That Magic Mischief (22 page)

“No, no, it’s not that! Not exactly. Well, kind of. I mean, I was pissed off at them — but — I’ve had a lot going on, I mean, well, I had this boyfriend and he … we broke up and I’ve been getting over that, and on top of it, Maria Grazia and Lorna and Kelli come up with their plot to get us together and that bugged me, and I’ve got this Pooka that’s been making a mess of everything — ”

Whoops.

Jamie cocked his head to one side. “A Pooka? You mean the Irish sort?”

Annabelle blushed, and imagined that her head would spontaneously ignite and burn to a cinder in under five seconds. “Um. Yeah.”

Jamie cocked his head to the other side. “Here? In Brooklyn?”

Annabelle wondered if she throwing herself in front of a bus could possibly feel worse than terminal mortification. All she could manage was a nod of her head.

“Huh,” he said. “That’s weird.”

“It’s weird,” insisted Annabelle, “But I’m not making it up — ”

“Because my auntie always told me that they never left ‘the auld sod’. How did you get your hands on one?”

Annabelle stared at him. Was there something about Irish males that made them particularly open-minded? Or particularly screwy? No way was she going to tell him the whole story and risk scaring him off, even if she wasn’t interested in him romantically … or anything … at the moment. She expelled a slightly cowardly breath, and edited the experience.

“Uh, well, the whole thing was an accident, and it’s begun began actively interfering in my, er, life. It’s kind of hard to explain. I have one, and I’m trying to get rid of it. Like roaches.”

“Hmmm.” Jamie seemed lost in thought, as if he was trying to see a way out of relieving her of her Pooka problem, and not planning a daring escape. They continued down Court Street, mulling things over as if they were trying to figure out a problem on their income tax returns, or how to stop the bathroom tap from leaking even though you’ve changed the washer ten times.

Like it was normal.

Jamie shook his head. “I’ve never heard of this before in my life.”

“I interviewed Dan Minnehan the other day — ”

“Dan Minnehan?” Jamie cut across in a strangled voice. “Dan Minnehan? The Dan Minnehan?”

Annabelle felt absurdly pleased and very, very cool. “Yeah, yeah, grumpy old Irish genius musician guy.”

Jamie dropped his head into his hands, and tugged at his rampant curls. “Dan Minnehan! I’d sell my own mother into white slavery in Constantinople just to — no, I wouldn’t even dare shake his hand … only to breathe the air of the same room as Dan Minnehan, I would sell my nieces and nephews as well.” He looked at her with an added layer of respect laid over top of the attraction.

Oh, my gosh
, thought Annabelle.
I know that look. He is, in fact, attracted to me.

“Dan
Minne
han!”

“So he told me a piseog?” Jamie nodded, still looking dazed. “About how a bunch of Pookas messed with some Queen — “ More judicious editing, things were surely complicated enough with Pookas, much less throwing in Ban Sí, “And they got stuck helping generations of the same families of humans with their — ” Whoops. “Problems.”

Jamie looked thoughtful. “There’s that auntie I was talkin’ about. She’s mad. A total nutter. Has the sight, like, drives us all bonkers with visions and premonitions and tea leaves and shite. She used tell us a tale, mostly to frighten us to pieces, you understand … ” He trailed off, apparently lost in thought, and Annabelle got a nice, healthy look at his strong and manly profile, and she almost giggled at herself for the ‘manly’ part. He turned to her, and caught her staring.

“Go on,” she urged, blushing.

It could not be humanly possible to blush this much in under one hour.

“Right,” Jamie said. “I can’t really call it to mind, but I could ask her, if you like?”

Annabelle stopped. They’d almost gone past her building.
That was fast
, she thought, ruefully.

Rue? Uh oh.

“This is me.” She turned to look at him, as he cased the building, the location, the amount of traffic.

“Nice place, all right.” He shifted from one foot to the other like a teenager, and promptly put a stop to that. “So will I?”

“Your aunt. Yeah. Sure. If it’s not too nutty.”

“They’re pushy creatures, Pookas. Not as bad as roaches, but if you let one in, God only knows … ”

“Oh, no!”

Jamie tried to backtrack. “I’m only joking you. A cousin had one, and eventually it went away.” He shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Em. So, well … I’ll ring you, I reckon, when I know anything, I mean, the aunt’s a bit hard to get hold of, she’s always off on her broomstick or whatever, em, so I could — Jesus, will you ever give me your phone number?”

Annabelle dug out one of her business cards. “It’s got all my numbers on it, and both emails, and my Twitter. So. Cool. Thanks. Great.”

Annabelle backed up the stairs as Jamie backed off toward Court Street. “Sound,” he said, as they slowly moved away from each other. “Sure, I’ll give you a bell. When I know.”

“Excellent.” Annabelle paused at the street door, and nodded and smiled and stalled. “Hey, thanks, you know? Everyone else thinks I’m crazy.”

“Ah, well,” Jamie grinned. “No imagination.”

“Well,” said Annabelle. “See ya.”

“Good luck,” said Jamie. “Mind yourself.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Bye.”

“Cheers, bye.”

Annabelle slipped into the vestibule and out of sight.

• • •

Jamie nodded — a good day’s work all in all. He slipped Annabelle’s card into the breast pocket of his leather jacket, and looked around.

He hadn’t a notion where he was.

Sure
, he thought,
there must be a subway around here somewhere
…

Annabelle slid stealthily into her apartment, soundlessly shot the locks and drew the chain across. Hanging up her coat, she stepped out of her shoes and then, and only then, ‘arrived’ home — and noticed that Callie had once again made some adjustments.

Candles flickered on every possible surface, and a light and beautifully floral scent filled the flat. She saw a ring of incense cones burning on the floor around her altar, and a large chunk of pink rock sat on the top. The whole place felt … clean? Warm? Lovely. “Thanks,” smiled Annabelle.

“Took you long enough.” Callie floated down from the ceiling and dropped into the chair furthest from Annabelle’s sacred space. Of human size, and in the form of the cloaked figure, the Pooka leaned a weary elbow on the tabletop.

“Sorry.” Worried, Annabelle moved toward her. “You look rotten.”

“Your gentle concern is warmin’ me heart.” Callie waved her away. “I’m all right. Need a bit of a sit-down.” She clutched her cloak close to herself and sat back in the chair. “We’ve got some work to do this night.”

A chill ran down Annabelle’s arms. “Work? Like … magic?”

“Magic isn’t magic, missus, and the sooner you realize that, the better.” The Pooka shrunk down to about a foot in height, and repositioned herself on the edge of the table. “It’s time you let aul’ Wilson go.”

Annabelle plopped into the chair that Callie had vacated. “I’ve let him go! I don’t expect him to call any longer, I don’t look for him on the streets, I don’t go past our ex-favorite restaurants — ”

“Jesus, girl, are you as bad as
that
?”

“ — I haven’t googled him in, like, six days! I don’t fantasize about a reunion, or even one-night stand scenarios, I don’t remember what he smelled like, or what his hands felt like, or the way that he used to twirl a bit of my hair around his index finger when we used to read the Sunday
Times
in bed, or how he used to like it when I went suit-shopping with him, or the way he used to chop carrots, kind of diagonally, not in strips or even little circles … ” Annabelle winced. “Gotcha. What do I do?”

Callie smiled, the first genuine smile she’d produced in Annabelle’s presence — it warmed Annabelle’s heart, and made the Pooka look angelic, benign, and like a friend. Annabelle leaned forward and touched the edge of Callie’s cloak — it felt as cold as the pot did the day the hazelnut — or Callie-as-hazelnut — died.
Oh no — was she
—

“First things first.” Callie stemmed what was, she was sure, a load of frenzied queries. “I’ve set the warmth of fire about your working space, for protection and for illumination. The incense is jasmine for cleansing, and geranium for hope, and there’s a bit of rose quartz there for you to keep to remind you of how far you’ve come.

“Now. Gather up everything, every memento, every photo, every gift, large and small, anything that had to do with Himself, and bring it here.”

Annabelle rose, and started collecting the bits and pieces she had strewn about the apartment, things that she hadn’t even noticed were still around. The framed photos were obvious, but she could see, sticking out from underneath a wodge of papers pinned up on the bulletin board above her desk, a few casual snapshots from picnics, boating trips, and parties gone by. A trawl through her CD collection showed her that she had a pile of music that she’d bought because Wilson liked it — she decided to keep The Cribs and Eels, but added
The Best of Robbie Williams
, among others, to the outgoing pile.

As she moved through the remnants and reminders, she realized that she was easily able to decide what to keep, and what to get rid of. She didn’t feel the need to toss it all out the window, least of all the silver bangles he’d given her, which she liked very much — but why hang on to anything that didn’t really have a value, like a bunch of ticket stubs and love notes. ‘Love notes’ with inverted commas, more like, as Annabelle shook out her journal and let myriad scraps of paper float down onto her satin bedspread. ‘Terse messages offset by a few X’s and O’s’ seemed a more appropriate term, and Annabelle smiled at her own hopelessly romantic streak.

I am a hopeless romantic.

Wilson … was not.

Clutching a handful of Wilson’s handwriting, Annabelle paused in the door of her bedroom. Callie sat waiting, eyes closed, as still as a stone, and Annabelle tried to imagine what it would be like if the Pooka wasn’t around. The terrible regret came over her, and Annabelle took a deep breath to keep herself steady.

“No tears, now,” scolded Callie, as her eyes snapped open, and she shook out her cloak. “Let’s get down to business.”

“You know, maybe I should get rid of all of them.”

“All of what?” It wasn’t often that an omniscient, supernatural creature was nonplussed.

“All of
who
. All the Exes. Yeah! Okay, wait.” Annabelle ducked back into her bedroom, and Callie heard a closet door slide open; a scrabbling sound accompanied by muffled swearing went on for a few minutes, until Annabelle emerged, triumphant, carrying a decoupaged cardboard shoebox. Sitting down in front of her altar, Annabelle shoved all the Wilson stuff to the side, and opened the box.

“I did the collage myself, of course — it’s held up pretty well. I’ve had this since I was fourteen.” She grinned up at the Pooka, whose eyebrows had risen so high they’d disappeared under its hood. “Oh my God! Look!” Annabelle held up a packet of papers tied up with a faded pink ribbon. “These are all my clippings from the local paper, of this guy that I had a crush on in high school. He was on the football team, and he didn’t know I was alive.”

She laughed as she thumbed through the cuttings. Laying them aside, she brought out a handful of photos. “Ohhhhh, man, I forgot about these!” Annabelle held up several for Callie to have a look, and the Pooka, impatient, nodded briskly. “I went down the shore with my best friend Pauline Hegarty and we met these guys and hung out with them for three weeks. It was the summer before I went to college, and … ”

She trailed off, distracted by another memory that she’d kept in this box at the bottom of her closet. “These are some of the drink tickets that Mike Phillips and I stole from the student council office. He was the president and the biggest criminal going. He broke my heart.” And yet she smiled, the pain so far in the past that she couldn’t be hurt by it. “Oh my God! I don’t
believe
it, look!”

“C’mere, chicken, you needn’t dispose of anything you have a fondness for. And I — we haven’t time to purge every single man ye’ve ever met in yer entire life!”

“Okay, okay.” Annabelle reorganized the box and decided not to replace the lid. Putting the open box before her, she chose a few things from her outgoing-Wilson pile and put them aside. She crossed her legs, and in concert, both she and Callie began to breathe.

“I’m ready.”

The sound of bells, lightly ringing, began to follow Annabelle’s breathing, and as she struggled with her wandering mind —
I’m out of milk, I need quarters for the laundry, I should post on my blog, I should post, I should post
— the gentle sound of the ringing bells, that seemed to float on a wind that was flowing through the apartment, soon replaced all that hectic thinking and Annabelle became conscious only of her breath, of Callie’s breathing, and the soothing smell of the burning incense.

“This is only simple, chicken, and up to you.” Callie’s voice, usually exasperating and abrasive, was a tender whisper in her ear. “You are the owner of the memories that are arranged before you, and you are the only one that can choose to keep them or to let them go. You are the only one with the power to reduce them to ashes, and as ashes, let the winds of change spirit them away.”

In her mind, Annabelle saw herself raise up the reminders of her old life with Wilson, saw them lift up from her upturned palms, saw them burn as gently as the incense burned, saw the ashes of the memories swirl about her, multi-colored, on the light and gentle breeze that filled her apartment, and saw them disappear out of the room, out of the window, out of her life.

She became conscious, once again, of her breath, of Callie’s breathing, of the dying smell of the floral incense, and of the light of the candles playing against her lids. The tears running down her cheeks were silent and cleansing, and she added the keepsakes she’d set aside to the other, older, no longer volatile memories that she was fond of and wanted to hold onto. She replaced the lid, and running a hand over the top of the box, looked over at Callie.