Witchy Woman

by Karen Leabo

  She’d seen it before their encounter in the antique shop.

  Whatever the story, he intended to find out more about it. Who knew, perhaps it tied in with Tess’s Moonbeam Majick history. Might make an interesting sidelight to his story.

  It seemed to take him forever to change the tire. The jack was balky. Every single lug nut was a challenge, as if they’d all been welded on. The spare was low, too, though it would probably make it to a service station.

  Since Tess hovered nearby during the entire ritual, he asked her to hold the lug nuts. He couldn’t help but notice that when he asked for them back, she dropped them one at a time into his hand rather than risk touching him.

  When she handed him the last lug nut, he made a point of brushing her hand with his. Was it his imagination, or had he actually seen a spark flare between their two hands in the darkness? He heard her sharp intake of breath.

  “Keep your mind on business,” he murmured to himself.

  “What?” Tess said.

  “All finished.” He gave the last nut one final twist with the lug wrench. The wrench slipped, and he banged his hand against the rough road surface, scraping his knuckles raw. In deference to Tess, the string of curses that spouted from his mouth were only mildly obscene.

  “Oh, are you okay?”

  “I’ll live.” He stuck his injured hand under his arm and squeezed his eyes closed until the pain subsided a bit. How many tires had he changed in his life? he wondered. And he’d never hurt himself before.

  Hell, the damn panther statue was giving him the willies.

  Since Tess still seemed to want to help, he let her ratchet the jack down while he wrestled the flat tire into the trunk. In a couple of minutes they were back on the road. They stopped at the first service station they came to for a shot of air into the spare, then continued on their way.

  “My place is a lot closer than yours,” he said as casually as he dared. “It’s been a long, miserable day, and I’ve got a good bottle of brandy tucked away for just such an occasion. What do you say we stop there and warm up a little before I take you back to your place?”

  “I really need to go home,” she said. Her voice held just enough hesitation that he persisted.

  “But what about the cat?” He knew she would feel guilty sticking him with it. “Maybe we should stop at the nearest bridge and drop it off.”

  Tess shook her head. “Won’t work. It’s been tried.” She glanced over quickly at him to see if he’d caught the significance of her revelation.

  He had. “You know this cat, then? You don’t just hate cats in general?”

  She sighed. “Can’t you just take me home?”

  He had her now. “I’m the one who plunked down fifty bucks for the cat and lobbed it into my trunk. It’s mine now. The least you could do is tell me about it. Explain what I’m up against.”

  Again she sighed. “Okay. Did you say something about brandy?”

  He suppressed a smile of satisfaction. Once he got Tess going about this bad-luck statue, the conversation would naturally segue into her past as Moonbeam. Perfect.

  He felt only a small stab of guilt at manipulating her with this superstition nonsense. Maybe when all was said and done, he would do her a favor by convincing her that superstitions weren’t legitimate. After all, it couldn’t be much fun to live with this kind of fear all the time.

  Nate lucked out and found a parking spot within half a block of his apartment house. After he and Tess had gotten out of the car and he’d locked the doors, he headed for the trunk.

  “No!” Tess cried. “Leave it where it is. For God’s sake, don’t bring the thing into your home.”

  “Okay, maybe you’re right,” he said. “The less we handle it, the better. Right?”

  “I would think so.”

  Nate was more and more intrigued. He couldn’t wait to get her talking.

  As he unlocked his front door at the top of the stairs, he felt a sudden reluctance to allow Tess inside. He was such a … bachelor. Earlier, at Judy’s place, he’d been congratulating himself for knowing how to load a dishwasher. But how long had it been since he’d tidied up his own place? A couple of weeks?

  With a shrug he ushered her inside and flipped on a light. Could be worse, he decided. A couple of empty pizza boxes, a beer can or two, some unopened junk mail, and wilted plants. Besides that, everything was basically clean. He sat Tess down on his pride-and-joy leather sofa, but before her rear even made contact with the cushions, she wiggled sideways and landed in one of his two tweed club chairs instead.

  “The sofa’s more comfortable,” he said.

  “Not for me.”

  He puzzled over her explanation, but she didn’t elaborate. So he shrugged and launched a whirlwind cleaning tour of the living room, the leavings of which he thrust down his garbage chute. Then he grabbed two glasses from the kitchen along with the unopened bottle of cognac.

  He found Tess sitting exactly where he’d left her, perched nervously on the edge of the club chair, hands clenched, eyes darting around.

  “You look like you could use a snort of this,” Nate said, sitting on the sofa, wishing he could have finagled a way to sit beside her. He poured a generous measure of the amber liquid into each snifter, then handed her one.

  “I think we should drink to Judy’s swift recovery,” he said, sincerely meaning it. As little time as he’d spent with Judy, he genuinely liked her. And he could tell that Tess loved her like a sister.

  She nodded and flashed the beginnings of a brave smile. “Yes, that’s an excellent idea.” They clinked their glasses, then each took a sip. “Mmm,” Tess said after swallowing. “Burns all the way down. Good.”

  “It’ll warm you all the way to your toenails too.”

  After his second sip of brandy, he set the snifter on his mahogany coffee table. That’s when he noticed one of his reporter’s notebooks, sitting on the table inches from Tess’s right knee. Aw, hell. All his notes about Moonbeam Majick were in there. If she should stumble onto that information, she would know that he’d engineered their supposedly random meeting at the antique shop. She would know why he was pursuing her, why he was so curious about her, and she wouldn’t be happy about it.

  Although he had to admit, his curiosity extended far beyond journalistic instincts at this point. Part of him, that small part that was still innocent and believed in fairy tales, wished he’d never offered to write this story. It wished he’d really been shopping for a doll for his older sister and had chanced a meeting with a pretty blonde he’d known nothing about except that he liked her figure and her smile and the hypnotic sound of her voice.

  That tiny, irrational part of him was wishing like crazy he had a chance in hell of getting her to forget all this curse nonsense and go out to a movie with him.

  Yeah, right. He would be lucky if she didn’t throw his brandy in his face and abandon him to his fate with that damn cat.

  Still, if he snatched the notebook away now, she would be suspicious. He would simply not leave her alone with it again. He would sit there, guarding it like a German shepherd, till it was time to take her home.

  “So,” he said when she sat back in her chair, looking as if maybe the brandy was taking effect. “Tell me the whole story about this wretched statue.”

  “You won’t believe it,” she said flatly. “You’ll just think I’m a total basket case.”

  “Try me.”

  If anything, she seemed even more reluctant. “Look, the brandy is nice and everything, but why don’t I just call a cab—”

  “Try me,” he said again. “I can’t guarantee I’ll believe you a hundred percent, but I promise not to laugh at you. And I’ll take you home as soon as you’re done.”

  “Promise? It’ll sound pretty outlandish to you.”

  He nodded. “Start at the beginning.”

  “Well, okay. See, no one knows exactly where the cat came from originally, but it’s really old. Back in the 1800s, there was thi
s Gypsy woman who lived in the woods near a town in Connecticut. The townspeople didn’t have a doctor, or a priest, so they relied on the Gypsy for lots of things—cures for illnesses, blessings, good-luck charms, and some charms that weren’t so nice. The Gypsy had a thriving business, until my great-grandmother—her name was Lass—moved to town. She was a …” Tess searched for the word.

  A witch? Nate was burning to ask. He’d read in his research materials that Morganna, Tess’s mother, claimed to come from a long line of witches.

  “I guess in today’s society she would be called a healer or an herbalist, something like that. She offered herbal remedies and, um, blessings, and unlike the Gypsy, she didn’t charge money for her services. You can imagine what this did to the Gypsy’s business.”

  Nate nodded.

  “Only the people who wanted evil stuff—curses on their enemies, that kind of thing—continued to see the Gypsy because Lass wouldn’t touch black magic.”

  Tess leaned back in her chair, relaxing slightly. “Well, the Gypsy finally decided she’d had enough. She came to Lass’s house with a gift, a supposed peace offering.”

  “The cat statue.”

  “Right. But she’d put a powerful curse on it, a curse that affected not only great-grandmother, but all of her descendants and, apparently, anybody who came into possession of the statue. It’s called the Crimson Cat, by the way.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She set her glass down on the table with a thunk. “See? I knew you wouldn’t believe any of this. You think I’m a nutcase.”

  “No, not at all. You’re merely recounting a bit of family legend. Nothing nutty about that.”

  “Unless I believe it. Which I do. My great-grandmother sickened and died within months of receiving the statue—that was after her herb garden shriveled and her goats’ milk soured. Then my grandmother inherited the statue. She went through four husbands, each dying more tragically than the last until finally Grandma killed herself.”

  Nate shivered despite himself. “That’s awful.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Then did your mother inherit?”

  “No, not yet. My uncle got it.”

  “Not the one who got the cut and lost his—”

  “The very same. By this time the curse was well-known, so he decided to sell the statue. The collector who bought it died in a car accident on his way home. The lawyer who handled his estate found the bill of sale for the cat in the man’s effects, and since the estate was in debt, he returned the statue and got his money back. Then my uncle tried to throw the thing off a bridge.”

  “And what happened?” Nate asked, fascinated despite himself. True or not, it was a pretty good story she was weaving.

  “A little boy from the village found the statue, undamaged, and dragged it up from the riverbed. His mother took one look at it, recognized it as belonging to my uncle, and back to my uncle the statue came. The little boy, incidentally, caught meningitis two weeks later and died.”

  “This is really interesting, Tess, but you’ll forgive me for asking this. How do you know this story is true?”

  “As a reporter, you’re obligated to ask, I guess,” she said. Nate was relieved that she didn’t seem to be insulted. “I heard the early part from a great-aunt. My uncle told me his part himself, shortly before he was killed in a plane crash. That was after the business with the splinter and gangrene, I might add. The rest I experienced personally.”

  “I assume your mother got the statue next.”

  Tess nodded. “It happened when I was ten. Before that, she was much the same as my great-grandmother was—an herbalist, a natural healer. Most of the women on that side of the family were interested in the healing arts and the arcane. Mother read auras and collected crystals and meditated twice a day. But as soon as the statue arrived at our house, something sinister started happening to her. She turned to a darker sort of magic.”

  Yes! This was the stuff Nate had been waiting for.

  Tess got fidgety again. She picked up her brandy snifter, then set it down without taking a sip. She fiddled with some coasters, then with a brass candlestick.

  Nate’s heart rose into his throat when she absently touched his notebook. Whoa, he told himself when he was ready to lunge across the table and grab the notebook from her. She hadn’t opened it yet.

  All at once a strange light came into her eyes. She frowned as her gaze became unfocused. Then she flashed him an angry scowl, and he could have sworn he saw blue sparks coming from her eyes.

  She threw the notebook onto the table. “You son of a bitch!”

  “What? Excuse me?” What had he done?

  “You’re using me. I trusted you. I was pouring my heart out to you, and the whole time all you want is to write a story about me. It was all a lie—all of it!”

  FIVE

  Tess had to get out of there. She rarely got angry, but when she did, her temper could boil over into rage, and Lord help whoever was in her path. She didn’t trust herself to be logical or reasonable until the anger had run itself out; the best course of action was to get away from Nate and reclaim her precious solitude till she felt in control again.

  “How did you know that?” Nate asked, sounding more bewildered than defensive. “How did you know I was planning to write a story about you?”

  She narrowed her blue eyes and held up her hands in a classic spell-casting pose, like the Wicked Witch of the West. “My boogie-woogie witchy powers, how else? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to catch a cab home. I have to feed my black cat and brew up some eye-of-newt tea!” She grabbed her purse and headed for the door.

  Nate was right behind her. “Wait, you can’t go!”

  “Why not?” She jerked the door open and stepped onto the landing.

  “You’re going to leave me alone with a cursed cat statue in my trunk?”

  That gave her pause. Much as she wanted to see the last of Nate Wagner, she had gotten him involved in the cat thing. The beast was still in his trunk, and he didn’t take the threat seriously. What if something happened to him, something worse than a scratch or an uncomfortable brush with a subway?

  Okay. If she were honest, she would have to admit that she really didn’t want to see the last of him, either. He was a most intriguing man, the first ever to touch her without making her skin crawl.

  She folded her arms and looked at him mutinously. No sense in letting him off easy. “You lied to me.”

  He conceded with a nod. “If I’d come right up to you and asked to write a story about Moonbeam Majick, what would you have said?”

  “I’d have run as far and as fast as I could.”

  “I figured that. I thought if you could get to know me first, trust me a little bit, then I could ease into the subject of your past.”

  “And if I still was against it?” When he didn’t respond right away, Tess discovered she was waiting breathlessly for his answer.

  Finally he said, “I don’t honestly know. I’d like to believe I would have honored your wishes. I can be a hard-ass sometimes, but I’m not ruthless.”

  Did she dare believe him? Or was this just another cramping of the truth to manipulate her? Then it occurred to her that she didn’t have to guess. She had a foolproof method of discovering his true intentions, even if he didn’t know the truth himself. “Give me your hand.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just let me hold your hand for a moment.”

  “Okay.” He held out one hand, palm up, as if he expected her to read his fortune in the lines and creases there. Instead, she took his hand in both of hers, lightly touching it. She closed her eyes.

  Damn. He was so sincere, it was astounding. He had no intention of doing anything that would harm her.

  “What are you doing?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Shh.” There it was again, that flash she’d experienced earlier, but it was stronger this time. Skin against skin, breathing, scents commingled, the hot touch of fevered finger
s, questing, murmured lovers’ words—

  “What?” he asked more insistently this time.

  She gasped and dropped his hand as if it were a burning coal. Holy moth-eaten cod. The images were stronger now, more distinct, too real to be dismissed as the frustrated yearnings of an overripe virgin. She and Nate were on a path toward intimacy, and their destiny was hurtling toward them at an alarming rate. Time was a fluid thing within the psychic world she knew, but she’d learned to guess.

  A week, no more.

  Destiny wasn’t quite the right word, though, because free choice was always an option. Shadows of the future weren’t carved in stone. Paths could be altered, the future could be changed.

  “Tess! Are you okay?”

  She realized she’d been staring at a blank wall, trancelike, for interminable seconds. Now she looked at Nate. The concern on his face, in the depths of those velvety brown eyes, was very real.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re zoning out on me, and I know you didn’t have that much brandy.”

  “I was just thinking about something.” She cleared her throat, trying to bring herself back to full, here-and-now consciousness. “I should go home. Just promise me you won’t do anything with the statue until you talk to me.”

  “Huh, don’t worry. I’m not going to touch it. Um, will you talk to me?”

  “Yeah,” she answered, her reluctance somewhat feigned. She didn’t want to say good-bye forever. There was too much there to walk away from. “You’re right, I can’t stick you with the cat. I’ll help you get rid of it.”

  “Let me get my car keys.” He started to duck back inside his apartment.

  “No! I’m not riding around the streets of Boston with that thing in your trunk. I’ll take a cab.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll walk you down a few blocks to Cambridge Square. There’s always a cab hanging around there.”

  She nodded.

  Nate stepped inside his apartment to grab a jacket off his coatrack—a leather bomber instead of his tweed blazer. Then he and Tess emerged from the building into the night. The wind had died down, but it was colder, and a malevolent mist hovered around the streetlights.