Simply Irresistible (20 page)

So Vivian had made her way past all the full tables, surprised at how many faces she recognized.

Most belonged to the news reporters she’d been watching on the local channels this past week, but she also recognized Noah Sturgis, who had been around since she was a little girl. He looked somewhat plastic in person, as if he’d glued his face back, a feature she’d recognized from L.A. Plastic surgery looked good on camera, but it certainly looked awful in person.

Sturgis was sitting right in the center of the restaurant with a scruffy man in jeans and a young woman who looked out of her depth. Sturgis seemed to enjoy the positioning, signing autographs and talking to people who passed. Vivian made certain she avoided that table as she made her way to the front of the restaurant.

Which was where she stood now, trying to stay away from the floor-to-ceiling windows. She was still nervous about going outside. She had moved the phone as far away from the windows as she could, but she still felt oddly exposed.

The crowd din was less here, but the occasional laughter from the celebrating businessmen jarred her. She wrapped the phone’s cord around her hand, wishing for a portable phone instead, and dialed Travers’s cell phone.

He answered on the fifth ring—or rather, Kyle did, sounding breathless. “Got it,” he said into the receiver, then apparently realizing what he had done, added, “hello?”

“Hey, Ky,” Vivian said.

“Aunt Viv! How’re you? We’ve been really worried. Hey, Dad, it’s Aunt Viv!” Kyle said all of this so quickly that Vivian couldn’t get a single word in.

“Gathered that.” Travers’s voice was faint but audible. Someone else was talking—yet another reporter, probably on the radio—and then that voice cut off. “Give it to me.”

“Wait,” Kyle said. “You okay, Aunt Viv?”

“That’s what I was calling to tell you,” she said. “I’m just fine.”

“She’s just fi—” There was a sudden crackling, a rap, and then the squishy sound of hands rubbing on plastic. A horn honked in the distance, Kyle cried, “Da-ad!” and then Travers said, “Vivian, what the hell’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” Vivian asked, unwrapping the phone cord from her hand. She knew exactly what he meant, but she wasn’t sure how to talk with him about her day.

“That whole building thing.” Another car honked, the sound moving past, as if Travers was driving away from the problem. “I thought you were going to call me right back.”

“I said I’d call you as soon as I could. This is the first chance I got.”

“It was your building, right?”

“
Hey, buddy! Watch it
!” a man yelled, the voice startlingly close.

“Dad, let me talk to her.”

“Are you driving?” Vivian asked. “I thought you weren’t supposed to drive and talk on the phone at the same time.”

“I’m not in L.A.,” Travers said. “No way is some state cop going to know about my previous citations. I paid the—well the same to you, jerk face!”

“Nice talk with your son in the car.” Vivian turned around and leaned against the back bar. The bartender grinned at her—apparently he’d heard that last comment—and pulled a highball glass off the nearby display.

“Lay off,” Travers said, and Vivian couldn’t tell if he was talking to her, Kyle, or some faceless driver.

“Do me a favor and pull over,” Vivian said.

“I’m not—”

“Do it, or I’ll hang up. And I’m not at home, so you won’t be able to find me.”

The phone crackled again, and she heard Travers’s voice, fainter now, say, “Here, you talk to her.”

“Aunt Viv, we nearly hit a semi.” Kyle sounded breathless. “And some guy in a Mazerati swore at us.”

“Is your dad pulling over?”

A crowd of people had gathered outside the restaurant. Vivian had the sense they were looking at her. Then she realized they were studying a posted menu.

“There’s no place to pull,” Kyle said. “He’ll find somewhere, though. He’s been really worried, Aunt Viv. He said he shouldn’t’ve left you up there all by yourself. You gonna be okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” Vivian said. “I’ve met my neighbors and they’re …”

She glanced at the swinging kitchen door. Ariel had just come through it, holding a tray of steaming plates like a pro.

“What, Aunt Viv? I missed that.”

“They’re okay,” Vivian said, feeling like
okay was
a completely inadequate description of the crew at Quixotic. The bartender, who had just put three rum and Cokes on a cocktail waitress’s tray, gave Vivian another grin, as if he too found the word
okay
an understatement.

“We see an exit,” Kyle said. “It’s a mile and a quarter. Dad says to wait.”

“I will.”

A woman walked through the main glass doors. She was tall and slender, dressed in a tasteful red business suit that seemed too upscale for Portland. She was in her mid-fifties and had done nothing to hide it, unlike most women of her age in L.A.

She carried a clutch purse in one hand and a cell phone in the other. Her close-cropped hair was dark, and her features were familiar. But she wasn’t an actress. Vivian had lived in the L.A. basin long enough to recognize one of those.

“… Aunt Viv?”

“What?” Vivian asked. She had missed everything Kyle had just said to her.

“Have you looked at my comic book yet?”

“I’ve looked at it,” Vivian said, still watching the woman. She radiated power, and not the confident power that some businesswomen had. Power— wattage—like Blackstone did. Or Andrew Vari. But unlike them, Vivian got no sense of magic from this woman.

Besides, the others would’ve noticed if someone magical had walked in, right?

“Aunt Viv!” Kyle shouted in her ear.

At that moment, the woman looked at her, and Vivian got the sense they had met before. In fact, the woman’s features weren’t familiar because Vivian had seen them on television or in a movie. They were familiar because Vivian had—

“Are you Erika O’Connell?” the maitre d’ asked the woman, breaking Vivian’s train of thought The woman turned away from Vivian, and the feeling passed. Vivian wasn’t sure what she had been thinking or where she had known the woman from. Or, exactly, why it had suddenly seemed so important.

“Aunt Viv?” Kyle was still shouting.

“I’m here, Kyle,” Vivian said, missing the woman’s response to the maitre d’.

“What’d you think of my comic book?”

“You’re burning up money here, kiddo.” Travers’s voice dominated the line as the phone crackled again.

Vivian was only half listening. She watched the maitre d’ take the woman to Noah Sturgis’s table.

• Of course. Erika O’Connell was supposed to be the twenty-first-century female version of Ted Turner. She owned several cable stations, and she was trying to create her own empire. But her focus was on news, on making it viable, profitable, and still honest.

Or so she had said in the interviews Vivian had seen.

“So what happened with your building and why aren’t you there?” Travers asked.

“I’m having lunch,” Vivian said. “And no one seems to know what happened. Personally, I didn’t notice anything different. I think it was a trick of the light.”

“Weird things always happened around Aunt Eugenia, Viv, and I’m wondering if she gave that legacy to you. You’ve never been the most stable—”

In the back of the restaurant, a woman screamed. Vivian set down the phone and hurried toward the sound.

Dex was sitting on an elderly woman’s lap. The woman was sitting in the chair he had used before he disappeared with the Fates.

Everyone was staring at them. Apparently he had just materialized, or whatever these mages called their arrivals.

He stood, grinned, and doffed an imaginary hat. He looked wonderful. Gallant and handsome and oh so self-possessed.

“Took a wrong turn, didn’t I?” he said with a veddy accurate, veddy British accent. “I thought this was Buckingham Palace. My mistake.”

And then he vanished.

Vivian smiled in spite of herself. The restaurant burst into conversation, and several people hurried over to the elderly woman, who still looked frightened.

The phone was swinging on its cord, and she could hear Travers yelling.

Vivian picked it up and, without putting it to her ear, said into the receiver, “I’m fine, Trav. I have to go. Something’s come up. I’ll call you in a few days.”

And then she hung up.

The restaurant was in chaos. Even Noah Sturgis looked flustered. But Erika O’Connell had a slight smile on her face, as if she had found everything as amusing as Vivian initially had.

Vivian headed for the back of the restaurant, avoiding the crowd that had gathered at the elderly woman’s table, and pushed her way into the kitchen.

Steam rose from several pots on the stove. A young man in a chef’s uniform made salads, and a woman in white was rolling pastry dough on the table’s steel surface. Ariel was loading full lunch plates on another tray.

Dex was nowhere to be seen. But Blackstone looked like he was ready to rip someone’s head off.

“What the hell was that?” he asked Vivian.

“How’m I supposed to know?”

“No wonder the Fates gave him a warning. I would have—”

“Excuse me.” Dex stood in the hallway, his face bright red. “I think you meant that question for me.”

Vivian’s heart leapt. She was relieved to see him, although she wasn’t sure why. She hadn’t thought he was in danger, but she had been worried about him—and slightly worried that he wouldn’t return or, at least, return to her.

Everyone in the kitchen looked at him in surprise. A few patrons poked their heads through the swinging door, apparently thinking that Vivian’s entrance gave them permission to come in too.

Dex’s sheepish gaze met Vivian’s, and she felt his embarrassment as if it were her own. He hadn’t checked his location, apparently, before doing the spell. Not that she understood what that meant But he was letting her know this as an explanation, a way of telling her why he had screwed up.

It’s okay
, she sent him, and he gave her a smile so small she wondered if anyone else could see it.

“Into my office, now,” Blackstone said, pointing down the hallway where Dex was standing. “You too, Ariel. Marcel, tell Nora to join us when she gets off the phone.”

“
Oui
,” said the chef, who had been watching everything from a place near the ovens.

Blackstone put a hand against Vivian’s back and actually shoved her forward. She hurried ahead of him to move away from his touch. Dex walked in front of her, then pulled open the last door on the right.

Andrew Van was inside, going through receipts, adding them up on an old-fashioned adding machine. Without looking up, he said, “Buckingham Palace?”

“Everyone worries about the non sequitur and then forgets the details about the guy who vanished,” Dex said, stepping inside.

“If you say so.” Van moved a pile of receipts into a basket and then stood.

The office was small and narrow. Two large desks were crammed into it, bumping up against each other to form an
L
. On one desk, a computer hummed. A screen saver spelled the word
Quixotic
one gothic letter at a time.

A single chair on casters swung between both desks. Above them were flyers and notices, some from the government and the state about inspections and employee notices. A single poster, announcing Quixotic’s opening, was framed on the only remaining wall space, and beside it, was a tiny article from the
New York Times
, calling Quixotic the Best of the West.

Vari went all the way to the filing cabinets in the back. Dex followed him, and Vivian remained by his side. Blackstone held the door for Ariel, who mentioned that someone had to take her tables. He told her not to worry. Then he pulled the door closed.

“I don’t appreciate careless magic in my restaurant,” Blackstone said to Dex.

“I covered,” Dex said.

“And repeated the sin,” Blackstone said. “The least you could have done was walk into the back.”

“And have everyone know where I was?” Dex asked. “Did you see all the reporters out there?”

“I warned you that would happen,” Vari said.

“You said all the publicity would be good,” Blackstone snapped.

“It probably will be,” Ariel said. “Fortunately this happened at the same time as the building fiasco. Everyone’ll think this is all related.”

“And being caused by me,” Blackstone said.

The door opened, and Nora stepped inside. She grinned at Dex. “Quite an entrance.”

“Your husband doesn’t think so,” Dex said.

“Do you know the kind of problems he just caused?” Blackstone asked.

“None,” Nora said. “I was talking on my cell when it happened, and people got all excited—”

“We noticed,” Ariel said dryly.

“—and by the time I’d hung up, I heard that a man tried to take some lady’s purse, that her lunch companion made a pass and she tossed him out of his chair, and that some local actor was taking advantage of the morning’s strange events to build himself a career. Nice going. You really confused them with that Buckingham Palace comment—”

“Enough,” Blackstone said.

But Vivian felt Dex tense beside her. “No,” he said to Blackstone. “Not enough. I told you that ploy worked.”

“You only know it because you’re careless with your magic in public,” Blackstone said.

“At least I don’t use mine to improve people’s meals or to change the decor. Yes, I’ve heard all the strange stories about Quixotic. Who hasn’t, over the years?”

“Boys,” Nora said. “No need to fight.”

But Dex wasn’t going to stop, even if Vivian asked him to. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

“Why shouldn’t we fight?” Dex asked Nora. “It’s clear your husband doesn’t like or trust me.”

Blackstone made a sputtering sound, but Dex wasn’t through. He glared at Blackstone. “You must be happy I have the Fates. That way if something happens to them—and you’re not sure that would be a bad thing—then you won’t get blamed for it.”

Blackstone straightened, as if making himself taller also made him seem more powerful. “I’ve been trying to help them.”

“By talking, dithering, and running your restaurant,” Dex said. “Only Vivian and I have taken the risks here.”