The Water Witch

by Juliet Dark

  I drove back home slowly, concentrating on the curving backcountry roads in the gathering dusk. I probably shouldn’t have driven so soon after the blow to my head, but I didn’t have much choice. I certainly was not going to stay in Lura’s house—not that she’d asked me.

  The sight of my own freshly painted, squared, and trim house—even with its missing roof tiles and twisted gutter—made me sigh with relief. I’d bought it impetuously and had since had cause enough to regret the decision, but right now I was grateful that I had such a welcoming home.

  When I opened the front door and knocked over a tin pot full of water, soaking the mail lying on the foyer floor, the relief evaporated. I’d forgotten about the leaks. I had to find someone to fix them before my house started to look like Lura’s. Just the thought of those peeling walls and crumbling ceilings made me feel cold and damp—which, as a matter of fact, I still was, and my dress smelled suspiciously of cat pee, which Ralph confirmed when he sniffed me. Wrinkling his nose, he disappeared into the hall closet (where he liked to sleep inside my shearling-lined winter boots).

  Ugh! I couldn’t blame him. I picked up the bucket and the wet mail and carried them both into the kitchen, sticking the bucket in the sink and spreading the damp mail out on the kitchen table to dry—bills and flyers, mostly, which I could deal with later. What I needed now was a hot bath and bed. I’d rest up tonight and then tomorrow I’d call Liz and tell her that I’d found enough Aelvesgold to power the circle. Heck, I thought, unwrapping the stone from Lura’s piece of flannel as I climbed the back stairs, this stone could power a dozen spell circles. When I reached my bedroom I stood by the window and held the stone under my desk lamp, feeling a pleasurable tingle in my hand. Instantly, I felt less cold and tired. But Lura had warned me to use it as little as I could. Regretfully, I wrapped it back in the flannel (the same tartan plaid as the shirt she’d worn, I noticed) and slipped it into one of the little pigeonhole drawers in the built-in desk. I kept an assortment of objects in those drawers—shells and stones, a fairy stone my father had given me, a piece of broken willow pattern china that Liam had brought back from one of his rambles … I took out the china shard, recalling Liam’s habit of bringing little tokens—stones and bird’s nests, pinecones and dried flowers—home from his walks. The house had seemed full of his spirit when he’d lived here …

  Now the house felt empty. By banishing Liam, I’d rid Honeysuckle House of the spirit of the incubus who’d haunted it for more than a century. In the years she’d lived and written here, Dahlia LaMotte had struck a sort of truce with the incubus, periodically allowing him back into the house. By studying her notebooks I’d figured out that she used her interaction with the incubus to fuel her writing. He was her muse. But after he had served her purpose, she would banish him back to the Borderlands.

  I opened another drawer—the only one that had been locked when I moved in—and took out the iron key I’d found there. It matched the one that hung around my neck. At some point long ago, Dahlia had locked the key away. She had broken her tie with the incubus. But I still wore my key.

  Why? I’d unlocked Liam’s manacles when I saw him in Faerie. He was no longer bound by me. I was glad he was no longer in pain but as I took the chain off and put it in the drawer with Dahlia’s key, I felt the loss of that connection. The place on my breastbone where the key had lain now felt as empty as my house.

  And how much emptier would my life be if the Grove was able to close the door and my friends chose to leave Fairwick?

  Feeling rather desolate, I got up from my desk, checked the drawer where I’d put the Aelvestone just to make sure I remembered where it was, I told myself, then went into the bathroom to run a much-needed bath. I put in the plug and turned on the hot water tap all the way. I’d learned that there was just enough hot water in the boiler to fill up the massive claw-foot tub. The water would start to cool when the tub was about half full and then mix with the hot, attaining the perfect temperature by the time the tub was filled. I’d thought of buying a bigger water tank—Brock had said that the one I had was pretty old and eventually would need to be replaced—but it seemed like a needless expense now that the only one using the hot water was me.

  While the bath filled, I peeled off my grimy and odiferous dress, dropped it into the sink, and ran water and added scented shampoo to get out the smell. I brushed my hair, working out the tangles—and a few twigs—and rubbed in a little jojoba oil to condition it. I added some to the bathwater as well. Seeing Lura’s wrinkled skin—even if she did look damned good for a hundred—had reminded me of the necessity of moisturizing.

  When the bath was full I turned off the tap and, with a shivery sense of anticipation, stepped in … to ice-cold water. Squealing, I plucked my foot out so quickly I teetered and nearly fell. Another opportunity to crack my skull, I thought, grabbing my robe and wrapping it around me. I studied the taps and turned the one clearly marked hot. More ice-cold water poured into the tub.

  Something was wrong with my hot water heater.

  I put on flip-flops and stormed down the stairs, rubber heels slapping angrily as if they were mad at the house, not me. Why did it have to pick now to malfunction? I knew Brock had kept the old place in pristine condition, but was it really so sensitive that it started falling apart the minute Brock wasn’t here?

  By the time I reached the basement stairs I’d calmed down a little. It was petty of me to make a fuss about some minor home repair problem when Brock lay in a deathlike coma, his spirit struggling in the icy fogs of Niflheim.

  I remained calm, even when the basement light didn’t switch on. The bulb had burned out since I’d last gone into the basement—which wasn’t all that often. Truth be told, I hated the basement. It had a dirt floor and stone walls—a good solid stone foundation, Brock said—and many, many spiders. The only times I ever went down there were when one of the fuses went out or that one time I’d forgotten to refill the oil tank (who knew you had to order heating oil?) and the man from the oil company had had to “reprime the pump.” Whatever that meant.

  I grabbed a lightbulb from the pantry and headed down, keeping one hand on the stone wall beside the staircase to keep my balance. I didn’t need any more falls. I went slowly down the stairs and stepped into several inches of water.

  At least it wasn’t cold.

  Resisting the urge to sit on the stairs and weep, I screwed the old bulb out of the overhead socket and screwed in the new bulb. The bulb burst into light and revealed the basement in garish detail. I’d hoped somehow that the puddle I was standing in would be the worst of it, but in fact the bit I stood in was high dry ground compared to the rest of the basement. The ground sloped down from where I stood and water covered the entire surface. The furnace and hot water heater were in several feet of water.

  Which probably explained why the hot water heater wasn’t working. I scanned the water’s murky surface as if I might locate a plug I could pull to make it all drain away. Instead I noticed a dead cockroach bobbing on a current heading my way.

  Shuddering, I backed up the stairs all the way to the kitchen, afraid that if I turned my back something might rise out of the water to grab me. Then I closed the door on the mess and sat down at my kitchen table and gave in to the urge for a good long cry.

  I was alone in an ancient house that was falling apart. Brock was never coming back to fix it and that was my own damned fault. No one was coming to fix it. Certainly not Liam, because I didn’t love him. I probably wasn’t capable of love. My friends were all going to leave me and go back to Faerie. I was going to grow old all alone while my house decayed and fell apart around me until it looked like Lura’s house and I looked as shriveled and dried-up as Lura.

  And smelled as bad as her.

  I already smelled like cat pee.

  I surprised myself by making a weird sound. Something between a burp and a hiccup. It burbled up out of me twice more before I realized that I was laughing.

  The cat p
ee had done it. In our teens I had gone with Annie to visit her nonna in her fifth-floor walk-up on Elizabeth Street. Afterward, Annie had made me promise that if she ever took to keeping multiple cats and smelling like pee I’d put her out of her misery. I’d only promised on the condition she’d do the same for me. I considered calling Annie and telling her I’d gotten there. I might not have a cat, but I did have a pet mouse, who had crept in while I was crying and was rooting around in the wet mail. He nosed a robin’s egg blue flyer into my lap. I picked it up. Handyman Bill! it read, For all your household needs—no repair too big or too small. Plumbing, masonry, roof repair—you name it, it fits the Bill!

  I snorted. “Let’s hope his handyman skills are better than his punning,” I remarked to Ralph, picking up the phone. I got a garbled voicemail message. I left my name and address and told Handyman Bill I had a basement full of water and a leaking roof and would he please get back to me as soon as possible. Then I hung up and tried three plumbers listed in the phone book. None of them picked up. They must all be out draining other people’s basements after yesterday’s rain.

  Disgusted, and sick of my own smell, I boiled some hot water in the electric kettle and brought it upstairs in one of the plastic basins I’d used last night to catch drips. I mixed the hot into the cold water until it was the right temperature. Then I took a sponge bath.

  I wasn’t rich but I had enough money to hire people to fix the house—just until Brock came back. And he was coming back. I’d make sure of that, just as I’d make sure the door remained open so that my friends wouldn’t have to go back to Faerie forever. To reassure myself, I checked on the Aelvestone again. I took it out of its flannel covering and held it in my hands for a moment. Surely there could be no harm in that. Its warmth coursed up my arms and spread through my chest. A sense of well-being suffused my body. It was better than a Xanax! With this much Aelvesgold, I’d be able to help Brock and keep the Grove from closing the door. With this much Aelvesgold, I was capable of anything! Ann Chase wouldn’t have to choose between helping her daughter and curing her arthritis. Liz would never have to grow old and die—no one would ever have to grow old and die! The possibilities were endless … but for right now I’d better put it away. Both Liz and Lura had said it was dangerous to handle too often.

  Reluctantly, I wrapped the stone back in its cloth and put it back in its drawer. I still felt its warmth radiating through my body as I crawled into bed. I hugged the delicious sensation to my bones and fell into a deep sleep …

  And straight into Faerie, as if there were a trapdoor beneath my bed that led directly to that grassy bank beneath the willow tree where Liam lay waiting for me, his bare flesh awash in the golden light of Aelvesgold.

  “Am I really here in Faerie or is this a dream?” I asked.

  “Is there a difference?” he replied, drawing me down beside him. I was naked, too, and drenched in the same golden light. We lay side by side, not quite touching, but joined by the same golden light. “It’s one of the gifts of Aelvesgold—it links true lovers together, no matter how far apart.”

  I snorted. “You’re making that up.”

  He laughed, a deep throaty sound that made the willow branches tremble and something deep in my belly tremble, too. He lifted his hand over my breastbone, holding it about an inch above me. I felt golden light caress my skin. He moved his hand, over one breast and then another, the Aelvesgold running like warm syrup over my skin. “Am I making this up?” he asked. “Are you telling me you can’t feel the connection between us?”

  He moved his hand lower, swirling the hot syrup in spirals around my belly. It pooled in my navel and dripped between my legs. When it reached the cleft between my legs, I moaned and arched my back.

  “Yes, I feel it,” I moaned, rolling over and straddling him. “Why haven’t we done this before?” I asked, riding the gold wave and coming down on him. “Why don’t we do this forever?” The gold light moved with me, a wave of heat that lifted me up and then down onto him. I guided him inside me and that heat pushed up into my core. I looked down but the light had grown so bright, so dazzling, that I couldn’t make out his face.

  “Liam?” I cried, as he rocked into me, our bodies moving as if controlled by some external force. “Liam, is it really you?”

  In answer, he drew my head down to his. Through the glare I saw his eyes: black with specks of green, as they’d appeared when I’d met him in Faerie. “Who else would it be, lass?” he whispered as the gold light began to spread inside me. It filled me up and then it burst, encircling us both in a golden corona of pure pleasure.

  “Ah,” Liam’s voice crooned in my head. “That’s why we can’t do this forever, love. We would never want to wake up.”

  I collapsed beside him onto a bed of velvety moss. “What’s wrong with that?” I asked, gasping sweet drafts of air. He turned to me and I could just make out his lips smiling at me through the golden haze.

  “You’ll lose yourself in the Aelvesgold,” he told me. “Here.” He took my hand in his and pressed something into it. When I opened the hand I saw that I held the Aelvestone.

  “How …?”

  “You’d better put it someplace safe,” he told me. “Lock it up. Or you’ll lose it … and lose yourself.”

  I felt its pulse in my hand, like the heart of a trapped animal trying to escape. I closed my hand around it, but that only made it beat harder. It was beating so hard, I heard it pounding.

  I turned back to Liam, but he was fading, melting into the golden haze of Faerie.

  “Don’t go!” I cried, but he was vanishing in a blaze of light so bright I had to close my eyes against the glare. When I was at last able to open them, I found myself in my room in Honeysuckle House. Watery green light struggled through the windows. I blinked at it, confused, unable to tell if it was morning or night. I felt as though I’d just gone to sleep. The time I’d spent making love to Liam couldn’t have been more than an hour …

  I heard pounding. I opened my hand, looking for the Aelvestone Liam had given me in my dream, but my hand was empty.

  The noise was coming from downstairs. For a moment I had the confused impression that the Aelvestone was knocking at my front door, but then realized that was ridiculous.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed. My limbs felt watery and weak. I stood up … and noticed I was naked. Hadn’t I worn a nightgown to bed? Yes, there it was, crumpled in a ball on the floor along with a discarded blanket. I walked to my dresser and pulled on shorts and a T-shirt. Then I walked downstairs, half hoping that my visitor would be gone by the time I got to the door. Who would be bothering me so early in the morning?

  A glance at the clock in the foyer told me it was twenty after ten.

  Oh.

  I swung the door open eagerly and suppressed a sigh of disappointment. A man in a navy blue sweatshirt and baseball cap pulled low over his eyes stood with shoulders hunched, holding a clipboard up to shield himself from a funnel of water cascading through the porch roof.

  “Yes?” I asked irritably. He was probably collecting signatures for some local political cause or here to read a meter.

  “Cal … Leach Mac Fay?” he said, butchering my name.

  “Yes,” I sighed, not bothering to correct his pronunciation. All that navy blue looked vaguely official. Maybe he was collecting for the policeman’s annual picnic. “That’s me.”

  “I’m Bill Carey. You called about some work you needed done?” He squinted up at the leak coming from the porch roof. “I guess you might want me to start on the roof.”

  “Bill Carey? Oh, Handyman Bill! I did call, but I didn’t make an appointment. How …?”

  “You left your address on my machine, but not your phone number.”

  I had? “Really? I guess I was … distracted.”

  “Yes, ma’am, you sounded kind of …” He shuffled his feet and looked embarrassed. “… desperate.”

  I bristled at the word, but before I could defend myself a
big drop of water splatted on my nose. I opened the door wider and said, “That’s because I am.”

  I gave Handyman Bill the tour of my house of horrors, from the many leaks and dissolving plaster to the moldy basement and broken hot water heater. He took notes on his clipboard and made guttural, monosyllabic grunts at each travesty. Not a big talker, Handyman Bill, but when we reached the basement he uttered the sweetest words I’d heard in days.

  “I can’t start on the roof until the rain stops, but I think I can pump this out and get the boiler going if you’d like some hot water.”

  I nearly hugged him, but I restrained myself and managed not to sound too desperate when I told him, “Yes, that would be an excellent place to start.”

  ELEVEN

  While Bill pumped out water from the basement, I made coffee. The kitchen was a mess of mud and pots and pans half-full of rainwater, but the minute Bill told me that there was hot water, and that he was leaving in a few minutes to go to the hardware store, I abandoned the mess and hightailed it upstairs. I took a long hot bath with plenty of scented bath salts to get the cat pee smell out of my hair. The hot water was less effective in rinsing away the memory of the dream of making love to Liam in Faerie. I’d freed him from the Borderlands—shouldn’t those dreams be over? Would they ever be over?

  I would have stayed in the bath longer, but I was disturbed by someone knocking on the door. Was it Handyman Bill back from the hardware store? Should I give him a key? But I didn’t even know him. Maybe I should have asked for references, I thought as I toweled off and dressed. Would that seem weird after he’d been nice enough to get my hot water working so quickly? I walked downstairs pondering the etiquette of handyman employment, something I’d never had to worry about when Brock was around, and opened the door to an empty porch. Maybe my visitor had given up. Then I heard voices coming from the edge of the porch. I looked over the railing and saw Liz and Diana crouched in the honeysuckle bushes at the foot of the porch steps. Liz looked up guiltily, a ceramic gnome in her hand.