Petty Magic (28 page)

I rub my arms to try to dispel the gooseflesh. “Perhaps for the same reason he’s vanished without a sound.”

“But that’s ridiculous, Eve. He’s got to be hiding in the graveyard.”

“Go on and check, then,” I tell him.

Justin strides to the wall and peers over it. He glances this way and that, waiting for any sign of movement behind the silent tombstones. “The drummer,” he murmurs, half to himself. “He told us that table was bad luck.” Now he gives me a look I know all too well—the look of a person who is on the verge of understanding but for sanity’s sake would really rather not.

“We’d better go,” he says.

Justin hops the graveyard wall and holds out his hand to help me over, and naturally I hesitate. But if there was ever a night I could be brave enough, tonight is it. I take a deep breath, grab his hand, and hop over the wall, and for a few moments I can hear nothing but our feet moving through the long wet grass. We’re halfway to the graveyard gate when I notice it: the darkest corner, which is on the side nearest the road, all the stones and grass devoured in shadow.

I’ve come this far; might as well kick it. It’s only a silly story anyhow.

Justin pauses at the gate. “Eve? Where are you going?”

“I’ll be just a minute!” I reach the corner and dip the toe of my boot into the shadow. Nothing. Thus emboldened, I aim a good sturdy kick at the old stone wall not two feet in front of me … 
and miss
.

I let out the scream of my life, though of course I don’t stick around to see if I’ve roused anybody. I sprint for the gate and Justin ducks out of the way to let me through, bless him. I keep on running up the boreen ’til my lungs hurt, and he soon catches up. “What was that all about?”

I shake my head, still breathless. “Don’t want to talk about it.” Then I realize that, through my own folly, we’re already a good bit of the way back to the pub—that much closer to the end of everything. I stop and vigorously shake my foot, hoping to rid myself of that terrible sucking sensation I felt when my boot met nothing but dead space.

We keep walking back to the main road, glancing frequently over our shoulders, though I know full well we’ll never set eyes on Billy Byrne again. So we stumble back toward Tully Cross, sour mouthed and shivering, light creeping back into the eastern sky so slowly that the sudden brightness of dawn comes as a shock.

“Wait, wait.” I lead him by the hand toward the stone wall along the road. “Let’s sit for a bit.” We hop up on the mossy stones and swing our legs over so we can see the sun coming up over the hills. A few cows come lumbering toward us.

“Where did you say our B and B was?”

“I didn’t.”

“Huh?”

I sigh. “We have to walk back to town. It’s, er, over the pub.”

“But I didn’t see any B and B over the pub …”

“It’s a small sign.”

“All right, as long as you’ve got the key.” He puts his arm around my waist and nuzzles my neck as the cows approach, regarding us with blank-eyed curiosity.

I’d give anything to have that key in my pocket right now, to have a little more time. “I gave it to you.”

Justin pats the pockets of his jacket, then his trousers. “I don’t have it. Do you have it?”

“Uh-oh.” This ruse is getting rather tiresome, but I can’t very well tell him we’re going home in twenty minutes. Besides, I don’t want to go home any more than he does.

“I guess we’ll have to knock. I hope they won’t hate us too much. Man, I’m hungry again. How many hours ’til they start serving breakfast?”

“A few, I suppose.” In a few hours he’ll be having breakfast at home, without me. I wish I could pull a chocolate bar out of my pocket for him.

“You know something, Eve?”

“Hmm?”

“Sometimes I think I must be very old, sitting in a wicker chair someplace, and that all this … I’m reliving all this. My whole life, you know? Inside my head.”

“That’s the silliest thing I ever heard.” I point to our bovine companions, who are still standing there staring at us. “See, they think so too.”

“Is it silly?” A shadow passes over his face. “Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m fast-forwarding from one event to the next, and I have only the haziest memories of the things that have happened in between. Makes a guy wonder if there isn’t some cruel twist coming up.”

I glance at him sidewise, feeling a pang. Then I pull the nightshade blossom out from behind my ear and put it up to his nose. “Can you smell this?”

Cautiously he sniffs. “Yeah.”

I point to the cows. “And can you smell them?” He wrinkles his nose in reply.

“That’s good,” I say gravely. “If this were all happening inside your head you wouldn’t be able to smell anything.”

“There’s a point.” He notices the Janus pendant round my neck and reaches out to finger it fondly.

I’ve had much too much to drink, and the greasy meal off the chipper truck hasn’t done my insides any good either. Of course, my heart is even more mutinous than my stomach—I want nothing more than to give in to it, to run back the way we came, through the fields and down to the shore, so that we might fall asleep in each other’s arms among the brittle swaths of dried seaweed.

But upon waking, caked in sand and cold to the bone, he would find quite a different Eve beside him. That very thought horrifies and sickens me. It’s over, very nearly over—and because Justin can never know it, much less why, our last moments together are deprived of their rightful tenderness.

The sun is higher in the sky now, the air cool and sweet. Little birds flit in and out of the hedges as the cows plod back to the trough. It’s the loveliest morning I’ve ever seen. I squeeze his hand and he turns to look at me. “What if something happened to me, Justin? No, I mean it. I’m being perfectly serious here. Life would go on, of course—but do you suppose you would remember me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He pulls me to him and holds me tighter than ever, and I smile into the folds of his jacket. I suppose I’ll have to content myself with that.

I
’M QUIVERING
with dread by the time we reach the alley that leads to the back of the pub. “Are you all right?” he asks, and what can I say? I give him a weak smile, a grimace more like. I undo the lock on the alley door with what little oomph I have left (just enough now to get us home and get me away before he can see what I am), and we go round the back. I gaze up into his bewildered face, lay my hand against his cheek, and when he opens his mouth to ask why the heck I’ve pulled him into the ladies’ toilet, I press a finger to his lips. As the fog drifts into his head this last time he yawns and smiles, his eyelids growing heavy.

I say the words that will bring us back to Hartmann’s Classic Toys … and that’s when it all, figuratively speaking, goes to pot.

String ’er Up

27.

S
ECOND VILLAGER:
She turned me into a newt!

B
EDEVERE:
A newt?

S
ECOND VILLAGER
(
after looking at himself for some time):
I got better.

A
LL:
Burn her anyway!

—Monty Python and the Holy Grail

T
HE FIRST
thing I notice is that I feel awfully stiff in the limbs. I can’t see very well either, though I can tell we’re not in the bathroom like we should be. Then I notice my feet aren’t on the ground; I feel myself flailing and realize in utter astonishment that I am actually
hanging
from something.

“Eve? Eve, what’s going on?”

I turn my head at the sound of Justin’s voice, and when I see what he’s wearing—a jester suit, bells and all—the appalling truth becomes all too clear.
Lucretia!

I tug and struggle, legs wheeling, but the crossbars are resting solidly on the flies and my hands feel as if they’re glued to this stupid mouse-sized lute. My jaw hinge squeaks as I call out, “Justin? Are you all right?”

I watch Justin survey himself, shaking his arm so the bells jingle, and I see a flash of panic in his little glass eyes.

“You were right,” I say. “We shouldn’t have used her bathroom.”

“What the hell is going on, Eve? Tell me I’m dreaming!”

“Oh, how I wish I could.” I’m getting better acquainted with our surroundings now. It’s a vantage never before seen by human eyes—that is, unless Lucretia makes a habit of turning people into marionettes, which wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. There’s a row of kewpie dolls propped up against the bottom of the stage beneath us and beyond them the railroad track with its gleaming red locomotive. And beyond that is the window, where I spot a faint reflection of us in our new (and hopefully very temporary) bodies. I’m the Renaissance angel, of course: shimmering wings, dark flowing locks, my rosy cheeks dusted with glitter. Gosh, I
do
look lovely, don’t I?

“Eve! What’s happened to us?”

“Look.” I nod at our reflection in the window. “See? We’ve been turned into puppets. And no, you really aren’t dreaming.”

He stares at his wooden hands. The bells on his cuffs give a pathetic jingle. “How the hell are you going to get us out of this?”

I turn to him sharply. “What makes you think I can?”

He can’t answer me that—not yet, anyway. The cat will be out of the bag soon enough now.

I pause, taking in the eerie early-morning stillness. No shrieking kiddies, no Chatty Cathys, no jingling doorbell. It’s still night here, and the only light comes from the streetlamp; we left Tully Cross sometime past five o’clock, so I guess it’s a little after midnight. The loo flue may shoot us back and forth between continents in a twinkling, but it isn’t a time machine. Would that it were.

I wait for something to break the silence, but all I can hear is the distant rumbling of a delivery truck. Where
is
the auld hatchet-face, anyway?

Then I start to panic. With Morven conked out, who’s to notice I’ve been gone too long?

“Enough of this.” I pull and pull and finally the lute comes loose out of my hands, and I cast it down with a discordant twang. Let’s see how well these little wooden lungs work.
“LUCRETIA!
Show your face, you miserable shrew!”

“Lucretia? Lucretia Hartmann did this to us?”

“I
told
you you’d be sorry for taking that apartment.”

The light goes on in the room behind the counter. So she’s been in her office all along! We hear footsteps approaching and I can see her face in the window glass. “Ah,” she says brightly. “You’re back. I trust you had a pleasant trip?”

“Go to hell,” I squeak as she reaches into the window, picks us up by the crossbars, and hangs us up again on a couple of hooks screwed into the wall above the display case. We’re much higher up now, making our chance of escape even slimmer—not that I could make a run for it on these wonky wooden legs.

“Well,” she says. “You’ve come to a pretty pass, now, haven’t you?”

“You’ve got to know you’ll be expelled, Lucretia.”

She makes a show of considering this. “Perhaps I will,” she says, tapping her forefinger to her lip. Then she points at me, and I feel awfully queer. “But it’s a lot less likely now your sister’s not running things.”

I glance at Justin: his little wooden brow is warped with horror. “Oh, Eve!
What has she done to your face?”

I struggle against the strings to turn myself so I’m facing the window again, but I can only catch a glimpse of my reflection. I gasp. The glitter slides down new runnels in my cheeks. She’s turned me into a prune-head! “Now, really, Lucretia. I may not be a spring chicken, but don’t you think this is rather overdoing it?”

“It’s closer to the truth than the face you put on for this boy.”

“It’s my own face!”

“Was
your face,” she sneers. “It’s been quite a while since you woke up looking like that, eh, hmmm?”

“What is she talking about, Eve?” The fright in Justin’s voice is unmistakable, and I can’t bring myself to look at him.

“It’s not your place to judge me.”

“Not my place!” Lucretia laughs. “Oh, but you do have me there, Evelyn. Our coven leader turns a blind eye because she’s your sister, and not a peep out of anybody. Just imagine if I were to do the same as you, smoothing out all my wrinkles, cinching my waist, and making my hair grow nice and thick again just so I could have all the men drooling after me.” (It’s all I can do to keep from bursting out laughing; surely Lucretia was as homely in girlhood as she is in middle age.) “What would your dear sister have to say
then?”

“I haven’t broken any—”

“But you see, it doesn’t matter that you haven’t used any charms or philters. You refuse to abide by the spirit of the law, and it’s time you were duly punished for it.”

“Right,” Justin cuts in nervously. “Lesson learned. Can you turn us back now, please?”

Lucretia looks him up and down. “I suppose you’ll be wanting your deposit back.”

I hear Justin’s limbs clunking gently as he fidgets. “I think that goes without saying, ma’am.”

“Lucretia, this is between you and me. I don’t see why you should punish the boy.”

“ ‘The boy’?”
Justin hisses. “Eve, who—
what are you?”

“I’ll explain everything,” I whisper, as if she can’t hear me.

“I suppose she was afraid you wouldn’t want her anymore if you knew she was a hundred and fifty years old,” Lucretia sneers.

He stares at me. “You … you told me you were a hundred and forty-nine. I thought you were joking because you didn’t want to admit you’d turned thirty.” He shoots Lucretia a look of defiance. “No. It can’t be.”

“See?” she says to me. “They always side with you no matter what rubbish you feed them. Evelyn this and Evelyn that. Evelyn, the pride of the coven. What a sorry lot we are, if you’re the best of us! You and all your stupid war stories—”

“I never said I was a heroine,” I cut in. “I did good work, and I don’t see any harm in recollecting it.”

“Hah! You ‘never said.’ What have you done that you haven’t expected full credit for afterward?”

Quite honestly, I’m so taken aback at this that I can’t even speak.

“Coven,”
Justin is muttering to himself. “What the hell, Eve? When you said she was a witch I never thought you meant it literally.”

“Justin, dear,” Lucretia cuts in. “If I’m a witch, then what is she?”

I refuse to panic. After all, he understood once—I can make him understand again. He won’t be angry for long. “I’ll explain everything once we get out of here,” I say. “I promise.”

Justin shakes his head with childlike vigor. “She can’t be a witch. She can’t be.”

“See!” Lucretia cries. “Everyone loves you. Everyone
believes
you, no matter what lies you throw at them.” Now she seems to be gearing for a meltdown. “You think I don’t notice how you all laugh at me? You and your snide laughter, always calling me a priss behind your hands—”

“Actually, we called you ‘Little Miss Prissyknickers,’ but I suppose that’s close enough.”

She leans in, and I get an unfortunately close view of her nose. For heaven’s sake, what’s the point of being a beldame if you can’t dispense with your own rosacea? “Helena is guilty,” she says fiercely. “You refuse to see it, but you will. She’s damned by the evidence.”

“Pah! The ravings of a lovesick schoolgirl hardly qualify as evidence.”

“It didn’t occur to you even when she closed the B and B? She might as well have painted the word ‘murderer’ on her own forehead! Use your brain, for heaven’s sake. Did you honestly think I would make that kind of accusation so lightly?”

I screw my little wooden prune-head into the fiercest grimace I can muster. What a stupid question! “I’ve had quite enough of this.”

“But I don’t see what the problem is, Evelyn. Go on and free yourself, why don’t you?” She pauses. “Oh, but I suppose you’ve run out of oomph. Well. That
is
a pickle.” She lifts me off the hook and carries me back to the puppet stage in the display case. I try to kick her but she’s holding me at arm’s length. “You can dangle here fifty years for all I care. Somebody will come along and buy you soon enough. Oops!” She attempts a girlish laugh but it comes out like a harpy’s honk. “I’ll have to change your face back first.”

She walks away from the window case. “Not you, of course, Justin,” I hear her say. “You’re a nice boy, and I’m sorry to have put you through this. The baby sometimes goes out with the bathwater when you put a monitor on a loo flue. Not to worry, you’ll wake up in your own bed.” I hear her footsteps retreating back toward her office, but I can still hear her saying, “Honestly, though, I’d be a little more careful choosing my next girlfriend, if I were you.”

Despair swallows me whole. The knowledge that I’ve just seen the last of him, and that it ended this way—I can’t bear it.

Mind you, I don’t care a fig what Lucretia says on that account. It’s her talk of Helena that’s needling at me underneath it all. Evelyn Harbinger, you foolish, foolish girl! Hah,
girl
. Silly old hag, more like.

I’ve never cared for the word “epiphany.” Feels like a shard of glass in my mouth.

The jester puppet suddenly reappears at my side, inert. I hear Lucretia’s footsteps coming back down the stairs. Then I see a sudden movement outside. There are faces at the window peering in at me, and my little wooden heart jumps for joy and relief. Mira and Vega! Then I hear the doorbell jingling, and Vega’s hand looms above me. In another moment I’m freed of these stupid strings. Helena’s here too, and Dymphna, and there are very harsh words spoken without the raising of voices. I feel jubilant in the knowledge that in the end it isn’t me who’s getting the comeuppance. Vega grasps me gently by the waist, the glitter from my dress spilling down her forearm. She taps me gently between the eyes and, mercifully, that’s the last thing I remember.