Yesterday's Magic (2 page)

“Oh, Daddy,” Averil said again.

“I didn’t. I decided that was a matter for
the law in that town. But I had to do something. And since I badly
wanted to hurt him, I threw him up against the wall on the opposite
side of the room.”

“Without actually touching him,” Bella said
knowingly. She and her father were sometimes very much alike.

“I didn’t trust myself to touch him. But
doing it that way
did
get his attention. Neither one of us
saw the young woman reach under her bed and pull out a gun. She
shot him. And he died, bled out like the animal he was. But not
before he cursed me and mine for generations to come.”

“Just you?” Averil asked. “Not the
woman?”

“Just me,” her father said, his voice soft.
“He knew what I was.”

Bella stood up but then sat back down fast.
She felt weak, drained, like always after she’d slipped away. “No
way. No one could figure it out that quickly. You weren’t cursed.
We aren’t cursed.” She looked at her sister for confirmation. “You
know it, Averil,” she demanded. “For witches, we’re amazingly
normal.”

Her father shook his head. “His name was
Rantaan Toomay. And he saw in me what I should have seen in him. We
both had the magic. Except he was Bad Magic.”

She heard Averil’s quick intake of breath and
knew her sister was afraid to ask. “How do you know that?” Bella
demanded.

“Because what he said would happen—has.” Her
father swallowed, so deliberately that she could see the movement
of his throat. “He said, ‘Go, fool that you are, but know that
thirteen decades from today, when you are least prepared but have
the most to lose, the earth shall split open and the waters shall
swell over their banks. You and yours will be spared, only to pay a
debt more dear. At the next full moon, you will be mine, to do with
as I please, and you and yours will forever beg for mercy.’”

Bella drained her wine and set the glass down
on the table with a sharp crack. “Well, that’s garbage,” she
said.

Her father shook his head. “It was on Dec
fifth, 1877, exactly one hundred and thirty years ago today, that I
killed him.”

Bella got up from the couch and circled the
room three times before looking at her father and sister again. Her
mind was racing. “So what?” she asked. “It’s a hundred and thirty
years ago, today. That means nothing. We’re freaking out for
nothing.”

Averil got up from her spot on the couch and
stood behind her father. She put her hand on his shoulder. “Bella,
I couldn’t do much today besides watch CNN. Just before noon, there
was an earthquake on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The epicenter
was straight east of South Carolina, about six miles out. There
were wave surges over fifty-feet high and most everything on the
Outer Banks is now under water.”

The Outer Banks
. The three of them had
been vacationing in South Carolina up until five days ago. Her
father had suggested the trip to cheer her up because she and
Bradley Willis, her on-again, off-again boyfriend, were really
truly off.

Three days into the trip, Averil hadn’t felt
well. They’d cut their two week vacation short and returned to
Chicago.

Bella couldn’t move. She could barely think.
The earth shall split and the waters shall swell over their
banks. Thirteen decades from today. Bad Magic.
She looked at
her sister. Averil’s face looked pinched, like it had right before
they’d removed her appendix.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Bella said. “Good
Magic and Bad Magic are so evenly matched. He would have had to
summon all his power to curse you. He would have had nothing left
to heal himself. He chose to die?”

“I can’t explain it, Bella,” her father
said.

“Well, we’ve got to fight back,” Bella said,
surprised at how calm she sounded given that her heart was racing
in her chest. She walked into the kitchen and looked at the
calendar that hung on the wall. “The next full moon is in seven
days.”

Her father stood up and waved his hands
wildly. “You know how Bad Magic works. Once the curse is made, it
can’t be reversed.”

Bella moved in front of her father and put
her hands on his shoulders. “Fine. Then we figure out a way to make
sure the curse never gets made.”

She heard Averil’s sharp gasp, like she
couldn’t get enough air. But Bella ignored her sister.

“We make sure that Toomay never goes up those
steps. That he plays cards and goes home. Then there’s no reason
for you to go after him, no reason for the saloon girl to shoot
him.”

Her father shook his head. “You can’t be
suggesting . . .”

Bella looked at her sister. Her father would
listen to Averil. She wasn’t just the oldest, she was the wisest,
the most stable. “You know I’m right, Averil,” Bella said. “One of
us has to go back in time and change things. It’s the only
way.”

Averil patted the chair where her father had
been sitting. “Daddy, sit down,” she said gently. Once he did, she
squatted next to him. “You know you can’t go back.”

Bella knew that’s why his colors were gray
and black. He wanted more than anything to go back and fix what had
happened, but the Bad Magic was too powerful. There were rules
about these kinds of things. The curse had been laid at his feet.
He could travel back but only to a time after the curse had been
uttered.

But that would be too late.

Averil patted her father’s hand. “You know,
it has to be Bella or me. I’m the oldest. I’ll go.”

Bella looked at her sister. “You can’t go.
You had your appendix removed three days ago. The trip would be too
hard on you. It’ll have to be me.”

Averil got slowly to her feet. “No. I . . .
”

Bella held up her hand, stopping her sister’s
protest. She looked at her father. “I know you both think I’m
unreliable, maybe even a little careless. But I can do this. I know
I can.”

Her father looked at Averil, who had sat back
down on the couch. She stared off into space, worrying the corner
of her lower lip. Finally she looked at Bella. “I think Bella’s
right,” she said. “We need to trust her.”

Bella looked at her father’s hands. They were
clenched so tightly that the skin around his fingertips was turning
white. “You know,” he said, his tone a combination of challenge
mixed with a little misery, “you won’t have any magic.”

She understood. Being half-mortal was a real
drawback at times. Her father’s magic could get her there and back
but in-between, she’d be left without her usual bag of tricks.
“Averil’s been on me to cut back anyway,” she said. She tossed her
hair and smiled brightly at her father and sister.

Neither one of them smiled in return. Her
father reached for her hand. “You know what needs to happen? Bad
Magic died that night. It won’t be enough to simply prevent Toomay
from going up those stairs. You know that, don’t you?”

There were beads of sweat running down her
father’s face. Bella understood why. Her father had stopped the Bad
Magic, had saved others from it. To let Rantaan Toomay live beyond
that night, to give him a chance to spread his Bad Magic, to have
it potentially overcome the Good Magic, could have dire
consequences. The world, as people had known it for more than a
hundred years, and people would know it for all the years to come,
would be very different.

Her mouth felt suddenly dry. She was going to
have to kill a man.

No. Not a man. Bad Magic. She licked her
lips. “I know, Daddy,” she said.

“What about your job?” Averil asked.

Bella felt a sharp pang in the middle of her
chest. It was silly to give it a thought given the task she had
before her, but just yesterday, her boss had told her that the
windows looked the best they’d ever looked. “All the displays are
done until after the holidays. It’ll be fine,” she said, hoping her
boss agreed.

“Are you sure you can do this?” her father
asked, his voice sounding tired. It seemed liked he’d aged five
years.

“I am,” she said. “Toomay and his Bad Magic
won’t know what hit him.”

Again, her father looked at Averil. She
nodded.

“Okay,” he said, looking back at Bella.
“Let’s figure out a plan.”

“Great,” Bella said. “In the meantime, I’m
starving.” With a deliberate look in Averil’s direction, she
twitched her nose—which was so ridiculous because everybody knew a
real witch didn’t need to twitch her nose—and a huge bowl of
spaghetti and meatballs appeared on her kitchen table.

Averil didn’t so much as roll her eyes.

***

Jedidiah McNeil leaned back in his chair, one
knee braced against his sturdy desk, and considered the man in
front of him. “I am not the least bit inclined to escort Madeline
Devine to Saturday’s dance,” Jed said.

“Damnit, Jed. You know I wouldn’t ask if I
weren’t plum desperate. Patience won’t go with me unless there be
some arrangements for her older sister.”

Jed shook his head at his deputy. Madeline
Devine had been trying to get Jed’s attention for the better part
of three months. He wouldn’t put it past the woman to have prompted
her sister to say yes to Bart, in hopes that he’d coerce Jed into
coming along. But he couldn’t tell his deputy that. The man had
been going on about Patience for the last week. “I’ll be on duty
that night,” Jed said. “I can’t go. What if we have a
prisoner?”

Bart pushed back his hat and made it obvious
that he was looking at the empty cell at the rear of the Sheriff’s
office. “We ain’t had all that much activity in Mantosa
lately.”

Jed shrugged. “That’s the way I like my town.
Quiet.” He leaned forward and the wheels of his chair hit the floor
with a solid thud. He pulled his watch out of his vest pocket.
“Afternoon stage is about due. Guess I’ll take a walk on down, make
my acquaintance with the passengers.”

Bart rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Christ.
I really hope there is somebody who plans to rob the bank or hold
up Freida Stroganhaufer at the Mercantile.”

Jed reached for his hat which hung on a hook
next to the door. He placed it on his head and pulled his coat off
a second hook and slipped it on. “I’d put my money on Freida. She
not only can lift a hundred pound flour sack, she can throw one a
fair distance too.” He opened the door and was halfway out before
Bart spoke again.

“You know there’s going to be a day when you
won’t be able to protect all of us,” he said, his voice serious. “A
day when somebody’s going to ride into town and none of your
scowling is going to get him to ride on.”

Jed looked back at the man who’d been his
deputy for going on five years and his friend for nearly thirty.
They’d been barely weaned when their mommas had introduced them, or
so they’d been told. “Well, hell. Then I guess I’ll just have to
ask you to sing to him. That’s a sure-fire way to get a body
running for the next stage.”

Jed let the door slam shut behind him. As he
took long, even strides, he pulled the collar of his sheepskin coat
higher, protecting his neck against the cold wind that hadn’t let
up for days. Damn, it was bitter. The thermometer outside Doc
Winder’s office window, which got a fair amount of afternoon sun,
hadn’t registered above twenty degrees for the last week.

If it was this cold on the twenty-ninth of
November, then it had the makings of a long, miserable winter. He
put his bare hands in his pockets and walked another thirty feet.
He heard the sounds of the approaching stage just as he had to stop
abruptly to avoid running into Freida Stroganhaufer when the woman,
who was tall and stout, barreled out of her store.

“Whoa,” Jed said. He grabbed for the wool hat
that flew off the woman’s head, managed to catch the brim, and then
he handed it back to her. “Where are you off to in such a
hurry?”

“My husband’s niece is on the stage. I don’t
want her having to wait in this cold.”

Freida Stroganhaufer’s husband had been dead
for more than five years. He’d died the same year Jed had taken
over wearing his father’s badge when his own father had passed on.
In all the years, he didn’t recall Freida ever entertaining any of
her husband’s kin. He fell into step with the woman, hugging the
storefronts to give her as much space as possible.

“I don’t believe I ever met any of Herbert’s
family,” Jed said.

“I only saw this niece once, back in Iowa. It
had to be fifteen years ago at least. She was about eight or ten
then, I suppose. Truth is, I’d almost forgotten about her.” Freida
pumped her arms and picked up the pace.

He sucked in a breath of cold air and it
stung his lungs. For a large woman, Freida set a fast stride. “But
suddenly she wants to come for a visit?” he asked.

“I’m not sure she wants to come. Her mother,
Herbert’s oldest sister, is insisting. I got a telegram a couple
weeks back and I could tell the poor woman was fit to be tied. You
see, my niece lost her husband less than a year ago and she’s been
at loose ends since then.”

Jed felt his arm tense—the one that had
gotten broken during his final
conversation
with his father,
almost six years ago. Why the hell couldn’t people just die? Why
did they always have to leave some memory hanging around, hurting
the folks left behind? The good memories made people want more
time. The bad memories made people wish it could all have been
different. In either case, the dead could rest but the mourners
could not.

When they rounded the corner, Jed saw that
the stage had already arrived. The driver, who had taken over the
route just a month earlier, took his time, as usual, getting off
his perch. Once on the ground, he shuffled to the back, like he had
all the time in the world. He pulled one case at a time out of the
back.

The stage door was wide open and he could see
people start to spill out. First one man, then another. They had
their backs to him. It didn’t matter. He recognized the Bean
brothers. Thomas and Earl were the tallest men in town. A few weeks
back they’d gone east to fetch their mother.