WishCraft Page 18

  Finally, she was able to get herself to eat again. Only the saltines and soda, but she sat on the sofa and slowly munched while watching really bad television, keeping the food constantly moving to her mouth. Just having something in her did make her stomach feel better. A decent serving of crackers convinced her mind it was just a stomach bug. Right? If she were pregnant, she would still feel the nausea certainly. Delilah consoled herself with the thought.

  She didn’t even notice when she dropped off to sleep. But slowly she was climbing stairs to a small apartment in Santa Monica. An apartment she had known before. She’d cleaned this apartment out just over a year ago. But everything was here now. For some reason that didn’t seem strange.

  Her brain associated the door with all things Jules. The memories came in a flood too fast and furious to be stopped. Consoling her sister’s tears over the boyfriend who had dumped her after she’d gone to the tremendous trouble of really cooking for him. Saturday afternoons, tired feet, dropping her sister off and sorting through shopping bags before she headed home to David. Jules always helped her shove the shoe boxes down inside the other bags so David wouldn’t ask about another pair of shoes. Delilah had other memories of dim red lights and pulsing music, wall to wall people, as she and David made their way into the cramped apartment, made more so by all the bodies. They always came to Jules’ parties.

  Her brain wondered now if anything had gone on between her husband and Jules at these parties. If the boyfriends and the tears were merely clever covers for infidelities. But, no, they assured her it had been a one time thing. Although something at the back of Delilah’s brain nagged her that it hadn’t been just the once. Still, in the end, it was Juliet’s infidelity that hurt the worst. So it was her younger sister Delilah wanted to hurt the worst in return.

  She knocked on the heavy tan-colored door, noticing the sound was hollow in her brain.

  The way Jules pulled the door open showed that she knew it was Delilah waiting on the other side. The siblings always sensed each other, and Juliet had always been the best. Delilah could have cast on herself, made it so Jules wouldn’t recognize the feeling from just beyond the door. Jules would throw it open and get the nasty surprise of her betrayed sister waiting for her. But Delilah didn’t do that. She wouldn’t cast against her sister. She knew how it felt and got her only satisfaction out of this whole mess from taking the moral high ground.

  And, besides, she didn’t have to spell Jules. She had enough ammunition, enough righteous anger, that she didn’t feel the need to resort to parlor tricks. Delilah pushed her way into the apartment, wondering briefly if she’d find David moved in here. He hadn’t been home—not that she’d seen anyway—in a week. He said he wasn’t staying with her sister. Then again, he said he wasn’t seeing anyone else either. He said he’d never cheat, and that he’d love her forever. Delilah shut those memories down before they could go any further. That kind of thinking could tear her up inside even worse than she already was.

  But it didn’t seem David was there. Which would hopefully make this easier.

  Juliet quietly closed the door behind herself. She was four inches taller than Delilah, thicker, more athletic, and right now, even though her voice was soft, she stood her ground. “What do you want, Li?”

  Delilah didn’t really think she could provide a real answer to that. She was so conflicted, even if she knew what she needed to do here. And she didn’t feel like giving the short version either. Didn’t think it wise to tell her sister what it was she wanted—or more accurately, needed—to hand her more ammunition when apparently Jules had little compunction about using it against her. So she asked her own question. “Are you still seeing him, Juliet?”

  Jules flinched.

  At first Delilah figured she’d scored a blow just by using Juliet’s formal name. The sisters had always called each other ‘Jules’ and ‘Li.’ The formal name had been intended as an insult.

  But apparently Delilah had been wrong. Juliet flinched because of her answer. “Yes, I’m still seeing him.”

  Delilah’s voice and emotions came flooding out in a screeching voice she didn’t recognize. “Well, you have to stop. How am I supposed to save my marriage if you keep seeing him?” Delilah didn’t leave room for an answer. “No more, Juliet!”

  While she’d yelled, Jules had stood up straighter, gotten angry, and her words came out on the grate of steel. Somehow Juliet managed to look wounded and offended and dignified as she responded to the fact that she’d not only cheated with her sister’s husband, but she was continuing to do so. “I love him! He loves me! I’m just supposed to hand him to you?”

  “No Juliet, you weren’t supposed to take him in the first place.”

  That at least made her sister a bit contrite again. Where did she get off thinking it was okay to steal someone else’s husband? Her sister’s husband at that? What had she ever done to Juliet to deserve this? The answer, of course, was nothing.

  And nothing could have prepared her for the next low blow Juliet delivered. “I didn’t steal him. He came to me.”

  Delilah found some of her own dignity. Tried like hell to push down the hurt, to believe it maybe wasn’t true, and to simply file it all away for later when she might be able to deal with it. If she couldn’t deal with it, at least she’d be alone. “Oh, he came to you? So that makes it okay? Then there’s more than one of your cheap-ass boyfriends I should have fucked along the way.”

  Juliet seemed to tower over her. Looking sad and sorry and a little bit regal. “I’m sorry you got hurt, but you have to face that it’s over, Li.”

  Delilah didn’t balk. “I’m pregnant.”

  She expected the shocked look on her sister’s face. She expected Jules to stop and place her hand flat against her chest and need a moment to think. She didn’t expect the whispered words she heard back.

  “I’m pregnant, too.” Juliet lifted the hem on her shirt revealing a maternity panel on the front of her jeans.

  Delilah stumbled back. Juliet had gotten that shirt a month ago. She’d worn it to the house one night and Delilah complimented her sister on her top and asked if it was new. Her little sister had happily replied ‘yes.’

  She could see the shirt now for what it was. There were gathers and pleats to expand with a growing belly. It looked cute. But Juliet had been wearing it since a month ago.

  Delilah wasn’t even in maternity clothes yet. She looked her ‘little’ sister up and down: Juliet was tall. She was hardly showing, but she had to be about four months along—or more—in order to need maternity clothes.

  Standing there, bewildered and frowning, Delilah tried to sort through it all. The math didn’t add up. Jules was too far along—her affair with David only started a month ago, a fling that continued, if at all, because Delilah had thrown him out of the house.

  Her lungs let go as it all fell neatly into place and finally she breathed. “What are you going to do?”

  Juliet didn’t blink. “David’s going to marry me.”

  What? “He’s still married to me.”

  “You’re divorcing him.” As though that made everything okay. Delilah didn’t recognize this person she was talking to. This person that she thought she knew better than anyone else in the whole world. She’d been wrong on so many fronts.

  Delilah shook her head, trying to stick to the conversation in front of her, because the rest of it was just too overwhelming. “I don’t think I am divorcing him now. We’re having a baby, apparently. So we’re going to have to act like adults and straighten this out. You’ll just have to stay out of it, Jules.”

  Juliet shook her head, too. “This is David’s baby, Li.”

  “But— . . . It was only— . . . you said it was just the once . . .”

  Delilah fled.

  She stumbled down the hallway. Flew down the stairs.

  They’d lied to her.

  Of course they’d lied to her. They were in bed together, and they had both scrambled around
, throwing on clothes and lies as though they might fix what they’d done. Like everything was all right if they said it was a one time thing and they were sorry.

  The hallway seemed interminable and her brain clicked over the facts as she ran. Juliet was in maternity clothes—a month ago—at her house. Long before Delilah knew what a cheap excuse for a man she’d married and what a back-stabbing sister she had. Then Juliet had known she was pregnant, by David, before Delilah caught them.

  And if her sister was sleeping with him and showed up in her maternity clothes, then David had to have known, too.

  They’d lied. They’d flat-out, bald-faced lied straight to her.

  Delilah climbed into her car and squealed out of the spot. Juliet was racing down the stairs and out the building, barefoot, calling after her. “Li! Li!”

  Barefoot and pregnant. Delilah laughed, the sound sick even to her own ears. Then the urge slammed into her like a baseball bat. She’d felt it in her gut and her chest. It invaded her brain: the overwhelming need to turn around, to go back and forgive her sister.

  Delilah looked in the rearview mirror and saw Juliet standing there, bare feet just apart, hands clasped in front of her heart. It was a stance in which Juliet found great power. It looked almost like she was praying. Indeed, it had a lot in common with prayer—except what Juliet was doing had no divine origins.

  Delilah could feel her sister calling her back. Instilling her with forgiveness she didn’t want to give. The feelings flooded through her as she turned the car around and circled the block. She loved her sister, the little sister she’d once played with. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for Juliet. They had to work this out.

  When she pulled up, she rolled down the passenger window so Juliet could lean over, the picture of contrition.

  “Li,” It was a sigh of sorrow and need.

  Delilah looked in her sister’s eyes. She’d been there for her sister, every time she’d been needed. All through the boyfriends that didn’t work out. The lost games. High school. College. She’d forged the path, in a way her mother had never been able to, a fully modern day witch in a world that still didn’t understand. And she’d given it all freely to her sister. Who now stood at the passenger window, very pregnant with Delilah’s husband’s baby.

  Juliet had cast on her own sister.

  David probably had gone to her. Juliet had probably cast on him, too.

  Delilah looked into those blue eyes so like her own. “Juliet . . . . Fuck . . . Off.”

  She’d flipped a bird and stomped on the gas, practically ripping off her sister’s fingers where they clung to the windshield. She could feel all the things Juliet wanted her to feel. But mostly she felt tainted. Used and lied to.

  For a moment, she wished she weren’t pregnant. The baby was a surprise, but one she and David had been considering for a while. Of course, now she realized that all the while they’d been talking about a baby, he’d known he was already having one. With Juliet.

  If either of them weren’t pregnant it would all be so much easier. If she weren’t pregnant, she would hand David over to Jules and tell them they deserved each other.

  With her first clear thought in a while, Delilah realized that was exactly what she needed to do. Baby or not. She could even threaten David if he tried to get custody. He had his own child—Juliet’s child—to be a father to. Delilah would find something better for hers. And if he tried anything . . . well, she could start a turf war with her sister the likes of which LA had never seen. David wouldn’t risk that. As she felt Juliet’s spell wearing off, she sighed, and took a moment to be glad her parents weren’t alive to see this.

  Racing home, she ignored all the speed limits and every vestige of sanity she possessed. It was a wonder she made it. Judging by what came later, Delilah had always figured letting her survive that drive had been a bad decision on Fate’s part.

  In the remembered dream, her thinking brain took over—correcting for life’s mistakes. As had happened so many times in her dreams that first year, her car raced off the side of the Pacific Coast Highway. The tumble down the long cliffside ended when she plunged into the water, jolting as the car slammed her around from the impact.

  She sat straight up, breathing heavily and drenched in sweat.

  Delilah hadn’t had that dream in a long time.

  Even though she’d suffered through it so many times before, she still required a moment to reorient herself. She was on her couch, game shows were on her TV, sunlight filtered in through the window.

  It was long over. Just a bad dream constructed and re-worked from a far too real memory.

  She stood and stretched. She called Maggie and left a voice mail saying she wouldn’t be in the next night either, she was suffering from a bad stomach bug that she didn’t want to spread around.

  Well, it was partly true.

  She checked her messages—on the home phone and on her cell.

  Nothing from Brandon.

  She drank a coke to clear her head for a minute and ate more crackers while she thought. She could go out and get a pregnancy test. But she thought the best thing to do was sleep. She’d like to tell Brandon before she took the test.

  She absolutely must come clean to him now.

  Still, her eyes were pulling closed. She needed real restful sleep. For her and the coming baby.

  Chapter 25

  Brandon was pissed.

  Somehow he’d screwed it all up and Delilah hadn’t called. She should be in the throes of a good, deep seated need for him right about now.

  If he’d done it correctly—which was a big ‘if.’

  Yasmin the Good Witch told them that first time spells were often duds. It seemed Brandon was going to prove to be no exception. She’d also told the class to start with inconsequential spells, things in which it wouldn’t matter if they went awry or not. But Brandon didn’t really see the point in that. If he was going to do something inconsequential it would involve several rounds of beer and a willing babe he’d pick up at Gin’s for the night.

  Yasmin had thrown in other good advice, as well. Like they should practice a handful of different spells so they could try things out and see what worked best for each of them. Brandon was soundly ignoring that advice, too.

  He needed more Tansy.

  Monday afternoon at work he called it quits early. They’d heard from the trio they presented to on Tuesday the week before. While the men hadn’t come up with the money for as many shares of the game rights as they ultimately claimed they wanted, they still signed for more than what he and Dan had originally thought might be possible.

  Dan wanted to celebrate.

  Brandon wanted to want to celebrate. Instead he was too wrapped up in his now very warped love life.

  He drove straight to Blessed Be.

  He played parking shark until a spot opened up on the neighboring block. At which point he beat out a little old lady in a big oldsmobile for the rights. Too bad. He wasn’t usually such an ass, so he figured karma would let him get away with a little bit.

  He locked the car down behind him and considered trying one of the instant protection spells they learned the first night. But with the way his spells were going he figured he was far more likely to tag the car with a neon steal me sign and find nothing but a bumper when he returned. So he merely hit the button on the key and waited for the usual double beep that signaled Acura was taking care of his car even if he couldn’t.

  He enjoyed the walk over to the store. Traffic was heavy, but moving and he was forced to wait for the light. He was certain he was breathing in the fumes of years of overpopulation, but he couldn’t summon the will to care.

  As he pushed it open, the door knocked a bell that let out a small tinkle to signal someone was entering the store. The bell system seemed kind of primitive to him. Weren’t these people supposed to be psychic? Shouldn’t they just know who was in the store or not?

  He found himself wandering around, appreciative that the dim
lighting and the seeming pulse the store exhibited hadn’t been effects of the odd evening when he’d first come. They existed now in the broad daylight of middle afternoon, too.

  He was standing, gazing at the racks of dried herbs and wondering what the hell they were all supposed to mean and do, when he felt the woman next to him staring.

  Brandon looked up.

  She smiled.

  He smiled back. She was pretty, with large gray eyes and a nice figure. She was dressed to be attractive, but her outfit didn’t scream it the way so many LA women seemed to think was necessary. Her understatement didn’t hide that she was actually quite beautiful, in fact. But it was something he noticed with his brain. It didn’t grab him in the gut and wrap itself around his heart, not the way Delilah’s looks did. He felt no pull whatsoever.

  Then he reminded himself there was a very good possibility all those emotions, and even now the lack thereof, were likely due to Delilah.

  Still, he couldn’t make himself feel any real attraction for the woman. He grabbed the tansy, noting that it all said ‘boleen cut/hand cut’—another important tip from Yasmin. Machine cut herbs were definitely inferior. Although he couldn’t say he was seeing the benefit of these expensive witch-cut herbs either.

  He picked up a small felt cutout and nearly laughed out loud. They had all looked so horrified and offended when he asked about sacrifice. And Yasmin herself had gotten that how dare you look on her face when she firmly explained that he was confusing witchcraft with voodoo. But here he was, ready to make a likeness of Delilah, for spell work—and all this at Yasmin’s instruction. It seemed they were the ones who confused voodoo with witchcraft.

  Still, the cutout was supposed to represent a person. It looked more like a fuzzy gingerbread man to him, but supposedly it would get the job done. They came in several shades—Brandon chose a pale piece to go with Delilah’s milky skin, surely kept flawless with some kind of spell. He grabbed a round of white cotton, handwoven ribbon and a fat, pink candle.