“It’s not much consolation, but at least she’ll know where Marla is. She’ll have answers.”
“But not all of them.” Liam drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “And we don’t have them, either. We’re not the only ones who care about this. Someone from PCC is watching out for her, talking to her mother.”
“Is that good news or bad news?” I asked. “Do we want them involved?”
“I don’t know. Depends on why they were there. We’re going to find that out. And in the meantime, I’m going to have Nix come back to the store tonight. You can keep working on your magic. The best way to combat fear is to get to work.”
On that, we agreed.
? ? ?
At six o’clock, Liam arrived with both Gavin and Nix in tow. I was still with a customer—someone who’d tried to shop when I was closed and wasn’t thrilled about it—so the Quinns made themselves comfortable, Gavin at one end of the cypress table, Liam at the other. Both of them wore the apparent Quinn family uniform—jeans, dark T-shirts, boots.
Nix stood in front of a round vintage candy holder of metal bins around a central pole. I’d filled each one with mismatched odds and ends—spoons, crystal doorknobs, antique hinges. She wore a pale green sleeveless dress, her blond hair in complicated braids. As she spun the holder, checking each bin, it was easy to see her as a stranger in a strange land.
When he wasn’t stealing glances at Nix, Gavin looked over the New York Times section I’d salvaged from one of the convoy boxes—the pages had been crumpled around bars of soap.
When the last customer was gone, I flipped the sign and locked the door, then walked back to the table. “Please, make yourselves at home.”
“Done,” Gavin said, refolding the paper.
I put my hands on my hips, looked at the brothers. “I see you aren’t punching each other. Friends again?”
“We reached an understanding,” Gavin said.
“I’m glad to hear it.” I glanced at Nix. “What’s on tonight’s agenda?”
“Binding.”
“Do I need three people to teach me to bind magic?”
“You only need me,” Nix said. “But they like to watch.”
Her voice was utterly innocent, and I wasn’t honestly sure if she understood the implication. But the expression on Gavin’s face said he was very, very aware of it.
I guessed that was part of the brothers’ understanding—Gavin wouldn’t throw a fit about Nix helping if he could keep an eye on her during the training. Or that was what he told himself, anyway, for the chance to be near her again.
“I think your brother’s still in love with her,” I said quietly to Liam as we took the stairs to the second floor.
“You’re nosy, you know that?” He grinned and shook his head, his mood seeming to thaw a little.
“I run a store that’s been in the French Quarter for more than a hundred years. I came by it honestly.”
“Be that as it may, it’s their story, and not mine to tell.”
Then, I’d have to convince one of them to tell it.
? ? ?
“Come,” Nix said, and sat on the floor on her knees, the skirt of her green dress spread around her. She looked very much like a fairy—I could imagine her in a bayou, moving among the cypresses, floating above the water, faintly glowing as her hair bobbed around her. “Sit down.”
I nodded, took a seat in front of her while Liam leaned against a bookshelf and Gavin sat down on the floor, back against the wall, arms atop his knees.
“I want you to go through the entire cycle,” Nix said. “First, I want you to move something,”
I looked around at the room and the labyrinth of antiques. “What do you want me to move?”
“It doesn’t matter. Pick something. Anything.”
I looked around, let my eyes pass the giant star sign, which was still propped against the wall. I mean, I wanted to move it on principle, since we’d started this journey together, but it was a big and lumbering thing. I didn’t especially want to impale Nix—especially with Gavin in the house.
I settled on a vintage produce crate with a gorgeous CREOLE LOUISIANA SWEET POTATOES sticker on one end. I could take or leave the crate, but the paper label could actually be worth a lot. Incentive not to bash it against anything hard—like Liam Quinn’s head.
“All right. You should probably all get out of the way.”
“Why?” Nix asked.
“Because my aim isn’t very good.” I held up a hand before they could complain. “Keep in mind the context and conditions. And keep an eye out.”
The crate sat on the top of a high shelf next to three others. I checked the path, imagined the string that would draw it to me. It would have to go around a chest of drawers with a mirror, then spin sharply back in the other direction to avoid getting snagged on a pink aluminum Christmas tree. Tricky. Not impossible, but tricky.
I blew out a breath, focused on the object. I imagined the room filled with energy, began to pull it together, like a spinning top of magic, of power.