For Love or Magic (23 page)

“Yeah,” I said, my own voice quavering. “I remember.”

“I wish I could have danced with you like this at your wedding,” he said.

I laughed. “No one danced at my wedding. It was at a county courthouse, and then we went out for pizza.”

“You should have a big wedding,” he said, pulling back to look at me. His eyes were a little misty, which was as close as I'd ever seen my father come to crying.

“Yeah, that won't be happening for a while,” I said. “But if it does, maybe we'll dance again then.”

“You've grown into such an amazing woman,” he said. “I'm really proud of you. I want you to know that.”

I took a deep breath. “It's okay. We don't have to do all of this right now. There's time.”

He stopped dancing and stepped back from me, holding my hands.

“Well, punkin, things are gonna be different here after tonight,” he said. “I wanted to be sure we had this moment first.”

“Um, okay,” I said, and my heart started pounding, an automatic response to my instinct knowing something my conscious mind was still resisting.

He took my hand in his and walked, leading me toward where they were setting up the fireworks display. I followed, trying to listen carefully despite the commotion around us.

“You know the story of what happened to your grandmother. My mother.” I couldn't see much of his face in the fading light, but I could hear the seriousness in his voice.

“Yes,” I said warily, and the muscles in my shoulders tightened.

He gave me a brief smile and looked away. “They talk about the Salem witch trials like that kind of thing is in the past, but it's not. Magicals die every day at the hands of people who don't understand what we are. And no one knows why it's happening, because we hide. We don't talk about who we are. We live on the edge of every society, and if you let it slip for one minute…” He took in a deep breath. “If you stop on a road walking for miles with your son on a hot day, a moment where you think you're alone, and have the audacity to make a little water fall from the sky to cool your boy, all it takes is one drunken asshole to see it, and you pay with your life.”

I felt the shock at the language; in all of my life, I'd never heard my father say so much as
darn.
He just wasn't that kind of guy. I reached out and touched his arm, and we both stopped walking to turn and face each other.

“Why are you talking about this, Emerson?”

He went on, almost as if he hadn't heard the question. “It's why I didn't want children. I didn't want to love anything so much, something that could be taken away in a vicious act of ignorance and fear. I didn't want to ever have to imagine your suffering, the way I imagined hers for all these years. Wondering what she must have felt, the pain and the terror and the sadness, in those last moments before…” He shook his head and raised his eyes to look into mine. “I want you to understand, Josie.”

“Emerson?” I said, my eyes filling with tears even as my body told me to run. But I didn't run; I kept my pace, walking at his side, hoping against all hope that this wasn't going the way I knew it was going.

Emerson went on. “I want you to know that everything I've done, I've done so you can live in a world where that kind of thing doesn't happen anymore. You need a place where there's magic.” He stopped walking, but didn't look me in the eye. “Just … everywhere. Just
everyone.
One town. One place where it's safe to let your guard down for a second. That's all I ever wanted, a place where you could live without ever having to see the things I've seen.”

“Emerson?” I could hear the tremor in my voice, so I cleared my throat and spoke louder. “Emerson, you're scaring me. What's going on?”

He pulled on a smile, but I could see the sadness in his eyes. “I know you may never speak to me again after this, and I'm really sorry about your fella there, but I did what I had to do, to get you here. To keep you safe.”

Another firework went off. Red sparks turned to white, and then green. My heart jumped in my throat, and I looked toward the picnic benches to find Desmond … until I realized that he wasn't talking about Desmond, and the world began to spin around me.

“Oh my god.” I stepped back from him and stumbled on my heel. Emerson reached out to steady me, but I pulled my arm away. “You killed Judd?”

“I was running out of time for you to find out who and what he was,” Emerson said. “I had to make a call.”

“Make a call? Jesus, this isn't fucking football. This is my
life.
”

“And he was a bad part of it,” Emerson said. “You weren't happy. Hell, I could tell that, and all I saw were pictures of you. Going to the grocery store, fighting with that no-account on the lawn. Wasting your time, your potential. Every day spent in that life was a waste of everything you are. I couldn't watch it anymore.”

“No one asked you to watch.
Jesus.
” I put my hand to my forehead and tried to process it all. “And Christy McNagle? Did you mean to kill her, too? God, Emerson! What if Seamus had been in that car with them?” Another firework went off with a big explosion, and then tiny white flames shot out into the sky. I was so jumpy that I cried out, but Emerson just looked up into the sky.

Emerson shook his head. “That was unfortunate. But sometimes, collateral damage—”

“Oh my god … I can't listen to this…” I started to stumble away from him, but he grabbed my elbow in a tight grip and turned me to face him.

“You ran off last time, and I lost you for sixteen years,” he said. “If you go again this time, I want you to know that I'm not some monster. I did what I did for my family. I did it for you, Josie. Because I love you and I want you safe. And if you can't understand that…” He shook his head and shot me a victimized look. “Well, then, I guess there's nothing I can do about that.”

Everything around me slowed down, and I felt every second like grains of sand slowly falling through an hourglass. I could feel my heart pounding, and while I knew it was beating fast, each beat thrummed through me with painful slowness. “Emerson, what did you do?”

He didn't seem to hear me, so I grabbed his arm and yanked until he looked at me.

“What did you do?”

He pulled me by my shoulders and kissed me on the forehead.

And that's when the fireworks went off.

At first, I thought it was strange; the sun wasn't even down yet. Then I looked over, and saw a blue bolt shoot out, but instead of going upward into the sky, it arced straight at me, and time stopped.

I didn't feel it hit. It didn't feel like anything. Sunlight, I guess, a little, but strangely colder. I held out my hands, on instinct, and then looked down at my feet. The light went through me, arcing out of me in a million little pieces, dancing from me to the people around me, then going ever outward. It seemed like an endless blast, circling outward over everyone. I couldn't tell how far it went, but it was well past as far as I could see.

It was a second, maybe even a nanosecond, and then I held my hand up and looked at it as the last of the blue light danced and died over my fingertips.

No one seemed hurt; the crowd roared with delight at fireworks the likes of which they had never seen before.

I turned around, looking for the picnic table where Desmond and everyone was, but I'd lost my sense of space. I twirled around again, and by the time I looked back at where Emerson had been, he was gone. More fireworks were going off as the sun set, and I looked for him in the flashes of light, but he had disappeared.

“Eliot! Eliot!” Desmond was suddenly at my side, one hand on my upper arm, the other running over me, as though checking for injury. “What happened? Are you all right?”

“No,” I said, and vomited into the grass.

*   *   *

“So what do we know?” Liv asked, pouring coffee for all of us in her kitchen, as it promised to be a long night. We hadn't woken Peach and Nick; we wanted to wait until we had some idea of what was going on.

“We know that he wants to spread magic,” I said. “And that the blue light was the same thing I saw in Lott's Cove when I was a kid. Last time, people became symptomatic within twelve hours, their magic activating immediately or at the next switch between day and night, depending on what kind of magic manifests. And within twenty-four hours…” I looked at Desmond, who reached across the Formica table and took my hand, and the room went silent.

“And it'll just be everybody?” Stacy said. “Everyone in town is going to have magical powers now?”

“If it works the same way it did last time,” I said, “then at least everyone touched by the light. Everyone who was within the blast zone … yes. I would expect that they would. That would make everyone in town magical, and that's what Emerson wanted.”

“But what about free will?” Leo asked, glancing from Stacy to Liv and back to me. “Isn't that a thing with magic? Don't things go wrong if you mess with free will?”

“I don't know. Desmond, you want to field that one?” Stacy said in a snarky tone. All eyes turned to her, and she sighed. “Sorry, Des. Old habits.”

“It's quite all right,” Desmond said, and looked at Leo. “Free will is an ethical consideration. Magic acts the same whether it was used with permission or not.”

“The good news is, some of the people with night magic are just going to go to sleep, so there's a good chance things will be quieter tonight than tomorrow morning,” Tobias said. “But there's still going to be some panic starting tonight. Even if there aren't any bad side effects this time, getting sudden magical power has a destabilizing effect. It might make sense for us to start canvassing the town, keep an eye out for anything unusual, and try to calm things where we can.”

“The thing is, using the power makes it worse, but people who suddenly get power love to use it,” I said. “If you see someone using their magic, you have to convince them to stop, then … I don't know.” I looked at Liv. “Bring them back here?”

“Absolutely,” Liv said. “I'll call Addie and Grace and have them hang out here to take in anyone we find. Let's make sure we've got everyone's numbers in our phones before we head out, so we can keep each other informed.”

“I think I should look for Emerson,” I said. “I don't know if I'll find him, but if I do, I might be able to get more solid information. If he's been running trials, it might be safe. But if not…”

I looked at Liv, and the room went quiet.

“What?” Liv said.

“Magicals were affected, too,” I said. “This killed my mother, without her even using her power much. I think just having residual power put her at risk. And given that you're unusually powerful…”

Liv stared at me for a moment as she processed what I was saying, then gave a sad smile. “I'm the canary in the coal mine.”

Tobias's face went to stone, and he stood up. “But we don't know that it's the same thing this time.”

“We don't,” I said. “And the symptoms are very similar to Desmond's trials from last year. He has some potions that might put things off for a while.”

“But not enough to keep an entire town going for long,” Stacy said.

“I'll be in my lab,” Desmond said. “Making as much as I can as quickly as I can, but it's not a fast process, and my supplies are limited.”

Stacy stood up, all business. “I'll grab what I've got and meet you there. I can double your speed.”

“Let's go.” Leo stood up and started toward the door, and Desmond and Stacy conferred about what she'd need to grab from her lab. Tobias and Liv looked at each other, fear in both of their eyes, and I walked over to them.

“Don't use your power deliberately,” I said to Liv. “If it starts to spark on its own, and you can't control it, call Desmond immediately. If you feel dizzy, call.” I looked at Tobias. “Stay by her side. Once it starts, things move pretty fast.”

Tobias nodded grimly, and I wanted to tell them how sorry I was, but there wasn't time. I turned and headed out the front door without saying another word to any of them.

I had to find my father.

*   *   *

He wasn't at his office, of course, and I had no idea where he lived. I hadn't asked. I hadn't wanted to know. To find the person who would know, I had to head straight to Happy Larry's.

The place was packed, and as far as I could see from a quick look around, no one was using magic. Based on my experience, the Happy Larry patrons were not town-event types. Most likely, they'd been in this brick building all night, which meant there was a chance they would have been unaffected by the blast. But it was a Saturday night, and it was crowded, so finding Amber Dorsey was gonna take a few minutes. I made my way to the bar and waved Larry over.

“You comin' in to work tonight?” Larry said. “I gotta tell you, I could use the help.”

“No, sorry. Hey, have you seen Amber tonight?”

Larry nodded, then jerked his head over toward the pool tables. Of course.

I tapped the bar. “Thanks.”

I wove through the crowd to find Amber lining up her shot, surrounded by guys. Pool balls were spread all over the table, and Amber was working her angle.

“Now how much do I get when I sink this?” she asked.

“Between us?” One of guys, a young blond kid who I'd served when he'd turned twenty-one last week, motioned among all of the guys there. “Forty bucks.”

“Put your money down,” Amber said, and they all laid their cash on the rim of the table, then went back to admiring the exposed tattoo on her lower back. I, however, was actually watching her play. She lined up the shot, wiggled her ass a little bit to distract attention, and opened her hand as she moved the stick. Smoky, orange strings of light shot out from her fingers, and a four ball went sailing straight into the corner pocket. The guys all let out pretend jeers as Amber collected their money and stuffed it into her back pocket.