“Again, good argument for me. Not making your point.”
“Yeah, it sounded so lucid coming from a man with his head in a public toilet.”
Disgruntled, Mason snapped, “Weren’t you on the other line or something?”
“At one o’clock in the morning, you were taking out a hit on the candles left in Brenda’s apartment.”
“You are so goddamn detail-oriented.”
“And you’re damn good at what you do when you’re sober. So if you think this job has been only a step above babysitting a five-year-old, I apologize. But the more you drank, the more I thought it was all you were going to be able to handle. And since I couldn’t count on you for a more brain-intensive job, and since I knew you’d rather die than go skiing, and since I needed you to get back on the horse and not sabotage our professional reputation, I took it.”
Mason didn’t have a comeback.
“You’ve known Jade a week.”
“Eight days.” Mason winced; it sounded worse out loud.
“Give it more time.”
He blew out an exasperated breath. “Hell, time’s no guarantee. I gave Brenda five years. Look where it got me. I’m more sure of Jade now than I ever was with Brenda.”
“I need you.”
“I need her more.”
“You want to talk about need? Parker—”
“Oh no, not with the kids,” Mason groaned, because with the phone getting bumped around on the other end, he knew Anthony was going for his wallet.
Mason knew the photo well. Parker, the long-legged teenager, wearing a track uniform and a big grin.
“He wants to drop out of school and help with the rest of the children, but I keep telling him to leave that to me. If I can just keep him in school, he’ll most likely win State again. They’re scouting him already, you know. Full ride. That kind of money doesn’t grow on trees, my friend.”
“Neither do women like Jade.” It felt damn good to say it, too.
“We’re partners,” Anthony continued, as unmoved as if Mason had said he needed a drink of water. “We’re under contract to do a job. And we’re going to finish this job right. The children are depending on me—”
“Oh, don’t go there. I love those kids, too, you know.”
“So wait. For their sake. Sleep with her after we’re done.”
“It’s not just about that, sleeping with her. I don’t expect you to understand this, hell, I don’t expect anybody to understand this, but if I couldn’t have sex with Jade for some reason, I’d still need to be with her.”
Silence.
“I need her, man. Pure and simple. So bad, I can hardly breathe.”
“Oh hell,” Anthony said with the air of one who’d given up. “Gotta go.”
The connection went dead, leaving Mason to his own thoughts as the wind shook the Jeep and the river flowed by.
Eagle watchers came, a car here, an SUV there. They watched from toasty warm interiors until they spotted what they’d come for. Mature bald eagles, standing so majestic on bare branches, their white heads glowing when the sunlight hit them. Juveniles, not bald yet, difficult to distinguish from the goldens. In Pensacola, it would’ve been seagulls and pelicans.
No, wait.
No, couldn’t be. Here? White pelicans? With black wings? He focused and shot a flock flying over the river, just so he could zoom in later to see if he was hallucinating now. Maybe he was; the tourists didn’t seem to notice them. Swathed in ski caps and knitted scarves, the ones who got out of their vehicles hunched down into thick coats. They peered at the eagles through binoculars and cameras until they could no longer stand the biting wind, which blew hard along the river. And then they were gone, soon to be replaced by the next carload of day-trippers smitten by the national bird.
Mason clicked a few photos himself, then turned to the material he’d brought along. To say the books were biased was an understatement. They were written by witches, for witches, and for people who thought they might want to be witches. Between yawns that had nothing to do with the material, he learned that contrary to what was depicted in movies and on sitcoms, witchcraft was not genetic. Witch adults didn’t sit around waiting to see if their babies were going to wiggle their noses and make it rain in the dining room. The Craft could be learned. It could be practiced. It was a way of life. If you liked to follow rules, there was Wicca.
None of the books so far were antiwitchcraft, and little addressed how practicing the Craft could be bad.
He wasn’t going back to enlighten the librarian. He looked forward to getting back to his room and burning the midnight oil on Google.
His whole body flinched once, and he realized he’d nodded off. He sat up straighter and thumbed through the pages, stopping abruptly when he saw the picture of a seven-knob candle, just like the one in the kitchen. Was Jade—?
Hadn’t Weezy asked what kind of spell he was here for? It wasn’t colloquialism, and she hadn’t been asking for herself.
Jade’s a witch?
Fuzzy sweaters, snug jeans, stiletto heels—well, hell, he didn’t suppose witches had uniforms, but c’mon, there should have been some clue. Bat earrings or bad teeth or a cackling laugh. Not silver hoops, a perfect smile, and a laugh as sexy as it was arousing when she’d stripped off the butterfly bandages and dabbed goop on his face.
Annie and Jade? And, hell, probably Courtney, too.
The damp cotton ball in his pocket was making more sense. And maybe the little dried leaves in his pillow-case weren’t something that came out of the wash.
Had they turned to witchcraft after exhausting all other means of finding their husbands?
Or had they cast a spell to rid themselves of excess baggage?
Annie took the call. It was that or tell the Dear Alanna letter writer that if her husband had been showering her with diamonds and rubies for ten years, then he was going to continue to do so no matter how much she complained about it, so boo-hoo, live with it.
“This is Mercy Hospital calling. Annie, is that you?”
Annie sat back in her chair, keyboard forgotten. “Gabby? What’s wrong?” Though she knew Gabrielle from the gym, she worked as a nurse at the local hospital.
Gabby’s laugh eased Annie’s mind. “Not too much, if you know what I mean. We’ve had a treat in the ER this afternoon. That sexy bird guy I’ve been hearing about, Mason Kincaid.”
“He stopped in?”
“No, silly. EMS brought him in.”
“Oh. Oh! He’s hurt?” He’d borrowed Jade’s Jeep again today.
“I’m kind of limited as to what I can say. You know—along those lines?”
It was after six; dark out. Annie’d heard no sirens.
“But,” Gabby continued, “he asked me to contact his partner, Anthony. So I can talk to him. Answer his questions.”
“Of course. Just a minute.” With her palm pressed to the phone, Annie cleared her throat, then lowered her voice an octave and adopted a deeper pitch. “Mason? That you, buddy?”
“This is Mercy Hospital calling for Anthony—”
“Yes, yes, what’s this about? Is Mason all right?”
“As a matter of fact, he asked me to call. He fell asleep in his car. Must have been there for hours. Got a bit hypothermic. But he’s all warmed up now and ready to go.”
Annie snickered. “He didn’t freeze off anything important, did he?”
“Nope.” Gabby cleared her throat. “Anyway, sir, he’d like you to come pick him up.”
“Will do. Right away.”
Annie left the office and rushed down the hall, headed for the conservatory until she saw Weezy exit Mason’s room in a very sneaky manner, closing the door quietly behind her and her four-year-old granddaughter.
“Weezy?”
She jumped. “What? Good Lord, don’t give a body a fright like that. I’m about to do a load of dishes. Gathering up coffee cups and such.”
“Did I say anything?”
They both s
tared at Weezy’s empty hands.
“There wasn’t any,” she said in a huff.
Annie opened Mason’s door and peeked inside. There, on the table, sat a mug.
“Huh. How’d I miss that?” Weezy didn’t move.
“I can’t believe you’re teaching your granddaughter to be sneaky.”
“She’s helping Granmommy clean, aren’t you, punkin? ’Sides, there’s a bad bug going ’round her day care, and my daughter has to work.”
Annie pushed the door wide. “Better get it, don’t you think? Otherwise your cover’s blown.”
Weezy instantly went off the defensive. “So you think something funny’s going on, too, do you?”
“Why? What’ve you heard?”
Weezy quickly gathered up the mug, and they headed down the back stairs as she shared what she knew. “There’s talk in town. Anthony asking all sorts of questions, and not all of them book material, if you know what I mean. Mason listening to talk at the café about what does or doesn’t go on up here.”
“Have you been cleaning the oven again? You’re not supposed to breathe those fumes.”
Weezy huffed and defended her point. “Seems to me a man’d be a bit more curious about the place he was sleeping. If you was a stranger in town, and you heard something peculiar about the place you was sleeping, wouldn’t you say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, I’m staying there, tell me more about this’?”
Put that way, Annie grudgingly agreed. “So, what do they say is going on?”
“Way I heard it, they accused him of staying for kinky sex.”
“No,” Annie said, stifling a laugh.
“Yep. But speaking of witches, he stopped at the library to ask about books on them.”
“So this is why you’ve been spending more time here. You’re keeping an eye on Jade.”
Weezy grinned. “Might be looking for the kinky sex.”
“Hon, if you’d give Noah half a chance, you could quit looking.”
Weezy waved off that thought, and Annie went on to find Jade in the conservatory. There was a woman with her, all dolled up in a dark business suit and conservative two-inch heels.
“Okay. Sounds easy enough,” she was saying to Jade. “I put some of this in my bathwater the morning before I go to court. And I carry this bag with me all the time, until the case is done.”
“That’s right. Also, if you can get the name of the judge beforehand—”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Annie said, pausing in the arch. “Hospital called. Mason’s in Emergency.”
Color drained from Jade’s cheeks.
So, Annie thought, the wind still blows that way. She wasn’t above helping it. “He’s asking for you.”
“Is he all right?”
“Sorry, all that confidentiality stuff, you know?”
“For me? Well, I…But…He had my Jeep.”
“Take my car. Keys are in my purse by the back door.” She turned to the client. “Hi. I’m Annie.”
“Cora.”
“We’ll be fine,” Annie said to Jade. “Go.”
Jade hugged Annie, not so much as a good-bye, but so she could whisper in her ear, “Not one spell while I’m gone, you hear me?”
Chapter 13
J ade abandoned Annie’s fifteen-year-old station wagon in a restricted zone at Mercy Hospital. She might not have closed the door when she got out; she couldn’t remember, and she wasn’t going back to check.
Was Mason ill? Hurt? Had he and Anthony escalated their previous shouting match, met away from Mystic Manor, and beat the heck out of each other? She couldn’t see Mason coming out on the short end of that. He wasn’t brawny, but there was a steady force about him, a hint of danger that said he could take care of himself.
The roads had been plowed and appeared safe, but there’d been a drizzle last night. Had he slid on a patch of black ice and landed in a ditch after all?
Seemed more than just her hormones were waking up. On the spur of the moment, she’d opened herself to a relationship, thinking she was ready for a lover. But in light of Mason’s pushing her out of his room and staying away all day, then frightening her with whatever this turned out to be, she didn’t know if she was ready for all the baggage that came with one.
Mercy Hospital was small, a three-story brick building in a quiet, residential neighborhood. They handled simple things: appendectomies and births, cuts and fractures, common illnesses, various in-and outpatient therapies. Complicated cases went to Hannibal Regional.
Six years ago, she’d waited day and night by the phone for a call from here, waited to hear that they had her husband. At first that’s what she’d expected. Days dragged into a week. Then that’s what she wanted, because a call from here meant Doug hadn’t been rushed to Hannibal, or worse, airlifted to St. Louis.
One week dragged into two, then a month, then several months. No one had to tell her that when the call came, it wouldn’t be the hospital.
Jade charged through the automatic door. It led directly into the ER waiting room, where Mason sat doubled over in one of the hard plastic chairs, his body trembling.
“Mason!”
She flew to his side and dropped to her knees, her long cape swirling around their feet, cocooning them together in a dark puddle.
The pain must be terrible to make him shake like that. “They’re discharging you when you’re like this?”
There wasn’t another patient in sight, and they hadn’t even treated him yet? The nurse sitting next to him was doing nothing about it, either. Jade glanced around, desperate to summon a doctor to help Mason, but no one appeared. She’d take him home, dip into her bag of herbs and spells, and ease his pain herself.
“Tell me where it hurts.”
It was important to her to touch him, reassuring even though he couldn’t sit up straight. She ran her hands over his body in assessment, starting at his head. No blood there. She skimmed over his shoulders, palpated his arms all the way down to his hands and fingers. No obvious fractures; no yelps of pain. Just one, long, sorrowful moan as he leaned closer to her.
Difficult to hide her frustration with such blatant lack of care, Jade snapped at Gabby. “Why aren’t you helping him?”
“Lord, there’s no helping—” Gabby dabbed at tears on her cheeks. Her eyes were crinkled with laughter, which vanished when she saw the look on Jade’s face. “Why, Jade, what are you doing here? I talked to—Anthony, was it?” she asked in Mason’s direction, though he couldn’t see her with his head hanging in his hands like that. “He said he was coming.”
Jade grabbed Mason’s head and lifted it so she could look him in the eye. “You’re laughing!”
He tried to speak but couldn’t. Finally he caught a deep breath, and he looked much better once he sat up straight. Jade was relieved, of course. Not a bandage or a cast in sight. If Mason had wrecked her Jeep, he ought to at least have a bandage to show for it.
Why couldn’t it have been this simple six years ago?
Why was she so glad it was now?
“I thought you were hurt. You looked as if you were in pain.”
Mason’s face brightened. Not with laughter again, not over what probably was another anecdote about one of Gabby’s grandchildren—she had a passel of them—but with pleasant surprise. “You were worried.”
“Don’t be silly.” Jade shot to her feet. “It’s bad for business when the guests end up in the hospital.”
“It wasn’t as if you had anything to do with it.” Mason’s eyes narrowed. “Did you?”
“Did you hit your head? Did he hit his head?” she demanded of Gabby, who said nothing, but shook hers to confirm he had not. Jade took the chair on the other side of Mason and asked, “What happened?”
“I went to the lock and dam today.” He reached in his pocket and started to hand her the Jeep key, but he fumbled it, and it fell to the floor.
“To photograph the eagles,” Gabby tossed in helpfully as she picked it up and gave it to Jade.
“Yeah, like every day.”
“Only he fell asleep.”
“No-o-o,” he denied on a long breath. “I don’t sleep. Not like that anyway. Must’ve passed out. Next thing I knew, I came to”—he emphasized the coming to part, as opposed to waking up—“to flashing lights, a cop leaning over me, and some woman who kept screeching, ‘I found him. Oh, Lawd, he’s dead, and I foun’ him. Musta froze. Oh, Lawd, he’s dead, and I foun’ him.’ I remember it clearly because she kept screeching. Did I mention she was hysterical? Over and over. I began to think she was right, because if I had to hear her much longer, I knew I was in hell.”
Jade covered a smile with her hand; best not to encourage him.
Didn’t work.
“‘Oh, Lawd, he’s dead, and I foun’ him,’” Mason repeated in a decidedly feminine voice.
Jade leaned around him to ask Gabby, “Is he all right to take home?” and Gabby laughed and said, “Well, I don’t know about that, but medically speaking, he’s fine.”
She was killing him.
Just seeing the frightened look on Jade’s face when she’d run in—frightened for him, because she thought he was hurt—was enough to stop Mason’s heart. It was as if someone had kicked him in the gut and socked him in the jaw at the same time; he knew he’d been hit, he knew it was supposed to hurt, and damn if it didn’t.
It sure as hell got his attention. What a way to go!
But still, she was killing him.
Oh, it wasn’t her fault. He was the stupid one who thought he was being smart when he’d opened his mouth and said he never slept. She just happened to be the one he wanted to believe it. She just happened to be awake nearly every friggin’ minute of every friggin’ day, so how, when, and where was he supposed to sneak in a solid six hours? He would’ve gotten a hotel room just for napping, but word would get back to her.
Jade walked beside him out to the car. His feet dragged along like concrete blocks. His legs weren’t much better. After he bumped into a plastic chair, she held on to his arm the whole way. Not bad; in fact, it turned out to be quite pleasant. She steered him with it snugged against the side of her breast—not on purpose, he was sure—so he could think of little else. He’d have to have died in the Jeep today not to be consumed with carnal thoughts of Jade, him, and little else.
Witch in the House Page 16
