Wickedly Magical (Baba Yaga, #0.5)(11)
“Or unearth an ancient cairn where some paranormal creature stashed his treasure and then forgot about it when most of them were forced to go live in the Otherworld permanently,” Barbara said, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “It definitely sounds like Mister John Bell may have found something that doesn’t belong to him.”
“If he did, I suspect the Queen would like you to get it back,” Beka added. “You know how she reacts to Otherworld objects falling into Human hands.”
They both shuddered involuntarily.
“Shit,” Barbara said with feeling. “I do not feel like being turned into a swan. Or a bullfrog.”
“I think the last one was a tree,” Beka said helpfully. “But that was someone who really pissed her off.”
“Remind me to make an effort not to do that,” Barbara said. “I’d make a terrible tree.”
“You would,” Beka said. “So you’d better get going and deal with this.”
“Don’t say it . . .” Barbara warned.
“You’d better leaf right now,” Beka said, and the mirror dimmed on the sound of her laughter echoing over the ether.
***
Jonathan Bellingwood leaned back in the padded leather desk chair and gazed out through the picture windows of his study with satisfaction. The view of his little empire never failed to give him a warm glow. No one would have ever expected little Johnny Bell, abandoned by his alcoholic mother at the age of six and tossed around the foster system for years, to end up here, the master of all he surveyed.
Not that it was all that much—just a ranch house with some acreage—but it was a start. And a long way from the days of being the outcast foster kid with no friends and no money. Now he was surrounded by people who adored him; he’d created the family he’d never had, and never had to be lonely again. Or poor.
Of course, it helped that no one could say no to him anymore. He’d learned to be charming early on, mostly in self-defense, but these days, his natural persuasiveness had an added boost. One hand crept up to touch the medallion he always wore, tucked under his shirt where it could touch his skin. Its unnatural heat pulsed like a drowsing dragon against his chest, quiescent for the moment. The bronze-colored metal got even hotter when he actually called on its powers, but it was worth the temporary discomfort to be able to get whatever—and whoever—he wanted.
When he’d first stumbled across it, he’d had no idea what it was. The earthquake hit while he was in his car, parked in a lot by a rarely used stretch of sandy shore. He’d been in the middle of screwing someone else’s wife in the back seat of his Cadillac when the tremors started, and at first he’d mistaken the movement for part of their rather aerobic activities. It wasn’t until his companion’s screams had reached an even higher pitch than usual that Jonathan realized the earth was literally moving.
Afterwards, while his lady friend took a few minutes to straighten her clothes and reapply her makeup, Jonathan went down to the beach. He always liked looking for the little treasures that washed up on the shore after a storm, and he had a small collection of sea glass, coins, and other oddities he’d been adding to since he was a kid.
The waves were larger than usual, probably because of the quake, and the wet sand crunched under his feet. As he bent down to turn over a bit of broken shell, the foam deposited an unexpected gift next to his polished Italian loafers—a small chest the size of his palm, made of something that looked like stone, but weighed next to nothing. When he pried it open, there was only one thing inside: a bronze-colored medallion with foreign symbols or writing around the edges, dangling from a tarnished silver chain.
It didn’t look like much, but for some reason, when the woman he was with came stumbling down the path from the parking lot, he hid it behind his back, clenched tight in one closed hand.
“Oh, for the love of god, will you stop messing around down here and drive me back into town?” she’d demanded fretfully. “I need to get to someplace with a cell signal so I can check in with my family and make sure they’re all right.”
“You weren’t worried about your family five minutes ago,” Jonathan said. “Stop whining at me, will you?”
Surprisingly, she had. The beach was silent for a moment, and Jonathan felt heat coming from the necklace he clutched in his hand, surprising him so much he almost dropped it.
“Hey, did you find something?” the woman asked. “Can I see?”
The medallion grew even hotter, and Jonathan stared at her. “No,” he said. “Go wait in the car.”
As he watched her plump rear retreating up the path, John Bell realized that providence had sent him a gift.
Initially, he’d used it in small ways, mostly to encourage people to buy cars from him, and women to sleep with him. He rapidly discovered that the piece seemed to work much like hypnosis. It couldn’t make someone do something they otherwise would never do. If a man had no intention of buying a car, he still wouldn’t. If a woman wasn’t interested at all, she’d still walk away. But if that man wanted a car that was beyond his means, suddenly Jonathan (or John, as he was still known then) could get him to fork out that extra couple of thousand. And if a woman found him attractive, well, it didn’t take much to persuade her to follow those urges.
Unfortunately, his initial experiments backfired, and he had to leave town in the middle of the night and set out for someplace where he could start over. Destiny sent him another gift, though, this one in the form of the Morrisons, a lovely older couple from Illinois who he met in a rest stop restaurant on his way across country. They’d fallen into conversation over greasy hamburgers, and he’d mostly listened as the gregarious pair talked about the college reunion they’d just been to, and how all their old friends had children and grandchildren, and how sad they were that they’d never had a family. Now it was just them and their huge house and all that property—too much responsibility for them now that they were getting older, but what could they do?