For Love or Magic (18 page)

“Wow,” I said. “Talk about a full-service conjurer. You do windows, too?”

“Liv and Tobias have gone,” Desmond said. “I offered to clean up after them.”

“How's Tobias?” I rolled up my sleeves and walked over to the sink. I nudged him out of the way to wash my hands and face, covered as they were with dog.

“He's well,” Desmond said. “He's still a bit confused, and he can't remember anything after about two weeks before he left. Honestly, that's quite a bit less memory than I thought he'd lose. Your quickness saved the day.” He put a clean coffee mug in the rack, and I picked up the towel and dried it.

“How's Liv handling everything?”

Desmond's expression darkened. “She seems to be having a tougher time. She still doesn't know if he willingly left her or not, and neither does he, so I imagine it's not easy for them.”

“They told you all that?”

He gave a small shrug. “I surmised.”

Desmond put a saucer in the rack, and I took it to dry. “You didn't have to clean up, you know.”

“I don't mind. How did it go with your father?”

I walked over to the cabinet to put the saucer away, grateful for the opportunity to hide my face. “I don't know. He told me he didn't have anything to do with Tobias's disappearance. But considering that Tobias was the only agency presence in town, I could see why Emerson would want him out of the way.” I turned to face him, playing with the towel in my hand. “Any chance Tobias will get his memory back?”

Desmond put the last coffee mug in the rack and shut off the water, angling his body to face me. “It's possible. Unlikely, but possible.”

“Poop,” I said absently as I grabbed a mug to dry. If Tobias didn't get his memory back, then I'd never know whether my father had been behind his disappearance or not. Which meant that I either needed to take my father's word, a dangerous proposition, or never trust anything he ever said again, which was a heartbreaking one.

“Eliot?”

“Huh?” I turned my attention back to Desmond. “What?”

“Is everything all right?”

I took a moment to figure out how to answer that question.

“When I took on my new identity, my birth date changed to September. I never really thought about it. I changed my name, my Social Security number … everything changed. My birthday was really the least of it. I never celebrated it, anyway.”

Desmond waited in silence, not pushing, just listening. I liked that, the way he just knew there was more, and was willing to wait until I was ready to tell him.

“My real birthday is Saturday. My father wants to take me to the bicentennial fireworks to celebrate.”

“Did you accept the invitation?”

“No.”

“Do you want to?”

“I don't know. I love him. He's funny and smart and sweet and if it weren't for the occasional bouts of evil-doing, he'd be the perfect father. I miss him. It's been a long time since I've had … you know … family.” I continued to dry the mug in my hand, even though it was already dry. I just wanted the busywork.

There was a pause in the conversation in which Desmond took the dry mug from my hand and set it on the mug tree by the coffee maker. “There's nothing wrong with it, you know.”

“Wrong with what?”

“Loving him,” he said simply. “He is your father.”

“I'm not worried about it being wrong. I'm worried about it being stupid.” I looked out the front window to see Seamus's tail wagging as he plodded by. “It looks like Seamus found a tennis ball.”

“Oh, yes. I had one in the back of my car.”

I pulled my attention away from the window and looked at Desmond. “You gave him that ball?”

He pulled his car keys out of his pocket. “It's been ages since I've played tennis, so I threw it out for Seamus. He seemed to enjoy it. Well, if you don't need me for anything else here, I think I might…” He trailed off, catching my expression. “You look strange. Are you well?”

Without thinking much about it, I pushed up on my tiptoes and kissed him. I didn't realize what I was doing until it was done, and his shoulders went stiff under my hands and we just … froze. It wasn't so much a kiss as two sets of lips touching, with no apparent idea why. Just when I was about to pull back and run out the front door, something changed. Desmond's lips softened, moving against mine, and I moved my hands up his shoulders to clasp at the back of his neck. His hands slid around my waist, pulling me closer, and our lips opened to each other and it felt like … I don't know. Music. Communion. A slow, slow dance to which there were no steps, only the crashing waves of … hell, I didn't even know what. I couldn't mix another metaphor, I just knew that suddenly, out of nowhere, I wanted this man more than anything I had ever wanted in my life.

The moment, like all of them, finally ended, and we regained consciousness of ourselves. I pulled back and looked up at him, and he stared down at me, his arms still wrapped around my waist, my fingers still woven into his hair. We were both breathing hard, and I felt like if he let me go, I'd fall for hours.

“Little more,” I breathed, and he bent his head down and kissed me again, and while the first time had seemed more me than him, his enthusiasm was apparent now. It was like falling into him, through him, only to be restored to myself again. I felt happiness in my toes. I didn't even know that was possible.

After a few minutes, I pulled back again, pressed the flats of my hands against his chest, and rested my forehead between them. Unable to look him in the eye, I stared at his chest and smoothed his shirt under my hands.

“I mean … thank you,” I said lamely. “F-for the tennis ball.”

We sort of froze there for a while, his arms around my waist, my palms resting against his chest, the
thump-thump-thump
of his heart growing faster under my fingers. It was like being on the edge of a precipice, and knowing that a single move will send you toppling one way or the other, but the edge is so nice, you kind of want to stay there a while and enjoy it.

His finger tucked under my chin, urging me to look up at him. When I did, he smiled down at me, his deep brown eyes so soft and so full of … well, whatever this was that was happening between us. He touched my face, his fingers moving hair away from my forehead in this gentle movement, so deliberate, so careful. He didn't want to topple away from this, either.

Slowly, he lowered his head and put his lips to mine, softly moving them against my mouth with agonizing deliberateness. I put my hands to his face, pulling him closer in, and at first, I thought the power that surged through us was just sexual excitement gone haywire, but then my eyes opened and I saw the blue light dancing around my hands … dancing around him …

Dancing
through
him.

“Oh my god!” I yelled, and jumped back from him, but it was too late. The light traveled down his shoulders, to his hands, and then he hollered and threw the keys that had been in his hand to the floor, and they skittered across the floor into the dining room.

“No,” I said, feeling like I was going to throw up. The room spun around me, but I focused on finding those keys. I had to find those keys, and they had to still be keys, because if they weren't still keys …

“Oh, god. No, no,
nonononono
…”

“Eliot.” I heard Desmond's voice behind me, but it might as well have been echoing on the end of a tinny phone line for all I noticed he was there. I was focused on the keys. I found them under the table, picked them up, and held them in my hands.

There had been three of them, attached to the keyless car fob. A house key, I guessed. Something that looked like a post office box key. Something else. It didn't matter, because they weren't keys anymore. They had molded into the shape of a potion flask, with the word
Kwikset
still engraved on one side.

“No!” I said. “No! Goddammit!”

“Eliot.” Desmond's hands were on my shoulders and he pulled me up from under the table, sitting me down in the chair. He left and I could hear the refrigerator door open, but I couldn't see anything but that stupid metal potion flask in my palm. The stupid metal potion flask he had made, because of me. Because I couldn't have had the common fucking sense to realize that if there was a chance I might have wild magic, and my magic was so strong that I could turn a doorknob without even trying,
maybe
I shouldn't go around kissing people.

“Hey.” Desmond appeared in my line of sight, kneeling before me, holding a glass of water. “Drink this, okay?”

“No,” I said, still staring down at the potion flask. My vision blurred, and tears dripped down my face, but all I could see and feel was that flask, cold and real in my hands.

Desmond put the glass on the table and touched my face, forcing me to look at him.

“I'm so sorry,” I said. “It wasn't on purpose. I didn't send that magic through you on purpose. I would never, ever—”

“Trust me, I know that,” he said, his voice completely calm. Considering that he'd just had wild magic surging through him, you would have expected him to be a little more ruffled, but he was completely cool. Cucumber cool. He took the potion flask from my hand, set it on the table, and then took both of my hands in his, holding them even as I weakly tried to pull them away.

“It's all right,” he said. “I feel fine.”

“So did Del, at first.” I pushed up from the seat, away from him, and started for the living room, pacing back and forth as I talked. “Okay. Okay. You have potions, right? You said you have potions. We can go back to your place and you can take them and then we'll go to my father. Maybe over the years he's figured it out, and he has a cure or something. Maybe…” I trailed off, knowing that if my father knew how to give power to nonmagicals without dire consequences, this whole town would be lit up with magic by now.

Desmond put his hands on my shoulders and forced me to stand still. “We don't know what we're dealing with just yet. I'm not going to take potions I don't need. It could do more harm than good. Right now, I'm more worried about you. You need to calm down, Eliot. Please. Look at me.”

I met his eyes and wanted to burst into tears again. But he was holding me, he was anchoring me, and if he wanted me calm, then I was going to be calm.

“It's twenty-four hours, right?” He held my hands in his, comforting me. “Twenty-four hours from initial exposure to…?” He had the courtesy to not finish the sentence with the word I couldn't hear:
death.

“Yes.” My voice sounded like someone else's, like a calm person speaking. Inside, I was trying like hell, but I was anything but calm. “About twenty-four hours. First you'll get powers of your own, and then…” I trailed off, unable to think past that point.

“All right.” He put one hand on my shoulder and pressed firmly, sending some of his calm shooting into me. “We have twenty-four hours to monitor the situation, and I am not afraid. I think I'm going to be fine, but even if … even if the worst happens, it'll be okay.”

“I won't be okay,” I said. “If the worst happens, I will never be okay again. You know that, right?”

He put his hands on my face, his eyes so confident and determined that I felt my heart rate slow down just from looking into them. “Then we won't let that happen.”

I held his gaze a while longer, taking strength from him until the vise of cold fear that clutched at my heart released its grip a little bit. “Promise me.”

He kissed me instead, and while I knew he was doing it to avoid making me a promise he couldn't keep, I took it as a promise anyway. It was the only way I was going to hold it together and be any help at all for the next twenty-four hours.

 

Chapter 11

Desmond drove us to his house in silence, the only sound coming from the backseat where Seamus panted and gnawed on his increasingly gross tennis ball. Once we got to Desmond's, he tossed my overnight bag and Seamus's food by the door, and walked me over to the couch, where he sat me down and took my hands in his.

“We need to talk about some things,” he said. “Do you need anything? Water? Tea?”

“No,” I said. “I'm okay.”

“When magic manifests,” he said, “it's usually centered in the limbic system … the emotional centers of the brain. Often a shock, a sudden burst of fear or happiness … those are the things that tend to bring on the first incident. So the first thing we need to look for is my developing any power independent of yours. So far, we just have the potion flask which was made on the burst of your magic. I haven't felt any other effects.”

“Really?” I asked. “You're not just saying that to make me feel better?”

He shook his head. “No tingling sensation in my arms or hands, and no evident light phenomena.” He held out his hands and looked at them as if they were some rare artifact he'd never seen before. “Of course, temporal constraints aren't necessarily transferable.”

I blinked. “Sorry. What?”

He seemed distracted by his own thoughts, but then looked up and gave me a comforting smile. “You have day magic, but the magic that each person manifests is contingent upon their individual potential. Some people are day magic, some are night. We won't know for sure what I am, if indeed I am anything, until evening falls. Which is…” He looked at his watch. “We're in midsummer, so it will be another seven hours at least.”

“And you have to have an intense emotional experience in order to spark it?” I asked. “To jump-start the limbic system?”

He gave a half nod, half shrug. “It's mostly conjecture at this point, but based on available data, that would be my expectation.”

“So, how do we create an intense emotional reaction in you? Should we … I don't know … talk about your childhood? Maybe … did you have to put down that deaf dog of yours or something?”