That Touch of Magic Read online

  Truthfully, according to the strictest of conjurer’s codes, I wasn’t supposed to be doing even the low-level perception magic unsupervised, let alone attempting physical magic. That was the kind of thing people went to special schools in Europe or Japan to learn, apprenticing for years before they could even try it under supervision, but the Internet was a beautiful, if dangerous, thing. I’d found the formula on a website last winter, and had downloaded it out immediately, which was a good thing, since the entire website where I’d found it had disappeared by the time I went back to it again after dinner.

  The formula hadn’t worked yet, but I wasn’t giving up. The magical community was only about 1 percent of the population at large, but where there was power, there were people watching. The people watching this particular power took the form of two shadowy magical agencies, and I had no desire to get their attention. So even if I managed to create physical magic, I couldn’t tell anyone. I would know, though, and that would be enough.

  I could tell Leo, a sinister thought broke in. He’d be happy for me, and he’d never tell anyone else.

  I shrugged the thought away and pulled out an Edison vial, named for its likeness to a tiny lightbulb and made of super-thin glass that flattened just enough on the bottom to give it stability. I glanced at the screen on my MacBook and read the instructions out loud.

  “Wait until a single bubble has emerged from amber liquid and surfaced at the top, remove from heat source and allow to cool for ninety seconds.”

  I watched the liquid carefully, waiting for the single bubble to form at the bottom and then move slowly to the surface. This part always went just fine, so when the bubble disappeared on the surface of the solution, I wasn’t nervous. I removed the vial from the burner with my tongs and carefully set it on the workbench, then hit my timer and looked back at the glowing screen on my computer.

  This is where I got nervous, the part where it always went wrong in the past: the transfer from flask to bulb. Sometimes the potion turned black when I moved it, which was bad, or it was too hot and it cracked the Edison vial, or it was too cool and turned to honey-colored sludge. Every time, I made a note in my notebook to figure out where it had gone wrong, and tried something different the next time.

  Conjurers are kind of an odd group. They’re not naturally magical; their magic comes from potions and centuries of secrecy. But in the age of the Internet, where information wants to roam free, it’s hard to have power like that and not show it off. To prevent the magical agencies from catching her sharing rogue formulas on the ’Net, a conjurer would usually put in one or two wrong details; if you followed the directions exactly as written, you’d never get it to work, and that was the loophole they would try to use to get out of trouble if it found them.

  I’d made it as far as I had by uncovering one obviously wrong step in this formula—she called for purified rather than distilled water when making the base, which is a rookie goof and any conjurer with half a brain would catch it—but I couldn’t be sure how many more errors were in the formula, not until I’d tried everything. I knew there was something at this point that wasn’t right, but who the hell knew what? And there was always the possibility that the formula was right, and I was just too green to be able to pull it off.

  I looked at my remaining instructions.

  Pick up flask and swirl 2x counterclockwise. I’d already tried one and three swirls, both counterclockwise and clockwise, and two counterclockwise was definitely the ticket.

  The timer dinged, and I picked up the flask and swirled it two times, watching as the now-blue liquid cleared the steam from the sides.

  I glanced again at the instructions.

  Remain calm. Breathe twice. I always found this part stupid. What my emotional state had to do with conjuring was beyond me, and it always sounded like old wives’ tales. Still, when a formula reminded me of this—and they all did—I followed the instructions as laid out. The ingredients were expensive, and humoring superstition was free. But of course, tonight, as soon as I read the words Remain calm, I saw Leo’s face in my head again, and my heart skipped a painful beat.

  I closed my eyes, pushed visions of Leo away, and breathed in and out, twice. Then I opened my eyes and glanced back at the formula.

  Pour exactly 1 ounce into Edison vial. I knelt down and looked at the Edison vial, with 1OZ etched over a line in the side. This was where it always went wrong, which made me tense, which violated the Remain calm rule, which made me think of Leo again.

  “Go away,” I said through gritted teeth, as though he were a fly. I tilted the flask slowly, and as soon as the liquid hit the narrowed neck of the flask, it turned to thick sludge and wouldn’t budge.

  “Damnit,” I said, and tossed the flask and contents into the trash. There was no point in trying to wash the honey-gunk out; it would solidify within minutes and make everything it touched unusable.

  I looked at the stupid recipe in the stupid MacBook, and scrolled down to the section where I’d been putting in my notes.

  I typed, What went wrong this time? Then I waited a moment and answered my own question.

  Leo North, I typed, then shut the computer down.

  * * *

  It was almost dark when I emerged from the path to the ’Bago. I came around the front to find Liv and Peach sitting on the hood of my brother Nick’s old forest-green Ford F-150, with the ridiculous EASTER LANDSCAPING logo and phone number on the side. Dude had been too cheap to pay a professional, and had painted it himself. It looked god-awful, and it made me laugh every time I saw it. Well, almost every time; at the moment, it wasn’t doing much for me. I walked toward them, wondering if I could sneak in to the ’Bago without them seeing me. Peach was fussing with her phone, but Liv saw me almost immediately. She hopped off the hood of the truck and headed right for me as I walked toward them.

  Liv was wearing her usual, a pair of ill-fitting jeans and a quirky T-shirt; this one had a dinosaur on it and a caption that read, ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD. Peach, on the other hand, wore painted-on capri jeans, a red-and-white polka-dotted buttondown shirt tied around the waist, and red patent-leather shoes with heels that would have killed a mortal woman. Her hair was bound in a red bandanna, and her lipstick was a perfect match to the shoes.

  “Hey,” I said, motioning to Peach. “It’s Rosie the Riveter, the spank-me version.”

  “Yay!” Peach said, hopping off the truck’s hood. “She’s being mean. She’s okay.”

  “Of course I’m okay.” I managed a brittle laugh. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

  Liv and Peach exchanged looks, and then focused on me.

  “We were worried,” Liv said. “You haven’t been answering your phone. Where were you?”

  “Oh, sorry.” I motioned lamely behind me in the direction of the shed. “I was working. I must have left my phone in the ’Bago.”

  Liv looked at me, her eyes narrowing. “You haven’t … taken anything, have you?”

  It took me a moment to realize what she was talking about, but I shook my head. “No. I don’t self-medicate. Against the rules.”

  Peach hopped off the hood of the truck and held up a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey. “That’s okay, baby. The doctor is in.”

  They smiled and I smiled back, and for a moment of total insanity, I felt like bursting into tears. I can handle people being jerks to me on rough days, but the second someone shows me kindness, it kills me. I collected myself while focusing on my keys and unlocking the door, then we all went inside.

  Peach put the bottle down on the counter and wrenched the cap off while Liv opened my cabinets, pulling out one glass from my mismatched menagerie of drinkware. I sat down at my little dinette table, and they crowded together on the tiny bench seat on the other side.

  “How are you doing?” Liv asked, her expression a little too sympathetic for my taste.

  “I’m fine.” I lifted my glass. “How are you?”

  Liv and Peach exchanged another glance.
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br />   “Stop doing that,” I said, motioning between them. “You know I hate that. You have something to say, say it.”

  “All right,” Peach said. “We think you’re going to try to pretend this thing with Leo isn’t a big deal when it’s obviously a big deal, and with these conjuring powers that you have now, we’re afraid you might blow up the town if you don’t deal with it properly.”

  Liv shot Peach a look, and Peach gave her a defiant stare. “What? That was one of the possibilities we discussed.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m fine. There’s no thing with Leo.” I felt a sharp stab in my gut as I said his name and took a drink. “He’s back in town. Big deal. It’s a free country. He can go where he wants. It’s all fine.” I drank again. Work had saved me from having to deal with Leo, and my best friends were going to force the issue. Something about that seemed wrong.

  “How silly of us to worry,” Liv said flatly.

  “It was a long time ago,” I said. “Really. No big deal.”

  “It was a big deal at the time,” Liv said.

  “Of course it was. My boyfriend slept with a girl at college then ran off on a guilt-bender and became a damn priest. Are you kidding? Teenage girls live for that kind of drama. Dawson’s Creek had nothing on me.”

  Liv looked at me, vague disappointment on her face, then shook her head. “Enough of the bullshit. I think I should turn him into a squirrel.”

  “Oh, I like that idea,” Peach said.

  “Right?” Liv said. “I mean, what’s the use of having magical powers if you can’t make things the way you think they should be, right?”

  We all went quiet and looked at one another. The magic was thrilling at times, but it had also come at a high cost. Had things been the way they were supposed to be, Millie would be sitting on one side of me, offering to make hot tea and telling me everything was going to be okay. Instead, her ashes were in an urn in Liv’s backyard garden, and her ruthless willingness to use magic to change things she didn’t like had put her there.

  “I was just kidding,” Liv said quietly. “I can’t turn living things into squirrels, anyway.”

  Liv reached over, grabbed the bottle off the counter—something you can do while still seated at the dinette, God bless the ’Bago—and refilled my glass. I lifted it up to take a sip, and then I crumbled. I let my head lower to the table, and I just started crying. It wasn’t the big ugly cry, just the steady stream of tears that happens when it’s all just too damn much.

  Liv got up and scooted into the bench next to me and put her arm around me. Peach got the Kleenex and set them on the table. I just cried, and cried some more, and then when I thought I didn’t have any left in me, I kept on crying. At least I didn’t have to explain anything; they had been there for it, both for the experience of me and Leo together, and for the devastating aftermath.

  After a little while, I managed to pull my head up from the table. I grabbed a Kleenex, swiped and sniffled, then sat up straight and downed the last of the whiskey in my glass.

  “No,” I said, my voice croaky. “I’m not doing this. He’s not doing this to me.” I swiped at my face and said, “No,” again, as though through sheer force of will I could stop it from hurting.

  “Okay, that’s it.” Peach reached into her purse and pulled out her phone.

  “What are you doing?” Liv asked.

  “I’m calling Nick,” Peach said. “I’m gonna tell him Leo can’t come to the wedding.”

  “No.” I took the phone from her, canceled the call, and handed it back. “Don’t do that.”

  “But it’ll ruin the wedding for you,” Peach said.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “It’s not my wedding.”

  “It’s on Saturday,” Peach said. “You can’t live like this for four days until he leaves.”

  I sighed. “Nick and Leo have been friends since grade school. I’m not going to be the reason my brother’s best friend isn’t at his wedding.”

  Peach and Liv exchanged doubtful glances, then Liv gave me a thoughtful look. I swiped the tissue under my nose and said, “What?”

  “Nothing, it’s just … why is it that you can’t self-medicate again?”

  I sighed and rubbed my eyes, grateful to not be talking about Leo for a minute. “It’s kind of like an audio feedback loop; the magic turns back in on itself and gets exaggerated. I don’t know. Something like that. They say that’s what made van Gogh cut off his ear.”

  Peach’s eyes widened. “Is that true?”

  I managed a half smile. “Probably not. You know conjurers. They always claim every crazy person in history was a conjurer who went wrong. They’re sick of the natural magicals getting all the ink.”

  Liv smiled. “Okay, so you can’t make anything for yourself, but maybe I can get ahold of something someone else makes and—”

  I held up one hand. “I don’t use magic. I profit from it. Very different relationship.”

  “But if someone else can make you something, give you some … I don’t know. Emotional distance. Just until Leo leaves.”

  I patted her hand. “I’m fine, really. I had too much to drink on an empty stomach and it’s Leo. Bad combination. I just need to sleep it off.”

  Liv didn’t move, and neither did Peach.

  “That’s your cue to leave,” I said.

  Still. Nothing.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ve got a guy in Niagara Falls who supplies me with my magical ingredients. Hey, have you heard from Cain lately, Liv? Is he still conjuring?”

  “He’s back in Tennessee, and I have no idea what he’s doing. He’s not terribly chatty. And don’t change the subject.”

  I looked at Peach. “Is he coming in for the wedding?”

  Peach’s eyes widened. “Oh, crap.” She looked at Liv, panic on her face. “Should I have invited him?”

  Liv kept her focus on me. “I know what you’re doing.”

  “He’s the closest thing Liv has to family,” I said, “and Liv is like family to you…”

  Peach pulled out her phone. “I have to call him. Maybe it’s not too late.”

  Liv took the phone away and patted Peach on the hand. “He doesn’t want to come to the wedding, and he’s not going to be offended. Stacy’s just trying to get us off her back.”

  Peach looked at me, shaking her head in disappointment. “Using my wedding paranoia against me. That’s low.”

  “Fine,” I said. “If things get bad, I’ll go see Desmond and get a potion or something.”

  Peach gave me her very serious look. “You promise?”

  I took my index finger and crossed it over my heart. “Now you two have to get out of here. I’m dead on my feet. I need some sleep.”

  Liv and Peach exchanged glances, and then both nodded, deciding between the two of them that I was okay to be left alone. It took three weeks for them to get to that point when Leo first left; that was progress, I guessed. I almost had them out the door when Liv turned to face me.

  “I don’t like you being alone all the way out here,” she said. “I know you won’t call if you need me.”

  “I will totally call,” I lied.

  She eyed me, her eyes narrowing in thought. I had a moment’s unease, wondering what she was thinking—Liv is exactly the kind of woman who would cuff our ankles together if she felt I needed it—but then her face cleared, and I let out a breath. She reached into her purse and pulled out her enormous set of keys, an array of every key she’d apparently ever needed, along with every keychain that had ever caught her eye. She stuffed them in my hand, then nudged past me to walk over to my sink.

  I looked down at the keys in my hand, then down at her as she knelt and pulled a small, clear glass mixing bowl out of the cabinet under the sink.

  “Am I supposed to know what she’s doing?” I asked Peach.

  Peach shrugged. “Don’t look at me.”

  “Hang on and shut up for a minute.” She put the bowl in the sink and turned on the wat
er, then took the keys from me. She singled out one keychain and showed it to me.

  “Oh, crap,” I said, and laughed. “You still have this?”

  It was one of four strip pictures of us we’d had taken at a picture booth at the Chautauqua County Fair sometime in high school: me and Liv squeezing in on the bottom, with Peach and Millie behind us. Millie held a puff of pink cotton candy as big as her head and stuck her tongue out to lick it. Peach was crossing her eyes. I was practicing my ironic sexy eyes, apparently, and Liv was playing it straight, her grin so big and so wide you could practically count all her teeth. For graduation, Liv had cut the strip up into four squares, and had them each encased in clear plastic and made into keychains. I’d lost mine at the beach the following summer; we’d put Millie’s in the urn with her ashes last year. I had no idea where Peach’s was. Liv’s had apparently been part of her key ring from hell all this time, and it looked it.

  “Oh,” Peach said, her voice cracking with emotion. “Millie.”

  We were silent for a moment. We didn’t talk about Millie much, mostly because I was still pissed off about it, Liv still felt like it was all her fault, and Peach was too much of an open nerve about Millie for either of us to handle.

  “I can’t believe you kept this,” I finally said to Liv.

  “Of course I kept it.” She grasped the plastic square in her palm and ripped it cleanly from the Gordian knot of keys, then gave the mass back to me.

  “Okay.” I said. “I didn’t see that coming.”

  She cupped her hands around the square and closed her eyes. For a moment, there was silence, nothing, and then I saw a thread of yellow light swirl out from her cupped palm and zip around the back of her hand, curling inside again. Then another, then another; little snakes of light racing around her hands.

  Magic.

  “Really?” I glanced at the clear bowl of water in my sink. “You’re making me a keychain fish?”