A Stroke Of Magic Read online

  “Please don’t. Please.” At his puzzled glance, I explained, “That will only make things worse. Especially if there is an issue I’m unaware of. I’m sure it will come out. And if I need your help then, I’ll let you know. Deal?”

  He hesitated for a few seconds but then nodded in agreement. “Be sure to let me know if things get out of hand. We’re a fairly relaxed company, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. To continue being that way, signs of trouble need to be stomped out quickly.”

  At that point, our discussion finally moved on to Frosty’s, my ideas for the campaign, and his thoughts. The next hour passed quickly. By the time we left, I had a firm handle on what I wanted to officially present at the next staff meeting, and in a strange way, I felt as if I’d made a friend.

  Naturally, I ignored the voice in my head that told me I wanted much more than friendship from Ethan. And I pushed away the surreal feeling that we were supposed to be…well, something we weren’t. I also ignored the signals my body repeatedly gave me in his presence. Sweaty palms, heart palpitations, and the like were nothing more than symptoms of an excess of hormones. They had to be. Because I barely knew the guy, and I had more than my share of complications in my life as it was.

  So, yeah. Friendship was good.

  It’d be enough—one way or another.

  When I returned home, I walked into a mess. Literally. The majority of my art supplies were scattered from the dining room to the living room, sitting on every available surface except for the couch, which held my sister, my grandmother, and Chloe.

  “What’s going on?” Not that I really wanted to know, but it had to be asked.

  Chloe jumped up, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright. “I came over earlier to check in on you, and your sister and grandmother filled me in on everything. I am so jealous! You have magic. And a ghost for a grandmother. And you went to another time. How can you stand it? It’s so unbelievably cool!”

  “Chloe! Calm down before you keel over,” I told her.

  “But it’s wicked exciting. Anyway, I told them about Beatrice and how I haven’t found any dirt on her at all, but then we talked about the soul mate problem.” Her eyes gleamed even brighter. “We figured out how you’re gonna find him. Tonight.”

  My stomach tightened in knots. For the moment, I turned away from Chloe and focused on my sister. She tended to be the calm one. “What’s she talking about?”

  “Your magic should be in your artwork,” Elizabeth said slowly. “So we thought you might be able to draw a picture of your soul mate. Once we have a picture, maybe we’ll be able to find him.”

  Grandma Verda stood. “I’m hoping it’s that cute Irish boss of yours, Alice.”

  “You mean that cute Irish boss of mine who you took to lunch? And told I was pregnant?”

  “He told you?” Her mouth stretched into an uneven line. “He’s definitely not a pomegranate if he broke a promise. I had such high hopes for that young man.”

  “Grandma! Stop with this fruit thing. None of us even knows what it means. Besides, he didn’t tell me; I guessed. And why’d you do it? You know I love you, but you stepped out of bounds with that one.”

  She looked contrite for about half a second, and then she grinned. “I’m so glad I wasn’t wrong about him. Maybe he’s the one for you.”

  I sighed. I’d hoped for an apology, but that so wasn’t happening. “The one what?”

  “She means your soul mate. For some reason, she has it in her head that this boss of yours is the man you’re destined to be with,” Elizabeth said. “I have no idea why.”

  “Call it instinct.” Grandma Verda winked at my sister. “I was right about Nate, wasn’t I?”

  My sister just about glowed at the mention of Nate’s name. She nodded. “Point taken. So maybe it’s not such a farfetched idea. What do you think of him, Alice?”

  Even though searching out a man was the last thing I wanted, I had to admit that the thought of Ethan being that man wasn’t so bad. Of course, I couldn’t let this continue. “I barely know Ethan! And about this drawing my soul mate thing—how am I supposed to draw a picture of some man I’ve never met?”

  For no reason that I could discern, Chloe ran into the kitchen. She returned almost immediately with a chocolate-frosted cupcake balanced in the palm of her hand. “Eat this first. Then draw.”

  “What are you talking about? I feel like everyone is speaking in a different language.”

  “It’s easy! Since Elizabeth still has her magic, she baked the cupcakes with the wish that you’d be able to draw a picture of your soul mate. If you eat it, the magic should do its thing, and we’ll know who he is without even leaving your condo. Isn’t that terrific?” Chloe pushed the cupcake toward me.

  “It is a good idea.” Grandma nodded toward the cupcake. “Let’s give it a go. What can it hurt?”

  With another sigh, I accepted the treat. “Didn’t you two just get done explaining how unpredictable magic is? That we should be careful and all that jazz? What if you said the wish wrong, Elizabeth? What if instead of drawing my soul mate, I draw the exact opposite of my soul mate?”

  “I’ve learned my lesson with wishes. I’m very careful with how I word everything.” She crossed her arms. “It should work. But if you don’t want to do it, it’s totally okay. This is your thing. We’re just here to help.”

  Help. Yeah, right. Elizabeth would agree with whatever my decision was, I knew that. But Grandma Verda and Chloe? They’d nag at me in their own special ways until I gave in. And I’d eventually give in, so why bother putting up a pretense?

  I sat at the dining room table. “Fine. All I need is a sketchpad and a pencil. I don’t know why you brought every art supply I own out here.”

  Chloe rushed to get the pad and pencil, while Grandma Verda and Elizabeth perched in the chairs across from me. Elizabeth smiled faintly in my direction, probably to reassure me. Call me bratty, but I didn’t return the gesture. Grandma Verda clasped her hands together and jiggled in her seat, bits of glitter from her sparkly lavender shirt landing on my table.

  “We weren’t sure if you’d want pencils or charcoals or if you’d want to paint or whatever.” Chloe placed my requested items in front of me. “So I brought everything out. Sorry about that.”

  “Not a big deal.” I glanced at Elizabeth, who still watched me intently. “So, all I do is eat this and then instantly it should begin? Just like that?”

  “Ideally,” she replied.

  “Ideally?”

  “You know, that whole magic-is-unpredictable thing,” Chloe interjected. “We hope it’s right away, though. Don’t we?”

  She’d certainly taken to all of this nice and easily. Too bad she wasn’t truly a member of the family, or I’d pass the magic on to her in a second. If I even could. “Okay. Here goes nothing.”

  I picked the paper off the cupcake and then tore a small chunk from the bottom. Popping the bite in my mouth, I somehow expected that this time I’d notice a difference in the taste, with magic as an extra ingredient. But no, it tasted like any other chocolate cupcake my sister ever baked: moist, flavorful, but completely normal.

  The first bite went down easily, so I took another. And another. The entire time I ate, Chloe hovered next to me, while Grandma Verda and Elizabeth stayed seated, eyes never leaving my face. After I swallowed the last bite, I brushed crumbs off my hands and stood. “I need some milk.”

  “Do you feel any different?” Chloe asked. “Can you tell if the magic is working?”

  “Are you ready to draw your soul mate?” asked Grandma Verda.

  “Give her a few minutes, girls. Geesh.” That voice of reason, which I oh-so-appreciated, came from my sister. Bless her heart.

  In the kitchen, milk in hand, I leaned against the wall. Did I feel any different? No. I didn’t. Did that mean the magic hadn’t taken hold? Most of me hoped that was the case, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a small part that had wanted this scheme to work. After all, even with
the weird crap going on, I was still a woman who’d once been a little girl, who’d once had dreams about finding her real, true love. But there was no prince in shining armor waiting around the bend for me; Troy had taught me that.

  I put my glass in the sink and went to give them the bad news. Returning to my chair, I clasped my hands together and said, “Okay, guys. I don’t feel any different at all, so I’m pretty sure nothing’s happened. Can we forget this? Please?”

  “You have to try,” Chloe said. “Like with the juice the other day. Give it a chance, at least.”

  “She’s right, Alice. All you’ve done is eat the cupcake. I don’t think you’ll feel anything until the magic begins to work, which probably won’t happen until you begin to draw,” said Elizabeth. “If nothing happens then, we’ll know.”

  For once, my grandmother didn’t say a word. And I wanted her opinion. “What do you think, Grandma?”

  “I think you’re the only one who can decide.” Her steady gaze met mine. “But if you don’t try, won’t you always wonder?”

  I couldn’t argue with that, so I nodded. “Okay, then. I guess I’ll give it a go.”

  My palms were damp—probably from nerves—so I rubbed them on my pants before opening my sketchbook to a clean page. Curiously, as soon as my fingers took their normal position around the pencil, everything relaxed inside of me. What was there to be nervous about, though? It wasn’t like this was going to work. Inhaling a short, quick breath, I put pencil to paper, not even sure what I was going to draw.

  I didn’t have any image in mind. Not a face, or a place, or anything at all. Closing my eyes, I tried to picture the person, the man, I was supposed to draw. Still nothing.

  “It’s not happening.”

  “Give it a little longer,” my grandmother said. “Don’t think too hard about it.”

  Trying to follow her advice, I cleared my thoughts. Instead of attempting to see an image, I focused on not seeing anything, on not hearing anything. But nope, that didn’t work either. A few years back, I’d taken a meditation class with Chloe. Let’s just say I hadn’t excelled. It seemed this wasn’t going to go any better than that twelve-week course, because I couldn’t stop thinking about what I was supposed to be doing, which was drawing the face of a man I was meant to be with. And because I couldn’t stop thinking about that, I couldn’t think of anything else.

  Because I wanted this over with, I decided to give them the show they were after. Only I’d have to fake it, because this magic thing? It so wasn’t happening. But I needed a man to draw, and after a minute, I had the perfect one.

  Elizabeth’s boyfriend, Nate.

  Besides, my sister had given me this gift I didn’t want, so I owed her one. I’d do this just to tease her. She’d probably freak out, but once I told her it was a joke, maybe everyone would forget this ridiculous idea and leave me alone.

  I thought of Nate, remembering his features. Normally I didn’t like drawing people without at least a picture of them in front of me, but I figured I’d be able to get a close enough representation based on memory alone.

  “Oh! I’m feeling something,” I fibbed. “I think it’s working!” My lips quirked and I fought to stop myself from breaking into laughter.

  Chloe squealed. My grandmother hushed her. Putting pencil to paper, I began to draw.

  In a millisecond, everything changed. Tingles sped down my arms into my hands, and just like that I was drawing a picture that wasn’t Nate. I didn’t have any other image in mind, so I saw what the others saw, as it came to be on the paper in front of me.

  My hand moved quickly, drawing lines, shading them in, moving on to another area of the page to do the same. The tingles increased, sort of like when your arm falls asleep and you get that numb but not quite numb feeling. That was exactly what it felt like, except it affected my entire body.

  As weird as this was, I also knew I had the power to stop. That if I wanted to drop the pencil, I could. But something I couldn’t explain pulled at me, pushed at me, and I felt as if I had to finish this drawing. That nothing else mattered at that moment but completing the picture in front of me.

  So, I drew. And drew. And finally, after I don’t know how much time, the image began to make sense. Sand met a water’s edge; a pile of seashells and a toy bucket with a shovel came into view. After that, a dog with big, floppy ears and a sideways grin. I have to admit, that made me chuckle. Here I was, supposedly drawing my soul mate, and a dog stared up at me from the page. Cute as he was, I doubted he was my forever after.

  But then my hand drew the image of a little girl. And I recognized her from the vision I’d had with Miranda. This was my child. My daughter. Garbed in a sundress, she sat on one side of the dog, her hands digging into the sand, building the beginnings of a sand castle.

  My heart raced and my breath caught in my throat. My daughter. I had a picture of my daughter before she was even born. How many people could say that?

  My hand continued to move, but every part of me remained focused on the child. Her smile was wide, open, and carefree. She looked healthy and well taken care of. Which meant I hadn’t screwed up too badly yet. Yay for that.

  When I heard Chloe gasp, I realized I was finally drawing the form of a man. My attention switched to him, and I waited with bated breath as my hand continued to move, continued to shade, continued to draw. All my prior arguments flew out the window. Because, guess what? I wanted to see his face.

  If this man was truly my soul mate, then hell yes, I wanted to see his face. My hand moved faster, so fast that my arm began to cramp. My fingers gripped the pencil tighter, sending another spasm through my arm. Ignoring the ache, I waited for the image to be finished.

  And then, finally, it was. I dropped the pencil on the table. It landed with a soft clack before rolling off, soundlessly hitting the floor below.

  “Oh, no,” Chloe whispered.

  “What?” Grandma Verda stood and then walked over to us. “Well, that’s not good.”

  “It can’t be that bad.” Elizabeth followed in Grandma Verda’s footsteps, stopping on the other side of me. She bent forward, the movement causing her hair to cover her eyes. Pushing it away, she sighed. “All right, that sucks.”

  Disappointment I hadn’t expected brushed against me, drowning out my anticipation. I ran my fingers over the drawing I’d just completed, and let out a sigh of my own. Maybe this man in front of me, put on paper by my own hands, really was my soul mate, but I’d never know who he was. At least, not based on this image. He knelt on the other side of the sand castle, across from my daughter, but all I could see was his backside. From the soles of his bare feet past the edges of his swim trunks, up to his bare back, to the—yep—back of his head. Not one part of his face showed.

  “He must be nice, this man. I mean, he’s building a sand castle with someone else’s child, so he must be a good man, right?” I muttered.

  “How do you know she isn’t his child?” Chloe asked.

  “Because she’s my daughter. I saw her last night, when I was with Miranda.”

  “Oh!” My grandmother squeezed my shoulder. “She’s beautiful.”

  Tears filled my eyes. I pushed them away. “Yes, she is. And she looks happy.”

  Elizabeth spoke softly over my right shoulder. “Of course she does. You’ll be a terrific mother.”

  Maybe. But what if this man, whose face I couldn’t see, was part of the reason why my daughter looked so happy? I heard Miranda’s warning again, and the part about my daughter needing the guidance of one particular man reverberated inside of me. As quick as I’d been to laugh at the idea of finding my soul mate, this changed things.

  “Miranda said she needed to be raised in pure love. She said it was of the utmost importance I find my soul mate before my baby is born. It could be she’s this happy because this picture represents the best-case scenario, assuming I can find him.”

  But what would the results be if I couldn’t? Prickles of unease popped up
, coating my skin from head to toe. I didn’t know the answer to that question. I stared at my daughter again, taking in her smile, the happiness in her gaze, and at that second I knew something I hadn’t known before: I would do anything—anything—to ascertain this image became reality.

  “I think I need to find him,” I whispered. Once again, I ran my fingers over the sketch, wishing I could turn the picture of him around by force of will so I could see his eyes. Were they gentle? Kind? I wanted to know. I wanted to know so badly that it startled me.

  “How are you going to find a faceless man?” my grandmother asked.

  This was another question for which I didn’t have an answer. At least, not right away; but as I stared at the drawing, searching for something, anything I could use to identify him, I found it. My answer and the identifying mark.

  “He has a scar.” I pointed to the jagged mark on his right shoulder. “See it? It’s not that large, but it’s there.”

  “Let me see that.” Grandma Verda reached for the sketchpad.

  I gave it to her. Then I stood and paced, working out the kinks in my legs from sitting so long.

  “You’re right! It’s definitely a scar. Or a birthmark. It’s hard to tell for sure.”

  She passed the sketchbook on to my sister, who said, “Hmm, I think it’s a birthmark. But Grandma’s right; it could be either.”

  Elizabeth then gave it to Chloe, who barely looked before returning it. “Would more magic work? Can’t you bake a new batch of cupcakes, Elizabeth? But wish for Alice to draw the face of her soul mate.”

  “We can definitely try. I’m just not sure how successful we’ll be. I was pretty clear in this wish, and that’s what we got. Of course, Alice should be able to use her magic for this too.”

  Grandma Verda crossed her arms. “There’s no need. The back of that man could be Ethan Gallagher. The body looks about the right size, and he has dark hair, just like Ethan.” She pointed at me. “All you have to do is get a look at him without his shirt on.”