Seduction Page 3

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Whatever. I get it.”

  “You do?” He sounded relieved.

  “I do,” I said resignedly. I had to admit I didn’t have a great track record in the secret-keeping department.

  At least I knew now. I finally understood why the old man had shown up when he did, after having nothing to do with Peter for most of his life. And why he had chosen Peter to be his heir.

  Jeremiah Shaw was an alchemist. And so was his great-nephew.

  “So?” I said, regaining some of my composure. “Show me.”

  “Show you what?”

  “You know.” I rubbed my fingers together in the universal symbol for money.

  Peter shook his head. “C’mon, Katy.”

  “I need to see it with my own eyes.”

  “Quit it.”

  “I thought you trusted me,” I said.

  We stared at each other for a long moment. Finally he sighed. “Okay, fine,” he said unenthusiastically. “I’ll need something made of base metal.”

  “Like lead?” I asked. He nodded. “But what’s made of lead? Bullets?”

  “It can be any metal,” Peter said. He tapped on my necklace. “How about that?”

  I put my hand protectively over the pendant around my neck. It was a heart with “Katy” inscribed on it. “You gave this to me, remember? On Valentine’s Day.”

  “Of course I remember,” he said softly. “I’d have turned it to gold then, if I’d known how.”

  “I thought you did know how.”

  “Not really. Not well, anyway, until—”

  “Right. Jeremiah Midas.”

  He blew air out of his nose. “So do you want me to do it, or what?”

  Reluctantly, I undid the clasp. I’d never taken the necklace off since he’d first put it around my neck, but now it slid down the length of its chain until it lay in the palm of Peter’s hand. I almost snatched it back, but he curled his fingers around it.

  “Ouch. The edges are sharp,” he said. “Guess that’s what happens when you buy jewelry at Fred’s Bargain Mart.”

  “It doesn’t matter where it came from,” I said. “I’ve always loved it.”

  “Well, you’re going to love it more after I’m done. Trust me.”

  There was something in the way he said that—his confidence, I guess, or something else—that made me feel as if I were seeing a new side to Peter, a facet of his personality that I hadn’t known existed.

  I wasn’t sure if I liked it either, but I let it go, the way I let my father’s remarks go when he got obnoxious. It made life less complicated.

  He held the metal heart between his fingers, concentrating in a way I’d never seen in him before. Concentration and focus were the real secrets to magic of any kind. That’s what Hattie meant when she said, as she often did, that magic had to be believed to be seen. First, you had to picture what was going to happen—what you were going to make happen. That was the key to everything, even something as outlandish as making gold.

  Actually, changing lesser metals into gold was one of the rarest magical gifts there was. Magicians have been trying to do it for millennia, mostly without success. Some of them—the most famous failures—concluded that it was possible only with the aid of what they called a “philosopher’s stone,” which not only produced gold, but also gave its owner immortality.

  “Do you have a philosopher’s stone?” I asked.

  “No. Shh.”

  That was what I thought. A crock. But then, if anyone had asked me an hour before what I’d thought of alchemy, I’d have said it was bogus too.

  “The moon’s full, isn’t it?” he asked.

  I had to think. The phases of the moon was something every witch learned along with her ABCs, but sometimes I lost track. “I think so,” I said.

  “Good.” He closed his eyes, and then he hummed or something. He made this low sound as he rubbed my tin Bargain Mart heart between his fingers, and I could almost see the magic crackling in the air between his lips and the object in his fingers.

  Then he stopped. For a moment, time itself seemed to stand still. Peter’s face was as distant as the image in a painting, as if he weren’t on the same plane with me at all. “Peter?” I whispered.

  “Huh?”

  The moment was gone. He smiled. In his hand was a heart that glinted with pure, glowing gold.

  “Katy,” the waitress said, cocking her head to the side as she read the inscription on the golden heart. She was carrying a pizza on her shoulder. “That you, hon?”

  I choked. When I was done coughing, I downed half my soda.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  I nodded, afraid to speak.

  “That’s real cute,” the waitress said, gesturing toward the heart in Peter’s hand as she set down the pizza. “Can I get you guys anything else?”

  We both shook our heads, and she winked at us before leaving.

  “Oh, my God,” I said. It was more like a breath than any type of speech.

  “I know. Amazing, isn’t it?” He picked up the chain, which had been pooled on the table beside the napkin dispenser, and looped it through the brilliant heart. Then he stood up and fastened it around my neck.

  I could immediately feel the difference in its weight. In its quality.

  “That’s more like it,” he said proudly.

  I looked into his eyes. “It’s a big gift, Peter.”

  I had meant the alchemy, but he must have misunderstood, because he touched the heart on my chest with his finger and smiled. “It’s what you deserve,” he said. Then he leaned over and kissed me.

  Now, I love kissing Peter. It’s probably my favorite thing in life. But I’ve got to say, my heart wasn’t really in it this time. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that Peter’s “gift” was going to have strings attached. Long strings.

  “Peter . . .”

  He sighed. “I thought we were done talking,” he said.

  Well, we’re not, I thought. “What exactly does your uncle want you to do with this . . . this talent of yours?”

  He frowned. “I don’t know,” he said. “He’s not the sort of person I feel comfortable grilling with a lot of questions.”

  “But . . .” I was thinking hard. “If you can make gold, why do you need to work for Jeremiah? You could send yourself to college. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  He looked annoyed. “Well, yes,” he admitted. “But that would be pretty ungrateful of me, wouldn’t it? I mean, after he taught me? After he’s told me he’s going to take me into the business?”

  “Okay, okay,” I said placatingly. I should have known Peter would feel obligated. That’s how he is. Fair to a fault.

  “It would be like slapping him in the face,” he went on. “My only relative.”

  “I said okay, okay? Sorry I brought it up, Peter.”

  This time I tried to kiss him. “Don’t be mad at me,” I said.

  “I can’t be mad at you.” He smiled and kissed me back.

  But I still had that feeling. The feeling that there were strings all around us, and that sooner or later we’d both end up dangling from them like puppets.

  CHAPTER

  •

  FOUR

  “One thing . . .”

  Peter pulled away from me. I could still feel his kiss on my mouth. “I need for you to keep this to yourself.”

  I sat up, rigid with indignation. “Well, duh.”

  “I’m serious,” he said. “If anyone finds out, even the witches—”

  “What will happen?” I taunted. “Is Jeremiah afraid that one of us will try to take some of his money?”

  “Yes!” he said, bulging his eyes at me. “Someone will. Count on it. Maybe not you or your relatives, but it’s inevitable that somewhere along the line—”

  “Excuse me?” I put my hands on my hips. “Am I mistaken, or are you putting Jeremiah Shaw ahead of the people you grew up with?”

  “That’s the point, Katy.
They’re people. It’s human nature.”

  “What’s human nature? Greed?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  I rummaged in my purse, trying not to look at him. “You sound more like your uncle every minute,” I said.

  He sighed. “And how would you know that? Have you ever even had a conversation with him?”

  “Well—” I was going to say but everybody knows what he’s like.

  “Or are you just going to follow the Whitfield party line that all the Shaws are evil?”

  “No,” I said, relenting. I had been pretty unreasonable, I knew. I held his hand. “They’re not all evil, because you’re a Shaw and you’re not evil. But aren’t you going to tell anyone? Not even Hattie?”

  “No one,” he said.

  “Up to you,” I said, trying to sound casual. “But I think it’s going to be tough to mass-produce gold coins while you’re slinging hash at Hattie’s this summer.”

  Suddenly his cheeks turned flamingo pink.

  “What’s with you?” I asked.

  “I’m not going to be at Hattie’s.” It sounded like a confession.

  I blinked. “But . . .” That had been the plan. We were both going to work full-time at the restaurant all summer. We were going to start a vegetable garden and grow herbs on the patio. We were going to save up all our money so that this time next year we’d be checking out dorm rooms at Harvard. “Where are you going to be?” My voice sounded like a squeak.

  He cleared his throat. “With Jeremiah,” he said.

  “Where?”

  He shrugged. “Wherever. New York, maybe. I don’t really know.”

  “But you’re going to go there. Wherever he says.”

  He sighed. “It’s not like he’s going to hurt me or anything. He’s my uncle. I just have to trust him.”

  “Do you?” I asked belligerently. “You didn’t trust me enough to tell me you had magic, but you’ll follow this guy—this uncle who disinherited you and didn’t talk to you for eleven years—to the ends of the earth, is that right?”

  “Oh, think whatever you want,” Peter said.

  I felt as if I’d been kicked in the stomach.

  I busied myself with the pizza, which served as a substitute for talking since we really had nothing more to say to each other at that point. I tried to eat, but the conversation had made me so nauseated that I threw my piece back onto my plate.

  “Look,” Peter said, a little louder than he had to be. “I’m going to make something of myself, whatever it takes, okay? So stop lecturing me.”

  “I’m not lecturing.” I bristled. “I’m just surprised.”

  “At what? That anyone would think I was worth anything?”

  “Quit it. You know as well as I do that Jeremiah Shaw is going to use you.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Because he uses everyone!” I almost shouted.

  “So what?” People were staring now. He looked around and lowered his voice. “That’s what all business comes down to. I do something for you, and you do something for me. It doesn’t make anybody good or bad.”

  I was so mad by now, it was all I could do to keep from screaming. “Look, Peter, all I’m saying is that changing all your plans to do something that you can’t tell anyone about, even me or Hattie, doesn’t seem like the best way to go.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you’re not my mom,” he said, his gray eyes blazing. “You’re just acting like it.”

  That did it. I walked out of there like my feet were on fire, and I didn’t look back.

  • • •

  His mom! That was a low blow, as well as stupid, since neither of us even had mothers. They’d both died when Peter and I were children. Peter had been an orphan most of his life. I at least still had my dad, though I hadn’t seen much of him since I went to boarding school.

  Before then, though, for about ten years, I pretty much took care of things around the house. My father was never much for cooking or cleaning. Maybe that’s how I got to be the way I am.

  Sensible. Reliable. Mom-like.

  Arggh. How long had he thought of me like that?

  The worst of it was, I don’t think Peter was just being malicious. It’s not his nature. So somewhere in the back of his mind—or maybe in the front of it—he’d been thinking mom thoughts about me before now. Which meant that in some way, some subtle permutation of the truth, I really was mom-like.

  Oh, God, I thought. Let me die.

  But then, while rolling in my quilt like a shrieking, weeping cigar that night, I had a thought. It was such a strange thought that I even forgot to cry for a second or two. It was this:

  Why?

  That was all, just that one question. Why did I always have to do the right thing, follow the right path, counsel good advice? I mean, I could be as self-centered and foolish as the next guy, couldn’t I? I could blow off my responsibilities like every other kid. I could do what I wanted for once, instead of what was expected of me.

  I didn’t have to spend my summer making gumbo and canning tomatoes while Peter went off to New York or wherever with Jeremiah Shaw. He was probably going to break up with me, anyway.

  For being like somebody’s mom.

  There are some things you just have to accept when they’re handed to you and then move on from there. If that was the way Peter felt about me, then he might not ever change his mind, no matter what I did.

  Unless I did something really radical.

  Maybe it was time for me to break away. From Whitfield, from Peter, from my own sorry self. There were wonderful places to see. Legendary places like Venice or Vienna or Hong Kong or New Delhi.

  Or Paris.

  The word caught in my throat. Paris.

  Yes. Paris.

  • • •

  So that’s how I came to be in the dump where I lived in the middle of what everyone told me was the most fabulous city in the world.

  As it turned out, my dad didn’t mind my leaving after all, so long as I paid for the trip out of my savings from my job at Hattie’s. Hattie herself was a little put out—she thought she’d already taught me everything I needed to know about cooking—but ended up giving me her blessing.

  “Maybe you’ll be able to teach me a thing or two from that fancy school,” she’d said. Well, maybe I would.

  My aunt and great-grandmother were entirely on board too. At least they pretended to be. I knew they were trying not to smother me.

  “This will broaden your horizons,” Aunt Agnes said with a brittle sort of cheer.

  “And if you need anything, just whistle,” Gram added. Gram is an empath, meaning she’s a healer and also a bit of a telepath. She was saying that if I ever needed help, I could reach her just by thinking. That’s easier said than done, though. Agnes and Gram communicate telepathically with each other all the time, but I don’t exactly have the hang of it yet. But we could still write letters and e-mails.

  The hardest good-bye was Peter. That is, I didn’t say good-bye to him at all. We hadn’t spoken since that terrible lunch at Pizza World, and . . . well, I was afraid he’d blow me off if I tried to see him, and that would ruin my whole summer in Paris.

  So I didn’t say anything. He was working on the day I left.

  Anyway, I made it to Paris, and was enrolled at the Clef d’Or.

  “Kooking school,” as Fabienne called it.

  I’d done it. Found the razor’s edge. Took a walk on the wild side. Said good-bye to my inner mom.

  He probably doesn’t even miss me, I thought.

  CHAPTER

  •

  FIVE

  Dear Gram,

  Well, the Clef d’Or surely lives up to its reputation as the greatest cooking school in the world! We are learning time-honored methods of preparing traditional French food, with no shortcuts. There are about thirty students in my class (Soups and Appetizers for the next two weeks). Most of them are French. Some are Japanese. There is one other English
speaker, a Canadian named Margot. I’m sure we’ll get to be good friends.

  Love,

  Katy

  Never mind that Margot was a fifty-two-year-old travel writer for the Toronto Sun, and was in Paris to cover a story about her close friend Chef Durant, the head chef of the school. Chef Durant does not speak to students, and neither does Margot, except in the capacity of interviewer. The one time I tried to talk to her, she asked me if I missed McDonald’s, which was pretty dumb, since there are McDonald’s all over Paris. Fortunately, she’s only staying around for Soups and Appetizers.

  Today we made coquelets sur canapés, which translates roughly to “disgusting critters on toast.” The class began with the chef’s assistant handing out little dead birds. I didn’t know what kind of birds they were, although he told us—one of the many mysteries of French cooking is the French language—but they were pitiful, scrawny little things, with their limp little necks and pathetic, blank eyes. We were told to plunge them into boiling water and then pluck the feathers off them, cut off their heads and feet, and remove their organs (the liver, mixed with raw pork fat, is a big part of the dish) before roasting them.

  The whole process was hideous. When I was working in Hattie’s Kitchen, I never had to chop anything’s head off, although I suppose someone did. I never had to sauté animal glands or skin eels (I won’t even begin to tell you how that’s done). Hattie didn’t even serve lobster, because she didn’t like the idea of taking an eight-year-old sea being and boiling it alive.

  “Deserves a sweet old age, if you ask me,” she’d say.

  At Hattie’s, I’d learned to cook with love. That is, love was my specialty. Hattie’s Kitchen was a magical restaurant. It was said that everybody got what they needed at Hattie’s, and when what they needed was love, my job was to stir a dose of it into their food.

  But I wouldn’t be using any magic at the Clef d’Or. I was going to learn the right way to cook, even if it was repulsive and took forever. And no shortcuts.

  That was another thing about Hattie’s Kitchen: We hadn’t been that fussy about making everything from scratch. Hattie’s grilled cheese sandwiches were made from processed American cheese. The chefs at the Clef would probably faint at the thought of that, but to tell the truth, those sandwiches tasted really good. When you’re sick, there’s nothing like grilled cheese on white bread with a bowl of canned tomato soup.