Never Been Witched

by BLAIR, ANNETTE

  She wanted to ask if he’d ever seen them, but he hated ghost talk, because, according to him, ghosts didn’t exist. Then again, neither did witches.

  Outside, he was climbing the ladder up the cement foundation that jutted into the sea and kept the land beneath the lighthouse from floating away. The ladder led to the boat shed.

  Morgan came out the back door, dripping icicles.

  Destiny wrapped her blanket around him and eyed her wet clothes strewn about the dock. “I don’t suppose we have a clothesline out here somewhere?”

  He went back into the shed and came out with a wheelbarrow, which he filled with her clothes. “There’s rope in the lighthouse. I’ll string you a clothesline at the base of the light tower steps, between the stair rails and lantern hooks.”

  “We have to hang them tonight,” she said, “so they don’t get moldy, or so stiff and wrinkled they’ll stand on their own. I’m gonna look and smell like a slimy stinkhorn in those things.”

  He looked her up and down. “You know my answer to that.”

  She huffed. “Go home?”

  “No. Go naked.”

  She raised her chin. “Care for another swim?”

  He gave her a full-bodied shiver and pushed the wheelbarrow of wet clothes to the house. “I’ll leave these in the tower, put on dry clothes, and be back to help you hang them.” He stopped in the kitchen while she got the mop from the corner. “Do you know how to make tea?”

  She patted the cast-iron monster dominating the kitchen. “On a stove out of Cabin and Wagon Train Magazine? Surely you jest.”

  “I’ve been using it for years. It’s ready for morning coffee. Strike a match, and touch it to the kindling in here.” He opened a door and pointed. “This is the firebox.” He took an empty, blue enamelware coffeepot from the stove’s top shelf where it sat beside an old aluminum coffeepot. A warming shelf, she surmised.

  “Fill this with water. Heat it. Pour it in a mug. Find a teabag. Think you can do that?”

  Part of her wanted to hit him with the damned pot that he used as a kettle. But the absurdly attracted part of her wanted to warm him, in a very big way.

  She yanked it from his icy hand. “Call me Annie freaking Oakley.”

  Chapter Six

  CAST-IRON stoves, salacious thoughts, and Popsicle hunks did not a romantic scene make, Destiny told herself. “You’re turning a nice shade of blue,” she said as the puddle he stood in got bigger. “In a minute, you’ll match your balls. Go change. One cup of hot hemlock tea coming up.”

  He looked back at her, raised a finger, shook his head, and left the kitchen. She took a pail, mopped his saltwater trail from the kitchen into the tower—amazing place—through the parlor, along the floor around the beautiful old Persian rug—he respected antiques—and up the stairs to the top.

  No way was she gonna mop in on him naked. She left the mop and bucket so he could take it from there after he was dressed.

  Twenty minutes later, his teeth still chattering, Morgan looked pretty dumb in layered sweats, hoods up and tied tight, no two pieces the same color. “You look like a tall, color-blind elf.”

  Gloves on, teeth chattering worse than ever—a delayed reaction, she supposed—he could barely hold his mug.

  “If you catch pneumonia, I’ll never forgive you,” Destiny said. She bit the inside of her cheek and set the door-mat on the floor near the firebox, so he could sit near its warmth. She put another blanket from her cart around him and took off his gloves so he could warm his hands on his mug. Caramello came in and curled up in his lap, yowling as if commiserating with him.

  She petted her cat on Morgan’s lap. “Night swims in October are a little out of your league, I take it?”

  He shivered so hard, he jarred Caramello, and she ended up on the floor, but she climbed right back up. “I think she’s trying to keep me warm.”

  Destiny scratched Caramello behind her ears, her hand knuckle-deep in the silky caramel-and-marshmallow-swirl coat. “Not that you deserve this, Cara,” Destiny said. “Scratching Morgan the way you did.”

  In response, Caramello licked her nose and purred louder.

  “Good girl.” Destiny poured herself a cup of tea, took out a bag of bakery-fresh chocolate chip cookies, gave Morgan one, and sat on the floor beside him. She sipped her tea and found the silence comfortable between them. When she shivered, he scooted over to share his blankets with her, changing the dynamics and making conversation imperative. “So why have you been coming here since you were a kid? You and your parents take separate vacations?”

  He shrugged. “If you met them, you’d understand why that would have been preferable. Suffice it to say that I was on my own at an early age. Why did you come here instead of going to Scotland or staying in Salem, for that matter?”

  “I had a psychic vision of the lighthouse, okay? I believe that I have to be here to find my psychic path.” She elbowed him. “Okay, so you’re not big on trust. It doesn’t matter. We both wanted to be here, and we are.”

  Morgan shook his head and unzipped one of his hoodies. “We both wanted to be alone, and we’re not, at least until the water taxi comes on Wednesday.”

  She offered him another cookie. “I’m here for two weeks. Are you thinking you’ll leave on that taxi? Why Wednesday?”

  “You’re gonna think this is lame, because in a way it is, but I call my parents every Wednesday afternoon. Since Paxton Island still doesn’t have phone lines or cell phone access, I go into Salem to call. My parents and I don’t get along, but they’re old and they’re mine, so I check on them.”

  “You don’t get along, but you call?”

  He shrugged. “You only get one set of parents.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I never had a set.”

  Morgan gazed earnestly into her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Something shifted in the time-space continuum. “Why? It’s not your fault about my parents.”

  “No. I’m sorry I tried to make you leave. You’re right, I have a problem with trust. But around you, it’s myself I don’t trust.” As if he’d said too much, he set down his mug, stood, and pulled a wad of rope from his jacket pocket. “Come on, let’s get your clothes hung so we can shut the lights on the longest day in Paxton Lighthouse history.”

  They walked through the same small connecting room from the house to the tower that Destiny had mopped. Morgan called the connecting room the keeper’s room. The wide base of the tower made it possible to hang clotheslines in a kind of spiderweb effect, from the stair rails to the lantern hooks and back again, all around.

  Without old-fashioned clothespins, Destiny draped her wet things over the ropes. Morgan watched for a minute and pitched in. “Thanks,” she said.

  “It’s the least I can do.” He shrugged. “I threw them in.”

  “I untied the boat.”

  “You what!”

  “Stop yelling! I didn’t want to go. No boat, no go.”

  He got a rather incredulous look on his face. “You wanted to stay here with me?”

  “Well, I wanted to stay here. We can be alone with our thoughts, do our own thing, take separate walks, and eat our own food. Sure, we’ll be forced to talk, sometimes.”

  “Right. Sometimes.” He turned back to her wet things. “You brought enough clothes for a month.”

  “Who are you to talk? You’re wearing enough clothes for a month. Half of what I brought is gone. Good thing I doubled up.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought I was putting them in the boat, not the ocean. You know that, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Thanks for the high opinion.” Morgan went to hang clothes on the opposite side of the tower’s circular stairs.

  Hanging her salty underwear, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye: the ghosts sitting on the fifth stair up, watching her.

  Centennial Man nodded.

  “I saw your picture in the house,” Destiny said. “You were the lighthouse keeper, weren’t you?
Your uniform reminds me of a train conductor’s, especially the hat.”

  “I was the last keeper,” he said. “The woman beside me in the picture is my wife, Ida. She’s buried here on the island, but I’m not.”

  “Is that why you’re still here?”

  “I did want to be buried with her, but I think there might be something more to my being here. I’m guessing the angel knows, but she’s not talking. Not to me, anyway.”

  Destiny looked from the keeper to the child. “Is this your little girl?”

  “I never had children,” he said with a heavy sadness. “My name’s Horace.”

  “And my name is Meggie,” the little girl said. “I’m here with my brother. He needs to remember.”

  “Hello, Meggie, I’m Destiny. Is Horace your brother, then?”

  Meggie denied that with a shake of her head, pigtails swinging.

  “Destiny?” Morgan called. “What did you say? I can barely hear you from here.” He ducked under a clothesline and caught a pair of her panties in the face. “Yellow,” he said, straightening them. “Your underwear seems to call my name.”

  Meggie giggled, but Destiny could tell that Morgan hadn’t heard. The way the child looked at Morgan, with that half smile, one side up, like his, really made Destiny wonder. She turned to her unexpected housemate. “You’ve been staying here on and off since you were sixteen, and you never met one ghost?”

  He raised his hands and let them fall to his sides. “Do you and your sisters do nothing but chase ghosts?”

  “We don’t chase them; they find us. Besides, these ghosts aren’t negative like the ones at Paxton castle were.”

  “These? You think there are ghosts here?” He scratched his earlobe. “You ever think of writing for the Sci Fi Channel?”

  “These ghosts are friendly. Meggie is only a child.”

  “Meggie?” Morgan paled, a tic suddenly pulsing in his cheek. He put distance between them as if by instinct. “Who told you?”

  “Who could have told me?” She had no idea what they were talking about, but drawing him out might help.

  He fisted his hands and considered her question. “No one. No one knows,” he said, almost to himself.

  “There you go. Maybe . . . I’m psychic. Maybe I can see ghosts.” Destiny hated how hearing Meggie’s name had about stabbed Morgan in the heart.

  “What?” Morgan asked. “Do I talk in my sleep? You came upstairs before your ritual, didn’t you?”

  “If that’s what you prefer to believe, sure,” Destiny said. “You were talking in your sleep. You said Meggie and schnoodle.”

  Morgan looked sharply up at her, but he failed to comment on her perception.

  She’d bet that Meggie had been the child who wanted the schnoodle. Meggie, the ghost child, watched the two of them now, her anguish mirroring Morgan’s. Soul-deep pain. Longing. A lifetime’s worth.

  She wouldn’t push for more answers. She couldn’t hurt either of them by trying, not tonight. “I think we’re done here,” Destiny said, wiping her wet hands on her jeans.

  Morgan gave a clipped nod, mouth grim. “I’ve had enough melodrama for one night.”

  Destiny watched the angel close Meggie in the grotto of her embrace.

  Chapter Seven

  NOBODY had spoken Meggie’s name in years, because that’s what his parents wanted—which his sister didn’t deserve. And now, he was trapped with a beguiler claiming Megs was here. He’d managed to bury his emotions over the years, and now this soul-deep grief had risen to the surface.

  Destiny’s hypothetical child ghost couldn’t possibly be his sister.

  Morgan banned the thought and followed Destiny up the stairs, a warning playing in his mind, her fine ass at eye level swaying to a different tune.

  With each step came a scary-thrilling thought: One bed. One bed. One bed. The slow-climbing cadence made him think of a doomed prisoner on his way to the electric chair. Or, in this case, the electric bed.

  Ghosts, he could run from. They didn’t exist.

  Emotions, he could run from. Better not to let them take over.

  Doomed, he could live with; he had for years.

  But need, the simple human need to touch someone with love. He wanted—God, he wanted. Not only to take Destiny to bed, he wanted her to teach him to play. If he could sip at the well of her adventurous spirit, he might find a blade sharp enough to sever the unnamed weight threatening to swamp his life.

  How could he be so fascinated by one of a three-pack? Identical triplets. Destiny looked exactly like Harmony and Storm, and yet Destiny, the mysterious yet audacious triplet, had perfected the art of grabbing life by the balloon strings and sailing that helium rainbow to the clouds. For Destiny, he yearned. With her, he wanted to take to the clouds and soar as well.

  Destiny could be annoyingly feisty and cheerful, though she wasn’t quite as self-confident as he’d once suspected. He’d glimpsed vulnerability in her tonight when she’d crossed her arms and backed away from the dock.

  He’d recognized her search for a life path in the way that she seemed to uselessly grasp, as if for purpose. He recognized it, because he owned its twin—poor word choice, but apt.

  Perhaps, somehow, they could each discover their own purpose, entwine them, and become manna to each other . . . like his mother might accept him and his decision to become an architect, and stop nagging.

  And pigs might fly, and not crap all over him.

  It irked him to be attuned to Destiny.

  Destiny. Fate. Karma. Providence—though certainly not divine. By whatever name, he’d recognized her the first time he saw her as somehow fitting him, like a piece of his life puzzle. Big puzzle. Huge. Useless. Half his pieces tossed in the trash.

  Two seconds after meeting Destiny, their first meeting, they’d sized each other up, circled with palpable mistrust, and scoffed when the other spoke, which might have been attraction, or the fear of it. Story of his life.

  Had it been attraction, dislike, or jealousy? He’d intercepted Destiny’s triplet connection, recognized and envied it with a rage of regret, because he’d lost its like, his twin connection, when Meggie passed.

  He’d mocked Aiden and King for correctly picking Harmony and Storm from the triplet lineup, but damned if he didn’t think he could spot Destiny as his in the clone line now.

  But love connected Aiden and King with Destiny’s sisters, married love—not an option for him. Who would have him anyway?

  Not Destiny.

  He could admit his connection to her. Lust. The kind a man got from being parched in the desert his whole life. Down-and-dirty lust that could only be cured with down-and-dirty sex. Temporary fix. Good enough.

  Sex for fun. He wondered if she might be up for it.

  Not a good time to ask with a bed staring them both down.

  “I can sleep here,” she said, indicating the bed in the first bedroom they’d come to. Too much to hope, he supposed, that his prayers had been answered.

  She ran a loving hand over the ornate brass headboard. “I love old brass beds.”

  “You want this bed?”

  “Sure. It’s gorgeous.” She tested the mattress by pushing on it, unknowingly wiggling her ass his way again. “Nice and soft.”

  “Looks firm to me. Oh, you mean the mattress. Okay by me. Do you sleep on the right or the left? Or we could share the middle.”

  “Never mind, smut brain, I’ll pick another, since I take it this one is yours?”

  Morgan left her cart where it stood and followed Destiny in silence from room to room, some rooms with chairs or tables, one that was book-lined, one he’d made into a studio for his drawing table and architectural supplies.

  She stopped in the doorway of the last bedroom. “Shriveling scrying balls! Only one bed? Harmony said the place was furnished.”

  He didn’t understand her exclamation, but he didn’t think he’d like his balls shriveled, whatever she named them.

  “And not a sofa
in the place,” he added, crossing his arms so he could cross his legs, because he’d already come to the conclusion she was working her way up to: one bed, two people.

  She lost the starch in her stance. “Sleeping bag?” she asked with hope, her voice so soft, she was giving him another rare peek at her vulnerable side, which derailed his train of thought and allowed him to stand straighter.

  “Sorry.” Morgan let her lead the way back to his room.

  Since the starch returned to her spine on the way, he wondered what ploy he was in for. She looked at the bed, at him, claimed the bed by planting her fine ass on it, instead of him—he should be so lucky—and folded her arms. “Bummer,” she said. “You’re not gonna be very comfortable on the floor.”

  He straightened, caught by surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’re a gentleman, so you will, of course, sleep on the parlor rug. That’s got to be the softest—”

  “It’s threadbare. This rug is at least newer and thicker, and you’re not as heavy as me, so you won’t feel the hard—”

  “It’s practically beneath the bed,” she said, examining it, “except for a body-sized scrap. I most certainly will not like it, because I’m not sleeping on it. I’ll take the bed, because I know a gentleman like you would insist, thank you very much. You could sleep on the floor. In one of the other bedrooms, because you’re a man and I’m a woman?”

  His body sure in blood-pumping Hades knew that; it was trying to sit up and beg. “I’m sleeping in this room,” Morgan said. “It’s the coolest in the summer and the warmest in winter. In the autumn, like now, it’s nothing short of spectacular. For that reason, I took that bed apart and moved it here, from a hot and stale front bedroom, piece by piece, thirteen years ago. The ocean may be cold at night—to which I can personally attest—but we’re having a great Indian summer, and with the daytime heat still heavy in the air, the breeze in here is unmatched.”

  He realized he was rambling, but he was also ticked and getting warm, finally, and she might be growing a conscience, judging by the way she nibbled the side of a polka-dot thumbnail.