Spellcrossed (3 page)

Long chuckled and threw up his hands in surrender.

Ten more minutes crawled by before he finally left us in peace. By then, Reinhard had brought up the house lights and Alex had emerged from the orchestra pit to join us.

I sighed. “We’re going to have to cast Chelsea as Annie, aren’t we?”

“Why not?” Alex asked. “She’s perfect.”

“Revolting, but perfect,” Janet agreed.

Against my will, I pictured Rowan trying to suppress a smile as I questioned the wisdom of casting me as the middle-aged, anthem-singing, clambake-loving Nettie in
Carousel
.

“I cast people in the roles they need, not necessarily the ones they’d be good at. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s worked for a very long time.”

And it
had
worked—for me and most of my cast mates. Only later did I learn that Rowan had called us all to the Crossroads, the far-flung descendants of the Mackenzie clan who had bound him to this world in the eighteenth century. He forced us to dig deep and let down our defenses. And that season at the Crossroads changed many lives, especially mine.

Even with the support of a staff with some pretty impressive Fae bloodlines, I would never be able to accomplish what Rowan had. But I still yearned to offer our actors the same opportunity for healing that I had discovered here.

Once a helping professional, always a helping professional.

A hand descended on my shoulder, startling me from my reverie. Reinhard frowned down at me—my stage manager, my mentor, my rock.

“We all agreed that this season we would adopt more…traditional casting methods.”

“We shouldn’t even have called the Mackenzies,” Janet muttered.

“It’s not the Crossroads without them,” Alex protested. “Besides, it wasn’t much of a call.”

But it had been strong enough to interrupt my dinner with Hal and Lee. Lee possessed enough Fae power to block its effects. Hal and I—who had about five drops of Fae blood between us—became totally antsy. Even Lee couldn’t calm us down. Finally, we grabbed two bottles of wine and drove to the theatre.

As soon as we stepped inside, the antsiness vanished, replaced by the reassuring sense of coming home that had embraced me the first time I entered the old white barn. By the time we polished off the wine, a troupe of faeries could have been calling and we wouldn’t have noticed.

“Calling the Mackenzies is a tradition,” Reinhard said.

“A tradition that’s going to have to change,” Janet replied. “We’re a professional theatre now. Well. Almost. We can’t keep living in the past.”

The pointed look she directed at me made it clear she wasn’t referring to calling the Mackenzies.

With an hour to spare before our dinner meeting, Mei-Yin raced off to torment the staff of the Mandarin Chalet, “Vermont’s only restaurant specializing in fine Chinese and Swiss cuisine.” I shooed the rest off to the Bates mansion and promised to join them after I’d collected all the resumes.

I smiled as I mounted the steps to the stage. Alex had been taken aback to learn my moniker for his childhood home, a stately Victorian perched on the hill near the theatre. Janet—whose sense of humor was as twisted as her family tree—loved it. At last year’s Halloween party, she had donned a gray wig and black dress and greeted us by brandishing a butcher knife. The feathers on Hal’s evening gown very nearly carried him aloft.

I paused to straighten the drooping metal cage of the ghost light and made a mental note to ask Lee to add another layer of duct tape to the ancient mic stand. It
would be a lot easier to use a standing lamp with a bare bulb to ward off specters, but Reinhard insisted we cobble ours together from backstage detritus. A Crossroads tradition as time-honored as calling the Mackenzies.

I flung open the green room door and paused again to admire the new furnishings. Hal might shudder at the green-and-blue plaid upholstery and the “chunky-clunky” tables, but even he admitted they were a huge improvement over the dilapidated furniture that had graced this room during my season as an actress.

Best of all, they were free, donated by one of our theatre “Angels” when she redecorated her den. As were the stove (which had four working burners instead of one) and the kitchen cabinetry (which had doors that actually opened and closed without falling off their hinges). Even the paint had been donated, although Mr. Hamilton at the General Store had to special order it because Hal insisted on a shade of pale green called “Crocodile Tears.”

The production office down the hall was still a work-in-progress. One day, I hoped it would live up to the shiny brass nameplate on the door that Hal had given me last Christmas—“Margaret Graham, Executive Director & Goddess.”

I plopped my briefcase on the desk and began transferring resumes and info sheets from my inbox. The towering stack said as much about the desperation of the actors as my PR brilliance, but it was still very satisfying.

Thirty professional actors had shown up at our Bennington audition, a pitifully small turnout for any other theatre, but a cornucopia of talent for the Crossroads. With the community theatre actors we’d auditioned yesterday, we would have an experienced company this season. Except, of course, for the fourteen bewildered Mackenzies.

Nearly eighty performers in all. Which posed a dilemma. In its long history, the Crossroads had never turned away an actor. A tradition that seemed destined to change.

Rowan would hate it. But it wasn’t his theatre any longer. No matter how wistful I felt about my season here, the Crossroads had to move on. And so did I.

My fingers caressed the silver chain around my throat. Rowan’s chain. He had thrust it into my hand the morning he left me to return to Faerie. Since then, I had worn it every day, waking and sleeping. Maybe it was time for that tradition to change, too.

I reached for the clasp, then let my hands fall. Talk about empty gestures. If I really wanted to make a break with the past, I knew exactly what I needed to do.

The ghost light provided just enough illumination to mount the stairs to his apartment. There was no lock on the door. When Rowan lived here, no one would have dreamed of invading his privacy. Except me, of course.

The staff tactfully refrained from reminding me that I’d passed up two opportunities to move in: last spring when Caren agreed to manage the Golden Bough and again in the fall, when she began a graduate course in interior design in New York City and I hired Frannie to replace her. If they thought I was out of my mind to accept Janet’s invitation to move into the Bates mansion, only Hal voiced his reservations.

Clutching the arm of one of the scantily clad mannequins that graced his lingerie shop, he’d said, “You and Janet? Living together?”

“It’s better than a cheap walk-up in town.”

Which was all I could afford on my meager salary. I was saving the money Rowan had left me to refurbish the Bough.

“It’s like something out of
The Children’s Hour
. Or
Little Women
.”

“Trust me, I don’t harbor repressed lesbian desires for Janet. And the day I call her Marmee, I’ll move out.”

Eight months later, I was still living there. Funny, how I kept filling the spaces that Helen had once occupied:
her apartment in the Bough, her bedroom in the Bates mansion. Janet and I surprised everyone—including ourselves—by adapting easily to the arrangement. Maybe because we were both lonely: she had lost her daughter, I’d lost the man I loved. At any rate, it was nice to hear her puttering around downstairs while I worked on a grant, to take out my frustrations on the weeds in Helen’s garden and share my little victories over dinner.

“I just don’t want to see you turning into Helen,” Hal had told me. I sure as hell didn’t want that, either. I loved Helen. Missed her every day since her untimely passing. But I was not going to live with Janet forever—or spend the rest of my life dreaming of the man who got away.

My thumb traced the ornate whorls and grooves of the wooden latch. Then I took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

The office was neater than I remembered; the staff must have tidied up when they packed Rowan’s journals and the other items he’d set aside for me, including the painted wooden box containing $50,000—everything he had saved after more than a century at the Crossroads.

As I stepped inside, I realized I was holding my breath. An unnecessary precaution. The air smelled a bit musty, but it held no trace of honeysuckle sweetness and animal musk, that peculiar scent of Fae desire.

Golden shafts of sunlight streamed through the three skylights on the western side of the steep roof. Instead of making the room more cheerful, the dust motes only underscored the emptiness.

I walked through the office to the large living area. Everywhere, there were reminders of Rowan: the extensive collection of books and records; the baby grand piano and the antique melodeon; the table where we had shared candlelit dinners and stories from our pasts. Yet, oddly, the room felt less like Rowan’s home than a photo in one of those free real estate booklets: “For rent or lease. Sunny artist’s loft. Soaring ceilings. Hardwood floors. Recently renovated to remove faery magic.”

Unexpected tears burned my eyes. I’d heard that old buildings retained the energy of their former occupants. Sometimes, I swore I could feel Helen’s comforting presence in the Bough and smell the faint whiff of lavender from the sachets that had scented her clothes. But I could feel nothing of Rowan here. The apartment was just a dusty shrine to the past.

Someday, these rooms might house the theatre’s artistic director—if we ever scraped together the funds to hire one. A stranger could be happy here, but not me.

I returned to the office and stared at the desk where he had written his farewell letters. Then I turned toward the final doorway, steeling myself to enter the bedroom.

Warmth embraced me. Something soft caressed my cheek.

I gasped and whirled around, but of course, no one was there.

I gripped the doorframe hard and waited for my heartbeat to slow, for reason to conquer imagination. A shaft of sunlight had warmed me. And the touch…a cobweb, perhaps, or a draft from the open door. Stupid to allow my longing to conjure phantoms.

Rowan was gone.

I pulled the front door closed behind me. I silently blessed the man who had once inhabited this apartment and this world. And then I said good-bye.

T
HE NEXT WEEK WAS YOUR BASIC FRENZY of activity. Alex made up music files. Reinhard sent out scripts and vocal books, schedules and parental consent forms. I scrambled to fill roles when some of the professionals refused the ones they were offered. Bitched about prima donnas. Shot off a final batch of grant proposals. And sent exuberant e-mails to the board urging them to sell, sell, sell those tickets for the opening weekend fund-raiser.

My horde of orphans arrived a week later. Mei-Yin had grumbled that casting every young hopeful encouraged the hopelessly untalented, but she had voted with the others to include every kid who had auditioned in one of our shows.

The prospect of coordinating thirty orphans ranging in age from seven to thirteen was daunting, even with the assistance of my Orphan Wranglers. Frannie had corralled one of her Chatterbox cronies and I’d roped in Janet by promising full disclosure on any and all awful dates I went on for the rest of my life.

Janet took one look at the throng onstage and muttered, “You better go on a lot of awful dates.” Frannie’s chum Eleanor just shrugged. “This is nothing. Try hosting a birthday party with nineteen six year olds and a drunk magician.”

Fortunately, my magicians were sober. Reinhard’s power rippled through me, calm and authoritative. To my surprise, Janet’s held a hint of banked excitement—that “We’ve got a barn, let’s do a show!” vibe.

When I announced that we’d play the Name Game by way of introductions, Chelsea rolled her eyes, but even she seemed amused when Reinhard joined us. In terms of icebreakers, it’s hard to beat a heavyset, frowning man sitting cross-legged in a circle of little girls and declaring, “R my name is Reinhard and I like rohwurst.”