CHAPTER 5
“OH MY GOD!” Melissa said. “What did you do?” She held up a finger before I could answer, turning to the counter behind her and picking up the pot of Toffee Kiss coffee. She filled a large paper cup and slipped on a finger-preserving corrugated sleeve before handing it to a ginger-haired man who looked like he was only just waking up, despite the fact that it was after six in the evening. He paid her with exact change and took the cup. No words were exchanged. Ah, the joys of being a regular. And Cake Walk had more coffee regulars than the Peabridge Library could ever hope to attract.
When I had Melissa’s undivided attention again, I shrugged. “Montrose left. I locked the door after him and went back to sleep.”
“I don’t believe that you’re being so blasé about all this! I would have totally freaked! I mean, you worked a spell from an ancient magic book!”
“What am I supposed to do? Run out into the street screaming, ‘I’m a witch! I’m a witch!’? It’s not like I can call the cops and report myself. They’d lock me up for observation. I’d wonder if I hadn’t imagined everything, if not for Neko.”
“He’s still there, then?”
“Asleep on the couch. At least he was this morning—curled up in a sunbeam. He barely stirred when I left for work.”
“I can’t believe you just left him there!”
“What else was I going to do? Sit and stare at him all day? I needed to get to work. The last thing I’d need now is to be fired. I’d lose my paycheck and my house.”
“But Montrose said that with the full moon—”
“I know!” I’d been worried about my familiar’s dire potential all day. Melissa looked startled by my sharp tone, and I forced myself to repeat a bit less forcefully, “I know. But I couldn’t figure out anything else to do with him. And, I have to say, he just doesn’t seem dangerous.”
Melissa snorted. “And what about Stupid Fish?”
“What else could I do? I hauled the aquarium into my room. It’s sitting on the floor.”
“Poor thing!”
“He’s a fish,” I said dryly. “I’ll get some sort of table for him tonight. I guess I should consider myself lucky that the bedroom door locks. Otherwise, there’s no telling what Neko might do for a snack.”
“Why didn’t you just whip up another spell? Conjure up a table to put the aquarium on.”
“It’s not like I’m a sudden expert on this stuff! And I’m not getting anywhere near that book again.” I remembered that strange flash of darkness, the sudden power that had risen from nowhere. “I mean, I have no idea how I did what I did, but I’m not going to play around with it. Even if I hadn’t promised Montrose—”
My words were interrupted by a pair of women who walked through the door. “What’s left?” one of them asked, already reaching into her purse.
“One Lemon Grenade.” Melissa pointed toward the pastry, sitting lonely beneath a glass dome. “Two Ginger-Butterscotch Dreams.” The giant cookies leaned against each other on a hand-thrown pottery plate. “One Fusion Swirl.” Raspberry jam glistened in a caramel blondie. “And half a dozen Bunny Bites.”
The miniature carrot cakes were my favorite. They were a lot of work, especially when Melissa took the time to pipe miniature orange carrots on top of the cream cheese frosting. I had the women pegged as Dream girls, though, and I wasn’t disappointed. They paid up, promised to be back the next day, and headed out the door.
Melissa passed me one of the Bites. The frosting melted over my tongue, and I closed my eyes in near-ecstasy.
So what if I was a witch? So what if I had managed to work a spell? So what if the books in my basement might contain secrets to the entire universe, if I only took the time to investigate them, to explore them, and put them in order?
I chewed and swallowed, reminding myself that I didn’t need to do anything with the witchcraft collection. I wasn’t going to let it interfere with my life ever again. It was a one-time mistake, like the Brazilian wax that Scott had coaxed me into trying, or having my eyebrows threaded. I wasn’t going to go there. Not ever again. Anything else would be just too strange. And there was no time like the present to get life back to normal (whatever that meant, with a familiar napping on my couch.)
I took a deep breath and forced a bright smile as I very purposefully changed the topic of conversation. “So?” I said. “Enough about the Wicked Ways of Witchcraft. Tell me about your date!”
Melissa was determined to find The Man by the time that she turned thirty. Although she hadn’t met him yet, she knew that the Man was educated. He was sensitive and caring and not intimidated by her running her own business. He was independent enough to give her breathing room, but reliable enough that he’d show up when he said he would. He had to be physically stronger than she was, and taller, and he had to have all his own teeth and hair. Too preppy was out, too grungy, too punk. Basically, she was looking for an impossible fiction, created by magazines and beach reading and endless, repetitious conversations with girlfriends.
But Melissa structured her search. She auditioned one new candidate every two weeks, rotating her stock from various resources: Dedicated Metropolitan Singles (an organization devoted to conducting volunteer activities with teams comprised of equal numbers of men and women); Washington Today personal ads (the magazine was read by lawyers, lobbyists, and other upwardly trending intellectuals); FranticDate.com (not really the name of the website, but I could never remember what it was actually called); and Independents—recommendations from friends, relatives, and anyone else who thought they should have a say in her love life.
“This one was a Dedicated, wasn’t he?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, popping a Bunny Bite into her own mouth. The guy must have been a disaster. Melissa never ate her own wares. “Dedicated to his mother.”
“We’re talking a Norman Bates type thing?”
“Just about. He phoned Mumsy when he picked me up, ostensibly to make sure that she’d gotten home from her card game all right. And then, he called her during dinner. And she phoned him while he was walking me home.”
“But what was he like? I mean, couldn’t you work with him on the phone thing?”
“Oh, the calls were only the beginning.” She checked her watch to make sure that it was 6:30 before she walked around the counter. When she reached the door, she flipped the hand-lettered “Walk on In” sign to “Walk on By” and turned off the outside light. She flipped another switch, and the four two-tops at the front of the shop disappeared in shadows.
I picked up a towel, well-accustomed to the routine. I didn’t pay for my Bunny Bites, but I washed plates, coffee carafes, and whatever else was left around at the end of the day. As Melissa filled the sink with hot, soapy water, she shook her head. “I tried to compliment him on his tie, and he told me that his mother had brought it back from Singapore. I asked him what had made him sign up with Dedicated Metro, and he said that his mother’s garden club was a sponsor.”
“Sounds like a real winner.” I shook my head and started drying the Dreams plate.
“I’m telling you, I was through all Five Conversational Topics, and we hadn’t even finished our appetizers.”
Despite all her practice, Melissa got nervous about dates. She was always afraid that she would say the wrong thing, or—worse—say nothing. So before each and every encounter, she drew up a list of Five Conversational Topics. She wrote them down on a piece of paper and committed them to memory. She tried to use them sparingly, exploiting the complete depths of each subject before going on to the next. Typically, they were masterpieces of open-ended questioning, and I’d never known her to go through all five. Two, usually. Three, if she was with a guy who was really hard to draw out. Four, if he was the shyest man in the world—most of her Four nights had been FranticDate guys.
But Five? And with the appetizer plates still on the table?
“What did you do?”
“I yielded to the inevitable.”
“And that
was?”
She shrugged and pulled the plug in the sink. We watched the water swirl away, and the slurping sound at the end seemed a comment on our love lives. “I asked him what his mother thought made an ideal woman.”
“You didn’t!”
“Oh yes, I did.” Her jaw was grim as she dried her hands on a towel.
“But what if he’d realized you were being sarcastic?”
“What was the worst that would happen? He’d refuse to see me again?”
“And what did he say? What was his mother’s ideal?”
Melissa shook her head. “A woman who could cook and clean and manage a household’s finances, all the while popping out babies as if the Pill had never been invented.” She put coffee into the brewing baskets, getting ready for the next morning’s rush. “That last bit was my editorial. He didn’t actually mention the Pill.”
“What did you talk about after that?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” I was fascinated by this tale of dating disaster. It was like a giant bruise, and I couldn’t keep from poking it.
“I decided not to waste any more topics. Five’s my limit.” She shrugged. “Even dessert was the pits—molten chocolate cakes. I make better stuff in my sleep.”
I started to challenge that harsh judgment. After all, molten chocolate cakes were molten chocolate cakes. They couldn’t be all bad, even if the date had been a complete disaster. Loyalty made me shake my head, though, and I clicked my tongue in disapproval. “Another wasted night.”
Melissa turned to the calendar that hung over the phone. She burrowed around in the mug of pens on the counter until she found her red felt-tip. Red for date nights. It was supposed to be a sign of romance, but it had become more like blood. She drew a giant X across the previous day and then switched to a black ballpoint to cross off the current square.
I sympathized with her. I really did. But a little voice nagged at the back of my mind: Twenty-six first dates in a year? That could drive anyone crazy. And what would happen if she actually did like one of these guys? Would she have to fit a second date in before the next competitor’s slot? Or would she skip one of the first dates? And if skipping became the answer, then what would she do about her rotation of sources—push it back as well to keep the sequence between Frantic Dating, Dedicated Metro, etc.?
I was much better off, really. I’d already decided which man to target—Jason. I could invest all of my thoughts and energy into figuring him out. In fact, I’d sketched out a perfect conversation just that morning, ready to ferret out specific information on Ekaterina Ivanova.
I’d waited until I was shelving books near him. When he looked up, I said, “Things are really busy around here. Lots of new users. I guess grad students must be getting really busy, with the end of the term so close.”
OK, so it wasn’t my most graceful conversational gambit. It sounded a bit like one of those games where you have to get your team-mate to say a key word—Password, or Taboo, or one of those things. Still, I had his attention.
“Nice dress,” he said, and I almost melted in front of his grin. “Is the library having a costume party?”
I tugged at my lace cuffs and cursed Evelyn under my breath. “This is something new we’re trying. To make the collection come alive.”
Before he could reply, someone rang the bell at the coffee counter. It was probably just as well. I’d seen the look in his eyes. There was confusion there. Confusion, and just a spark of pity. Great foundation for a romance.
But better than a mama’s boy who needed to be surgically separated from his cell phone. “I’m sorry,” I said to Melissa. “Better luck next time.”
She sighed. “Yep. I’ll have to start reviewing the next candidates.” She had a stack of responses to her most recent Washington Today ad. She brushed her hands, as if she were shaking off excess flour. “Enough about that, though. Are we still on for yoga tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I hated going to yoga with Melissa. She was a lot more flexible than I was, and she was somehow able to listen to the instructor at the same time that she levered her body into impossible twists and turns.
“You know you’ll feel better after you go to class.”
“I’m worried about leaving Neko.”
“You went to the library all day today. You came over here. What could he get into tomorrow that he couldn’t do today.” I shook my head, still looking for a way out. “Come on,” she urged. “Rock, paper, scissors?”
We’d settled disputes with the game since we were in elementary school. “All right,” I said, reluctantly. We counted together, touching our right fists to our left palms. “One. Two. Three.” I went for rock, but she chose paper.
“Paper covers rock,” she said, laughing. “Yoga it is.”
“Best two out of three!”
“Don’t be a bad sport. I’ll meet you at the studio tomorrow.”
I gathered up my purse and followed Melissa to Cake Walk’s back door. “I should have gone for scissors.”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t be late.”
I stepped into the alley, but then I turned back to look at her. She was framed in the doorway, her overalls dusted with flour and her hair ruffled from a full day’s work. “Do you think I’m crazy?” I asked. “About this whole witch thing?”
She shook her head, and her smile was the same one I’d known since third grade. “You might be crazy, but this ‘witch thing’ doesn’t prove it. I’m not exactly sure what’s going on, but we’ll figure it out. You might want to pick up some more tuna on the way home, though. Spare Stupid Fish for another day.”
It was strange, I know. I should have been panicked about having Neko in the house—I mean, it’s not every day that a girl conjures up a half-man, half-cat with a better fashion sense than she can ever dream of having.
But Neko just wasn’t frightening. I should have been worried about his magical powers, about what he could do to me, to the house, to all of Georgetown and the world, but I couldn’t be. Not when he got so aghast at the notion of my re-using a tea-bag. Not when he was horrified that I would wear flats with an above-the-knee dress. Not when he had actually hissed in dismay at my Peabridge costume.
Strange things were happening, but they weren’t frightening. Not terrifying, anyway. And besides, I was never going to work another spell, so none of it really mattered. Only a fool would play with magic, I had told myself all afternoon. Only a naive idiot.
“No more magic,” I said to myself as I walked down the cobble-stoned Georgetown street. If only I had listened to those words of witch-free wisdom.