A ghost with an unlimited supply of energy boggled the mind. Harmony hoped she was wrong, because if her psychic mandate meant dealing with the witch in particular, Harmony herself would be in for some rough seas . . . as Destiny predicted, slam it.
With a sigh of acceptance, Harmony looked for clues to her psychic goal, any number of possibilities having already surfaced. She needed to find the other half of the ring, and perhaps she was meant to protect the castle, but from the ghost, or for the ghost? Protect the Paxtons, or the workers? So many possibilities. So little time. And perhaps she hadn’t come close to sensing her purpose yet.
Meeting the witch might help.
In the drawer of the black lacquer bedside table by the matching four-poster, Harmony found a bone buttonhook with a strong sense of its owner. Holding it, she sat on the bed and understood that the hook had been crafted for the entity, who seemed as confused as Harmony. Maybe the ghost had been wandering in aimless frustration for a hundred years, which would be enough to make anybody wail.
All this paranormal confusion should make her objective clear. Not!
Withering witch balls, she was glad she’d tucked the charm bag between her breasts. Covering it, she asked for guidance.
She replaced the buttonhook and drew with her finger a Celtic peace knot in the dust on the bedside table—offering a peace pipe to the entity, without pipe, smoke, or entity.
No sooner had she done so than an icy draft drifted into the room as if awaiting her invitation. Smelling of decaying lilacs too long in the vase, the icy draft moved insidiously around her, as if to examine her from every angle, its cold breath nipping at her face, her ears, the back of her neck.
Harmony shivered and covered the ring, swallowing a knot of unease.
The cool air receded from her face, as if the entity stepped away, and as it did, the glass in the frame directly across from Harmony frosted over and cracked.
Warmth claimed her then, for less than a beat, until a chill ran down her left arm. The ring got so cold, it almost hurt to wear, but Harmony made a stubborn fist to keep it there. She sensed that if she lost the ring, she’d fail in her psychic purpose. Maybe the ring was more of a psychic get-out-of-jail-free card.
“I wish I’d worn a coat,” Harmony said, shivering, showing the entity she accepted her presence while injecting a note of reality into unreality. She opened the lacquered chest. “I hope you don’t mind if I borrow some of your things to keep warm. Besides, I’d better start looking for vintage clothes, or the tyrant who owns this place is going to throw me out.”
Harmony wrapped a quilted mulberry dressing gown nearly twice around herself, tied the sash, and raised the hood. Painted silk scarves served as neck warmers. She traded her spikes for a pair of fur
boots that might be Eskimo, pulled on a pair of hideous yellow green leather gloves, and rubbed her hands together. “Now, where can I find some vintage gowns? Oh, too late. Our host is coming.”
Harmony stood almost at attention as she sensed Paxton on the other side of the closed door. Funny, she didn’t remember closing it.
It opened before either of them reached it, both too far away to have managed it. Harmony hummed the theme song from The Twilight Zone so Paxton could hear it, the open door a proclamation from the hereafter that he failed to acknowledge.
He came in and focused on her clothes. “Who do the fashion police monitor? Because I think you’ve been taken captive by the enemy.”
Harmony looked down at her mukluks, gaudy gloves, and antiquated dressing gown. “I’m a work in progress?”
“Aren’t we all? Who were you talking to?”
“The ghost.”
“There is no ghost,” he said, and the door behind him slammed with a resounding echo. “Whatever,” he added. “Did she dress you for Halloween?”
“Then it is a woman?”
“How the hell do I know?” Paxton raised Harmony’s temperature with his assessing gaze and interest alone, while hot licks of desire crept along her spine, radiating to her breasts, her inner thighs—and to the places where he was going with his lips in his imagination. Glory!
Like a deer in headlights, she stood motionless and dumb as a box of frogs, while King Paxton had his imaginary way with her, and she—in his mind—reveled in it and asked, no, begged for more. As she climaxed in his fantasy, she gasped, bringing them both back with a start, and she wondered which of them was more surprised.
Paxton wiped his brow with the back of a hand, while his ginormous erection tried to break free of its zipper. She looked up and caught him watching her watch him. “You find this outfit a turn-on?” she asked, taking her question toward but not too close to the truth.
“What can I say? I’ve been out of commission for a long time.”
“Looks like everything works great.”
“Oh, it does.”
“Tested it, have you?”
His laugh lines deepened. “Do you always say what’s on your mind?”
“Hardly ever,” she said. “This place has a weird effect on me.”
“Neither do I, obviously, though some things speak louder than words.”
“Very loud.” She watched his erection become manageable, but who wanted that? Not her.
“Keep watching,” he said, cupping the back of his neck, “and it’ll never—”
“Oh! Sorry.” She backed into an armoire and hit her crazy bone. “Ouch.” She rubbed her elbow, surprised they weren’t both smoking a cigarette—not that she smoked, but the correlation seemed appropriate.
He turned her to face a standing mirror, corroded, but reflective enough to give her a jolt at the sight of herself. She turned back to him with a hand on her hip. “I call this look ‘homeless on a budget’ or ‘scare today, circus tomorrow.’ Wha’d’ya think?”
He tied one of her neck shawls on top of her head like bunny ears, and that small bit of personal attention turned her on. “Hard man, hard bod,” Destiny had said, and here he stood in the flesh, every muscle clearly outlined beneath a hundred-dollar tee that felt like butter. Oops, when had she put her hand on his chest?
She took it back, fast, but the imprint of his pecs warmed her palm.
“All you need is a red nose,” he said, “and the circus it is.”
She wiggled her nose. “Are you sure it’s not already red?”
He cupped it between his hands, blessing it with a warmth that spread like jelly on hot toast, until she felt the heat at her center.
Downplaying her sexual reaction, she crossed her eyes to watch his hands.
Sir Galahad looked up, stifled a hitching cough, and gasped like he’d swallowed a chicken bone.
She tried giving him the Heimlich, which made him cough more. “No more,” he gasped, pulling away. “I can’t.”
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Never. I—” A last cough before he caught his breath. “I don’t . . . laugh.”
She came into psychic contact with the real him then, the man whose need to laugh scared the military starch right out of him, the man who worked very hard to keep his no-emotions-allowed wall erected.
Screw the wall. From him, she’d like a more gigundous erection—several, if you please, nightly for a month at least—then maybe she could concentrate on his psychological problems. She was only here for the day, though she felt as if it was the right place . . . for longer than that.
The dichotomy between the real and the psychic was hard to shake. Unnerving, too. “It’s blooming cold in here.” She pulled her tattered lapels together. This outfit is called self-preservation,” she said. Like his wall. “You know a little something about that.”
He went from human to robot in sixty seconds. An emotional systems freeze out.
She felt the chill and practically heard his wall lock in place. “You’re a hard one,” she said.
The lines around his mouth relaxed, but not much. “As you saw. I could be
hard again . . . if you wanted me to be.”
Yay team! “No kidding?” The possibilities thrilled her as she eyed the evidence. He was halfway there, already. Come on, boy. Sit up. There you go. Now beg .
He watched her and finally clued in to the fact that theirs was a mutual attraction, and warmed the entire room with a newly vigilant and assessing once-over.
“I think I’m having a hot flash,” she said, fanning her face with a hand.
“That would make two of us.” But he’d never give in, and it was all she could do not to argue with the thoughts in his head.
They stepped apart and looked for places to put their hands, and before she knew how it happened, they were all over each other. Where he touched, she blossomed, even through the robe. Lightning flashed, but only in her mind, and her limbs, and deep at her center—surges of pure electricity. Paxton felt them, too.
He opened his mouth over hers, devouring her as if he’d been starved, and she became his very happy meal. He kissed like a professional, not that she’d ever kissed a professional, but she recognized experience when it Frenched her.
He’d barely started undoing her sash when he groaned in frustration and fell against the wall at his back.
Head down, hands on his knees, he shook his head, and by the time he straightened, she’d retied her robe.
He’d regained his sanity.
She wished she could reclaim hers.
He cleared his throat. “So . . . are those the clothes you want to buy? Because we have better. Vintage ladies’ underclothes two floors up.”
“How do you know?”
“I found them when I was a boy.”
“By accident, of course.”
“Absolutely.” His laugh lines appeared again, nothing more, but the transformation was a heart-stopper.
“I was thirteen. What say you try them on next?” He took her hand, as if he did it every day. “Come on.”
He pulled one way, she pulled the other. He let go first.
“Doesn’t seem prudent right now,” though something rebellious in her would follow him anywhere. “I haven’t started looking for vintage clothes yet.”
“Fifty men downstairs would take one look at you and say you have.”
“Your ghost froze me out, I tell you.”
Paxton saw the picture frame with its ice-cracked glass. “I don’t have a ghost,” he said as he straightened it.
Oh man, a picture-straightener . . . with an ego, walled-off emotions, and a powerful finger-snap. Him ,
she wanted to get in the sack? Which just went to prove that sex appeal was stronger than good judgment. “If the castle has a ghost, you have a ghost. We both know she’s real. You must’ve seen more proof of the otherworldly than a piece of cracked glass and a conveniently open door over the course of your life.”
“There is you,” he said. “You’re the most otherworldly thing I’ve come across. Did you zoom down from another planet?”
“No, seriously.”
“You think I’m kidding? You scare me.”
“Focus on the question. Do you have any idea who the ghost could be?”
Paxton untied her bunny ears—as if doing so would undo his lapse into humanity—and put a hard space between them. “There is no ghost.”
“You’re in denial, Hurricane Boy. I know you have a suspect.”
Paxton took in the room, the empty frames, and sighed. “Only one person lived out her life here. She died in that bed—Augusta ‘Gussie’ Paxton. My mother used to say that Gussie never left. ‘Unfinished business,’ Mom said.”
“You had a mother? You didn’t get shot from a cannon during a twenty-one gun salute and land at attention?”
“Old habits. Military school. It’s textbook. I’ve tried to escape it.”
“Escape it? You embrace it. No, let me rephrase that. You hide behind it.”
Paxton moved closer—too tall, too close, not close enough. “You don’t know anything about me,” he said towering over her, which didn’t seem possible, because she was nearly as tall as him.
Not to be outdone, outmaneuvered, or bullied, Harmony moved in as well. A sheet of paper wouldn’t fit between them. If it did, it’d catch fire. “You, sir, have a steel rod shoved up your ass. When you issue a command, I get an uncontrollable urge to salute. You need someone to loosen you up, take the starch out of you, melt the steel rod, and teach you to be spontaneous. I’m sorely tempted to take the job.”
“Give it your best shot, Witch Whisperer.”
“There’s a challenge I can’t refuse. Don’t worry, pulling down your walls won’t hurt a bit.”
“You leave my walls where they a—I don’t have walls. Loosening up is one thing; giving up control is another, and I won’t.” Paxton snatched at the doorknob behind him, and it came off in his hand.
On the opposite side of the door, the knob’s mate hit the floor and bounced—an echoing reminder of his stupidity—an unnaturally lengthy echoing reminder. Gussie must be helping it bounce.
Paxton threw the crystal doorknob on the bed. It rolled off and bounced as well—like a rubber ball, it bounced—and he growled.
Harmony imagined the growl deep in his throat during sex, him deep inside her, and . . . Withering witch balls, she needed to get a grip.
“Do it again,” she said when the knob stopped bouncing.
“You really piss me off, you know that!”
Harmony raised her chin. “So why did you come looking for me?”
“Hell if I remember. Oh yes. I was wor—I thought you might need protecting. Hah!” He charged the door with his shoulder.
It splintered and slammed open with a resounding crack.
Paxton straightened, slipped his hands in his pockets, and left, whistling.
Hot. He looked hot walking away. Damn it. He looked hot going and coming. Oh man, she really wanted to watch him coming.
“I’m gonna unstarch you, Ramrod,” she called after him, “whether you want me to or not!”
Chapter Six
HARMONY thought Paxton was beginning to seem human. But she wasn’t here to pick up men, or she didn’t think she was. Who knew?
Harmony turned back to the room. “Okay, Gussie. Vintage clothes; lead the way.”
A door on the far side of the room opened and Harmony stepped into a cedar dressing room containing sheet-covered racks of something that might very well be vintage clothes.
“Thanks, Gussie.” I think. Hmm, wha’d’ya know? Gussie liked her. Oh, oh. A friendly but negative ghost might be a ruse to get the ring, or whatever the heck had kept the poor thing wailing for a century.
When the air warmed, Harmony figured Gussie retired to replenish her energy, and she shed her layers.
She wished she could read her dead hostess the way she read her bigger-than-life host. Then again, there was a lot about Paxton she couldn’t read. Hell, his walls had walls, which she was gonna pull down, brick by sexy brick.
In a dressing room lit by electrified dolphin gaslights, Harmony caught the faint aroma of herbs in addition to the cedar. An amazing dressing table called to her. The top wore a playful spray of red tulips, with stems growing up its legs and leaves flowing around its mirror. Once upon a time Gussie had had a playful side.
Harmony felt cold air on the back of her neck again, smelled the dead lilacs, and saw a woman in the mirror behind her—Gussie, forty years old, maybe, and expressionless, wearing a purple crepe gown, diamond necklace and earrings, and a dolphin brooch. She looked . . . lost, or she felt lost, or lonely, and angry, and she wanted . . . out? Then she was gone.
In Gussie’s day, purple had been the purgatory color between the black dress of mourning and the release from mourning colors. Was that what she meant by wanting out? Or did she want out of the castle?
Not a little jarred by the encounter, Harmony looked through the dressing table drawers for the other half of the ring with no luck. But
she did find Gussie’s grimoire and leafed through it. Finding no spells of import, she lifted a couple of sheets from the clothes racks.
In recent years—well, maybe not terribly recent—someone had put the dresses and gowns on padded wooden hangers and covered them with linen sheets. The gowns were plentiful and awesome. Harmony wished time wasn’t an issue.
Several old trunks held accessories, nightclothes, and bed linens, and between the layers, dried sprigs of southernwood, or garderobe, kept the moths away while lavender kept the linens smelling fresh. Most were in decent shape because of the conservation attempts and low temperatures. But the place wasn’t air-conditioned.
Harmony followed the draft to a glass-fronted corner curio full of jewelry, trinkets, and scrimshaw, some with dolphins, but no Celtic rings. Feeling along the outer edges of the cupboard, she found a trip latch.
The curio swung out as a whole, leaving a gaping entrance to a dank and chilly tunnel with a ray of natural light at the far end.
She followed it, ignoring the occasional squeal and clickety-click of teeny toenails, the owners of which she refused to identify. If she ever came this way again, she was bringing reinforcements.
The scent of brine told Harmony she was headed toward the sea. A red lacquer door opened to an overfurnished, overlarge, formal Victorian parlor, with Oriental rugs and enough treasures to make an antiques dealer salivate.
She cut through the musty parlor. She’d explore here later, but right now, she was called toward a door behind a small tapestry—as seduced toward it as she’d been by the gold linen yard sale gown.
The door opened to a tower room—octagon, with seven more doors inside, each a different bright color, the walls between painted with clown faces, all eerie and unique.
The sights, colors, and scents of . . . cotton candy and candy apples . . . fascinated her. But Gussie’s energy ran rampant here, despite the room’s masquerade as a toy room with sweet scents to seduce.
Sex and the Psychic Witch Page 4
