The Touch of Magic Series, page 14
He settled back into his office chair thinking that it was nice to have someone to tell everything to. Then he stopped himself. He hadn’t told her everything.
At lunch, he mentioned that he’d gone with his sister and her husband to the kids’ school fair the night before. Both Taylor and Madison performed along with their entire second grade and kindergarten classes. Then the five of them wandered around the cheap, fund-raiser fairgrounds.
They’d stuffed their faces with popcorn, bratwurst, and kabobs. Gone fishing for candy. Bowled down plastic bunny pins for more cheap prizes. Brandon and Madison even managed to stay in the boogie-off until the semifinal round. All in all, it had been a great night and he kept wishing Delilah was with him.
Until he’d gone into the psychic booth. Bethy had shoved him in, wanting to get the scoop from the psychic since Brandon wasn’t telling her. He was a bit surprised that they even had a psychic at a catholic school fair, but maybe it was okay because she was billed as a ‘fortune teller.’
The whole family went into the purple tent and Brandon forked out all the money, glad that it was helping the art program. The psychic was sweet and cute to the kids, telling them that their lives were open and they could be whatever they wanted. By the time she got through stroking Bethy’s palm, ‘Madame Jennifer’ had firmly established herself as a hack.
So he was surprised when she took his hand but looked straight at his face. “You have a new woman in your life.”
He nodded. He figured he looked like a single guy, so that wasn’t a big stretch.
“She is afraid.”
“Okay?” He didn’t know what to say to that. The woman was right, but again it was an easy guess.
“She doesn’t want you to know.” Madame Jennifer’s eyes clouded, as though she were looking at some world other than this one. She blinked a few times before focusing again on this plane. Her gaze strayed to Bethy and her family standing behind him, anxiously awaiting his fortune. “You might not want the children to hear this.”
That shocked him. Before he could say ‘no, it’s okay,’ Bethy hustled them out of the tent, leaving him there alone.
The psychic leaned forward, her face a mask of concern for him. Brandon just figured she was putting on a good show. Her voice was her own though, not the over-inflected, slightly gravelly voice of Madame Jennifer. “She’s hiding something from you.”
Duh.
He’d pretty much already figured that out. He told the two-bit psychic exactly that.
But she shook her head vehemently. “No, not that.”
Of course she said ‘not that.’ If it were about ‘that,’ then she would be wrong. “She’s hiding something else. Something dark. Something you should look into before you go any further with this relationship.”
At that point he’d had enough. Pulling his hand away, he said so.
She reached for him, clutching at his fingers. “Look, I do this for fun, but sometimes I really do see things. You should be careful.”
Her eyes had been a little wild, a little soulful, as though she really did fear for his life. And he almost believed her—until she handed him her card and blew the whole thing. She was just drumming up business.
He shoved the card back at her, and the expression on his face must have said exactly what he thought, because she got angry. “You can ignore me if you want, and I’m sorry I don’t have any more information for you, but whatever’s in her past is dark. Blackmail, murder, that kind of dark.”
“Okay.” It was the only word to come out of his mouth, even though it wasn’t okay. She’d ruined a perfectly good evening out with the kids. And managed to badmouth Delilah even though she didn’t know a damn thing about the woman. Brandon held onto his righteous anger, even if Delilah still did have a few things to answer to.
He’d turned around and stalked halfway out the tent when she blurted out, “You told her about your mother leaving. About the fact that your Pop only made bad macaroni and cheese. And this woman, she can cook. It’s like, it’s like I’m in a bake shop—I can smell brownies and cakes and custards. And pumpkin cakes. There’s something about pumpkin cakes.”
He’d just kept going, walked away, freaked out by those last words tumbling out of her mouth.
When Bethy asked what the fortune-teller had said, he only replied, “Nothing.”
But he was shaken. Madame Jennifer had ultimately been very convincing. Maybe too convincing.
He spent the rest of the evening ignoring the things she’d told him. It had all been so much mumbo jumbo until the part at the end. Then he shrugged it off. He told himself she guessed the pastry part because he smelled like cake, just a little. Delilah often did.
He ultimately decided the whole thing was silly. But if it was so silly, why hadn’t he told Delilah about it at lunch? It would have been so easy: this funny thing happened at the school fair last night. But he hadn’t said it. Why couldn’t he forget about it?
Brandon knew it was just one of those psychic’s tricks. Whatever they say that’s closest to your truth gets a reaction from you, so they keep going with it. But she’d hit some of it dead on. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been having concerning thoughts about Delilah’s ex and his mysterious death.
Brandon did what he’d done before and pushed the thoughts to the back of his head. Still, they waited there for him. When he finished whatever task he set for himself, they would burble up again until he managed to get into the next item on his list. But always they lingered.
Eventually he gave up trying to fight it, and he gave up trying to stay focused on work. He did an internet search, trying out the name David Goodman. He looked for obituaries and found three. One was for an infant and the other two were for men in their seventies. The timing wasn’t right on any of them.
After a handful of searches that turned up hundreds of thousands of links, none of which were useful, he tried ‘Delilah Goodman.’ There were several old pieces about scholarships she had won. But nothing much helpful. At least he enjoyed reading the articles about her. He knew he’d have to confess later that he’d checked her out online. Quickly he made a mental note to check himself out too, just to see what might have turned up had she done the same.
First he finished the article. Her sister Juliet was mentioned in one of them. Delilah had been a previous winner and Juliet followed. There was something about the ‘Goodman sisters’ that grabbed him, until he realized that Goodman was her family name, not her husband’s. She’d either not taken his name, or had reverted back when they divorced. Brandon had no idea what the mysterious philandering David’s last name might be. That would make it harder to find him.
But, his brain crackled a moment, it would make it easier to find Juliet.
Sure enough, when he typed in ‘Juliet Goodman’ a series of articles came up and a good handful were about the correct Juliet Goodman. Those generally had ‘death’ or ‘car accident’ in the title.
Mostly they were short and uninformative. Juliet and David had been ‘running errands’ according to one article. David Burnham. Now he had a name. All the information seemed to agree that the car had taken a curve too sharply and slid off the side of the road down into one of the many canyons in Malibu. Several mentioned that the two were survived by Delilah Goodman, his wife, her sister. None mentioned anything untoward going on between the two and there was nothing, no matter how hard he looked for it, about a divorce.
He wasn’t sure how much later it was that Dan popped his head into the room asking if Brandon was finished for the day, and were they ready for tomorrow? Figuring he’d seen enough—Brandon sure didn’t want to read all fifty-two thousand links the internet provided—he agreed and finally followed Dan out for a beer.
They hit Gin’s again. As though if he kept coming back it would prove that he hadn’t been here just to see Delilah. Of course, she was working and he knew he wouldn’t see her. He managed to relax for a while and forget what the psychic had told him.
Surely if anything had been suspicious, truly suspicious, the police would have followed it up.
The two men drank themselves just silly enough to stay on their A-game. They had another presentation tomorrow.
Brandon held his glass up. “Here’s to Richard. He was an ass, but look what he got us.”
Dan clinked their pilsners together with a heartfelt “Amen to that!”
Just as he was shooting the last of his beer, Brandon realized that Richard had given him Delilah, too. If the other man hadn’t been such a jerk to her, they never would have met. He raised another salute to Richard, but he didn’t tell Dan what this one was for.
Delilah woke up long before her alarm that night. Rolling over, she opened one eye, staring at the red numbers on the face of the clock. 1:04.
She blinked. It was full dark outside, although the street light just outside her window gave some faint illumination through the glass. With a deep breath, she closed her eyes again, telling herself she could get another hour’s worth of sleep.
By the time the clock read 1:14 she quit lying to herself. There was no way she was going to get back to sleep tonight. Throwing the covers back, she slid from the warm bed, waking up the last little bit as her feet hit the carpet.
Without thinking, she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. When she finished, she was left standing there in front of her mirror, thinking, Now what do I do?
It wasn’t like she could just turn on the TV and watch for an hour. The only things on were infomercials. If she ordered any more as seen on TV products Tristan would have her head. She debated dressing for work, but there was really no point. She wasn’t hungry enough to make it worthwhile to cook something.
She sat on the edge of her bed in her jammies and tried to think.
It only took a moment for the idea to come.
She owed herself a spell. Or ten.
Inspired, she began bustling about. She gathered her implements from the living room side cabinet where she kept them. Never ashamed of what she was or where she came from, Delilah nevertheless understood that flaunting her witchcraft was a bad idea. So her sea salts and incense coals and her herb bundles and sacred dishes all stayed behind the closed doors of the sideboard until she needed them.
The piece of beautiful handcrafted teak had been handed down from her grandmother. As the oldest female, she had been in line to inherit it, as had her own mother. Once, she believed her family should buck tradition and give the chest to Juliet, the more powerful of the Goodman daughters. But her grandmother insisted the chest was hers. The tradition was in place for a reason—it would always be the oldest daughter who had need of it—and Delilah wasn’t to fight that. Later, she realized Juliet had no need of a place to store herbs and wands she didn’t use. And, of course, eventually, there had been no one but herself to keep it.
One day she would pass it on to Tristan’s oldest daughter. Not that he was headed that direction anytime soon. The colossal explosion between herself and Juliet had affected him, too. In ways that Delilah was still seeing. The hardest part had been David—they had all loved him. All believed him. And he’d managed to fool them all.
Delilah knew her family—with maybe the exception of Jules—would have protected her if they could. But David had gotten inside and taken advantage. And none of them saw it until it was too late.
Only as she set out the hand-crafted glass bowls, the wand worn smooth from years in her grandmother’s hands, and the small orbs of crystal, did she think again that the cabinet just might be handed to her own daughter one of these days. She refused to think of a child with green eyes and chocolate brown curls.
In fact, that was the very reason she needed to cast this spell. It was horribly clear that her thinking was anything but clear where Brandon was concerned. Here she was daydreaming about children with a man who didn’t even know her religion.
In moments, she was set up at her coffee table/altar. The magazines were set aside and the ceremonial knife removed from the wall. She stripped down to her all cotton white t-shirt and undies. Then she took a moment to center herself, to take a deep breath and let go of any of her stress—or at least as much as she could.
She began.
She walked to each of the candles she placed around the room. One at a time, she cupped her hand around the wick and blew the candle to life. She repeated the incantation for each of the four corners, then knelt before the implements on her altar.
Through a series of spells she asked for sight and clarity.
Once, she’d been much better at reading people as she touched them. But that had been because she regularly kept up with her spellwork. Constantly casting on herself to make her stronger had the desired effect. Delilah hoped to reclaim some of it tonight.
Eventually, she finished the work. Her head felt clearer already, her vision brighter as though she had put in contacts. From where she sat, she blew out all four candles with a single breath—just a little magick.
As she stood up, her legs stretched and she realized she’d been there a bit longer than she’d thought. A quick glance at the clock told her there was just enough time to get ready. Just.
She showered as fast as she could. Then blew her hair dry only enough to sling it up into a ponytail. This time she pulled the hair tie out of her jacket pocket and put the net in at home.
As her fingers worked the elastic band around her hair, a vision of herself came through. She was lying naked sprawled across her own bed, looking totally wanton and quite satisfied. She blinked.
Where had that come from?
The mirror gave nothing away, until she gave up and decided if she didn’t get her hair up, she’d be late for work. As she rotated her head to see what she was doing, her gaze caught the blue fabric rose on her hair tie.
This was what had triggered the vision. Brandon touched this tie that first night they’d been together. That vision of her laid out across her own bed sheets must have been what he saw.
Lordy, that was hot.
She wondered what else she’d see the next time she touched him.
And she was beginning to wonder less and less whether she should keep him around or not.
CHAPTER 20
Brandon worked his butt off on the presentation the next day, but it wasn’t as clean and easy as Monday’s. The investors didn’t whip out pens and ask where to sign. They said they had to think about it. Tell the other investors in their pool. Make a group decision.
They’d be in touch.
They asked so many questions. Some of them horribly underinformed. And they’d taken the entire day to come to their less-than-thrilling conclusion.
After the trio left, Dan stood in Brandon’s office rubbing his head. “I hate this crap. I know it’s wrong and premature to write them off and blame them for taking up our time. But it’s just as bad to hold out hope that they’ll come back tomorrow with fistfuls of money.”
Brandon agreed. “Who knows? But today is a total loss.” He was ready to rub his own head.
Dan looked like he’d put in a week of labor in the mines. “I’m ready to go-round again tomorrow. But right now, I’m going to go home and watch some football and see if I can’t pass out on my couch.”
Brandon agreed. After all, Delilah would be dead asleep right now. He wasn’t thoughtless enough to wake her up before a shift like this. So he wound up leaving the office only about fifteen minutes after Dan did.
Exhausted from the trying day, Brandon paid little attention to his surroundings as he locked up the office behind himself and dragged his sorry butt down to his car. Eventually he took one good look around before he backed his SUV out of the parking lot. Immediately a man appeared behind the car and Brandon slammed on his brakes. His first thought was that the man was either a moron or was trying to kill himself under Brandon’s tires. But he was too worn out to start up a good round of LA road rage. Besides, he wasn’t even on the road yet. And the world was full of idiots waiting to happen. So he sat there with his foot solid on the brake and waited for the man to pass, but it didn’t happen.
Because he was fairly short, the man’s head was just at window height and it was wrapped in a huge white turban. On closer inspection all the man’s clothes were white, edged with embroidery in fine threads. It was a nice enough outfit that Brandon had to wonder if the man was an actor escaped from some location shoot down the street. Or if there was a Hindi wedding missing their priest right about now.
So he was startled when the man rapped his fist against the glass, then motioned for Brandon to roll down the window. How had he gotten there so fast?
Brandon was just surprised enough to do it, not questioning the move until the window was already halfway open. The voice was reedy and crackled with a thick Indian accent. Just the thing Brandon would have expected from a character like this. “You are very lucky, sir.”
No, you’re lucky that I didn’t hit you, walking around a parking lot like that. But he didn’t say it. Just smiled and nodded and started to roll up the window.
The man spoke again. “You have a long life with a true love ahead of you.”
Oh god, not this again.
“For five dollars, I will tell you all that I see.”
“Ohhhhh.” This time he actually groaned out loud. Then he got himself together and smiled again at the man. A nice placating smile as he resumed putting the window up. “No, thank you.”
“Wait!” The man’s bony hands wrapped around the top of the glass, forcing Brandon to reverse the window direction or break the man’s fingers.
Even though he wasn’t heartless enough to just put the window up and damn the man’s fingers, he was still done with this crap. So he put on his best don’t-mess-with-me face. “What?”
“I do not charge for this. You need to know.”
Truly impatient now, at the end of a long day, there was nothing Brandon wanted to do less than listen to this man. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to be rude enough to drive away, although he desperately wanted to. “What?”
