“There’s no one here,” I say to Michael, looking at a huge room full of empty tables.

“They aren’t open for lunch,” he replies matter-of-factly.

I stop in my tracks. “Then why are we here?”

Michael laughs in that rolling hills way again. “It’s okay. I own the place. Well, I will when I turn eighteen.”

I don’t move. Strike number two. Rich, cute boys are rarely fun to play with, and you surely wouldn’t want to actually date one. I’ve been forced to meet enough of his type through Dad’s social circles to know that much. They actually think they don’t have to be decent human beings, because, well, they’ve got what everyone wants. Only for me, they totally don’t.

“I wanted to talk in private,” he says, urging me to the back corner of the place. “Besides, we can get the most awesome organic food. I only eat organic.”

So, he’s playing the “Upscale Gorgeous Green” card as well? Please.

I remind myself he’s Helene’s nephew. I have to be careful, here. Very.

I move to the table without saying anything. If his phone rings and he…

His phone rings. Strike three buddy, if you take that call. I don’t care how important you are.

“I’m so sorry, Julie, but I have to take this call. I’ve been waiting all day for it.”

“No problem,” I say flatly. Give me adoring Jake, any day.

We find our seats and I don’t even pretend not to listen in on his conversation.

“Hello? Yes Sir, it is. Thank you for calling, Sir. Yes, Sir. That’s very kind of you, Sir.” He pauses to listen, giving me a dramatic “sooo sorry” look. “Yes Sir, I’ll look forward to meeting her. Six O’clock. Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”

Three strikes with the phone, four for being a total brown nose.

“I’m really sorry, Julie,” he says to me after flipping the phone shut and making sure to show me it’s turned off. Seems he picked up on my attitude. At least he’s bright.

The waiter comes up in off-duty clothes. He’s glad to see Michael and is more than happy to whip up something great for us. Anything at all is on the menu, it seems. Michael orders a large plate of organic greens with sun-dried tomatoes and some “lightly toasted” goat’s cheese, plus a mini loaf of herbed bread. I can’t think without a menu in front of me so I say I’ll take the same, making sure to ask for butter with the bread. I’m all for organic greens, but I need my calories, too. The waiter looks at me like it would not matter what I asked for—if he didn’t have it, he’d go to the store to get it—and insists he’ll bring me a few flavors of butter to choose from.

“Okay, so on to my dysfunctional family,” Michael finally says. His voice is quiet, even if we are off in a far corner.

“Okay,” I say. I’m listening, not talking.

“I hardly know where to start. I don’t know how you know my great-aunt Anna, or Gran Bea and Jake.”

I don’t reply.

He considers me again, and sighs. “I’m sure it looks like I’m a spoiled little rich kid. But it’s a game and I’m playing for a reason.”\

“What kind of game?”

“One the whole family plays. In my case, I’m not only my Aunt Helene’s legal charge, I’m her favorite. She’s “protecting” me, she says, from my other family members. She won’t say why, but I have a feeling I know. I play along with her, as her favorite, because it’s better than having her think I’m on their side, and make my life even more hellish. Not to mention theirs, I have a feeling.”

“Why do you think that?”

He looks at me very seriously, then clears the plate in front of him. He puts a spoon in the center of his plate, looks over his shoulder to make sure the lone waiter guy is not around, then puts his hand over the spoon. He sort of bounces his hand five inches above the spoon, then takes a finger and—I swear—without touching it, it starts to spin. Like, fast. Like, seriously…without him touching it.

I look up at him with eyes as wide as they go, I am sure. He looks back, his eyes more than hopeful that I understand.

“You have magic,” I say.

He nods and moves the spoon toward me—again without touching it. I can’t help but back up in my chair. This is bigger than breaking a bowl. This is controlled.

“Keep talking,” I say.

“From what I have been able to figure out—since no one will actually tell me—what you call “magic” runs in the family. All of us. Anna, Gran-Bea, and Jake. Even Aunt Helene. There was some huge blow up, and I think it was about them the twins teaching me something once I am of legal age. I’ve pieced together that much over the years.”

Those chills are running up and down my spine big time now.

He leans into me and lowers his voice even further. “Anna’s not really out of it, is she? I mean, it’s not an illness. That’s why you were talking to her about Jake and Bea—which, by the way, no one has seen anywhere for more than a year. It made Aunt Helene nuts, because Jake’s her grandson. Even his mom has not seen him, and he’s our age. There was talk that he ran away, but everyone whispers, and Gran-Bea is also gone. And then at the same time, Anna who was perfectly fine went into that nursing home?”

He sits back and looks at me dead on. “They are all gone, probably hiding, and Anna is paying such a huge price. It’s about the magic, I know. But why go into hiding? And what does it have to do with me? Because it has to have something to do with me, or Aunt Helene wouldn’t work so hard to make sure I’m turning into a rich snob like her.”

I can’t say anything. I just can’t.

“Julie,” he leans in again, “am I even warm on this?”

I think at this point I would tell him everything, if I could. But I can’t get my mouth to hook up with my brain. His pieces fit with my pieces, but I still don’t have a full picture, or permission to try to make sense of it with him.

The waiter brings the bread with three small cups of butter, explains my options, and then leaves. Michael thanks him, but his eyes never leave me.

“Okay, you don’t have to confirm or deny anything. But what I would like you to tell Anna, if there is any way for you to get through to her, is that I already have the magic. They don’t have to wait to teach me. She once told me we would spend time together when I was older—her, me and Gran-Bea and Jake—and she would teach me wonderful things. But I had to grow up first, she said. This was a long time ago, but I never forgot.”

“I wouldn’t forget something like that, either,” I say.

“I also know she made a commitment to my mother, right before she died, which was only a few days after I was born. I once overheard Anna and Aunt Helene arguing about it. I think that commitment was to keep me from learning the magic until I was an adult. But I already have it. That’s what you have to tell her. I have it! And I don’t know what to do with it. Or why I have it. Or what it means. And now, seeing Aunt Anna like that…”

His eyes show a near panic. The kind I have felt when I think about Anna trapped in there.

“If she’s there to keep Bea and Jake hidden,” he continues, “which is the best I’ve been able to gather, and they are trying to hold out until I’m old enough to honor my mother…. I don’t know. Anna’s just got to know I’m old enough now. I can play the game with Helene and learn, I swear I can. I can do it without anyone knowing. I already do. No one knows about what I can do—no one but you now.”

His eyes are begging. No kidding, this guy is desperate. As desperate as I am when it comes to the magic. It’s hard to hold anything against someone like that. So I guess four strikes and he’s still in.

I’d love to tell him he’s right, at least about the parts I know actually are right. I’d love to say that Jake is learning magic, and I am, and they totally plan to teach him someday, too. That they have said he’s in line for the magic to continue, but maybe it’s not good to learn it too young. But if what he is saying is true, maybe they don’t want him to know any more than he does. And yet if they knew he already has the magic…

My head is spinning. “I hear you, Michael. Really. But I’m not… You know, it would be best if I take your Aunt on a walk today. Alone.”

He nods his own understanding.

“So, why are you in town now? I mean, you don’t sound like you’re from here.”

“I’m from here. But I go to boarding school in Rome. Have since I was nine. Aunt Helene enrolled me in a month-long soccer camp this summer on the Naval Academy campus, so I got to come back. She’s handed me the car keys and a lot of money. She knows I like good food, so she’s promised me this place. Really, I think she wants to see if I’m totally enrolled in her world or not. So, I plan to show her I am.”

“Isn’t Europe a better place for Soccer?”

“Definitely. But she wants me to consider a career in the Navy. The Naval Academy is here, so it’s her way to entice me.”

“And watch over you for a month?”

“Well, that was the plan. But she’s been called away for the next few weeks, so I’ve been moved to be watched over by someone else. That was what the call was about. She asked her business partner to put me up in his guest house. He’s got a teenage daughter, so she thought it would be better than me alone in her house. It’s not my first choice, but I rarely ever get my first choice in anything where she’s concerned.”

I raise my eyebrows and get all tingly, I mean from head to toe tingly, but say nothing. Not yet. It could be another business partner and another teenage daughter. But Dad asked me to be home for a dinner guest tonight at six, so more than likely, Michael is staying in our guest house. I’ll get to watch him go off to soccer camp in cute shorts and come home with sore muscles and grass stains. Which throws this into the category of one of the most bizarre turn of events that can happen to a girl in any given two days.

“Anyway,” he continues, “I have to meet them for dinner tonight at six. But if you are done for your walk before then, I could meet up with you. Or after, I can slip out. Might be late, though.”

“You might like the girl,” I say.

“I’m not here for girls,” he says flatly, completely unaware he’s also flattened my tinglies. “How could I be, with Anna trapped like that? She’s my first priority. I have to get her out of there. Nothing is worse than that, especially if she is aware of what’s going on. It’s got to be a living hell, you know?”

I nod. Put like that, he’s totally right. How could you even think about falling in love with Anna suffering like that? I feel like a jerk just imagining it.

“So when could you meet me?” he asks, anxious.

Once again, there are too many variables in this to do anything but play it straight. “At six tonight.”

“I’m sorry, like I just said, I have a dinner…”

“With me. I’m Julie Mayden. Your Aunt’s business partner’s teenage daughter.”

Michael is as stunned as I expected him to be. For reasons I totally don’t understand, and despite everything with Anna, it makes me feel really, really happy.