WishCraft Read online

  “Sorry.”

  That startled her. “About what?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t mean to run off such a good catch.”

  Did he mean as in ‘husband material’ or ‘money’? She couldn’t tell.

  He didn’t explain. He did sit there for a moment, looking pensive as he counted out bills and laid them on the table along with the check. “Why me?”

  Oh God, what a question. And there were a million ways to answer. She tried to find one that didn’t involve filleting her soul and serving it up on a platter. The best she could come up with was, “I liked you.”

  He nodded. “Okay, here’s how it’s going to go . . .”

  She did not like the sound of that.

  Brandon didn’t seem to notice. “You and me, we’ve got two nights behind us, but no dates. We’re going to start making up for that tomorrow night.”

  “I have to work tomorrow.” It bothered her how quickly and easily the lie tumbled from her mouth.

  “No, you don’t.” He didn’t even act upset that she had lied to him, and he sure didn’t believe her. Was he out for some kind of revenge? His words got even stranger. “Tomorrow, we are going to start dating. We are going to be exclusive. I figure after everything else between us, we owe each other that much. And maybe you’ll explain the whole thing to me one of these days. We’ll see where this goes.”

  His eyes caught and held hers and she had to wonder if he was as crazy as he’d told Jeff she was. He wanted to date her? No way.

  But he smiled and it seemed genuine. Then he backed carefully out of the booth, deftly avoiding a waitress coming behind him with a loaded tray. His hand locked onto hers and he pulled her smoothly out after him. “Come on.”

  She wanted to say no. Wanted to tell him good-bye. Her instincts were screaming, but not a one of them was about harm. She felt completely safe with Brandon. Even if she didn’t know why. As a double-check her hand shot out and jostled what was left of the mojito.

  The leaves went clockwise. It was all right.

  Whatever ‘all right’ meant.

  Chapter 13

  “You do it.”

  Delilah’s head turned at the sound of the voice. She knew that voice. Her heart knew that voice. It belonged in a time when things had been okay. That’s how she knew she was dreaming.

  Her own mouth opened to respond, her brain knew the words before they were spoken, but she said them anyway. “You do it. You’re better at it.”

  Still the small hand had held out the cluster of long grasses, plucked from the field behind their house. They lived at the edge of town, both literally and figuratively. A Wiccan family on the fringe of society, trying to keep the balance between civilization and nature.

  Even back then, when they had been young, Juliet had been the littlest and the best at magick. As though their parents had gotten better and better at focusing their talents into their children each time they brought a new one into the world. It had been Juliet who encouraged Delilah to get better, stronger. So she held out the grasses for practice.

  They had stood there for an eternity. At least it had seemed that way to Delilah. Juliet’s small fist around the grasses, held out directly between them while Delilah concentrated.

  She’d been nine. Juliet seven. Tristan twelve, but less involved in the effort to master the grasses.

  Delilah had caved long before her sister. “Jules, I can’t do it. Not like that.”

  “Sure you can. You just have to want it.” Where Juliet had come up with that bit of sage advice Delilah would never know.

  But it didn’t matter. Delilah had wanted it. There was nothing wrong with her desire. Merely with her methods. She wanted herbs, flame, small hand motions. Things Juliet never needed nor used. But she couldn’t fail in front of her baby sister, her cheerleader. She tried again.

  Eons later, the plain grasses bloomed into bright, peach colored flowers that smelled of the apple pie she planned to help her mother bake that evening.

  Tristan had worked on his own skills. With a sprinkle of water, he made pebbles levitate and spin. He could whip his pencil through the air and leave tracers of blue light. He could make tiny alterations to wind, the kind that would conveniently pull a few papers out of a girl’s grasp as she passed by in the hallway at school. Papers that he could pick up for her. If only he could keep his own awkward body under his control. But that wouldn’t happen, because junior high was junior high, and there were certain inescapable truths. She and Juliet found those things out for themselves in later years.

  But that afternoon, the afternoon she had first made the grasses bloom with only her thoughts, she’d gathered them from Juliet’s outstretched hand and run into the house. Her mother then pulled down her best vase and arranged them in the center of the table and lovingly poured water on them, even though she stopped doing this for Juliet’s creations long ago. They stayed on the table for a month before they finally withered and dried as the grass stalks they had originally been, as they had been meant to be.

  In the dream, small Delilah knew this all this, knew how long her precious flowers would last. And she knew that she should still take this moment to admire them.

  Her smile must have burned a thousand watts, for her whole family had smiled with her. Even Tristan, and back then he seemed determined not to smile about anything, at least not until junior high was finished.

  Small arms went around her. For some reason, Juliet looked up to her. Aside from magicks, Delilah was clearly the older, more experienced sister. When she looked at Juliet though, something was wrong.

  The voice that came from Juliet’s mouth was not her own. Well, it was, but it was a voice Jules would not obtain until adulthood. “I knew you’d be okay.”

  Delilah jerked back, her nine-year-old body reacting with her adult knowledge. I’m not okay. I’ll never be okay again.

  But her mouth didn’t speak the words. Not that it mattered. She would never speak to the real Juliet again. So she stood there with Juliet’s arms around her, her sister’s small face gazing up at her.

  Juliet smiled. Her eyes . . .

  Delilah had to blink twice to figure it out.

  The eyes were blue.

  Not Juliet’s eyes, but her own. Staring back at her from her sister’s face.

  Her lungs expanded on a strangled sound, sucking in air as though she’d been underwater. Even as she came awake and struggled to right herself, a great weight kept her pinned. She was bound and suffocating in the dark, haunted by images of her sister. Seeing Juliet as a reflection of herself and scared to think what it all might mean.

  Delilah thrashed against her bindings, only to discover that she wasn’t being held prisoner at all. She wasn’t tied, but tangled in bed sheets. The weight she felt was a heavy arm across her waist.

  Brandon’s arm.

  She must not have thrashed as hard as she thought, because he slept like nothing had happened. As though someone on the other side of his bed flailed themselves awake in the middle of every night. At last she lay still, unable to fight against Brandon, who won merely by being larger and heavier. And unable to fight against the memories of her dream, which were burned into her brain whether she understood their meaning or not.

  She talked herself back into a state of half-sleep where she became unaware of the passage of time, as well as the unmoving man beside her. For a while she drifted through half dreams, before the contact with Brandon’s skin showed her his dreamless sleep. Delilah latched on to that and tried to relax.

  Later, his alarm went off, startling them both. Tired as she was, and not willing to deal with what she’d done and how she’d wound up in his bed, she rolled back over while he showered then dressed.

  Utterly confused, she found herself alone in his apartment after he kissed her good-bye and left for work. Pretending to sleep through the whole ‘leaving’ part had been an attempt to avoid anything else between them. But he hadn’t left it at that.

&n
bsp; What he left was a lengthy note telling her all about the date they were going on that evening. He was planning to take her to Othello—where she worked—which just would not do.

  She sat there in his bed, clutching the sheets to her chest, protecting herself from the lecherous gaze of . . . no one. So why did she feel so exposed? She debated with herself over what she should do. She could call him on his cell, as he’d left her all his numbers on the note. Or she could do what she’d planned all along: snitch a piece of hair, a well-worn garment, and his toothbrush cup.

  Cautiously, she climbed out of his bed and back into her clothes. She pulled her fingers through her hair, and spelled it smooth and shiny. It was a little measure of control in a world that was suddenly spinning way too fast for her again. While she worked on her hair, she told herself that she wasn’t going to do anything wrong. She was just going to look around.

  His living room was sparsely furnished and managed to feel empty even when Brandon was in the house, but her spell to search for personal items turned up the remote control. He would have had a lot of contact with it if he was anything like David and her brother. But if she took it, he’d definitely notice it was missing.

  If she cast on him again it would have to be subtle. If he realized she’d spelled him then he’d just shake it. Some people seemed to have that ability naturally. She herself apparently was not one of them. Brandon, however, had already proved himself capable of doing just that.

  So the remote was out of the question, but the toothbrush cup still seemed like a good idea. A lot of contact, but it was nothing special, just another plastic cup from his cupboard. She could take the one he’d been using, slip in a replacement, and he’d never realize it.

  Only her fingers suddenly wouldn’t work when she tried to pick up the cup. She’d gone completely klutzo. First it had slipped into the sink. When she grabbed it again, it rolled under the toilet around back. It’s third attempt at escape had landed it square in the toilet. That rendered it unusable on all fronts.

  She’d pinched the rim and lifted it gingerly from the bowl—thank god the man had good cleaning habits or a good maid service. She rinsed it in the sink, then delivered it to the kitchen where she set it into the dishwasher with its dirty dish friends and pulled a replacement that she put back, upside down, on the rim of the bathroom sink.

  All of this, of course, was carried off without a single bobble or foible. And left her with no cup.

  She sat down and closed her eyes and focused. Quickly she cast a small spell to see if anything had been cast on her. What a great irony it would be if Brandon were Wiccan, too. Or even a pure magician without the religion to follow. He could be having great fun countering her spells.

  But when she looked, she found nothing. Not a single spell cast on her.

  Her fingers simply weren’t working. She managed to break every hair she tried to extract from the brush. To top off her frustration, every piece of his clothing was freshly laundered. The hamper was completely empty.

  She could not get what she needed.

  If she couldn’t cast on him, she was stuck with him.

  She’d almost sat down and cried. Right there on his living room floor. While he was off at work.

  And what was he doing leaving her alone in his house? He didn’t trust her.

  Delilah amended that. Well, obviously, he did. But he shouldn’t.

  Maybe he had a camera on her. She’d looked around but couldn’t find anything. He did know where she lived. So he could always come after her.

  Eventually, she’d called it a loss and picked herself up off his pretty hardwood floor. Making sure she had everything that was hers, she turned the lock when she left. The man hadn’t left her a key. Since he thought she drugged him and wondered why she didn’t take his wallet, why was he leaving her here alone? For that matter, why had he asked out a woman he thought capable of the things he thought her capable of?

  She found it hard to trust a man who trusted her. At least given what Brandon knew of her, he shouldn’t trust her. And why hadn’t she made an effort—any effort—to defend her bizarre actions?

  She’d started the walk home with her eyes straight ahead, watching the traffic around her and wondering how the world could go on so benignly, when so much was just beyond the edges of what you could see. But, within moments, her thoughts had turned back inward—to Brandon, to the dream—and her feet followed their own path home.

  She was almost there when she was jolted from her blind state by the music from her cell phone. The faceplate showed that, not only was it Tristan calling, but he had called three times already this morning. Realizing that she had to do it sooner or later, she hit the send button and connected through to her brother.

  “I see you have deigned to answer my call.” Then he got right to the point—commenting on her date with Jeff. Which now felt like it had happened over a million years ago. Somehow he wound up with entirely the wrong idea.

  “No, Tristan. It was a complete disaster.” Delilah sighed into her cell phone as she rounded the last block to her apartment.

  “Yeah, right.” There was a smile in his voice that she couldn’t understand. “I’m just glad that you had a good time with a date for once.”

  “But I didn’t. Jeff was boring. And later, he was arrogant. Don’t tell Yasmin, because I know he’s her friend, but he was awful. What makes you so certain I liked him?”

  Tristan’s voice faltered through the line. “You didn’t go home last night.”

  “How do you know that!?” Delilah spilled the words before she realized that they were as good as an admission that she hadn’t spent the night in her own bed.

  She really had to cast a spell on herself to be sure that she thought before she blurted. It was happening way too much lately, really since this whole thing with Brandon started. Which just went to show you that she really needed to ditch Brandon.

  Something more than her words must have broadcast to Tristan, and she added ‘keeping her thoughts closed’ to the growing list of spells she clearly needed to work on herself. His voice couldn’t mask the trepidation underneath, belying how concerned he was about the answer. “Was it the Rotisserie Guy?”

  She could lie but, really, what good would that do?

  It was likely that Tristan would just laugh at her for trying. Then, if it did work, she would carry around the guilt of lying to the one person in the whole world who truly loved her. So she bucked up and did what she could. “I plead the fifth.”

  That didn’t work for Tristan. “Rotisserie Guy! No.”

  He said the ‘no’ the same way you would if you’d found out your perfect soufflé had fallen.

  Delilah countered with a slight change of subject. “How did you know I didn’t go home? You weren’t scrying on me were you?”

  A warped image formed in her head of Tristan and all his adoring clerks at the shop gathered around a crystal ball trying to watch her on her date. Luckily, or maybe just intelligently, she’d cast a protection against being viewed remotely a long time ago. If they had checked in on her, Tristan would never have made the mistake of assuming it was Jeff she’d been with. Still the whole idea gave her the willies. Thank god her brother had morals.

  Indeed, he offered up a far more common method. “I called your house all night, you didn’t answer.”

  “Maybe I was just sleeping heavy.”

  “You already admitted you were with the Rotisserie Guy.”

  Yeah, that blurting thing had been a mistake. She sighed again, finding herself at a distinct disadvantage against her brother’s concern for her. “Can we stop calling him that?”

  “So tell me his name, or better yet, bring him by to meet me. Since you’re actually seeing him.”

  “Never mind. ‘Rotisserie Guy’ will be just fine.” She didn’t even address Tristan’s idea that she was really ‘seeing’ Brandon. She so wished this conversation were over.

  Tristan must have sensed that, because he
claimed there was a commotion in the store and that he’d have to leave soon as it got busier with the Friday afternoon rush that would turn into the evening crush. They said their good-byes—even though Delilah knew the discussion of ‘Rotisserie Guy’ was far from finished—and he hung up to go train the new girl about the midnight closing before he left her in Yasmin’s capable hands.

  Delilah mentally amended that Yasmin was not a capable matchmaker, but she kept that to herself and just wished him well with his trainee.

  She hit the end button on her phone as she looked up and down her own apartment hallway. She hadn’t paid much attention to getting here. She’d walked the ten blocks from Brandon’s house in a daze.

  Turning the key in her own apartment door, Delilah stepped over the threshold into familiarity. With a deep breath, her whirl of thoughts and feelings at last came to a stop and settled.

  Trying her best not to think at all, Delilah padded into the bathroom and turned the hot water to full blast. She stripped her clothes away and wished she could strip her memories just as easily. Not only Brandon, but all of them.

  She stepped into the spray of the shower and simply enjoyed the heat for a few minutes. It wasn’t long before her thoughts demanded attention. She tried, like she had so many times before, to figure out what had gone wrong in her life. But she couldn’t find it. Couldn’t pinpoint a moment of mistake, the obvious signs she had missed or ignored.

  She and David had married in a whirlwind of romance, happy and in love. She’d had the white dress and the flowers in her hair. Her mother and father beamed, her brother and sister were in attendance, all of them smiling and happy for her.

  They’d all loved David. David loved them. He’d known her family was Wiccan, and accepted her religion. He’d embraced her love of it, if not her faith as his own. He had no issues with what she or her family was.

  Yet none of them had foreseen what was to come.

  Delilah pushed the water off her face and thought back to her wedding day, to the days before and after it. David gave no warning that she could see. She’d gotten no cold feet, no inkling that something was wrong. Even in hindsight, she could see nothing.