“Good-bye, Aerin Doe,” he said ominously. “I’m sorry.”
Aerin nodded, suddenly unable to find her voice, as he fished a phone from his pocket.
“Yes?”
Turning away, Aerin let his portentous words follow her back inside.
“It is done.”
Whatever. She needed to find a rental car counter, and then some Scotch.
On the tail of that thought, the first sneeze wracked her body.
Chapter Three
Port Townsend was no Hamptons, but as a seaside-port-town-turned-tourist-destination it was damn cute. Charming even. Nestled on the tip of the Olympic Peninsula’s Sun Belt, hundred-year-old brick buildings shaded Aerin as blue skies reflected off bluer water on three sides of the isthmus. On the hill, Victorian homes lined the roads like painted ladies, shamelessly baring their bay windows, large porches, gables and spires in a neat, yet colorful array. The whole place bespoke of the genteel opulence of the merchant shipping class in an industrial bygone age.
Aerin passed store windows on the shaded water-front thoroughfare that had once been bustling with cobblers and co-ops, haberdasheries and milliners. Now, the colorful brick buildings housed art galleries and boutiques, creperies and bistros.
What she needed was some decent fucking coffee. This was Washington, right? This place gave birth to Starbucks. Wasn’t there supposed to be a coffee shop on every corner?
She’d be able to use her phone to find a café if she wasn’t stuck on a conference call with her Board of Investors, Kai Masashi and his contingent from Japan, and of course, Dev the dick bag.
She could fire him…if she hadn’t fucked him. Last thing Windmark Tech needed was a scandal and a sexual harassment lawsuit.
She felt like warmed-over shit, and hid her puffy eyes and raw, runny nose with ginormous Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses and enough makeup to require a grout scrubber to remove. How had she gotten sick? She had the immune system of a Honey Badger.
“We haven’t seen market numbers this high since we went public,” she assured the board and the insidious Mr. Masashi. “That being said, this deal isn’t going to make them drop, it’ll only drive them higher.”
She crossed the street and noted that the vintage clothing boutique, S’Klallam Native Art Gallery, the Good Vibes Yoga Studio, and Raven Song Pottery all had signs in their windows advertising “going out of business” blowout sales.
More casualties of the economic downturn? Damn shame, that.
“We understand, Miss Doe.” Masashi put too much emphasis on the word. “But Windmark is still young and untried. It hasn’t weathered the storms that it’s bigger, older contenders have…” He paused.
There! Two doors away, on the far corner of the block, a purple shingle advertised Ambrosia’s Brews and Charms—wicked coffee, spellbinding tea, and magical sundries.
Fuck, yeah.
Aerin rushed for it, almost yanked some hippie’s arm out of his socket when she opened the door and dove inside, letting the smell of fresh-ground dark roast envelope her in ecstatic anticipation.
“It is, miss, isn’t it? I presume you’re not married,” the snide twat Masashi was saying.
“It’s Ms.,” Aerin annunciated very smoothly. They wouldn’t be having this conversation if she had different genitals. “And I guess you could say that Windmark Tech is young and untried, but you’d be contradicting opinions with some very powerful dissenters.”
“Such as…?”
She pressed the mute button on her blue-tooth. “I’ll have your largest shot in the dark, black, no room for cream.” She threw a ten-dollar bill on the tray of a pink-haired pixie that pranced past her with the fleet-footed, light-heartedness of the young and irresponsible. “Keep the change.”
Figuring that the kid stared at her with such wide-eyes because she needed time to process all those words that were not in text speak, Aerin waved her off while addressing Mr. Masashi.
“Such as JD Power and Associates, Fortune 500, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Wired, Fast Company, my fucking Cayman Islands and Swiss bank accounts… need I go on?”
Jesus, it looked like Stevie Nicks took a gypsy shit in here. Fringed shawls acted as café tablecloths weighted by various themed decks of tarot cards. Candles burned everywhere infusing the air with a confusion of scents that, despite their overabundance, were pleasant. It was hard to find a surface not littered by crystals, herbs, pottery, handmade jewelry, knick-knacks and books.
To say the place kinda shimmered would be like saying Larry Page was kinda rich.
Mr. Masashi wasn’t through acting like a little bitch. “All I’m saying is that it’s troubling to spend this kind of capital—”
“What I find troubling,” Aerin bit out an interruption. “Is that you flew all the way to New York to balk at terms you’ve already agreed to. If you have a problem with the deal, get the fuck out of my building, and I’ll call the next person clamoring for this opportunity in your market.”
“L-let’s not be hasty.” The very real worry in Masashi’s voice did enough to lower her blood pressure.
“Let’s be plenty hasty. Sign the papers or don’t, but either way, stop wasting my valuable time.” She hung up in time to bury her face in the elbow of her fawn jacket and let the sneeze wrack her bones.
“Sinclaire?” The pink-punk hadn’t unglued her silver-buckled combat boots from the floor.
Aerin shook her head. “Sorry, you’re mistaking me for someone else.” Turning, she took a seat closest to the window.
“Another one?” The barista’s bouncy voice matched the tits that her pleather bustier mashed up to her chin. “Are they like, cloning you, or what?”
Apparently, they were cloning morons.
“What nonsense are you talking?”
Fake lashes blinked a few times brushing the glass of her cat-eyes spectacles. “Sorry but… you’re definitely not Moira, or Tierra.”
“We’ve never met. I’m not a local, kid.”
On such an alternative canvass, the girl’s smile held a tinge of youthful innocence that didn’t seem to match. “I can tell. You’d have to go to New York or L.A. to get a coat like that.”
Aerin scoffed. “Honey, you have to go to Paris or Milan to get a coat like this.”
“No doubt. I’m Sunny. Are you here to meet your—”
Aerin’s phone pealed loud enough to echo. It was Dev, the douche nozzle.
“You have an ETA on that coffee, Tacklebox, or do I have to make it myself?” Aerin quipped.
To her surprise, Sunny tossed her pink dreadlocks and grinned. “Tacklebox, because of all this.” She motioned to her umpteen face piercings. “That’s funny. I like you.”
“Great, I can die happy.”
Sunny laughed. “Shot in the dark, coming right up.”
“Good, and don’t spit in it. I’ll be able to tell.”
They were both smirking when Sunny sauntered off. Aerin liked her too. She reminded her of New York.
“What?” she barked into her phone.
“We Asians are not used to that kind of lack of respect or decorum in our business dealings.” Dev also dispensed with niceties.
“Did he sign?” Aerin ignored the reproach in his voice.
The silence told her that the papers were signed.
Goddamn but she was sick of the fragile male ego. “I give respect when it’s earned, and when it is given in return. That dildo hasn’t shown me one ounce of respect since we started this deal and you don’t hear me crying about it, do you? This is business, if he’s looking for someone to rub his neck and give him a happy ending, he’s come to the wrong massage parlor.”
“There’s no need to be racist.” Dev paused. “Are you sick?”
“Are you kidding?” Aerin rubbed her aching, stuffy head with one hand to try to alleviate the pressure building behind her eyes. Her hands were freezing, but her forehead felt as hot as the bottom of a badly vented laptop.
“
It’s only that, I’ve known you for five years and you’ve never once been sick.”
“There’s a first time for everything, I guess.”
“And, you’re bitchier than usual.”
Aerin sighed. He wasn’t wrong. “I’m only human,” she murmured, gearing up for an apology. She sucked at those, but she cared enough to try.
“You sure about that?” Dev snarked.
Okay. Never mind. Fuck the apology. “Did you need something, or did you call under the mistaken impression that just because you woke up in my bed that gives you the right to censure me? Because last time I checked, this was still my company and I was still your boss.”
“Aerin—”
She cut him off. “Oh, and while I’m away, please refrain from trying to grudge-fuck my assistant? It makes her uncomfortable.”
“I can explain—”
“Don’t bother, just do your job.” She cut off the call and silenced her ringer.
“Here ya go, sister.” The pleasant southern twang heralded a gigantic recycled coffee cup appearing in front of her.
Aerin’s eyes watered with the precursor to another soul-wracking sneeze. She gasped out a “thank you” to whoever wasn’t Tacklebox and let loose into a table napkin.
“That’s a mighty cold you got there. You been lickin’ door handles or something?”
“Excuse me,” Aerin said dismissively as she wiped her nose and checked her loaded inbox from her phone. Wrapping her freezing fingers around the blessedly warm cup, she lifted it to her lips and took that first tentative sip.
And promptly spit it out, soiling the glass covering the crimson shawl on her round café table. “What. The shit. Is that?”
She turned in her seat to confront the waitress and shock caused her to leap to her feet, which set her stuffy head to swimming.
“I know, I know,” drawled the woman who displayed her Exact. Same. Features. She didn’t just look similar, nor did she have a mere resemblance, like a relative. She was wearing Aerin’s face. The tall, stunning beauty had her identical black-cherry hair knotted in two braids that teased the nipples visible through her skin-tight t-shirt. The bottom of her pockets peaked below the hem of her barely-there jean shorts, and her legs went on for miles and miles until they ended in a pair of shapely, but well-used feet.
“Drink up,” the woman prodded. “It tastes like somethin’ that squirted out of the south end of a northbound mud duck, but trust me, it’ll scare them nasty critters out of your sinuses.”
Holy Christ, she had a hillbilly doppelganger. One who’d apparently never heard of a pedicure.
“She’s here?” An excited cry filtered from the swinging mahogany doors behind the coffee counter. Another incarnation of herself rushed forward. “What took you so long?” the gypsy-woman demanded a bit breathlessly. “I called for you ages ago!”
“Wha-?” Aerin looked down into her coffee mug. Had she just been drugged?
A red motorcycle roared to a stop in front of the shop and a long, shapely woman clad in black and red leather peeled her body from the seat and sauntered through the door. Pulling off a black helmet brushed with flames, she shook down long auburn waves and flashed Aerin’s own teeth with her fucking smile.
“Look at this bad boy I just bought!” The biker called in Aerin’s voice.
The room spun. Aerin felt hot. Then cold. Then like she was on fire. “The—Fuck?” she groaned, before the hardwood floor rushed up to meet her and darkness saved her from her hallucinations.
Chapter Four
I promise to be gentle…the first time.
Every time those words stormed, unbidden, through Julian’s memory, images of the invitation in Aerin’s liquid-silver eyes accompanied it.
The first time. Their first time. His first time. Would she have been gentle?
No, he thought with a bittersweet smile. She was not a woman bred to gentility. They would have fought for supremacy in the bedroom. He’d have let her win, that first time.
Would have. Past tense…
As his body heated and hardened, his heart froze and shriveled. The agony was so acute, it drove him even deeper into solitude than usual.
The first time that could never be.
Her body, the epitome of desire’s own creation, had been clad in a suit like a man. And somehow, it had made her breasts that much more lovely, because they were such a mystery. Wide-legged trousers hid, yet hinted at, what must have been shapely legs, lent height by uncomfortable-looking spike-heeled shoes.
Strange, feminine elements reflecting a wardrobe which bespoke masculine power alongside a great deal of money, and taste. Julian savored a sip of his 1962 Cote D’or Burgundy wine, closed his eyes against the fire crackling in the stone hearth, and let the melancholy transcendence of Pavarotti’s rendition of Una Furtiva Lagrima tear at the furrows of regret in his chest.
He’d picked this vintage because it matched the dark velvet red of her hair. He’d never know the length of the tresses she’d pinned to her nape. Never hear the lush, yet crisp tones of her voice. Never erase the memory of her elegant fingers clasped against his in a shake as decisive and firm as any man’s.
Never feel that grip…elsewhere.
Because by now, she was dead.
“Listening to Puccini by firelight and sipping a fifty-year-old wine that is not a sipping wine?” Nicholas Kingswood strode from the entry to the stone manor’s library, helped himself to a glass, and joined him at the hearth as though the flames could answer his unspoken questions. When they didn’t, he turned his dark head toward Julian. “What is your bereavement this time?”
“This time?”
“Last time you left Le Chateaux Morte and ventured into the world, I found you thus the very next morning. How long ago was that, a hundred years or so?”
Julian took another sip and turned from the fire, preferring the shadows to his comrade’s shrewd, calculating gaze. “Nineteen-eighteen,” he murmured.
“Ah, yes.” Stripping off his charcoal suit coat, Nicholas released the cuffs of his blue silk shirt, and claimed a great deal of the leather couch with his powerful body. “Influenza, a stroke of brilliance on your part.”
“A stroke of genocide.”
“Buck up, Jules. Genocide is what you do best.” Nick raised his glass in salute. “You’re a maestro of the massacre. It was your last work that truly went ‘viral.’” He chuckled around a sip at his own pun.
“This is no time for levity, Nicholas, a woman is dead.”
“As opposed to the seventy-five million casualties in the nineteen-eighteen pandemic?”
Julian grunted his irritation.
“Don’t you think maybe a few of those corpses were women?” Nicholas asked.
“And children, and the elderly! Did you come to salt my wounds, or does your visit have a purpose?”
Contrition wasn’t a display that lay organically on Nicholas Kingswood’s features, but the attempt was appreciated. “I came to check in on you. And to…thank you.”
Julian made an ironic sound in his throat. “And to what accomplishment is your gratitude owed?”
“I don’t know, Julian, saving the fucking world from the Apocalypse, I guess,” Nick spat. “God, a hundred years of solitude makes you a surly dick hole.”
Julian joined Conquest, folding into the throne-style chair next to the table of wine. “My apologies,” he muttered. “I found the task more…distasteful than was expected.” It was an admission he could only make to Nicholas, for the same reason he knew that only Conquest, himself, would venture into the library drawn by good music and better wine.
“Where’s Drustan?” he changed the subject.
Nicholas shrugged. “Lurking in the hedges somewhere, practicing the more physical skills of the art of war. You know nunchuk skills, bowhunting skills…”
Julian did crack a smile at Nicholas’ perfect rendition of Napoleon Dynamite. But when he looked over, Nicholas was studying the fire through his win
e glass, as though only just discovering the intriguing color of the vintage.
“Julian, do you ever wonder… Do you ever question our…purpose?”
“The question being, what is the bloody point?” Julian finished. “Constantly.”
He studied Nicholas over another sip from his goblet. Conquest, brilliant as he was, never had been a man prone to brooding. He built empires and toppled civilizations all in a day’s work. He was a man of action. Decisive, confident, and damned effective.
So why the sudden cognitive dissonance?
His swarthy, brutal features darkened. “Why would they create the four of us, the billions of them, the prophecy, the Grimoire, the…de Morays?”
Julian had given it a good deal of thought. Not just ponderance, but study, prayer, meditation, et al. “I suppose, this world—this short life of theirs—is only one chapter in the eternal tome that is existence. Perhaps we are an end to the chapter. A cliffhanger of sorts. Even a transitory vehicle to the next phase of being?” It was the best he could come up with thus far.
“Fuck off. I’m no astrophysical, hypothetical transit authority.”
Julian chuckled. “That’s not precisely what I was alluding to… Though, I often wonder. Why would the gods create creatures of such majesty, power, vitality, beauty and infinite potential only to have us lay in wait for the day we must destroy them?”
Nicholas’ eyebrow went up. “You hold the mortals in higher regard than I realized.”
Julian maintained his silence. He hadn’t been talking about the mortals.
Only one of them.
“I thought you were weak, you know,” Julian admitted. “You and Drustan. I didn’t understand why you hadn’t yet destroyed the de Moray witches while they were still estranged and easily broken. I couldn’t comprehend how three of them had found each other and cast magic before you were forced to call me away from Le Chateaux Morte.”
Nicholas didn’t look at him, but drained his glass in two gulps. “And now?”
“And now I realize just how much power a mere woman can wield.”
“And those are just the ones without Druid magic.”
Which Witch is Which? (The Witches of Port Townsend) Page 19
