Magic and Loss: A Novel of Golgotham (19 page)

“Please, Tate. You don’t know what you’re asking of me. . . .”

“I’m hanging up now, Hexe.”

I hit the
END
button and set the phone aside so I could wipe my eyes and collect myself. Within seconds “Magic Man” started playing. I stabbed at the
REJECT CALL
, only to have it start to play again. I snatched up the phone and powered it down. I needed time to think, to decide what to do. As I stared at the cramped confines of Vanessa and Adrian’s apartment—barely big enough for a newlywed couple, much less an indefinite houseguest, a bothersome dog, and eventual newborn—I realized I should not impose any further on their lives. Although I might eventually be able to find a place in Golgotham, that meant placing me in dangerously close proximity to Hexe. I wasn’t afraid of him stalking or intimidating me as much as I was worried that my resolve might weaken and I would move back in. Like it or not, I found myself with only one viable choice. But it would mean swallowing my pride and putting on my big girl panties and doing the one thing I had promised myself I would not do.

•   •   •

Beanie all but dragged me out of the elevator, his paws scrabbling frantically on the polished marble floor of the penthouse’s foyer. It had been months since the last time I had been there, but nothing much had changed. Save for the life-sized portrait of an old robber baron hanging on the wall, it still looked more like the antechamber of a four-star hotel’s presidential suite than the entrance to a private residence.

I took a deep breath to steady my nerves and then pressed the doorbell. Although it seemed to make no sound, I knew that somewhere deep within the penthouse, where the servants spent most of their time, a buzzer was going off. A few seconds later the door opened, revealing a very proper-looking older man in his early sixties, neatly dressed in the formal wear of a butler. The moment he saw me, his reserve disappeared and he grinned from ear to ear.

“Miss Timmy! Welcome home!”

T
he water from the multiple-head shower felt good on my body. I could have stood there for another hour, without worrying about the hot water running out, but I knew I was just postponing the inevitable. And, besides, I was starting to prune. As I toweled myself dry in my old bedroom, Beanie patrolled the perimeter, diligently sniffing the baseboards, his eyes bugging even farther out of his skull than usual. There was a polite knock on the door just as I finished slipping into some fresh clothes. It was Clarence, of course.

“Your parents are awaiting you in the Grand Salon, Miss Timmy,” he announced.

“Can’t they just sit around the kitchen table like normal people?” I sighed.

“Then they wouldn’t be Eresbies, would they?” Clarence replied, with the same small, conspiratorial smile we used to share when I was in junior high and chafing under my parents’ rules.

“No, they wouldn’t,” I agreed. “Well, no point in putting it off any longer, I suppose. Come along, Beanie.”

Beanie stopped his sniffing and obediently trotted at my heels as I led him down the pristine marble staircase that was the only access to the Grand Salon, a cavernous room with ceilings, paneling, and mantelpieces looted from only the finest Venetian palaces by the family’s founder.

My parents were there, seated before the massive fireplace in antique club chairs. My father looked like he had just come back from yachting, his face still ruddy from the wind, while my mother was dressed in her after-luncheon ensemble and working on what I hoped was her first highball of the day. I was surprised to find myself actually glad to see them.

My father’s weathered face split into a wide grin as I descended the stairs. “There’s my girl!” he exclaimed, as he rose to hug me. “I’ve missed you, Princess!”

“I missed you, too, Dad,” I said around the lump in my throat.

“I
told
you she’d come back once she got tired of playing haunted house,” my mother said as she rattled the ice in her glass. “What on earth has that Kymie been feeding you? Look at that pot belly—oh my God, you’re pregnant.” As my mother realized what she was looking at, her usual sense of decorum disappeared and her jaw dropped in disbelief.

“Thanks for noticing,” I said proudly.

“You hear that, Millie?” my father asked with an excited laugh. “We’re going to be grandparents!”

“Yes. I heard,” my mother replied curtly, reaching for her decanter of bourbon. “How far along are you?”

“Eighteen weeks.”

She glanced at my stomach again. “Are you
sure
about that?”

Before I could ask her what she meant by that, my dog walked over to one of the statues that decorated the salon—in this case, a Bernini—and pissed all over its base.

“Beanie—! No—!” I yelped. Instead of stopping, he merely turned to look at me as he continued to urinate.

My father seemed more amused than irritated as he gestured to the butler. “Clarence, it would appear my daughter’s dog needs to be walked.”

“I’ll see to it personally, sir,” Clarence said. Once Beanie finished emptying his bladder, Clarence picked him up and, tucking him under his arm like a football, carried him out of the room.

“So—I take it
that
is the reason you’ve come back,” my mother said, gesturing vaguely toward my midsection with her glass. “Slumming it isn’t nearly as much fun when you actually have to
live
in the slums, is it?”

“I’ll admit, living without a trust fund to fall back on is hard,” I replied. “But working at a steady job has taught me a lot about life, especially what is and isn’t necessary for me to be happy.”

“So what is it that you do?” my father asked.

“I’m employed at Canterbury Customs as a fabricator and apprentice blacksmith.”

“You’re working as a common
laborer
?” This information seemed to shock my mother even more than the news I was pregnant.

“It’s a
skilled
trade, Mother,” I pointed out sharply. “And my Master has recently taken me on as his partner.”

“It sounds positively pornographic,” she replied with a grimace. “So, what does your magic man—what’s his name? Vex?—think about becoming a father?”

“His name is
Hexe
and he’s very excited about the whole thing and is looking forward to being a dad. . . .”

“There
has
to be a ‘but’ after that sentence,” my mother said, fixing me with one of her patented glares. “You wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t.”

“Things have been a little . . . tense . . . between us lately,” I admitted grudgingly. “Hexe and I are both going through some changes right now, and I decided it would be better if we gave each other some . . . space.”

To my surprise, my mother abruptly set aside her drink, a concerned look on her face. “Has he laid hands on you, Timmy?”

“No!” I replied, although not as quickly or as forcefully as I would have liked.

Her eyes narrowed, and I could tell she was trying to figure out if I was telling the truth or not by parsing out my response in her head. If ever there was a human lie detector, it was my mother. However, her calculations were interrupted by the downstairs maid who arrived armed with a bucket and mop. For some reason, my mother had an aversion—if not an actual phobia—when it came to watching others engage in manual labor of any sort, and would invariably leave the room.

“We’ll discuss this later, at dinner,” she said, hastily rising from her club chair. “Seven o’clock, sharp.”

•   •   •

After the reunion with my parents—which did not go nearly as horribly as I had dreaded—I returned upstairs to see Clarence closing the door to my room behind him. He smiled upon espying me. “I just finished taking your Beanie for a brief stroll in the park. I must say, he is a very friendly little chap—although he appears to have a decided dislike of squirrels.”

“Yes, he does seem to take their existence as a personal affront,” I agreed with a chuckle.

“It’s good to have you back, Miss Timmy. You have been missed.”

“I’ve missed you, too, Clarence,” I said, giving him a warm hug.

“Oh—and Madam requests that you dress for dinner.”

“Of course she does,” I sighed.

Upon entering the bedroom, I saw that Beanie had made himself at home by hopping up onto the king-sized bed and falling asleep at its very center, his legs stretched out as far as they would go, as if it was the world’s biggest dog bed. As I set about searching my suitcase for something my mother would consider “dressing” for dinner, I heard a scrabbling sound outside the window, which I assumed was just pigeons from the nearby park perching on the ledge. Suddenly Beanie snapped out of his snooze and leapt off the bed and began frantically jumping up and down like a kangaroo, all while yapping excitedly. I drew back the curtain to see what could possibly trigger such a reaction from him, only to find Scratch squatting outside the window.

“Nice digs,” the familiar purred as I slid open the window, allowing him to drop down onto the carpet. “Really swank.”

“What are
you
doing here?”

“Since you’re refusing to answer your phone, I’ve been turned into a message delivery service. Yes, yes, I’ve missed you, too,” Scratch said, bumping his head against Beanie as he continued to hop about excitedly.

“How did you find me?” I asked cautiously.

“I sniffed out Beanie,” he replied. “I knew you wouldn’t be far away.”

“So what does Hexe have to say?”

In reply, the familiar leapt up onto the dresser and opened his mouth. To my surprise Hexe’s voice issued forth, sounding eerily like the playback on an answering machine. “Tate, whatever it is I’ve done, I’m sorry, and I swear it won’t happen again. I’ll get help, I’ll go to couples counseling—whatever it is you need me to do, I’ll do it. Just please come back home. It’s not the same without you—the house is so empty without you here. I love you, Tate. And I love our baby. Just say you’ll come back.”

“Stop it!” I said with a shudder. “You’re giving me the creeps.”

“So—what do I tell him?” Scratch asked. “Are you coming back or what?”

“I won’t come home until he agrees to get rid of the gauntlet,” I said firmly. “Once he’s willing to do that, I’ll come back, but not before.”

“He’s not going to want to hear that. But I’ll deliver the message just the same.” Scratch then sighed and I saw true concern in his bloodred eyes and the furrow of his hairless brow. “I am a familiar, and I am bound to my master. I must obey him, regardless of the order, and I am powerless to thwart his will. That is the nature of the bargain we have made, he and I. But, for what it’s worth—you were right to leave. I have never seen him like this before. And it scares me. Oh—and for what it’s worth—the house really
isn’t
the same without you.”

And with that, the familiar jumped from the dresser and dove through the open window, leaving a heartbroken Beanie standing propped against the sill, whining inconsolably as he watched his best friend wing his way back downtown.

W
hen most people sit down for dinner with their folks, it’s a time for casual banter about school, friends, and weekend plans. In my family it’s far more . . . complicated than that. I have never once seen my mother take a meal without diamonds in her ears and haute couture on her back. And instead of reaching for the bowl of mashed potatoes or passing around a basket of rolls on our own, either Clarence or Langston, his deputy, always does it for us.

“So . . . what are your plans?” my mother asked as Clarence carefully deposited three spears of white asparagus onto her plate.

“You mean for my child?” I replied. “I intend on keeping it, of course.”

My mother raised an elegantly sculpted eyebrow. “Have you truly thought this out?”

“Yes, but clearly not the same way
you
have,” I replied, already feeling my hackles rise.

“I’m just saying you have your whole life ahead of you. Are you
sure
you want to lumber yourself with a constant, living reminder of a bad decision you once made?”

“Despite what you may think, my being with Hexe was
not
a bad decision,” I snapped. “Once things get worked out between us, I’m planning on going back home.”

“But, darling, you
are
home.”

“No,” I said, with a shake of my head. “This is where I grew up. My
home
is in Golgotham. With Hexe.”

“Golgotham’s a haven for freaks and monstrosities,” my mother sniffed. “Decent humans have no place there.”

“I belong in that world far more than I ever have in yours,” I said flatly. “In fact—I’m a full-fledged Golgothamite now.”

My mother’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by that?”

I turned to Clarence, who was in the process of sliding a nice, juicy slice of prime rib onto my father’s plate. “Clarence, could you bring me a pair of paper clips?”

“Of course, Miss Timmy,” he replied. Clarence nodded to Langston, who nimbly stepped in and took over the carving knife and fork, and then disappeared into the kitchen.

“What on earth do
paper clips
have to do with this?” my mother asked with a frown.

A few moments later, Clarence returned to the dining room, brandishing a pair of jumbo gold-colored paper clips. “Will these do, Miss Timmy?”

“Just what I need,” I smiled. “Thank you, Clarence.”

I quickly unbent the metal wires and used them to construct an impromptu sculpture utilizing the welter of tableware on either side of my plate. The “body” was fashioned from my coffee spoon, while its four “legs,” joined by the repurposed paper clips, were made from the salad and dessert fork, the seafood fork, and the butter knife. I decided it looked like a horse. Granted, a spindly, somewhat lopsided horse, but a horse nonetheless.

“What
are
you doing?” my mother sighed. “And couldn’t this have waited until after we’ve had dinner?”

“Your mother
does
have a point, Princess,” my father agreed as he munched on his prime rib.

“You asked me what I meant when I said I was a Golgothamite,” I replied, as I placed my handiwork down in the middle of the table. “It’s far easier for me to show you.”

I reached out to my creation, just as I had with the clockwork dragon, and felt the familiar spark of connection. Suddenly my ungainly little tableware horse began moving forward under its own steam across the tabletop, although the cocktail fork did result in giving it a pronounced limp.

My father dropped the roll he was buttering onto the floor, along with the knife he was using. To his credit, Clarence promptly retrieved the fallen utensil without batting an eye. My mother squealed in horror and threw her napkin at the thing stumping toward her, knocking it over. The “horse” lay on its side, its mismatched legs still moving, like those of a tipped turtle trying to regain purchase. Although I will admit to taking a certain satisfaction in freaking my mother out, I was genuinely surprised when she suddenly burst into tears and leapt up from the table, fleeing the room. I jumped up and hurried after her, leaving my father to poke at the now-lifeless construct with his own fork.

•   •   •

I found my mother in the conservatory. As unlikely as it seems, she has always had a green thumb. But where other “ladies who lunch” make a hobby out of cultivating orchids or tending bonsai gardens, her passion was container gardening—tomatoes, zucchini, squash, various peppers, cucumbers, even watermelons. Indeed, most of the vegetables that graced the family table were grown on the premises. But not only was her penthouse vegetable garden her hobby; it also served as my mother’s private refuge.

She was sitting in a wicker plantation chair, between the beefsteak tomatoes and the snap peas, daubing at the tears in her eyes with a tissue as she struggled to regain her composure.

“Mom—are you all right?” I asked gently. “I really didn’t mean to scare you like that.”

“I’m okay,” she said between sniffles. “I guess I should have known this day would come. After all, magic has its price. But I never thought the price would be
you
.”

I frowned in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

She heaved a deep sigh that seemed almost to deflate her. “All of this is my fault. I brought it upon myself and on you.”

“Mom, you’re not making any sense. . . .”

“I’m a complete fraud, you know,” she announced matter-of-factly. “A complete and utter fraud. Have been from the start.” She looked at me appraisingly. “Do you know where I was born?”

“Sure; in Philadelphia.”

“Oh, I was born in Pennsylvania, all right!” she said with a humorless laugh. “But not in Philly. I was actually born in rural Lancaster County, deep in Pennsylvania Dutch country, on a Mennonite farm.”

I blinked in surprise. Although my maternal grandparents had died long before I was born, I was fairly familiar with their family history. “I thought Grandfather Bieler owned a textile company.”

My mother smiled ruefully. “The closest my father came to textiles was the wool on the sheep he raised. I was the fourth of their seven children—yes, that’s right. I’m not an only child, either. You have aunts and uncles and rafts of cousins I’ve never told you about, most of them still in Lancaster County, I suppose.

“The farm I grew up on wasn’t big, but it wasn’t that small, either. The boys helped Father work the fields, while the girls kept the house and tended the livestock. Every morning before school I had to milk the goat and feed the chickens and then, when I got home, I had to muck out the horse stalls. And I
hated
every minute of it. The goats would try to butt me, the chickens would peck at me, and the horses were always trying to step on my feet. I promised myself that when I grew up, I would make sure I never had to look at the wrong end of a mule for the rest of my life.”

“Your parents—my grandparents—are they still alive?” I asked hopefully.

“I’m afraid not,” she replied, with a shake of her head. “My father died a couple years after I ran away when a tractor rolled over on him. My mother died of cancer, not long before you were born.

“They were good people, I suppose—but uneducated. Neither of them had graduated from high school. My mother was fifteen when she married my father and sixteen when she started popping out kids. I never really knew her that well—she was always either pregnant or tired. I wasn’t particularly close to any of my siblings, either—I was the only one of the litter who had dreams of doing something besides working on a farm or marrying a farmer. I wanted bigger, better things than that, and was determined to escape the first chance I got. So I ran away from home when I was seventeen. I wanted to go to New York City and become a dancer on Broadway. It took some doing, but I eventually got there.”

My jaw dropped in surprise. “You were a
showgirl
?”

“I realize I’m your mother, but you don’t have to look
that
incredulous,” she chided. “Yes, I was a showgirl—and a damn good one, too. I could line-kick with the best of ’em, and in high heels, no less.” She paused to study me for a moment. “Did I ever tell you how your father and I first met?”

“Sure,” I replied automatically. “It was at the after-party for the Met’s staging of Rossini’s
Cinderella
.
 
. . .”

“It was at an after-party—but for
A Chorus Line
, not the opera. It was being held out in the Hamptons, and one of the producers of the show I was in asked me to be his ‘date.’ He was queer as a three-dollar bill, of course, but he would bring me along as arm candy, for appearances’ sake. When we got there, I realized the mansion was full of younger society types—the ones who went to Elaine’s and Studio 54. Everywhere I looked there were glamorous women with pedigrees as long as my arm, dressed in the latest from Paris, and literally dripping with diamonds. I felt like a hick farm girl with hayseeds in my hair and pig shit on my shoes.

“The minute we arrived my producer friend dumped me to go fool around with some pretty boy in the pool house. The minute he leaves me alone, this creepy swinger type gloms on to me, trying to chat me up. I must have looked pretty nervous, because the next thing I know, your father walks over and hands me a drink and says, ‘Sorry that took so long. Is this guy bothering you?’ After the creep hurried off, Timothy apologized for butting in, but said he could tell I needed some help. Then he introduced himself to me and we started talking.

“I didn’t know who he was—not at first, anyway—but I could tell he came from money. When he asked me about myself, I panicked and the next thing I know I’m telling him my family owns a textile company and that I’m visiting from Philadelphia.” She shook her head in disbelief at the actions of her younger self. “Before I know it, your father is asking me if I wanted to go out to dinner the next time I’m ‘in town.’ I said yes because he was such a gentleman—not like all the other men I knew, who were all hands and tongue.”

“Mom!”

“Don’t give me that look!” she sniffed. “You’re not a five-year-old anymore, Timmy. Everyone knows what you have to do to make it onto a Broadway stage.

“Once my producer friend was finished amusing himself, he came and gathered me up. On the way back into the city, he asked me if I’d made any new friends. And he winked when he said it. When I told him I’d met a nice young man named Tim Eresby, he nearly drove off the road! That’s when I realized I’d lucked into something
really
big. But I’d also managed to screw myself at the same time.

“If I was going to make any headway with him, I was going to have to ‘live’ the part I’d created for myself. But how could I possibly fill my closet with designer clothes and cover myself in jewelry? I was just the third girl from the left in a mediocre revival of a mediocre musical. If I wanted to dress for success, it meant resorting to magic.

“I had grown up in a religious family, and the idea of turning to a witch for help was . . . troublesome for me. But I also knew several other people who worked in the theater that had used magic to further their careers, most of whom seemed to have suffered no ill effects from doing it. So I went ahead and picked up the
Village Voice
and looked through the listings in the back for magical services. I found an ad for a Mistress Syra—that’s what she called herself back then; none of that “Lady” nonsense—who specialized in glamours and enchantments, especially the appearance of wealth and social status. Best of all, she made house calls, because, back then, decent people didn’t travel to Golgotham unless they couldn’t avoid it.

“I called the number in the ad, and she showed up at my apartment the very next day. I will admit that I was very impressed when I saw her. She arrived carrying a squarish valise that looked like a salesman’s sample case. I told her what my problem was, and she said what I needed was a No-Knickers spell, which would guarantee me the outward appearance of wealth without actually providing me with riches.

“She opened up her case and a pair of legs popped out of it, so that she could use it like a table. I could see that it was full of different little vials and canisters. She mixed up a sampler batch of the potion, which she poured into a perfume atomizer, and told me to spray it all over myself, from head to toe, and then count to ten before looking at myself in a mirror.

“I did as I was directed, and when I opened my eyes I was amazed by what I saw. I was no longer wearing an off-the-rack dress, but the latest design from Halston, complete with a diamond necklace and matching diamond stud earrings. I made Audrey Hepburn look like a bag lady.

“She then instructed me to take my coat out of the closet and put it on. When I did, it turned into a glorious mink stole! I was ecstatic! It was like I was staring at a totally new woman, one who had never gathered eggs and milked goats, and didn’t know which end of a shovel was used to muck out a horse stable—in fact, she didn’t know what ‘muck’ meant.

“Syra told me that while all of this might look real—even feel and smell real—it was nothing but an illusion. Once its potency wore off, the glamour would evaporate, leaving me revealed as a pauper. Hence the saying: ‘fur coat and no knickers.’

“She told me the more I used it, the weaker the spell would become. I was young and desperate, so I went ahead and paid for the spell, and it wasn’t long before I was on my way to being a faux heiress.

“On my first date with your father, I lied and told him I was staying at the Plaza, because I didn’t want him to see the apartment building I was living in. It was definitely not the kind of place where one would expect an heiress—even one from Philly—to be staying. An hour before he was supposed to pick me up, I took a cab to the Plaza and hung around in the lobby, waiting for your father to come collect me. I must have looked like I belonged, because no one asked me what I was doing there.”

“So how was your first date?” I asked, intrigued by this secret history of my parents’ meeting and courtship.

“It was
wonderful
—your father took me to this charming little Italian place called Mama Rosa’s, and then we went to Xenon over on Forty-third and danced for
hours.
Why are you gaping at me like that, child?”