Sympathetic Magic(20)
“Even now, with Connor in charge?”
This time he did eat, and drank some water before he replied. “No, I’d say things are sort of in flux. It’s pretty clear he has no intention of running things the way Damon, or his father before him, did. I guess in a way you could call Marie and Andre and me the unofficial Wilcox elders, since we’re the ones he seems to go to for advice most of the time. At least, for Wilcox matters,” he added quickly. “Obviously, he and Angela talk pretty much everything over, but she doesn’t want to be seen as interfering in our family’s business.”
Wise of her, Margot thought. I really wouldn’t want to get embroiled in any of that, either. “And you don’t mind?”
“Why would I? I’m glad Connor feels he can rely on me.” A lift of the shoulders, and he said, “I used to be Damon’s sounding board, too.”
“Indeed? I had no idea Damon Wilcox ever took anyone’s advice but his own.”
“Well,” Lucas replied, after sipping some wine, “just because he used me as a sounding board doesn’t mean he actually ever did anything I advised.”
This was said in such a self-deprecating tone that Margot let out a reluctant laugh. In general, the mere mention of the late primus was enough to make her skin prickle, even now, when he was certainly no danger to anyone. But the way Lucas spoke of his late cousin told her that they’d had at least a friendly relationship, something she had a hard time wrapping her head around.
“Do you miss him?” she asked abruptly.
He paused a long time before answering. “Sometimes. That is, I can’t excuse the things he did, because there is no excuse for them. And I can’t fault for Angela doing what she had to do, because there really was no alternative. But….” The word seemed to hang in the air, even as he shook his head and ate another bite of his salad.
“But?” she prompted, then returned to her own neglected plate of field greens.
“We were friends,” Lucas said simply. “I have a lot of friends, but he didn’t. I think that’s why he liked talking with me, even if he planned to do things his way in the end. And I’d meet him when he was done with classes sometimes, and we’d have a few beers and talk about the D-backs, and — ”
Margot felt her eyes widening. Damon Wilcox, plotter and mastermind behind Angela’s kidnapping, was just a regular guy who liked baseball? “I find that hard to believe.”
A shrug. “Believe it, or don’t. He had a whole lot of different sides, like most people. I suppose it’s just that Damon didn’t show many of his. But we’d known each other since we were kids. I think he appreciated that he could relax around me, that I never asked him for anything.”
“I’d think it was the other way around,” she remarked. “Don’t tell me he never asked you for investment advice.”
“Oh, he did that all the time,” Lucas said easily. “Why not? Using my gift to help the clan seemed a natural enough thing. It didn’t hurt anybody.”
No, she supposed not. Well, maybe some people would call Lucas’ supernatural inside information a way of gaming the system, but she really didn’t think so. It really wasn’t all that different from having Adam nudge a few storm clouds closer to Jerome so everyone’s wilted vegetable gardens could get some much-needed rain in the midst of a long, hot summer.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, and Lucas sent her a surprised look.
“Sorry for what?”
“I’m sorry for your loss. Like you, I can’t excuse or forgive Damon for the things he did, but still, it hurts when you lose a friend. So I am sorry for that.”
Several indefinable emotions flitted across Lucas’ face — surprise? confusion? — but then he gave her a considering nod. “Thanks, Margot.”
They fell into a long silence after that, finishing their salads without speaking, waiting until the plates were taken away and their entrees brought. At last Lucas spoke.
“You’re a surprising woman, Margot Emory.”
“I am?” she said with a small laugh. “Really, I think I’m sadly predictable.”
“Not so.” Now his gaze was warm, and she forced herself not to shift nervously in her seat, to keep herself looking back at him as if being studied in such an admiring way was something that happened to her every day. “Don’t sell yourself short.”
Well, it was easy to do that when everyone else did. Then she chided herself for the self-pitying thought, which wasn’t even true. The worst she could say of her clan members was that they expected her to be as she was: an elder, there when a dispute needed to be mediated, a spell shored up, a decision made when changes in the outside world necessitated some alteration of the clan’s policies. And could she really fault them for that? They were only doing as they’d always done.