“Whatever you do,” he continued, “just bloody fuck her and get it over with so I can have some peace and quiet.”
“I plan to,” Nick said.
“Do I hear an implied but in that statement?”
The silence mocked Nick more than any of Julian’s barbs could have. None of the declarations he could devise carried the brute force of truth, the only answer his canny brother would accept.
“Don’t tell me—” a dry, rasping rattle only Nick would recognize as a laugh danced through the phone “—she turned you down. Oh, how delicious!”
“She didn’t turn me down,” Nick insisted. Throwing water at him and singeing his face via a fire-breathing pig didn’t constitute an official refusal by his account. Just a temporary delay of the inevitable.
“Could it be that the great Nicholas Kingswood has finally met his match?”
Fine hairs rose on the back of Nick’s neck. “There’s no such thing.”
“Not according to the prophecy,” Julian teased. “How does it go? By the blood moon’s light, one of four will by sacrifice rite—”
“You need to spend less time fondling your books, brother.”
“That, you may rely on. The world is due another pandemic. The bottom rungs have grown swollen once again. A good culling will set things to rights. Let’s hope, for my sake, the lapse in your gifts isn’t contagious.”
“I see what you did there.” Nick couldn’t suppress a laugh, though it came more out of a kind of twisted affection for Julian’s erudite brand of humor than actual hilarity caused by it.
“Go forth and conquer, and all that,” Julian said.
“By this time tomorrow,” Nick vowed, “this entire city will be at my mercy.”
“Pity you don’t have any.”
“A damn shame,” Nick agreed.
Chapter Seven
“Here,” Tierra said. “Put this in your bra.”
Moira looked dubiously at the flat, smooth red stone pooling like blood in her sister’s palm. “What’s that for?”
“It’s red jasper,” Tierra explained. “It will re-anchor you to the earth’s energy and detoxify your root chakra.”
Moira blinked at her. “My what?”
They stood behind the counter of Tierra’s shop—Ambrosia’s Brews and Charms—after hours of conversation and one restless night’s sleep behind them. Whatever revelations Moira had expected to anchor her in this town failed to materialize. She felt more out of place than a gopher in the gumbo.
Walking down the hill toward Water Street only half an hour earlier, they had passed more storybook homes tucked between thick stands of trees just beginning to shake out their glossy leaves beneath the spring sun. Buildings of colorful brick bunched up on either side of the road, their shingles swinging in the breeze like flags, inviting tourists to carry their recycled coffee cups in for a peek at artisan wares.
Moira hadn’t minded the walk.
It was the lecture she could do without. Already, she’d learned that the Badger, her car, likely caused the deaths of countless sweatshop orphans and created a hole in the ozone layer big enough for Saturn to stumble through.
And all before breakfast.
Tierra’s dark brows drew toward each other. An expression Moira was quickly learning to dread.
“Your root chakra. Look, I don’t have time to explain everything right now. Just put this in your bra. We need to get the herbal teas brewing before the customers start wandering in.”
“Never wear one.” Moira’s shudder of revulsion at the mere mention of those wire-rimmed devil’s bear traps brought a heightened awareness to the way her breasts swayed with the movement.
“Moira Joule de Moray,” Tierra huffed. “You left the house this morning without a bra?”
Moira was sure regretting telling her sister her full name, all right. “It’s Malveaux,” she corrected. “And I sure did. Believe it or not, I made it all the way across the country without a single lick of help from a brassiere.”
“You can’t walk around my store looking like that.” Tierra’s beringed fingers drew a hasty circle around Moira from knees to knockers. “I run a respectable business. It’s bad enough you’re dressed like a—”
“Like a what?” Moira interrupted. She stood there with her hand on her hip, challenging Tierra to give her a reason to turn tail and run. Since learning that Tierra had no idea who their father was and their mother died during childbirth, she was feeling less and less motivated to stick around. Particularly with that squinty aunt shooting her the stink-eye around every corner.
“Forget it,” Tierra muttered, whisking behind a closet door. “But you’re putting on this apron.”
Moira looked at the sage-colored fabric covered in purple paisley swirls. It was easily a full foot longer than the jean skirt that brushed her upper thigh, and looked like something the quilting bee biddies back home might wear. “Sure, I’ll wear that apron. Right after you build that stepladder to the moon.”
Tierra held her gaze and the apron both, unflinching. “Everyone who works here wears one.”
Moira folded her arms beneath—not over—her breasts. “Good thing I work at the HooDoo Shack, then.”
The eyes Tierra narrowed at her looked wider than her own, accentuated by soft, shimmery eye shadow very different from Moira’s application of sultry charcoals and raven-black mascara. “The what?”
“The HooDoo Shack. It’s a bar just on the edge of St. Bernard. They don’t make me wear an apron, and I serve the customers just fine.”
“I’ll bet you do,” Tierra snorted.
“And what’s that ‘sposed to mean?”
The jingling of a brass bell announced the front door’s opening as a petite sprite with pink dreadlocks piled atop her head strode a practiced path through the café tables and groups of armchairs. “Hey, T,” she called, not pausing to look up as she gathered books piled on the many tables and started re-shelving them on the wooden bookcases against the far wall.
Layered tank tops in gray and white revealed arms covered in a swirling mural of tattoos reaching down to her delicate wrists. Jewelry of the kind on display near the store’s entrance encircled her wrists and neck. Her tight black leggings were tucked into knee-high leather boots Moira had to concede were pretty damned kick-ass, though she’d never owned anything of the kind. Silver studs traced the curve of her ear, the upper part skewered by a long metal post that pierced her in two places.
Moira wondered how those body-scanning boxes at the airport would react to so much metal in one person.
Tierra cleared her throat. “Sunny, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
Sunny glanced up, and the armful of books clattered to the wood floor at her feet. She looked from Tierra to Moira and back again. “What the hell?”
“Sunny Brooks, this is my sister, Moira de Mor—”
“Malveaux,” Moira found herself interrupting. “Moira Malveaux.”
“Sister? You never told me you had a sister.” Sunny stood with her back to the bookshelf, pale behind the black rims of her glasses like she had seen a ghost. And a ghost was just about what Moira felt like in this place—a strange echo of someone else’s life, a shade in a world she didn’t belong to.
“I sort of didn’t know,” Tierra said.
Moira heard a lingering trace of resentment in Tierra’s words and felt her aunt’s shadowy presence behind it.
“How do you not know you have a twin?” Sunny stooped to pick up the books piled at her feet.
“Long story,” Tierra sighed.
“Oh.” Sunny nodded knowingly. “One of those super-weird separated at birth sort of things?”
“Something like that,” Tierra said. “I’ll catch you up later.”
“Let me help you with that,” Moira offered, wanting any task that could reasonably be done without the apron still clutched in Tierra’s hand. She felt Sunny’s sharp-eyed gaze trace her profile as she bent to help pick up the book
s.
“Where you from, anyway?” Sunny asked.
“Louisiana,” Moira said, stacking books on her arm. “Terrebonne Parish.”
“Dig your accent.” A bright pink rhinestone flashed at the corner of Sunny’s nose when she smiled.
“Thanks.” The self-conscious tightness lodged at the base of Moira’s throat eased off a bit.
“Sunny, could you get the teas going? And check to make sure we have enough taro root for today? We’re running a little behind this morning.”
If there was a reproach loaded into Tierra’s statement, Moira chose not to hear it.
“Sure thing, T.” Sunny slid the last of her books onto the shelf and grinned down at Moira. “Nice meeting you, long-lost sibling.”
“Likewise.”
“Apron,” Tierra called, dangling the fabric over the counter.
Sunny paused on her way to the small kitchen. “Don’t bother fighting her on this one,” she said. “Trust me. I’ve been trying for years.”
“See?” Tierra’s smile was brighter than it had been all morning. “She knows.”
Moira took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “Fine.”
It was the first concession of many she would make that day.
Chapter Eight
Twelve.
The precise number of women in this incense-choked bohemian boutique Nick could fuck if he so chose. They gathered in groups of twos and threes, sipping flowery tea, flipping through tarot cards, and playing at divination.
But of all the mood-ring wearers, crystal consulters, and part-time tourists, his eyes followed only one.
Moira.
She hadn’t seen him yet—and wouldn’t. Subverting the awareness of those around him was so easy, it couldn’t even be considered a game any longer. Not when he could move among them, turning their attentions elsewhere until he decided to be noticeable.
Which wasn’t just yet. Watching her weave through the tables while balancing a tray loaded with heavy, hand-thrown ceramics was a little like observing a canary in the coal mine. A bright, beautiful thing amongst all that shifting gray, the harbinger and oracle of destruction she knew nothing about.
Destruction he would bring.
He swept the crowd once again, dividing them in the ways he found most amusing.
Thirteen.
The number of men he could kill in the space of time it required for Moira to draw a breath and release it again. The number of men who had slid their eyes up the length of her legs not obscured by the apron he would be burning at the first opportunity. The number of men who had traced the curve of her breasts and tested their weight with phantom hands.
Times like this, he regretted the efficiency of modern weaponry. Hearing their bones yield to the honed edge of an axe would have been far more melodic than the racket oozing out of the speakers to assault his ears. Some kind of wind chime battle someone had slapped with the appellation “new age” and sent out into the world to rob people of their natural inclinations toward violence.
On him, it had precisely the opposite effect.
Like the excess energy gnawing the fraying edges of his awareness, the sounds and smells of this place slipped a red filter of rage over his vision. Conflict would bloom around him like the pots of flowers and herbs mobbing every surface if he didn’t quit this place, and soon.
Moira swung by a table and leaned in just enough to flash the crescent shadow below one shapely ass cheek. His cock twitched at the sight.
In less than a minute, he could dismember every person in this place and have Moira on the counter, legs spread, his face up that excuse for a skirt.
He would taste her through her panties first. Force her to endure the maddening sensation of his tongue working through the thin layer of cloth. Though she didn’t wear a bra, she would be wearing a thong. He knew it as surely as he knew she would fight the pleasure. He might slide the fabric aside for her second orgasm so he could shove his tongue inside her when she came. By the third, he would have torn the scrap of silk away with his teeth for better access while he learned the curvature of the wet, wanting ache inside her with his fingers.
He would fuck her raw, exploiting every angle to create the frenzied, frenetic state he needed.
And then he would own her.
Make her beg for—
“Jesus Christ on a Ferris wheel. What the hell are you doin’ here?”
Nick spun around to find Moira not only in close proximity, but behind him. His back had been to the corner. He had known it. Made certain of it. When had he moved? How had she seen him?
“Moira Jo Malveaux,” Nick said, tweaking her name into a twangy rhyme. “Imagine running into you here of all places.”
She propped her tray of used mugs against the curve of her hip. “Well, if it ain’t Mister Slicker’n Owl Shit Hisself. Why do I get the feeling that you don’t run into anyone?”
“Because you know as well as I do that there’s really no such thing as chance,” Nick answered.
“That,” Moira snorted, “or you didn’t get your fill yesterday and decided to follow me home like a hang-dog.”
“I’m afraid I’m here on business.” The edges of Nick’s vision bled a deeper shade of crimson. “Can you fetch your boss for me?”
Moira’s dark head rose an inch in his vision as her spine straightened. “My boss is back in Louisiana. You plannin’ on hopping back on a plane?”
“Forgive the error,” Nick said. “I just saw that tray and apron and reasoned that you might work here.”
“Probably you oughta spend less time reasoning,” Moira suggested. “You’re not all that good at it.”
Nick worked against the muscles in his jaw threatening to grind his teeth to powder. “So you stop into random establishments and volunteer your services, then?”
“Naw,” Moira said. “I’m just helpin’ out my sister.”
“Ahh. Your sister wouldn’t happen to be Tierra de Moray, would she?”
He guessed by the stricken look on Moira’s face that he had hit his mark.
“Thanks for your help.” Nick clunked his empty coffee cup down on Moira’s tray with more force than was necessary and brushed past her on the way to the counter where a tattooed minx with a bird’s nest of pink dreadlocks on her head coaxed coffee and steamed milk from a hissing copper behemoth.
He knew Moira would be at his elbow before he could so much as catch the barista’s attention.
“What do you want with my sister?” she demanded.
“None of your concern, as you don’t work here. Excuse me,” Nick said, flagging down the barista.
“What else can I get for you? Another double espresso?” the petite woman asked. Koi fish jumped and slithered down her toned biceps as she tamped espresso into a filter with a stainless steel press.
“Tierra de Moray, to begin with,” Nick answered.
Pain rolled through Nick’s head like the shockwaves of a nuclear explosion as the familiar face leaned into the doorway.
Moira. But not Moira.
The features were the same. The expression they wore was not. Wide-set eyes, high, smooth cheekbones, pillowed lips and a halo of that strange red-black hair. In Moira, the combination was a feral as cloudburst, the kind of intense, accidental beauty that sent people running for safer ground.
In Tierra, they were the unfolding of a season—relentless in their loveliness and supremely confident of their right to exist. “Who wants me?” she asked.
Twins. Julian’s mocking, lyrical voice looped through Nick’s mind. By blood moon’s light… Nick shoved the thoughts away, drawing his focus back to the task at hand.
“I do,” Nick said.
So strange to see that face slide easily into a smile. Tierra wiped her hands on her apron and pushed a stray lock of hair away from her face with the back of her wrist. “And who might you be?”
“A pain in the ass, mostly,” Moira commented, depositing the mugs from her tray in the deep sink b
ehind the counter.
“Moira!” Tierra’s voice held a mix of motherly rebuke and embarrassment.
“It’s all right,” Nick said. He waved a casual hand in Moira’s direction. “We’ve met. I’m acquainted with your sister’s native…wit. Nick Kingswood.”
The hand she offered was shaken with a grasp as warm as a sun-drenched rock, and lacked the accompany jolt of pain and promise. But she was a witch. He had felt the low-level hum crackling like the air before a lightning strike.
“Tierra de Moray,” she announced. “What can I do for you?”
Nick hesitated. He wanted a few extra seconds to drink in the expression on her face. This moment, the space between a contented existence and the end of life as she knew it was his foreplay. His Christmas Eve. He returned her confident smile as an appetizer to the killing blow. “You can be out of here in three days.”
Yes. There it was. Her smile slid from its moorings, buffeted by confusion and disbelief.
“Out of where?” Tierra asked. “What do you mean?”
“Here.” Nick swept a hand over the crowded cafe. “This store. My building.”
A spontaneous burst of laughter set Tierra’s eyes dancing. “Yeah, right. Your building. I’ve been renting this space from Mrs. Cavendish forever!”
“Which explains why your lease hasn’t been updated recently. It seems the last one you signed ended about eighteen months ago.” Nick set his leather briefcase on the counter and popped the lid, withdrawing a manila folder. “Here we are.”
“Let me see that.” Tierra snatched the yellowing, dog-eared document away from him and flipped through the pages. Moira had taken to cleaning the same patch of counter over and over again as she leaned over her sister’s shoulder for a peek.
“That can’t be right,” Tierra said, worry creasing her face.
“Mrs. Cavendish was so eager to sell when she learned I was buying the rest of the block. Did you know she’s wanted to retire in Boca for years?” Genuine pleasure touched his heart at the memory. It had taken less than five minutes for Nick to secure her signature on the document now quaking in Tierra’s hands.
Which Witch is Which? (The Witches of Port Townsend) Page 6
