Opening her eyes again, she asked, "Did you hit your head when you landed?"
He nodded.
Aurora pushed his dark hair aside and looked at the bump on his head. She held her receptive hand over it and knew it was throbbing, but not dangerous. Mild concussion at the worst. She'd confirm that, as well, with a precautionary X-ray. "You can feel better knowing there's nothing seriously wrong," she said. "Let's just be as thorough as possible, though. Don't want you suing me." And she pulled on a pair of latex gloves, then slipped her fingers inside the waistband of his jeans and began undoing them.
His hand landed atop hers instantly. "Hold on a minute!"
She couldn't pull her hand away, so she left it there. "Problem?"
"Yeah, there's a problem. What do you think you're doing?"
She smiled. "I always heard that men who drive Jaguars are trying to make up for having small genitals," she said sweetly. "I just wanted to check." His jaw dropped. She shook her head and rolled her eyes. "I'm examining you. I'm a doctor, Nathan. What do you think I'm doing?"
"I think I'd like a doctor with a little less sarcasm, and a little more testosterone. A male doctor, if you don't mind. And could you make him a few years older than Doogie Hauser?"
She lifted her brows. "So it is true? About the small—"
"Dammit, Aurora, get me a male doctor or I'm outta here."
"You're as big a jerk now as you were ten years ago, McBride," she snapped. "And I hope your balls swell up and fall off."
"What happened to your phony line about harming none, Endora?"
She smirked at his name-calling. "Hey, I didn't say I'd cause it, just that I'd like it." She peeled off her latex gloves and tossed them onto his chest. "And before I go, I'll tell you what Dr. Stewart is going to tell you after a thorough exam and a few hundred dollars' worth of X-rays. You probably have a mild concussion, which is amazing considering how hard that rock you call a head must be. Your family jewels will be sore for a few days or so, but no damage was done. And you have a big purple bruise on your right elbow. That's going to bother you more than anything else, because you'll wince every time you bend the arm." She spun on her heel to head out the door, then stopped in her tracks and turned to face him again. "And one more thing—something Dr. Stewart won't tell you. You're still a virgin."
He gasped. He sputtered. He stared at her as if she'd grown another head.
"Remember all this next time you feel like calling my abilities as a doctor—or as a Witch—into question, Nathan."
#
Dr. Stewart examined him thoroughly and ordered a complete set of X-rays. When all was said and done, he told Nathan that he had a mild concussion. That his groin was going to be sore but no serious damage had been done. And that the bruise to his right elbow would probably give him more trouble than any of the other injuries.
He didn't tell him that he was still a virgin, but Nathan didn't figure that sort of thing showed up in an X-ray.
But Aurora had known. And how the hell did a skeptic like him explain that? How could she know something he'd never told another living soul?
Damn.
He felt invaded. Embarrassed. As if he had to explain or defend himself to her. It insulted his pride that she knew, that she must be thinking what she must be thinking. And for God's sake, when had he ever given a damn what Aurora thought? Besides, it wasn't as if he'd chosen to be celibate. It was just that every time he got anywhere near scoring with a woman, some sort of disaster happened. It had been this way since college, and he was beginning to think it would stay this way for his entire life.
Hell, maybe he ought to join the priesthood.
It was as if he were cursed.
Cursed?
What if.. She'd always hated his guts. So suppose she had....
Nah. He sighed and fell back on the bed.
Dr. Stewart came in with release forms for him to sign, and Nathan took the pen and scratched his name across the bottom. "Tell me something, Doc, do you believe in curses?"
Dr. Stewart smiled. "I know you made her mad, son, but Aurora Sortilege would never go putting any curse on anybody. Wouldn't hurt a fly, that one. Don't be listening to gossip."
"That's easy for you to say." He shook his head. What he was thinking was really silly, because he didn't believe in that kind of crap.
"If someone put a hex on you, son, it wasn't Aurora." He winked then. "But I'd bet my last dollar she could help you get rid of it."
Nathan gaped. "You telling me you believe in all that...that Witch stuff?"
Dr. Stewart drew a thoughtful breath, frowning hard. Then he sighed and sat down in the chair beside the bed, crossing one leg over the other. "Yesterday, Aurora and I were sitting in the doctors' lounge having coffee. All of the sudden, for no apparent reason, she dropped her cup on the floor." He shook his head. "Coffee all over the place. She got up and ran out of there like her chair was on fire. Next thing I knew she was pushing a crash cart down the hall. She stopped outside one of the patients' rooms...and about a second later, the man inside went into full arrest."
Nathan scanned the doctor's face to see if he was kidding. It didn't look like he was. "Did you ask her about it?"
"She said she heard the alarm going off on the man's heart monitor, but she didn't. There wasn't any alarm. We found out later that one of the nurses had left it unplugged. Damn thing never would have gone off."
Sure, and it's almost Halloween and I'll bet it's this guy's favorite holiday—next to April Fool's Day, that is.
"It wasn't the first time something like that's happened, either."
"Then you do believe she's some kind of a Witch?"
"It's uncanny, boy. I'll tell you that much."
The man didn't seem like the practical-joking type. And Nathan got to thinking about some of the uncanny things he'd seen Aurora do, from the time she'd been pint-sized to a peanut.
"So...so if there was some kind of curse on me..."
"Or even if it's just bad luck," Dr. Stewart continued, "Aurora would be the person to talk to about it. No doubt in my mind about that."
"Yeah," Nathan said. "Unless she happens to hate my guts." Or unless she's the one who cursed me in the first place. The possibility didn't seem quite so farfetched anymore.
Dr. Stewart chuckled deep in his gut as he got up and walked out of the room, shaking his head.
Well, Nathan thought, he really had nothing to lose. If he didn't figure out why the fates seemed to be conspiring to keep him from ever having sex in his life, he was going to lose his mind. And the embarrassing part—the part where he actually had to admit that he was still a virgin at twenty-nine—was already over. Aurora already knew. So maybe he should try to get her to help him.
And maybe he should just stick hot needles into his eyes. First he had to decide which would be more unpleasant.
Chapter Two
Aurora ducked her head to miss the wind chimes that hung from every possible place on the front porch and kept the house sounding like an ice-waterfall all the time, and headed through the front door.
Aunt Flora looked up from where she'd been concentrating hard on two pink candles with heart shapes carved into their bases and rose petals scattered around them. And her athame was still in her hand.
"Sorry," Aurora whispered, pausing in her tracks. "Am I interrupting a ritual?"
"No!" Aunt Flora said, too quickly. Almost as if she had something to hide.
"Now, Auntie, it looks like a love spell to me." Aurora crooked a brow. "Hey, you aren't trying to conjure up some prince to come steal you away from us, are you?"
"Of course not, dear! Why, I would never. Oh, no, absolutely not, darling." She cleared her throat, muttered a quick, "As I will it, so mote it be," half under her breath, and snuffed her candles.
Aurora got a little queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, one that told her she was being kept in the dark about something. Before she could question Aunt Flora, however, Aunt Fauna came in fr
om the back door, a basketful of freshly cut herbs and various roots over her arm. "Ohhh, you're home!" she exclaimed. "Merriwether, she's home!"
Aunt Merri's steps came from the second floor as she hurried to the top of the stairs. "Wait until you see what I bought you today, Aurora!" She waved the little box she held in her hand as she trotted down the stairs. Aurora winced, and quickly sent a protective wish out to her, to keep her from falling and breaking something. "I saw it and I just knew—''
"Oh, wait until you see it!"
"You'll never take it off!"
Her aunts were acting decidedly suspicious tonight. Aurora's warning bells were going off. Of course, she loved them with every cell in her body, and knew they'd never dream of harming her. But meddling was certainly not beyond them.
"Thank you, Aunt Merri," she said, taking the box warily and opening the lid. "Oh, my. That is beautiful." Aurora lifted the necklace from the box—a gold chain with a rose quartz stone suspended from it, and the Runic symbol for love etched onto the surface. "But, Aunt Merri, why this particular stone?"
"It spoke to me," Merri said. "Just felt right, you know. One of those impulse buys."
Aurora frowned. "You've never done anything impulsive in your live, Aunt Merri. Now why don't you girls tell me just what's going on here? Hmm?"
They all shook their heads, muttering denials, and averting their eyes. Aurora's sense of foreboding grew stronger.
"Tell us about your day, dear."
"Oh, yes, do! Did you meet anyone interesting today?"
"Anyone new?"
She tilted her head, knew they were changing the subject, and decided to let it slide. For now. "The only new patient wasn't really new. The little brat who used to pick on me when I was younger. He grew into a bigger brat, and a chauvinist pig to boot."
"Why, whoever can you mean?" Flora asked faintly.
"Certainly not that sweet little McBride boy?" Fauna said, as Merri elbowed her in the ribs.
"Now how on earth could you know...?"
"The cards, dear! The cards."
"I didn't know there was a Nathan McBride card in your deck, Aunt Fauna. Unless you're referring to The Fool."
"Oh, dear," Fauna said. "Then you did see the McBride boy today?"
"Only long enough to wish I hadn't," she said. "I swear I've never known a bigger jerk in my life. Demanded a male doctor. Of all the nerve..."
"Don't be too hard on him, Aurora," Aunt Merriwether advised. "Maybe he was just embarrassed."
"Or shy," Flora put in.
"Or nervous," Fauna added.
"Or an idiot," Aurora declared. "If I ever see him again, I think I'll... What? Why are you all looking at me like that?"
"Like what, dear?"
"Like you've done something I'm going to hate, is like what"
"Well... well, you see, we were under the impression that..." Fauna began.
"That you and Nathan McBride were old friends," Flora finished for her.
"So when his father called to say he'd heard you were back in town, and to ask how you were doing..." Merri's voice faltered. "We...well, that is, we..."
"You what?"
Merri swallowed, lifted her chin, and said with authority, "Invited him to dinner."
"Nathan and his father, that is," Fauna added quickly. "You know, his father, Daniel, he's always been kind to us. Always willing to order even the most obscure herbs, if we asked, and never once pried into what we could want with them."
"He's retired now, you know. Turned the drugstore chain over to Nathan," Flora said.
"Chain?" When Aurora had left, there had only been a handful of small drugstores.
"It's a rather impressive chain of pharmacies now, dear," Aunt Merri clarified. "Nathan has a head for business. And you mustn't be upset about this dinner. We just thought it would be nice to..."
"To be sociable," Fauna finished. Then she sighed and wiped her neon hair from her brow as if exhausted.
"When?"
"Why, tomorrow night, dear."
"Fine. I just won't be here then. I'll make something up and..."
"Oh, no you won't," Merri said, and for once her voice sounded a bit harsh, and even a little disapproving. "That would be not only deceitful, but rude, and we've raised you better than that."
"Oh, that we have," said the usually timid and soft-spoken Flora, shaking a forefinger. "'Ever mind the Rule of Three. Three times what thou givest, returns to thee.'"
Aurora pressed her fingertips to her temples and closed her eyes. "All right, all right. I'll suffer through dinner with the idiot. But if you expect me to enjoy it, you'd better think again."
"Oh, darling, that's better. And of course you'll enjoy it. I'm sure Nathan's become a wonderful man." Merri smiled.
"No one's at his best when he ends up in an emergency room," Flora said sympathetically.
"You might be very pleasantly surprised, dear," Fauna put in.
"I'll be surprised if he has the nerve to show up," she retorted; then she made her way upstairs to her own suite of rooms to sit and ponder the possible reasons for such a terrible scourge appearing in her life right now, just when everything had been going so smoothly.
#
The place scared the living hell out of him.
First, it was old, and creepier than even he remembered. Then again, he'd never come all the way inside before. And the house was older now than it had been last time he'd come over here. But only by a decade.
It was Gothic in style, with tall narrow windows so ancient that the glass was thicker at the bottom of the panes than at the top. The house had been freshly painted, sure, and kept in good repair. But a weed patch that his father assured him was an herb garden took up half of the side lawn, and a dense flower garden, with a path that led to its center and enough trees and shrubs to keep that center hidden, took up most of the back. He'd always wondered what was hiding inside the depths of that garden. Then there were those wall-to-wall wind chimes lining the front porch, tinkling constantly. The place gave him the chills. He kept expecting bats to come flying out of a dormer window.
His dad had come down with a mysterious, hacking cough just before it was time to leave, and insisted it was probably his allergies acting up. He'd said Nathan had to go or the three old ladies would be insulted, and goodness only knew what would happen then.
Nathan didn't particularly want to think about what would happen then. He grinned self-consciously and reminded himself that he didn't believe in that stuff.
He rang the doorbell and it chimed with a deep and resonant tone, then grinned harder as he imagined Lurch coming to answer it. But instead a tall, regal woman with steel-gray hair and piercing black eyes opened the door, and Nathan's smile died. "Hello, Nathan," she greeted him. "You probably don't remember me. I'm Merriwether. Do come in."
"Hello, Nathan," said another voice, this one coming from a body no bigger than a minute. She was four-eleven if he'd ever seen it, and weighed perhaps ninety pounds dripping wet. She had hair as soft and white as cotton, and the face of everybody's cookie-baking grandma. "It's so good to see you again, young man. I'm Flora, remember?"
"And I'm Fauna," called another, this one short as well, but as round as a pumpkin and with hair about the same color. This one he remembered.
"Good to see you again," he managed. "I'm sorry my father couldn't make it. He said to tell you how badly he feels for missing this." As he spoke and listened to their pat replies about being sorry that his father couldn't make it, Nathan looked past them. But she was nowhere in sight. There was plenty to look at, though. It smelled fantastic in here, and he spotted the source—incense burning in brass pots that looked Oriental and ancient. There were candles glowing everywhere. Mostly pink and red, he noted, wondering if the colors were significant in any way. Soft music was playing, sounding whimsical and Gaelic to him. Every window had a crystal prism suspended in front of it, and every shelf was lined with other stones—amethyst clusters and giant glittering
geodes big enough for a small child to crawl inside. A tiny table sat in the window to the north, and there was a black iron cauldron sitting in its center, and various other items arranged around it: candlesticks, statuettes of mythical figures of some sort, wineglasses, an ornate silver hand mirror.
"And what is it that kept your father away, Nathan?" the tall one—Merriwether—asked.
"I think it's an allergy or something," he said, still distracted, and still searching the place for Aurora, and wondering why he was. He didn't even like her. Didn't even like her type. He liked blue-eyed blondes yes, but he preferred them with more bustline than brain. Not willowy Witches with genius IQs and electric blue eyes that could burn holes through solid rock. He still didn't see her. But there was a round table in the room's center with an elaborately decorated deck of oversized cards on it, and what he thought was a crystal ball in the center. Its base looked like pewter, and was made in the shape of a gnarled, clawed hand, long fingers grasping the crystal ball and holding it up.
A cold chill went up his nape.
"Oh, your father's ill?" tiny Flora asked with concern.
"Yes. Just allergies. Nothing serious. He's..." Nathan's voice trailed off. Aurora appeared at the top of the stairs, and he went utterly still. She was...man, she was mesmerizing. Okay, so maybe he did like intelligent, spooky women. Maybe he'd just never realized it before. She just... she hadn't looked like this at the hospital, in that lab coat with her hair tied back and...
But now...
She came down the stairs in a black dress that hugged her arms from her wrists to her shoulders, dipped to cling to her breasts and her waist, snugged its way over her hips, and then turned into free-flowing rivers of satin that swayed around her legs when she moved. Her hair was long, very long, and gleaming in the candlelight like magic. And her eyes, they were almond shaped and more exotic than ever, lined and shadowed and as blue as polished sapphires.
For the life of him, Nathan couldn't figure out why she would take pains to look this good for a man she disliked as much as she disliked him. Why? He wondered if maybe Bobby Ridgeway was coming over later.
Three Witches and a Zombie Page 3
