A Cast-Off Coven Page 5

  “Isn’t it enough that I’m asking for your help?” Aidan continued.

  He was being polite. As we both knew, he held my marker. I was bound.

  “Of course,” I conceded. “Do you have any information at all on what went on last night?”

  “No idea.”

  “There are rumors of a ghost in the building.”

  He nodded. “Supposedly the bell tower’s inhabited. But you know as well as I do that it would be unusual for a resident ghost to suddenly take someone out. They rarely manifest in order to murder, especially years after death.”

  Our eyes held for a long moment.

  “So you think it was the act of a human?” I asked.

  “Or some other entity?”

  “That’s what I’d like you to find out. What did you feel at the school last night?”

  “How do you know I was there?”

  He gave me a pained look. Aidan knew things.

  “I felt . . . something,” I said. “But I don’t know what it was, much less what it wanted. You know how I am with spirits.”

  “I’ve got someone who can help you with that. Goes by the name of Sailor.” Aidan reached into his breast pocket and took out a sleek silver case from which he extracted one of his fine ivory business cards. He turned it over and wrote on the back with a bold, black stroke.

  “Sailor, as in ‘Ahoy there, matie’?” I asked.

  “Maybe it’s a last name.” He handed me the card. The word “Cerulean” and an address on Romolo Place were below the name “Sailor.”

  “Could you be a little more cryptic?” I asked.

  “Cerulean’s a club on Romolo, right off Broadway near Columbus. Sailor’s a psychic. Very talented. You can find him there.”

  “He owns this club?”

  “Not exactly. He just hangs out there.”

  “Uh-huh. I couldn’t just call him up and ask for an appointment rather than tracking him down in a bar?”

  “He’s not in the business. Likes to keep a low profile, powers-wise, not unlike you.”

  “But he’ll help me?”

  “Oh, he’ll help you.”

  “Why do I get the feeling that it will be against his will?”

  Aidan just smiled and changed the subject. “How’s my mandragora coming along?”

  “Fine. He’ll be ready in another twenty days.”

  Not long ago Aidan asked me to make him a mandragora, a kind of household elf made from the root of a mandrake plant. I was surprised he didn’t just make it himself, but witchcraft is an enormous field of knowledge, and just as in any other profession, different witches excel in distinct areas. I’m a whiz at all things botanical, but a complete bust in the “foreseeing the future” or “talking to the dead” departments; my ornate crystal ball sat, generally unused and virtually useless, on a shelf in my bedroom.

  It struck me as odd that Aidan wanted a mandragora. He claimed to be lonely. I knew there was more to it than that—probably something as simple as his selling off the imp to the highest bidder—but I still owed him.

  “Wonderful.” He checked his watch. The Open sign flipped back over, and the lock clicked open. “Well, I’d best be going. Lovely to see you, Lily, as always.”

  “Aidan,” I said to his back as he moved toward the door, “would you happen to know anything about mares visiting me?”

  He looked back at me, eyebrows raised in surprise. He smiled and fixed me with a quizzical look. “Nocturnal mares?”

  “You know the kind I mean.”

  Night mares, or more specifically, incubi, are night spirits thought to sit on the chests of sleeping victims, causing fear, shortness of breath, and paralysis. Incubi have a decidedly lascivious nature, whereas mares might be underlings sent by more powerful spirits, although they, too, tend toward the bawdy and libidinous.

  “Mares usually come to women sleeping alone,” Aidan said.

  I wasn’t going to dignify that with an answer.

  “Perhaps you should take a lover,” he continued.

  “Perhaps you should mind your own danged business.”

  “You asked my opinion. You and I both know the night spirits often appear in a lonely woman’s bed, when her thoughts turn to . . . love.” His eyes ran over the length of me. He chuckled and stroked a nearby satin and lace nightgown the color of new violets. “There’s something unnatural about a witch without a lover.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Aidan cocked his head as though trying to understand me. “You could mesmerize any man you want, have him at your beck and call. Don’t tell me you need my help.”

  “For cryin’ out loud, I don’t want to enchant someone to make them like me, thank you very much.” I could hear that I protesteth too much. The hard truth was that I had been fighting the urge to cast a love spell over Max Carmichael since the day I met him.

  “You want natural love, then?” Aidan considered me.

  “Hmm. A tall order for someone like you.”

  “Gee, thanks so much.”

  “You’re . . . different, Lily, as you well know. You should stick with your own kind. Come out on the town with me tonight. We’ll see about those pesky mares.”

  Unbidden, my mind flashed on what it would be like to share a bed with someone like Aidan Rhodes. Probably pretty incredible. I bit my lower lip, then looked up to see Aidan’s sparkling blue eyes looking at me as though he were reading my thoughts. His warm hand closed over mine on the counter. The chemistry was undeniable, almost like an electric charge. It was enticing. But as sexy as he was, I wasn’t looking for a quick fling. And at a deep, undeniable level Aidan scared me.

  He had told me himself that he used to work with my father. The little I knew about my father was all bad.

  Besides that, I had a date with Max. I slid my hand out from under Aidan’s and started folding a bunch of silk scarves I had scored at an auction in Alameda last week. Yesterday I had hand- laundered the delicate material in a mixture of mild low-alkaline soap flakes and rosewater, then dried them overnight in the moonlight on my second-floor terrace, where I grow my herbs. Now they carried the faint scents of rosemary and lavender, and hummed with the comforting energy of the moon and their former owners.

  After a long moment of silence I peeked back up at Aidan, who hadn’t budged.

  He smiled. I amused him—on a number of levels. “It just so happens,” I said, seemingly unable to stop myself from talking, “that I have a date for brunch today. And I didn’t have to compel the man to ask me, either.”

  A pained expression passed over Aidan’s face. He crossed his arms over his broad chest and leaned back against the counter. When he spoke, his voice dripped with disdain. “Don’t tell me. It’s that guy from the other night. The human.”

  “You say that as if it were an insult. In case you’ve forgotten, you’re human, too, Aidan. As am I.”

  “Not in the same way. So, about this Mark character . . .”

  “Max,” I corrected him.

  “Right. Max. This whole situation doesn’t seem just a little Bewitched for you?”

  “No.” My voice sounded defensive, even to my own ears. Old Bewitched reruns, highlighting the antics of Samantha, the natural witch, and Darrin, her nonmagical husband, had been a favorite staple of my youth. Certain similarities had, in fact, occurred to me. But I wasn’t about to admit that to this particular male witch.

  My scarf folding took on a certain frenetic quality. Aidan continued. “Let’s see. Talented witch gets together with ludicrous human who insists she deny her powers. . . .”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I’ll just start calling him Darrin.”

  Oscar snorted and hopped around happily at Aidan’s feet, pink piggy eyes bright and interested.

  “Stop it now, both of you,” I snapped.

  The cheery little bell on my shop door chimed. All three of us swung around to look at the door, almost guiltily.

  “Speak of the devil, and
the devil appears,” Aidan murmured.

  Oscar ran to his pillow and feigned sleep.

  “Good morning, Max,” I said.

  Max was a handsome man in the classical sense: Tall and broad-shouldered, he had a rugged, masculine face; light gray, sad eyes; shaggy, finger-combed dark hair; and a perpetual five o’clock shadow. He was not model gorgeous, but there was something about him . . . especially that voice.

  “Hello, Lily.” His eyes shifted to Aidan.

  The two men sized up each other. Aidan wore a mien of amused boredom; Max a quizzical, assessing look.

  “Max, this is Aidan. Aidan, Max,” I introduced them. They shook hands, their eyes locked.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Max.

  “Mack,” Aidan said with a nod.

  “It’s Max,” Max responded, correcting him.

  “Right. That’s what I said.”

  The ensuing silence was broken by the bell on the front door as Maya entered with our coffees.

  “Ah, look, here’s your cappuccino, Aidan,” I said.

  “Just in time. Since you were just leaving. As are Max and I.”

  A couple of young women, Maya’s age, came in and started to poke through my small collection of vintage-band T-shirts. I left the store in Maya’s capable hands; Bronwyn would be in soon after eleven to keep her company.

  Aidan, Max, and I walked out onto the sidewalk, an awkward trio.

  “Good-bye, Aidan,” I said when he began walking in the same direction as Max and I.

  “You’ll let me know what you find out?”

  “Of course.”

  He turned to Max, who inclined his head.

  “Good to meet you, Mike.”

  “Max.”

  “Right. That’s what I said.”

  With one more wink at me, Aidan strode off down the street.

  If only he’d been wearing a cape, it would have been a picture-perfect ending.

  Chapter 4

  “So, you want to tell me about this guy?” Max queried after the waiter poured us each a flute of sparkling champagne.

  I had been expecting a simple croissant and a coffee, so imagine my surprise when Max insisted on taking me to champagne brunch at the Cliff House, a restaurant overlooking Seal Rock, the Pacific Ocean, and the ruins of the old Sutro Baths. When I asked where we were headed as we drove across town, Max responded, “I told you I’d take you somewhere with tablecloths.” Our first impromptu “date” had been at a taqueria in the Mission District, which was great by me. But there was no denying that white tablecloths, flutes of champagne, and a view of the ocean were slightly more romantic than orange vinyl booths and beer from the bottle.

  “What guy?” I asked. “You mean Aidan?”

  He nodded. “Is this what was so complicated in your life?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Not so long ago you told me you couldn’t see me because it was complicated. I thought he might be the complication.”

  I shook my head and tasted my champagne; it was dry and crisp, bubbly, delicious.

  “I get the sense he’s more than a friend,” Max continued.

  “He’s not my lover, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  He chuckled, his gray eyes almost exactly the same color as the overcast sky on the other side of the windowpane. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

  “Not as a general rule, no.”

  “So, does this Aidan person have a last name?”

  “Yes. Are you planning on looking him up?”

  “Just wondered what his story was.”

  “Tell me, Max, is this you being a journalist, or jealous, or both?”

  In lieu of an answer, Max took a long pull on his champagne and stared at me, as though assessing my response. Finally he cracked a smile and shrugged one shoulder.

  “Just curious.”

  “The truth is you and I don’t know each other well enough for me to tell you all my deepest secrets.”

  “So he’s a deep secret?”

  I sat back in exasperation, folding my arms over my chest.

  “Oops. Body language alert.” Max held up one hand in surrender. “I’m sorry, Lily, you’re right. My journalistic instincts—some would say terminal nosiness—can get out of hand. Let’s make a toast to taking it slow.”

  He raised his champagne flute, and after a brief moment of consideration I lifted my own. We clinked glasses and drank.

  Once we got over that, brunch was lovely. We visited the abundant buffet tables where Max kept putting fattening items such as éclairs and sausages on my plate, telling me I could use a little more flesh on my bones.

  I’m a healthy, average- sized woman, nowhere near skinny. But I liked Max’s attitude.

  By the time we returned to our table by the window, our plates piled high, the waiter had refilled our flutes with champagne, and we toasted the sea lions who were trying to shove one another off Seal Rock, a fierce, angry crag that stuck up from the ocean floor.

  “We used to come here when I was a kid,” Max told me. “There was an old Playland on the beach with the creepiest fun house, and right here in the Cliff House was a mechanical arcade museum. I used to tell everyone I wanted to grow up to design pinball machines.”

  “What happened to that plan?”

  He shrugged. “Pinball machines went the way of the dodo bird. Everything’s electronic now. Doesn’t have the same romance, somehow.”

  “And you’re a big one for romance?”

  “Mmm.” He gazed at me for a moment across the table.

  “Who’s we?” I asked. At Max’s bemused expression I clarified. “You said ‘we’ used to come here?”

  “My brother and I. Occasionally my sister would join us, but she was a few years older and usually went off with her friends. But my brother and I would spend whole days.”

  “Your sister’s a doctor, right?”

  He nodded. “An internist over at SF General.” “And your brother? Are you two still close?”

  A shadow passed over his light eyes. Max turned his attention back to his plate of food. “Not really.”

  I sensed he didn’t want to follow that particular line of questioning.

  “What happened to the arcade museum?”

  “It moved over to Fisherman’s Wharf. Probably a lot more foot traffic, but I liked it better before. It used to be wonderfully eerie, like a secret only you knew about, crowded and dusty. Haunted.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in being haunted.” True enough: Max was a haunted man. By what? I knew he was a widower, but little else about him. But that was the point of dating, right, to get to know someone? To come to trust them? I was a grown woman, but given my unconventional past, I still felt like a novice at this whole romance thing.

  Distracted by the sparkle in Max’s light eyes as he spoke, by the time dessert rolled around I forgot all about the plate of sugar-dusted Belgian waffles and chocolate-dipped strawberries in front of me. Max regaled me with stories of his time working as a reporter for Reuters in Europe and Africa, making me laugh until I snorted with a description of getting lost in Tangiers with an empty gas tank, a vociferous Italian photographer, and one very annoyed goat. When Max asked me about my own globe-trotting past, I found myself opening up, just the tiniest bit, about never quite fitting in . . . and my protracted search for a sense of home.

  Handsome, smart, funny, and heterosexual, he even had a job. Max was the elusive Holy Grail of San Francisco’s single straight women. What more could any woman want?

  Still, Aidan’s barbs had stung. Max was ill at ease with my being a witch. But my magick was a huge part of who I was, and it had taken me a long time to accept myself. Did I want to get involved with a man who would prefer that I deny my powers? Would Max be willing to change for me instead of asking me to change for him? I reminded myself that I was in no hurry to plan a wedding, caressed my medicine b
ag, and willed myself to relax.

  After brunch, we explored the decks around the Cliff House and looked out over the ocean. But what really fascinated me was a series of low, crumbling concrete walls, rusty pipes, and low pools that marched up the terraced hill.

  “What’s all that?” I asked.

  “The old Sutro Baths. It was built in the late 1800s and housed a huge swimming pool complex, with separate pools of fresh water and salt water. But the place fell into disrepair and burned down in the sixties. Now it’s San Francisco’s version of Roman ruins. Want to climb around?”

  “Could we?”

  “Sure.”

  We descended a set of steep concrete stairs to the ruins. I was relieved I’d worn my Keds. The ground beneath our feet was wet and slippery from fog and the last high tide; had I worn a froufrou pair of sandals, I would have tumbled over the edge into the abyss. A sign warned us to climb with care, or better yet, not to climb at all, but it did not tell us to keep out. I was surprised to find the ruins open to passersby in such a litigious society: It reminded me of hiking in Europe, where the prevailing sentiment seemed to be that if you were stupid enough to fall and hurt yourself, you shouldn’t expect any sympathy from the villagers.

  A salt-tinged wind whipped off the ocean, making me glad I was wearing my 1940s cocoa brown wool coat, vintage Hermès scarf, and butter-soft leather gloves. Max took my gloved hand in his to help me from one wall to the next, and then didn’t let go as we scampered up and down short flights of stairs, peeked into small rooms, and made our way through shadowy, briny tunnels. Wisps of fog made it easy to believe this place was haunted.

  “I’d like to take you to another place I love, out near Muir Woods,” Max said as we emerged from a tunnel and climbed atop a broad abutment.

  “The giant redwoods? I’ve been dying to see them!”

  He smiled and pushed strands of wind-whipped hair away from my face. His eyes were a brilliant gray, like today’s sky, but his smile couldn’t hide a tinge of sadness. I tried to read him, but, as usual, his guard was up.