The Water Witch

by Juliet Dark

  “Oh,” I said, embarrassed. “It’s a long story—” Before I could finish he stepped closer and put his hand up against my face, but the wards on my skin sizzled and popped. He kept his hand there, though, even though the wards were beginning to smoke and I smelled singed flesh.

  “Frank, don’t!” I grabbed his hand and pushed it away. He looked at me, then down at his hand. The coils had been seared into his flesh. He nodded once, as if what he saw confirmed something he’d long suspected. Then he turned and left without another word.

  Liz’s face sagged. She seemed to have aged a decade in the hour we’d been inside this room. I was afraid she was going to cry, but instead she asked the last question I wanted to hear. “Can you stop them from closing the door?”

  “Yes,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “I read in Wheelock that there’s a way for a doorkeeper to create a bond with the door to keep it open.”

  “I’ve read that footnote in Wheelock,” Liz said, “but only a doorkeeper can access the spell.” Her face looked troubled. “I’ve also heard that doorkeepers have died in the attempt to prevent a door from closing.”

  “It won’t come to that,” I told Liz.

  She held my gaze for a moment, then nodded. “Let’s hope not.”

  • • •

  I walked quickly across the campus, my anger at the Grove pumping in my veins. They had tricked and manipulated us. Clearly they had gotten to some of the IMP board members and influenced their votes. The others had been swayed by those awful pictures of undine attacks. The Grove was using fear and prejudice to control us. Well, I wouldn’t be controlled. I was the doorkeeper. There had to be a way I could keep the door open, despite the Grove’s intention to close it—and the answer was in Wheelock.

  When I reached my house I opened my briefcase and took out the spellbook. Standing on the porch I opened to the marked section, reread the footnote, and then depressed the magical icon. Instead of pages filling with text as had happened before, I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my right eye, as if a hot cinder had blown into it. I blinked and a red film covered my vision. It took a moment to realize that words were imprinted on the film and that they were scrolling across my vision.

  In order for a doorkeeper to gain complete dominion over a door to Faerie and prevent others from closing it she may cast a correlative spell that links her own person to the door. This can be accomplished by spilling a drop of her blood on the threshold of the door. Once the bond is established she only has to repeat the words Quam cor mea aperit, tam ianua aperit (“Just as my heart opens, so the door opens”) in order to cancel out any opposing closing spells. The best time to perform this ritual is at dusk on the eve of the summer solstice.

  “Eureka!” I said aloud, blinking my eyes three times. The words There is one caution … flashed as I blinked but then began to fade. Shoot! Blinking three times was probably the way to end the transmission. Never mind, I thought, I knew enough to make the bond. It was nearly dusk now. I had to go to the door right now to establish the bond before tomorrow morning.

  Without bothering to change out of my suit and pumps, I took off into the woods, walking as fast as I could in heels to the clearing where the door to Faerie stood. As rushed as I was, I ground to a halt when I reached the edge of the clearing. I’d stood here before in the middle of winter and thought it was magical when glazed with ice and snow, but I’d never seen it before in full summer, on the eve of the summer solstice. The trees were draped with honeysuckle vines in full bloom, their white and yellow blossoms filling the air with sweet honeyed scent. The vines had twisted themselves into an arch directly across from me. Heavy wisteria blooms hung over the arch like a fringed curtain. The air inside the arch shimmered like the skin of a soap bubble. I approached it warily, feeling my resolve waver with the undulating colors. I was going to bond myself to this, I thought, a portal to another world? I was already a mess of conflicting desires. What would it do to me to connect myself to an unstable, volatile entity?

  Perhaps I should have read that caution in Wheelock.

  But I’d left the book behind and I didn’t have time to go back. It was dusk. The Grove was closing the door tomorrow. Clearly they thought they could. This might be the only way to stop them.

  I moved closer until I was inches from the door. The transparent film pulsed as if sensing my presence. Weren’t we already connected? I stretched out my hand and held it up to the surface of the door, palm out. The film swirled, forming a pattern like the one I’d seen on Skald’s phone. Yes, this was my fate. Whatever it did to me, I had to forge this bond.

  Still holding one hand up to the door I unpinned the luckenbooth brooch from my jacket. Its design of two hearts seemed fitting for a spell that linked my heart to the door. I pricked my finger with the pin, squeezed it until a drop of blood welled up, then turned my hand over to let the drop fall on the threshold of the door.

  “Quam cor mea aperit,” I said, “tam ianua aperit.”

  The transparent pattern swirled into a spiral. As it moved, I felt a tugging sensation in my chest. Yes, we were connected, for better or for worse. Like a marriage, I thought wryly, looking down at my hand. The drop of blood reminded me of Bill drawing out the splinter. I suddenly wished he were here to cradle my hand in his …

  But that was silly. It wasn’t as if I was really injured—just bound to an ephemeral ancient gateway. I turned and walked back to my house. It began to rain again, but the trees were so thick that the raindrops barely touched me. I could hear them, though, rustling through the high branches. When I looked up, I saw a shadow moving through the branches.

  A shadow? In the pouring rain?

  A branch cracked overhead, the sound loud as gunfire in the rain, and I took off toward my house. Something burst out of the trees above me, but I was too frightened to turn around and look up. I sprinted across my lawn, up the porch steps, and onto the shelter of my porch. My hands were wet and shaking as I dug in my pocket for my keys. I’d just found them when I felt a hand on my back.

  I whirled around, the point of the house key gripped between my fingers ready to stab the intruder … and looked up into Duncan’s blue eyes.

  “Callie, it’s me. Are you all right? I saw you running from the woods and came to see if you were okay. You looked frightened.”

  I edged past Duncan to the porch railing and looked up into the sky. A large branch had fallen at the edge of the woods.

  “I thought I heard something in the trees,” I said warily. “For all I knew it was you, come to finish what you started and claw out my other eye.”

  Duncan blanched. “Callie, I’m sorry. I can explain …”

  “Really?” I leaned against the porch railing and crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m waiting.”

  “That spell you cast summoned a creature—some kind of imp with bat wings and claws. It flew between us so quickly I couldn’t stop it, but when it struck you I pulled it away from you and then chased it into the woods.”

  I snorted. “I don’t believe that for a minute. I was holding your hand. When I turned …” I faltered. I had turned and the slash of claws had blinded me. I’d assumed it was Duncan—or Duncan turned into a clawed beast—but really I hadn’t seen the thing that had attacked me. “If that was true, why didn’t you come back?”

  “I followed it into the woods. I didn’t want it to come back to hurt you. I chased it all night and finally cornered it, but it lashed out at me just as it did at you. This is what I got for my trouble.” He took a tentative step closer to me and rolled up his shirtsleeve. Five deep gashes ran from elbow to wrist.

  “You could have done that to yourself,” I said.

  “Really?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow. “Could I have done this?” He turned, ripping off his shirt to expose his back, which was raked with claw marks. I reached out to touch one and he winced.

  “You weren’t at the meeting today,” I said.

  “How could I go with these marks on me
?” he asked, turning to face me. He was close, his bare chest radiating heat across the few inches that separated us. I felt a tug, like static electricity or centripetal force, pulling me toward him. My heart, newly bound to the door, beat erratically. Were heart palpitations part of the warning I hadn’t read?

  “Ann Chase told me you asked her to recommend you as my tutor. She thinks you’re the incubus.”

  “Is that who you think I am?” he asked, lifting his hand to my cheek and gently tracing the scratches over my eye with his fingertips. I shivered at his touch, suddenly aware of how cold and wet I was. “Is that who you want me to be?”

  “I … I don’t know,” I said, my voice trembling. “I thought I might love him. I thought if I saw him once more … as he really is … then I’d know.”

  There was a flicker in Duncan azure eyes, a shadow that swam in and out of my vision as Duncan lowered his head and pressed his mouth against my mouth. The instant his lips were on mine the shadow resolved into the shadow that had moved through the trees and I felt a jolt of fear. I tried to pull away but he wrapped his arms around me and held me tight, his lips locked on mine, his tongue probing my mouth, his bare chest pressing me up against the porch railing. But now instead of warmth rising off him, I felt cold. Pure ice-water cold. I wasn’t sure if Duncan was the incubus but I was sure of one thing: he felt wrong. I summoned the sizzle of energy I’d felt last night when I released my wards, wriggled my hands between our bodies, and pushed.

  Duncan flew across the porch and hit the front door so hard the doorbell chimed and the glass fanlight shook in its frame and cracked. A sliver of green glass plummeted straight down onto Duncan’s bare chest and lodged there like a miniature dart. Duncan winced and brushed it away, streaking blood across his chest. He wiped the blood on his pants and got to his feet, his eyes locked on mine.

  “I’m getting a little tired,” he said, biting off each word as he moved toward me, “of these mixed signals.”

  “I don’t think there was anything mixed in that last signal the lady sent you.”

  The voice, low and ominous, came from behind me. I turned around and found Bill, hands clenched into fists, glaring at Duncan.

  “This is between Callie and me,” Duncan said. “I don’t think we need the handyman to weigh in.”

  I moved closer to Bill and put my hand on his arm. “Bill’s right. I think you should leave.”

  Duncan narrowed his eyes at Bill, clearly assessing the threat he represented. The muscles in Bill’s forearm clenched under my fingers, turning hard as steel. I could practically smell the testosterone in the air. Any second now the two men would fly at each other. I stepped between them and felt the hair on the back of my neck rise. “If the two of you are going to fight over me like two dogs fighting over a bone, I’m going to talk to you like dogs. Go home, Duncan. You stay, Bill.”

  Duncan lifted one corner of his mouth in a half smile–half snarl and walked past us, getting close enough to brush against Bill’s arm. I felt Bill tense, but he remained still. We both turned, though, to watch Duncan walk down the stairs. When he got to the bottom he looked over his shoulder at me. “Remember that this was your choice, Callie.” Then he walked across the street to the Hart Brake Inn.

  It wasn’t until he was halfway across the street that I felt a release of the tension in the air and then I nearly collapsed. If Bill hadn’t steadied me with his arm, I’d have slumped to the floor. “Let’s get you inside,” he said, helping me toward the door.

  “Okay,” I said, leaning against him and letting him practically carry me over the threshold. I felt weak. It wasn’t just the release of tension; it had something to do with the power I’d used pushing Duncan away. “Thank you for coming to my defense.”

  “You looked like you were doing a pretty good job yourself,” he said. “I’d have stepped in sooner, only I wasn’t sure you wanted me to.”

  “You were watching us?”

  Bill pointed up. At first I thought he was pointing at the fanlight, which I saw to my dismay was indeed cracked. A splinter had come loose from the stained glass eye of the young man, making it look as if a single tear was falling from his eye. “I was on the porch roof,” Bill explained when he saw me staring at the fanlight. “I didn’t mean to listen in, but I couldn’t help hearing … I heard you say you thought you loved someone.”

  “Oh, that,” I said. “I thought Duncan Laird was someone else …” I looked up at Bill. “I’ve been pretty confused lately. I seem to keep making mistakes …”

  “Do you think last night was a mistake?” he asked, his face pained.

  “No! I didn’t mean that. Last night was great … lovely … but …”

  “But what?” he asked, taking his arm from my shoulder and leaning against the wall. “Do you want to be with that man?”

  “Duncan?” I shuddered. “No, I don’t. But it’s complicated. There’s history between us that I can’t completely ignore.”

  “Oh, I see. Complicated. Too complicated for the likes of me, I guess. It seems pretty simple to me. That man hurt you.” He reached out and touched my face. His blunt, calloused fingertips felt like balm on my bruised skin, like a warm breeze. While Duncan’s touch had chilled me, Bill’s warmed me. Where Duncan had felt wrong, Bill felt right. He started to take his hand away, but I grabbed it and held it to my face.

  “You’re right,” I said. “It is simple. I want you, not Duncan Laird. Would you …? Could you …?”

  Bill didn’t wait for me to figure out the words for what I wanted. He already knew. He pulled me into his arms and pressed me hard against his chest and bent my head back. He kissed the bruises on my face gently, then sank his mouth down to mine not so gently. He pressed me up against the door until I felt the hard length of him pushing between my legs. I moaned and went weak in the knees. He scooped me up and started for the stairs, but I wrapped my legs around his waist and bit his ear.

  “No. Here.”

  He lowered me onto the polished oak floor of the foyer and crouched over me. Keeping my eyes on his face, I slid out of my skirt, half afraid that if I didn’t keep my eyes on him he’d vanish. The rain lashing against the windows cast speckled shadows across the foyer, painting Bill’s body with a dappled tattoo. When I reached for him, my own arms dipped into the rain shadows as though into a waterfall. For a moment we were caught in the same current and I thought, Good, if he vanishes so will I, and then he pressed the length of his body against mine and the strength of him anchored me. His skin against mine awoke a heat deep within—another coil of the wards that had bound me unwound as I pulled him inside me. As we moved together, our eyes locked on to each other’s, I felt it coil around us, wrapping us in an endless spiral of desire.

  “I could do this forever,” I whispered in his ear.

  “We have done this forever,” he answered.

  At some point, we made it up to the bedroom. We made love again and then slept. I awoke in the middle of the night to a room filled with moonlight. My head pillowed on Bill’s chest, I saw the profile of his face etched against the silver light.

  “It’s stopped raining,” I said.

  “No,” he said, turning to me, his eyes flashing silver. “It’s witchlight. The woods are flooding. All the lost creatures are making their way back to the door before it closes.”

  “Bill, how do you know about all that?”

  He smiled and traced his fingertip along my lips. “I don’t. You’re dreaming. You’re also dreaming that I’m about to kiss you. Is that all right?”

  “Yes,” I said, my heart fluttering. “I suppose that would be …”

  He pressed his mouth against mine, his lips spreading mine open. I felt the heat of him pouring into me, warming every last inch of me. I pressed against him and felt his heart thud against mine. My heart beat in answer to his. I heard an answering thud from deep in the woods. The door, linked to my heart, was opening wide, beating so loudly I could hear it …

  I startle
d awake in the empty bed to the sound of pounding. Bill sat in a chair beside the bed, his face dark in the rain-shadowed room. I saw by his posture that he was alert.

  “Bill? Was there moonlight a minute ago? And were you …”

  “It’s still raining,” he said, getting to his feet, “and there’s someone at the door. I’ll go and tell them to leave. You shouldn’t go out in this rain.”

  He left the room before I could stop him. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat on the edge for a moment, trying to reconstruct my dream. I went to the window. Through the rain, I saw the woods were filled with an eerie light: a white, glowing mist that rose off the wet ground and flowed along the forest floor like floodwater. It was full of shapes. Dream-Bill had been right. The woods were full of creatures heading toward the door. But how did Bill Carey know that?

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I got dressed in jeans, a turtleneck, and heavy socks, and then took the Aelvestone out of the bag where I’d stashed it and stuffed it in my pocket, making sure it was carefully wrapped in flannel. I needed one other thing, which I got from my desk, then I crept down the backstairs with my waterproof hiking boots held in my hand, listening to the murmur of voices in the front hall. I could make out one excitable young man’s voice and two lower, more mature male voices besides Bill’s.

  “I don’t care how much you need her,” Bill was saying as I walked through the library. “She’s not well enough to go out in this weather.”

  “I’d like to see her myself and hear her say that. Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “This is Bill,” I told Frank as I came into the foyer. “He’s my … boyfriend.” I felt silly using the word for a man I’d spent all of two nights with, but Bill’s smile chased those scruples away. “At least I hope he is,” I added.

  “Well, that’s sweet,” Frank said, staring at Bill. I scowled at Frank and then at the other two men in the hallway. Mac Stewart and his father, Angus, both in plaid rain jackets and plaid rain boots dripping water all over my parquet floor. I remembered that Liz said the Stewarts were some kind of protectors of the forest … but that shouldn’t mean they couldn’t remember to wipe their feet.