To Love A Witch

Chapter 6

  

Romy sat at a table with the menu up in front of her face and stewed. She was humiliated and hungry, and that was a bad combination.
“The lasagna’s good,” Jake said. “Or the ravioli, or pretty much anything except the eggplant thingie.”
The waitress who had just strolled over whacked him on the head with a menu. “Just because you don’t like vegetables, mio caro, doesn’t mean my Franco’s eggplant parmesan isn’t out of this world.”
Jake grinned. “Tomatoes are vegetables. I like those.”
“Fine, I’ll bring you a bowl of tomato sauce.”
“Put some spaghetti under it, and I’ll be a happy man. Romy, this is Carla, the owner of this fine establishment. Carla, this is Romy, a new friend of mine.”
Carla winked at Romy. “Collecting pretty women again, is he?”
Romy rolled her eyes. “I’m hard to collect. What’s good tonight?”
“Everything, bella, but the manicotti is better than sex.” She leaned in. “And when the same man can give you both, you should lock him up and swallow the key.”
Then she whacked Jake on the head again. “See—you’ll never get one of these lovely girls to keep you unless you learn how to cook.”
Romy laughed as Carla walked away. “She’s quite the character.”
“You should meet her husband, Franco. Looks like he played a bit part in the Godfather, but he’s a magician in the kitchen.”
“The witchy kind of magician?” Romy spoke around an unbelievably good bread roll.
Jake shook his head and swiped half her roll. “Nope, just garden variety culinary genius. Carla’s the witch; Franco still insists she must have nabbed him with a love potion. They lived in New York until a year ago, and then moved out here for the warm weather and the grandkids. Franco’s cooking is one of the reasons I agreed to take this zone for Sentinel.”
Romy cast a cautious glance around. A covert witch organization was the last thing she wanted to be talking about in a public place.
“Relax,” Jake said. “One bite of Franco’s cooking and no one will notice if you danced naked on the tables.”
“You first.”
Jake sighed. “As much fun as that would be, Carla would probably banish me, and then I wouldn’t get any spaghetti. She’s strict like that.”
Romy told the tingles in her belly to settle down. Why did she always go for the bad boys with a sense of humor? This one had tried to kidnap her, for cripes sake. She needed to work on some higher standards.
“Sounds like she runs a tight ship.” Romy snagged another roll.
He laughed. “Just you wait until after dinner when she gets started on you.”
“Why me? I’m not the one threatening to dance naked in her fine restaurant.”
Jake suddenly looked very serious. “She’s one of Sentinel’s mentors. Without the royal screw-up in this zone, you’d have been matched with someone like her years ago—someone who could help you access your magic and control it.”
Her control had been fine for years, until some he-man had tried a witch snatch-and-run. “I don’t want to access my magic; I want it to go away.”
“Why?”
She could feel her teeth clench at the gentleness in his voice. “Because all it’s ever done is send my life up in flames.”
“Yeah, I get that. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”
She was an actress, dammit. No one got to churn up her insides this way unless she meant for it to happen. Time to change the script.
“So, tell me about the screw-ups in this zone. Why did I get left to rot in juvie? Sounds like this organization you work for isn’t very competent.”
Carla slid a plate of manicotti in front of her. The smell alone could have made her beg. “When you’re done eating this, you come see me. We’ll talk about that magic of yours.” She walked off before Romy could say anything.
Jake motioned to her plate. “Try it.”
Carla was right. It was better than sex. When she opened her eyes, Jake held out a forkful of spaghetti. “Now try this. My mama’s been trying to replicate Franco’s tomato sauce for twenty years, and she’s nowhere close.”
Actresses could always use potent experiences to help trigger emotions onstage. The next time she needed tears on command, she’d just imagine someone snatching her plate away before the next bite. Food filled your belly—this was going to fill her soul.
And wow, that was waxing far too lyrical over some noodles. Even deliriously good ones.
“So back to the fun stuff. Let me guess. The system screwed up, a kid or two fell through the cracks, and you’re here to make sure it never happens again.”
Jake grimaced. “Unfortunately, it’s worse than that. The system royally screwed up, a lot of kids fell through the cracks, and thanks to the sexist jerk who monitored this zone for forty years, they were almost all girls.”
Romy put down her fork slowly. She’d designed a special place in hell for people who preyed on defenseless girls. “How many?”
“Over eighty.”
“And what happened to these girls?”
Jake’s face got mean and hard, which caused more odd tingles in her belly. “Most of them didn’t turn out as well as you did. Quite a few died young. Too many turned to drugs, probably trying to make the magic go away, or at least tune it out. One’s doing twenty-to-life in California. A couple are married with kids and seem pretty happy.”
“Wait. You know what happened to each of them?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I did a little digging. I figured the least Sentinel could do was try to clean up some of the wreckage. There’s a lawyer heading to California tomorrow; we’ll try to get the woman there out on time served. Most of the rest will be assigned back to me.”
Something still wasn’t computing. “Why are they stepping in now?”
Jake shrugged. “Want some more of my spaghetti?”
Romy had worked with delinquents for years. That pathetic an attempt to distract her was hardly going to work. She took his plate and handed over the remains of her manicotti. It wasn’t a very even trade; she’d eaten a lot faster.
“So what exactly did you hang over their heads to get them to care about a bunch of girls they abandoned years ago?”
“New information. Alvin monitored this sector for forty years. Sweeping a couple of girls a year under the carpet probably wasn’t all that hard. It wasn’t until I added up forty years of data that the totals were pretty stark. I painted a picture for the folks at Sentinel headquarters, that’s all.”
She had plenty of experience with bureaucratic systems. They didn’t shift gears because some data geek showed them a few tables and charts. Romy reached out a hand and grabbed Carla on her way by. “What did he do? At Sentinel, to make them pay attention.”
Carla nodded in sharp approval. “Word has it he rode in there like an avenging angel. Threatened them with mayhem and field staff revolt if they didn’t do what they could to clean up the travesty.” She patted Jake’s cheek. “And that was before he caused a little earthquake. Nice magic, my boy. I’ll go get you some tiramisu—you earned it.”
He’d tracked down information on a bunch of lost girls, and then thrown a witch hissy fit? Romy could feel the tingles in her stomach mate like bunnies.
Dammit. She’d grown out of heroes a long, long time ago, and this hero’s story had at least one pretty big hole. “So how exactly did you come by all this data on the girls in the first place? I’m guessing Alvin the A*shole didn’t leave a file lying around.”
Jake just grinned. “Fortunately, no one at headquarters thought to ask that question.”