Which Witch is Which? (The Witches of Port Townsend)

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “I don’t see what you’re all bunched up about. You still got a seat. And a pair of tits to stare at besides. You oughta be happier than a pig in slop.”

  A grunt from the bag at her feet sent a burst of fear skittering down her spine. Quiet, she willed the Cheeto.

  Nick’s unnerving amber eyes fixed in the direction of the sound. “What’s in that bag?”

  Moira swung a protective leg in front of it. “None of your business.”

  His lips, and the sultry smile they formed, could have been stolen from one of the wicked satyr statues Moira had seen in a book at the St. Bernard library.

  “Yes,” he said. “Please put your legs in front of the bag. I’ll split them to get to it and enjoy the effort twice as much.”

  The threat lodged further south of the Mason Dixon line than Moira was comfortable with. “You reach one finger toward that bag and I’ll break it quicker than you can shake your dick.”

  “You mean the dick you were gawkin’ at while you were pretending to sleep?”

  Blood burned into Moira’s cheeks. “I wasn’t either.”

  “You were. And judging by the grin on your face, you liked what you saw.”

  “Please.” Moira rolled her eyes in feigned disinterest. “I seen enough of them things to choke a humpback whale.”

  “So why not see one that can do the job on its own?” Nick scooted down in his seat, arms folded behind his head, knees splayed in the most brazen invitation Moira had ever witnessed, and after working Saturday night at the HooDoo Shack during Mardi Gras, that was saying something.

  Don’t look at his junk. Don’t look at his—goddammit! Moira’s eyes moved of their own accord, focusing in on the long shape now traversing a good distance down Nick’s thigh. “Sufferin’ savior!” she gasped. “You got a license for that thing?” Up until now, she’d thought too big for your britches was just an expression.

  She swung her gaze toward the window, and her legs followed out of habit. The next moments unfolded at a speed both too fast and too slow for Moira to follow. Her foot connected with the bag. The bag toppled over. A blur of pink shot out.

  All the frames of action slammed into one another as time resumed its normal speed. The little pig’s frightened squeal knifed through Moira. She reached for him, but too late.

  Nick scooped the pig from the floor in one large hand and brought him to eye level.

  Cheeto’s hooves pedaled in the air, his snout twitching, his tail flicking. Moira could see he was working up to a shriek that would alert passengers both alive and dead to his presence, which would be followed by something infinitely worse.

  “Give him here!” she ordered. “Right this second.”

  “You poor bastard,” Nick said to the pig, ignoring Moira entirely. “Stuffed in that tiny bag all day.”

  Moira made a desperate grasp for Nick’s elbow, but he jerked it away before she could pull Cheeto back to her. “Mister, you best hand over my pig before you get yourself hurt.”

  Nick’s laugh was cut short by Cheeto’s ear-piercing shriek, and Moira snatched her hands away just in time.

  Whumph.

  A puff of bright orange flame blotted out everything as it engulfed Nick’s head.

  Brief, intense heat rolled over Moira’s bare arm and licked its way down her thigh. It was over as quickly as it had come. Moira scanned the aisles to see if anyone had noticed. Luckily, the bright flash of light had failed to rouse the passenger in the opposite row, whose eyes were sealed behind a black sleep mask, just as his ears were sealed behind a pair of those fancy noise-canceling headphones.

  Satisfied no immediate damage control was required, she glanced over at Nick, who still held Cheeto at eye level. His face was frozen in a mask of disbelief, his eyebrows singed and smoking.

  “Thanks,” she said, leaning over to grab her pig while he was rendered motionless. “Mind if I borrow this?” She filched the rolled up blanket he had tucked next to his armrest and wrapped Cheeto in it before snuggling him down in her lap.

  Nick’s hands dropped onto the armrest. His head ratcheted slowly in her direction.

  “What. The fuck. Was that?” Fine filaments of burned hair fluttered down to his shirt as he spoke.

  Moira stroked an idle hand over Cheeto’s fuzzy head. He tended to get a little wound up after these run-ins. “What was what?”

  Nick glared at her in disbelief. His voice skated over low, dangerous gullies of anger. “You know damn well what.”

  Leaning forward, Moira retrieved a paper sack she’d squirreled away in her bag before leaving home that morning. Her stomach rumbled in anticipation when she saw the patches of grease dotting the brown paper like X’s on a treasure map. She reached in and pulled out a still-crispy leg. “Chicken?” she offered.

  The same lips that had earlier worn that luxurious smirk were now turning white around the edges. Moira half expected foam to start spilling from between them.

  “Your fucking pig just shot a fireball at my face!”

  “I’m guessin’ that’s a no on the chicken,” Moira said. “More for us, Cheeto.” She flaked off some of the brown, crumbly coating and sprinkled it in a little dip in the blanket for easy access.

  “You’re going to sit there and pretend that didn’t just happen? I demand—”

  “General Custer on a three-legged mule! Did I get a good scald on that or what?” Even at room temperature, the salty-sweet crunch of the chicken’s crust gave Moira a rush of pride. At least that was one thing she could do right. She’d only made the mistake of entering her cooking into the county fair the one time. The way the other ladies reacted to her winning first, second, and third place had her expecting to be lynched behind the Tilt-a-Whirl.

  Nick gripped the armrest with whitening knuckles. “For Christ’s sake, no one cares about your chicken! And stop interrupting—”

  “I care,” Moira argued. “And Cheeto cares, which by my count makes two out of three people in this aisle that care about my chicken. You’re overruled.” She paused to savor the expression of abject shock on his face. His mouth opened and closed, trying to summon words the way a fish out of water tries to summon air. “Also, you might want to do somethin’ about your eyebrows on account of they’re mostly sprinkled down the front of your shirt.”

  Moira reached out a helpful hand to brush away some of the ashes and couldn’t stifle her gasp when Nick seized it with surprising speed and force.

  Mixed hungers warred in his golden gaze. Moira reached for what she saw, let her mind feel him out, stretching tendrils of thought like vines.

  But he wasn’t a tree, nor anything else she could wrap her senses around.

  What she could see, what she could feel, were only the smallest fraction of what he was. Older than the world, more changeable than the melted rock beneath its surface. Deeper than the ocean, more inconstant than the wind.

  It was what she didn’t find that scared her most of all.

  Need.

  “Another drink, Mr. Kingswood?” The overpaid peanut-pusher had returned, only now she had a cart and an equally prissy friend.

  Nick released Moira’s hand, but not her gaze. “Yes. Another scotch. And a whiskey on the rocks for my friend.”

  “No!” Moira knew at once she had said it too loud. Panic welled up in her chest as she saw the woman’s narrowed gaze come to rest on the bundled pig in her lap.

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to reseat you,” the flight attendant said. “There are no animals in first class.”

  “Then how come they let you wander up and down the aisle all the time?” Moira spat back.

  Nick made a sound somewhere between dismay and stifled laughter. After he had regained his composure, he beamed a smile at the flight attendant that snagged Moira’s stomach like a fishhook. “You’ll make an exception,” he said. “Get us our drinks.”

  “Forget the drinks.” Moira tucked Cheeto under her arm, grabbed her bag, and stood as tall as the bin overhead would allow. �
��What y’all can do is get the hell outta my way.”

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Nick asked, making no sign whatsoever of withdrawing the long legs he’d stretched out in front of him.

  “Away from you. And Miss Twisted Britches,” Moira said.

  “You don’t need to go.” Nick glanced over his shoulder at the woman shoveling ice into glasses. “Isn’t that right, Cheryl?”

  Moira wasn’t about to wait for an answer. “You gonna move? Or am I goin’ over you?”

  “Please.” The word might has well have been a porcupine for all the trouble Nick had working it up his throat. “I would like you to stay.”

  “Don’t much care what you’d like. Y’all can keep your drinks, your seats, and all the asses that ever creased them, while you’re at it.” She took a step forward, but found her progress arrested by Nick’s arm barring her at waist level.

  “Stay.” It wasn’t a request this time. It was an order. A decree. An edict.

  She looked down into those fathomless eyes again, felt herself losing ground in their insistent, relentless will.

  “Oops,” she said, seconds before the open bottled water lurched from the cart and fell into Nick’s unguarded lap.

  Nick doubled up on a grunt, hands flying to his now wet crotch.

  Moira secretly congratulated herself on her aim as she shoved her way past the cart and bolted down the aisle toward the back of the plane. She’d only meant to create a distraction. Catching Nick Kingswood in his king-sized spunk bunkers turned out to be a much more satisfying solution.

  She found an empty row by the bathroom and scooted into the seat nearest the window. He wouldn’t come back here.

  Placing the still-bundled pig on her chest, she bent down to plant a kiss between his velvety ears. “Sorry about all that,” she whispered.

  Cheeto’s quiet grunt was as much of an acknowledgement as she needed.

  “You wanna see?” Moira pushed up the shade and held her pig as close to the window as she could without pressing his nose against the cold glass. “Look at all them clouds.”

  The sun had begun to sink into the horizon, melting away like a lemon drop into the endless sea of feathery white, drawing darkness over an azure blue like Moira had never seen.

  For one unfiltered moment, Moira thought about scooping up some of that sky in a mason jar before it went away altogether. She had learned early and well not to count on things that beautiful stickin’ around.

  “Gonna be dark by the time we hit Port Townsend,” Moira said, nestling the bundle back in her lap.

  Port Townsend.

  Moira had ducked into one of the gift shops at the airport soon after she’d arrived. Right after she’d eaten a cinnamon roll that nearly restored her faith in Jesus. Leafing through the pages of an Atlas with still-sticky fingers, she’d gotten a nasty paper cut on the Washington Coast.

  One single drop of blood fell, and Moira watched in horrified fascination as it dripped up the page, and with jerky strokes, circled Port Townsend.

  Startled, stunned, and weak-kneed, Moira had spent half of all she had left in the world to satisfy the pencil-eyebrowed clerk behind the counter. But for her insistence that Moira ought not touch what she couldn’t afford, she might have torn the page out and walked away.

  It would be a couple hours before they landed in Seattle, and there would be a couple more that would need driven after that.

  And then there was a driver to consider. Mostly, that she’d need one.

  Exhaustion settled over Moira, draining what little reserve she had left. She couldn’t think about that just now. She couldn’t think about anything.

  Especially not about Nick.

  Chapter Five

  “I’d rather suck off a truck driver.” And so she had.

  Moira’s parting words to Nick circled her brain as she stood out in the street in front of a building that looked less like a house and more like a layer cake.

  Three stories, each painted a different color, the ornate woodwork so delicate in contrast to the tin-roofed shacks of her hometown, they looked as fragile as spun sugar. Even the windows, glowing golden like butterscotch candy from lamps within, looked like something right out of a storybook.

  Things didn’t end well for kids who ran across candy houses, the way Moira remembered it.

  The strap of her duffel bag dug into her shoulder, a reminder of what had coaxed those flippant words from her lips in the first place.

  Nick had waited for her. Had pulled down her battered old duffel bag from the compartment where she’d left it when she stormed off. The man stood there with it slung over his shoulder like a soldier going off to war.

  “I’ll carry this out to my car for you. My driver will take you where you need to go.”

  Spoken in anyone else’s voice, it would have sounded like an offer. Coming from him it was an order.

  She wasn’t in the habit of taking them.

  And riding the Ray Dean Express wasn’t a purely an opportunistic move on her part. Poor Ray, the Seattle truck driver who had picked her up just outside the airport, hadn’t ever grieved the murder of his mother. Two hours and fifty-six miles later, he’d finished grieving for momma, a handful of dead pets, and a high school sweetheart who’d run off with his best friend.

  Moira took another breath of air heavy with salt and sea. Just as dense as what she was accustomed to, but cool and clammy. They were practically a hound’s sneeze from the ocean. She could feel it in her bones.

  Just as she could feel whatever was in that house, pulling her like the moon pulled the tides.

  And yet, here she stood. Frozen.

  She had gone as far as to imagine walking up those tidy steps, standing on the wrap-around porch, and knocking on the door when she stopped.

  She’d grown up on the other side of those kinds of doors. Had them slammed in her face. Been thrown out of more of them than she cared to remember.

  What if she had come all this way just to have another one closed on her?

  The thought stirred up a hollow ache that brought her attention to the chill creeping into her skin. Her cut-offs, tank top, and flip-flops were keeping the cold out about as well as fishing net kept away gnats.

  A small sneeze from her shoulder bag finally set her feet to moving. It was one thing for her to set out in the cold. Another thing altogether for her baby to suffer.

  “All right,” she said at last. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Out of the street, across the sidewalk, and up the steps she marched, pausing only for a moment to snort at the wreath of dried weeds affixed to the front door. She’d seen them used for a lot of things in her day, but never for decoration. Uncle Sal and the boys would laugh themselves stupid about this.

  “Here we go,” she whispered to Cheeto.

  The old brass knocker retreated from her just as her fingertips had brushed it. The door flung wide open, and Moira’s heart tripped into a panicked hum when the silhouette of a woman appeared inside its frame.

  She had scarcely mapped out the best path for a hasty retreat when the porch light blinked on, and what it revealed stunned Moira like a whack over the head with a skillet.

  Staring back at her from the woman in the doorway...was her own face.

  ****

  Neither of them spoke for what felt to Moira like an eternity. Or at least the average duration of a Sunday sermon with old Reverend Dupuis spittin’ brimstone behind the pulpit.

  In the silence, Moira found herself doing just what had been done to her time and time again: staring like a wide-eyed carp.

  The face was where any similarity ended.

  Well, maybe the hair, but Moira found it hard to tell on account of all the flowers, clips, bobby pins and what not keeping the burgundy mass loosely piled atop the woman’s head. Several dark locks escaped their confines despite her best efforts, winding alongside that familiar face like kudzu.

  A body roughly the same shape and size as her
own hid inside loose, gauzy layers of scarves and skirts. Bangles and beads climbed her wrists and dangled from her neck and ears.

  When their eyes finally met, Moira couldn’t shake the sensation of staring into a mirror, though the eyes looking back at her were not bright blue, but glass green.

  The return appraisal was quicker than Moira had expected, with the woman’s studying gaze skimming over all the spots where ladies at home usually set to scowlin’.

  When that face broke out into a triumphant grin, Moira nearly flinched. She’d been prepared for just about anything but that.

  “Oh my hell!” the woman said, grabbing Moira by the shoulders. “I knew it!”

  Moira’s body tensed beneath her grasp. She could still duck, drop her bags, turn around quick and have her knee in this granola girl’s back quicker than she could say sprouted wheat. “What?” Moira asked. “You knew what?”

  “Oh my goddess!” Her cheeks flushed pink with girlish enthusiasm as she stepped back, but kept her grip on Moira. “Say that again! Where are you from? How did you get here? You have to tell me everything! Wait! No, come inside.”

  And with that, she turned on one bare foot and disappeared inside with a swish of skirts.

  Moira stood on the porch and glanced at the swing swaying in the breeze. The night was empty of the evening chorus chirps, squawks and croaks that would have settled into the bayou by now. The chime of a distant clock tower and a nearby harbor’s creaks and sways were too foreign to yet be comforting. With no trees providing a canopy overhead and the silent sky bearing down on her, she felt as exposed as cockroach on a coffee table.

  “Come on!”

  Gooseflesh rose on Moira’s arms at the sound of being beckoned by her own voice in a foreign accent. Herself, as she might have been, with a little more schoolin’ and a little less fishin’.

  “I guess we’re goin’ inside,” she mumbled to Cheeto.

  Once over the threshold, Moira kicked her sandals off and set her duffle bag by the door where it would be easy to snatch up if she had to make a hasty exit.