That Touch of Magic Read online

  “Maybe you shouldn’t push me,” he said, his voice quiet. “I may have been a man of God once, Stacy, but I’m still a man.”

  One side of his face quirked in a smile, but the heat in his eyes was serious. I swallowed, gripping the coffee mugs tight to keep my hands from doing what they desperately wanted to do.

  “Save it for after dark, Science Boy.” I dumped the coffee mugs into my tiny sink, pulled the curtain that separated my bed from the rest of the place, and fell backward onto it. I closed my eyes and thought of my big, bald brother running around naked on a beach full of fat, old Spanish nudists. Five minutes later, I hopped in the shower, turned the water on cold, and turned my focus to the tasks at hand.

  It helped, but not a lot.

  * * *

  It wasn’t like the last time I was at my mother’s house. There weren’t as many parking spaces on the street as usual, but I didn’t have to park three blocks away, either. Things seemed to be calming down, at least a little. When Leo and I stepped out of my car, I noticed that one of the parked cars had Pennsylvania plates, and for some reason, it made me tense. It really shouldn’t have. The Pennsylvania border was twenty minutes from Nodaway; you saw those plates all the time, but they were always in town, dropping by for waffles or antiques on their way to somewhere else. Not typically in my mother’s residential neighborhood.

  “You all right?” Leo asked, taking my elbow naturally as we headed across the street to my mother’s house.

  “Yeah, I’ve just got a really bad feeling, and I’m not sure why.”

  “You’re going to visit Lillith Easter. That would make anyone tense.”

  “You’ve got a point there.” We hit the sidewalk in front of my mother’s house and I stopped and turned to Leo. “She’s been really weird since all this started. Prepare yourself.”

  He smiled. “I’ve known your mother since I was five years old. I don’t think there’s much she can do that will surprise me.”

  “Leo North!”

  The Widow stood on the porch steps, wearing a flowing floral dress, hair falling freely around her shoulders, her arms spread out wide to embrace Leo.

  Leo gave me a wide-eyed, slightly freaked look.

  “Hey, I warned you,” I said, and we started toward the house. The Widow met us halfway up the walk and pulled Leo in for a tight, and what appeared to be warm-ish, hug.

  “Leo North!” She pulled back, kissed him on the cheek, and laughed. “I thought you’d gone home! So wonderful to see you!”

  “Hi, Mrs. Easter,” Leo said awkwardly.

  Then, she turned on me.

  “Stacy, darling!” Another hug. I’d been prepared for how sweet she acted when she was under the influence of narcissistic supply, but still. This was starting to get creepy.

  She pulled back from me, her face beaming. “It’s so good to see you again, sweetheart. Come in, come in, there’s iced tea in the fridge!”

  We followed her up the walkway, and that was when I noticed the woman sitting in the rocker on the porch. She looked to be in her mid-forties, hair graying and cut into a wavy bob, wearing a blue floral dress that looked like she’d made it herself. As we started up the steps, she pushed up from her chair. I was about to hold my hand out and introduce myself when she knelt and lowered her head.

  “It’s so wonderful to see you both,” the Widow said, not looking at the woman even as she held her hand out to her. “We have so much to catch up on!”

  The woman kissed my mother’s knuckles and remained on her knees, head lowered, as we walked past. I stared, rude but unable to stop myself, almost stumbling as my mother grabbed my hand and pulled me inside after her.

  “What the hell was that?” I whispered as the Widow shut the front door behind us.

  “What, darling?” my mother said, her face blank.

  “The crazy person on the porch who kissed your hand.” I looked at Leo. “Just me?”

  He shook his head slowly, eyes wide. “Nope. Not just you.”

  “Oh, that!” The Widow waved a dismissive hand in the air. “It’s just the adoration.”

  I almost choked. “The what?”

  “You know, like at church, how we all sign up when the Eucharist is out so someone is there adoring it every hour of the day? They’re doing that for me.”

  “Eugh,” I said. My mother gave me a stark look, and I held up my hands. “Sorry, Widow, but isn’t that sacrilegious or something?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “I’m a miracle, and this is Tinsey’s hour to witness the miracle.”

  “She knelt and kissed your hand,” I said. “That’s just … wrong.” I nudged Leo. “Tell her, Leo. You were almost a priest.”

  “Yeah, I’m gonna stay out of this one,” he said under his breath.

  “See? I told you it was fine.” The Widow made a dismissive gesture at me and then smiled at Leo. “Tinsey came all the way in from Erie just to see me! Can you believe it?”

  “Erie,” I said to Leo.

  “Eerie,” he said back.

  The Widow glanced at her watch. “Although I thought she was being replaced at ten. Maybe she’s pulling a double.” She shrugged. “It is a bit of a distance for her. Oh, well. Iced tea?”

  “I can’t believe you think a twenty-four-hour adoration is okay,” I said as we followed the Widow to the kitchen. The table was covered with baskets and tins and unlit candles. I grabbed Leo’s hand and he squeezed mine back, and we sat down in unison.

  “Well, it was hardly my idea,” she said, but the huge grin on her face said it was absolutely her idea. She turned to face me with the pitcher. “Lemon? Sugar?”

  “Bitter and bland is fine,” I said.

  She began to pour. “Leo?”

  Leo kept his eyes on her, his brow crinkling as he watched her, looking like a geologist watching a rock suddenly defy the law of gravity: fascinated, but even more disturbed. “Yeah … that’s fine. Thank you.”

  She poured the drinks and sat down at the table, sliding her chair to our side so she could see us over the pile of offerings. There was a long silence during which she looked at us expectantly, and I’ll be damned if she didn’t have her kissing hand ready and in position, just in case.

  “It is just so good to see you again, Leo,” she said finally, turning her focus on him. “I heard you left the priesthood, and I want you to put your mind at ease; you are forgiven.”

  Leo stared at her blankly for a moment. “Thank … you?”

  “Well, you were practically my son. Your mother abandoned you to your father when you were so young, and from the day Nicky brought you home from kindergarten, you were here more than you were home.”

  “Oh,” Leo said, seeming to understand.

  “What?” I looked from the Widow to Leo, then back to the Widow. “What?”

  Leo leaned closer to me, not taking his eyes off the Widow. “When a child becomes a nun or a priest, there is a belief that it gets the parents into Heaven, no matter what.”

  “Not a belief,” the Widow said earnestly. “It does get them into Heaven. No matter what. I could rob a drugstore if I wanted to.”

  “Yeah, except he’s not your son, Widow,” I said.

  She ignored me, focusing on Leo. “And when you left the church, you took that away from me.” And there it was, that tiny, familiar glitter of meanness in her eyes.

  “Ohhhh, there she is,” Leo said, seeing it.

  I patted his arm. “She never left, she was just in hiding.”

  “I get it.” He smiled at the Widow. “Good to see you again, Lillith.”

  She raised her brow and said, “Are you two quite done with your comedy routine?”

  “I think so.” I gave my mother a gracious wave of permission. “Continue.”

  She gave me a disapproving look, then turned her attention to Leo and smiled with magnanimity. “As I was saying, I forgive you. God saw that you had stolen that precious gift away from me, but He gave me another way in.”

>   “Yeah, what way is that?” I asked, but again, she ignored me, keeping her focus on Leo.

  “I was sorry to hear about your defection—” she began.

  “Well, I never actually became a—”

  The Widow spoke louder over him. “—but if God has other plans for you, then sometimes you just have to follow your heart to find them. That’s where God lives.” She tapped her chest twice, then cut a quick look at me before returning her gaze to Leo. “It was your … heart … you were following, right?”

  I nudged Leo. “She’s like those Whack-A-Moles. Just when you think she’s gone, poof! She’s back.”

  Leo shot me a look, then returned his focus to my mother. “Yes, I was following my heart,” he said with more kindness and patience than she deserved. “But let’s talk about you. How are you, Lillith?”

  The Widow’s face lit up. “You know, thank you so much for asking. I’m doing amazing, I have to tell you.” She reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing it in her cold, bony fingers. “My beautiful daughter has changed my life, and now I’ve seen God’s plan for me, and everything suddenly makes sense.”

  “Yeah, about that.” I pulled my hand out of her grasp, losing my patience for the game. I waved my hand in front of her face, and she switched her weird, smiley focus from Leo to me. “It’s not God’s plan, Widow. You’re being magically influenced by something weird and decidedly unholy. You need to send these people home and draw as little attention to yourself as possible until we get this figured out. Okay?”

  The Widow blinked at me as though I’d just started speaking Russian. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

  “All this? It isn’t God, Widow. It’s your narcissism and their delusion, all feeding each other into huge monsters that, left unchecked, will most definitely crush Tokyo. Once I figure this out and get rid of the magic, it’s going to be hard to come back from this, so—”

  “Get rid of it?” Her smile faded and her expression hardened and for the first time since we’d arrived, she looked like my mother again. “You will not get rid of it. What God has done, no man can undo.”

  “Oh, for—” I nudged Leo. “Tell her it’s not God, Leo.” I looked at the Widow. “He used to be a priest. He knows these things.”

  “Almost-priest,” Leo corrected.

  “Fine, whatever. An almost-priest. Tell her, Leo.”

  Leo was quiet for a moment, then said, “I can’t do that.”

  I blinked in shock and stared at him. “What?”

  “I don’t know God’s will. No one does. That’s why He’s God.”

  “Oh, dear sweet Leo.” My mother reached across the table and patted his cheek. “Such a good boy.” She pulled one of the tins from the big pile on the kitchen table, opened it, and shoved it at him. “Have a cookie.”

  I clenched my teeth and spoke through them to Leo. “You’re not helping.”

  “I’m not going to lie,” he said, his voice low.

  An uneasiness settled in the pit of my stomach. “I thought you didn’t believe in God anymore.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You said you lost your faith.”

  “In me,” he said. “In whether I really belonged in the church. Maybe even in the church itself, a bit. Not in God.”

  I felt a mix of disappointment and anger, although I couldn’t quite figure out why. “Oh.”

  He held my eyes for a moment, and I could sense a disappointment of his own in there, and then he turned to my mother.

  “Lillith.” His voice was soft and kind as he reached his hand out to my mother, who beamed and placed her hand in his. “I think the question of whether or not this is God’s will is not what’s at issue here. If it is God’s will, it will be, no matter what. You don’t need to have adoration and vigils and sermons to fulfill God’s plan for you.”

  She pulled her hand out of his, and the beam in her face dimmed significantly. “I should have known you’d be on her side.”

  “I’m on your side,” Leo said. “I’m not sure all of this is good for you.”

  Her little beady eyes went dead and cold, glittering like black glass. “Good for me? It’s amazing for me. My entire life, I knew I was special. I knew I had a purpose. A destiny. But over and over again, I was disappointed. An unworthy husband, a tramp for a daughter. Now a Babylonian Whore of a daughter-in-law, here to ruin the only pure thing in my life, my good boy. And right at the moment when everything seemed darkest, when I began to question how I could be this special and yet so unappreciated—”

  “Here we go,” I muttered.

  My mother ignored me. “—at that very moment, I got my answer. And every day, that answer is clearer and clearer.” She slammed the flat of her hand down on the table. “Look! I’ll show you!”

  With that, she pushed up and headed out at a clip. By the time we got to the front door, she was already on the lawn, and Tinsey the Insane Adorer was on her knees on the porch, her hands out to receive my mother’s knuckles for a kiss, but the Widow swooshed past her without a thought, and Tinsey just lowered her head and made the sign of the cross.

  The Widow trudged to the middle of the lawn and held out her arms, then gave a meaningful glance back at Tinsey, who gasped and whipped her cell phone out. She didn’t talk into the phone, just hit a few buttons, and within a few moments, doors up and down the street began to open, and people were coming up the street.

  Leo moved a little closer to me where we stood at the base of the porch stairs. “What is she doing?” he whispered.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “It’s still daytime. She doesn’t have any power now. Maybe she just wants to show us how many people she can call in on a moment’s notice?”

  Leo shrugged. People began to gather, all silent, watching, their faces rapt. I moved closer to Leo, and he took my hand. My mother held her arms out even farther, and lifted her face to the sky.

  “Father, creator of all that is good in this world, I ask you to act through me, to show the unbelievers and the cynics what your power can do. In your name, I humbly give myself to thee.”

  “Amen,” someone said from behind me as the crowd gathered closer to her, circling her on the lawn.

  At first, I thought it was just a ray of sun coming through the clouds—which, granted, would have been freaky enough. But as the crowd gasped and I stepped closer to get a better look, I saw that it wasn’t the sun.

  It was the Widow.

  “I thought her power was night power,” Leo said.

  “It was.”

  “I thought you said people with night power couldn’t use their power during the day.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.”

  “Okay.”

  I moved closer and wedged my way through the crowd until I got to my mother’s side. Light emanated from her, a multihued halo that shimmered around her entire body. The green ropes of smoky light that had come from her hands the first few times were now electric-charged, like day magic, and they ran all over her body, only just visible under the glow of the other rainbow colors undulating around her body.

  It took me a moment to see past the light to the extreme strain on her face. Veins were popping out on her forehead, and a trickle of sweat slid down her cheek.

  This wasn’t an act.

  “Mom!” I rushed to her, catching her just as she fell. The light went out in a few flickers, and her chest heaved with shallow breath. She was cold to the touch, which wasn’t unusual for someone with no body fat, but still. It was easily eighty degrees outside; even a snake got warm in the heat.

  “Back off!” I yelled over the mumbling prayers as people huddled in to touch her. “Tinsey, call nine-one-one! Someone get her a blanket!”

  I laid her down on the lawn, rubbing my hands up and down her arms as her body started to shake.

  “Hang in there, Widow,” I said. “You’re going to be okay.”

  “Of course I am,” she croaked, her voice weak. “I haven’t made
my sacrifice yet.” And then she shut her eyes and passed out.

  The crowd dispersed, and I glanced back to see Leo coming with the old quilt from the back of the couch. He wrapped her up in it and lifted her easily, like a child, carrying her up the steps and inside, where we could close the door against the insanity behind us. I tried to follow him, but I had to fight my way through the throng of people trying to touch my mother’s limp, unconscious body.

  “Back the fuck off!” I hollered, and they split like the Red Sea, glaring at me as I passed through them. I glared back and slammed the door shut behind us.

  * * *

  When she wouldn’t wake up, the EMTs sent her to the hospital in Buffalo, where she was immediately admitted. Leo was at my side pretty much the whole time, but somehow managed to get in a call to Liv and Tobias, who were there by noon. Liv got ahold of Peach, and told me that Peach and Nick were going to be on the next plane stateside, but that was going to take at least a day.

  Meanwhile, the Widow slept. Tests were run on her blood, on her brain. An unreasonably tall doctor told me that they weren’t sure what had caused all of this, but they’d work hard to figure it out. Deliveries of flowers started pouring in almost the minute we got her admitted, and strange people began holding vigil outside her room. I processed everything from a place far away from the rumble and activity. I talked to doctors and nurses, I signed papers, I functioned, but I and my thoughts were elsewhere.

  With Desmond, mostly. He’d done this, to my people. Me, my checkout girl, my English teacher, my mother. The rules of what he was doing didn’t work the way that natural magic worked; this was a whole new ball game. It may have started out as day and night magic, but apparently, whatever this was, it was evolving past that. Was that Desmond’s intention? Or was it the consequence of messing with free will? Maybe he was skating by on a free-will loophole; after all, we had all taken the potions willingly, even if we didn’t realize the full effect of what we were taking.

  And hell, some of those consequences would be mine, wouldn’t they? Or was I going to skate by on my own loophole, since I didn’t know that my purple vials had been contaminated at the time I made the potions?