Just One Taste Part 19

"There's a bit of a recipe of things to be consumed, and then some words to be spoken. I thought I could go backwards, eat the opposite of the ingredients listed."

Cade frowned. "That's why there's such weird stuff in the grocery box."

"Yes. And you're so clever with words. You can write the steps for me."

"You're not going to summon Satan, are you?"

"Of course not!" Juliet said, shocked. "I'm not perfectly sure why the spell worked the first time, but Sir Joseph was a G.o.d-fearing man, a pillar of our little parish. No matter how desperate he was to, um, prove his manhood, I cannot imagine him resorting to such a strategy."

"I don't know. If I couldn't make love to you anymore, Julie, I just might be desperate enough to do a deal with the Devil."

"I suppose you expect me to be flattered, but G.o.d has ears, you know." Juliet gave him a stern look.

"And a heart, too, because He brought you back to me." Cade held her to his own until it was time to prove his own manhood again.

Juliet stood at her kitchen counter, her sleeves rolled up, wearing a butcher's ap.r.o.n and a fingerprint of flour on one cheek. Cade sat at the dining table reading one of Juliet's oldest magic books. And praying. They had risen before dawn and had crafted what was the first and hopefully the last attempt at amateur sorcery. Juliet's notes, recently translated from Portuguese, were spread out in neat piles. Marion Kilgariff's family secret lay front and center. Like a Chinese magic menu, Cade and Juliet had cobbled together a little bit of Column A, a little bit of Column B.

"I wish I'd had a computer," Cade complained, rubbing his eyes. "I think and write better with one. I hope I can read my writing when the time comes." He closed the slim volume carefully. It had no specific spells within, but cautioned its reader on the general consequences of unsanctioned magical experimentation.

Apparently he and Juliet should have a coven of naked White Witches in the kitchen with them for backup, chanting away. There was some talk of unexpected outcomes. Like death.

The dogs would have to do.

"From what I can figure out, if this actually works we'll get some sort of sign. It's all very vague, though. If I put out a catalogue like this, I'd go out of business. Just exactly where are we going to get a wand?"

Juliet grinned. "Silly boy, I have several in my shop. But I didn't bring any. You just don't know where they've been or what they've been up to. I've read the human index finger works just as well." She waggled hers at him.

"As opposed to the dog index finger," Cade muttered. Jack looked up at the sound of 'dog' but didn't actually get up. He and Rufus had already gone for a frigid morning swim and they were warming up in front of the woodstove, wet fur stinky.

"Okay. Are we ready? We've already blessed the vessel with lake water. You've got everything measured?"

Julia nodded. She was using a big crackled brown mixing bowl that had seen its share of duty in its day. Countless women had kneaded bread dough and stirred cake batter in it for more than a century. Juliet said she could almost feel their competent hands at work. The bowl had a kind of country magic on its own, but to enhance it, she had taken it to the water's edge. Cade was grateful he'd paid attention in Sunday School to come up with the words for their odd little ceremony while the dogs paddled around.

"Add the salt first. It says 'Let it run slowly through your hands and concentrate on what you want.' Say the words we decided."

Juliet put her reading gla.s.ses on and looked at the recipe card. "Purify and protect so that the Spirit is powerful," she whispered. Salt drifted like sand through an hourgla.s.s between her fingers. Cade was reminded of the opening of Days of Our Lives and had to subdue his amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Now the flour."

"Fruit of the earth, nourish the spell with your innocence." She gently stirred the salt and flour together, her face now intent. As she poured in the water, she said, "Water is the source of all life. Let it carry my desire. Spirit, Earth and Water, hear my heart." She kneaded the gooey lump, then washed off her hands in the sink.

They were still wet and were shaking when Cade handed her the slip of paper with her heart's most earnest desire written on it. He steadied her hand while she set a match to her wish in a Pyrex pie plate. When it was ash, she added it to her bowl, then sprinkled the remainder of the spell's ingredients into the mixture. She dropped it onto a cookie sheet, shaped it into a heart, waved a finger over it and slipped it into the preheated oven.

Her voice rusty. "There. I wonder how it will taste."

"You'll find out in fifteen minutes if the oven doesn't blow up. Now it's my turn." Cade bent to kiss her, keeping clear of her gummy fingers.

"You don't have to, you know. If something goes wrong-"

He kissed her to shut her up. And for other reasons, too many to write down. He already had quite a list on the paper in his hand. She washed up and stood beside him as he read the words aloud in a strong, clear voice. He then swallowed the bitter liquid in the wine gla.s.s in front of him, making a face. A bank of gray clouds moved over the lake, shutting out the morning sun. A breeze blew up, scattering the fallen leaves in frenzied spiral swirls. Rufus whined and curled closer to Jack. The timer on the oven dinged.

Julie put on her oven mitts and opened the door. An ambrosial aroma wafted through the room.

"I hope it tastes as good as it smells," she said doubtfully. Cade knew what was in the misshapen biscuit, after all, and it really shouldn't smell quite so delicious. She lifted it off the pan with a spatula and put it on a cooling rack. Jack, alerted to food by his very capacious and discerning nose, abandoned his friend by the woodstove and put his face at the lip of the kitchen counter.

"Oh, no you don't! I haven't waited all these years for this moment just so a d.a.m.n dog can outfox me." Juliet s.n.a.t.c.hed up the hot biscuit and bit into it.

"Not bad. Not bad at all." She crammed the rest of it into her mouth.

Cade looked at her in horror. "My G.o.d, Julie! Did you say the words before you ate it?"

Juliet swallowed. "I thought them. A lady doesn't talk with her mouth full." She licked a crumb from the corner of her lips. "If for some reason our effort this morning didn't work, I'll make a whole batch of these again just to eat them with strawberry jam and a big gla.s.s of cold milk."

Cade put his arm around her and squeezed her tight. "Well, providing we both don't go back in time, turn into toads or shrivel up or something, what are we going to do today?"

Julie looked at the mess on the counter. "I cooked. You clean up."

Chapter 7.

The freaking loons were having some kind of mournful hootenanny on the lake tonight. Cade had been to years of Boy Scout camp. Baseball camp, too, although that was usually at some college campus with no lake, just over-chlorinated swimming pools that people had probably peed in. He was a Maine boy, born and bred. He thought of himself as an outdoorsman, although he wasn't one to hunt with anything but a camera now. He'd learned all the lore about loons, how some people thought they escorted you into the netherworld with their screams and laughter. He knew the different sounds loons made when they felt threatened. Something was bothering them tonight, that was for sure.

Juliet was curled up against him, oblivious to the shrieking. The uncurtained windows cast squares of moonlight to reveal her tangled hair, one small fist tucked under chin. She was smiling in her sleep. Cade was pretty sure she was dreaming of him. He'd put that smile on her face. And would do it again.

He rolled away from her gingerly and got out of bed. He was wide awake, might as well make use of the time to work on another magic formula just in case. He picked his boxers up off the floor and put one foot in. He wobbled a little, but didn't want to sit on the mattress and wake up Sleeping Beauty. But then he looked out the French doors to the deck and fell on his a.s.s to the floor.

Jesus. Ben Franklin or his lookalike was standing out there, his round Ben Franklin gla.s.ses twinkling in a patch of silver light. Cade s.h.i.+mmied into his underwear from a sitting position and wished he had his baseball bat.

"Julie!" he whispered. "Julie!"

Maybe he shouldn't wake her. But the phone was on her side of the bed. She could call 911 while he crawled around looking for a weapon. The guy was probably trying to rob them, except he was dressed like no cat burglar Cade had ever seen. It was like he was going to an early Halloween party as a Founding Father.

You read about wackos in the woods all the time. Some hermit had lived in a tent for twenty-seven years not too far from here, breaking into cottages for beer and beans. Cade had heard plenty of stories at camp when he was a kid too, when the counselors tried to scare the bejesus out of the campers so they wouldn't try anything funny after lights-out and cut into the counselors' dope-smoking time. Hollywood was cranking out movies left and right with screaming teens running through the forest in fear for their lives. Cade had no desire to become fodder for a screen treatment Based on a True Story.

He wasn't a hero. He was just a half-naked guy covered in goose pimples because the wood stove fire had died down.

But Ben looked pretty old. Cade wondered if they'd remembered to lock the latch on the door after they'd watched the moon rise. A lock meant nothing to a thief, though. If someone was determined to break the law, they'd break anything to do it.

"Julie," he said, a little louder this time. "Honey, wake up."

"Mmm." She rolled over to where he used to be. "Cade? Where are you?"

"Shh. On the floor. Don't get up, Juliet. There's an old man on the deck."

"What?" Juliet sat up in alarm, the quilt dropping from her perfectly perfect white b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Cade couldn't help but notice, but now was not the time to be h.o.r.n.y.

"Call the police. Where's your gun?"

"Oh, Cade. It's not loaded, you know."

He was glad to hear his life had never been in danger, but kind of wished he had a bullet now.

"Merde."

"What's wrong?"

"The cell phone's dead. My reticule, I mean my handbag is on the kitchen counter. The gun's in the zippered compartment. But he'll see you if you try to get it. What if-" Her voice trailed off in the dark.

"I'll be okay." Once he got around the bed, it was a straight shot across the room to the open kitchen. He could almost see the bag's leather-and-metal chain from here gleaming in the night light by the sink. If he crawled on his belly like a reptile-where was that coming from?-he might just get there without Ben noticing him.

Cade took a quick look outside. Ben hadn't moved an inch. The loons were still laughing with a definite edge of hysteria.

He pulled Juliet's fuzzy robe off the blanket chest at the end of the bed and tossed it to her. "Put this on. We'll both feel better."

Juliet nodded. "Maybe it's just a neighbor."

"You have no neighbors, remember? Everyone's closed up their cottages on the main road for the season and gone. At least that's what you told me." Unless she'd lied about that like she lied about the gun.

"I want to see him."

"No!" From where Ben was standing, he couldn't possibly see Juliet. But if she slid down the bed or, G.o.d forbid, walked to the gla.s.s door- "What does he look like, then?"

Cade could hear the s.h.i.+ver in her voice. "Like Ben Franklin, actually." He heard a sharp intake of breath. "Do you know him? Were you friends with Ben way back when? Or is he just a neighbor?"

"I very much fear," Juliet said slowly, "that the gentleman you see is my late husband, Sir Joseph Barton."

"Holy s.h.i.+t." Cade climbed back on the bed. "Is he a ghost?" Jeez, the fact he could even ask such a question showed he was now a fully vested partner in Juliet's Magical Mystery Tour.

"I've never seen his apparition before, and I've attempted any number of things to conjure him up over the years. To give him a piece of my mind, you know, and ask his a.s.sistance in letting me grow old gracefully. He's never had the courtesy to turn up before."

"Well, he's there now. Do you think what we did this morning worked?"

"Possibly. There's no real way of telling. Oh, Cade! What if I'm a normal woman now! Quick, turn on the lights! Do you see any wrinkles?"

He put his arm around her and kissed her. "I love you, even if you're abnormal, Julie. If we get out of here alive, I'm going to marry you even if you outlive me and our kids."

"I couldn't bear that."

He felt a tear slide down her cheek and brushed it away. "I think it's time we invited Ben-I mean Joe inside. Is he dangerous, do you think?"

Juliet lifted her chin. "It is I you should be worrying about. When I get my hands on that rodent b.a.s.t.a.r.d, he'll be sorry he ever married me!"

Cade got dressed in the dark. He didn't want old Joe to disappear. Or give him an easy target. He could only find his jeans, though. He and Juliet had had a mutual striptease on the way to bed and he must have tossed his sweats.h.i.+rt out of reach. After he b.u.t.toned his pants, he kissed Juliet's forehead. "I'm going out the front door. I'll sneak around the house."

He paused. "I wonder why the dogs haven't woken up. The loons are going nuts." There was pretty regular dog-snoring coming from across the room.

"Please be careful, Cade," Juliet whispered.

He nodded and stepped outside. His bare feet crunched against some fallen leaves and he cursed. But by the time he got to the deck steps, he saw Sir Joseph hadn't moved a muscle. The man stood at the French door, peering into the blackness. Cade crept behind him, about to wrap his arm around the old guy's throat. They did that in movies, didn't they?

"Don't be a fool. I can see your reflection in the gla.s.s, you young scamp. Would you dare to incapacitate me before you discover the reason I have come?"

The man turned toward Cade, a touch of a smile on his lips. "Do you truly have the audacity to touch me? I am a baronet, you know. And a powerful warlock. And you..." He gestured in disgust. "You are a half-naked savage!"

Cade snorted. "I'm afraid we half-naked savages don't care about t.i.tles, Joe. This is America. And your last foray into magic didn't work out so well for you, did it?"

"Don't be impertinent." Suddenly a perfectly round ball of icy blue light appeared in Barton's upturned hand, illuminating the deck. Cade took a step backward in surprise.

"Yes, I've learned a thing or two in my spare time. Why do you think those hounds of yours still sleep? I have enchanted them!" Sir Joseph's ghastly smile hinted at something more.

"Juliet!" Cade cried.

"Indeed, she's fallen back asleep as well. A lady should not be a witness to a duel. It's not seemly."

"A duel?"

"Mr. Gray, I hereby challenge you! You have dishonored my wife. Pick your weapons."

Cade couldn't help himself. He laughed. This fat little old guy-this fat little dead guy-was standing here, bristling with outrage.

"Joe," he said, "Juliet isn't your wife. She's your widow. And if she could, she'd kill you all over again. You really screwed things up for her."