Falling for Your Madness by Katharine Grubb Page A

David gritted his teeth and put his foot on Trey’s chest.
     
    “Yes.”
     
    David withdrew the sword. Police surrounded him. David threw his sword on the ground and submitted to them. They led him, the tweed-jacketed, well-mannered literature professor who’d made my date wet his pants, into a squad car.
     
    David looked at me. “Laura. He was not a gentleman.”
     
    They shut the door. Officers walked around the crowd asking everyone, “Did you see what happened here? Can you give us any information?” The crowd pointed at Trey and then pointed to David. No one was pointing at me. I was in the middle of all of it but felt, somehow, that I was invisible.
     
    An officer next to me spoke up. She was so close to me that I could read her name badge. “Can anyone else give us information about what happened here?” She looked right at me and never saw me. “Anyone?”
     
    I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. I turned around. It was Merle. “Miss Laura. Come with me. I think you need to know something about David.”
     
    “What’s going to happen to him?”
     
    “Assault charges, at the very least. Do not worry. He has magic on his side.”
     
     
     

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Saturday, September 29, 2012
    121 Commonwealth Avenue #2
    Boston, Massachusetts
    11:01 p.m.
     
    David’s apartment on Commonwealth Avenue was beautiful. It had high ceilings and those great bowed windows that look out over the romantic Back Bay. The living room was exactly what you would expect of a professor of literature. Walnut bookcases lined the perimeter. A leather sofa sat in the middle. A large, old-fashioned desk, with a laptop, was in the corner. Rich draperies hung from the windows, and along one wall was a tapestry that featured a medieval scene. An oriental rug was on the floor.
     
    Merle went to the bar and poured a snifter of brandy for me. “I assure you, Madam, I have no intention of trying to get you drunk. I am, however, concerned about your emotional state.”
     
    I believed him. If he laid a hand on me, David would clean his clock.
     
    He sat across from me on a leather ottoman. “David has told you that I do very bad card tricks.”
     
    I nodded and took a sip of brandy.
     
    “Would you like to see one?”
     
    “I suppose so.”
     
    He held his empty hand in the air and turned it, and a new, sealed deck cards appeared. “Would you do me the honor of unwrapping this deck?”
     
    I put the brandy down on the end table, unwrapped the box, and handed it back to him. He opened the box and took out the cards and offered them to me. “Would you examine the deck, please, and tell me what cards you see?”
     
    “This is a normal deck of cards.”
     
    “Exactly.”
     
    He took them back, shuffled them, and fanned them out in his hands. Now they were all kings, all of them, alternating perfectly, spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds.
     
    “That’s very impressive.”
     
    “That’s one of David’s favorites.” He then gathered the cards and did one of those maneuvers that I had seen blackjack dealers do on television.
     
    “Forgive me. This is such a cliché.”
     
    I laughed.
     
    “Now.” He fanned the cards out again, face down. “Please, pick a card, but do not look at it. Put it on the sofa to your right.”
     
    I did as I was told.
     
    “Now, pick eight more from anywhere in the deck. Do not look at those either.” Merle put the deck aside and took the eight cards from me. He turned them over, one by one, and handed them to me. They were no longer kings, but photographs of David and a woman. A much younger David was with a Korean girl who was wearing a fedora and holding an iris. Another had David with shorter hair and a girl who looked exotic, either Middle Eastern or Greek, and she was holding a hibiscus. Another was of a boyish David and a girl with a mane of red curls holding a daffodil. The African American girl with the beautiful smile was holding orange