Love Charms (49 page)

6:
Snooping

Dad and I got a Christmas tree that
afternoon, and while he set it up, I took off in my Beetle with the casserole
dish for Genevieve. I felt so good about this visit after learning about Mavis
and her crystals that I snapped a shot of the passion-potion spell, including
the gibberish at the end I was supposed to say. Or, I guess, enchant.

I smacked the steering wheel. This was
too great. I could do this.

Genevieve lived on the other side of
town, and with the snow still coming down, I felt an urgency to get to her
before any of the streets got too difficult to navigate. We'd been snowed in
more than one Christmas when the plows couldn't keep up.

I hadn't called ahead for any of them
even though I had their numbers. Surprise seemed to be wiser, to see what I
could glean before they recognized me.

I debated the headband. While I knew it
might attract magic I couldn't handle or understand, the reaction of people
seeing it on me might tell me what they knew. Rah had obviously been clueless.
Plus, I never knew when it was protecting me or steering me in the right
direction. Hopefully I had a handle on its lip-sealing side effect.

Genevieve's house was set back from the
road. A large iron fence separated it from the street, but the heavy gates were
open, so I drove in.

The front of the house could have
appeared in a magazine. Sparkling lights, tasteful ribbons, and real boughs of
garland, not plastic bits on wire.

Quite a lot of cars lined the circle
drive. When I opened my door, piano music filtered from the house, a Christmas
tune. They must be having a party.

I hesitated. I could come back another
time, but that meant the loss of another day. I had hoped to learn something I
could use that night in the lair, after Dad had gone to sleep and I could safely
mix things. If everything with Genevieve went perfectly, maybe I'd even know
how to say the words to the enchantment. The end of the spell was
indecipherable, and who knew if a simple mispronunciation was all that stood
between a working potion and — Mom.

But I couldn't ask her until I knew where
I stood. The boy and Hallow had both said helping a nix was forbidden, so I had
to be cautious.

I clutched the Pyrex dish to my chest
like a shield as I went up the steps. Another car pulled up behind mine, and I
hesitated. Maybe I could walk in with another family and get a good look around
before I was spotted. I dug my keys from my pocket and purposefully dropped
them off the side of the porch.

"Dang," I said, smiling at the
couple getting out of their seats. A man, a woman, and two teen girls. Perfect.
I hurried down the steps and collected my keys as they made their way up the
walk.

They rang the bell, and the door swung
open. "Jerry! Cecilia!" a woman cried.

I fell in behind the bored teen girls in
their holiday dresses. Rats, I was wearing jeans to a fancy party. Nothing to
do about that.

As the family filtered through the door,
I caught sight of the woman who had greeted them. Yes, I recognized her. She'd
been at the funeral, elegant but somehow unapproachable and stern. I didn't
know if I could ask her about the potion after all.

As I had hoped, Genevieve stepped back
and led the adults into the room, letting the kids follow. I closed the door
and quickly passed by the cluster in the front room to head down the hall.

Another large group had gathered in the
open kitchen, pouring wine and laughing. I set the dish on a counter, nodding
at everyone, and backed out again. I just needed to find some photos.

The kitchen connected to a family room
with a large television set in the center of a wall of bookshelves.
Interspersed on the rows were many framed images. I walked as casually as
possible over to the portraits.

The light was pretty dim, but I could
make out a family of five. Unfortunately, the kids were all babies and toddlers
and Genevieve was a young mother. The hair color was right, though. This could
really be it.

The family grew older in the portraits as
I walked along the shelves. A light glimmered faintly in a hallway off the
other side of the room, and I could spot much larger photographs on the walls
there.

I smiled at a few other passersby and
beelined for the hall. There, a bright light shone on the images. Another of
the young family, but then, there, one of all three kids as teenagers. I moved
toward the image, two boys and a girl, when someone grabbed my shoulders,
dragged me backward into a room, and slammed the door.

7:
Caleb

"Are you insane?" The voice was
disembodied, as the room was too dark to see anything.

I pulled away from the arms that held me.
"What the hell are you doing?" I asked.

A light snapped on.

Oh, man. It was him. Instead of the green
robe, he wore a pair of slim khaki pants and a cranberry sweater that fit him
like a dream. His black hair curled along his forehead just as it had in the
pewter bowl.

"Your eyes." It was all I could
think to say.

He sat on his bed, and finally I began to
realize where we were. A bedroom. His room. My heart beat a little faster.

He shook his head. "I know. I don't
know why we're a match. You're a nix, and I'm an enchanter. Even talking to you
is forbidden. And meeting you during the match phase..."

I backed away to lean against a desk. I
needed some distance. My face was flushing, and I didn't think my ribs were
going to contain this racing heart much longer. I needed to be calm.

My scalp tingled under the headband, and
a strange warmth began to flow down. My shoulders dropped a few inches, less
tense, and my breathing slowed. Magic. Had to love it.

The boy ran his fingers through the
curls. "This is a disaster. I already started the rituals with
Mariah."

I held on to the desk. "Look, I'm
not interested in your matches or your rituals. I'm just trying to figure out
how to make this potion."

He looked right into my face, and when
our eyes locked, all the work the band had done to calm me was for nothing. I
couldn't breathe, not a bit, and I gripped the edge of the desk so hard my
fingers hurt. I wanted nothing more than to walk up to him, to embrace him, to
be as close as I possibly could.

"You feel that, don't you?" he
said. "I feel it too. It's the way it's supposed to work." He whirled
around. "All those other matches I've met, and you have to be the real
deal."

I pushed off the desk. So he had other
options. Fine. "I really have a lot more urgent matters than worrying
about my next shag."

His hands went back to his hair as he
stared out a window at the lights twinkling on snow. "You're right. That
doesn't matter. I can't do anything with a nix anyway." He turned back
around. "Okay, so what are you doing here?"

"I have to make this potion."

He exhaled in a rush. "What is it
with this one spell? Your mom called on everyone she knew to help her with it.
What did she get into?"

"It's some sort of love potion.
Seems like that would be standard issue."

"But it's not. There are three
things an enchanter doesn't mess with — life, death, and love."

He acted like I was stupid. Well, on this
issue, I was. His room practically crackled with starch. Clean, organized,
matching accessories. No posters, no junk, no personal stuff spread across the
dresser. "You don't live here, do you?"

"I'm home from school."

Safer topic. "Where do you go?"

"Yale."

Of course. "Major?"

"The usual. Chemistry."

My knees wobbled at that. I rolled the
desk chair out and sat down. "Why chemistry?"

"It's the best way to hide who we
are, to blend in. Some do medicine. A few go into other sciences, just to mix
things up, but the rules are pretty strict."

"So there are rules."

"Of course. But you're a nix. You
won't be trained. You won't need to be."

"But I can understand Mom's ferret.
And the band works for me." I pointed at the silver circlet.

He walked over to peer at it. "It
was your mother's." His nearness made my blood pressure shoot up again.
I'd had boyfriends, plenty of them, and sure, we'd had our moments. But this
was some other feeling, an attraction to the exponential degree.

"What's your name?" Thankfully,
my lips allowed that question.

The boy stepped away, staring at his
hands like he couldn't control them. I knew exactly how he felt. The need to
touch him, to connect with him in some small way, was fierce.

"Caleb."

Knowing his name eased my discomfort by a
degree, as if I were moving in the right direction. "I'm Jet."

He nodded. "I know. I've always
known you."

"But you didn't know we were a
match?"

Caleb sat back down on his bed. "Do
you remember when your eyes changed color?"

"They've always been like
this."

He frowned. "No, an enchanter's
color arrives with all the other changes at age thirteen."

"Nope. Always been turquoise."

"You just don't remember."

I jumped up at this. "Look. I know
the color of my freaking eyes. I was even in some baby contest and won because
of my eyes. The picture was up on the wall of that stupid little portrait
studio in the mall for years."

Now he leaped from the bed. "That
was you?"

"Yes. My lifelong humiliation."

"You had chubby thighs." Those
matching eyes glanced down at my jeans.

God. That picture had been the bane of my
adolescence. I'd probably run a thousand miles in high school to make sure no
one could call me Thunder Thighs and mean it. I was naked in the image, sitting
on my bare bottom, my fat thigh hiding the crucial bits. But my eyes were what
won the prize, I knew.

"I've changed since then," I
said.

"I can see that."

The electricity was practically lethal. I
could have powered a small village at this rate. "So why are you all
gobsmacked over our eyes?"

Caleb busted out with a laugh. "Do
you always talk like a Brit? You don't have the least bit of an accent."

"Sorry." My face flamed.
"Happens when I'm around Dad a lot. Mom met him across the Pond on
holiday." I'd tried to break myself of the habit when I left, but talking
to no one but my father made it all flood back.

"So your father is from
England." He paced the room.

"Yes."

"Do their eyes match?"

"No."

"And you always had your
color?"

"What does this have to do with
anything?" I felt exasperated. I needed help with the spell. The rest of
the whole world-building could wait.

"I don't know why you are a nix. You
seem like you're like any other enchanter before the change." He spun
around. "You say your ferret talks?"

"Yes. Since I put this on." I
pointed to the circlet.

He pushed up the sleeve to his sweater,
revealing a bracelet made of heavy silver links. "This is my token. It
allows me to sense magic."

I reached for it, drawn with a force
second only to when my sticky hands had searched for the headband. When my
fingertips touched the surface of the metal, a visible spark flew out.

I jerked back. "That was
something."

Caleb watched me with those eyes like
mine. "I can't be with you, but I don't get it. Why would you find me? Why
would we have a match bond?"

A rap on the door made us both jump.

"Caleb? You're missing the
party."

I dove behind the bed. Good grief, I was
living in a made-for-TV movie.

The door opened with a click, and Caleb
said, "I'll be right out."

"Come with me now. I need you to
meet another daughter."

"Mom, I told you I was going to
accept Mariah."

"It doesn't hurt to see them
all."

Another match? How many of them were
there?

"Can you give me just a
minute?"

"All right. But don't try to avoid
this one. Most matches are set by the time they finish undergrad, and you still
have the six rituals."

The door closed. I waited a few seconds,
then peeked over the bedspread. "Sorry if I'm inconveniencing your
rituals."

He paced the room, hands back in the
black curls. "This is way screwed up. Seven matches, and you're the
one." He paused. "I don't know what else to do."

I clambered up from the floor. "What
are you talking about? What do you have to do?"

He strode over and clasped his hands
behind my head.

And kissed me.