Daughter of the Spellcaster Read online

  Bahru frowned.

  She didn’t bother explaining. In all the years he’d spent in the States since leaving his native Pakistan, there were still a lot of American expressions that perplexed him.

  “Will you come?” he asked again.

  Lena knew she had to go. Ernst McNally was her child’s grandfather, after all. “Of course I’ll come. When is the funeral?”

  “Tomorrow at one. St. Patrick’s Cathedral, of course.”

  “Of course.” Nothing but the best for one of the richest men in the world.

  “Good.” He patted the box she was still holding. “Take good care of this. We found it in a Tibetan street vendor’s stand amid piles of worthless trinkets. Ernst believed it was special. He said it had your name written all over it, but I never knew what he meant by that.” He blinked slowly. “He would never let me touch it, never let anyone touch it. Said it was for your hands alone. Very strange. But I’ve respected his wishes and never touched it until it was time to bring it to you.”

  “Thank you, Bahru.” She was curious, but too distracted by the thought of seeing Ryan again to open the box just then. “Are you sure you won’t come in? Mom’s out, but I could make some tea—”

  “No. But I will see you soon, and perhaps...perhaps more. After.”

  It was her turn to frown. What did he mean by that?

  Turning, he walked in his fake leather moccasins through the half inch of fresh snow—there had been so little that year that winter had felt more like late fall—to the waiting car. It was a black Lincoln with a driver behind the wheel, cap and all. Probably one of Ernst’s. The billionaire-turned-spiritual-seeker had dozens of them, and whatever he had was at his personal guru’s disposal.

  Ryan wasn’t likely to let that continue. He’d always thought the former guru-to-the-stars was a con artist, out to scam his father at his weakest moment, right after the untimely death of Ryan’s mother twenty years ago. But Bahru had been at Ernst’s side ever since, guiding him in a quest for understanding that had taken him to the far corners of the world. His businesses had been left in the hands of their boards of directors. And his son in the hands of boarding schools and nannies.

  She wondered if Ernst had ever found what he’d been looking for, then decided he probably had now. Bahru eased his long limbs into the backseat, pulling the tail of the sari in behind him and closing the door. The car rolled away through the snow, and Lena stepped back and closed out the cold at last.

  She was going back to Manhattan. She was going to see him again. Ryan McNally. The father of her unborn baby. The man she had once believed to be the handsome prince of her childhood fantasies come to life. Carrying the wooden box with her, she all but sleep-walked to the rattan rocking chair in front of the stacked stone fireplace that was one of her favorite parts of the house, even though it was old and had gaps where the mortar had fallen away. It was comforting, and she loved it. She sank into the chair and started rocking, memories flooding her mind.

  * * *

  She remembered the day she had first set eyes on her long-lost prince—other than in the face of her mother’s magic mirror, and her childhood dreams, and the stories she had created out of them in construction paper and crayons. She’d taken one look at him and the impossible visions of her childhood had all come rushing back.

  She had been completely at peace, loved her life, her job at a PR firm in New York City, where she made scads of money, and her pricey Manhattan apartment. Her practice of the Craft had matured. As she’d grown up, she had come to understand that magic was more about creative visualization and positive belief than flashes of light and sparkles. Her imaginary sister-friend Lilia had stopped showing up somewhere around the middle of fourth grade, as near as she could pin it.

  It was all good. Or she thought it was. And yeah, she’d probably been skating, pretending there was nothing underneath the ice but more ice, ignoring the stuff she’d pushed down there, the stuff she’d frozen out. The undeniable experience of real magic. Those visions of past lives that had been so vivid and convincing at the time. Lilia, the chalice...the curse. A little girl with a witch for a mom and a huge imagination, that was all it was.

  Only it wasn’t.

  She’d managed to deny every last bit of it until the night she met Ryan McNally. Her handsome prince, right down to the roots of his hair.

  She’d been handed his father’s account—temporarily, of course, while Bennet, Clarkson & Tate’s senior partner, Bill Bennet, was recovering from a triple bypass. Timing was everything. Ernst McNally, billionaire, philanthropist, world traveler and spiritual seeker, had been named Now Magazine’s Man of the Year and would receive the honor officially at a posh reception at the Waldorf Astoria. The other partners were booked, and Ernst was an important client. Lena was tapped to be the firm’s stand-in, and she didn’t kid herself by pretending it wasn’t because, of all the younger associates, she would look best in a halter dress. It went against her grain, but she wasn’t confrontational and she wasn’t an activist. She figured she would use the opportunity to show them she was worthy by doing a bang-up job. Instead, she had pretty much proved the opposite by getting pregnant by the client’s son, but that was getting ahead of the story a little.

  That night changed her life forever. It was not only the night she had met the father of her baby, it was the night her imaginary childhood friend had returned as big as life and nearly given her heart failure. The night...she had learned that there might be a little bit more to magic than she had come to believe.

  Either that, or that a high-pressure job in the big city was a little more stressful than she was equipped to handle.

  * * *

  “Lena?”

  She had no idea how long she’d been sitting in front of the crackling fireplace, staring into the flames. But when she heard her mom’s voice, she brought her head up fast. Selma was standing there looking down at her, frowning. Her glorious red hair was shorter these days, and a few strands of gray dulled its old vibrancy a little. She still wore the big gaudy jewelry and jewel-toned, free-flowing kaftans, though.

  Captains, Lena thought, smiling at her inner witchling.

  “Are you okay?” her mother asked.

  “I... Ernst McNally is dead.”

  Her mother’s hand flew to her chest. “Oh, honey—I’m so sorry, I know you cared for him. How did you hear? Did someone call?”

  “Bahru came by.”

  “Bahru?” Selma blinked her surprise, turning back toward the big oak door she’d just come through. “He was here?”

  “Yeah. Showed up in a big Lincoln with one of Ernst’s drivers at the wheel. I tried to get him to stay, but he was in a rush to leave.”

  “I wish I’d seen him,” her mother said.

  Lena sighed, recalling how much her mother and Bahru had seemed to enjoy bickering over tea recipes. Mom was a top-notch herbal-tea maker. Bahru was no slouch. But that was before...

  “He says I’m named in the will, or the baby is, or something. Anyway. The funeral’s tomorrow. He made me promise that I’d be there.”

  Selma’s still-auburn eyebrows pressed against each other. “Do you think that’s wise, honey? To travel that far, this late in the pregnancy?”

  “It’s only a few hours’ drive. I can handle that.”

  “It’s not just the drive I’m worried about. He’ll be there. Can you handle that?”

  She meant Ryan. Of course. “I’m sure I can. I knew this day would come, Mom. I have to face him sooner or later. He has a right to know.”

  “You could tell him later. After the baby’s here.”

  “Keeping it from him this long was wrong. And you know it. And I know you know it, because you’re the one who raised me never to lie.”

  “You didn’t lie to him.”

  “And you’
re also the one who taught me that omissions of this magnitude are the same things as lies.”

  Selma pressed her lips together. “Damn thorough, wasn’t I?” She ran a hand over Lena’s hair. “You sure you can handle him?”

  “I’m sure.” So why did she feel compelled to avert her eyes when she said it? Lena wondered.

  “Okay, if that’s what you want to do. You want me to go with?”

  “Mom, I’m not six.”

  Selma smiled and nodded, her spiral curls—even tighter than Lena’s longer, looser waves—bouncing with the motion. “What’s that you have there?” she asked, nodding at the box in Lena’s lap.

  “I don’t know. Bahru said Ernst wanted me to have it.” Lena stroked the box. “I got lost in thought and forgot about it.”

  “Memories?”

  Lena nodded and tried to ignore the hot moisture in her eyes.

  “You really loved him a lot. It hurts. I know, honey.”

  She wasn’t talking about Ernst, but that didn’t need to be said. They both knew what she meant. Flipping open the tiny latch, Lena lifted the lid as her mother leaned over her from behind.

  An old, very tarnished chalice lay inside the box, nestled in a red-velvet-lined mold that fit its shape perfectly. Frowning, she lifted it out, held it up, turning it slowly so she could see the dull stones embedded around the outer rim.

  “I think that’s silver,” her mother said. She hustled to the kitchen, and returned with a bottle of tarnish remover and a soft cloth. Then she took the chalice and went to work. Leaning forward in her chair, Lena watched the tarnish being rubbed away, the heavy silver gleaming through. Her mother sat down in the matching rocker on the other side of the fireplace, rubbing and scrubbing and polishing. “It’s real silver, all right. Heavy. It must be worth a small fortune. Where on earth did he get this?”

  “A street vendor in Tibet. Bahru said the stand was mostly junk, with this just mixed in with all the rest. He said Ernst took one look at it and knew it was meant for me.”

  Her mother sighed. “Never knew a rich guy as decent as that one.” And then she paused and held the chalice up. The firelight made it gleam and wink in what Lena now saw were semiprecious gemstones: amethyst, topaz, citrine, quartz, peridot, three others that she thought might be a ruby, an emerald and a blue sapphire.

  “It’s old,” her mother said. “And if these stones are as real as this silver is, and I think they are—I know my rocks—”

  “I know you do.” Most of the jewelry her mother wore, she had made herself.

  “Lena, this cup could be worth thousands. Maybe tens of thousands.”

  “It’s worth a lot more than that,” Lena said very softly.

  Her mother frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Remember when I was little, Mom? My first attempt at scrying? The vision I had?”

  “The one where you saw your handsome prince. The one you later thought looked just like Ryan.”

  “Didn’t look like him. Was him.” She reached for the cup, and her mother handed it to her. “And do you remember the cup I saw in that vision? The one I described to you?”

  Selma seemed to search her daughter’s eyes. “Lena, you don’t think—wait. Just wait here, I’ll be right back.” She was out of her chair and up the stairs, heading, Lena had no doubt, to their temple room on the second floor, where they kept their altar and all their witch things. Herbs, oils, books. It was their own sacred space. The house’s chapel, so to speak. Lena studied the cup while she was gone, wondering what on earth all this could mean.

  Her mother returned, a Book of Shadows in her hand. An old one. Goddess knew they had filled many over the years, Selma more than Lena, of course. She was flipping pages as she walked. “I remember, I had you draw what you’d seen. You were only eight, but—here. Here it is.” She came to a standstill in front of Lena’s rocker, blinking down at the page, and when she looked up again there was no more doubt in her eyes. Just astonishment.

  Turning the book toward Lena, Selma showed her what her eight-year-old hands had drawn in crayon. The shape was the same, the color—well, she’d used the crayon marked “silver,” though what resulted was a pale shade of gray. But most interesting were the gemstones, because they were each a different color and a different shape.

  And they matched the ones on the cup.

  “They’re even in the same order, at least the ones that show,” her mother whispered, staring at her as if she’d never seen her before. “My Goddess, Lena, it wasn’t your imagination. It was a true vision you received that day.”

  “Looks like,” Lena said. “The question now is—what the heck does it all mean?”

  “I don’t know.” Selma moved closer, hugging her. “I don’t know, baby. But we’ll figure it out.”

  That’s what I’m afraid of, Lena thought.

  * * *

  Ryan McNally sat in the front pew, and felt small and insignificant inside the magnificent cathedral. But it was fitting that his father be memorialized here. He’d been bigger than life, too. Until his wife’s death had brought him to his knees.

  When his mother died, Ryan thought, the best part of his father had died with her. He’d loved her so much that losing her had all but demolished him. Ryan had been eleven, and even then he’d known he would never let that happen to him.

  He was seated near several of his father’s closest friends—old men, all of them—and Bahru, who had added a black sash to his red robes today, and who looked as if he’d been crying. His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, his cheeks even more hollow than usual.

  Seeing the old guru like that almost made Ryan rethink his twenty-year belief that the man was nothing but a con. But only until he reminded himself that Bahru had spent a lot of time around actors, prior to latching on to a broken and grieving widower. He’d probably learned a few tricks of the trade, like tears on demand.

  Ryan had to give the eulogy. He’d spent a lot of time on it, yet when the priest nodded at him to come up, he found his knees were locked and he couldn’t quite force himself to move.

  Bahru put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said. “I promise you, it’s all right.”

  He didn’t like or trust the man, even resented him—and yeah, that was mostly because Bahru had been closer to his father than Ryan had been himself. Not Bahru’s fault, though. “Of course it is.”

  “Would it help to focus your mind elsewhere?”

  “Not much could accomplish that today, Bahru.”

  Bahru met his eyes. “Magdalena is here.”

  He could have sucker punched him in the gut, Ryan thought, and it wouldn’t have distracted him more. Lena had come. He hadn’t thought she would. He’d figured she would send flowers, maybe call, but he hadn’t expected her to come.

  He rose easily, moving up to the front, taking his place at the podium and scanning the magnificent cathedral from a brand new angle. The stained glass, the architecture, the statues—the place was more beautiful than a museum, and it touched him. Beautiful things always did, especially art and architecture.

  The sacred place was filled to capacity. No press—they’d been asked to remain outside, where the hearse was waiting and the black stretch limos were lined up around the block.

  That thought drew his gaze to the fabric-draped coffin that held his father’s remains. And suddenly his throat closed up so tightly that he didn’t think he would be able to force a word through. His father was inside that box. His father. Lifeless. So hard to believe. He was suddenly awash in regret that his old man’s time had run out. He supposed he had always expected they would make things right between the two of them again before it came to this. And now...now he was just gone. Hell.

  Someone cleared their throat, and he lifted his head and looked out over the somber crowd, tak
ing in the men in their black suits, the black dresses and even hats on the older women. White tissues flashed like flags here and there. Sniffles and clearing throats echoed from one direction and then another. People he knew, people he didn’t want to know. A few genuine tears, more phony ones. But even with all of that, his eyes found hers without trying. He looked up and right into them. They were wet, and her tears were genuine. She was genuine. Had been all along, but he’d ruined it. Somehow. She was in a pew toward the back, probably hoping to make a quick exit without running into him. But she was staring right at him, and he got lost in her eyes for a second as their gazes locked. He felt her sympathy, her caring, and wondered yet again why the hell she’d left him. Certainly not because he hadn’t been ready to offer her forever after only six weeks. She wasn’t that unreasonable. She wasn’t unreasonable at all.

  Or hadn’t been—until that day.

  She gave him a sad half smile and a “go ahead, you can do this” nod. He realized that he could, and began. He read his speech with very little emotion, talked about his father’s generous contributions to various causes over the years, the people he’d helped, the jobs he’d created. And then he stopped and shook his head, looked up from his notes and blinked back the first tears he’d shed since he’d heard the news.

  “You know, I’ve always believed that most of my father died twenty years ago when his beloved wife, my beautiful mother, was taken from us by a drunk driver. He gave up everything after that. His businesses, his friends...his son. I don’t blame him. Her death destroyed him. And ever since she left us, my father has been on a spiritual quest, traveling the world with Bahru by his side, trying to find the answer to one question. Why?”

  He closed his eyes momentarily to compose himself, then nodded and went on. “I’m not a religious man. But I don’t think it ends like this. I would like to think my father is finally getting the answer to that question. And I don’t think we should be sad about that. Because I want to believe he’s getting it straight from my mother.”