For the Love of Magic Read online

  “Yeah, I had a really great time too,” Maeve’s voice dropped. Nathalia could tell the admission was genuine.

  Aaron must have apologized for bothering her because Maeve said, “No it’s fine. I’m not really doing anything, just laying out with my best friend. What’s up?”

  Maeve’s eyes lit up. Whatever he’d suggested tempted Maeve. “Tonight? That does sound like a lot of fun. Swing dancing is something I’ve always wanted to learn.”

  Maeve chewed her fingernail. “I don’t know, Aaron. I’m flattered, really, but I don’t really date.” This man had just asked Maeve out on a date and she sounded like she wanted to say yes. “Being Vinculum Primo brings complications to a relationship that most people don’t want to deal with.”

  Nathalia whispered, “It’s a date. He didn’t ask you to marry him.” She didn’t see what the big deal was: Maeve went on dates all the time. Nathalia took the phone from her friend and said, “What time do you want to pick her up? She’ll meet you at the front gate at 6:30.” She hung up and, smiling, handed the cell back.

  Maeve whacked Nathalia with the back of her hand. “What’d you do that for?”

  Honestly, Nathalia wasn’t entirely sure what had come over her. She’d heard the longing in Maeve’s voice and acted without thinking. “You’ve been off your game since Jolie. I don’t know if it was your mark going to someone else or Sara’s failure. Go out. Have a good time. Get another match under your belt.”

  “THAT WAS delicious. Real authentic vegetarian Indian. I’m gonna have to tell the girls about it. They’d love it. Especially Jolie. We should bring her and JD here.”

  “Sure. We can make the next date a double if you want.”

  Maeve rubbed her full belly as they headed to Aaron’s black mustang and wondered why she’d eaten so much. She’d been starving after the dancing, and the food really was the most authentic Indian she’d ever tasted, but that was no excuse. Getting in the mood was going to be hard, overstuffed as they were. It had been a while since she went on an actual date with the person she was going to matchmake for. “Did you remember to pick up condoms?”

  “Wow, that was quite a jump from delicious dinner to doing the dirty.” Aaron laughed and sidestepped the question. “You certainly are straightforward, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I believe in being honest about your desires, especially where sex’s concerned.”

  Aaron reached out and took her hand in his, interlocking their fingers in a carefree manner. It felt good, but suddenly Maeve went stiff. “You can talk about sex without any embarrassment or fear, but you’re terrified to hold my hand. Why’s that?”

  “They’re two very different things. I can’t…I mean, my vows prohibit…” She struggled to find the words as her free hand went to her ribcage. How could she have gone out without her corset? How careless of her. She’d only been thinking about their swing dancing tonight and how it would hinder her movement.

  Aaron raised their interlocking hands to his chest and turned to stand facing her. “You’re right. They’re two very different things. The first subject’s safe and comfortable for you, but not for me. And hand holding’s just the opposite. Your organization’s all about this one life and making each humans one chance at existence as filled with happiness and love as possible. You help provide what lonely humans need; and right now this human needs to hold your hand after our very successful date.”

  “Why?” she whispered the question, wanting to hear more about how he needed her, but fearing the answer.

  “Just for this moment I want to really be with you, to see what it feels like to be out on a date with a beautiful woman who wants to be with me too. I want to feel that connection with another human. Is that so wrong?”

  “No, it’s not wrong for you to want that. It’s dangerous for me though. You’re right; I’m terrified to hold your hand.”

  Now it was his turn to ask, “Why?”

  His hand was so warm and oddly familiar. “Maybe because the desire to feel the connection you’re talking about could ruin my life. I can’t allow myself to become accustomed to this.”

  Now at the car, he allowed her to pull her hand from his but instead of opening her door, he turned them so that she was between him and the car. Leaning on the door, his hand beside her shoulder, he used his arm to cage her against it. He reached down with one hand, caught her chin, pulled her face up to meet his and kissed her.

  The first touch of their lips was amazing. His kiss was so tender. A true first kiss. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had one so tentative. His tongue lightly tested her receipt. She kissed him back, allowing herself that moment, and it must have encouraged him. His hand moved across her cheek to her neck. He thumbed her throat lightly and then moved to palm the nape of her neck. She tried to pull back to move on to other things, but his hand kept her clamped against his exploring mouth. She’d always loved that when a man kissed—it seemed so possessive.

  A small moan escaped her. He moved his hand down off her neck to her shoulder and then her hip. She moved closer, slipping her hands around his waist, and pressed her pelvis into his. Maeve lost all track of time as they stood making out like two teenagers.

  Maeve ended their kiss. She stayed close to him, their bodies interlocked. She traced his jaw line with her finger, looked up at him and asked, “What took you so long? I didn’t think you were ever gonna kiss me.”

  He didn’t answer out loud, but took her face in his hand once again and kissed her passionately. This time she tried hard not to get caught up in the rush of feeling, but to savor the moment, capturing all the details. Goddess knew when she’d have this again. The warmth of his body against hers, the way his sideburns felt under her fingertips, the savory spice of his mouth, the way he breathed for them both; all of it was being locked away into her memory.

  “Wow, you really like kissing.” She needed this to stop. She needed not to feel like Aaron made her feel.

  “Tonight’s been really special. I wish it never had to end.”

  Enough was enough. She didn’t have room in her life for romance. It was her turn to go for it. Time to get to work. “You know what would make it really special?” She placed her hand on his fly, rubbing and gripping until she got the physical response from him that she wanted.

  “Stop.”

  AARON SAW the change in her face. Maeve couldn’t fool him. He knew her and could recognize it. She was working now; he’d become a mark again.

  “Stop.” He grabbed her forearms, forcing her hands to her side. He looked into her eyes and saw a stranger there. “Stop it.”

  She arched her back, pressing her already erect nipples against the thin material of her lacy bra and top. “Don’t you want me?”

  He took a few steps back from her. “No, I don’t. I want Maeve. I want the girl I’ve spent all these hours with. I want Maeve that I was kissing just a minute ago. I don’t want you.”

  Maeve looked stunned. “I don’t understand. You want Maeve. You don’t want me. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. I could see it. The moment you decided to ‘work me’ you changed into a person I don’t recognize. It’s like you turned into a plastic version of yourself. It looks like Maeve and sounds like Maeve, but it’s just the ‘Sex Me Barbie’ version of Maeve. The thing about Barbies is they’re cheap and there’re millions of them. I don’t want the Sex Me Maeve. I want the real Maeve.”

  She sighed, deflated. “I can’t give you that Maeve. The best I can do is matchmake for you. The woman that comes along’ll be a better mate for you than I can.”

  Aaron ran his hand over his head, through his short hair. Then he closed the physical distance between them. “You don’t get it. I don’t want my name written in your book.” He touched her chest above her heart. “I want it written in here.”

  He reached behind her and opened the passenger door. As she slipped into his car, she said, “I’ve been ve
ry clear from the start that this’s just fun. I told you it isn’t real, more like a test drive of a car I know I can’t afford.”

  “And I was very clear from the beginning about what I wanted. I want you, Maeve. We can work out the details as we go along. But only if you quit telling me this isn’t real.” Aaron closed her door and walked around the back of his Mustang.

  Aaron could tell she was struggling with something when he got in the driver’s side. He silently started the engine and turned on the Bob Dylan CD he kept in the player. His music, so poetic and jumbled with confusion and angst, seemed appropriate for their predicament.

  As they pulled out of the parking lot, she positioned her legs so that they grazed his shifting hand. He could feel her smooth, soft skin. “So, is it far to your place?”

  “Not far.” He answered, as he glanced over at her face. She was trying to hide it, but was failing. The change had occurred and the girl he had taken on a date was gone, replaced with a plastic shell.

  “Good.” She loosened her seatbelt just a little and stretched her arm across him and laid it on his leg, dangerously close to his inseam. She began to caress closer and closer to the already tightening portion of his pants, drawing a pattern there with her nail.

  “Maeve. Don’t.”

  She did not remove her hand. “Why not?”

  “The plastic persona’s back. I’ll sleep with you, you, not her, when I’m ready and when you can honestly say that you want to make love to me too. Not a moment sooner.”

  The silence was deafening. Still she did not move her hand. “I can honestly say that I want you,” Maeve whispered. “I’ve never wanted anyone more.”

  He moved her hand back to her side of the car and rested his own on her smoothly shaved leg. He rubbed her knee with the pad of his thumb, a reward for allowing the real Maeve to come through. “Yes, but do you want to make love to me, or do you want to matchmake for me?”

  Aaron had been with her enough to analyze her behaviors. She always put on the persona when she took initiative when it came to sex. The two were connected in her mind. When she became the aggressor, she was all business. What she needed was to feel vulnerable, out of control. That might keep the magic from taking over.

  He squeezed her leg and smiled at her. If the aggressor was what she needed him to be, he could oblige.

  TUESDAYS WERE always their slowest. Marcie wasn’t sure why they were even open. Mondays they were closed, so why open on Tuesdays when no one was going to come anyway? Was two nights off a week too much to ask?

  She looked at her new husband’s back. Tank to everyone else, she called him Teddy and it made him melt even though he acted like he hated it. She’d known they were right for each other since the beginning, but when she asked Maeve to matchmake for him, she’d had her doubts that she’d be his mate. She’d prepared herself to watch him fall for another, but it’d been unnecessary.

  Marcie was an Animaverto, but had forgone her last rite. Her Primo vows were unmade. Life on the compound just wasn’t for her. The sisters never begrudged a woman who did not want to step into the inner circle. Each must travel her own path. She was always welcome to partake in ceremonies and celebrations, but she would forever be a Sophomore.

  That was fine with her. She didn’t like having visions: realistic or symbolic, poetry or prose, they all bothered her. She just wanted to dream like a normal person: lucid dreams were not fun or rejuvenating. She would take her random dreams about being in church and realizing she forgot her panties, or not being able to remember the code to her high school locker, over interpretative dreams about the future any day.

  She and Tank had a custom of smoking a doobie every Tuesday, since it was so abandoned, before clocking in to work. Tank liked to think he was pretty spontaneous, but she knew later tonight, they’d sneak into the stock room for a quickie, because of the little smoking tradition. Pot always made him horny. Marcie’s mouth was amazingly dry; she could hear her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth and the weed was making her obsess about it.

  “Teddy, I’m thirsty. Get me an apple juice?”

  “I gotta take a piss anyway. Back in a sec.” Tank walked inside to the employee restroom just inside the ticket counter. It was just as well. There was no one around anyway.

  Marcie was thinking about her contemporary, Jolie, when the van drove up. She was matched now too, but had taken her vows, and so passed Marcie. Marcie did wonder about the final mysteries, but not enough to make the sacrifice. She wondered how Jolie managed to live with the visions that must be overpowering by now.

  A bag fell over her head before she had time to scream. The darkness terrified her, but scarier was the voice that accompanied it. She’d never heard a voice so filled with hatred and malice. “My friend is weak right now, but your blood and tears will give him strength.”

  Someone jerked her hands behind her and bound them painfully tight. Marcie fell from her stool onto the hard concrete. Nobody roamed the streets, and the music boomed too loudly for anyone to hear her, but she screamed as her attacker dragged her away from the club. She couldn’t let them take her to a second location. She kicked when she heard the rubbing sound of a door sliding open on its track, but they managed to get her in the van. She tumbled across its dirty carpet then hit the metal wall on the far side.

  Someone waited for her in the back of the van. They punched her in the face to stop her screaming. Then a garbled voice, even more evil than the first, spat out like an insult, “You should have seen this coming, ignorant zonah.” The voice had an odd quality to it, like the voice of a possessed person: two voices coming from one mouth. She tried to concentrate on them both so that, in case she got free, she’d recognize them.

  The van took off and she had to concentrate on one more thing: turns. A right meant they were going to get onto the Mopac One; a left was toward the capitol building. She lay very still, but her breath and pulse raced.

  “You smell delicious. The trouble will be not killing you while I get my fill.” Large thick hands reached beneath her shirt to grope her breasts. Raking at them, he touched her nipple rings. “Did you enjoy being pierced?” He yanked them. “Like being hurt? Withstanding high levels of pain is a prerequisite for surviving with me.”

  “Get your hands off me!” she yelled.

  The mouth was close to her ear when it said, “Gladly.” He removed his hands without releasing the piercings, jerking the rings out of her nipples, tearing her tender pink skin.

  Marcie screamed. Shaking with the effort of keeping it together, she forced herself to give a brave retort, “Tank’s gonna kill you.”

  “Oh, my dearest. I cannot be killed.” Holding her shirt up he lapped at the blood dripping from her torn nipples. His tongue stung like lemon in a cut. She struggled and he straddled her legs to keep them still. Pressing her shoulders down against the floor crushed her arms beneath her. He whispered, “And when I am through hurting you, you will not even have death as a retreat from the evil inside of you.”

  The driver perked up at that, “You promised to turn me if I got you a witch. Don’t think I am going to let you forget your promise now that you’ve got her.”

  “I have lived for millennia, cretin. If I turn you so close to the full moon, they will feel it and come for us both. The only time safe from their detection is on the new moon.”

  The wheels squealed as they came to a stop. Sitting up, she let out a earsplitting scream that anyone nearby could hear. A heavy strike to the back of her head was followed by an explosive pain. The hollow clang told her it was metal. She tried to focus on something besides the ringing in her head. Turns be damned, she blacked out, but not before she felt teeth tearing at the skin of her neck.

  Marcie was gone. The police had nothing to go on. No suspects, no clues, save the one nipple ring they had found on the road.

  Tank couldn’t think straight and he had never felt this sick in all his life. He wanted to kill whoever took her, and would if he g
ot the chance. Cops always suspected the husband first. Looking the part of a brute, he lost his temper at the station when they implied he was a suspect. They were obviously useless. His blinding rage had cleared long enough for him to think: the Daughters. They had limitless money and resources and Marcie had been one of them. They would find her even if the police could not.

  He knew they were witches, and he begged them to use their magic to find Marcie. How they got the ring from the police, he’d never know, but several Daughters took it into a sealed room while he paced a great hall filled with erotic statues.

  When they came out, a giant man entered the room by a different door and stood next to Tank. The oldest of the women looked weak and pale, and she was escorted out by a balding man that reminded Tank of his high school drama teacher.

  The tall woman Tank knew to be their leader crossed over to him and placed her hand on his shoulder, forcing him to stop moving. She assured him, “Marcie’s alive. She knows that we’re coming for her; she’ll fight to stay alive. Quarters have been set up for you both to stay here while she heals.”

  He didn’t want to stay here and Marcie had chosen to live on the outside with him. She liked it better that way. He wanted to take her to the hospital and then home. Tank started to argue, but couldn’t seem to work up the courage to disagree with this powerful woman.

  “I knew you’d want to do something,” the woman said, “not just wait around.” She gestured to the giant standing next to him. “This man knows were she is and will take you to her. I want you to know that you saved her by coming to us. She’ll be here within the hour and she’ll have you to thank for it. You did well, Theodore.”

  MARCIE HAD seen them. There was no way they were going to let her live. She felt weak from the blood loss and repeated blows to the face and head. They had taken off the bag so they could see the damage they were doing. Her eyes were swollen shut and she was glad of it. She tried to hold onto Nathalia’s words of salvation, but it was nearly impossible.