Eliza
“Where can she be?” asked my father as soon as I walked through the door. “Did the two of you have a fight or something?”
I glared at him. “Yes, but—”
He raked a hand through his hair. “I knew it.” He frowned when he noticed what I held in my hands. “Is that a Dragon’s Mouth orchid?”
“Yes, it is.” Putting Hal on the table in the foyer, I slipped out of my coat. “Ashley at Bewitching Blooms forced me to buy it.”
“It’s lovely,” he said, carefully inspecting Hal. “And also rare and valuable. Do you know how to take care of something like this?”
“I’m learning,” I said through gritted teeth. Why did he always doubt me? Not that I had much confidence in my own ability to keep Hal alive, but hearing the skepticism in my father’s voice rubbed me the wrong way. We had more important things to discuss, however. “You haven’t heard from Amanda yet?”
He shook his head. “I spoke with Celeste. She tried to track Amanda’s phone, but since Amanda turned it off, Celeste wasn’t able to find her. She said the last known location was on South Side Slopes.”
“Tommy’s place.”
“Yes,” he said, leaning against the foyer table. He looked older all of a sudden, and it concerned me. “I’m so worried. Knowing Solomon is hanging around…”
“He isn’t. He’s back in Las Vegas.”
“Are you sure?”
“I confirmed it with Anthony on the way home.”
I didn’t bother mentioning Ivan had strong-armed Solomon into leaving. That would cause my father even more worry.
“Oh, good,” he said, sinking in a chair.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“I’m just tired. Do you think your sister will be home for Thanksgiving?”
“That’s a week away. I’m sure she’ll be home by then.”
Although I tried to sound positive, I had my doubts. Would she be home by Thanksgiving? Was this all because I’d yelled at her, or had something else happened?
The home phone rang with a number I didn’t recognize. When I answered it, I was surprised to hear my sister’s voice.
“Amanda? Are you okay? What’s going on?” Moving close to my father, I put it on speaker. “Dad’s here too. Why did you run away? Is this because I yelled at you?”
“What? No. I needed to get away for a few days. It has nothing to do with the two of you.”
Relief flooded through me. “Good. Where are you? I’m coming to get you right now.”
She paused. “No, you aren’t, Eliza. I’m safe and I’m fine. I’m sorry I worried you guys. I turned off my phone because I knew my mother would track me. She always tracks me.”
That seemed like a huge step. Maybe Amanda was distancing herself from Celeste once and for all.
“Will you be home for Thanksgiving?” asked my father. “And are you still singing at mass this Sunday?”
“I already let the choir director know I won’t be there on Sunday.” Amanda’s voice held an odd note. Was she trying not to cry? She cleared her throat. “But I’ll be home by Thanksgiving.”
I wanted to insist she tell me where she was, but I didn’t. “As long as you’re safe. That’s all we care about.” I locked eyes with my dad, and he nodded. “Dad agrees with me. Be careful.”
“I will. I just need to get my head on straight. Don’t do any echo-location spells on me or whatever, okay?”
“I’m a witch, not a bat,” I said with a laugh. Immediately, my father’s jaw tightened, as it always did when I talked about witchcraft. I ignored him. “But there is something I need to tell you. Solomon is gone. He went back to Vegas.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, so you can come back anytime. You don’t have to worry.” I bit my lip. “When will you be back? I’m sorry I was such a jerk. You know how I get when I’m worried.”
“I do, and it’s okay. I’ll come home Sunday afternoon, and be back at work on Monday. Does that sound good?”
“Of course, it does. It’s been awful without you. See you on Sunday.”
After I hung up the phone, my father sighed. “It’s a relief to know she’s fine, but what the heck is going on? Why would she take off like that?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, but I had my suspicions it might have to do with Tommy Belfiore. In an effort to respect my sister’s privacy, however, I didn’t mention it. Nor would I interrogate Tommy, even though I wanted to question him right now. There was someone else I wanted to question, too.
The next day, I went to visit Mr. Dalca at his bookstore, Librarie Antique. While other shops had already strung Christmas twinkle lights in their windows and welcoming wreaths on their doors, Mr. Dalca’s shop seemed dark and uninviting. That may have been because of the dusty display in the window, or the handwritten sign on the door reading, “Unless you have an appointment, please go away and leave me alone.”
The “please” was a nice touch. Ignoring the sign, I stepped into the shop. “Mr. Dalca?”
A shuffling sound came from the back, followed by hushed voices. One of them was Mr. Dalca’s, and the other sounded a lot like the proprietress of the Hocus Pocus Magic Shop, Madame Lucinda Trabuski—Ivan and Gabriel’s great aunt by marriage or something. A stroke of luck. I needed to talk with her as well.
“Mrs. Trabuski? Is that you?”
“Eliza? Just a minute. We’ll be right out.”
More shuffling ensued. I was about to call out to them again, when Mr. Dalca and Mrs. Trabuski came out of the storage area in the back of the shop, looking disheveled. What remained of Mr. Dalca’s wispy white hair stood on end, and Mrs. Trabuski’s blouse was buttoned crooked. Both of them were breathing hard. I’d obviously interrupted them in the midst of something.
“Sorry to disturb you,” I said. “But I needed to speak with both of you.”
Mr. Dalca scowled at me. “You cannot read the sign? Appointment only. Even for white witches. Nowhere on there does it say anything about exceptions, Ms. Dragonsong. I thought I was clear.”
Mrs. Trabuski patted his arm. “Now, Connie, calm down.”
“Connie?” I asked.
“Short for Constantine,” explained Mrs. Trabuski. She put a hand next to her mouth and spoke in a stage whisper. “He gets upset if he’s interrupted in the middle of…you know.”
“Oh, I see.” Although I tried to banish the image of two elderly people getting it on in the storage room, who was I to judge? Love was love. And like Mr. Dalca’s visitation policy, there were no exceptions.
“What do you want?” asked Mr. Dalca. “Is this about the Dragon Rouge? Is it safe?”
“It’s safe, but I have a few questions. For both of you.”
Muttering something under his breath in Romanian, he waved us to the back corner of the store where someone had set up chairs and a coffee table. He put a kettle on for tea in the shop’s small kitchen and brought us two steaming cups. It tasted surprisingly delicious.
“It’s Turkish,” he said. “The trick is in the tea pots. One holds the tea, the other hot water. You mix them together in the cup. It’s the only way to make the perfect tea. Now, tell us why you are here so we can get back to…” He paused, sneaking a glance at Mrs. Trabuski. “Doing inventory.”
“Oh, yes.” She fluffed her bright red hair, a twinkle in her blue eyes. “I love doing inventory.”
The sexual attraction between these two was so powerful, the air hung thick with it. I cleared my throat. “I need to ask you about the Trabuski brothers, Mr. Dalca.”
“Gabriel, Ivan, and Peter?”
I blinked in surprise. “I didn’t know about Peter.”
“He’s the youngest. Well, the youngest we know of at least. Their father was a bit of a philanderer.”
“A bit?”
“Ivan is the only legal heir, but they are all trouble. Stay away from them. Next question.”
“Wait. Back up. Why is Ivan trouble?”
He blew out a breath, staring skyward. “I told you already. He has magic, but he doesn’t understand magic. Maybe his heart is good, I don’t know, but his actions have often been perhaps unlawful.”
“Perhaps?”
“Next question.”
I tried to stifle my irritation. “He doesn’t seem to be in trouble with the police right now. They’ve cleared him of all charges, including those involving the Hocus Pocus Magic Shop. Can you tell me what happened, Mrs. Trabuski?”
She folded her hands on her lap. The misaligned buttons on her blouse drove me bonkers, but if I asked her to fix them, it could get awkward.
“Well, I thought Ivan tried to kill me by pushing me down the stairs.”
My head started to ache. Mrs. Trabuski had been in a cast for weeks after her fall, and the reason her niece Grace had come from Philadelphia to help her with the shop. “Ivan pushed you down the steps?”
“Heavens, no. I only thought he had. It was a big misunderstanding. Ivan came to steal the Dragon Rouge. I didn’t even know I had it. I put it on my bookshelf years ago and forgot all about it.”
I stared at the little old lady with the dyed hair and dangling Thanksgiving turkey earrings. She’d had one of the most powerful magical objects in history in her possession and she forgot about it? I snuck a look at Mr. Dalca.
He shrugged. “She forgot about it. Funny, huh?”
“Hilarious. But back to Ivan…”
“Oh, yes. Well, he broke into my shop several times trying to find it. He can break into anything. He’s like an expert locksmith.” She frowned. “Would you call it a locksmith?”
“I call it a thief,” grumbled Mr. Dalca.
“And yet you didn’t file charges against him, Mrs. Trabuski?” I asked.
“No. I couldn’t. He’s family.”
“Family-wamily,” said Mr. Dalca. “You should have pressed charges.”
She gave him a stern look. “We’ve talked about this before, Connie. It’s my decision. Am I going to have to spank you?”
Wincing at the image conjured in my brain, I attempted to bring their focus back to our conversation. “Tell me what you know about Ivan, Mr. Dalca.”
Leaning back in his chair, he crossed his arms over his rounded belly. “Ivan’s parents divorced when he was small. His mother found out about Gabriel, and that was it. Boom. She left. And she took Ivan with her, but mostly out of spite.”
“Why do you say that?”
“As soon as she remarried, she stuck the poor kid in a boarding school. From what I understand, he barely saw his mother. He never saw his father. He didn’t even come back to Romania, in fact, until after his father died. He was a man without a center. No home. No family. Well, other than his bastard brothers. Oh, and he had a younger half-sister as well, from his mother and stepfather, but she wasn’t a bastard.”
“Connie, that isn’t a nice word,” said Mrs. Trabuski. “Call them ‘the fruit of his adulterous loins.’”
“I will not. Anyway, back to Ivan. He got used to having nice things. His mother and stepfather never showed him much real affection, but they bought him whatever he needed. When he graduated from university, however, everything changed. His relationship with his stepfather, never good, turned sour. He began…acquiring things…during this time period. He had a reputation. If he wanted something, he got it. No security system could stop him, and no locks could keep him out. But something changed. It happened around the time his mother, stepfather, and half-sister died in a car accident. They drove off a cliff in Monaco.”
“I hate it when that happens,” said Mrs. Trabuski.
“Me, too,” said Mr. Dalca. “But, afterward, he stopped stealing art and started buying art and antiques as well. He acquired an impressive collection. Of course, when his father died, he had to sell most of it.”
“To pay off his father’s debts,” I said.
“Yes. Exactly. Are we done yet?”
“One last thing,” I said, ignoring Mr. Dalca’s noise of pure disgust. “Does Gabriel really work for the National Museum of Romania?”
He snorted. “I’ve heard he’s their new curator. What that means is he’s paid to take back what others have stolen.”
“But isn’t that a good thing?”
“I suppose, but he doesn’t always use lawful means to do it. And he’s as relentless as Ivan. They are cut from the same cloth. I have a feeling the museum is not as interested in getting the Dragon Rouge as Gabriel is, since he’s obsessed with receiving what he sees as his due. He is as much a Trabuski as Ivan, but he didn’t inherit a single thing when his father died.”
“So, he isn’t here for the museum?”
“Maybe, maybe not. I have known many Trabuskis in my life. The only good one, the only honorable one, was Anton.” He smiled as he patted Mrs. Trabuski’s hand. “And you, of course, dragostea mea.”
“Dragostea?”
Mrs. Trabuski answered. “It means ‘love’ in Romanian. And dragostea mea is ‘my love.’ Isn’t that sweet?” She fluttered her eyelashes at Mr. Dalca. “I know some dirty words, too—”
I held up my hand for her to stop. “No need to continue, although I may ask you about them later. And I’m sorry for taking so much of your time. I’m sure you want to get back to doing, um, inventory.”
“True,” said Mr. Dalca, studying my face with his shrewd eyes. “But since you’ve already interrupted us, you might as well tell me what you came here to tell me.”
I paused. “It’s about Ivan,” I said, biting my lower lip. “I’ve been teaching him magic.”
“That could be a good thing,” said Mr. Dalca. “An untrained witch, especially a powerful one like Ivan, can be dangerous.”
“I agree, but there’s more. I told him I’d give him the Dragon Rouge if he ever grew strong enough to control it.”
Mr. Dalca laughed. “Good one. Because no one is truly strong enough to control it. The only thing we can hope for is that it won’t control you. That’s clever. Well done, Ms. Dragonsong.”
“Thank you, but it was someone else’s idea. My friend, Helena, came up with it.”
“It figures,” he said. I ignored him.
“But there’s a problem. I’ve let Ivan get too close, and now I’m not sure if I’m viewing things impartially or not. Talking to Gabriel was a wake-up call.”
“Wait a moment. Gabriel Trabuski is in Pittsburgh?” asked Mr. Dalca, rubbing his temples. “You never said that. Why didn’t you say that?”
“I just did—”
“But not until after you told me this whole boring story.” He narrowed his eyes. “Hold your donkeys. Are you doing the hanky panky with Ivan? Is that what you mean when you say you let Ivan get too close?”
“It’s horses, dear,” said Mrs. Trabuski. “Not donkeys. Hold your horses.”
“Why would I do that?” he asked. “It’s stupid. I don’t want to hold any horses.”
I needed an aspirin. “I’d better go. I’ve inconvenienced you long enough.”
“You’ve inconvenienced me, but not because you came here to talk and ask me a million questions. I’m inconvenienced because I have to deal with both Ivan and Gabriel. I didn’t expect this. And I didn’t expect you to fall into bed with Ivan at the drop of a hat. Do you not remember I warned you about him? I said he was dangerous and charming. And you said ‘Blah, blah, blah, no problem for me, Mr. Dalca.’ You said you could handle Ivan, but you are not handling Ivan.”
Mrs. Trabuski giggled behind her hand. “Actually, maybe she is handling Ivan…”
“Look at the time,” I said, pretending to glance at my watch. I put down my teacup and got to my feet. “Thank you both. Again.”
Mr. Dalca rose, too. To my surprise, his dark eyes were filled with concern. “You need to be careful, Ms. Dragonsong. You didn’t take me seriously before. Now you must. I cannot tell you whether Ivan is a good guy or a bad guy. Maybe he is both. The same goes for Gabriel. There is something afoot here. I don’t know what it is, but it frightens me.” He let out a tired sigh, and Mrs. Trabuski put a comforting hand on his arm.
“Don’t worry, Connie. I’ll take care of you.”
Mr. Dalca gave her the sweetest smile. It made me understand what she saw in him. “Do you know what else is big and scary?” he asked, his eyes on Mrs. Trabuski. “Love. It’s sometimes unexpected, and sometimes unwanted, but it cannot be stopped. It cannot be contained. And also dragostea nu se face cu sila.”
“What does that mean?”
He smiled. “Love cannot be compelled. Remember those words, Ms. Dragonsong. Good day.”