Missing powers, p.4
Missing Powers, page 4
“Sure. What do you want?” Reg opened the fridge door and looked at the overflowing contents. “You have to stop making all of this food materialize in here. One person cannot eat that much before it goes bad.”
“You could,” Harrison argued.
“I would be sick.”
“Yes,” he conceded.
“So just stop messing with my fridge. I don’t need that much food. Thank you, but no.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I did not fill the fridge.”
“Oh, really?” Reg gestured to the contents. “I believe you didn’t put the Tupperware dishes in there. That would be Sarah, trying to pawn off her leftovers on me, saying that I need to eat less junk food. But the chocolate cake and the ribs? Any of the other junk food or takeout in here? That’s you.”
Harrison shook his head.
“It is. Just admit it and stop filling it up. Maybe you can bring food when you come for a visit. One thing. But don’t put anything straight into the fridge.”
Harrison smiled and twirled the ends of his mustache. “It is not me.”
“Who, then?” Reg had sudden doubts. Maybe it was Weston, another immortal, who might be Reg’s father. Or was there someone else? Another immortal she had not met or some other person or creature who had taken it upon himself to provide for Reg?
Harrison pointed at her. “You.”
“Me?” Reg shook her head and laughed. “I can’t make food materialize out of thin air.”
“Thin air,” Harrison mused. “No.”
“It came from somewhere. From you.” Reg remembered Julian being amazed when he saw Harrison materialize a huge breakfast without any apparent effort. He had said that it was impossible for Harrison to produce something from nothing. That it must have come from somewhere. Matter couldn’t be created or destroyed… something like the arguments that Reg had heard against time travel, which had all turned out not to be true at all.
“It came from somewhere,” Harrison agreed. He pointed at her again. “You put it there.”
“You think I went out and bought all of this food and put it in my fridge. And then can’t remember doing it. Am I sleepwalking? I know my memory has been bad since—well, you know—but it isn’t that bad. If I had bought all of this, I would remember it.”
“You did not buy it,” Harrison said, watching the coffee drip into the carafe with fascination. “You… called it.” He picked up Starlight and cuddled him against his face, murmuring and making kissing noises.
Reg opened her mouth to say that she couldn’t call it, but she had learned over the past little while that she did, in fact, have the ability to call a person or object to her using magic. But that was through effort of will. It wasn’t something that could just happen without her knowing or remembering it.
Could it?
Harrison was nodding at her, emphasizing the point. “You called it.”
Reg opened the fridge door and looked at the contents in dismay. Some of the food was in branded bags or containers, so that she knew which restaurant or store it had come from. Was it possible that she had magically transported the food directly from the stores to her fridge and wasn’t even aware that she had done so?
“But I don’t… need all of this food.”
“Humans need food to live.”
“Yes. I know. But not this much. There is too much. And I can afford to buy food, I don’t need to…” she dropped her voice to a whisper, embarrassed, “magic it off the shelves.”
“You said it is fun.”
Reg blinked at him, shaking her head slightly. “When did I say that? I never told you that.”
Harrison held his hand out low beside him, indicating a height below his hip. “You were small.”
“When I was little? Living with Norma Jean?”
Harrison nodded and smiled. “Yes. Little Reg.”
“When I was little, I probably did need to magic it to me,” Reg admitted slowly.
Norma Jean had been an addict, walking the streets to support her habit, partying with anyone who would have her, giving little thought to the child back in her filthy flophouse apartment. Without Uncle Harrison to help Reg or the long series of foster families she had been placed with once she entered the system, she would have died. But she had thought that Harrison had provided all of the food. She didn’t remember being able to call it herself.
“So you taught me?” she asked slowly. “You showed me how to call the food so I would have something to eat?”
Harrison nodded. “You learned very quickly.”
Hunger would do that to a person. Reg felt suddenly weak-kneed. She looked around for somewhere to sit and eventually staggered into the living room to sit down on one of the wicker chairs.
All at once, the pieces were falling into place. Being accused by foster parents of hoarding food when she hadn’t been the one to stash it. She had assumed that one of her foster siblings had done it and thrown the blame in her direction. Foster parents found other things in her room too. Watches, handheld games, money, items that other children had shown her school class for show-and-tell. Things that Reg had never touched. She hadn’t stolen them; someone else had put them there. But no foster parent had ever believed her.
And as Reg aged out of foster care and took jobs here and there to support herself between one brilliant con and the next, there were other things. Not food or games, but jewelry that had been given to her by her employers. If Reg found a necklace or heirloom brooch in her luggage that she had not put there, the only possible explanation was that her employer had put it there, making a gift of it as a show of gratitude. Such gifts had frequently gotten Reg in hot water.
“The coffee is ready?” Harrison suggested.
Reg rubbed her eyes and tried to focus on the present.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The coffee. Yes.” Reg massaged her legs and then got slowly to her feet. She seemed to be steadier now. She went back to the kitchen and poured herself a mug of coffee. Harrison, she remembered, didn’t actually drink coffee. He just liked to watch it being made and Reg drinking it. She added sugar and opened the fridge once more to select something for Harrison to eat for breakfast. There was most of a Black Forest cake piled high with frosting and cherries on the top shelf, so she pulled it out and set it in front of Harrison. She handed him a fork rather than allowing him to eat it with a spatula or serving spoon that he would have grabbed himself. He could be a very messy eater.
Reg took a long swallow of the scalding coffee. “If I’m the one making the food appear in here, then… why? Why would I do that?”
Harrison wrinkled his brow in a dramatic “thinking” face. “Because you are hungry?”
“But I’m not. I’ve been putting on weight. Sarah is always bringing food over. I eat out at The Crystal Bowl. I order in. Sometimes I even buy groceries. I’m not starving. There is plenty of food here without me overfilling the fridge with food.”
“You like to eat,” Harrison pointed out.
“Yes. And these are all things that I like… but I’m actually getting tired of chocolate cake, if you want to know the truth. Having it all the time, it can get to be a bit much.”
Harrison put a huge bite of cake and frosting in his mouth. Reg was afraid it would all come squirting out when he tried to chew, but he was able to keep it in his mouth, though his cheeks puffed out like a hamster’s.
“I like chocolate cake.”
“Hmm. Does that mean I make it appear for you?” That made some sense. Reg had been worried about Harrison being angry with her when he had tried to keep her locked in the cottage and she had found a way past his magic. They had disagreed before that, too, about Harrison bringing Horace back from Egypt to Reg. As it had turned out, it had been the right thing to do, but Reg had not known that at the time.
Maybe all of Harrison’s favorite foods in the fridge was her way of making up with him. Even if she had done it without conscious thought.
“Are we okay now?” she asked him.
Harrison didn’t appear to harbor any resentments against her, but who knew what an immortal was thinking? They could hold on to a grudge for the smallest thing for a very long time, if the mythologies she had studied in school were any indication.
“We are okay.”
Reg was not reassured. She didn’t think he understood what she was asking. “I mean… you were mad at me before. Remember? Are you still mad at me?”
Harrison took another massive bite of chocolate cake and tried to say something around it. She shook her head and waited until he had swallowed the bite. “I couldn’t understand you. What did you say?”
“I want Reg to be safe.”
“I know. You’ve protected me for a long time. You’ve been very good about it.”
He nodded his agreement.
“You’re not still mad about me getting out of the cottage when you told me to stay here? Or when I got upset about you bringing Horace back from Egypt?”
“Horace is back in Egypt again in this time,” Harrison said, his expression serious. “Why did you take him back?”
“He’s not with the warlock again. You were right to take him away from there. But… I took him back so that he could be happy. So that he could join with Merneith and not be so sad about that piece he was missing.” Reg took a sip of her coffee, shifting uncomfortably. What if he didn’t accept her explanation? She couldn’t exactly go and bring Horace back. He couldn’t live with her, as Harrison had suggested. She couldn’t have another cat living in the cottage, or Sarah would kick her out. And Horace was a big cat. “Merneith wanted a physical form and Horace needed something to fill the empty space. So… it seemed like a good solution. He’s happy there. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“Merneith wanted a cat?”
“Yes.”
Harrison started plucking the cherries from the top of the cake and putting them into his mouth. “The warlock stole his flame.”
“From Horace… yes. Kareem stole the piece of the Witch Doctor that Francesca had bound to him. But you know he doesn’t have it anymore.”
“No. It is stolen again. And missing.”
Reg didn’t want to think about what might have happened to that missing piece of the Witch Doctor, her mortal enemy. He was supposed to be bound for a thousand years so that he would not be a problem again until hundreds of years after Reg was dead and buried. But she worried that with one piece being loosed already, the other eight were more vulnerable than Francesca had thought.
“I don’t know where it is,” Reg says. “But I think that Horace is safe and happy where he is now. Don’t you?”
Harrison shrugged and didn’t answer. He always seemed to either avoid her questions or to leave her with some kind of ambiguous or impossible answer. She should know by now not to ask him to explain anything.
“I think—”
There was a quick knock at the door, and Reg turned her head to see Sarah letting herself in.
“Oh, hi. I was just—” Reg looked back at the Black Forest cake sitting on the island, but Harrison was gone. Apparently, he wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone else. Reg rubbed her forehead and took another sip of coffee. “Never mind.”
Sarah looked at the half-eaten cake, huge, ragged chunks ripped out of it, and raised her brows. “Morning snack?” she asked. “I’m surprised to see you up so early. Or have you not gone to bed yet?” She stood with her hands on her well-padded hips, a grandmotherly look of concern on her face.
Reg sighed. She wished she was still in bed. “Someone got me out of bed a lot earlier than I intended. And no, I wasn’t the one eating the chocolate cake.”
Sarah looked at it again and shook her head. “Do you want this back in the fridge, then?”
“No. You can toss it out. I’m not in the mood. I need to get the fridge cleaned out like you said, so I can see what’s in there. It’s packed so full there could be a whole rotisserie chicken in there and I wouldn’t even know it.”
She thought belatedly that she should probably not have pictured a rotisserie chicken jammed in among the fast-food containers and plastic containers. If she were unconsciously calling all of the food into her fridge, that was probably all it would take for a chicken to have disappeared from “Mary Jane’s Chicken Delite” and appeared in Reg’s fridge. She sighed.
Sarah shook her head at the waste of food and put the remains of the chocolate cake in the garbage. “You do need to keep on top of these things,” she said, nodding toward the fridge. “I don’t know why you keep buying so much food.”
Instead of denying yet again that she had been the one to put all of that food in the fridge, Reg tried a different tack. “Maybe I was stressed.”
“Ahh.” Sarah nodded wisely. “Comfort eating is not good for you.” She patted her own thickened waistline. “Goes straight to the belly.”
Reg ran her thumb behind the waistband of her shorts. The shorts were significantly tighter than when she’d bought them. “I know.”
“Well. Speaking of stress, I don’t suppose you’ve heard the news yet.”
“About Corvin being reinstated? Yes, I have.”
“And that he’s—”
“Hoping to become the new leader of the coven. Yes. That too. Davyn told me. And Corvin called yesterday to gloat about it too.”
“Well, that’s not what I meant, but yes. What I was going to say is that he is missing.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Who is missing? Corvin?”
Sarah rolled her eyes and shook her head. “No, no such luck! It’s Davyn who is missing.”
“Davyn.” Reg shook her head, not comprehending. “He isn’t missing. I just saw him yesterday. For training.”
“You should probably let the police know that. You might have been one of the last people to see him.”
“He’s not missing.”
“He is,” Sarah insisted. “He didn’t show up at his office today and, when the police went to his house to check on him, he wasn’t there. His car is. His wallet and phone. But he is not.”
“But…” Reg tried to wrap her mind around this fact. “I just saw him. He can’t be missing. Are they sure?”
“Where would he be without his car, phone, or wallet?” Sarah demanded.
“Well… I don’t know. Out for a walk?”
“Without his wallet or phone.”
“He could be. Maybe he didn’t want to be disturbed.”
“You know Davyn. He doesn’t do things like that. And he didn’t show up for work. He wouldn’t go out for a walk instead of to work.”
“No. I guess not. But it just seems so bizarre. He didn’t say that he was going anywhere.”
“I’m sure he’s just fine,” Sarah said brightly. “He’ll show up again. The problem with Davyn is that he is too predictable and responsible. He takes on too much and was bound to burn out sooner or later. I have seen it happen to too many warlocks. They seem to have everything under control, and then boom, it all comes crashing down and they’re running around town with their undershorts on their heads.”
Reg blinked, trying to erase the mental image of Davyn sprinting along with a pair of tighty-whities stretched over his head. “You think he’s had some kind of nervous breakdown?”
“It was bound to happen sooner or later. This strait-laced type doesn’t know how to take a break or balance the load. Eventually, they just break.”
Reg shook her head. Davyn did seem to be organized and responsible and have it all together, but she had never seen that as a disadvantage. She supposed it was true; she had release valves. If a situation got to be too much, she could back out. No one expected her to be that responsible. If she ducked out of something she had promised to do, people would just roll their eyes and go with the next person available. She didn’t have a whole coven of witches expecting her to tell them what to do. If she were the leader of a coven, the members would pretty much just have to fend for themselves. She didn’t know a higher way. She would probably be expecting them to tell her what to do.
“What will the coven do?” she asked.
Sarah raised her brows. “I’m sure the coven will be fine. A coven leader isn’t always available. People have to realize that. You can’t live your whole life for everyone else. If Davyn hasn’t ever taken a vacation… well, he should have. They should know how to get along if he has to deal with something else or take a break. It isn’t like they need him to tell them what to do every step of the way.”
“So they’ll be okay.”
“Of course. Witches are pretty independent, you know. Many choose a solo practice. Those who join a coven… well, most of them are just loose affiliations. It is good for moral support, especially if you don’t live in a place like Black Sands where you know any other practitioners. It’s nice to get together for celebrations and holy days. But no one needs permission to practice.”
“What if he doesn’t come back before the election?”
“Oh, he’ll be back before then.”
“But what if he isn’t?”
“I don’t know. It will depend on if there is anyone else campaigning for leadership. If there isn’t, and Corvin is the only one who makes a run for it…” She shrugged. “Then I guess he’ll get what he wants.”
Reg’s heart pounded. “They can’t make him their leader.”
“If he is the only one who wants to… I suppose they can say that they won’t recognize him, but that would be quite a scandal. I don’t think most of the warlocks would be willing to do such a thing. Especially when there has been all of this publicity about allowing someone like that to run.”
“Has there been a lot of publicity?” Reg shook her head. “I only just heard about it. I never even knew that he wasn’t allowed to run before. Actually… I never knew that they did have elections and campaigns and that kind of thing. I thought that Davyn was just the most powerful warlock in that group, so he got to be the leader.”
“He has achieved a higher level of understanding than most of them, but that doesn’t automatically give him the authority or the responsibility. He has to accept it. Be willing to serve.”
