Tarnished and Torn (21 page)

I left the Hyatt and walked down hectic Market Street feeling battered, as though all those sore spots that had long since scarred over had been scraped raw again.

There was a tiny sneaking hope, a slight whisper, that perhaps my father was telling the truth, that if I found the fire opal ring and helped him escape from the demon, we could be a family again.

I’m not naive; I knew that it wouldn’t be all sweetness and light. But still . . . for the first time in so long there was the slightest hope. Just to have communication with my father, an attachment to a blood relative that went beyond the unanswered phone calls and letters and checks I sent to my mother, beyond the awkward annual Mother’s Day phone call, during which she mostly wept on the other end of the line while I told her I loved her. Graciela still cared for me, and I treasured our connection. But what if I could have more?

Probably he would ride right off into the sunset if I managed to free him, but it was still worth a try. I couldn’t stand to think of anyone under a demon’s thumb, much less blood kin.

So I was back where I started: How did I get my hands on the elusive
Ojo del Fuego
, presuming Griselda really had brought it with her to San Francisco? My father said it could only be held by a very powerful person, which in his mind meant Aidan.

Could that be why he was nowhere to be found? Might he have the ring, and if so . . . could I talk him into helping me free my father? After what had happened between them . . . maybe if Aidan had, indeed, betrayed my father, he would help him out of guilt.

Aidan had never shown a whole lot of guilt about anything, but it was possible. If not, perhaps I could promise him something in exchange for it. Which would mean that I would be beholden to Aidan, which seemed only slightly less awkward than being held in thrall to a demon.

These thoughts filled my mind as I drove back to Aunt Cora’s Closet, where I went straight into one of Bronwyn’s famous hugs. She was a little taken aback—usually I wasn’t much of a hugger. But then she slowly stroked my hair.

“Lily, what’s wrong?”

I gave her a brief rundown about encountering my father—leaving out all the demon stuff and the witch stuff and the manipulation stuff. I offered only the broadest outlines of his abandonment and the fact that he was now in San Francisco, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about seeing him, much less whether I should try to work on any sort of relationship between us.

“I myself am always an advocate of doing whatever you can for peace and reconciliation. Look how it worked for me and Rebecca!”

Bronwyn had been rather estranged from her very respectable daughter, who didn’t care for her mother’s involvement in Wiccan activities, among other things. But after Rebecca’s husband was caught up in a nasty murder investigation, the two had become much closer. Now Rebecca’s daughter, Imogen, was allowed to come hang out with us at Aunt Cora’s Closet, which she did with frequency.

“I know,” I said, and tried to think whether I could put into words why my relationship with my father was, perhaps, more convoluted than most. Why our estrangement might have to do with issues of demons and loyalty and fate. “It’s just . . . I guess I’m afraid, when it comes right down to it.”

“We’re all afraid of being hurt,” said Bronwyn, her voice as gentle as a dove’s coo. “But as you know, there’s no way to embrace change without allowing oneself to be vulnerable. That’s why you have good friends at your back, so even if things go terribly wrong, you can rely on them for strength.”

And then, as was her wont, she enveloped me in yet another long, vanilla-scented bear hug.

“Were you baking today, by any chance?” I asked as I finally pulled away.

“How did you know? Imogen and I had a kitchen project this morning.”

Bronwyn brought out a plate of fresh-baked snickerdoodles from behind her herbal stand. That would explain the crumbs I had noticed on Oscar’s snout—he had no doubt begged a few from her.

I smiled and bit into one. “Mmm . . . scrumptious.”

“Homemade cookies make everything better, I always say.”

My mouth full of cookie, I turned as the bell over the front door failed to tinkle when someone walked in. I didn’t have to rely on any extrasensory perception to know who it was.

As my own
abuelita
Graciela used to say:
Cuando aparezca el diablo, estará vestido de caballero.
When the devil shows up, he’ll be dressed as a gentleman.

“
Lily
,” said the hard-to-find Aidan Rhodes in a silky voice. “How wonderful to see you. It’s been so long.
Too
long.”

Oscar, in his piggy form, did his obsequious bit, running circles around Aidan’s legs, begging for attention. Aidan gave him a twitch of the head, and Oscar scooted back over to the purple silk pillow Bronwyn had bought him. Recently she’d had it monogrammed, with O
SCAR
I
VORY
embroidered in giant florid letters, the “O” and “I” prominent. Maya called it his OI pillow and suggested we come up with two more names starting with “N” and “K,” so it would spell “oink.”

“Aidan, we haven’t seen you in ages!” gushed Bronwyn as she ran across the shop to give him a big hug. I imagined not many people dared to hug Aidan, but he smiled and returned the embrace.

“I swear you are looking more gorgeous with every birthday, Bronwyn. That shade of lilac is exquisite with your coloring.” Bronwyn had just turned fifty-three and celebrated with a party that would make any coven proud.

How Aidan knew this was anyone’s guess . . . but Aidan always knew things. It was the way of it, just as natural as the sun rising in the east.

The handful of women in the aisles of Aunt Cora’s Closet glanced over at Aidan and sighed. It was a typical response of women, and most men.

Not long ago Bronwyn had referred to Aidan as a golden-haired god, which wasn’t all that far from the truth. Not that the man was a god—far from it. But there was no denying that his sparkling aura cast a magical, demigodlike spell over just about anyone he walked by. His eyes were a deep, captivating shade of periwinkle blue and seemed to hold secrets you were just dying to know. Tall and broad shouldered, he cut a fine figure and was always impeccably dressed.

His beauty seemed unreal, and part of it was. But love him or hate him, Aidan was a force to be reckoned with.

Lately my own feelings for him had been closer to hate than to love. Though he wouldn’t admit it, I was pretty sure Aidan had run Sailor out of town. In fact, there was part of me that was hoping this was so, because if it was true, I didn’t have to consider the painful possibilities that Sailor had fled because he was either afraid of me or didn’t want to be with me. It was one thing to be a disaster in the romance department, and quite another to make men flee.

“Where’s Sailor?” I demanded of him, as I had every time we had met since Sailor’s disappearance.

Aidan cocked his head and gave a tiny frown as he looked at me quizzically. “How would I know?”

“Because you ran him out of town once you learned we were dating.”

“Personally,” he said as his long, graceful fingers played with a strand of Venetian glass beads, “I’d ask his relations. Perhaps he left a forwarding address.”

I pursed my lips to avoid saying anything more damaging. Besides, we had more immediate concerns at the moment than my love life, such as demons and magic amulets.

Witchy politics, and witchy feuds, made strange bedfellows.

“It looks like
some
body had fun at the Gem Faire,” he said as he admired a long string of dark purple-gray misshapen pearls that adorned a nearby mannequin. He smiled. “Either that or a magpie’s been busily decorating.”

“If you’re not going to tell me about Sailor, what are you doing here?” I asked. I had no desire to swap small talk with this powerful mage, but I wanted
him
to bring up the business with Gene and the ring and my father. Even though I’d been trying to get in touch with him, I was certain he had shown up here for his own reasons. That was how it was with Aidan.

“Seriously?” Aidan said, his eyebrows raised, a half smile on his lips. He glanced over at Bronwyn, who was now showing an elderly woman her new salve to fade age spots. They seemed engrossed in the discussion, and within moments all the other women in the store joined them, crowding Bronwyn’s herbal stand. They were mesmerized suddenly with whatever concoction Bronwyn was mixing up.

It took me a moment to realize Aidan must have cast a cocooning spell so they wouldn’t overhear our conversation.

“Perhaps we could go upstairs and speak in private?” he suggested.

Aidan had never been to my apartment. I planned to keep it that way. I wasn’t sure why, exactly, except that my place was my inner sanctum.

“Let’s go for a walk instead. It’s so sunny out.”

“Hot, even,” Aidan said with a smile, fixing me with an intense look from those sparkly blue eyes. I wasn’t fooling him. “Of course, whatever you’d like.”

Aidan released Bronwyn from the spell, and I left the store in her more than capable hands. As Aidan opened the door for me, the bell again failed to make any noise. I lifted an eyebrow.

Aidan paused and glanced overhead. The bell rang obligingly.

“Why do you
do
that?” I asked as he closed the door behind us.

“You don’t find that incessant ringing a bit annoying? Reminds me of the faerie court—those little guys do adore their chimes. Anyway, I don’t like to give you any warning of my arrival.” He grinned. “You might escape.”

“This is all a joke to you, isn’t it?” I demanded. I was on edge, not feeling like myself. I had no idea how Aidan was involved with any of this, or even whether he
was
actually involved, although when something magical was going haywire, it seemed he was
always
involved.

He laughed outright. “
Someone
woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. ’Mares bothering you again?”

I just shook my head as we walked past a street vendor selling earrings, and another with a display of tiny handmade clay flutes.

“I told you,” he said in a quiet, seductive voice, “it’s not natural for a witch to sleep alone. You’re inviting all sorts of nocturnal trouble. There’s no reason to be by yourself; you could enamor any man you like.”

“You’re giving me
romantic
advice now? Seems to me you’ve done your level best to run off any such possibilities in my life.”

He scoffed. “Any man worth his salt wouldn’t be that easily run off. Besides, that journalist you liked—what was his name? Max?—was a train wreck.”

“And Sailor?”

“Sailor is . . .” He suppressed it quickly, but I knew the thought of Sailor and me together still stuck in his craw. “Sailor is trouble, no two ways about it.”

We paused for the light at Cole Street. Aidan reached out to tuck a strand of my dark hair behind my ear.

“Besides . . .” he said in a low voice. “We both know there’s someone else so much better suited to you. One of these days, maybe you’ll stop fighting it.”

The mere touch of his fingers caused a searing tingle of heat to race through me, but I had already braced myself for it. There was no denying there was chemistry between us. The only question was what to do about it. We had kissed once, and our combined magic spun out of control. I had the feeling that Aidan’s romantic track record wasn’t much better than mine; we both seemed to leave a trail of battered lives in our wake.

But for the moment, at least, I was putting that at the very top of the list of things I didn’t want to think, much less talk, about.

We crossed Stanyon to enter Golden Gate Park.

“What has your father said to you?”

I studied the side of his face as he looked straight ahead at a group of children playing hide-and-seek in a eucalyptus grove. I wasn’t going to bother to ask how he knew my father was back in town—Aidan had more scouts and spies than I could fathom.

“Nothing.”

“He hasn’t asked you for anything?”

I shook my head.

We walked farther into the park in silence. Aidan wasn’t one prone to fabricating long pauses for dramatic effect. He was choosing his words carefully.

“You haven’t been contacted in any way?” He searched my face. “No unusual characters in your life lately—anything like that?”

“Someone was sent to follow me.”

“Who? How?”

“Couple of look-alike guys in a big mint green Ford Scout. Not exactly subtle. Named Zeke and Clem. They’re pretty incompetent—came into the store, then tried to mug me.”

“
Mugged
you?” Alarm in those beautiful blue eyes. Maybe he really did care about me. “Did they take anything from you, a piece of jewelry?”

Or . . . maybe not. He was worried about them finding the ring, not the health and welfare of yours truly.

I shook my head.

“This is very important, Lily: Was anything given to you? A gift or present of some kind?”

“What kind of present?” I played ignorant, seeing what he’d say.

“A ring.”

“No,” I said, relieved not to have to lie to Aidan. Though we couldn’t read each other’s thoughts, it was usually pretty evident when the other was lying.

As we followed a bend in the path to a small meadow, we saw a couple of young women in halter tops and cutoffs, swinging pots on ropes, dancing and swaying.

“Are they practicing fire dancing?” Aidan asked with a frown.

“I think so, yes.”

He swore under his breath. “Since when has this been going on?”

“First time I heard about it was Sunday. You’ve been out of touch. Shouldn’t you be on top of this sort of thing?”

“Fire dancing is a great art, actually, but in this case . . . it’s not good. Not good at all. Listen. With regards to your father: Don’t trust him.”

I snorted. “Like I need you to tell me that?”

Again with the searching of my face. It was starting to make me nervous. Aidan was clearly trying to figure out how much information to share with me and how much to hold back. It was rare for him. I almost never saw him unsure.