Simply Irresistible (4 page)

“I don’t care,” Vivian said. “Just tell me what’s happening.”

“Oh, dear,” Atropos said. “This will be difficult if you have no idea who we are.”

“Can you spell the building first?” Clotho asked.

“I can’t spell anything,” Vivian snapped, and then she paused. “You don’t mean spell-spell, do you? As in spelling bee?”

The women stared at each other, looking even more confused.

“I suppose not,” Vivian said. “That would be too simple.”

She marched across her floor and headed into the kitchen, pushing open the swinging door. The kitchen had been remodeled just before she moved in and still had that new plastic smell appliances sometimes had. Her large blue teakettle, shaped like the Tick with his little antennae serving as a handle, looked out of place on the black stove.

She grabbed the kettle, turned on the cold water, and shoved the kettle beneath it. Breakfast. She needed breakfast. And time to think.

These women had mentioned Aunt Eugenia. So they were connected to Vivian somehow, and they thought Aunt Eugenia had told her something.

Maybe Aunt Eugenia had. She had sent Vivian a box full of papers the week before she died. Vivian had scanned them to look for a new version of the will and had found nothing except handwritten notes, books, and newspaper clippings from the previous century. She planned to go through it all when she had more time.

Cold water splashed on her hand. She shut off the faucet, dried off the teakettle, and set it on the stove. Then she slid out her toaster and put an English muffin inside.

The women would be able to smell the food. Vivian sighed. She hated being impolite, even to strangers—and was there a better word for these women?
strange-ers?
—so she supposed to ease her own mind she’d have to offer them something.

Vivian pushed open the swinging door and held it in place. The strange women were still standing in her entry, huddled together and talking quietly.

“I’m going to have breakfast,” Vivian said. “Would you like something to eat?”

“Food!” Lachesis said with relief.

“Oh, yes,” Atropos said. “We haven’t had food in hours.”

Clotho clapped her hands together. “How about some chocolate crepes, followed by one of those egg-cheese things—”

“An omelet,” Lachesis said.

“Three omelets,” Atropos said.

“And perhaps some freshly ripened grapes,” Clotho said. “You know the type. At the very peak—”

“I have English muffins or Pop Tarts,” Vivian said, wishing she’d never made the offer. “And if you want the muffins, you get a choice of peanut butter, margarine, strawberry jelly, or cream cheese.”

The toaster popped. She went back into the kitchen and slathered peanut butter on her English muffins. She didn’t care what the women wanted.

“And,” Vivian shouted so that they could hear her, “you make them yourself.”

Her remark was greeted with silence. She poured orange juice into a McDonalds’ promotional glass from the third Batman movie, and carried it through the swinging door to the glass-topped table.

The three women had gathered around her table in anticipation of food, and now that she had refused to give them what they wanted, they stared at her.

Vivian set her glass down as if nothing were wrong. But something was wrong, and she just realized what it was.

She had no sense of these women. She always had a sense of people—whether they were good or bad, whether they meant to harm her or not, whether they were self-involved or saintly.

That was why she’d had no idea they were at her door—why she had assumed they were at someone else’s. And that was what bothered her the most about them. It wasn’t their odd way of talking or their appearance. It was that they made no impact on her psyche. As if they weren’t there at all.

She almost touched one, then realized that would be a mistake. They were here, and present. They had moved her chairs, and they brought with them the faint scent of summer sunshine, not to mention all the noise.

There had been only one other person in the whole world Vivian could never sense, and that had been Aunt Eugenia. Aunt Eugenia, whom these women claimed to know.

“You really have no idea who we are, do you?” Lachesis asked.

Vivian looked up from her contemplation of her orange juice glass. “No, I don’t.”

Atropos licked her lips nervously. “Do you have any chocolate? We’ll eat anything chocolate for breakfast.”

The teakettle whistled. Vivian sighed. She did have some chocolate truffles that Kyle had bought her the day before, and she hadn’t been planning on eating them. They looked too rich for her.

She went back into the kitchen, took the teakettle off the burner, and shut it off. Then she made some Earl Gray, put the teapot, her muffin, the truffles, and some X-Men mugs on a tray, and carried the whole thing back to the dining room.

“All right,” she said as she set the tray down near her orange juice glass. “Sit down. Tell me what’s going on, and convince me not to call the police.”

“Well, for one thing, your police can’t help,” Clotho said.

“They lack the power.” Atropos reached for a truffle.

Lachesis slapped her hand. “We haven’t been invited yet.”

“Yes, you have,” Vivian said. “The chocolate is for you.”

“Thank you,” the three women said in unison, and it was as if she had given them the world. They each took a truffle, bit into it at the same time, and got the identical expression of joy on their faces.

Vivian ate her muffin, the peanut butter making her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth. She drank some orange juice to dislodge it “You do owe me an explanation.”

Clotho nodded. “We’re trying to think of the best way to tell you.”

“What did Eugenia tell you about the magical world?” Lachesis asked.

“The magical world?” Vivian repeated. “Eugenia told my parents I’m psychic.”

“And?” Atropos asked.

“And to tolerate what happened to me, saying that it was pretty normal for someone with my abilities,” Vivian said.

“And?” Clotho asked.

“And that Eugenia had been psychic when she was a kid, so she understood what was going on.” Vivian frowned.

Eugenia had said
had been
, as if being psychic was something someone outgrew. She never exhibited any psychic powers around Vivian that she could remember, but maybe Eugenia had had different talents. Maybe she could foresee the future. Maybe that was why she had sent Vivian that box the week before her death.

Maybe that was what Eugenia had meant when she used to invite Vivian to Portland, claiming they were running out of time.
I’m not young anymore
, Eugenia would say during their phone calls.

Nonsense
, Vivian used to say,
you’re going to live forever, Aunt
.

“And?” Lachesis asked.

“And what?” Vivian said.

“What else did she tell you?”

Vivian shrugged. “Bits and pieces here and there. So I wouldn’t feel like a freak. Even though I did. Because I was. Am. You know. You do know that I’m psychic, right?”

“We know everything about you, child,” Atropos said, and Vivian started. She’d never had anyone her own age call her
child
before.

“Or we used to,” Clotho said.

“And we will again,” Lachesis said, her voice rising the way people’s voices did when they were trying to cheer other people up.

“How old are you?” Atropos asked.

“I thought you knew everything about me,” Vivian said.

Clotho waved a hand in dismissal. “We’re never great with details.”

“I’m twenty-six,” Vivian said.

“Twenty-six,” Lachesis said to the other two. “That’s old enough. In fact, that’s too old. Eugenia should have started the training long before that.”

“Training?” Vivian asked.

“She did tell you that she was your mentor, right?” Atropos said.

“Well, it was obvious,” Vivian said. “No one else I ever met could have been my mentor.”

“For your magical training,” Clotho said.

“My what?” Vivian asked.

“Your training, you know, how to control your powers,” Lachesis said.

“My what?” Vivian asked again.

“Your powers, you know, the ones you’ll come into after menopause,” Atropos said.

“What are you talking about?” Vivian asked. “Are you saying I’ll be Super Hot-flash Woman?”

“Your magical powers,” Clotho said.

“I can’t believe Eugenia didn’t tell you,” Lachesis said.

“She’s always so responsible,” Atropos said.

“Except lately,” Clotho said.

“She could have told us about losing the house,” Lachesis said.

“And her change of address,” Atropos said. “If she had planned better, we wouldn’t be here now.”

She addressed that last to Vivian. Vivian, who felt like she was only getting half of this conversation anyway, set her English muffin down.

“Um,” she said cautiously, “you do know that Eugenia died at the beginning of the month.”

“She what?” All three women spoke in unison.

“Impossible,” said Clotho.

“We would have known,” said Lachesis at the same time.

“We
should
have known,” said Atropos a second later.

“I’m sorry to tell you this way,” Vivian said. “She was murdered.”

The three women didn’t respond to that. Instead they looked at each other, and for the first time, Vivian got a sense of them. The sense was fleeting and odd, as if they were communicating with each other telepathically.

They were frightened. That much she could tell, even without her gifts.

A car alarm went off in the street. All three women jumped. So did Vivian, but she pretended that she hadn’t. To cover her own nervousness, she poured tea into all four mugs.

“You were going to explain things to me,” Vivian said, her hand shaking. She set the teapot down. She was more on edge than she had thought.

“We were,” Clotho said.

“But first,” Lachesis said.

“Explain why you weren’t studying with Eugenia,” Atropos said.

“I didn’t know I was supposed to,” Vivian said.

“Surely she invited you up here,” Clotho said.

“She wanted me to spend some time with her, yes,” Vivian said. “But I had a business to run, and she wouldn’t come to L.A.”

“A business?” Lachesis said. “You mean that psychic hotline?”

“You thought that was more important than your training?” Atropos asked.

Vivian felt her cheeks flush. If she had known Eugenia was going to die so soon, she would have made a point of coming here. But she hadn’t known. That wasn’t how her gifts manifested themselves.

“I think I did some good with that hotline.” Vivian’s voice sounded small.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time—a psychic hotline with real psychics, not people who traced your phone number or used your credit reports (gleaned from your credit card number) to give them their “special” knowledge.

And it had worked. Her hotline got to be known as the hotline to call. But she had to shut it down. There weren’t that many real psychics walking around Los Angeles, and most of the real ones didn’t want anything to do with her little idea.

Eventually, there were too many calls for her to handle. Even though she was minting money, she had to close the doors—and then she slept for what seemed like two months straight.

That was just before Eugenia died.

“Some good?” Clotho said.

“You would have done more good if you had had training,” Lachesis said.

“Training in what?” Vivian asked again.

“Magic,” Atropos said.

“But Aunt Eugenia wasn’t a magician,” Vivian said.

“No,” Clotho said. “She was a mage, just like you will be someday.”

“A mage,” Vivian said, trying to wrap her mind around the difference between
mage
and
magician
, besides the spelling and the number of syllables.

Another car alarm went off, and then another. The three women clutched each other’s hands.

“He’s getting close,” Lachesis said.

“This was a stupid idea,” Atropos said.

“We agreed on it,” Clotho said.

“We were forced into it,” Lachesis said.

“It’s too late,” Atropos said. “We made the choice.”

Vivian glanced out the window. Three cars in front of the building across the street were blaring, their headlights blinking on and off. She had no idea what could have set them off.

“All right.” Clotho’s delicate mouth was covered in chocolate. She didn’t seem to notice. “We’ll do our best to explain, but since your mentor failed on the job, you probably won’t believe this.”

Lachesis handed Clotho a napkin, then said, “Before we do this, perhaps we should ask her about Blackstone.”

“Blackstone? The magician?” Vivian asked.

“Yes!” they said in pleased unison.

“Do you know him?” Atropos asked.

“I know of him,” Vivian said, wondering how she could know a man who had been dead for a very long time.

“Good.” Clotho looked relieved. “Then you go to his restaurant.”

“What?” Vivian asked. That spinning feeling had returned.

“What’s it called?” Lachesis looked at her companions. “Quixote?”

“Quixotic?” Vivian asked. “It’s next door.”

The women smiled at her as if she’d won a prize.

“I’ve been there. What does it have to do with Blackstone?”

“He owns it,” Atropos said. “Or he did. It wasn’t open this morning. Do you know why?”

Vivian shrugged. “It doesn’t serve breakfast. I’m sure it won’t open until eleven or so.”

A dog started barking nearby, big deep, scary barks. The car alarms were still going, and Vivian thought she heard another one flare up.

“Eleven’s too late,” Clotho said. “We’ll have to explain.”

“All right.” Lachesis took a deep breath, and the others followed suit. They leaned toward Vivian in one swift movement.

Another bang sounded below, and all three women jumped.

“There are mortals, and then there are the magical,” Atropos said, looking toward the door.

“You are one of the magical,” Clotho said.

“Yeah, right,” Vivian said.

“No, really,” Lachesis said. Then she frowned. “That is the correct modern response, isn’t it?”