by Anna Abner
“Jesus,” she breathed.
As if he had all the time in the world, he slid her shirt up to bunch under her breasts, baring her belly. His kisses were soft brushes of lips and whiskers. When he tongued her belly button, she fisted the comforter and squeezed her eyes closed. A need built low in her abdomen, an insatiable yearning that would not be easily satisfied.
He pushed her shirt higher, dragging it over her nipples and pinning it under her arms. Both breasts puckered in the cool air, tightening with desire. Derek dropped chaste kisses all around her sensitive skin and then licked the underside of her breast, drawing a warm, wet line along the crease. Jessa’s head thrashed.
He barely gave her a moment to breathe before his mouth lavished both breasts with equal attention, pulling and tasting with tongue and teeth. Her legs locked around his waist, as she clenched her inner muscles in a vain attempt to find release.
Derek palmed one breast as he suckled the other, and his wet noises of pleasure drove her to the breaking point.
No more teasing. “Condoms are in the drawer,” she panted, gesturing wildly in the right direction.
That was all the prompting he needed. With a growl of approval, he kicked out of his clothes and rolled protection onto himself. His very impressive self, she admired, catching a brief sight of him hard and straining.
But he didn’t enter her. Instead, he traced the lines of her ribs with his fingers and his tongue. When he neared her waist she tried to tear her panties aside, but he caught her wrists and held them still. He nosed at her crotch, rubbing her panties against her core. She cried out, torn between agony and release.
“Please.” Her back arched as her legs thrashed against him.
“Please what?” he asked against her wet center.
“Touch me,” she begged. “With your mouth.”
He ripped her panties down her legs, and then his lips were upon her, soft and foreign. Whiskers rubbed against her core as his slick, warm tongue snaked out to draw pictographs against her clit.
“I want you,” she ground out, pulling at him, digging her fingernails in.
He hovered over her, arms quivering on either side of her shoulders. “Jessa, I—”
She cupped his face and kissed him hard, a punishing kiss. He entered her, and her tortured cry got swallowed up in his mouth.
Derek drove into her, further and faster with each thrust, pressing her knees closer and closer to her breasts until there didn’t seem to be a start to him or an end to her.
The muscles in her thighs and belly tightened. She shifted to lock her fingers with his.
“I remember you,” he said, his breath mixing with hers. He withdrew slowly, and she thrashed.
She was hanging onto sanity by her fingernails. Just one tiny push and she’d be airborne.
“Jessa. I remember.” He thrust into her, burying himself to the hilt, and she lost hold of reality, tumbling backward into the void.
He came, panting against her shoulder, slick with sweat.
“I remember you,” he murmured, climbing onto the bed beside her. She curled into him, spent and deliriously sated.
“I’m so sleepy.” Her eyes refused to stay open.
“Sleep.” He kissed each of her checks.
“Stay,” she said, threading her fingers with his.
The bed creaked as he tugged a blanket over them, and then he curled around her. Wonderfully fuzzy-headed, she fell asleep to the sound of his breathing.
* * *
Jolie traveled into Sparky’s and almost popped right back out because the only people she saw were Willow and another witch, two people who couldn’t see or hear her. But she hesitated at the words evil and betrayal. She wasn’t above a little eavesdropping if it helped her better understand how to protect Jessa.
“She was one of my best friends a week ago,” Willow lamented, slamming her phone onto the tabletop. “Now she won’t answer my texts.”
“Maybe she’s under some kind of mind control?” ventured Sasha.
Willow shook her head. “I haven’t heard any rumors about control. They have free will. This is a choice.”
Jolie sat in a stool at the lunch counter, even though she didn’t need to, simply to feel less creepy about listening in.
“How does a woman decide to unleash hell on earth?” Willow asked. “Last time I saw Beatrice, she talked about selling doll clothes online. I don’t—” Willow put her head in her hands.
“It must be tempting,” Sasha said. “To cast magic without any rules. To completely let loose.”
Willow lowered her hands to gape at her friend.
Sasha continued almost wistfully. “I’ve been a witch over ten years and I’ve never fully accessed my power. In case I hurt someone. But to cast without boundaries? To feel that much power?”
Jolie stared at Sasha the same way Willow did. With startled awe. Jolie hadn’t lived long enough to fully wield her witch magic, and Sasha was making it sound downright addictive.
“Has the cabal approached you?” Willow asked with care.
“No, of course not.” Sasha rolled her eyes. “I’m just guessing why she switched sides. I mean, all we do is practice control. Haven’t you ever wondered what it would feel like to go another way?”
“No,” Willow said. “I haven’t. Because magic is a responsibility as well as a gift. And I treat it as a blessing.”
“Sometimes you treat it like a curse.” Sasha stood. “I need a drink. You think Holden has any booze in this place?” She rummaged through the cupboards behind the lunch counter.
“Sasha, are you with me, or not? Can I trust you?”
“Willow, don’t be absurd.” Sasha popped up behind the register, flush-faced but empty-handed. “I’m not interested in summoning demons, I’m just saying I can understand the allure.”
“Terror and pain are alluring?” Willow shot back, rising from the booth. “Murder and the destruction of life on earth are alluring?”
Sasha rolled her eyes. “You’re being overdramatic. Are you honestly saying you’ve never wondered what it would be like to let go?” Building up steam, she rounded the counter. “To form an inferno of power inside your body and release it into the universe? Maybe even into another person? How do we even know how much we can do if we never test our limits?”
Willow sat down again, her shoulders sinking. “Magic is dangerous,” she murmured. “Control is the only way we keep ourselves and the people we care about safe.”
“I know that.” Sasha joined her in the booth. “I’m not purporting we go dark side. I’m simply trying to understand how she could do this.”
“I can never understand it,” Willow mumbled.
Sasha gripped her friend’s hand and held on.
Jolie tipped her head back and pictured Jessa’s apartment. When she got there, the place was quiet. Her sister was asleep, curled in Derek’s arm like a kitten so she blinked into the living room and stared at the glyphs both Holden and Derek had graffitied all over Jessa’s walls.
Jolie’s power didn’t come from glyphs or magic words. It was already inside her.
She hadn’t had enough time to master her witchy magic before she died, but some of the things Sasha said rang true. Not the evil stuff, but the part about releasing power.
Jolie lifted her hands and examined them, feeling her innate strength like a current under her skin. She let the power build and build. If she was alive it would have been insanely painful, but it was just a phantom itch, nothing more.
She’d gleaned enough about spirits to know the ones left on earth had power, but could only affect the physical world when channeled through a necromancer.
Jolie wasn’t any spirit. She was a witch, and apparently would be for eternity.
She focused her energy on the chair at the head of Jessa’s dining room table. The chair leapt backwards, pirouetted on one leg, and then flew through the air to crash into the fridge. Despite the fact that the refrigerator had a dent in its door
and the chair had lost a spoke, a huge smile spread across Jolie’s face.
“Who’s there?” Derek skidded around the corner in a pair of boxer shorts, his blonde hair pointing in at least six different directions. “What happened?”
“It’s just me,” Jolie assured, holding back a giddy laugh. “I was practicing with my magic. Sorry. Go back to bed.”
Chapter Fourteen
Jessa rolled over, knocking into a sleeping Derek, and opened her eyes to a new day.
Someone else was in the room with them.
Jessa noticed a flash of human proportions outside the second floor window. When she focused on the figure, though, it wasn’t there anymore. She blinked, and a face appeared in the glass.
Jolie.
Her beautiful, crazy, athletic, compulsive, and very dead sister.
“Derek,” she hissed.
“What’s wrong?” he grumbled into his pillow.
“I can see my sister.” Everything from her green eyes to her favorite full-body wetsuit.
With a groan, he raised his head and blinked sleepily at her. “Of course you can. You were touched by the other side.”
“But you don’t understand,” she said. Emotion overwhelmed her. Grief, guilt, hope, and love. All of it. “She’s dead, and I can see her.” It was like her greatest hope realized. How many nights had she prayed for the chance to see Jolie again? Just one more time.
There she was.
Jessa threw on whatever clothes were closest, not caring that they were yoga pants and an inside out blouse, and scurried for the front door. She took the stairs two at a time and blew through the stairwell.
“Jolie?” she called.
“I’m here.” Her sister appeared in front of her as if she’d never died. The same blonde hair, same uncertainty behind her eyes, same fingers curling nervously at her waist.
The words tumbled out as if they’d been clinging to the back of her tongue all these months just waiting to break out.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Jolie, you deserved better. You came to me in trust, sister to sister, and I didn’t listen. I’m sorry.”
There. She’d said it. Everything she’d tried to say when Jolie had been on life support. And then again at her graveside. And once more in her prayers. The words she thought she’d never get to say.
“No,” Jolie countered, “I’m sorry. You had to make decisions no sister should have to make.”
“I gave up on you,” Jessa said, her voice catching in her throat. “I should have given you more time on the ventilator.” It was as far as she could go into Jolie’s last day. She wasn’t ready, yet, to delve any deeper into the reason Jolie was a ghost.
“It wouldn’t have made any difference.” Jolie’s eyes filled with shiny tears. “I forgive you, sissy. Sincerely. I forgive you for everything.”
Jessa didn’t deserve forgiveness. She’d behaved like a bully.
“Are you alright like this?” she asked, studying everything she could see of her sister’s current form. “Derek mentioned the word ‘stuck.’”
“It’s not what I would’ve wished for,” she admitted. “I’d rather be alive and a witch again, but watching you live is enough.”
It wasn’t enough for Jessa.
“I should’ve been more understanding,” she said. “When you came to me about being a witch I should’ve listened.” Her voice caught. “You needed someone to talk to, and I wasn’t there for you.”
“It’s okay.” Jolie’s voice wobbled too.
And Jessa broke. Tears burned, blinding her. A sob seven months in the making tore its way out of her. Her knees gave way, and she would have fallen upon the wet grass except a pair of strong arms locked around her, keeping her on her feet.
“I’m right here,” Derek whispered into her ear. “Just let it out, Jessa. Let it all out.”
Pain wracked her, and she clung to him. Words and regret stuttered out among the cries and the sobs. Her sister was dead, and it still hurt so bad Jessa didn’t know how to survive it. All the positive thinking in the world couldn’t bring her sister back or change the last conversation they’d had.
Eventually, Jessa burrowed her head under Derek’s chin and cried a garbled version of, “I’m sorry,” over and over.
“Tell me how your sister died,” he prodded.
Damn him, he wasn’t satisfied that she’d cried her eyes raw. He was going to make her confess everything.
“I signed a paper, and the doctors turned off her ventilator,” she said, her voice unrecognizable. “I killed her.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Jolie said from somewhere overhead. “I was already gone.”
Jessa pulled on Derek’s shirt in a futile attempt to conceal the thoughts racing through her mind.
“Tell me more,” he said.
She saw her sister lying in a bed, impossibly small and fragile in a too-big white gown. She remembered how cold Jolie’s fingers got after the doctor removed the breathing apparatus. Jessa had tried, in vain, to rub some warmth into them.
“I watched her struggle to breathe,” she groaned, clenching her eyes shut against the memory. “I watched as her heart stopped beating.”
Derek jerked her upright, forcing her at arm’s length so he could see into her face. “It wasn’t your fault.” He sounded so sure of it, she nearly believed him. “She was already gone.”
“I can’t believe you’ve been walking around,” Jolie said, “thinking you killed me.”
Jessa found her sister’s spirit standing near a light pole. “I signed the paper.”
“They would’ve turned me off, with or without you,” Jolie said. “Don’t you remember? I didn’t have minor issues. I was brain dead. My organs were failing. I was dying anyway, you just helped me along.”
“I wish you had more time,” Jessa said. Her biggest regret. That Jolie had only begun to live when she was struck down.
“Me, too, but none of it’s your fault.” Jolie neared, coming within feet of her. “It was an accident, and you did the best a sister could do in that situation.”
Jessa took a breath. And then another. The crying and the confessions had been cathartic. Guilt she hadn’t even realized she carried around was fading and leaving her hollow.
She smiled at her sister, admiring her new form. “You’re beautiful,” she said. “You’re sort of shimmery.”
“Sorry, but I can’t pay you the same compliment,” Jolie teased. “Your face is all red and swollen.”
Jessa laughed, and it felt good.
Rain began to fall so hard, she and Derek were forced inside the building, but her thoughts remained with her sister. Jessa’s entire understanding of life, death, and the soul had to be re-written to encompass everything she’d experienced in the last few days, and the repercussions were disorienting.
“I’m going to shower,” Derek announced, heading into the bedroom. Before the bathroom door closed, though, she heard a crash and an oomf.
“You okay?” She rushed in to make sure Paul hadn’t zip-lined in through the window or something.
But the accident was much less dramatic.
“Sorry.” Derek was hanging onto the dresser for support and one of the surfboards wobbled on the floor.
“You surf?” he guessed, rubbing his sore foot.
“No.” Jessa smiled wistfully. “Not me. Jolie was the surfer.”
“No kidding.” He sounded impressed. “Are you going to save these, or are you going to sell them?”
“Save,” she said. “I want to hang them on the wall, I just haven’t had the time.”
“I could do it for you.” He lifted the fallen board and held it against an expanse of eggshell paint for her approval. “Like this?”
“That looks great,” she agreed.
“I’ll see what I can do.” He set the board in the corner and Jessa ran her fingers over the smooth point.
“She loved the water,” she said. “But it’s also what took her life.”
<
br /> He took her hand. “I thought she died of a brain injury.”
“It was utterly pointless,” Jessa began, remembering the call from the hospital. The same panic she’d felt then seeped in. “She was surfing at Onslow Beach. A little boy swam past the surf, and his mother freaked out. There are no lifeguards at that beach.” Her sister had been so brave, and yet so foolish at the same time. But it was just like her to jump in the water without thinking things through. “If Jolie had paddled out with her board, they’d both still be alive. But she swam instead.”
“I was a strong swimmer.”
Jessa jumped at the quiet voice at the window.
“The distance was deceiving,” Jolie added.
“She didn’t make it?” Derek guessed.
“A rescue team arrived,” Jessa explained, watching her sister’s face for signs of emotion, but Jolie didn’t crack. “They couldn’t revive the boy. He drowned. But they were able to shock Jolie’s heart. It became obvious at the hospital that, though her heart was strong, her brain had been deprived of oxygen for too long. She was gone.”
She remembered the scene perfectly. Jolie connected to a ventilator while Jessa fretted over every eyelid flutter and finger spasm until the doctor arrived to deliver the devastating news.
“I’m sorry,” Derek said.
“Me too,” Jolie spoke up. “I was an idiot.”
“A brave idiot, though,” Jessa amended. “Do you remember dying?” When Jolie pulled a face, Jessa added, “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”
“It was like going to sleep,” Jolie answered, “and waking up in a dream world. Everything was the same, but different.” Her eyes met Jessa’s. “It didn’t hurt or anything, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Good.” That is what she’d been concerned about. If her sister had to leave her, she only hoped Jolie’s passing had been as quick and painless as possible.
“I love you, sissy,” Jolie whispered. “I’ve been waiting seven months for you to be able to hear me say that.”
“I love you, too, Jolie,” Jessa said, finding it difficult to finish their nightly bedtime ritual, but needing to desperately. The familiar words tumbled out. “Forever and ever.”
