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He snickered. “Touché. You know, this might go a bit faster if you used a little . . .” He waggled his fingers as if casting a Las Vegas magician’s spell.
“Really?” I scoffed. “You want me to use magic because you’re having trouble with some landscaping?”
“No, I want you to use magic because it can be fun,” he said, gesturing to building-scale trees towering over our heads. “Maybe just peel all the greenery back like curtains. Or make the trees dance around like those ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ mops in Fantasia. I just want to see what you can do. It’s not like I ever got to watch you perform in a ballet recital.”
“I never took ballet. And didn’t Nana tell you anything about our magic?” I asked.
“She said your family’s talents were a gift, not that you were only allowed to put them toward practical purposes,” he said. “Just think of how boring life would be if you received gloves and car-detailing kits every Christmas.”
I thought back to my grandmother’s many, many lectures on magic. She had never told me that magic wasn’t supposed to be fun. In fact, I remembered several lessons in which she taught me to create shapes in colored smoke through concentration. Or to make fire dance. But the fire-dancing lesson had ended in tears and damaged drapes. So we’d stuck to the area in which I excelled, which happened to be healing. There aren’t a lot of laughs to be had in curing rashes and boils.
Come to think of it, in addition to the motel sleeping bag, Stephen had also given me gloves and a car-detailing kit for Christmas.
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself,” Mr. Wainwright said. “I think the search for your Elements is a bit like keeping a grip on that altar plaque. If you try too hard to hold on to it, you’ll break it.”
“So I need to relax.” I snorted. “In the face of an impossible task and a looming deadline, I’m supposed to relax and have fun.”
“It couldn’t hurt.”
“I’ll try. Thanks, Mr. Wainwright.”
“Still not budging on that ‘Grandpa’ issue, are you?”
I shook my head but grinned at him and squeezed his hand. “No.”
Mr. Wainwright squeezed my hand tightly, then turned on his heel and commenced chopping through the jungle plants again.
“Nola?” he called as he pushed into the brush. “Take it easy on Dick. He means well.”
* * *
Muttering to myself about unhelpful figments, I woke up with my head propped on my arm and the bare expanse of Jed’s back turned toward me. He was up on one elbow, holding something, shifting it back and forth in his hands.
“Are you all right?” I asked. Startled, he turned, and there was a strange, unfamiliar expression on his face. Sadness, regret, a touch of anger. I’d never seen those emotions on Jed’s sunny, open face. He looked down at me, a quick grin spreading across his features, chasing the sad expression away. “Yeah, just fine.”
“So this is incredibly awkward,” I said. I sat up, with the sheets pressed to my chest. I looked over Jed’s shoulder to find that he was holding the altar plaque in his hands, turning it over and over. “What are you doing?”
“I just didn’t get a very good look at it last night,” he said, turning onto his back and pulling me with him so I was splayed across his chest as he toyed with the plaque. “It’s just a chunk of clay. I was tryin’ to figure out what was so special about this that Jane Jameson would send us all the way down here for it.”
I carefully retrieved the plaque from his hands and wrapped it in the unbleached cloth I’d packed for just such a purpose. “I think it was the principle of the thing. Jane got really pissed at the idea that Mama Ginger had not only stolen from her but had also used ill-gotten goods to get out of shopping for a present. Reclaiming the gift would embarrass Mama Ginger, so the effort was worth it.”
“But why send you?”
“I’ve spent a lot of time at the shop lately, and I haven’t stolen anything from her yet. It fostered a sense of trust.”
“Not for me,” he said. “I plan on pattin’ you down after you get out of my truck.”
“Well, I was also one of the few people she knew who could make the trip down here,” I said. There was a pause, not awkward, just pleasant. I pressed a finger into the little divot in his chin, making him dip his head and bite down on my fingertip. I laughed and drew it away, but not before his rasping tongue on the ridges of my skin sparked some rather pleasant tingles between my thighs. “So last night . . .”
“. . . Was not a one-time occasion,” he informed me. “That was new for me. The whole talkin’ and actually tellin’ you what I think, instead of what I think you want to hear—I don’t do that with everybody. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. This is a beginning, not a brush-off, understood?”
I nodded. “Still, it is incredibly awkward.”
“Did you have a good time?” He leaned across the sheets and pushed my hair back from my face. I nodded. “Do you think I’m easy?”
I burst out laughing. “No.”
“Good. I don’t think you’re easy, either. I think you’re sexy and fun and bendy in all the right places.”
