"What do you think he wants us to do?" Lizzie asked me about two hours later. When I'd first arrived home, she'd been napping. Yoshi had left me a message on the house comp saying he'd had to go to another gig and to keep him posted.
I changed out of my “visiting the billionaire ex” outfit that I'd been telling myself I hadn't spent way too much time choosing and wandered out to the kitchen to make myself syncaf—ugh—and then do some planning. But Lizzie had joined me. So I started making grilled cheese and talking instead.
She perched on a stool near the counter and yawned as I told her what had happened. Until I got to the part about him wanting the Cestis to check things out for him.
Then she got focused fast. Hence the question.
"I don't know," I said, poking the grilled cheese with a spatula to see if it was ready. "I guess whatever it was you did for him last time." I raised my eyebrows at her as I flipped the sandwich out onto the waiting plate.
Lizzie pulled it toward her. "Don't wriggle your eyebrows at me. You were very clear that you wanted nothing to do with Damon or Cestis business at the time. If I'd told you about it, you would have gone through the roof. Besides, I was just doing my job. It didn't take very long. It wasn't as though I was hanging out with the guy."
No. Because she'd been busy hanging out with me in those first few weeks after Nat died and Damon bailed. Yes, she'd disappeared for "work" a few times, but I'd been a mess huddled on my sofa watching mindless old movies and trying to remember how to breathe.
"I didn't say anything," I muttered.
"Good. I won’t apologize for doing my job. Or for choosing your peace of mind over total honesty." She bit into the sandwich as I put the one I was making for myself into the skillet.
"You don't have to," I said. I sighed. "I owe you an apology though. I'm pretty sure I was an asshole most of the time when you first moved in."
"You had your moments," Lizzie agreed. "But grief sucks, and you had good reason to be off your game. You still do. So apology accepted." She wiped sandwich grease off her fingers. "Did he say why he thinks there's something magical going on?"
"No, he just said he wanted to cover all bases."
"Did you believe him?"
I hesitated, prodding the sandwich again. "I'm not sure. I'd like to think he wouldn't lie to me, but who knows? Or he might not be lying. He might just not be able to admit to himself that something has him spooked."
"Sounds like someone else I know," Lizzie said.
"I told him you were hurt and that he'd have to wait a few days."
"And he was okay with that?"
"They have other avenues to pursue," I said. I flipped the sandwich over. "And he's in the middle of a launch. Things must be crazy right now."
"I guess. Archangel is number one on all the charts, so it seems to be going well." She fixed me with a curious look. "Did you ask him about it?"
"Did I ask my ex-boyfriend who hates magic about why there's a character in his new game who looks like me? No. I'm not a masochist. I don't want to know."
"Liar, liar, pants on fire," Lizzie chanted softly.
"Shut up and eat your sandwich." I tipped mine onto the plate and put the skillet in the sink, too hungry to stop and clean it. The few bites of Danish felt like a long time ago, and my appetite was back now that I was over the nerves about meeting Damon.
We both ate in silence for a while. Lizzie looked better than she had yesterday, but she was still pale. Whatever it was Damon needed, he could definitely wait. She needed to rest for a few days. And refuel. Magical healing burned lots of calories. She was already wiping the last crumbs of her sandwich off her plate with a finger.
"Do you want another—" I broke off as the housecomp began to chime. I frowned toward it. "Are we expecting anyone?" I asked Lizzie.
"No. Yoshi said he'd check back later, but I assumed he meant he'd call."
"Identify," I said to the housecomp.
"Cassandra Tallant," the electronic voice came back, sounding somewhat bored.
I looked at Lizzie. "Been adding to the guest list, have we?"
She shrugged. "I didn't want any of them triggering an alarm when they came to help with the wards."
"Is that why she's here now?"
"I don't know," Lizzie said. "Probably checking up on me." She sounded irritated. "Better go let her in. She doesn't like to be kept waiting."
There didn't seem to be an alternative. I'd asked for a day or two to sort out my issue with Damon before we got back to the issue of where my magic had gone. It seemed I wasn’t going to get it.
"Hi," I said, trying to sound enthusiastic as I opened the door.
"Hello, Maggie." Cassandra handed me a plate of something wrapped in a daisy-patterned sil-wrap. From the smell wafting up from it, I'd have to guess it was chocolate chip cookies. If Cassandra kept this up, I’d be 95 percent cookie before all this was over.
"I was in the neighborhood," she said.
That might have been true, but I doubted this was a casual visit. "You want to see Lizzie? She's in the kitchen." I waved behind me, indicating the general direction. Was this going to be life now that I'd broken my “no contact with the Cestis” rule?
"And how is whatever problem it was you had to deal with?" Cassandra said as I caught up with her.
Her tone suggested that she definitely didn't think I should take too long to find a solution. But I wasn't ready to just hand myself over so she could put me through my magical paces until something cracked and my magic came back.
"I'm heading in the right direction," I said, hedging. It might be easier to let Lizzie tell her Damon had asked for help. I pushed open the kitchen door, relieved to see Lizzie still at the table, calmly peeling an orange. "Cassandra brought cookies," I said, holding up the plate.
Lizzie smiled at that. "Cookies are good." She glanced at Cassandra. "Let me guess, you were just in the neighborhood?"
"Exactly. And now that I'm here, you can tell me how you're feeling."
"You could have just called." Lizzie rolled her eyes.
"I can't see your energy field on a call," Cassandra said. "Which means I can't tell if you're lying to me."
"I'm fine," Lizzie said. "No need to lie. My arm’s still sore, and I'm definitely going to take another nap this afternoon, but I'm fine. It was only a fracture. You should all chill."
Cassandra watched her closely as she spoke, her big golden brown eyes narrowed. But apparently whatever she saw in Lizzie's energy field didn't contradict what Lizzie was saying, because she just nodded after a few moments and said, "That's good. We need you back up and running."
"More importantly, I need to get back to work. It's one of our busy times."
Cassandra wrinkled her nose. "Evie understands what you do for us."
"Yes she does," Lizzie agreed. "But I also understand what she does for the kids out there. So I don't want to leave her in the lurch right now."
Evie London, I knew, was Lizzie's boss. I hadn't known she knew about Lizzie's other job. Did that mean she was a witch, too? I was still hazy on exactly what the foundation Evie ran did. I knew it involved teenagers, and that Lizzie worked in "philanthropy management". That seemed to be a fancy name for fundraising. Obviously the Cestis took up a chunk of her time, too. I'd never been brave enough to ask if that was a paid position. I imagined it had to be. Ian was the only one whose lifestyle confirmed him to be actually rich. Though, to be fair, I hadn't actually seen Cassandra's house, just the store.
Radha worked as a healer, though, from what I'd gathered, that could be a vocation for witches as well as a job. The sort of thing you did even if you didn't need the money.
Lizzie contributed her half of the bills and groceries every month without complaint. I didn't charge her rent. I owned the house, even if it was a wreck, and the help she was giving me with the rebuild was worth more to me than a rent check would be.
I didn't know if there was a third job in there somewhere, but she didn't seem to lack for money. Though I was starting to feel bad for not knowing. Sure, I'd had a lot on my mind for the nine months, but exactly how self-absorbed had I been that Lizzie and I had never really talked about her job?
She and Cassandra were watching each other silently across the table. It was a little disconcerting to see them at odds. Usually Lizzie was easygoing. She wasn't a doormat, and she spoke up when she wanted to, but in the Cestis, Cassandra ran things. Maybe being injured made her cranky.
"Speaking of work," Lizzie said just as I was starting to rack my brain for something to say before the silence got too weird, "Damon Riley has asked us to do another sweep."
Cassandra turned to me. "When did you see Damon?"
"Why do you assume it was me? Lizzie did whatever a sweep is for him last time, didn't she?"
"Was it Lizzie?" Cassandra asked.
I grimaced. "No. He came to the house yesterday."
"Does that happen often?"
"I haven't seen him since Nat's funeral. As I'm sure Lizzie has told you."
Cassandra pursed her lips. "I think you overestimate our interest in your love life."
"I don't have a love life. And if I did, it wouldn't be with Damon Riley."
"Then why did he come see you instead of just asking Lizzie for help?"
"Because his initial problem was something that involved me."
"This is the same problem you mentioned last night? The reason you couldn't work on your magic today?"
Gah! "Yes."
"And you didn't want to tell us that?" She peered at me over her glasses.
Cassandra would have made an excellent high school principal. I wanted to squirm. I resisted. She wasn't, despite what she might think, the boss of me. "Since when does the Cestis deal with fake emails?" I said grumpily.
Cassandra looked confused. "Fake emails? Whose fake emails?"
"Damon was getting some threats. His security team insisted it was coming from me. I proved otherwise. I went to see him to tell him so. Told him to look elsewhere. That's when he mentioned Lizzie."
"Did he say why he thought we should take a look?"
"No. He said he was just being thorough. If he has another reason, he didn't tell me."
"But he asked you about the emails?"
"Because it looked like they were coming from me. He wanted to give me a chance to clear my name."
"I see." She turned back to Lizzie. "I know you gave him the all clear last time, but this isn't something we can ignore. Do you think you have time to help him? I can ask someone else."
Lizzie shook her head. "It’ll be faster if I do it. I know what's involved."
"All right. Maggie can help you."
"What?" I squawked.
"Lizzie needed a hand with the technology aspects last time. You know more about computers—and Damon's company—than anybody else we have. It makes sense."
"What if he doesn't want me there?" Okay, I had officially turned back into a whiny teenager. I gave myself a mental slap and straightened my shoulders.
"Well, if he wants our help, he can just suck it up," Cassandra said. She smiled smugly. "Besides, if Radha and Lizzie are right and your magic has something to do with trauma from the demon, then he's part of that. Maybe spending some time with him might shake something loose for you."
"Man, you really believe in tough love, don't you?" I muttered. "Damon and I...it's hard for me to see him."
"I appreciate that. And I made you cookies, so you can wallow with those if you want to," Cassandra said. "But I'm not going to coddle you about your magic. You need it back or we'll have to spend way too much time checking up on you. So when Lizzie is feeling up to it, you'll help her with this. And I expect to see you at the store tomorrow at some point for some more practice. Yes?"
Saying no didn't seem to be an option. I’d have to call my client and tell them I'd be working off-site for a few days.
I looked at the cookies. She should have made a bigger batch.
"Did you know she was going to say that?" I asked when I came back to the kitchen after showing Cassandra out.
Lizzie was at the dishwasher, stacking plates one-handed. "I didn't know Damon was going to ask for help, so how was I supposed to know that Cassandra would say you should help me?"
"Educated guess?" I shooed her away from the dishwasher. "Let me do that."
"I have a fracture, not a head wound," Lizzie said. "I can handle putting some plates in the dishwasher."
"You're supposed to be resting. I fractured my arm when I was twenty. I was exhausted for a few weeks."
"Yeah, but you didn't have a witch speed up the healing, did you?"
"That's tiring, too." I knew that from experience.
"I have Cassandra to nag me," she said, then winced. "Sorry, bad mood. I'd rather be at work."
"Does Evie really need you right now?"
"Yeah, we do a big push as the school year wraps up and then set up for our holiday campaigns."
"Anything I can help with?"
"You have a job of your own," Lizzie said, but she smiled.
"Not one I'm much good at for the moment."
"So we need to fix that," she said. "But if you're interested in volunteering at some point, I'm sure Evie will find something you can do. We always need more hands."
"Okay." I closed up the dishwasher. "I will." It seemed the least I could do to start paying Lizzie back for all the help she’d given me. "What are you doing this afternoon?"
"More exciting sofa time, I guess." Lizzie looked less than enthused. "How about you? I could talk you through some of the stuff in that book Cassandra gave you. Easier than just reading about it?"
"Actually, I have some work-work to do," I said. "Sort of."
"Oh?"
"Damon is supposed to be sending me a data dump of everything related to the emails he's been receiving. I’m going to run some pattern analysis on them, see if anything leaps out at me. You can help if you want. You need to know what's in there anyway, I guess." And Lizzie would see things that I wouldn't even know to look for if there was something magical going on.
"Sure," she said, brightening. "I can do that from the sofa. Then no one can accuse me of not resting."
"Is anyone else likely to check up on you today? We're getting low on syncaf." And a lot of other things, particularly if we were going to be feeding a teenage boy. If Yoshi had time later, I would get him to keep digging around, see if he could find any trace of how my system could have been cloned. The methods for doing that weren't going to be strictly kosher, but I suspected he knew how even if he was a white hatter.
"I'll order groceries while you're running whatever analysis you're going to," Lizzie said, heading toward the living room. "Out of curiosity, when did Damon say those messages started?"
I frowned, trying to remember. "Back at the beginning of the month, I think."
She turned to look back at me, eyes wide. "May first?"
"I'd have to check. Why?"
"That's Beltane."
Beltane. Pagan festival. That was about all I knew about it. "Does that matter?" I tried to see if anything else popped up in my head about it. "Isn't that a ritual all about fertility and harvest?"
"Traditionally, yes, and no, we don't necessarily pay much attention to those historic days, but some people think that the energy of such days is enhanced. It would be a good day to start a big working of some sort." She shrugged. "Or it may be just a complete coincidence. So, you run whatever it is you want to do, I'll make sure we can eat for another week, and then we'll see what there is to see."