The Touch of Magic Series, page 27
“David and I got married when I was twenty-three. He died four years later. I just found out he and Juliet were having an affair when I decided to divorce him just a month before they died. I still have no idea how long the affair was going on.”
She took a deep breath. “I found out about them the last time by walking in on them in bed together.”
Brandon’s heart broke at the way her shoulders caved and her head shook back and forth just a little, like she was calling herself all kinds of stupid. But he didn’t interrupt.
“They acted upset. Juliet said she was sorry. While she was putting on her clothes she apologized, said it happened just the one time. David seemed shocked and a little confused, but Juliet waved her hand at him. I didn’t recognize the communication for what it was, I was in such shock myself. My head was reeling and I kept seeing that image of them in bed together in my mind.”
Her breath sucked in. “It never occurred to me that David would cheat. Or that Juliet would be the one he would do it with. But I kicked him out. Right there while he was still naked and Juliet was heading out the door. Just before she left, she told David she’d ‘take care of it’ and I can only guess now that meant me. But she couldn’t take care of it, because I threw his clothes into a suitcase and called the locksmith the second I bolted the door behind him.”
She sank down onto the couch now, as though there wasn’t enough energy to hold her up. Brandon stood motionless, the way you did when you saw a deer and didn’t want to scare it. He wanted this. Wanted to know all of this.
“I called Tristan. He intervened. He tried to make peace, but agreed Juliet was in the wrong and David was a snake. He tried to get me to forgive her since it was just the once. As the days went by, I did. I started to forgive her. I realized I was pregnant, and I began to think I could save my marriage. I thought it was the right thing to do. Tristan agreed to help me because it was what I wanted.
“Then I went to Juliet and found out she was pregnant, too. Which meant the time I caught them hadn’t even been close to the first time. That she was five months along meant she’d flat out lied to me. Then she cast on me, tried to get me to come back and forgive her, but I fought it.
“I went home, got out the birch bark and looked around the house. She hadn’t cast any spells on my house, and I thought everything was clean. But then I turned around and saw that the smoke was following me, in this big thick layer. Juliet had cast on me time and again. I still don’t know exactly how many times I figured out they were sleeping together and she made me forget each time.”
Delilah sunk her face into her hands, not quite in tears, but unable to deal with anything around her. Brandon was unable to deal with letting her sit there by herself. He sank down beside her, pulling her back against the cushions and cradling her in his arms. He was grateful she allowed the gesture. But he still didn’t have any idea what to say. After a few moments, Delilah went on.
“I undid her work. It took a while, but I peeled the layers and started remembering. I caught them together on at least three different occasions. Each time Juliet cleaned up the mess, meaning me. She was good; she got through my protection spells and she made me forget.
“I have no real idea if David was in love with her, wanted her, or if she’d worked him over, too. But when I remembered, I found out that David had on several occasions pressed her to make me forget. So he wasn’t innocent. And you can’t pull people that far.”
What? Brandon frowned down at her until she caught on and explained what she meant.
“You can’t make them cluck like a chicken. The ‘forget’ spells were welcome to me because what I saw was so painful part of me wanted to forget. Because I didn’t want it to be true. And if David truly wanted me and only me . . . well, Juliet wouldn’t have been able to get very far. Then again, my parents had died, one right after the other the previous year and I’d been in a shell myself. So maybe David had a good reason to stray.”
“Wait a minute.” Brandon grabbed her arms and hauled her around to face him. “I thought he married you. Is there something different and non-binding about Wiccan marriages?”
Delilah blinked. Maybe he’d handled her a little too harshly, but he was upset. “No. If anything a Wiccan marriage is supposed to be more binding.”
“Then what happened to ‘in sickness and in health’? He’s supposed to stand by you when you need him, like, oh, say, your parents die.” Brandon was surprised by the depths of feeling Delilah’s self-doubt caused him. He wanted to write it off to his issues with cheating, but honestly thought more of it was due to his issues with Delilah.
She shook her head, making Brandon sick at the thought that she was going to defend David’s behavior. “I wasn’t there really. I was so sad I was lost. So how was he supposed to maintain a marriage to me?”
“That’s the point. I don’t know how. And he didn’t have to either, but it was his job to figure it out.”
“Well he didn’t. And he paid for it.”
Brandon remembered the school fair psychic, telling him that Delilah’s past was dark. And something omniscient ran up his spine. “I don’t understand.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to, but he was certain that he needed to.
“I told you, I saw David’s car coming up the street.” He could tell she was upset just at the telling. Her breathing had changed, but so had something else about her. She was going to get this off her chest. “I had just come out the front of the house. I needed fresh air to make up for all the work of undoing Juliet’s spells on me. I saw the car and I got so angry. I pushed them off the road.”
She got very quiet.
“Wait. You told me there was another car there. There wasn’t?”
“There was. It sideswiped them.”
“Then how did you push them off?” How could she possibly think she was responsible? Besides, a slip of a person like her couldn’t push a car.
She didn’t look at him. “Did you read that Almanac you bought? There’s a lot of information in there.”
He hadn’t read the whole thing, it was huge.
She offered up some wisdom. “A spell works best when it can take time, when things can play into it.”
“What do you mean?” he asked. She’d gone from being sad to making very little sense.
“Like if I wanted the remote to be on top of the TV.” She pointed to where it rested on the arm of the chair. “Right now I would have to cast a spell that would lift it and move it there. Or teleport it. That’s a lot of energy. But if I cast the spell even a few hours early, or if someone was walking around here, then the remote would have energy to it. It would have almost wanted to be on top of the TV and someone would have put it there. Almost unconsciously.”
“That’s not what most people think of when they think of witchcraft.”
Delilah practically snorted. “Most people don’t have a clue. It isn’t moonlight dances and lightning from your fingertips. Hell, I never met anyone who rode a broom, and I know some damn fine witches.”
He had to laugh at that. “But you didn’t have time. I can’t imagine that you would have set that up in advance to kill them.”
“I didn’t. It was snap. But there was a car there, and I saw in my mind David going over the side of the rail a moment before the other car swerved for no reason.” She was getting more upset as she talked about it. “I did it.”
“Honey. Are you really even that powerful?”
She cried, silent tears running down her cheeks as her head tilted to the side and he felt something go through him. A feeling, a wind, something. She held her hand out to the room, as though to say ‘look.’
He’d kept a handful of the candles he’d bought, thinking they’d be good for light if the power went out. Every one of them flickered back at him. Even the little scent light for when he burned dinner, or when there’d been too much pizza and beer in the house the day before.
His brain went through it logically, since what he saw stunned him. He’d walked in with Delilah, he hadn’t lit candles. They hadn’t been burning all day either. There wasn’t a wax drip in sight. And as he watched, still a little stunned, one by one they winked out.
His gaze came back, amazed, to rest on Delilah.
The tone in her voice was resigned. “I’m dangerous. It’s why I didn’t want to get involved with anyone. The first ideal of Wicca is ‘harm none.’”
Brandon knew that, he’d read it in his witchcraft book. There was a sign with those words as you entered and exited Blessed Be. He’d told himself he wasn’t harming her. More like teasing her.
“You’re not dangerous, Li.” His brain caught on something. “Besides, I thought Juliet was the most powerful of the three of you. So how did you, the less powerful one, get to her?”
Delilah shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t see it coming. You can do all kinds of things with spells, but you have to do them. You have to think of it ahead of time and you have to remember. A lot of times I can’t remember to get milk on the way home from work.”
“Juliet made you forget you saw her in bed with your husband. More than once. Then she knew she’d screwed it up. She told you she was more pregnant with your husband’s baby than you were. Then she cast another spell on you to get you to come back and forgive her. And you honestly believe she didn’t see it coming?”
Delilah blinked.
“Baby, you didn’t do it.” His arms tightened around her, the feelings settling in. He’d been uptight, because you never knew where these big talks might lead. But they were going to be okay—even if they clearly had a long way to go. “You lost your baby trying to save her and hers. I read that you have to have pure emotion for a strong spell. Is that right?”
She managed a small nod in response, though she didn’t look at him.
He leaned over, to where he was practically speaking into her hair. The feel and the smell of her next to him were almost overwhelming. “I doubt you had a single pure emotion about your sister or even your husband those days.”
Delilah sank into him and his eyes closed as he held her. This was where he belonged. With his arms around Delilah. Here on his couch. Waiting for her to smile at him again.
She looked up. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. Really sorry. I was way out of line.”
“Apology accepted. If you’ll take mine.” He grinned. “I’m sorry for what I did, too. Even though it didn’t work at all.”
She nodded, then laughed. “What were you trying to do anyway?”
Oh great. She wanted to know that! But he needed to confess. They were clearing the waters. Still, even though he told himself it was the right thing to do, he knew his face was beet red. He was simply grateful that the day had darkened into evening and maybe she didn’t see. He worked to keep his voice steady. “I tried to cast a love spell on you.”
“With Tansy? What did you—”
He jerked back. “How did you know what I bought? Are you spying on me?”
She looked at him like he was nuts. “My brother owns the store. We went through the receipts.”
“I paid cash.” How the hell had they gotten his shopping list? Was there a camera in the store? Oh, hell, it was a family of witches, he could just guess how they figured it out. “So it wasn’t enough that you messed with my brain, you had to spy on me, too?”
“It wasn’t like that. You know, if you were casting love spells with Tansy you were really off base.”
No shit, he was off base. He felt violated all over again.
Delilah got up and paced. “You bought the ingredients for the equivalent of a spell bomb the first time. If you had Tansy and the black and green candles . . .”
He was so busy being upset at her again, he didn’t register that her voice had trailed off. He didn’t like where this was headed or the knot it made in the middle of his chest. He wanted to ask if she knew what he’d eaten for lunch or what searches he’d done on the internet at work today.
She turned and stared at him. “Your spells did work. Just not the way you wanted.”
She was angry at him? Brandon stared back at her, wondering where the hell she thought she had the right and where she was going with this.
“You did it.”
She looked like he’d killed her puppy.
Then she got mad and yelled. “Tansy is for female problems! You made that pregnancy! That’s why there was never a baby. You put a spell on me and you screwed it up!”
Where did she get off getting upset at him about this? Who knew how many she’d put on him. He was opening his mouth to say so when she burst into angry tears.
“I wanted that baby! There is nothing I wanted as much as a baby.” Her shoulders heaved and Brandon braced himself for whatever she might throw his way: harsh words, a spell, the lamp.
Instead she took a few deep breaths and sniffed twice, trying to get herself back together. “You couldn’t have picked a better way to get revenge on me. You found the one thing I really wanted. Something I didn’t even know I wanted that badly.”
She gathered her purse from where she set it by the front door. “I’m going home. I’m going to put a binding spell on you so you can’t mess with anyone else.”
“And who’s going to stop you, Delilah?”
She looked like he’d slapped her, but that was ridiculous. “Fine, promise me you won’t do anything else.”
“Delilah, with you gone there won’t be any need.”
She nodded, yanked her purse to her shoulder and headed out the door.
CHAPTER 36
Several days later, Delilah still didn’t know quite how it had happened. One minute Brandon was holding her, telling her it wasn’t her fault. The next she’d been yelling at him.
Looking back, she’d accused him of getting his revenge. That’s what he’d been trying anyway. By accident, he’d succeeded far better than he planned. That idiot, using Tansy in a love spell. That Almanac was doubly dangerous because of the occasional error. Lilac was for love spells. Any decent witch would know better. Anyone with a rudimentary herbal knowledge would never put Tansy into a love spell. But an idiot with a book sure would.
She shouldn’t have said those things.
But he hurt her. The fact that there was no baby was a very bitter pill to swallow. That Brandon had fabricated the whole thing was a knife in the back. Even though he hadn’t intended to make her think she was pregnant, he had been trying to get back at her. She probably could have lived with one or the other, but that Brandon caused such great hurt, and that he’d been trying to hurt her was just too much.
She was better off without him, she knew. They were a volatile match right from the first day. If only that first forget spell had worked.
Delilah went to work, she came home and slept, she went to work again. She put in extra shifts and stockpiled spare days because it seemed like a good thing to do. By the second week she began thinking about taking a vacation. A real vacation. She hadn’t had one since she’d started the job almost a year and a half ago. She hadn’t thought of anything beyond the next day. Until recently. But now . . . now she needed to get somewhere and find herself. The idea rolled around in her brain—five days off somewhere alone.
She swore off all spells that altered anyone but herself.
She didn’t run into Brandon.
Tristan came over for dinner and breakfast a few times. When he was avoiding the subject of Brandon, he talked about Yasmin and how it appeared Delilah was right about his assistant. Of course, she was. When he was tackling things head on he told her she was better off without Brandon. Verbally she agreed. To herself she figured she’d completely messed it up.
Tuesday night, she made herself an apple and raspberry pie. Then she sat down with a steaming slice of it, doctored with caramel sauce and a scoop of really good French vanilla ice cream. She popped the top on a pale ale and—while she limited herself to just the one—got tipsy enough to let herself really think about Brandon.
She didn’t hate him. She just ached whenever she thought about him. She finally opened her brain enough to ask herself how it was that Brandon managed to cast spells on her when she’d been protected from them. She and Tristan had seen the protection spells—the fine thin layers that the birch bark smoke showed. But she’d also seen the globs Brandon put there. They should have slid right off her with no effect. Yet he’d been able to make her think she was pregnant. He’d made her turn the test positive.
If she had done the protection spells herself, Delilah would have easily written the incidence off as something she messed up. She’d certainly not been meticulous girl this last year. But Tristan put those spells there—carefully, knowing full well she wasn’t likely to take good care of herself. So how had Brandon gotten through that?
By the time her plate was empty and her beer was gone, Delilah didn’t have any better answers. She wasn’t about to drink another beer to find them. She also didn’t think any decent answers would be found at the bottom of a second bottle.
So she cleaned up and pulled the shades against the light, before curling into a tiny ball in the middle of her bed and finding a little sleep.
The next morning after work she waited for Maggie to arrive. Told her about how she’d thought she was pregnant, but wasn’t. Without admitting to any of the witchcraft, she told about how the fight had broken her and Brandon up. How she’d like to take six days in a row off.
Maggie obliged her.
Delilah worked the next night. She made last minute arrangements when she got home. For the first time she dug into David’s large life insurance policy. The money covered the very expensive plane tickets and a nice hotel room. By Thursday evening, she was on the beach in South Carolina, watching the waves come in and trying to find some peace.
