Witch Way Inn

by Kate Richards

  But even if I missed the actual party, sure to have been exciting, I could still interview the owner, a few guests, take some pictures—my photographer’s flight still hadn’t landed and I’d had to leave without him—and head back to Reno late tonight. I did have a room for the night at the inn, but planned to make my excuses and leave as soon as possible.

  I still hadn’t passed a single car headed toward me, nor were there any going in my direction. Perhaps nobody had shown up for the big event. In which case, I wouldn’t have anything to write about. Maybe a short bit indicating nothing was happening. That wouldn’t be too bad. GPS—the feminine voice that had stopped me from passing my exit despite my desire to do so—informed me to take the left fork ahead. The road had retained its two-lane status but had become a never-ending series of switchbacks, steep, and almost all-blind corners. On some curves, pine trees lined the road but on others, I could see for miles. Scenic but terrifying, especially when my car revealed a tendency to have almost-zero traction when any gravel or other slippery substances were on the road surface. No wonder nobody showed up for the grand opening. Who in their right mind would come here if they had a choice?

  Finally, just when I was starting to think I’d crossed into an alternate universe where I’d drive on forever and never reach my destination, the feminine voice said, “Turn left into the driveway. Your destination will be straight ahead.”

  Driveway? For the last hundred yards I was deep in the forest, so feeling less edgy than I had for a while, but I saw nothing that looked anything like a driveway. I was in the middle of nowhere. And it was dark. The trees were tall, ancient, and hard to see past. The wind shook my little car, the only one available at the rental agency, threatening to push me off the road and into their trunks. I struggled to hold the wheel while the GPS lady insisted I watch for the drive, which was only “one hundred feet ahead” then turn left. At my current speed, that would take a minute or two to get to, it wasn’t far, but I saw nothing. Slowing even more, I crept between the trees, peering out my windshield, looking for any sign of the mysterious entrance to the Witch Way Inn.

  Even if the grand opening had been a bust, wouldn’t there be lights? Like...along the route guests would take to and from the main road. If you could call this paved sheep trail a main road. I was grumbling under my breath, wishing I was a witch and could put a curse on my publisher, on Zelda, and on the owner of this...this place in the middle of nowhere.

  For just a second I entertained the idea I’d been had. Maybe there was no hotel at all. It seemed more likely every moment. It might be an even better revenge on the part of Zelda, who I’d put absolutely nothing past, to have arranged for a rental car with a pre-programmed GPS to send me into the wilderness. Did GPS normally even work in such out-of-the-way places?

  But no...was that a break in the trees? And a mailbox! If there was a mailbox, there was somebody out here. If not the hotel, perhaps someone’s vacation home I could hole up in until morning because no way was I going to take that road out of here in the dark. Not after a whole day of crazy, inconvenient travel. I was beat and just wanted a place to rest my head.

  I signaled my left turn into the drive, only then noticing the witch’s hat insignia on the mailbox. Well...could be it. The drive was paved better than the road had been; it was even a little wider. I put-putted along, still seeing nothing, but after my turn the GPS lady informed me my destination was straight ahead.

  I continued on, at this point almost believing I might have found it.

  Also sure that nobody had come—who would even try to make their way into here—and while I’d be forced to spend the night due to the road conditions and my exhaustion, there’d be no story. My rep would be intact.

  Sure enough, when the house came into view, it was totally dark, as if no party had taken place. Only a single car occupied the parking area to the left of the front door. The inn loomed, tall and glowering in the darkness, a Victorian mansion built a long time ago by some eccentric—my assistant would do that background research for the article, if there was going to be one, which I felt confident there would not.

  Parking next to the Volvo, I grabbed my bag from the back seat and crunched across the crushed-gravel paved lot toward the front door. The half-dozen wide steps led upward, and something about the altitude made it harder to ascend them than usual. My feet felt like they were mired in mud. I was even more exhausted than I thought. With each step, I moved slower and slower, my legs heavy, shoulders drooping, eyelids sagging. Sagging like me when I finally quit fighting and landed prone, facedown on the porch, reaching out for the door.

  What the hell?

  Chapter Three

  Karina

  “Karina! Karina, come now!” Tinsley’s urgent whisper dragged me back from a lovely dream about the cook presenting me with a steak dinner, or perhaps roast chicken. Presenting the guests with these things. I tried to ignore her, but she grasped my shoulder and shook hard. “Wake up. Someone is outside.”

  Impossible. We hadn’t seen one uninvited person in the entire time we’d been up here. Only contractors and delivery men—most of them didn’t love us in the slightest. “Is it one of the contractors?” I muttered. “Maybe he forgot something.” And it had better be something important to come here at this time of night.

  “No, it’s not anyone I’ve seen before,” she insisted, now dragging on my arm, tugging me from my nest of pillows and blankets. “And he’s sleeping out there.”

  I jerked upright, staring at her. “He’s what?” While I wasn’t thrilled to have one of the workers back late at night like this, we certainly could do better than making him sleep on the porch. It was cold out there. “Did he knock?”

  Tinsley shook her head. “No. I was going to flit around the gardens for a bit before bed, you know, as I like to do.”

  “Did you trip over him?” That should have woken him. Tinsley could fly a bit, but she had a lot of ogre in her. If she had stumbled over him, he’d know it.

  “No, I stepped onto the porch and saw him lying there so I locked the door and came right up here.”

  Uneasy, I stood up and slipped my arms into my long terry cloth robe, my feet into my fuzzy slippers, brushed a few hairs that had escaped from my nighttime braid from my face, and headed for the stairs. One of our workers would surely have known to knock. And deliveries rarely came after dark. No, something extraordinary was happening here and I feared not in a good way.

  I padded through the living room in the dark, reluctant to turn on a light and alert the stranger. I peeked through the window in the door, and found the scene Tinsley described. A tall man in a leather jacket lay sprawled on my freshly painted boards. Dark hair fell over his forehead, hiding his features, which I unaccountably wanted a look at. I didn’t think I knew him, but he didn’t look particularly threatening, either. Reaching for the door handle, I paused long enough to grab the broom I’d forgotten there when sweeping up the nonexistent dust earlier. Not much as weapons go, but I didn’t think he was especially threatening. Not asleep anyway.

  Twisting the knob, I tiptoed outside, giving a little shiver at the chill. The wind hadn’t died but rather stiffened, bringing with it a promise of winter, and I hoped the weather forecast—rather, prediction—by Tinsley was correct and the next day would be as clear and beautiful as she’d promised. With no lights on, the sky over the tossing trees was velvet pierced with diamonds, beautiful and cold.

  I stopped by the man’s head, my toes inches from his face, but he slept on. I bent and pushed the hair from his forehead to get a look at him. The soft weight of it sifted between my fingers, like heavy silk, and what it had concealed was every bit as wonderful. Dark brows winged above heavily lashed eyes. What color would they be when he opened them? And why hadn’t he done so yet?

  The scruff darkening his jaw looked almost as soft as the hair on his head, and I reached out, wanting to feel it under my palm—

  “Who do you think he is?” Tinsle
y’s voice shattered my concentration.

  I jumped, almost landing on his nose, an aquiline projection that would have been worse the wear from a stomping, but at the last minute I managed to straddle his head.

  “Tinsley! Why do you keep sneaking up on me?”

  “Sneaking?” Her shrill tone would wake the dead. “I never sneak. You’re lost in the clouds, looking at the dead guy.

  Fact. Her ogre side showed in her big, fat, flat feet and anyone paying attention could hear her coming. But then I caught the rest of what she’d said.

  Goddess, was he dead? My breath caught. What would I do with a corpse working its way into rigor mortis on my front porch the night before opening day? I shrieked and leapt back. “Do you think he’s dead?”

  She snorted. Her fairy side really was in abeyance tonight. “Is he breathing?”

  Back flat against the screen door, I shrugged. “I don’t know. Check.”

  “You check.” She lifted up to sit on the railing, which creaked.

  “Get down. Don’t we have enough problems without a broken rail?”

  She gaped at me, her lower lip protruded and trembling, the smallish wings she cut slits in her peasant tops for, fluttering nervously. A big tear rolled out of one eye and perched on her slightly bulbous nose. “You called me fat!” she whimpered, sniffling. Not getting down or anything, but definitely crying.

  I hurried to her side. “I never! You are half fairy, one of the most delicate and lovely creatures I’ve ever met.”

  “You don’t mean that,” she said, face squinched into an expression that was 100 percent ogre. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Tinsley.” I wrapped my arms around her somewhat-broad shoulders. “I would never lie to you. You look in the mirror every morning. You know what a vision of loveliness greets your sleepy eyes.”

  She sniffed again, but the tears stopped flowing. “Well, yes, but...”

  I squeezed her and rested her head on my shoulder. “Of course, you do. Now, you’re tired after such a busy day and I will need you at full steam tomorrow when our guests come. What would I do without you?”

  She gave a shuddering sigh. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. It’s just one dead guy, after all. Why don’t I haul him into the woods and—”

  “Hey!” If Tinsley’s voice had startled me, the deeply masculine one nearly sent me flying. “What dead guy are you discussing?”

  I dipped my head closer to Tinsley’s. “Did you hear that?”

  “Yes,” she hissed.

  “He’s not dead, is he?”

  “No...yes.” She peeked over my shoulder. “Doesn’t look like it but anything’s possible. He could be a vampire.”

  “I suppose, but usually they only pass out in daytime.”

  “Oh right,” Tinsley muttered. “So not dead, then...unless he’s a zombie?” she asked hopefully.

  “No, I touched his hair and got a look at his face. No rotting flesh and as close as I was, if he was a zombie I’d have smelled the rotting flesh.”

  “Hello? Ladies?” Him again. This time, I stepped away from my sister-in-law and turned slowly toward the voice. He was no longer lying sprawled on the patio floor. No...now he was upright, but clinging to the nearest porch support as if his life depended on it. “Can you turn off whatever spell is doing this to me?”

  “Spell?” I moved close to him, still cautious, but confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Tinsley came up behind me. “Ask him if he’s a vampire.”

  “We agreed that wouldn’t make sense.” Still... “Are you having trouble entering the house?”

  “Yes. As soon as I hit the top step, I couldn’t go any farther.” He was awfully cute with that little line of puzzlement between his dark, dramatic brows.

  “I guess he is a vamp,” Tinsley chimed in. “We don’t have any blood, vampire...at least none we’re giving up to you.”

  “Tinsley!” Still... “Are you a vampire?” He didn’t look like one, but the inability to enter without an invite would explain a lot.

  “Hell no!” The insult in his tone did imply he was something, and I bent closer, sniffing. The faint musk I hadn’t noticed before gave him away but did not explain his issues with entering.

  “I don’t know what your problem is...” And I was a little disturbed by the fact that I was worried about it. “But why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here.” Because if something—maybe a spell set by my auntie, although I didn’t think most magic would last through a total remodel—there had to be a good reason for it.

  His fingers flexed on the support, feet scrabbling a little for purchase before he answered. “I am a reporter for The Journal of Magical Times. I was sent to cover your grand opening, which clearly was a dismal failure, but I still need to stay overnight because the road up here is not one I’m willing to face in the dark, and my stupid rental car”—he freed up one arm to wave in the general direction of the parking area where I saw a very small, very dusty sedan before he clutched the support again—“is not four-wheel drive. Judging from the performance on the way up here, it’s not even two-wheel drive.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” Tinsley opined, still from behind me.

  “Tin, weren’t you going out to flit around the garden?” She wasn’t helping, and I felt like I had the situation in hand. After all, the intruder couldn’t even stay upright without help. And he was a reporter.

  “Oh, I see how you are,” she huffed, giving me a friendly jab in the ribs, ogre style.

  I gasped for breath then recovered enough to say, “Refreshments. We need refreshments for our guest.”

  Her gasp was of delight. “What a gracious idea. I’ll set them out in the parlor, shall I?” At my nod, her footsteps slapped away, and the door to the house opened and closed, leaving me alone with the lion shifter who thought he’d already missed the grand opening?

  I didn’t know what was holding him in place, but I was prepared to continue this conversation for a bit before seeing if we could come up with a resolution. “So, you think our grand opening was a failure, huh?”

  “I—”

  “I’m sorry, a dismal failure.” I climbed up on the railing closest to him, taking comfort in the fact that even with more curves that was strictly fashionable, I heard no creaks. “Anyway, you wouldn’t want to write a story about a big failure of an opening, huh?”

  “Well,” he muttered, flexing his fingers and shifting his feet, “I wouldn’t want to embarrass you, no.”

  “That’s so sweet of you. I really appreciate your kindness.” What a shame he was so cute when he was such a jerk. “But if it had been a success, if lots of people had come to the event, you would of course have given us a really nice write-up in your magazine.”

  “Yeah, no doubt. Now, if you have any way to let me loose...would you do it?”

  Chapter Four

  Early

  I couldn’t even believe we were having this conversation. It was so hard to think while trying to remain upright, but I didn’t want to find myself facedown on those boards again. It was humiliating and just a little frightening and not something to repeat. But my hostess, if that was indeed what she was, seemed in no hurry to release her spell.

  “Wait...aren’t you supposed to be without magic?” I saw her eyes widen and felt the flare of something, but desperate to regain my footing, I plunged on. “You know that’s what everyone says, right? But you clearly have the juice.”

  “I am sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She tipped her pert nose in the air.

  Even wearing a thick robe and slippers, this woman was extraordinary. Her eyes were the blue of the ocean off Princess Island in the Bahamas. Clear and sparkling, but somehow also hot, tiny golden flames flickered in their depths. Her black hair was tousled, bed hair of the very best kind spread over her shoulders. If I’d had a free hand, I’d have reached for it, wrapped it around my fist. I wondered what that bulk
y terry cloth concealed and longed to peel it from her shoulders and kiss each inch of revealed skin.

  My lion rumbled in the depths of my being... Mate. Oh hell no. What was going on?

  “What are you playing at, witch?” I growled, shoving the lion as far down as I could, not wanting him deceived by her Craft. “Release me and I’ll go sleep in the car and leave. It’s not like there’s a story here, anyway.”

  The flames blinked out as if they’d never been there, and she was shaking her head. “I don’t have magic. You heard right. That’s why I wanted to open this place where magical and not so much could come together in a place of non-judgment. But I don’t suppose you understand that since you’ve already judged The Witch Way Inn and found us lacking.”

  As happened too often, my words tumbled out before I applied thought to them. “I don’t know why you’re hiding what you can do, but you have to admit the place is deserted. You’re in the middle of abso-freaking-lutely nowhere. No wonder you don’t have any guests.”

  And...the flames were back. The surge of power washed over me a wave that ruffled my hair and stole my breath. “I have never had power and I am not a failure. You stupid cat. The grand opening is tomorrow.” She slid off the rail and stood, hands on hips, legs braced as if on board a ship instead of a porch. “Come in the house, if you can manage it and have a snack. Then I’ll show you to a room because I’m gracious like that and you can be my very first guest.”

  As she berated me, she sent off more waves of pure, clean, fiery magic. Why was she denying it? But as soon as she finished her sentence, something changed. I no longer felt compelled to fall to the floor. With great care, I eased away from the carved spindle and stood on my own two feet. A great exhale, and I was ready to follow the owner into the house. I had her name in my notes, but I couldn’t remember it now.

  The dark witch paused in the doorway, and waved me inside. “Merry meet. I am Karina Jewel, and when you enter my home, be welcome in friendship until we part again.”