Chapter Eighteen

Secret Cupboard

Veda

Back at my place, I bandaged my toes and heels in the bathroom while Salinger made nice with Hattie.

I paused for a second to see what my sudden flare of magic had done to my hair. It was getting curlier. I normally kept my hair in long ringlets. Now each tendril was turning into tight corkscrews. I wasn't doing it on purpose. What was winding me up? It couldn't be Salinger. His beautiful whispers in my ears had absolutely no effect on me. Likewise, him carrying me without a complaint or a grunt did nothing for me.

Unthinkingly, I went to meet him with a smile on my face and a bounce in my step. He still looked like a train wreck standing in the living room talking to Hattie, but he beamed when he saw me and held out his hand for me.

“We're going to the school.”

“Have her back before midnight,” Hattie called.

We crossed the street.

“Isn't it locked?” I asked as we got to the front doors. “I bet Clementine locked it.”

“I bet she did, but that didn't stop me from making a copy of June’s key before I gave it to Clementine.” He pulled out his keyring and I saw he had quite a lot of keys.

“You don't happen to have keys to the yarn shop, do you? I seriously doubt they'd miss a few balls.”

“They would,” he retorted as he opened the doors and led me inside.

“Spoilsport.” I stuck my tongue out at him as we headed down the hall.

The hidden library was lit by moonlight that shone through the skylight. Thinking about my book instead of Clementine in the cupboard, I rifled through the bookshelves. Soon, I had checked everywhere. There was only one last place to look.

“You said you found it in the cupboard?” I asked.

“Don't open that. It wasn't in there the last time I checked. Besides, Clementine is in there.”

“She'll be reading and won't notice us. My spell book could be in there.”

I pushed the painting aside and by then it was too late not to see everything. Inside, Clementine was lying on her back and there was a man in the cupboard on top of her, kissing her passionately. The couple (fortunately dressed) noticed and looked up at us.

“Hello, Salinger,” the man said, not lifting himself completely off Clementine. He was neither shy nor ashamed. His white teeth gleamed a dazzling smile, while his voice sounded husky in the dark, more like the voice of a mature man than the young man I had always envisioned Clementine to paired up with.

“Veda!” Clementine shrieked with happiness. “You'll never guess who this is!”

I bet I could, but I let her talk.

“It's the Gray Wolf. He's the author of the spell book I can't get over.”

“Hello, Ata,” Salinger said. “I didn't say you should come in my email.”

Even in the darkness, I could see the older man looked confused. “I didn't get an email from you. This is my magic and it doesn't have anything to do with you. We'll meet up later.” He looked at the door meaningfully and it swung shut on its own.

Salinger took me by the shoulders and led me out. Neither of us spoke until we were almost out of the school. “So, who is Ata?”

“Ata means father,” he said gravely.

I strolled beside Salinger and commented placidly, “Your father is the Gray Wolf? That explains where your literary talent comes from.”

“Does it?”

“How old is he?”

“Thirty-six.”

That made him sixteen when Salinger was born.

“The age difference isn't horrifying me if that's what you're wondering. I told you, she's older than she looks.”

Salinger whipped his head around. “You mean, you're okay with the fact that you just caught my father with your cousin.”

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I nodded. “It's great news. Why shouldn't it be a good match? Do you know anything about your father that would make him a bad match for Clem?”

Salinger ran a hand over his face. “I don't know. What kind of man were you hoping to snare for her? Tell me about him and I'll tell you whether my father hits the mark.”

“Well, he should be a mage.”

“He is. A famous one, too.”

“He has to be single.”

“My father has had two wives. The first one was my mother. She disappeared and my father eventually got remarried. Woman number two lasted less than a year. He's been single for the last decade. He doesn't even date.”

I wanted to ask him more about his mother who disappeared, but when he said it, I knew the words could just as easily have come out of my mouth. That was the word I always wanted to use when I spoke about my mother but hadn't known that was the word I wanted.

I clicked my tongue and continued, “He has to have a life in the real world.”

“Trust me, he does. He's a builder and an architect. His work will melt her heart, and actually, his work is supposed to melt your heart.”

“Why?”

“Because he designed the house he built for me. You know, the witchy house I'm supposed to bring my witch bride home to.”

“That is a real place?”

“Absolutely. I'll tell you about it sometime.”

Anxious to move on, I cleared my throat. “He's got to think tattoos are cool.”

“Then you're really not responsible for Clementine's tattoos?” he asked, flirting.

“I already said I wasn't. They are enchanted, but not by me.”

He paused and leaned against the wall. “What kind of enchantment?”

“She does something to them to make the lines look cleaner. Her tattoos are far prettier than the average. The colors are bolder. Anyway, it’s too late not to have them. Her magic isn’t strong enough to make them disappear entirely.”

“Is yours?”

I grumbled. “I can't juggle that many enchantments. I have one going on myself at all times for my hair, six on Fair Isle, and...”

He interrupted, “Isn't it about time you told her the truth about her piercings?”

“Uh. No. The reason I enchanted her in the first place was that I thought she was doing it for the wrong reasons. Clementine had just got her tattoos and she had this fresh amazing style. It was stupid, but she was suddenly really popular at school, and Fair Isle wanted to do something similar, but she didn't want to be exactly the same, so she got piercings instead of tattoos. I knew she was going to grow up and not want them anymore, so I gave her a way where she could have both. I just didn't want to see her make the same mistake twice.”

“What mistake?”

“When Fair Isle chose black for her color, she did so after a spell of tremendous envy of me. All the elders thought my choosing black was so responsible and appropriate. They all showered me with compliments. She wanted that too, so she picked black when she wasn’t ready and it wasn't really what was right for her.”

“What's right?”

“Red. She knows it too, but she wasn't brave enough to go through high school entirely in red, so she chose black to appear mature. She should have waited until high school was over to make the decision. Red is her color.”

“Can she change her color now?”

“Yes. I don't think the family would treat her as badly as Emi, but she would always be remembered as a flake. She doesn't want to be spoken about like that, so she wears black now and probably always will.”

“Couldn't you do something about that instead? Make everyone believe her color was always some brilliant scarlet instead of convincing everyone she has ten piercings in her head?”

I glared at him. “She is really angry at me right now. It's hard to keep my current enchantments intact. The only reason I'm able to do it at all is that there are magical artifacts involved. If she does move to British Columbia, I won't be able to maintain it. I'd love to be with her in the piercing salon when she goes to get her ears pierced for the first time. The pain will wind her. But seriously, no. I can't do anything more for her in her current state of mind.”

There was a lull in the conversation, but I pointed it where it needed to go. “I guess I'll have to wait and see what I think of your father and Clementine together. So far, I have no objections. It seems like the best thing for her, like the ending of a fairytale. A nice fairytale! The whimsical girl falls into reading a magical book, wherein she meets a man that makes her heart beat. Magically, he turns out to be real. It's like a princess kissing a frog and getting prince charming.”

Salinger stood beside me. The light of the moonlight arched through the window next to him and cast a single shadow from the window frame up the side of his face. “That was what your book did to me. Except at the end of the story, you disappeared, like Cinderella down the stairs at midnight.”

Something caught in my throat. He said disappeared. Except it wasn't his mother or my mother who was disappearing. It was me.

“Veda, the book doesn't make anyone love. People choose to love. I choose to love you. Let me.” His hand came out to touch my cheek.

On instinct, I brushed his hand away. I might still disappear.

“It serves me right. I should never have thrown my work in the garbage and expected it to stay there. The garbage is not a portal into nothingness. Someone who knows what to look for can always find it.” After I said those words, it was obvious who had taken my book, and the more I thought of it, the more sense it made. He was obsessed. He was confused. He didn’t need my permission. “Antony has my book,” I deduced, clearing my throat to remove the knots. “I have written dozens, and I don't know how many of them I have thrown away. He may have more than one.”

“More than one?” Salinger almost cursed. The apprehension that covered his face revealed that he was far more worried about the consequences than I was. I was humbled to realize, he understood what had happened to Antony far better than I did. “Well, then I guess that explains Antony.”

“What do you mean?”

“That explains why his mouth fills with saliva when you enter the room. Why he can’t stop ogling you, even when he has Pearl in his arms. He’s been chasing you around in your books, and believe me, he could have done anything with the version of you that he met in the book. I did things with Fair Isle I would never do in real life. Probably, as far as he is concerned, you two are already lovers.”

My cheeks went ashen. “I never meant for something like this to happen.”

“I’ll fix it. I’ll get the books back from him.”

“How?”

“I’ll think of a way.”