Tami Hoag - Magic

“The magic word,” Rachel parroted flatly. She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot in mock impatience.

“Marshmallows!” he intoned dramatically, and tapped the brim of the hat three times with the fingers of his left hand. This time he reached inside, and when he withdrew his hand, he was holding a brooch of intricately worked silver filigree set with a translucent stone of deep purple.

Rachel’s mouth dropped open as he handed it to her. It was an exquisite thing that looked to be very old and very valuable. The stone gleamed as it caught the morning light that streamed in through the window.

“Bryan, it’s beautiful,” she whispered reverently. “Where did you find it?”

“In my hat. Jeez, Rachel, I think your memory is worse than mine.”

“Really,” she insisted, fingering the brooch lovingly. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Is it an heirloom or something?”

He cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable. “I came across it in a country that frowns on exporting such things. You’re probably better off not knowing.”

She gave him a suspicious look, wondering, not for the first time, just who Bryan Hennessy really was.

“Legend has it that when a man gives this brooch to the lady of his heart, shell love him into eternity,” he said, taking the gift from her and pinning it carefully to the throat of her prim blouse. The stone picked up and intensified the color of her eyes, making Bryan’s breath catch. A crooked, self-deprecating smile tugged up one corner of his mouth. “It’s a custom also known as hedging your bets.”

“Thank you,” Rachel whispered, smiling at him. She rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek. Practically in the blink of an eye he had lifted her mood out of the doldrums. He was amazing and wonderful, and if she could tell him nothing else, she could at least tell him that. “What an extraordinarily sweet, bizarre man you are.”

Remarkably, he blushed, and Rachel’s heart swelled a little more with love for him. Grinning, she plunked his magic hat upon his head, grabbed his hand, and pulled him toward the door.

“Come on, Hennessy. Let’s go get some breakfast. I’m starved.”

“What’s your hurry?” Bryan asked, patting her bottom with a loving hand. “Ants in your pants?”

“Very funny.”

They sauntered down the grand staircase together, hand in hand, smiling at each other the way only lovers do, arguing amicably over how they would spend the day. Rachel insisted there was no time for anything other than marking prices on the antiques that would be offered at the tag sale in two days. Bryan insisted there was more than enough time for a stroll along the beach. But as they neared the kitchen, he broke off in mid-rebuttal and held a finger to his lips, suddenly alert to something going on in the next room. Together they inched toward the door, listening.

“You’re a meddling, bone-headed Democrat, Wimsey,” Addie said. “Just keep that long nose of yours out of my affairs. I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody.”

There was silence then. Bryan held his breath as he tried to tune in, hoping for anything-a sigh, a vibration in the air, anything.

“Keep your opinions to yourself, you blithering British idiot,” Addie snapped.

The rattling of pots and pans blocked out whatever response she might have gotten, and Bryan frowned in frustration. Rachel rolled her eyes in impatience.

“She’s just talking to herself,” she insisted in a harsh whisper.

Bryan ground his teeth. If only he had enough equipment to monitor every room in the blasted house. He had chosen to concentrate on the study and the foyer. Of course, Rachel wouldn’t have believed Wimsey was in the kitchen if the ghost had walked up to her and kissed her on the nose.

“This is ridiculous,” Rachel muttered. “Every sensible person knows there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

As soon as the last word left her mouth, the kitchen door swung inward so quickly neither of them had a chance to brace themselves, and they both went sprawling across the cracked linoleum. On the far side of the room Addie stood staring at them, a gray cloud billowing around her.

Bryan’s eyes widened at the sight. “An apparition,” he whispered.

“Apparition nothing,” Rachel said, clambering to her feet. “The kitchen’s on fire!”

Smoke rolled out of the old cookstove, an appliance that hadn’t seen action since Thomas Edison was in short pants. Rachel grabbed her mother’s hand and jerked her away from the thing while Bryan, who had scrambled to his feet, grabbed the fire extinguisher and blasted the blaze with white foam.

“Hennessy! You’re ruining my eggs!”

“Mother,” Rachel said between her teeth, “you were ruining the house. That stove doesn’t work.”

“Of course I know that,” Addie grumbled, but there was uncertainty in her eyes as she looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time.

“You should have waited for us to come down,” Rachel said, her temper rising like steam in a pressure cooker. Why couldn’t Addie accept her help? Was she going to cling to that damned stubborn pride of hers until she burned the house down around them?

Addie bristled like a cat. “I don’t take orders from you, missy!”

She hauled back to punch Rachel on the arm, but Bryan caught her fist in his hand and pulled her into his arms.

“Come on, beautiful. Let’s go dance in the fresh air while Cinderella cleans up the kitchen. Maybe we’ll run into Wimsey.”

“Pompous, presumptuous pinhead,” Addie said with a snarl, though it wasn’t clear whether she was referring to her invisible friend or to Bryan. She dug the heels of her rubber boots into the floor and gave him an amazed look. “Why on earth are you wearing that ridiculous hat?”

“There’s a rabbit in it,” Bryan said, coaxing her toward the door as Rachel began flinging pots off the stove in a rage. “I thought you might want hasenpfeffer for breakfast.”

“You’re an idiot, Hennessy,” Addie declared, but followed him out of the room nevertheless.

“I’ll second that,” Rachel grumbled, poking at the debris inside the cookstove with a tongs. “Ghosts. What intelligent man with degrees from two major universities believes in ghosts? What intelligent woman falls in love with a man who believes in ghosts? Ghosts. The man must have been hit over the head with something when he was young.”

She bent over to look inside the oven, and an enamel pot tipped off the cooking surface and bounced off her skull. She stared at the pot as it rolled across the floor, sure she had knocked it over during her initial burst of fury. Dismissing it, she turned her attention to the mess her mother had made.

“Oh, no…” she said on a long groan.

With her tongs she fished out a stack of half-burned mail. She flipped through the ruined envelopes, her heart sinking. Bills. Bills that had never been opened. Bills that had certainly never been paid. She bent over again and tugged out another long envelope, this one only slightly charred, and her heart dropped from low to the pit of her stomach, where it lay like a rock.

“Ooooh, noooo…”

“What is it?” Bryan asked, returning to the kitchen without his dancing partner.

In a daze, Rachel handed him the envelope. “Yon know how you keep saying something will turn up? Something just did.”

Bryan took the letter out, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and began to read to himself. He paled a bit beneath his tan and handed the piece of stationery back to Rachel, muttering, “Oh, no…”

Feeling as if all her bones were dissolving, Rachel sank down on a chair at the kitchen table and stared across the room in a trance. It wasn’t the first time she had seen a letter like this one. It was, however, the first time she had felt dizzy because of it.