The Water Witch

by Juliet Dark

  “You are mine!” he cried.

  “But you aren’t really here,” I sobbed, collapsing onto his chest, wanting the contact now as the heat from the coils began to fade.

  “Aren’t I?” he murmured into my neck. “Listen. Do you hear that?”

  I heard thunder in the distance, the last reverberations of our stormy lovemaking. It was fading just as he was fading, vanishing in my arms just as he had when I’d banished him.

  “That’s me,” he whispered, his voice now no more than a faint stir of the honeyed air. “I’m here.”

  My eyes flicked open. I was in my bed, alone, naked in a tangle of sundrenched sheets. I lifted my hand in front of my face and saw the golden spirals fading from my skin. My heart was pounding as if I’d just run a race … or made love all night to my incubus lover. It was so loud I thought I could hear it …

  I’m here, he had said.

  I sat up and listened. The pounding seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. From the air itself. I felt it deep inside, matching the beat of my heart.

  I’m here, it said.

  Where? I threw the sheets to the floor and stood up. My bare feet felt the pounding in the floorboards. It came from below. From the front door …

  I nearly ran out of the room naked, but grabbed my damp and twisted nightgown off the floor and wrestled it over my head as I ran down the stairs.

  I’m here! I’m here! The pounding was definitely coming from the front door. I stumbled into the foyer and lifted a trembling hand to the doorknob … and then hesitated.

  If it really was Liam, did I want to let him in?

  Yes! every inch of my skin screamed. Yes!

  I turned the cold iron knob and flung open the door. Duncan Laird stood in the doorway. When he saw me in my thin nightgown, my hair wild, my skin glowing, his blue eyes widened and he smiled a slow, silky smile.

  “It’s you!” I cried.

  “Were you expecting someone else?”

  “Um … I …”

  “Should I come back later?” His eyes were amused at my confusion.

  “No! I just didn’t expect you quite so early.”

  “I had something to tell you that I didn’t think could wait, but … I can’t really tell you out here.”

  “Oh!” I said. “Come in. I’m sorry. I was having a dream …”

  “Was I trying to drown you again?” he asked as he came inside.

  “No,” I said, blushing. The heat on my skin made me aware of how close to naked I was. I grabbed a sweater from the hall closet and pulled it on over my nightgown. “You weren’t in it.”

  Or had he been? I’m here, Liam had said in the dream, and then Duncan had appeared at the door. But Duncan couldn’t be my incubus. Liz had carefully vetted him …

  “… and I thought you should know.”

  “Thought I should know what?” I asked, realizing I hadn’t heard a thing he said.

  “Grove members are arriving today in Fairwick.”

  “They’re here early,” I said, “The meeting isn’t until Monday. We still have two days.”

  “I suppose they wanted to make a weekend of it.” Duncan smiled wryly at the idea of anyone choosing to spend any more time in Fairwick than they had to. I had felt the same ten months ago, but now I was offended for my town. Perhaps sensing that, Duncan’s smile faded. “Or maybe they know you’re trying to increase your power and they’re worried.”

  “Good,” I said. “They should be worried.”

  Duncan smiled again, but guardedly. “I just don’t want them to force you into a conflict prematurely. I thought I should warn you that they’re here.”

  He touched my arm and I felt the gold spirals tightening inside me. I studied his face. The high cheekbones and strong jaw, the aquamarine eyes, skin the color of honey … Yes, he looked like a creature from another world, but was he my creature? Shouldn’t I be able to look into his eyes and recognize him?

  But I didn’t. And when he dipped his head to mine and brushed his lips against my cheek, the spirals flared up in the air between us and singed the lock of hair that was always falling over his eyes.

  “Damn,” I said, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why …”

  Duncan smiled, his jaw tight. “I think I do,” he said. “As long as you’re still bound to the incubus, no mortal man will be able to come close to you. It’s your decision, Callie. I’ll be here when you make it.”

  He turned and left. I watched him walk down the porch steps and toward the driveway, where I now noticed Bill’s truck was parked. Had he just arrived …? But then I spotted the ladder leaning against the side of the house and saw Bill climbing down from it. He reached the ground just as Duncan walked past him. As the two men nodded at each other I thought I saw the air between them sizzle, but it might have been a trick of sunlight. Bill, cap pulled low over his eyes, looked from Duncan to me. I was suddenly aware of what the scene looked like: Duncan leaving my house early in the morning, me standing in my flimsy nightgown and sweater in the doorway. I blushed.

  I closed the front door—slammed it, really, in my frustration at myself. The panes of glass in the fanlight trembled with the impact. I looked up—into the stained-glass face that so resembled my incubus lover. His full lips and almond-shaped eyes seemed to mock me. You are bound to me, they seemed to say, You will be mine forever. I will keep you in this house for all time.

  “Like Lura,” I muttered as I stomped up the stairs, taking my anger out on the old, worn, and bowed stair treads, which creaked and groaned as if personally offended. Like Lura, who was moldering away in her decaying house because she’d been jilted by her fiancé. I’d live alone in this house while it fell apart around me, bound to a fantasy lover.

  At the top of the stairs I turned to go down the hall to my room, but paused outside of the door to the room that had been Liam’s study in the brief time he’d lived here. I’d never cleaned his stuff out of my house. I had thought I’d recovered, but I’d never even gotten up the nerve to go into his room. If I really was over him, I should be able to.

  I turned the doorknob, steeling myself for the sight of his desk, where he used to sit looking out the window to the street.

  I paused, the door half-open. I recalled my dream from last night—the way Liam had made me come by just grasping my hand—and felt my knees go weak.

  I opened the door … and froze on the threshold, stunned. The room was empty. The desk and chair Liam and I had bought together at an antiques market in the country were gone. The windowsill, which he’d lined with stones and bird’s nests and pieces of wood, was bare. For a moment I suffered the vertiginous sensation that maybe Liam had never existed at all. I’d made him up. An incubus indeed! It sounded like the delusion of a crazy person.

  But then another explanation occurred to me. In the weeks I’d raved in the shadows, while my friends sat watching me, someone had decided it would be a good idea to remove all trace of Liam from the house. So they had emptied the study. They probably told themselves that they were sparing poor hapless Callie any further heartache.

  I was so overcome with rage that my vision blurred and I thought I might faint. I clenched the doorframe to steady myself and noticed that my arm was glowing. Spirals and knots moved beneath my skin like a nest of angry snakes. My bonds, but also my protection. They were made out of my own power. I could let them control me or I could control them.

  I straightened and stepped back into the hall. I held up both arms and splayed my fingers, willing the energy inside me to go out—all the hurt and anger, the disappointment and fear. Sparks sizzled off my fingertips, gold rays shot out of my hands. The spirals and knots inside me uncoiled. I felt them stretching within the boundaries of the house, from attic to basement. No one will ever take something from my home again, I swore. I closed my eyes and pulled the spirals back inside. Or from me again. The wards snapped back through my fingertips like a rubber band and coiled up inside me, hotter and more powerful for their wa
lk on the outside. I felt like I’d swallowed the universe. It felt good.

  NINETEEN

  Ten minutes later I left my house, dressed in tight black jeans, snug white T-shirt, and motorcycle boots, the Aelvestone tucked into my jeans pocket. I was going to rock that spell circle and bring back Brock. Then I was going to tell the Grove to go to hell. I was the doorkeeper. They weren’t going to close my door. I was ready to take names and kick ass …

  “Cal … leack?”

  The voice from above, calling my name, stopped me short halfway across my lawn. I whirled around, prepared to face an avenging god ready to smite me for my hubris, but it was just Bill sitting on the edge of my roof. Of course, I chided myself; an avenging god would have known how to pronounce my name. I shaded my eyes with my hand to look up at him. He sat with the sun at his back; his face was under the brim of his cap in shadow so I couldn’t see his expression, but his voice sounded concerned.

  “Yes, Bill, is something wrong?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing. There was a lot of banging coming from inside.”

  I’d forgotten about Bill up on the roof while I was throwing around my wards. Thank goodness he hadn’t been knocked off.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “I was just … um … rearranging some old furniture.”

  “It sounded like you were throwing around the furniture,” he said. “Was it that man who left before who you were angry at? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  I flushed with embarrassment, then anger at being made to feel embarrassed. Then Bill leaned forward and took his cap off, and I could make out deep brown eyes the color of warm chocolate. There wasn’t a smidgen of judgment or censure in them, just concern.

  “No, it wasn’t Duncan. It’s just … I had a bad breakup a few months ago,” I said, not sure why I was confiding in him. “And I haven’t been able to … move on. So I thought I’d clean house, so to speak.”

  “Oh,” Bill said, his brown eyes looking thoughtful. “So you were angry because of how this ex-boyfriend treated you? Was he that bad?”

  “He lied to me,” I told Bill, compelled to honesty by the concern—and pain—in his eyes. I was betting that Bill had a bad breakup in his history, too. “And I was idiot enough to believe his lies. It’s hard to trust anyone after that—it’s hard to even trust myself.”

  “You weren’t an idiot,” Bill asserted with surprising conviction. “Your ex-boyfriend was. He’d have to have been to hurt you like that.” He ducked his head back into the shadows, looking embarrassed, and put his baseball cap back on.

  “It was a bit more complicated than that,” I said, smiling up at him. “But thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “Any time,” he said. “If there’s anything else …”

  “Just be careful up there, Bill. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  As I turned to go I heard Bill say, “You too. Be careful.”

  • • •

  I drove out of town, my fiery mood tempered by a few kind words from Bill. I’d left Brock’s iPod plugged into the sound system so I turned it on. Kate Bush’s voice filled the car, singing about something trapped beneath the ice. I’d always found the song haunting, but now it made me think of Brock’s spirit struggling through the icy fogs of Niflheim. I hoped that today’s circle would finally release him.

  As I went up the long drive to the Olsen farm, I noticed how the house sat high on a hill above the surrounding countryside. When I got out of my car, I turned to admire the view. Fields of hay, corn, and fenced grassy pastureland spread out north as far as the outskirts of the village and south to a neighboring, smaller farm. I’d always thought of Brock and Ike as small businessmen, running the Valhalla nursery and doing odd jobs in town for extra money. I hadn’t realized that they came from such a prosperous farming family. The Olsen farm must be one of the largest in the valley. It felt, standing here, as if it commanded the whole valley—not just its own fields and pastures, but the other small farms dotting the valley, the village to the north, and the dense woods that lay to the east.

  I blinked and looked harder at the view. At the golden hay waving in the breeze and the deep emerald pastures. At the neat white fences and bright red barn. All glowing in the summer sunshine. But it wasn’t the sun that made them glow. Everything, from each blade of grass in the meadows to the red paint on the barn, was glowing with golden light. And when I looked even harder, I saw rays of light coming from the fields and fences—delicate gold lines that formed an intricate pattern over the Olsen farm like a foil overlay on a book cover. A pattern that extended over all the farms in the valley, crossed Trask Road, and stopped at the edge of the woods.

  “We can spin wards of protection across the farms and village, but not into the woods.”

  I turned around. Ike stood behind me, wearing jeans and the ubiquitous flannel shirt.

  “How did you know I wasn’t just admiring your farming techniques?”

  “You’ve got so much Aelvesgold in you that you’re disrupting the patterns. Look …”

  I turned back, raising my hand to shield my eyes … and saw the net of golden threads ripple over the fields.

  “You couldn’t have that much Aelvesgold in you and not see the wards,” he said.

  “Am I hurting your … wards?”

  “They’re pretty resilient. The Norns reinforce them once a year, always the week leading up to the solstice. That’s when all magic is at its strongest.”

  I looked again at the acres of intricate patterns. “It must be a lot of work.”

  “It is, but it’s necessary. If not for the wards, the farms and the village would be open to the woods. Anything could come out of them.”

  Or get lost in them, I thought, remembering the fishermen who had gone missing in the woods. “How’s Brock?” I asked.

  A shadow passed over Ike’s deeply furrowed brow. “I’m beginning to fear he’ll never wake up. It’s been four days. I don’t know what we’ll do if he’s still unconscious when—I mean, if … the door closes.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I don’t know whether I should bring him to Faerie or not. I don’t know his wishes. He’s very attached to Fairwick. Since we came here, he’s seen himself as the guardian of the town. And I know he won’t want to leave you here unprotected. But then, if Dory goes …”

  “Dory is planning to go?” I asked, shocked and dismayed that she would think of leaving Fairwick. She was such a fixture of the town—a member of the Rotary Club and head of the library board. What would the town do without her? What would I do without her and all the other good neighbors? I felt a tug at my chest, as if someone had tightened a knot there.

  Ike gasped. Looking out at the fields, I saw that the gold patterns were now quivering like live electrical wires.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “It’s your pain at the thought of your friends leaving.” He looked at me strangely. “You’re part of the pattern of Fairwick now. You feel the loss of all our good friends.”

  “Of course I do,” I said, laying my hand over my heart. The knot hurt like a cramped muscle, but I had a feeling that it would hurt more if the knot weren’t there. Then it would be only an empty place. “That’s why we’re not going to let them leave.”

  Ike gave me a hopeful smile and then turned to lead me around the side of the house. “We’re outside today,” he told me. “The Norns thought that the circle would be more powerful if it was held in the labyrinth.”

  “The labyrinth?”

  “Yes, Brock built it some years ago for our amma so she could use it to meditate. It’s always available for the circle, and for anyone who wishes to walk the labyrinth.”

  We passed through a wooden arbor covered with roses and followed a stone path bordered by hollyhocks, dahlias, and poppies toward a formal garden of neat boxwood hedges and parterres surrounding a circle marked out by sunken bricks. Brock lay on a bench at the center, his honest face loo
king as serene as if he were sunbathing instead of in a coma. The members of the circle were assembled around the perimeter, some sitting on the grass, a few standing. Moondance, regal in a flowing orange and purple caftan, greeted me by demanding what I had been doing. “The Norns say the wards have been disrupted.”

  “Sorry, I guess it’s this.” I took the Aelvestone out of my pocket and unwrapped it from the flannel cloth. Twelve heads leaned in to look at it.

  “That’s what made me drop a stitch before,” Urd hissed.

  “And tangled my thread,” Verdandi said, holding up a knot of multicolored embroidery thread.

  “Yeah, my screen crashed five minutes ago, but I knew it was going to happen so I backed it up.” Skald held up a flash drive that was hanging on a chain around her neck along with her silver scythe.

  “You might have told us,” Verdandi snapped.

  “Ladies,” Ike interrupted, “were you able to fix the wards? Did we suffer a breach?”

  “Of course we fixed the wards.” Urd held up her knitting. The bundled afghan in her lap was knitted in the same rune and knot pattern as Verdandi’s needlepoint and Skald’s computer game. The same pattern, I saw now, that overlaid the fields and buildings of Olsen farm and the surrounding valley. “Do you think we were born in the last millennium? We know how to circumvent a power surge.”

  “You didn’t prevent her from short-circuiting the circle last time,” Moondance grumbled, glaring at me as I sat down on a bench between Ann Chase and Tara Cohen-Miller. Ann smiled and patted me on the hand as if to make up for Moondance’s hostility.

  “We were unprepared,” Verdandi said, shooting Skald a reproachful look.

  “I can’t keep an eye on everything,” she retorted, rolling her eyes like any exasperated teenager. “Would you like tomorrow’s Dow Jones index or next week’s weather in Kuala Lumpur while I’m at it?”

  “Really? You know all that?” Hank Lester asked. “Do you know who’s going to win in the fifth race at Belmont today?”