The Lingering Grace (25 page)

I will fix her
, she swore.

Her mom hugged her even more tightly, then let her go. “I wish you could, too. But,” she said, reaching for the coffee pot, “it will be okay. We’ll get through it.”

She stood at the sink, watching the pot fill. Alice wasn’t sure if it was just the light, but her mom looked especially tired this morning—nothing like the radiantly healthy woman who had rushed out the door to greet her yesterday.

“We’ll have to be flexible. Things will have to change,” her mom continued softly, as though speaking to herself. She looked at the pot, then up at Alice. “Do you want some, hon?”

“Coffee?” Alice asked as though this were an entirely foreign concept.

“Haven’t I made you coffee before?”

“No. Never,” Alice answered, shocked. Now that her mom
was
offering her coffee, she wasn’t sure how to react. On the one hand, it
would
be nice not to worry about her mom finding out how much money she spent at coffee shops. On the other hand, her mom was offering her coffee like a grown-up—an equal—and it was unsettling. Alice felt more adult and yet far less secure.

“Oh?” Her mom’s brow furrowed; she looked genuinely surprised. She shook her head and added a few more inches of water to the kettle. “Well, you’re old enough now. And as I was saying … things change.”

Alice agreed. Things change. Quickly, brutally, and unexpectedly—things change.

Alice pulled Tony to her the minute she got into the car. They kissed for an embarrassingly long time before she realized her mom was still watching from the door. Blushing, she pulled away and waved at her mom.

“Good morning to you too,” Tony said, running a hand through her hair. Then he spotted her mom and turned very red. Waving sheepishly, he put the car into gear and sped away.

“Did I do something to deserve that?” he asked when they were a few streets away.

“Deserve what?” Alice asked, playing dumb.

He poked her leg playfully. “You’re right—it was nothing. You’ve never been able to keep your hands off me.”

“As if!” she laughed, pushing his hand away. “I think you’ve got it backward.”

He shrugged and wagged his eyebrows.

“Fine,” she sighed. “I just … missed you.”

“Missed me?”

“I’m allowed to miss you. We usually hang out after school, but we didn’t get to yesterday or the day before. So I was glad to see you.”

“I should disappear more often,” he said with a grin.

“Don’t you dare!” she said. “What have you been up to anyway?”

He straightened and cleared his throat; in about two seconds he went from smiling to deadly serious. “Do you remember what I told you yesterday? About what I’m planning?”

“Yes,” she lied. Then, sighing, she admitted, “No.”

“I thought you might not. No offense, but you were a little out of it. Was something wrong?”

Alice fidgeted with her seatbelt. She wanted to tell Tony what was going on. She
needed
to tell him. And yet she couldn’t seem to find the words. “You go first,” she said at last. “What is this great plan?”

“Okay,” he said, shooting her a concerned glance. “Well, I realized what Danny’s weakness is: He gets so caught up in what he’s doing
now
that he forgets that he still has restrictions from what he’s done
before.
For instance, he still has a restraining order—he’s not allowed within 500 feet of Marcella’s house. But he never thinks about it.”

“Does she even live here anymore?”

“Yeah, she’s living with her parents right now. She goes to UC Berkeley.”

“You still know her?” Alice was surprised. If it had been her, she wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with her kidnapper’s family.

“I know Sofi,” he explained. “We’re not
best
friends, but we still say hi occasionally at school.”

“Oh,” said Alice. She wanted to ask more about this Sofi. If Marcella was so gorgeous, her little sister must at least be attractive. A little flare of jealousy made Alice squirm; the very thought of Tony saying hi to a Brazilian model’s daughter set her teeth on edge
. Tony and a beautiful
brunette, kissing all over school
…
She shook her head, but couldn’t shake away the picture.

“Anyway,” he said, totally oblivious to the rabbit hole this information had sent Alice down, “I realized that if I can make him do something careless, I might be able to use that information against him. So I’m going to get him to break his restraining order.”

Alice was imagining Sofi’s eyes (she pictured them languid, light brown, and seductive), but this captured her attention. “Wait, what? You want to get him thrown back in jail?”

“No, no!” Tony protested, “I don’t
want
him to get sent back there. I just want to have something to bargain with. I need a good ‘or else’—you know, so I can convince him to leave you alone.”

Alice was a little relieved. She didn’t love the guy, but she didn’t want Danny getting thrown back in jail because of her. Nor did she want Tony to do that to his own brother.

“You think that will work?” she asked, wondering if that would really be enough to restrain Danny from doing exactly as he pleased.

Tony deflated. “Oh,” he said. “You don’t like it?”

He gave a little shrug as if to suggest that it really wasn’t a big deal, but Alice could tell that he was disappointed that she hadn’t been more impressed. He’d clearly been working on this for quite a while now.

“No!” she assured him, “No, I didn’t mean that at all. I just meant … I was just wondering how you’re going to get Danny near Marcella’s house. Won’t he be suspicious?”

Tony perked up immediately and said with evident pride, “That’s the genius part. I’m posing as one of the Seekers. I’ve been spending a lot of time over the past couple days working on my online presence. I made contact with him yesterday—said I wanted to make him an offer. I’ll get him to come to the park, snap a few pictures, then blackmail him anonymously. He won’t know he violated the restraining order until it’s too late.”

This plan suddenly sounded a lot more dangerous. How would the Seekers react to an outsider infiltrating their organization? Alice remembered her vision. Would the Seekers hunt down Tony if they found out? Her heart started racing as she remembered his limp body. She could still smell the blood, remember how cold his shoulder had been when she touched him …

She put her hand on his arm—his warm arm.

“You’ve got to be careful,” she begged. “Your brother will be furious if he finds out it’s you. Maybe—maybe you shouldn’t do it. I mean, it’s a lot of ‘if’s, don’t you think? There’s a lot that could go wrong. Maybe you should just use your forum identity to keep an eye on him, make sure he’s not going to do anything crazy. And if he is … we can deal with it then.”

The car slowed down and he looked at her. His eyebrows furrowed, then he shook his head and said, “I’ll …” he gave her a slight thoughtful frown, “I’ll think about it.”

“Thanks,” she said. She would much rather risk looking a little overprotective now than regret keeping quiet later. Still, Tony had been swayed too easily for comfort. Alice suspected he might be agreeing to “think about it” just to calm her down. Whether he had any intention of changing his plan was a totally different issue.

She was going to have to keep a close eye on him. Not being able to trust him completely was uncomfortable, but she wasn’t about to be taken for a fool.

They pulled into the school parking lot and Alice grabbed her backpack.

“Quick—tell me your news,” Tony said.

“My news?”

“You were going to tell me something.”

“Oh, that.” She gulped. Tony stopped the car in the carpool drop-off lane. Alice reached for the door. “You know, maybe another time—it’s too long to explain right now.”

“Ok. I’m not going to let you forget, though.”

He leaned in and kissed her. She ran her hand through his curly hair but thought she felt something wet and pulled away with a scream. Her hands were clean—it was just water—but for a second she had been sure she felt blood. The graveyard flashed before her eyes again. The tombstones …

Tony grabbed her hand, “What’s wrong?”

“Did you just take a shower?”

“I took one this morning,” he said, looking simultaneously puzzled and worried. “Like most people do …”

“Oh,” she said. “I … I see … I just … never mind. It’s nothing.”

Grabbing her backpack, she hurried out of the car. As she walked into school, she wiped her hand on her jeans over and over again. The trace of water was long gone, but the vision was impossible to forget.

Eva was all too eager to come over after school when Alice suggested a sleepover. As nervous as she was after yesterday’s accident, Alice also knew she couldn’t put this off when her mom’s happiness might depend on Eva’s help. Alice couldn’t let her endure that surgery if she didn’t have to. They dropped by Eva’s house after school so she could grab a few overnight things (Alice, avoiding Eva’s mom, stayed in the car), and an hour later they were in Alice’s room discussing how best to make a spell from scratch.

Eva had already learned from some witch in Australia that cobbling together parts of other spells was more effective than trying to compose one from scratch, but she tried to write a simple levitation spell anyway for the sake of being thorough. It was a total non-starter. They both tried it on pens, paper clips, and pieces of paper, but, after a sticky note refused to budge Eva declared the experiment a bust.

“Magic takes confidence and I can’t be confident in something I just made up,” she said. “Writing spells isn’t going to work.”

Alice was having the same problem. Reading Eva’s words off of crumpled notebook paper just didn’t have the same power as reading old incantations from a musty, yellowed book.

“I don’t see why the words make such a difference,” Alice said.

Eva shrugged. She grabbed her spell, crumpled the piece of paper, and threw it at the wall. “They probably don’t. But I can’t believe them. I can’t connect to anything. I don’t feel any power.”

“Neither do I,” Alice admitted. “Hasn’t anyone on your Wicca forum managed to write a working spell?”

Eva started paging through her spellbook again. “I don’t know. It’s not always clear how much people have stolen from other spells and how much they’ve made up. I get the feeling most of the ‘original’ spells are just bits of older spells that people have thrown together in a new way. They’re more compositors than composers.”

“So maybe it is the words after all.”

“Only one way to find out,” Eva sighed. “We might as well try something easy first … ” She flipped to the beginning of the book and thumbed through a few pages. A moment later she stopped and looked around the room; her eyes came to rest on a woeful-looking miniature rose bush, casually dying on Alice’s windowsill. Its gnarled, leafless branches pressed against the window, as though frozen in a futile escape attempt.

“It’s perfect,” said Eva, jumping to her feet.

That wasn’t exactly what had been going through Alice’s mind. She’d been wishing she had thrown the thing away weeks ago. Her mom bought it for Alice ages ago when she was on that feng shui kick. For a few weeks, they had to have at least one living plant in each room. Unfortunately, her mom wasn’t much of a gardener, and now they had plant carcasses scattered throughout the house—ugly brown eyesores that everyone ignored.

“Is there a spell that needs dead plants?” Alice asked.

Eva picked up the pot and cradled it in the crook of her arm. “I’m sure. But I just want to experiment on this little guy. You don’t mind?” she asked.

“No, but thanks for asking.”

At least they’d made progress since the earring disagreement.

“What are you going to do to it?” Alice asked as Eva sat down and positioned the plant in front of her. It was gray and spindly; unless Eva was planning to set it on fire, Alice didn’t understand what use it could possibly be to her.

Eva was busily copying a few lines out of the old spellbook, keeping her place in Alice’s library book with her foot.