Waiting for Magic (2 page)

Kemble felt small. If his father couldn’t stop the Clan, who could? “What do we do?”

His father turned. “It’s what you do, son.”

“Me?” Panic squeezed his chest. His dismay at being relegated to the sidelines was nothing compared to the dread of having such an important, impossible task.

“Morgan said to me once that with a ritual and just the right timing, Talismans could increase our powers. What if she’s right? What if more still exist? If she gets them all, she might be invincible. Lehman Brothers and a few bad storms would be dwarfed by the things she could do to the world. I should have been working on finding them since the moment we got back from Chicago, not just hunkering down at the Breakers and thwarting a few plots.”

“If you need to find something, Michael’s your man. He’s the Finder.” Kemble found he could breathe again. Not his job. Not his imminent failure.

“He could find the Sword because the Clan discovered what it looked like.” Senior ran his fingers through his hair. “I have no idea what the other Talismans look like.” He got up to pace the conference room. “
If
they still exist. They’ve had sixteen centuries since Merlin’s day to disappear. And if we do find them, we have no idea how to use them to augment our power.” His father rounded on Kemble. “We’re totally in the dark. That’s not a place I like to be.”

Kemble got that. An Adapter could do anything, but
he had to know what to do first. It must frustrate the hell out of Senior. Still.… “You can’t think I can help here.”

His father strode forward and took Kemble’s shoulder. His grip was firm, steadying. “You may be the only one who can, son. If the Talismans are out there, someone knows about it. And these days, if knowledge exists, it’s in the virtual
universe. Nobody is better with computers than you are. You can hack anything, which means you can look everywhere.”

His father valued him? Kemble had to remind himself to breathe. It was what he’d always wanted. But that made disabusing Senior of his confidence feel even worse. “Any trace would be in old manuscripts or something.…”

His father turned and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out at Catalina again. Was he embarrassed by that moment of connection with his oldest son? “All transcribed online. You’ll get Drew to help you, of course. She’s a history major. She found the true origin of the tarot, for God’s sake.” A small smile touched his lips. “That was good work.” Then he was all business again as he turned that ice-blue gaze on Kemble. “Together, you can do this.”

Kemble chewed his lip. He could almost feel the disappointment creeping up from behind, waiting to surprise his father. Failure wouldn’t be a surprise to Kemble, of course.

“Please.”

Kemble sucked in a little breath. He wouldn’t call it a gasp. Not exactly. When had his father ever asked him to do something? He’d used the word “please” before. But there was a way to use it that was really a command, not a request. This was almost as if his father needed him.
He couldn’t refuse that, even if Senior was doomed to disappointment. “I’ll give it a shot.”

It was only a matter of life and death to the family, if what Senior said was true. And Senior didn’t feel up to tackling it himself? What chance did Kemble have?

*****

A misshapen shadow fell across Kee’s canvas. Her brush, laden with the deep teal she was using for the early November shadows under the pergola, paused in midair. The somber tone of her painting matched her mood today. She might be moving out of her Monet period. The question was, whose style was she moving into? She sighed.

“Those are going to fall off one of these days,” she said to the shadow without turning.

“You always say that,” the familiar deep voice complained. “They never do.”

She gave a reluctant smile and swiveled. In spite of his protest, Devin put his surfboard down on the lawn and hiked up the baggy, wet board shorts from hips to waist, retying the cord. The chill November wind had dried his body on the hike up from the beach, but his longish blond hair was still wet and dark. She refused to ask if he was cold. He always called the weather “brisk,” even if she was freezing. Today she’d bundled up in a turtleneck under the men’s work shirt she used as a painter’s smock, while Devin was half-naked. Salt rime left a wavy line over his tanned chest and shoulders. He had to be strong to surf the big waves and he’d worked hard at it. His muscles were sleek. Like a seal, he seemed to have been born for the water.

Kee turned herself forcibly back to her painting. Somehow the bougainvillea looked like the last bright defiance of the coming winter. She hadn’t intended to make it seem so poignant.

“You just want to give those surfer girls a thrill,” she said over her shoulder.

He snorted and plopped down on the grass. “Like I care.”

“Not for any of them?” she asked, suddenly serious.

“No.”

Her brother, with whom she’d shared everything since they were nine, had seemed, well, closed off lately. She’d thought maybe he’d finally found a girlfriend. “You’ve got to start dating.” It was inevitable. She’d been dreading it, but he had to move on. He wasn’t a boy anymore.

Everyone’s life would move on, except hers. She was like that mosquito stuck in amber for a zillion years from
Jurassic Park
. Frozen, still.

“Back at you.” Devin plopped down on the grass next to her, drew his knees up to his chest
, and looked up. People said you couldn’t really tell what brown-eyed people were thinking. She’d never understood that. Maybe it was only that they had lived practically like twins, but Devin’s eyes usually told her exactly what he was thinking. Not right now, though.

She cleared her throat but nothing came out.

Devin glanced to her canvas. “That’s good.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Different then. What’s wrong, Kee?”

She waved her brush around in the air. “Oh, you mean besides the fact that I’m stuck here at the Breakers when I wanted to be studying in Paris? Or the fact that some horrible people want to kill our family for what we are? Or that Father’s overprotectiveness is ruining our chance of having any kind of life? We’re on lockdown, waiting for an attack that hasn’t come in more than four years. That’s not living.”

“Yeah.” A tiny curve appeared at one side of his lips. “Besides that.”

Could she hide from her best friend? Her brother? Technically, some cousin, but they’d all considered him family ever since the Parents took him in after his family died. What was the use of hiding? Maybe she
’d quit wondering every morning whether it was safe to go to her volunteer gig at the museum, even with her “escort” in tow, but that was just because they’d all gotten used to being prisoners of war. The whole thing could come to an end at any moment. She might as well tell him. Live for today and all.

She looked back at her painting, feeling his presence behind her. The clouds needed to be darker to balance out the strong dark verticals of the pergola posts. A swirl of ominous
threat, just like their lives. She stabbed her brush into black and mixed a charcoal, then curved a swipe that feathered into the lighter gray of the clouds. That was better. She always seemed to paint more cohesively with Devin around. He grounded her.

“Earth calling Kee Tremaine,” Devin called, as though from a distance. “There’s a question hanging. It’s not polite to ignore people.”

Case in point: grounding. Well, she could start with the obvious answer. “Autumn, I guess. Time passing.” But that was only part of the reason she was restive.

“You’re only twenty-two, Kee,” he said softly.

“Almost twenty-three. Old enough.”

“Yeah.”

“I keep waiting for lightning to strike. That’s how Father said it happened for him with Mother.” She turned to stare at Devin. “And Tris was obsessed with Maggie from day one. Drew saw Michael on TV, for goodness’ sake, and that was it for her.” She sighed. “But lightning never strikes me. I never even meet people now that I’ve graduated, except at the museum.”

“Kemble is thirty-six, and he hasn’t found the One.”

“Which is why I think it … it may pass some of us by. Maybe I’m never going to get it.”

Devin stood up. “The only ones
living at the Breakers who will never get magic are Mr. Nakamura and me. It’s in your genes, Kee. When you find the One with genes to match, you’ll fall in love and get the power, whatever it is. Destiny.” He shrugged and looked away.

“That’s another thing,” she added darkly. “They each got a power that had to do with what they were good at.” She paused. Could she say this out loud? It was the other half of her pain. She took a breath. “What am I good at? My painting is competent, but not brilliant. ‘Not an
auspicious
talent.’ That’s what the review panel at UCLA said.” Something seemed to be sitting on her chest. “And what kind of a power would art be, anyway?”

He chuckled. “First you’re afraid you’ll never find your soul mate and get a power. Now you’re afraid it won’t be a cool power.” He grabbed the brush out of her hand and set it on the little table that held her paint box. “Come in for lunch with me before I head back out.”

When she looked mulish, he softened. “You can’t make it happen.”

“I’m not good at being patient.”

“No. So in the meantime, have fun. Be impulsive. You’re good at that. Go on a date.”

“With
paterfamilias
requiring bodyguards everywhere we go?”

“Tammy managed that prom for homeschooled kids and her date didn’t even know she had shadows. They’re discreet.”

“
I’d
know they were there,” Kee muttered. “I don’t know how you can be so patient with them trailing you all over UCLA.”

Devin shrugged. “They’re nice guys.” He chuckled. “Not overly fond of oceanography when they attend lectures with me. I think they don’t like the math part.”

“Or the botany part, or the computer modeling, probably.” Kee was amazed her surfer-boy brother was a whiz at all the things that went into his passion for the sea. Such a whiz he’d gotten a McGovern Grant to continue his studies at the graduate level. Probably the only way he would have worked on his doctorate. He was getting touchy about depending on the Parents for support. “It’s so strange to think that someday I’ll have to call you Dr. Tremaine.”

“Like you’d do that,” he snorted. The two walked into the kitchen. Devin opened the left-hand fridge and Kee sat on a stool at the bar that overlooked the food preparation area.

She could tell Devin was mulling something over.

“Kee, you can’t tell me no one’s asked you out.” Devin turned back, his arms stacked with packages of wrapped deli meats, blocks of cheese, and some tomatoes, all precariously balanced with a jar of mayo and one of mustard. “I wouldn’t believe it.”

“You’d be right.” Her sister Drew strolled in from the office wing of the Breakers.

“So who asked her out?” Devin grinned at Drew.

Kee frowned at her, for all the good it would do. Drew was not as sure of herself as she’d once been, what with her power being so difficult, but she was still an older sister. Enough said.

“The new curator at the museum.” Drew raised a supercilious eyebrow. She had their mother’s
nearly black hair except with sea-grey eyes, and of course the pale porcelain skin the Tremaine women all shared. She wore a sleek red silk jumpsuit with a wide black patent belt and a tiny black lacy sweater as a gesture to the rising wind. How did she always manage to look so nonchalant and sophisticated?

“Betrayer,” Kee muttered. She always felt either frumpy or way too flamboyant around Drew. Kee’s hair was pale in comparison, her eyes a so-so blue, even though she had the standard Tremaine good looks. She was a pale shadow of Drew’s dramatic presence. It grated. “We had coffee in the cafeteria. It wasn’t a date or anything.”

“Do you like him?” Devin asked. He seemed particularly intent on slathering mustard on the load of protein he’d stacked on his poor slice of bread.

“Yes. She likes him,” Drew answered. “Even though she only talks to him about old belt buckles. Which is why she must go out with him when he asks her out on an actual date. Which he will.…” Drew hovered over the kitchen counter. “Hmmm. Is that prosciutto?”