Any Witch Way She Can

by Christine Warren

  The old woman drew herself up like a queen, wrapping herself in a cloak of dignity and wounded innocence. “I am sorry to hear you think so little of me, Miranda, but I’m certain you will find yourself mistaken. I know very well when Cassidy and Sullivan are traveling, and I know their flight leaves on Saturday evening, not on Friday.”

  “It is Saturday.”

  Behind her, Michael shifted and cleared his throat. “Um, actually, Randy, your grandmother is right. Today is Friday.”

  She half-turned to stare at him as if he were demented. She really hoped he wasn’t, because that could put a damper on their potential relationship. “Uh, no, it’s not. If it were, I would have been at work today, and I wasn’t. I was at home brooding about the inevitable idiocy of men.”

  “No matter how highly you think of yourself, Miranda,” Adele snapped, “even you cannot change the calendar to suit yourself. Today is Friday, March the seventh. If you don’t believe me, turn on a television set or open up a newspaper.”

  That odd ringing Randy had heard in her ears as she’d cast the spell earlier suddenly reappeared, twice as loud. Her head spun drunkenly. “Friday?”

  Michael responded to her hoarse whisper. “Yes, Friday. Randy, is something wrong?”

  “Oh, no,” she laughed, the sound tinged with hysteria. “Nothing at all. I’m fine. Just fine. So what if I went back in time? That happens all the time. Right?”

  Michael stepped in front of her, but Randy’s vision had gone all cloudy. “Actually,” he said, his expression concerned and frowning. “It doesn’t. It almost never happens. At all.”

  Chapter 5

  For a second, Michael thought Randy was going to keel over right in front of him. His hands shot up instinctively to catch her as she began to sway, but she remained on her feet. Barely. Her huge, velvety brown eyes went unfocused, and she turned the color of schoolroom paste, but she didn’t faint. He almost thought it might have been better if she had.

  Better for him, anyway. Then he could have gotten his hands on those sleek curves.

  Swearing, Michael pushed away the thought and carefully grasped her upper arm. Her skin had gone icy. “Randy? Are you okay? Do you need to sit down?”

  She gave another one of those disconcerting, high-pitched laughs. “No, no. I’m fine. I may very well have lost my mind, but other than that, everything’s perfect.”

  Adele shot him a look of confusion and something else. Concern. “What on earth is she talking about? Miranda, what is going on here?”

  “I have no friggin’ clue, Gran. You’re the Other; you tell me. How is it that I could have woken up on Saturday, spent Saturday doing things I distinctly remember, seen my cousin and her husband off for a flight that left on Saturday night, and then blacked out for a second and woken up on Friday, a day I also distinctly remember having already lived through? Got any ideas?”

  Michael felt his curiosity stirring. “Only one,” he said. “Magic.”

  Adele blinked. “That is impossible.”

  “Completely impossible,” Randy agreed.

  Michael found himself thinking this may have been the first time ever. He pushed past it. “I disagree. Look at the evidence. You say Randy wasn’t on tonight’s guest list, Mrs. Berry?”

  “No. Miranda has no place in Council business, nor has she ever expressed any interest in it.”

  “Then how do you explain her appearing on your carpet just as your guests were leaving the dining room?”

  Adele cast him a chilly glance. “I believe most visitors tend to use the front doors, Michael.”

  He shook his head. “That would explain how someone got inside, not how they appeared in the middle of the carpet seemingly out of thin air. And that is exactly what happened with your niece. If you’ll recall, I left the dining room ahead of everyone else to take a phone call. I was here in the hall—the empty hall—when Randy appeared.”

  “Out of the question. It cannot have happened like that.”

  Michael felt his mouth tighten. “I was here to see it, Mrs. Berry, and I can assure you that I’m not lying. I have no reason to.” He turned to the younger woman. “Randy, you say that the last thing you remember is it being Saturday night?”

  She nodded, still looking a little dazed. “A little before midnight. I was at Cassidy and Quinn’s apartment. They asked me to spend time there while they’re away and keep up with things for them.”

  He had met Cassidy Quinn and her husband on several occasions when Adele invited members of the Witches’ Council along with the Council of Others into her home. Neither of the Quinns held positions on the Council of Others, but both had consulted when their expertise had been called for, and Adele seemed to value their opinions. It was a bit like the arrangement he had with his uncle Harold. While Harold held the family seat on the Witches’ Council, Michael couldn’t take part in their activities, but he did offer his advice when he felt it was called for, and often when it wasn’t. Harold tended to rely on his cunning above his intellect, something that often led to trouble.

  “Do you recall anything unusual happening while you were there?” he asked.

  “No, I was just—” Randy broke off and shifted her feet. Her lips pursed and she looked down at her polished red toenails.

  “Just what?”

  “Miranda Louisa, what on earth have you done this time?” Adele glared at her.

  She crossed her arms over her chest, pushing those apples together until Michael’s mouth watered with the urge to take a bite.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Randy snapped, her entire posture radiating defensiveness. “It was just a lark. I didn’t think it would do anything. Especially not right away.”

  Adele thumped her cane on the floor. “Young lady, what did you do?”

  “I cast a spell,” Randy mumbled, “but it was just a little one.”

  If anything, Adele’s skin turned paler than her granddaughter’s. “That’s…not possible.”

  “What? You think just because I’m not a Foxwoman, I can’t do anything special? I’m not an idiot, Adele. I can follow the directions in a spell book just as well as the next person.”

  Michael felt his eyebrows shoot toward the ceiling. “You attempted to work magic?” He frowned at Adele. “Your granddaughter is a witch?”

  “Of course not! She’s a Berry. There are no witches in our family tree.”

  “From the look of things, you may have missed a branch.” Michael turned back to Randy. “I admit I’m surprised. Witches tend to be human, not Other. You may be the only Other witch I’ve ever met.”

  Randy shook her head. “I am human.”

  Michael tried to conceal his surprise, but he had the feeling he hadn’t completely succeeded. “Not a Foxwoman?”

  “No. As much as she might hate to admit it, Adele is my paternal grandmother, so my father put a cork in the inheritance of those particular genes. The Foxwoman thing only passes from mother to daughter, not from mother to son, or from son to daughter.”

  The explanation made sense, given what he knew of Foxwomen, but it didn’t answer all of Michael’s questions. “So your mother was human, too?”

  She nodded. When she spoke again, she was talking to him, but her eyes were on her grandmother. “Adele had a hard enough time accepting the fact that she’d given birth to a human. Can you imagine how she would have reacted if my father had tried to ‘pollute the bloodline’ by marrying some other sort of Other? She’d have blown like Vesuvius. They’d still be digging the city out from under the ashes.”

  “That is untrue!” Adele protested.

  Michael held up a hand. “I don’t think there’s time right now to settle this particular family quarrel. Let’s go back to the issue at hand. Randy, you are human, with no experience with magic, and you decided to cast a time travel spell? Were you under the influence of a mind-altering substance? Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?”

  “Hey, buddy, I don’t need anyone else on the ‘Randy i
s a screw-up’ bandwagon,” she said, glaring at him. “And for your information, I didn’t cast a time travel spell. Why the hell would I do that? As far as I’m concerned, Friday sucked rocks. The last thing I wanted was to relive it.”

  “Then what kind of spell did you cast?”

  She suddenly looked uncomfortable, and a rush of hot color stained her cheeks. When she spoke, her chin was tucked down to her chest and it came out in a rushed mumble. “Uhluphsplakay.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A love spell, okay?” She shot him a killing glance, then swiftly looked back at the floor and scuffed her bare feet against the carpet. “But it wasn’t supposed to mess with the time space continuum. It was just supposed to issue a kind of magical cosmic personal ad.”

  Michael had a hard time believing this woman needed to resort to personal ads. She had the sort of blatantly feminine figure that made a man’s palms itch and a face that captured attention the minute it caught the eye. She also had the sort of personality that drew attention instantly. Not the sort of woman who faded into the woodwork.

  Now, he could definitely see pinning her up against some woodwork and—

  He cut himself off and cleared his throat. If only he could clear his libido so easily. “Are you sure that’s what the spell was? Could you have misread something?”

  “Like I said, I’m not an idiot. It came out of a book of love spells and it was titled ‘A Woman’s Spell to Attract True Love.’ What’s there to misunderstand in that?”

  “I think I should take a look at that spell.”

  Randy threw her hands out to her sides and shot him an exasperated look. “Well, it’s not like I’m carrying it around in my pocket, is it? Besides, how would you looking at it help?”

  He smiled. “I know a thing or two about magic. I am a witch, after all.”

  A click from the sitting room doors drew everyone’s attention. Uncle Harold stuck his head out of the door and glared at them. “Is there a problem out here, Adele? We’re getting a bit restless. There’s a great deal of business to discuss tonight, and it’s getting late. If you aren’t prepared to give tonight’s meeting the attention it deserves, maybe it would be better if we—”

  Adele stepped forward, her cane clicking in time with her obvious annoyance. “You know very well that the Council’s business is always my first priority, Harold. Simply give me a few more minutes to—”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Michael said. He wanted a few minutes alone with Randy anyway. For a number of reasons. “Mrs. Berry, I’m more than capable of sorting things out and giving your granddaughter any assistance she needs. You go ahead and attend to your guests. Uncle Harold, I’m sure you can handle things without me for the evening?”

  “Of course I can.” Harold’s scowl deepened and turned from Adele to his nephew. Michael ignored it. Harold’s disapproval wasn’t something he worried about. “But I don’t see what you have to do with the girl. Let one of Adele’s servants see to it and let’s move on.”

  “Take me. Take me now,” Randy snarked, looking disgusted. “You must be a real ladies’ man there, Harold. I know I’m all a-quiver.”

  Michael stifled a chuckle and took Randy by the arm to turn her toward the stairs. “If you’ll excuse us, I’m sure we’ll have this all taken care of in no time.”

  Before anyone could argue, especially the scantily clad woman beside him, he turned his back on the sitting room and propelled Randy toward the stairs. He definitely had some things to clear up with her. And one or two of them even involved magic.

  Chapter 6

  Randy couldn’t decide if she’d fallen and hit her head while casting the spell and was having an extremely vivid nightmare, or if she was being punished by God for one of her more significant transgressions. Maybe more than one.

  As she climbed the stairs beside Michael Devon, she tried to sort out just what the hell was going on. If they were telling her the truth and it really was Friday again—God forbid, because that meant she was supposed to be being stood up again even as she thought about it—then something in that spell had not gone as expected. She wasn’t supposed to go back in time. She wasn’t supposed to go anywhere. She was just supposed to stir that damned mess, blow out the candles, and then meet the man of her dreams when she ran out for bagels in the morning.

  Instead, she’d landed in her grandmother’s house twenty-four hours before the idea of casting the spell had so much as occurred to her, being led around by a man who exhibited several of the qualities that had topped her wants and needs lists, outrageously sexy being chief among them. He also seemed intelligent, fairly mellow, and overflowing with charisma, but he lacked the one thing she’d underlined three times on her needs list—he wasn’t human.

  Or at least not completely human. He was a witch, and while she knew the difference between those and the Others, when she’d written down human, she’d been envisioning someone…normal. Not someone who could perform magic by waving his wand in the air.

  The vision that popped into her head with that thought was not helpful.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, then had to pop them open again to keep from tripping on the stair treads. “Where exactly are we going?”

  He didn’t glance at her. “Upstairs.”

  “Well, duh. Can you be a little more specific?”

  “Somewhere we’re not going to be interrupted.”

  Randy wasn’t sure if she should be wary or enthusiastic. “What are we going to be doing that can’t be interrupted?”

  That time he did look at her, and his grin was positively predatory. He didn’t answer. Instead, he ushered her down the hall with a warm hand at the small of her back and leaned around her to push open a door. “Please, ladies first.”

  She stepped inside reflexively. By the time she’d registered that he’d led them to a bedroom, the door had already clicked shut behind him. Randy spun around and fixed her gaze on his face. She didn’t feel nervous, exactly, but neither was she perfectly comfortable under the circumstances. She didn’t think the love spell had really brought her to Michael, but what if it made him think they were meant to be together?

  “Okay, it’s not like I have anything against sex,” she said, fighting the urge to take a step backward. “In fact, I’m a huge fan. I love sex. It’s fabulous. But I don’t usually have it with men I’ve only known for twenty minutes.”

  He glanced at his watch and then grinned at her. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “I heard what you said to Adele, but I can take care of myself perfectly well. I don’t need you to ‘sort things out’ for me. All I need is to go home.”

  He shook his head, not budging from his position between her and the door. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “That spell you cast that brought you here. I want to talk about that for a few minutes.”

  She sighed. “What about it? Is this where you lecture me about the dangers of silly little humans playing with dark powers they can’t possibly comprehend?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I hadn’t planned on it. Do you think I should?”

  “Of course not. Trust me, the world is in no danger of my summoning the apocalypse. I don’t even plan to pull a rabbit out of a hat after this.” She made a face. “I think it’s pretty clear that this whole magic thing didn’t work out well for me.”

  He took a step toward her. “It didn’t?”

  “Hell, no. I thought I was going to meet a nice guy and instead I ended up half naked at one of my stuck-up grandmother’s swanky dinner parties. I’d rather have a root canal with chamomile tea as the anesthesia than go through this again.”

  “You and your grandmother do seem to have an…interesting relationship.”

  “Absolutely. In the Chinese sense of the word.”

  “‘May you live in interesting times’?”

  “Exactly.” Randy shrugged. “It’s no big secret that I’m a huge disappointment to
my grandmother. Adele likes to pretend her bloodlines have never been tainted by anything as plebian as a human, let alone that she herself gave birth to one. She’s spent most of her life ignoring the men in the family because of their species. The fact that one of them had the nerve to procreate and spawn a female of that same inferior species drives her crazy.”

  “So you do your best to make yourself impossible for her to ignore.”

  “Oh, Adele does a fine job with the ignoring routine. Every time I turn up for family dinners, she gets that sour look on her face, like someone let a mongrel into the kennel with her purebreds.” She paused and gave a short laugh. “Though now that I think about it, that’s a bad analogy. If I could turn into a dog, she’d probably respect me more. Not as much as a real Foxwoman, of course, but more than a human.”

  Michael tilted his head to the side, a gesture Randy tried not to find adorable. “I’m not sure a lack of respect is how I’d describe Adele’s view of you.”

  “Trust me, it’s accurate. Cassidy she respects, but me? Not in this incarnation.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “The evidence.” She scowled. “Not once in my life has she tried to involve me in her life, not the life that’s important to her. Cassidy is the one she calls on to help her out. I’m just an embarrassment. She obviously invited Cassidy and Quinn to this evening’s festivities. Do you think for one second it occurred to her to invite me? Of course not. I’m human, therefore I’m of no use to her.”

  “Hm, interesting. But maybe we shouldn’t talk anymore about your grandmother.”

  “Fine with me.”

  He took another step, which brought him close enough that Randy could smell him. Not that he wore some kind of an overpowering cologne or anything, but he had a smell that made her want to suck him in, all spice and musk and warm, clean man. “Why don’t you tell me some more about this spell?”

  It wasn’t a question.