Jamie perched on a windowsill, away from the gathering crowd, and frowned into his beer. He was brooding, and everyone knew it—actor-y types were especially sensitive and they picked up on his ill-tempered vibe immediately. He glared down at the highly polished floor and then scowled up at the ceiling. The party space was twice the size of his place and twenty times as clean. Gelled lights casts their multi-colors onto parquet floors, and candles in 12-foot hammered metal stands burned in strategic locations, mostly flanking tables full of hors d’oeuvres that would sit there until the techies showed. Kelli kept throwing him quizzical glances, but he ignored her.
I’m not a coward, he told himself. I simply don’t feel like explaining myself to some avant-garde off-off-off-off Broadway producer who conspired to throw some woman at me. In fact, he went on, to himself, that it seemed everyone, including his Aunt Maeve, who normally stayed out of this aspect of his business, was trying to tell him what to do as well. Not to mention random supernatural creatures that were doing their best to stir the pot.
What I really feckin’ resent, he added, is the fact that I am completely crazy about this bird and I would be pursuing her under normal circumstances. Normal circumstances. And it didn’t help that he’d put two and two together and come up with feckin’ thirteen, by having finally remembered Maeve’s scary fairy story about the destruction of the wedding stone of the Queen of the shaggin’ Ban feckin’ Sí. That was the deal-breaker, the out-and-outer, the last straw. The last thing in the bloody world he intended, he swore, was to be manipulated into a relationship because of some feckin’ piseog.
He stared down the mouth of his beer bottle, and heaved a sigh. Nature had been taking its course, but between the meeting with his wayward clairvoyant Aunt, and the penny dropping as regarded Annabelle’s Pooka, he was feeling rebellious and irritated, which ran directly at odds with his desire to see Annabelle, get to know Annabelle, snog Annabelle—
Where the hell was Annabelle?
He looked up and saw that her two friends, the co-conspirators, arrived. Lorna and Maria Grazia. They scanned the room with the air of professionals used to casing a party in 20 seconds flat, and saw them make the decision to venture over toward himself.
He reckoned he could scare them away in under a minute.
“Hello,” said Lorna, extending her hand rather formally. “We met in the street.”
“Right,” Jamie grunted, not ill-mannered enough to refuse the hand.
“Maria Grazia Bevilacqua,” and another hand was extended formally, and duly shaken. “What can I get you?”
“Another Stella.” He was overdoing the surly bit, and he got the impression they weren’t buying it. “Thanks.”
Lorna cut her eyes at Jamie, and then looked away. “Actors. They’re all the same.” She shook her head. “I’m in—”
“Public relations.”
“Yes. And you’re a restorer-slash-painter. Entertainment would be a great business if it weren’t for the so-called talent. But enough bitterness,” Lorna smiled like the cat who’d got the cream. “Have you heard Annabelle’s news?” Jamie shook his head no, and shrugged. She took her glass of wine from Maria Grazia, who returned, and Jamie took the proffered bottle. “Jamie hasn’t heard Annabelle’s news. But let’s have the first of many toasts, regardless.”
“Cheers.” They clinked, and Jamie took a long, cold pull. The conversation didn’t flag so much, as it up and died.
“Cast parties,” MG moaned, trying to draw him out. “They’re all the same.”
“You’re an actor, yourself?” I’m not an awkward lout, Jamie thought to himself. Just an annoyed, confused, exasperated, mutinous lout.
“Oh, God, no. I’m a fashion designer. We met at the meeting, that extravagant dinner thing. I was supposed to be dressing the actors, but why in the world they needed me to hand out black leotards to a buncha mimes is beyond me.”
“Kelli likes to surround herself with free talent,” Lorna sniped, as the producer fluttered by with a bouquet of flowers, terse nods for Lorna and Maria Grazia, and another inquiring look for Jamie.
Who continued scowling. What bloody time was it? Maybe he could sneak away before Annabelle got here? Cooooowwwwwaaaaard, sang a nasty little voice in his head, and he leaned back against the window.
He clocked Lorna and Maria Grazia, under the cover of scrutinizing the room again, exchanging a series of arched looks. The noise level was growing as the techies finally arrived, and their mass stampede toward the food nearly lifted the roof off. The DJ raised the volume accordingly, and the lights began to spin when, as a nod to the high percentage of dancers in the room, the speakers blared the theme to ‘Flashdance.’ A communal squeal of delight accompanied the swarm of bodies as the first of many impromptu performances commenced. Jamie, Lorna and Maria Grazia rolled their eyes in concert as smoke started to roll out from behind the DJ, and as Jamie opened his mouth to comment—he never got that far, and his mouth hung open like a fish because Annabelle entered the room.
“She’s trying to kill me,” he muttered. Lorna smirked, and Maria Grazia sighed, and they both disappeared into the thickly gathering smoke as Annabelle made her way toward Jamie. Techies dropped shrimp toast and dancing mimes missed steps as Annabelle… sashayed—there was no other word for it—Annabelle sashayed across the room, one high heel clad foot in front of the other.
Her hair bounced around her face, and it had a ‘fresh out of the shower’ look that immediately cast a tantalizing mental image of Annabelle in the shower into his mind. The red satin scrap of a dress she was wearing flashed under the disco lights—it clung to her curves without looking skin tight, and yet it revealed just enough leg, just enough cleavage, to be alluring—and she carried it off with a high caliber of style and ease that was breathtaking.
Sheer black hose hugged long, curvy legs that ended in—Jamie felt like weeping. Shiny black heels with the little toe thing cut out, so he could see two adorable little red toenails peeking up at him. “Howaya,” Annabelle mimicked his accent, and stole a sip of his beer.
“Hey, how are you, how are you doing?” Jamie raised his voice and came down on his consonants like jackhammer.
“What?” Annabelle shouted, the DJ having upped the volume yet again as the party found its feet, and the dance floor packed out.
He leaned in (she was wearing that scent again, that lemony limey scent, bloody hell) and shouted into her ear, “Nothing! Bad joke!” He looked away from her inquiring gaze. The silence grew and grew. He knew he should be complimenting her on her stunning appearance, fetching her a drink, doing all the things he’d do under normal circumstances. But these weren’t normal circumstances. He mood darkened and he could feel hers shift from sexy to sulky in the next heartbeat.
“Humph,” said Annabelle.
“What?” Jamie shouted.
“I said ‘humph!’” Annabelle shouted back.
“Let’s—we can’t talk in here.” Jamie grabbed her elbow, Annabelle jerked it out of his grasp, and walked out to the landing. There was a smaller, quieter room on the other side of the stairs, with more candles and more food and a few couches—that were already playing host to kissing couples. For feck’s sake, thought Jamie. Don’t people even wait to get drunk anymore? Leading the way to a quiet corner—and following along behind her was going to kill him—he grabbed two more beers from a nearby drinks table. They clinked bottles perfunctorily, and Jamie couldn’t imagine how he was going to handle this. If he weren’t just acting like the biggest eejit going, throwing his love life into the lap of the fates mightn’t be such a bad idea. He hated to hurt her, she was such a sensitive type, and her heart had only recently been—
“So what’s your frickin’ problem?” Annabelle asked.
“Uh. What?” The kitten turned into a tiger.
“Let’s get something straight, okay? I am, admittedly, a sucker for a good romance. The whole thing with the running into each other all the time on the street, and the thing with turning up at my house with knives and whisks—I really liked that. It’s the sort of thing, when you’ve met someone you’re attracted to, that kind of… cuts out the bullshit wondering and doubting and whatever. I was looking forward to tonight. And you may have noticed, as I took some trouble with my appearance—”
“You look—”
Annabelle raised a hand and cut him off. “You blew that five minutes ago. If you’d like to tell me what’s on your mind, that’s great, if not, I’ve got no time for this. Because to be honest with you, I only recently discovered that my ex-boyfriend, the one that dumped me rather abruptly, is engaged to be married. I have, therefore, had it up to here—” She raised an arm as high as it would go over her head, “—with, with, with, no communication, withholding, blowing hot-and-cold douches.”
“That’s direct,” said Jamie, playing for time.
“I really don’t have the patience for anything else.” Annabelle leaned against the wall, and wiggled her foot like it was paining her.
Jamie stalled by chugging down the rest of his beer.
Annabelle looked away, her high dudgeon depleted. “If you’re not interested, just tell me, okay? We’re adults.”
That’s funny, Jamie thought, I was only feeling like a 15-year-old gurrier. “I was wondering about your Pooka,” he said. “Like, what kind of Pooka it was. Exactly.”
“Exactly?”
“Whether or not it is in fact trapped in one of your cupboards, or in a closet, or…?” He crossed his arms, and felt grim satisfaction at her apparent discomfort.
“What other kind is there?” She tried for an evasive shrug and a noncommittal laugh.
“The kind that shapeshifts. The kind that follows a person around, and makes all kinds of trouble for them. The kind that needs a person to marry another person or else it will be resigned to the darkest realms of limbo or some such bollocks.”
“Oh,” she said, looking shifty. “That kind.”
“I finally met my auntie. The witchy one.” He went to take another drink, and finding his bottle of Dutch courage empty, put it on the floor. “She’s heading for the West of Ireland, waiting for your Pooka, or waiting for whatever’s supposed to happen with your Pooka to… happen.” He shoved his hands on his pockets. “And then I remembered the story, the one she used to tell all the time. About the Pookas and the Queen of the Ban Sí.”
“Yeah, okay, I know that story. Dan Minnehan told me.” Annabelle picked at the label on her half-finished beer.
“Wait. Dan Minnehan knew the story? But it’s a family story!”
“He said he had an aunt that had the same Pooka problem. Maybe you guys are related.”
“Maybe we’re cousins!” Jamie couldn’t get his head around it. “But he’s—but—shite—the mother knows the genealogy business—but maybe—what a turn up!”
Annabelle tapped a foot as he imagined a reunion with his long-lost, internationally famous cousin. “So,” she prodded. “You remembered the story.”
“The business with the Queen and Pookas was, like, the main bit of the tale, but there was always this little part at the end that we used to torment each other about. When Maeve would say that one day down the road, maybe in our lifetime, a Flynn and one of the Pooka people would marry to make up for the wrong done in years past. When the last Pooka had to right its wrong, it would have to do with one of us.”
He decided to leave out the part where it always seemed that Maeve was directing this epilogue directly to him, and how his sisters and brother and cousins had slagged him to death about it.
“So, you think you have to marry me, is that it? Is that what’s gotten you all worked up?” Annabelle raised herself to her fullest height, and looked him dead in the eye. She moved closer, and ran a finger down his chest to his belt buckle. This, he thought, is going to kill me. “Well, let me clear this up for you right now. My Pooka—Callie is her name, by the way—said that I’d only have to kiss, uh, somebody, and then she’d be portable again, or whatever, and I could take care of the rest of it. On my own.”
“I—I really, em, like you Annabelle, em, and I’ll kiss you if you want,” he stuttered. Her gaze was frigid, nothing like the warm, open look he’d come to know. “But the marriage thing, I mean, you know yourself, we’ve only just met, and to, to, to, to—”
Annabelle stepped back. “Dude, listen, you’re no prize yourself.”
“Now, that’s not what—whatd’ ya mean, I’m no prize?”
“Conceited, as if I were going to drop dead with joy at some kind of proposal. Cocky, acting as though you had to let me down gently or something—”
“Listen to yourself, ya wagon, assuming I was ever going to propose in the first place—”
“A, a, cooking snob!” Annabelle spat. “And—disorganized!”
“As opposed to so feckin’ organized that there’s no breathing space for a bit of creativity to rear its ugly wee head—”
“I am creative! I am talented! I don’t need to wallow in some faux-artistic mud puddle of a mess because of some crackpot notion that neatness equals—”
“And manipulative! Turning up in some dress designed to bleed every man in the room of reason, and smelling like, like, some bloody gorgeous lemon tree on legs, and… and… ”
In their fury, they ended up nose-to-nose, practically chest-to-chest. Jamie ran out of gas and they stood there, face-to-face, angry eye to angry eye, eyes dark with fury and hurt.
“This isn’t the way I thought things were going to go tonight,” whispered Annabelle.
“No.” Jamie fought the urge to tease a few strands of touchably soft-looking hair out of her eyes. “I, I don’t know what to think.”
Annabelle brushed it back herself. “There’s nothing to think. You’ve made yourself clear. I’ll save my Pooka somehow, on my own.” She took a deep breath. “Thanks for the dinner. It was nice.”
She stepped back, breaking the connection. “I’m going to go dance. I love to dance.” She smiled, faintly. “Good luck with the council.”
“Your friends said you had good news?” Jaime asked, but Annabelle shook her head, and turned and left the room.
Bereft was a word he always liked to come across in novels. He’d say it aloud, luxuriating in the ‘r,’ sliding through the ‘f,’ and hitting the ‘t’ like pebble out of a slingshot. First time, he thought morosely, that he’d ever felt like it. More beer, he decided. What else was a cowardly eejit of a man to do.
He was torn out of his reverie as Annabelle’s friends rose up from behind a couch like the wrath of God. Maria Grazia’s pleasant countenance was set like stone, and Lorna’s eyes narrowed with such dislike they were practically invisible. She made a movement to go at him, but Maria Grazia held her back.
“Don’t waste your time, Lorna,” she said, never taking her eyes off of Jamie. “Annabelle said it all. I’ve never heard her so fierce,” she went on, deceptively conversationally. “If anyone was thinking of making up of for being such an asshole, they’d have a lot—a lot—of work to do.”
Lorna swiped her nails at him, but Maria Grazia increased the pressure of her arm around her friend’s waist, and dragged her out of the room.
Jamie followed them out after a decent interval and glanced in at the main party. Annabelle danced with two set builders and one wiry mime, and it was the image he carried with him on his lonely, rain-drenched walk home.
62y
Annabelle locked the door behind her, and gratefully kicked off her shoes. It was only midnight, and there she was, back home, the dregs of her excited grooming littering the apartment. She began clearing up, half-heartedly, and stopped; there’d be plenty of time tomorrow. She sat down on one of her dining room chairs, and drooped. The fun had gone out of the night fairly rapidly, and dancing with a series of burly techies and gay mimes had been only slightly entertaining. Lorna and Maria Grazia had given her space, after she’d asked for it, and she got the idea that they somehow knew what had transpired.
“I didn’t want things to move so fast either, you know!” All the things she could have said to Jamie, all the rational things she’d been saying all along had gone right out of her head. Friends fight all the time, he’d said—she hoped they were getting to be friends…
“So.” Callie materialized in the middle of the room. Annabelle was shocked by her Pooka’s appearance: she seemed aged and bent, wizened and crushed, her voice a pained rasp. “No kissing.”
“No. He figured out his part in the scheme, and he, he’s not interested.”
“Is that how easily you give up?” Callie croaked. “No wonder you needed me to get you on your path, no wonder you didn’t have any career to speak of. If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be moonin’ over that rotter of a banker—”
Annabelle rose, angry all over again. “You said it yourself, ‘magic isn’t magic!’ Time healed my broken heart, not hocus-pocus, and all those people called me for work because I am good at what I do, and I have a meeting with an agent because she saw my work and liked it, not because—” She hesitated, unsure. “Not because you had anything to do with it. Right?”
Callie began to fade from sight. “You are on your path, and I seem to be on mine.” The Pooka’s voice became as faint as her presence. “If I had any power at all, it was only for the good. I have no idea where it is that I am headed. I only wanted the best for you. My charge, my responsibility… My girl. And now…” Her voice trailed off almost completely. “If you could find it in your heart to do me a good turn, there are seven days left. One week to save me from a fate over which I have no control. Annabelle!” Callie raised her voice, begged. “Please! You’re the only one who can—”
And she disappeared. Annabelle stood, useless, alone in her living room, a lump in her throat, guilt building in her heart.
Dammit. She might have to talk that Irishman again after all.