It, like all stories, begins in one place and ends in quite another. Small minds expand. Opinions are worked over like hot iron in a forge. Writers are a bit like blacksmiths in that respect: we thrust characters into the fire and beat on them until they're in the shape we want...
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The Magician
There are two kinds of legends.
There’s the big legends: the legends everyone knows. They’re embellished, and
twisted, but the main threads run constant. Legends of kings, of presidents, of
horrible wars. The sorts of legends that withstand centuries of time, and get
put down in books.
Then there are small legends: the
local ones. The ones salted with the flavor of towns, of places, of small
people with big stories to tell as they keep warm by the fire. Legends steeped
in mystery, swirled in uncertainty, tasting of fear and dreams and wishes and
tall tales. Legends that only exist on the lips of the tellers, that spill
forth at the gentlest prodding of good whiskey, that live a generation, or two,
or three, before they’re laid to rest in cold Southern ground somewhere.
Liam Bennet was a small legend.
It had started in 1860, before the
war. Of the few truly well-to-do families in Marietta, the McCords had been
the wealthiest. Their Greek revival mansion sat on a prime square at city
center, shaded with oaks, washed a crisp white and shining in columned glory.
Reesling had never been to one of their parties – she was too close to poor for
that – but she’d heard tell of them. Men and women in Sunday finery sipping
mint juleps beneath parasols, playing croquet in the dappled shade of those
magnificent oaks, laughter slipping up through the leaves like the strike of wind
chimes. Fine food and servants moving about across the lawns and through the
manse. Dancing and drinking and the soft rustle of expensive skirts sweeping
across the ballroom floor. According to Haddie Dunstan, whose papa owned the
butcher shop and who supplied the McCords’ parties with pork haunch and beef
roast, it was a sight unequaled save the most exclusive of Atlanta house
parties.
It was Devin McCord, rumor had it,
who’d first introduced Marietta to the man who would come to be known as the
Magician. If passed-around stories were to be believed, Liam Bennet had worn
his hair short and been clean shaven the night of that party. He’d been dressed
as well as any English lord, and his tongue had been twice as charming. While
partygoers looked on, stupefied, he’d made a soup tureen levitate. He’d stolen
ten ladies’ purses without moving from his place at the center of the ballroom.
With a dozen card tricks, he’d dazzled. Turning a pocketwatch into a dove, he’d
astounded. And at the end of all that, he’d conjured a leaping flame in the
palm of one empty hand. Not just a magician, but a conjurer. A firestarter. He
was half-gypsy, half-noble, half-demon, half-rake.
Or so the story went.
But once the war started, other
stories had begun to arise. For the past three years, tales of the Magician had
traveled as far as the Carolinas and back. His parlor tricks had been
transformed through the telling into feats of great and terrible black magic.
He was a heretic who worshipped devil spawn…and who somehow managed to conjure
himself into the middle of dozens of battles – from state line to state line –
appearing when and where he was needed, snatching young Confederates off the
battlefield, leaving dead northerners in his wake. No one knew his motive, or
his methods, or if he even existed, really. He was a local hero frightened
mothers told their children of. Georgia’s very own Locksley.
And here he sat in Rees’s kitchen.
Her deep-seated sense of hospitality
kicked in, but she had nothing to offer guests. “Lily, put some water on,” she
instructed, “for tea.” And her eyes went to the meager stack of split logs
beside the stove, stomach tightening at the thought of using any of it for
something so menial as tea.
Lily shared her worry, her blue eyes
wide and frightened. “But the wood–”
“Tea, Lily,” Rees pressed, and moved
about the room. The whole house was six inches in dust and smelled like an
abandoned barn. What had you been doing,
Mama? she wondered. Had it gotten
this bad? Were you in so poor a shape? If she was truly dead, as Liam
claimed, then she had been. I should have
been here, she thought fiercely. But she’d had a husband off to war and a
baby and sisters-in-law…
“Annabel,” she said in a warning
tone. “What have I always said about poking bears?”
From her perch on a chair, Annabel
spared her a withering glance and then returned to making faces at Theo
Merrick. “He’s not a bear; he’s just a smelly old outlaw who needs a shave.”
He was sitting in the window seat,
one long leg drawn up, arm propped on his knee, boots leaving fresh mud on the
grimy window ledge. He looked lean and dark and dangerous in the sad quiet of
the kitchen, his eyes a bright shade of green that missed nothing. He’d taken
off his brown jacket – not military wool, but faded oilskin – and fished a
green apple from a pocket that he was peeling with a wicked length of knife,
sun glinting on the shiny wet innards of the peel strips. His nails were dirty
and his fingers were callused and he had all his teeth still, the whites of
them flashing as he slipped a bite of apple between his lips. Everything about
the man was frightening…but he didn’t frighten her the way the Yankee had. The
Yankee had been soft and slight and offered pleasantries. Theo was anything but
pleasant, and if a man didn’t put on airs, you could probably believe what he
said. Or so that was Rees’s logic.
By contrast, Liam sat at the head of
the plank table, as casual and unconcerned as if he were an uncle they’d
invited for dinner. Under his jacket, his clothes were faded and dirty, and
offered a clearer picture of strong shoulders. He has a nice neck, Rees thought, stupidly. Under the scruff of his
reddish beard, framed in straggly hair, he had a nice face, too. It was
weathered, and lined, and showed his age. And he had beautiful eyes. If nothing
else about the man was true, his reputation of a rake had been true at some
point. At some point in his life, women had found something in his looks that
drew them in slowly, sinuously, until they were snared before they’d managed to
find a word for the strange way in which they thought him handsome.
“I’m a bear now?” Theo asked, still
peeling apple.
“You’re not anything I want in the
house,” Rees countered, pulling the tea kettle down from its shelf. There was
one tea bag left. One. And she dropped it in the pot that she placed on the
table.
“Did you hear that?” Theo asked with
a glance at his friend.
“Aye. She’s right, you know,” Liam
said. “I wouldn’t want you in a house of mine.”
Theo snorted and chewed apple.
The air had a tense, frozen quality
about it, ready to crack. This was the strangest, scariest, stupidest situation
Rees could have imagined. She filled the kettle from the bucket they’d hauled
up from the well and kept an eye on both men. Lily stood wringing her hands,
looking close to panic.
Liam’s gaze went to the willowy
blonde. “Don’t fret, child,” he told her in a gentle voice. “We don’t mean you
any harm.”
Lily swallowed – throat moving – and
managed a tremulous smile.
“Why are you here?” Rees asked.
His blue eyes shifted to her and she
fought the urge to curl her hands into fists. That almost-smile flirted with
his face again, and made his blue gaze dance. “I take it you know who I am?”
She kicked her chin up. “I’ve heard
stories.”
“And you don’t trust me.” It wasn’t
a question.
“I don’t see a reason to trust anyone
these days.”
His grin became true. “Smart girl.”
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