Scarcely had the door closed behind her when she ran face-first into a wall of scent that damn near ripped the hairs right from her nose. And it was no wonder.
The inside of the house looked like someone had knocked over a florist’s shop. Pots of foliage crowded every horizontal surface, jostled for space on the mantel over an antique fireplace, leap-frogged over one another up the old wooden staircase. Flowers, herbs, and ferns were literally everywhere.
Areas not overrun by plants were cluttered, but clean. Ornately carved tables, shelves, and credenzas piled with books, vases, knick-knacks, and assorted lamps gave the foyer and sitting room the elegant claustrophobia of the antiques stores Moira wandered through on occasion. At least the couches looked well worn.
Moira ran a hand over the satiny dark wood bordering the burgundy damask fabric of the settee. How many hands had stroked it smooth over the years? Throw pillows of all patterns, sizes and colors congregated on the matching couch across the coffee table and marched the length of a bay window nook overlooking the street. Moira found herself looking at it with longing. She wouldn’t mind curling up in a spot like that for a spell, even if she had to fight a few plants for legroom.
The walls, painted in hues of deepening shades of freshly dug earth, golden tobacco, and warm sand dragged Moira’s eyes up to crown molding abutting ceilings higher than even the churches back home had. Somehow, they made her feel smaller and bigger all at the same time.
“Goddamn,” she heard herself whisper.
“I think you mean goddess,” the woman corrected, stopping to pick a dead leaf off a drooping plant on the ornate credenza. “Everyone knows who really wears the pants in that relationship. Speaking of which…” She turned and called up the stairs. “Aunt Justine! We have company!”
“Tierra de Moray, I’m already in my dressing gown,” came the testy reply. “Who in the goddess’s name is it?”
Moira placed the voice at about the age where women stopped plucking their eyebrows and started waxing their upper lips.
“It’s—” Surprise widened Tierra’s eyes.
“Moira. My name is Moira.”
Moira hadn’t intended to finish the sentence. Just the opposite. She’d almost wanted Tierra to flounder for not even having asked. And maybe a little for having grabbed her like a ragdoll and trotted her in to show off to some crusty old aunt.
They blinked at each other.
It had just happened. As easy as breathing and just as natural.
“Moira,” Tierra repeated.
An ominous creaking sounded at the top of the stairs, followed by a sallow pool of light creeping across the landing. The shadow crept down the hall like something out of the slasher movies Moira had always covered her eyes for in the beds of pickup trucks at the drive-in.
In this moment of doubt, it was Uncle Sal’s voice she heard in her head. “You be just as scared as you want, Moira Jo. But don’t you give nobody else the satisfaction of seein’ it.”
Taking a deep breath, Moira straightened her spine and pointed her chin toward the stairs just as she saw the slippered feet begin to descend it.
A crushed velvet housecoat gradually took shape then, but halted abruptly when Aunt Justine’s face came into view.
Moira wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the long, thin face blanched a paler shade of porcelain when those eyes—a harder shade of Tierra’s—fixed on her. The pale ghost of a hand fluttered up to finger the dark red braid laced with silver strands resting over her shoulder.
The housecoat concealed a body that looked more like a bundle of branches to Moira than it did a woman. Sharp shoulders, protruding elbows, a bony nose, and more knots than a forest of redwoods.
Moira’s head itched just looking at the severe line of scalp pulled hard enough to tighten Aunt Justine’s slackening features.
Some of those features were hers.
And Tierra’s.
“It worked! The spell worked!” Tierra announced into the deafening silence. “I have a sister!”
“I can see that.” Justine descended the remaining stairs with slow, deliberate steps that barely set the old wood creaking.
Moira didn’t trust a person who didn’t make any noise when they moved about. She’d have to keep an eye on that one. “Sister? Would someone mind tellin’ me what the hell y’all are talkin’ about?”
Justine turned to Moira, pinning her with a gaze so pale green it bordered on gray. “You shouldn’t have come.”
The pain of those words was intense, but brief—only the needle’s first sting. Once it got past her skin, Moira found the dull ache mostly bearable. Especially when her blood and bile came rushing to meet it. Her face felt hot. She could hear her own pulse like the ticking of a pocket watch.
“Aunt Justine,” Tierra began. “Moira—”
“Shouldn’t?” Moira’s hand found her hip, and she leaned into the welcome comfort of the gesture. “So long as we’re talking about shouldn’ts, you shouldn’t wear dark colors on account of your complexion lookin’ like the inside of a clamshell. That about cover shouldn’ts for the moment?”
Aunt Justine flinched like she’d been slapped.
“Moira!” Tierra scolded.
“Well ‘scuse me all the way to hell’s waitin’ room. It’s not like I just rolled outta bed this morning thinkin’, ‘Gee, you know what’d be more fun than skinning a wet cat? Lightin’ outta here for someplace I’ve never been, leavin’ damn near everything I own, gettin’ harassed all goddamn day by everyone and their ass mites just so some pinched-face old bat can as good as spit on me for my trouble.’”
“You—” Justine’s gnarled finger stabbed at Moira despite Tierra’s attempt to wedge herself between them “—have no idea what you’ve done by coming here.”
“How in the hell could I?” Moira asked. “I barely know where here is.”
“Port Townsend,” Tierra said. “You’re in Port Townsend. You’re going to love it here. I have the cutest shop just downtown where I sell organic teas and handmade pottery and—”
“I got the Port Townsend part, thanks. I can read, it might shock you to know. What I don’t know is why I’m here. And why here is important. And where in the hell I got a twin sister!”
“Why don’t you come into the kitchen and I’ll brew you a nice cup of lavender and milk-thistle tea to calm your nerves,” Tierra offered. “I’ll explain everything.”
“I’ll take the explanation, but you can keep your weeds.” Moira folded her arms across her chest to prevent Tierra from grasping them.
“You see how impossible this is?” Justine’s red-rimmed eyes were growing more frantic by the second. “What you’re hoping for is worse than a foolish fantasy. There is a reason you were separated. Did you never think of that?”
Tierra’s hands tightened into fists at her sides, the chunky rings adorning each finger making them look like medieval weapons. “Maybe if you had been willing to tell me the truth, I wouldn’t have had to cast a spell to find out.”
The wood floor vibrated beneath Moira’s feet. All around her, plants nodded and bobbed, their leaves shaking as if caught up in some ghostly gale.
“Tierra!” Justine barked. “Stop.”
All the energy rushed out of Tierra along with the breath she had been holding. Her chest rose in rapid bursts, but the eyes she turned to her aunt were wide and full of an emotion Moira was well acquainted with, pain. “How could you keep this from me?”
Justine’s hand found the high lace collar of her nightgown and clenched it at her throat. “You’re no more ready to know than you were to cast the spell that brought her to our doorstep.”
Side by side, they watched Aunt Justine stomp up the stairs and disappear back into the darkness where she seemed most at home.
“Well, that could have gone better,” Tierra said, brushing a stray lock of hair away from her face. “Let’s go to the kitchen. I think better there.”
Moira stood rooted to the spot, her gaze flicking b
etween the kitchen door and an easy exit. “I ain’t sure I should be anywhere in this house with ol’ pickle-puss skulkin’ around upstairs.”
“Oh, she’s more bark than bite.” Tierra waved a dismissive hand. “Anyway, this house is as much yours as it is hers.”
“How’s that?” Like it or not, the casual announcement had her like a hook through the gills, and she wasn’t about to let Tierra wander into the kitchen unfollowed.
Compared to the kitchen in Uncle Sal’s fishing shack—little more than a galley with a couple electric burners that worked only when they felt like it—this space, with its stained glass accents, tiled backsplash, and dark wooden cabinets, might have been dropped right out of a palace.
It was the kind of cozy, clean hub Moira had imagined herself having heartfelt chats in with the mother she’d never known. They would sit at that island with steaming mugs of something-or-other, the shiny copper pots winking overhead like a chandelier, her gentle hands untangling the snarls that daily plagued Moira’s hair.
Tierra breezed over to the cabinet and slipped on an apron embroidered with the words Kitchen Witch. “This house has been in our family for ages. It’s yours now too.”
Moira looked around at the neat stacks of dishes, the lovely old table and chairs, the cookbooks and linens. Hers?
“Sit down,” Tierra urged. “Take a load off. Tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out.”
Moira eased onto a stool at the kitchen island and watched as Tierra sifted through cabinets and drawers with a kind of dancing, unstudied ease. Pulling down mugs, hip-checking drawers closed while snipping bits from various plants and tossing them into a gleaming copper kettle.
“Well,” Moira began.
“Turmeric,” Tierra pronounced, pausing to consult a gleaming array of glass bottles. “Definitely.”
“’Scuse me?”
Tierra unburdened her long, slim arms of their bottles and vegetation. “Turmeric. It’s for your liver. From the looks of things, you could use a cleanse.”
Moira looked down into her bag as an excuse to give herself a subtle sniff. Seemed all right. “I clean myself just fine, thanks.”
“It’s not your outsides I’m worried about,” Tierra said. “It’s your insides. I can only imagine the kind of things you’ve been eating. Not to mention drinking.”
“Speaking of,” Moira said, eyeing the fridge. “I’d love a Coke of you’ve got one.”
Tierra’s eyes widened in horror as she tore the greens from a sugar beet and tossed them in the kettle. “Do you have any idea how many toxins and preservatives are in that stuff? You might as well drink formaldehyde.”
“If they sold it in cans labeled ‘Coke,’ I just might.” Moira reached into her bag and stroked Cheeto’s snout. He’d been out cold since they shared a bag of dill pickle sunflower seeds in Ray Dean’s truck.
Tierra opened the fridge and snagged an earthenware pitcher, which she set in front of Moira along with a glass. “When is the last time you ate something green?”
Moira chewed on her lower lip as she thought. “I made a bunch of fried okra the other night.”
Tierra sighed. “Oh, Moira. You have so much to learn.”
“I don’t mean to be rude or nothin’,” Moira said, knowing she didn’t entirely mean it, “but the only thing I’m real keen on learnin’ at the moment doesn’t have to do with greens. You follow me?”
The blade chopping dark magenta flesh from the beet slowed on its downstroke. “Let’s start with the basics. Which kind of witch are you?”
“Pardon?” Moira had heard the word hurled at her many times, but usually while someone’s husband or boyfriend was pulling on his clothing and ducking other projectiles.
“Witch,” Tierra repeated. “You’re a witch. I’m a witch. Aunt Justine is a witch.”
Moira looked up at the ceiling. She could easily imagine that stuffy old biddy with her ear hovering over a heating vent, hoping to catch snatches of their conversation. “That I’d believe.”
Tierra shook her head and tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear only to have it fall across her forehead again. “She hasn’t always been like that. When I was younger, we would go for walks in the woods, gathering herbs, roots, flowers.”
“So she raised you? Y’all lived here all your life?”
“Right here in this house,” Tierra confirmed. “What about you?”
“Uncle Sal brought me up on Stump Bayou in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. He caught me when I’s just a baby.”
“Caught you?” Tierra tumbled the cut beets into the kettle and started stripping herbs from their stems. “You make it sound like he snagged you on a fishing line.”
“Hell no,” Moira snorted. “It was a net.”
Tierra looked up from her thick wooden cutting board. The mixture of pity and disgust written on her face made cold sweat bloom on the back of Moira’s neck. “He found you in the water?”
“Yup.”
“But how on earth did you get there?”
“That’s exactly what I’s hoping you could tell me.”
Chapter Six
Nick watched the fine mist settle on the windshield of his Corvette Stingray—a considerable step down from the Ferrari 458 Italia he liked tooling around town for daily errands. The ‘Vette’s copious safety features robbed him of the chance to dominate a truly dangerous machine but saw him to his destination in decent time.
The lights in the house across the street glowed yellow like a jack-o-lantern’s grin. Cozy, he supposed some people might find it. For him, it was little more than a prison with better bars.
She was in there. Moira.
He could smell her on the damp night air, an intoxicating mix of rain and wild muscadines. Her curving silhouette sashayed across the backs of his eyelids every time he blinked. Over and over, she marched away from him, her ass winding a lazy sideways figure eight.
The symbol of eternity, and rightly so, for he could hold her in his memory this way for as long as he wished.
An ache in his groin reminded him that memory was not the only place where he wanted to keep her. He wanted her skewered on the cockstand he had endured ever since she had turned her back to him and sauntered off in search of other means of transportation.
And find it she had.
He had watched her step up into the stranger’s truck, admired the way she gripped the handle and propelled herself into the cab with one powerful jerk. The length of her leg disappearing under the streetlights.
They had been easy to catch. Once he dismissed the driver arranged for him and took the wheel in his own hands, he was ghosting their taillights in the space of ten minutes.
He hadn’t killed Ray Dean. That was a first.
Hadn’t forced him off the road, gutted him like livestock, and left him in a ditch bath of his own blood and offal. Hadn’t dragged her out of the cab and made her beg forgiveness on her knees around a mouthful of his cock.
No.
What he’d wanted was to watch Moira linger in the street, looking like she was stepping off a cliff rather than a curb.
Again and again he scraped the night, searching for her thoughts. What was she doing here?
A vibration within his coat pocket had him searching for his cell phone, and bringing it to his ear, answering it without looking. No one who had his number dared call without reason.
“What?”
“You’ve been malingering for over an hour now. What are you doing?”
Julian Roarke’s voice always felt like a silver stiletto sliding into Nick’s ear. Sharp, cool, smooth, and deadly accurate in its aim.
“Jules,” Nick said, both acknowledgement and greeting.
“The last unfortunate who called me Jules died horribly of a syphilitic esophagus.”
Nick shifted to loosen his slacks from the place where his pulse throbbed. “I remember. Crusades, wasn’t it?”
“Constantinople. 14th century.”
“Right. Th
e beginning of that plague business in Europe. How could I have forgotten? Some of your best work to date, if I may say so.”
“You have done,” Julian replied. “On several occasions. But flattery was never your strong suit, brother.”
“And tact isn’t yours. Remind me why you called me again?”
Nick could practically hear the kid-gloved hand find the spot where Julian’s silver-black hair met his pale temple. “That dreadful brooding of yours is giving me a migraine. You haven’t been this preoccupied since you toppled Wall Street in 1929. What exactly is it you traveled to Port Townsend to do?”
“Just a simple operation. Buy out the entire town and devastate the local economy by shutting down the timber operations in the name of a green energy government grant thereby delivering them into my complete control.”
Julian’s sigh was as soft and restless as autumn leaves. “How you love your droll little dramas. Couldn’t you just find a widow to put out in the street instead? Conquer a convenience store or something?”
“It’s not the operation that’s the problem.”
“Oh?”
Nick drew in a deep breath to force out words he didn’t want to speak. “It’s a witch.”
“Which witch?” Only Julian’s highborn, crisp accent could make this seem a valid question.
“Don’t be cute,” Nick grunted.
“I think we could both agree that cute is the last adjective that could accurately be applied to me.”
“True.” In days long past, Nick had resented his brother’s cultivated suavity, his ability to incite in any woman that longing for drawing rooms and stormy gothic ruins to be rescued from. With his fine features and romantically tormented air, Julian Roarke promised Mr. Darcy...but delivered Vlad the Impaler.
“I fail to see how one witch represents a challenge. I’ve seen you take on as many as five when the mood suits you.”
The memory did little to help cool the ache radiating through Nick’s core. “This isn’t a simple Greek orgy, Jules.”
“So, dominate her. Humiliate her. Chain her to something and torture her. I hear that’s all the rage these days.” These words possessed no more interest in Julian’s voice than would announcing an upcoming dentist appointment.
Which Witch is Which? (The Witches of Port Townsend) Page 5
