Casual Hex

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  He was impressed with her chutzpah. She thought she was dealing with a crazy person, and she was keeping her cool. She would make such an excellent Queen of Atwood. “You know, my mother is going to love you.”

  “Did you embalm her and prop her in a rocking chair in an upstairs room of your creepy old house?”

  He laughed. “Psycho. I have it on DVD. No, my mother, Queen Beryl, is alive and well. She’s the one who sent me to Big Knob. I didn’t want to come here, to be honest. But I have to say, you’ve been a pleasant surprise.”

  “And you’ve been a nightmare. Literally.”

  “Picture yourself sitting on a throne, dressed in velvet robes.”

  “Picture yourself sitting in a courtroom in an orange jumpsuit.”

  Leo sighed. This wasn’t getting them anywhere, and he had no doubt Chevalier was riding to the rescue behind the wheel of his galloping black rental car. Leo had no choice but to cast a spell on her, rusty as he was at those things. He’d never had to bespell a woman into submission.

  Searching his memory, he came up with what he thought would work. He took a step forward and pointed a finger at her. “Hypnosis ad nauseam.”

  She stared at him. “What?”

  Maybe that wasn’t quite it. He drew closer and pointed at her again. “Hypnosis ad hoc.”

  “You are seriously delusional. But if you come any closer, you’re going to be very sorry. I have a gun.” Her hand moved inside her bathrobe pocket, as if she might be getting a firmer grip on whatever was inside.

  He knew she didn’t have a gun. Guns weren’t round, which was the shape of whatever she was fondling in her pocket. But she was obviously planning to bean him with the object if he came closer. He was strong enough to keep her from doing that, but he didn’t relish having to carry her, kicking and screaming, out the back door. That might attract attention.

  He edged closer as he dug frantically through the dusty recesses of his brain for the right spell.

  A pulse was beating rapidly in her throat. She was scared, but she stood her ground. “I’m warning you. Come one step closer, and you’re a dead man.”

  What spirit! She’d have the kingdom at her feet. He raised his hand and pointed again. Everyone said the third time was a charm, and he needed a charm desperately. “Hypnosis ad infinitum!”

  He watched in fascination as the spell began to take effect. She was fighting it, and she lifted the object out of her pocket as if to hurl it at him. Her diamond bracelet flashed in the lamplight, and for a moment, he was afraid she’d beat back the spell.

  Then her brown eyes glazed over, and the object, some kind of crystal paperweight, fell from her slack grip onto the hardwood floor.

  There would be a dent in the floor, but better that than a dent in his head. “Sorry about this, Gwendolyn.” He stepped forward and took her limp hand. “One of these days you’ll realize that I’m doing you a huge favor. You’ll thank me for saving you from a boring botanist.”

  She merely stared at him.

  He missed her sassy comebacks and her fighting spirit, but the spell would wear off in . . . It came to him that he had no idea how soon the spell would wear off. That meant he’d better boogie, because for all he knew it was a twenty-second spell.

  Leading her back to the bedroom, he glanced longingly at the bed, but there was no time for sex. Besides, she wouldn’t be any fun in her current state. Still, he had a moment of lust when he took off the ugly bathrobe and her hideous slippers, leaving her wearing only a cream-colored nightgown and the diamond bracelet.

  He remembered that nightgown. She’d had it on the first time he’d entered her dream. That night he’d discovered that helping her to become more self-confident wouldn’t be much of a chore, after all.

  Teaching her to love her role as his queen wouldn’t be that tough, either, once he got her to Atwood. Women loved castles, crowns, moats and shit like that. She would be able to have a hundred diamond bracelets. Once she understood her good fortune, she’d want to kiss his feet, but he’d direct her to aim higher up.

  Yes, this was going to be excellent. But she needed traveling clothes for the plane. The bronze outfit on the floor looked better than anything he’d seen her wear, but it was wrinkled and the pants were water stained, as if she’d hiked through some serious snow.

  He had no choice but to take the boring stuff in her closet. He found a small rolling suitcase in there and packed it quickly. Everything she owned except her nightgowns was cotton, but in no time he’d have her in silk and velvet full-time. He grabbed a pair of what his mother called sensible shoes.

  Finally the suitcase was ready. She’d need a coat and boots to go outside, but fortunately those were in the bedroom, too. The boots lay there as if she’d kicked them off, and the coat was in a heap in the far corner of the room.

  She wasn’t normally this casual about her clothes. He knew that from his many visits to this room. It bugged him that she’d been so motivated to get naked with the Frenchman that she’d thrown clothes everywhere and hadn’t even bothered to pick them up after he’d left.

  Maybe it was the oral sex that had impressed her. Leo vowed to get with that program ASAP. But first he had to get her back to his cave, where he’d proceed to convince her that he was the one she wanted.

  At the last minute he remembered to take her purse. She’d need identification to get on a flight. Luckily he’d brought his fake ID with him on this trip, for some unknown reason. Maybe he was getting psychic.

  He turned off all the lights. Then, because he had her purse and her keys, he locked up the place. No reason to leave it open and make things easier for Chevalier when he arrived.

  At last they were ready to start out. Navigating wasn’t easy on the narrow path that led into the forest. He put one hand on her shoulder to guide her so she’d walk in front of him. At least in her hypnotic state she was like a wind-up doll. Point her in one direction and she kept going.

  He slung her purse over his shoulder and pulled the rolling suitcase behind him. Several yards down the trail he realized that the tracks they were leaving would be like a neon sign to anyone with half a brain. Chevalier had a pretty good brain, as evidenced by his taste in women.

  “Stop, Gwendolyn.” He squeezed her shoulder and she came to a halt. The trance he’d put her in was kind of creepy, like a horror movie with zombies in it. Those had always scared the pee out of him.

  He’d be glad when the spell was gone and she’d come to realize that she was the luckiest girl in the world. He might have physical possession of her right now, but it didn’t feel like a victory.

  “Hold your purse.” He hooked it over her shoulder. He could have done that in the first place, but she was acting so dazed that she might have dropped it. She’d need the purse for traveling, plus he didn’t want to leave that behind as evidence, either.

  Setting the suitcase next to her, he broke off an evergreen branch and returned quickly to her back porch. Walking backward down the path, he swept the snow to erase both sets of footprints and the double line made by the rolling bag.

  Thinking of the rolling bag gave him an idea. He could attach the branch to the bag using the little strap intended for briefcases and small carry-ons. Then as he pulled the rolling bag, the branch would automatically sweep behind them.

  Brilliant concept. People always underestimated him, especially his mother. He was a lot like Thomas Jefferson—leader, inventor, stud. Leo thought he had the potential to be the best king Atwood ever had, especially with the right queen.

  Because he was walking backward and thinking about his future reign of excellence, he didn’t realize he’d reached the spot where he’d left Gwendolyn until he bumped into the suitcase and knocked it over.

  “Whoops.” He turned, thinking the suitcase might have banged into his future queen. And it might have, if she’d been standing there. Instead she was gone.

  Marc took some chances on the drive back to Big Knob, both with the road conditio
ns and the highway patrol. He skidded once and managed to pull out of it without hitting anyone or anything. Fortunately there were not many cars on the interstate at one in the morning.

  The only police car he passed was headed in the opposite direction and did not appear interested in turning around to give him a ticket. Marc was not sure what he would do if anyone tried to stop him. He would probably shove the gas pedal to the floor and hope the car had enough speed to outrun a pursuer.

  Luckily, he did not have to test that. He arrived on the outskirts of Big Knob without incident. As he drove down Fourth toward Beaucoup Bouquets, the town looked peaceful and innocent under its new veil of white snow. His were the only tire tracks. The businesses on the square were closed and dark, even the Big Knobian.

  But something was going on in this town, something that had the hairs all over Marc’s body standing at attention. He did not know if the town’s Wiccan heritage was somehow connected to the bizarre dream scenario. He did not believe in paranormal events, and yet . . . nothing else would explain Gwen’s dreams, or his one experience with her dream guy.

  She had left out the details of those dreams, for which Marc was grateful. He had experienced sex dreams before, so he had a fair idea of what Gwen’s had been like. She had called them realistic, but he did not want to think too much about what that could mean.

  He parked in one of the empty spots in front of her flower shop, got out quickly and started around back. Immediately he knew something was very wrong. As scared as she had been, she would have left all the lights on. The cottage was dark.

  Heart pounding, he rang the doorbell. He was not surprised to get no answer. His breath clouded the air, but sweat trickled down his back. This was not good.

  Running around the house as fast as her father’s boots would allow, he got to the back door and pounded on it. Nothing. To hell with it. He was breaking in.

  Only thing was, he was a botany professor, not a thief. He had never broken into a house before. He checked out the windows and they were all sturdy double-paned. Both doors had dead bolts. He thought again about Leo Atwood, and whether he had been able to somehow get inside and make Gwen think she was dreaming.

  That made no sense, though. Although Marc was not a woman, he had to believe if a woman woke up in the middle of the night with a real man in her bed, she would certainly know it. She would not imagine she was dreaming and accept the situation. She would scream bloody murder and struggle to get away.

  In the end, Marc figured out that the only glass that was not double-paned was the bay window in the kitchen that she used as a mini greenhouse. He had to dig a suitable rock out of the snow so he could break the glass. The job was harder than he thought. By the time he had enough glass broken away to hoist himself up and crawl in, he was bleeding from several cuts on his hand.

  He could not worry about that. He also could not worry about the herbs he squashed on his way though the bay window. Ironically, he knocked over the pot holding the bromeliad, the plant that had started this whole saga.

  It fell to the floor, its clay pot shattering on impact. Marc spared it one quick glance, which was when he noticed that the roots were glowing.

  Dear God. His chest tightened. “Gwen!” No answer. He started through the house, turning on lights as he went and calling her name. If anything had happened to her, if that Atwood character, whoever or whatever he was, had harmed her . . .

  He found the paperweight in the living room on the floor, where it had dented the hardwood. Panic threatened to engulf him. She would not have left the paperweight on the floor unless she had been powerless to pick it up.

  “Gwen!” He started down the hall toward the bedroom almost in a crouch, afraid of what he might find. When he turned on the jeweled lamps in the bedroom, he knew she was gone. Her bathrobe and slippers were still there, but her coat and boots were missing.

  Tearing back to the kitchen, he wrenched open drawers and cupboards until he found what he needed: Big Knob’s thin little excuse for a phone book. Although he’d told Gwen to call Bob Anglethorpe, Bob wasn’t the answer to this crisis. Marc had to face the possibility that witchcraft was involved.

  That meant only two people in town could help. In seconds he was dialing Dorcas and Ambrose’s number.

  “Gwen is missing,” he snapped when a sleepy Ambrose answered. “I believe Leo Atwood took her.”

  “We’ll be right over,” Ambrose said.

  “Who is this bastard, Ambrose?”

  But Ambrose had already hung up.

  Chapter 22

  Gwen had no idea why she was stumbling along a path in the middle of the forest, wearing her coat over her nightgown and carrying her purse over her shoulder. She just knew she had to keep going, had to get deeper into the forest and hide. Thinking was difficult. Her brain seemed clogged with dryer lint, as if she’d been drugged.

  Even so, she was positive that something or someone was after her. She just couldn’t remember who or why. If only she could clear her head, then she’d know how to protect herself.

  By day she knew this forest pretty well, but she didn’t come here at night. She didn’t really believe it was haunted, but she wondered if someone had an interest in making it seem that way. If so, that someone wouldn’t be above scaring her to death if she ventured in here after dark.

  What had happened to put her here on this cold night? She fought backward through the fuzziness and tried to piece it together. Marc. Where was he? Oh yeah. He’d left and driven to Evansville.

  Then she’d gone to sleep, but . . . he had shown up. Then it came back to her in a rush—the sheik costume, the turban, the call to Marc, and Leo Atwood appearing as if by magic in her living room.

  He’d been trying to convince her that he was somebody special, a fairy prince, of all things. Then he’d started throwing around Latin phrases. That was the last thing she remembered until she found herself here, with an urgency to continue down the path into dark woods that intimidated her.

  But something more intimidating was behind her. She thought it was probably Leo, who seemed determined to take her somewhere. He couldn’t have possibly put a spell on her, could he? No, such things didn’t exist.

  Then she heard him calling her. It had to be him, because he was the only person who refused to use her nickname. She’d never liked Gwendolyn, and now she hated it with a passion.

  She picked up the pace and dug in her purse for her keys. In college she’d learned the self-defense trick of holding your keys with the points sticking out through your fist. She’d never expected to have to use the technique once she returned to Big Knob.

  Heart pounding, she riffled through the junk in her purse, searching for the damned keys. Finally her fingers closed around the comforting metal. As she pulled them out, she became aware of the bracelet on her wrist, the diamond bracelet. Nothing was harder than diamonds.

  The nut job called out again, and he was getting closer. Ducking into the trees, she found a little path that was no more than an animal trail. She paused just long enough to unclasp the bracelet and wrap it around her knuckles.

  All righty. Bring it on. She had keys sticking out of one fist and diamond-studded knuckles on the other. This girl wasn’t going down without a fight.

  But if she could avoid him completely, that would be better. She pushed farther into the woods along the narrow trail, and snowy evergreen branches slapped her in the face. She welcomed the sensation, because it helped counteract the groggy feeling.

  He must have drugged her, but how? She’d had nothing to drink besides the wine that she’d shared with Marc. Leo couldn’t have forced something down her throat or injected her somehow. She’d remember that.

  He’d only touched her once, and she’d been dreaming then. Hadn’t she? The lines were blurring between dreams and reality. She didn’t like that one damned bit.

  As she continued to elbow her way through the overgrown trail, she became aware of a glow off to her right. A campfir
e? That sounded cozy and welcoming. Where there was a campfire there would be campers, normal people who would be happy to help save her from a crazy guy who thought he was a freaking prince.

  Camping in the forest in the middle of winter wasn’t all that bright, but she wasn’t interested in finding high IQs. She was hoping for rugged outdoorsy types in buffalo-plaid jackets who chopped their own firewood with a sturdy ax. Yes, a sturdy ax sounded terrific right now.

  As she drew closer, she realized the light came from a couple of kerosene lanterns hung in the trees. That was still okay. The campfire wasn’t a necessity, only the rugged campers armed with at least one ax.

  She heard chattering, but couldn’t make out any words. Unfortunately, the campers didn’t sound like manly men. She’d met hefty guys with high-pitched voices, though, so she wasn’t giving up on the buffalo plaid and the sharp ax.

  “Awesome river card, dude!” The voice was the first one she could understand clearly. “Check out these beauties. Pocket aces!”

  So the campers played poker. She had no problem with that, especially if they had an ax in addition to a deck of cards. She’d really started to count on the ax.

  Mentally she rehearsed her story as she drew close to the clearing. She’d say that a man had broken into her house, and she’d managed to grab her coat and boots before escaping out the back door. The man was following her, and he was probably loony tunes.

  Okay, the story sounded plausible enough. She peered into the clearing. Blinking, she looked again. She didn’t know whether to laugh or groan. She was still dreaming.

  While knowing that gave her some relief, she would love to wake up and get the hell out of this nightmare. Instead she was smack-dab in the middle of it, staring at a dragon playing poker with five raccoons. Because a light snow continued to fall, they’d strung a tarp over the poker table.

  So none of this had been real—not the sheik in her bedroom, the phone call to Marc, the return of Leo Atwood. She had a monster imagination, that was for sure. She could smell the pine fragrance of the trees and the kerosene burning in the lamps.