Skeptic

by Denise Mathew

  After I'd had a coffee, and emailed everyone I needed to, I cut down to the boardwalk. As expected on such a beautiful day, the place was crowded with an assortment of people, out to enjoy the last dregs of summer. Children, with melting ice cream cones, walked beside skateboarding teenagers, with droopy shorts and hats askew. Love struck couples walked hand and hand, and it made me think about how I would love to stroll with Dakota like that.

  The only downside to an otherwise perfect day, was that the blinding glare from the water had me wishing that I had brought my sunglasses. Still driving, I flipped open Dakota's glove compartment, hoping that he had a spare set of shades, but instead of finding sunglasses, a thick wad of papers fell out, and scattered on the passengers side floor. I sighed, pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store, then gathered the papers up. I was just about to stick them back inside, when I spotted something completely out of place, a black velvet bag that looked suspiciously like a gris-gris. I laid the stack of papers on the seat next to me, and plucked the gris-gris out. I unknotted the silver cord drawstring that secured the top. An aromatic scent of spices wafted up as soon as I opened it.

  When I peered inside, I found a cinnamon stick, a few cloves, nutmeg, three whole green cardamom pods, and a dried heart shaped leaf from an eastern redbud tree. Besides the spices and leaf, was a lock of hair tied with a pink ribbon, some fingernail clippings, and a curled up piece of yellowed paper. Seeing the contents of the bag made my stomach clench into a tight knot. I knew it was a love gris-gris, a voodoo spell aimed at getting the object of your desire to love you, and though it was odd that Dakota had one in his car, there was something much worse about the gris-gris.

  I slipped the elastic from my hair and let it fall loose, then snatched the lock of hair from the bag, and compared it to my own. My mouth went dry, when I realized that it was my hair in the gris-gris, and though I couldn't be exactly sure, the nail clippings were probably mine too. I fished out the slip of paper and gasped. Written in Nanny Flo's distinctive cursive, was my full name, date of birth and beneath it, Dakota's signature in rusty brown blood.

  14. DAKOTA

  Dakota rolled over, and opened his eyes, just in time to see a pea-sized brown spider with beige and grey spots, scuttle across the ceiling then suddenly, like a mountain climber descending, drop to the floor a few feet away from where he was lying. Lightning fast, it disappeared into a crack in the floor trim. Dakota couldn't help but shudder. He had always hated spiders, in fact he had been plagued by arachnophobia since he had been a teenager, and knowing that the spider had been above his head the whole time, was beyond creepy.

  He sat at the side of the bed, and massaged the back of his neck, sore from the odd way he'd been sleeping. He hadn't planned on knocking off, but he had been so full after breakfast that he'd passed out. When he glanced at his watch, he was shocked to see that it was already midday, and he wondered why Elise hadn't woken him up already.

  Twenty minutes later, showered and dressed in khaki cargo pants and a short-sleeved black jersey, with his hair still wet, he went to look for Elise. As he moved down the corridor, he couldn't help but think that the house was unnaturally quiet.

  When he didn't find anyone inside, he stepped onto the front veranda. Both his car, and the old Ford truck, were gone. A little nervous about where Elise was, he reached into his pocket and tugged out his cell phone. There was only one bar of signal, but he hoped it would be enough to put a call through to Elise. He punched in her number, there was a lot of static on the line, then it connected. The line rang three times before she picked up.

  "Dakota?" she said.

  "Elise where are you?" he asked.

  The connection crackled, and he only managed to hear the word "town", before the line went dead. Knowing that he probably wouldn't get through again, and since Elise had sounded okay, he tucked the phone back into his pocket. With nothing left to do but wait for her to come back, he sat on the porch swing and let his overworked mind pick through the events of the past few days. From the funky crap in the garage, to his fantasies about Mira, to ghostly women wandering around the house, and messages on roses, he'd had about as much as he could handle. And now with Elise convinced that Tansy was dead because of some spell, all he could think was that Cape Glenn was a fucked up place, with a side of just plain scary, and the sooner his ass was back in the city, the better.

  "Hey there," Mira said, startling him.

  "Shit," he said, under his breath.

  Mira bounced up the steps, a seductive smile curved her lips. She had changed her clothes again and was wearing a tube-top style lemon yellow sundress, that came to just above her mid-thighs. Her delicate black sandals, had stiletto heels and were just shy of trashy. She had teased her hair into a much fuller and surprisingly sexier style.

  She pushed the screen door open, and stepped onto the porch. When she did, the skirt of her dress rose a little higher, revealing even more of her bronzed thighs. Dakota flicked his eyes away, but the damage was already done, he knew he would have a difficult time getting the image of those divine legs out of his mind.

  Determined to keep his shit together, Dakota rocked to and fro on the swing, silently willing Mira to leave him alone, but as expected she pushed into the space at his side. The musky aroma of her perfume, surrounded him, and Dakota used every bit of his will to keep his eyes fixed straight ahead.

  "Where's Elise?" she said, in a too-sweet, singsong voice.

  She had moved in so close, that he felt her hot breath on his cheek. He wanted to move further down the bench, away from her, but it was like his body refused to obey his mental commands.

  "She's in town," he said stiffly, hating that he liked having Mira so close to him.

  "You didn't go?" she asked, grazing the flesh of his forearm with her fingernails. He shivered with pleasure, and prayed she didn't notice the erection, that was pushing mercilessly against the fly of his pants.

  "I was sleeping...I guess she decided to go alone," he said.

  His breathing quickened, and he swallowed a few times. He felt her tongue glide up the curve of his neck, and he whipped his head around. Before he could stop himself, his hand reached under her dress, when his fingers found bare flesh, he growled with excitement.

  In a smooth move, he lifted her up and onto his lap, her bare buttocks coming to rest on his crotch. He sank his fingers into her hair, and pulled her face to his, snatching her mouth with his own. Mira repositioned herself, until she straddled him.

  She kissed him with unabashed hunger, and it made him sigh against her lips. His tongue found hers and when it did, an electric shock surged through him. Any hesitations he'd had about taking her, were drowned in his animalistic need to have her. Crazed with desire, he thrust a hand down the front of her dress, squeezing the crushed velvet of her breast in his palm. He broke free from her lips, long enough to rip off his shirt, and tug the bodice of her dress down. Both of her breasts sprang into view, and he gazed greedily at her nakedness. He filled his mouth with her, and not too gently, bit her nipple. A part of him wanted to bite hard enough to draw blood, and he just managed to suppress the urge. Mira threw back her head, crushing and pushing her sex against his jeans, until the confines of his clothes grew painful.

  "I want you inside me Att... Dakota," she purred, and the sound of her voice, so unlike Elise's, made him remember the woman he loved, and who he'd promised to protect with his life.

  "This isn't right," he murmured, but even as he said the words, he knew they meant nothing. He couldn't stop this any more than he could stop the earth from rotating on its axis.

  Mira's face darkened for a fraction of a second, before she shoved his face into the warmth of her breasts. In the back of his mind, Dakota knew that Elise or Nanny Flo even, could pull into the driveway at any moment, but it did nothing to dampen his feverish yearning. He thrust his groin up repeatedly, and Mira matched his moves, gyrating her pubic bone against him. The swing moved beneath them in rh
ythm with their bodies, and only served to heighten his pleasure. Mira dragged her nails across his chest, hard enough that it hurt, then she slipped a hand down to his fly. Before she had a chance to unzip it, Dakota, with an abruptness that he hadn't felt since he had been a teenager, closed his eyes, threw back his head, and allowed an orgasm to ripple through him. Still panting, his face slicked with sweat, he felt Mira slip off his lap.

  When he opened his eyes again, she was sitting beside him. She had already pulled her dress back into place, and fluffed her hair, and now sat demurely, with her legs crossed as if nothing had happened. For a second, Dakota wondered if he had imagined it as he had before, but when he opened his mouth to speak, Mira silenced him with a pink fingernail against his lips.

  "That was just a taste of what you're going to get in a few days," she said, then licked her lips seductively.

  This time her overt sexuality, didn't have the same effect on him as it had just a few minutes before. Anger and shame spread through him, and he narrowed his eyes.

  "This was a mistake," he snapped, sitting up straight in the swing. "I'm with Elise. This never happened."

  Mira tilted her head to the side, and sent him a cruel grin, that managed to ice him, and also make him wonder why he had been so drawn to her in the first place. She leaned in closer to him, her eyes sparking with ferocity, then dug her fingernails into his inner thigh until it hurt.

  "But you're not really with her, are you Dakota? She doesn't satisfy your needs, does she?" Mira asked, her face pinched and ugly.

  He stared at her blankly. He wasn't about to talk to Mira about Elise, or their relationship.

  "We haven't had sex," he said almost mechanically, and was appalled that he had actually blurted it out. What the hell was wrong with him, what kind of power did this woman have over him, that made him lose all sense of himself?

  Mira glared at him, and once again Dakota was confused about what had once made Mira irresistible to him. He had been with enough women to know that what he felt for her was wrong, like all his self-control had been stripped away.

  He heard the pop of gravel beneath tires, and shifted his gaze to the driveway. Nanny Flo pulled up close to the house, and even as he saw the old woman glower at him through the insect speckled windshield, another rush of what could only be described as sex madness, made him go erect again.

  "Fuck," he said.

  "Soon," Mira said, giving his growing bulge a quick squeeze, before getting to her feet, and sidling toward the screen door.

  He couldn't take his eyes off where the flimsy fabric of her dress had slipped into the space between the cheeks of her buttocks, and he knew he was going to orgasm again, right there, with Nanny Flo, and her wizened sour face just a few feet away from him.

  He watched the old woman throw open the door of the truck, and it gave a rusty screech when she did. The sound seemed to snap him back to attention, and he leapt to his feet, and raced back into the house, seizing the last chance he had, to make a clean getaway. As he ran down the polished floor of the corridor, he heard Mira's mocking laughter follow him, and the sound of it made him want to get as far away from her as he could. He had just made it to the bathroom, slammed and locked the door behind him, when he shuddered violently with another orgasm.

  "What the fuck is happening to me?" he muttered, leaning against the coolness of the ceramic sink.

  Exhausted, and more confused than he had ever been in his life, he stared at his reflection in the oval mirror, and for a second he saw something in his face that made him remember another time and place, when his skin had been paler, his face thinner, and he had been so much more than he was right now.

  His hands clawed at the sink as he tried to to steady himself, but it was no use, he was falling into an abyss, and he didn't seem to know who he was anymore. Suddenly, and with perfect clarity, he saw Mira for the witch she was, and how she had promised him so much but had delivered nothing. He had wanted to kill her once, but she had managed to convince him that she would give him what he had always wanted, what he had been born to have.

  But none of that mattered now, because soon, he would have the power to rule them all. The time had finally come, and there was nothing in the universe that would stop what was destined to be.

  15. DAKOTA

  "You said the spell would hold until the time was right," Nanny Flo hissed.

  "What makes you think it isn't holding?" Mira countered.

  Dakota could hear the two women speaking over him, but he couldn't seem to crack open his eyelids.

  "So what's wrong with him then?" Nanny Flo asked.

  "I think there was a small crack, but I've already fixed it, and as soon as it takes, everything will be fine."

  Dakota tried to move, but his muscles were as useless as his eyes. He remembered blacking out in the bathroom, but not much else. Fear drove a spike into his chest. Had he somehow hit his head, and was now in a coma, paralyzed or hell knew what?

  "It better be fixed before Elise gets back, because we only have thirty-six hours before the blood moon. If she gets scared off, everything we've planned will be in vain," Nanny Flo said, even though Dakota couldn't see her expression he heard it in her tone, she was seriously pissed at Mira.

  His ears pricked at the sound of the screen door hinges being cocked. Seconds later, approaching footsteps tapped lightly on wood.

  "Why is she back so soon I thought you..." Mira started, but her voice cut off mid-sentence.

  He heard a loud gasp, then Elise's voice, and his heart leapt, because she would help him, somehow she would find a way to make his body work again.

  "What happened to him?" Elise said. Dakota heard the panic in her voice, and he wanted to tell her he was okay. His lips quivered slightly, but nothing more.

  "We found him collapsed in the bathroom," Mira said, as if she didn't give a shit if he lived or died.

  Cool hands, that he instinctively knew were Elise's, brushed his forehead, and he wanted to open his eyes, let her know that he was fine, but damn if he could. Anger simmered in his guts, because he was certain that somehow Mira and Elise's fucked up grandmother, had something to do with what was happening to him.

  "Maybe we should take him to a doctor," Elise said, her tone bordering on frantic.

  "No," Mira and Nanny Flo said in unison.

  "He's my boyfriend, and I decide what he needs," Elise snapped. He felt her hands work through his hair. "Did he bang his head?" she asked, probing his scalp.

  "How the hell do I know, I just told you that we found him passed out, and we managed to get him to the sofa..."

  "You haven't changed a bit, have you Mira?" Elise said.

  "I'm sure he's fine, Lisey," Nanny Flo soothed, her tone silky and as far as Dakota could tell, fake as a two dollar bill. "Probably just a bit too much heat, it's near a hundred degrees out there, probably even hotter in the house."

  "I don't know," Elise said uncertainly. There was a pause in the conversation, and Dakota wished he could see what was transpiring between the three.

  "If he doesn't come around soon, we'll take him in to the hospital, I promise," Nanny Flo said. Before the last word left her lips, Dakota felt his eyes pop open, as if someone had tied strings to his lids and tugged.

  He shuddered, then sat up so quickly that it made him dizzy. His sight was blurry, but it didn't take long to lock on Elise who was standing directly in front of Nanny Flo, blocking the old woman's face from his view. Her left hip was cocked in an all too familiar stance, that said she wasn't going to roll over for anyone, not even her grandmother.

  Dakota grinned. Elise's feisty temper matched her fiery hair, and he never loved her more than he did at that moment.

  "Hey, don't worry I'm fine," Dakota said, stretching his arms over his head. Elise whipped around, and closed the distance between them in a few quick steps. She leaned over him cupping his face in her hands.

  "What happened to you?" she asked, her clear eyes full of concern. Her s
oft lips parted, showing her slightly imperfect teeth, and all he wanted to do was kiss her, and forget everything that had happened with Mira.

  "He lives," Mira said in a derisive tone.

  Dakota kept his gaze on Elise, trying to ignore Mira, as well as the guilt that was burrowing into his thoughts.

  "Thanks for your concern," Elise said, rolling her eyes.

  Dakota tugged Elise into his arms, and planted a soft kiss on her cheek, then he let his eyes drift past Elise, to Nanny Flo, who was standing with her sinewy arms folded. Her scowl said in no uncertain terms, that she wasn't impressed with his display of affection.

  Elise grasped Dakota's biceps, and pushed back until her eyes met his.

  "Can you remember anything at all?" she murmured, as if she didn't want Mira or Nanny Flo to hear her. Dakota shook his head.

  "One minute I was washing my hands, the next I was out like a light. I think I might have bumped my head," he said, touching a spot near his temple. Elise slid her hand to the place he had just touched, and nodded.

  "You definitely have an egg there, do you want to get checked out at the hospital?" she said, giving him a hard stare.

  "No, I feel fine, it makes no sense to waste time in an emergency room, just because I have a little bump on my noggin."

  "I wouldn't say it's little," Elise chided. "But if you say you're okay, we'll just keep a watch on you, make sure you stay awake for a few hours and that you don't have a concussion."