Waiting for Magic (26 page)

After too few hours of sleep Kemble
had been wakened by an earthquake.

Lanyon breezed by, his flute trilling. He lifted it in greeting.

“You feel the earthquake?” Kemble asked.

Lanyon lowered his flute. “Wasn’t an earthquake. Big wave hit the bluff.”

“Tsunami?” Kemble’s mind leapt to the consequences. “Hermosa would be destroyed.”

Lanyon shrugged. “Hermosa’s fine. I went to the window and saw it ebbing out. Didn’t look like it hit the flat areas up the coast. Just some kind of a local surge.”

Strange. Lanyon turned and proceeded on his way, then stopped dead in the hallway. He sniffed the air then came back a few steps to stop in front of Devin’s door. “Wow. Devin’s hole smells like a distillery.”

“I think Devin had a late night,” Kemble said in a tone meant to cut off further conversation.

“He must have bathed in it.” Lanyon sniffed again. “Scotch and … tequila? Dude must have one bad head today.”

Devin came trudging through the glass-paned door at the end of the hall. He was wearing his wetsuit, the top hanging down around his hips. He looked pensive. But strong.
Jane was right. His adopted brother had grown into a man. It wasn’t just that he’d filled out and gotten a man’s bulk of muscle. He had a strong center, a presence Kemble had never noticed.

Guess he should have realized that before. He might have been able to warn Keelan.

“Here for some hair of the dog, Dev?” Lanyon asked with a smirk. “There might be a drop of liquor left
some
where in the house.”

Devin went beet red. “I, uh, spilled some Scotch last night.”

“And tequila. Amazing you’re functional.”

Kemble saw Devin gather himself. “Hmmm,” he said. “Could be because I’m not a dorky wuss like the kid with the flute.”

Lanyon made a noise with his flute that sounded remarkably like a raspberry and turned, piping himself down the hall.

Devin looked at Kemble’s face and went red all over again.
He knows I know,
Kemble thought. What did Devin see in his face? Disapproval? Maybe. But horror and anger probably aced it out. He’d thought he could control himself, but the anger gushed up from his center like a geyser. How could Devin
do
that? To Kemble’s little sister, whom Devin had known almost all his life, who’d been so generous to him when he’d been a scared little boy drowning in grief? Kemble knew he had to get hold of his emotions. What would his father do?

“You got something you’d like to tell me?” Kemble asked, trying like hell to make his voice neutral.

“No.” Devin pushed by him.

Okay, anger wins
. He shoved the door open with one hand as Devin tried to slam it shut. He must have looked fierce, because Devin backed into the room, his shoulders collapsing.

“Look. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“You didn’t
mean
for it to happen!” Kemble exploded. “What, you’re just drilling everything in sight, and she happened to be here?”

“No. God, no.”

“I suppose it’s all her fault then. God damn it, Devin. We trusted you.” He ran his hands through his hair. “We made you a member of the family.”

“Yeah. Poor little orphan boy gets above his station, is that it?” Devin’s anger was ramping up to match his own when Kemble suddenly saw him deflate.

“Well, don't worry. I’m not gonna hang around, so she’s in no danger.”

“Yeah, you can just take your new little true love and waltz off into a new life. But Keelan’s got to live with what you did.”

“What
we
did,” Devin muttered. “And we’re both going to live with that.”

“Well, you’ve got your power. Keelan will just have to wait around like the rest of us.” Did that come out petulant?

“Kee’s not going to be waiting around,” Devin hissed, advancing on Kemble. “She’s got a power too. She could feel the Talisman at Pendragon’s just like I could. So she and her curator pal will do just fine, in spite of what we did last night. She was probably just practicing on me.”

Kemble found himself blinking rapidly and backing up as he tried to assimilate
his brother’s. Devin seemed to be trying to get control of himself. He sucked in a breath and let it out. “So, you can go give Pendragon’s Talisman another shot,” he continued. “But do me a favor and wait till I’m gone. I don’t want to be a part of it. You can wait one more day, right?”

Kemble nodded. Devin was leaving the Breakers? It seemed unthinkable. He had a power now. It was dangerous. But how could he stay with what had happened between him and Keelan? Kemble couldn’t think what to say. Should he talk Devin out of it? Or was it the best thing for all concerned? Then maybe Senior never had to know.

“Well, don’t you tell anyone else about Kee and me. You’ll just make Kee feel worse than she already does.” Devin advanced again and poked Kemble in the shoulder. “And don’t you
dare
confront Kee with that … that sanctimonious look on your face.” When he slammed the door in Kemble’s face, Kemble realized he’d backed out into the hall.

He just stood there, unable to think or move. Keelan had a power? What was it?

What did it matter?

Everybody in the whole damn house had a power, probably even Tammy’s goddamned cat. He turned on his heel and stalked into the kitchen. He needed coffee, immediately.

His mother was sitting at the kitchen table that looked out over the deck. Cards were sitting in piles in front of her. As he came in she turned over another one and gasped.

Crap in a hat.
What now? He was sick of all this mumbo jumbo: Pendragon and his charlatan’s magic, his mother and her tarot cards. Why couldn’t they be a normal family with normal problems he could understand and
do
something about?

She looked up as he stalked over to the coffee machine that was just finishing the last drips into a new pot. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

Not now. He could not have her probing around in his emotional sewer right now. “Nothing.” He grabbed a mug. It said “Castaic Equine Rescue” on it in pink letters with hearts around the edges. Tammy’s. It figured. He might as well use a pink mug with how emasculated he felt right now. His father would know what to do about all this. But there, Devin was right. It was better nobody knew. If Senior knew what had happened under his roof last night…. Or his mother. God, he hadn’t even thought about how it would break her heart.

“Right,” his mother said. She communicated clearly with that one word that she knew it was not “nothing,” but that she would respect his wishes and not probe. How did mothers do that? He was thirty-six years old and still living with his family, for God’s sake. Talk about being a wuss. Shouldn’t he be old enough to be spared his mother’s intuition? He needed to move out. He almost envied the fact that Devin could just decide to leave. And as long as nobody but Kemble knew Devin had a power, they probably wouldn’t try to stop him. Was that right?

His mother turned another card over and chewed her lip, studying it.

He poured too much cream in his coffee. What the hell? He loaded sugar into it too. “Okay,” he said, voice weary. “Why the gasp?”

His mother smiled at him, “I’d say ‘nothing’ but that would be vindictive.” Her face sobered. “It’s Devin.”

Right. Of course it was Devin. Or it might have been Keelan. He didn’t want to know. Or rather he didn’t want to know what she suspected, just in case it was close to the truth, and his face confirmed or denied her theory. It had to be a theory. She couldn’t
know.
Not by casting cards. He didn’t care if they came down from Merlin. They didn’t tell the future. “Okay, then. Gotta go. Gotta find Talismans.”

He strode out of the kitchen toward his office. He could feel her eyes on his retreating back, her judgment on him for not taking more of an interest in his siblings. He didn’t care what she thought. He couldn’t deal with what he’d heard in Devin’s room last night. He had to figure out how he was going to get the Talisman Devin said was at Pendragon’s away from the charlatan and into Tremaine hands. He’d think about that.

*****

Jason stood at the bottom of the tower, looking up into the late-morning drizzle. The fact that this elevator was the only way in and out except for those winding stairs was not comforting. He still had about thirty-five stitches in his arm from his last visit. He was glad it was daytime. Maybe whatever had torn him up couldn’t move around in daylight. Hardwick pushed the intercom button. The lock on the gated arch clicked open.

Jason glanced to the old woman. In her loosely hooded, billowy coat with those golden eyes and that strong nose, she looked like the witch from Hansel and Gretel in the storybook he’d had as a kid. Not far off, actually. “This place doesn’t have a back door,” he warned her.

“There’s always a back door.” She glanced pointedly to Talbot. The old woman had been excited to recruit him. His power was
Levitation, but Jason wasn’t sure he was really reliable. Too new, too raw from what he’d been forced to do to qualify for membership in the Clan. Jason wasn’t wild about depending on a newbie’s power. But it wasn’t like they could turn back.

The elevator, when it came, was small so Jason and Hardwick went up with the old woman, leaving Rhiannon and Talbot to follow.

“Whatever happened to ladies first?” Rhiannon pouted as she emerged from the tower. She opened an umbrella painted with storm clouds.

“When I find a lady, I’ll let you know,” Jason muttered. The old woman was already striding over the small bridge. That bridge meant single
file on the way out. Not good.

The place had an ominous feel, even though there was no sign of the things he’d felt on the grounds the night he’d come for Pendragon by himself. It started to rain harder as they moved up the long walk through the lawns and gardens. It had been raining off and on for weeks it seemed. The news on the car radio was full of mudslides and instructions on where to get sandbags if you lived in certain areas. Jason just found the constant rain depressing.

In the daylight, he could see how big the house reallly was. Chaparral-covered hills rose on three sides around it, which gave it a kind of privacy he’d bet was rare in the Hollywood Hills. Pendragon had probably chosen the house because it looked like a wizard should live there. Overly dramatic. But Pendragon was the real deal. Jason felt the hairs on his neck rise.

The guy who answered the door added to the atmosphere. Creepy.

“Mr. Pendragon is expecting you.”

As they stamped the water from their feet and moved into the huge foyer, Jason felt it.

A hum of power hung in the air. He glanced over to Hardwick, who nodded. Rhiannon was looking surprised, her pouty lips parted in an “oh.” Talbot blinked rapidly. And the old woman looked supremely self-satisfied.

There was a Talisman here, all right. Was the old woman ever wrong?

They shed their coats and a girl came out to take them. Just an ordinary-looking girl—not scary at all. She was dressed in some kind of uniform—gray, with a white apron. The buzzing along Jason’s veins got stronger as the butler, or whatever he was, led them into a study or a library or something, where Pendragon was standing with his back to them, staring into a huge fireplace where a cheerful fire crackled. The air was heavy with power. Jason saw Rhiannon give a little shudder of ecstasy. Jason turned his attention back to Pendragon. Guy was wearing a suit and tie in his own house. A very expensive suit, Jason noted. And the diamond in the stickpin would have bought a couple of houses in Las Vegas after the real estate crash. Maybe three. The whole place was over-decorated as far as Jason was concerned. Potted plants and Oriental carpets and dark paintings where he could hardly see the subject.

At their entrance, Pendragon turned from watching the flames and strode over to greet them, leaning on an ornate cane. He had pale hair and
Jason couldn’t tell the color of his eyes. He might have been forty-five. Or sixty.