Witch's Jewel

by Kater Cheek

  “Upstairs.”

  James threw his apron onto a nearby hook, and missed. None of the employees picked it up, but stared at us with dropped jaws. No one had seen James angry before. James never got angry. We managed to get most of the way up the stairs before the fight started.

  “You promised you wouldn’t sell it.” James unlocked his apartment and slammed it open. “You lied to me.”

  Not to be outdone, I slammed it shut. “I promised I wouldn’t sell it to her.”

  “You offered it to an appraiser. That was him on the phone.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “You can’t sell it, Kit. Uncle Fred asked you not to.”

  “It’s worth six figures, James. I have no business wearing a hundred thousand dollars on my forehead.”

  “Uncle Fred gave you his most priceless heirloom and all you can see are dollar signs?” James shouted.

  James never shouted at me. James never got mad at anyone. God, he looked like Dad when he was angry. It made me flinch.

  “It’s not priceless, it’s worth six figures! How can I not see dollar signs when we’re talking about that kind of money?”

  “I can’t believe you’d do this, Kit. I can’t believe you’d go against his wishes like this.”

  “I don’t have much choice, James.” I folded my arms in front of my breasts and sat down on the couch, not bothering to move the clutter out of the way. My arms were shaking, not with anger, but fear.

  Fear at having to handle all this alone. Rob and Fenwick were gone, like were-jerks at the full moon. Elaina kicked me out of my own apartment. Now James, the big brother I could always count on, was reaming me out for a decision I didn’t even want to make.

  “Of course, you have a choice. Uncle Fred gave this to you because he loved you, because he wanted you to use it—”

  “Uncle Fred gave me this bindi knowing full well that there were other people in town who wanted to kill for it. You yourself predicted someone would try to kill me.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Why do you think that happened so soon after I inherited this thing?” I pointed angrily at my forehead.

  “But, they haven’t, have they?” Now James didn’t sound so sure.

  I told him about Monica mugging me, Holzhausen’s warning, the bloody footprint, the curse on my van. James listened, and the expression on his face was the same one he had when one of Mom’s boyfriends pushed me down the stairs.

  “I’d like to keep it, James, if for no other reason than to have a memento of him, but I’m not willing to die for it. He cast an inheritance spell on it. It won’t work for anyone else until I die.”

  “But if you sell it, it won’t work either.”

  “Yeah, but a hundred grand is enough for me to hide for a couple years.”

  “You can’t be serious! You’re going to sell it and then skip town?” James knocked over a mostly-empty water glass and didn’t pick it up. He wasn’t as tidy in his apartment as he was in the café.

  I picked up the glass and mopped the spill with the couch pillow.

  “I’m scared, James. I’ve been robbed, mugged, stalked, and cursed. I can’t deal with this alone. This is too big for me. I can’t deal with an enemy I can’t see. What else is there to do but run?”

  James let out a long painful sigh and sat down on the couch. “I don’t want you to leave, Kit.”

  “Me neither.” I sat next to him and put my face in my hands, tracing my fingertips around the edge of the bindi. It never fell off, no matter how much I sweated. It never itched. It felt like it belonged there. It had become part of me. “I don’t want to sell it, you know, even for that kind of money. I’ve never owned anything this cool.”

  “I don’t want you to have to sell it. I don’t want you to leave town.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s Monica who wants to kill me. She’s bound to figure out sooner or later that I gave her a fake. Even if she doesn’t find out, she might kill me just because she wants it to work for her. But what can I do? I can’t turn her in for a murder she might commit in the future.

  “I could just confront her, even though she’s got that gun in her purse, but what good would that do? I just wish she would get it over with, you know? I know that sounds stupid, but worrying about whether she’s going to kill me or not, or when, is worse than having someone pull a gun on me.”

  James stood and started pacing. “What you need is advice. Good advice.”

  “Like what?”

  He held up a finger to quiet me, then lifted the tablecloth covering his altar and pulled out an enormous three-ring binder, with a laminated photograph of a sword and a chalice on the front. Uncle Fred’s Book of Shadows. Murmuring to himself, James crouched down and began to flip through the plastic covered pages.

  “Found it.”

  “Found what?” I walked over and crouched down next to him. The yellowed mimeograph had dense single-spaced blue text, with symbols penciled in the margins, and a name and a phone number underneath one of them.

  James put his finger to bookmark the page. “Be here on Samhain. I think I know a way to get the advice we need.”

  “We’re too old to trick-or-treat. What do you have in mind?”

  “We’re going to talk to Uncle Fred.”

  “Hate to break the news to you, but he’s dead. You gonna raise him from the grave?”

  “I’m not mage enough.” He picked up his phone and entered the phone number. “I’m going to hire someone to do it for us. Be here at sundown on Halloween. Promise.”

  Shit. He was serious. “Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  James made a sign against evil, thumb stuck between fore and middle fingers. “Don’t say that, Kit.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I crossed the bridge quickly, fearing the kappa as a child fears the monster under the bed. Sure, Elaina said the kappa would only attack our enemies, but it was better to not take chances.

  The bloodstain still hadn’t washed off the cement slab, despite the rain.

  Elaina and Ulrich had been together almost every night, and tonight I had given them four hours at the dojo, four hours of much needed exercise, of mind-emptying katas and practice kicks on the bag.

  A white cotton sock hung off the door, in case I hadn’t noticed by the loud movie playing that they were still making out on the couch. Should I go in, or find somewhere else to be? My boughs were just about done, but I had a book to read and laundry to do. Decisions, decisions. As I stepped on to the welcome mat, cellophane crackled under my feet.

  A bouquet of flowers lay in front of the door. Bird of paradise, six of them, my favorite flower. You couldn’t pick these up at the grocery store. These were exotic tropicals. Who knew that was my favorite flower? Fenwick. He brought me flowers. I picked them up and gripped them. He brought me flowers. A small card had been tucked in among the orange and violet petals.

  All I wanted was to make you happy.

  He brought me flowers. Maybe I had been too harsh. He was right. It had made me happy, for a little while anyway. And how could I get mad at him for telling me the truth?

  So, he wasn’t that into me. No big deal. We were still friends.

  I started walking. I missed him. How long had it been since we had a real conversation? I hadn’t told him about Theresa, or about the curse on my van, or about the person lurking around my apartment. And I missed him. And sure, it would be great to feel his arms around me, and kiss him, and spend the night in his bed, but it was okay. I could live without that.

  Maybe it was even better this way. Friendship like ours was forever. Relationships were like fly lives in comparison. My pace sped up. I really missed him. And he lived so close, just a mile or two. Just a few minutes if you were practically running.

  Twenty minutes later I was knocking on his apartment door. He opened it wearing gray sweats, with his hair loose around his shoulders. “Kit?”

  I stepped in and shut the door behind me. “I
guess I came to kiss and make up.” My lips pulled in with sudden shyness.

  He took me literally. Before I knew it I was in his arms and his tongue was in my mouth, and Jesus it felt so good, and I was already getting wet, and his hands were caressing me, and goddamnit! Why’d he have to do this to me? And here I was all set to forgive him.

  I pushed him away. “Damnit, Fenwick, you can’t do this to me! You think I don’t have feelings? You think that I’m made of stone or something? You can’t think it doesn’t mean anything!”

  Fenwick stepped back as if I had slapped him. “I won’t do it anymore, Kit. I thought we agreed to pretend it didn’t happen.”

  “And now it’s going to happen again! What, now I get to be your dirty little secret?” My brows were furrowed so deeply they ached. “Don’t you think it hurts me when I have to stay at home on Friday nights because you’re out with someone hotter than me?”

  “I thought you … Kit, I don’t get it. What are you talking about?”

  “You told everyone I slept with you, and then you went out with Cammie.”

  Fenwick scowled and strode towards the couch. “Kit, I just talked to her. She invited me out, and I said no. It’s your fault, anyway, you practically threw her at me. Why didn’t you tell her that you were my girlfriend?”

  “I’m not your girlfriend. I’m just an ugly friend you gave a charity lay to, all right? I know it, you know it and I’m okay with that.

  “But that’s no reason for you to treat me like this. You’re supposed to be my friend, Fenwick. So what if I’m mannish? So what if I’m not cute and tiny like the airhead coeds all the guys like? I thought we had a great friendship, and then you had to go and fuck it all up by treating me like a used—”

  “Kit, stop.” He stepped forward and placed a hand over my mouth firmly enough that I couldn’t pull it away. “Please, will you just listen to me? Please?”

  My teeth ground slowly back and forth in an effort to keep the angry screams in. There was no way he could dig his way out of this.

  He put his other hand on my shoulder. “First of all, I didn’t even go out with her. She invited me out, and I said no. I only want to be with you.”

  I stared straight ahead.

  “Kit, have I ever lied to you? Ever?”

  He hadn’t, but I wouldn’t concede that.

  “Second, I’m sorry I changed into a bear while you were over. I’m sorry it freaked you out. If I had known you’d be that upset—”

  I couldn’t let this one go. I jerked my mouth away from his hand. “All the shit you’ve put me through and that’s what you apologize for?”

  He blinked. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”

  “You said you were ashamed of me! You didn’t want me to tell anyone that we slept together because it would keep you from getting laid! You even had the nerve to yell at me, because James happened to guess that we’d been hooking up, and all you care about is that you changed into a bear?”

  “You thought I was ashamed of you? I was ashamed of myself for changing into a bear! Why do you think it’s taken me two years to get up the nerve to tell you I’m in love with you?” He blinked, and a horrified look crossed his face, the look of someone who just accidentally pulled the trigger.

  “You’re in love with me?”

  He nodded dumbly.

  “You said that night was a mistake. All that time you were talking about changing into a bear?”

  “Of course. What else would I have been talking about?”

  “You idiot!”

  “What?” He was completely clueless.

  “Fenwick, you put me through a mound of shit for this? Do you totally not understand women? In the past two months I’ve seen a dozen otherfolk, most of them a lot weirder than a guy who’s only furry once in a while. I had drinks with a talking fox with two tails. I just had a chat with a faerie not two hours ago.

  “And the vampires! Don’t even get me started about the vampires. Did you really think that I would freak out just because I woke up next to an animal? Fenwick, my last boyfriend was a beast twenty-four-seven. You are so clueless!”

  “Me? I’m the clueless one? Kit, I haven’t been able to sleep at night thinking that I missed my shot at true love. Why do you think I kept pestering you about Rob? I waited so long to get my chance, and then after I finally succeeded in seducing you, you went out of your way to avoid me. What was I supposed to think?”

  “I was trying to give you your space,” I mumbled, folding my arms.

  “I don’t want space. I want you to be mine.” Fenwick picked up my hands and started rubbing his thumbs in my palms.

  “I’m not pretty.” I looked down.

  Fenwick was smart enough not to agree with me. “If you’re not pretty, why do I want you so badly?” He kissed me gently, then wrapped his arms around me. “If you’re not beautiful, why am I so much in love with you?”

  He kissed me again, sweet and wet and serious, and it felt like a piece of heaven. When he pulled away, his gray eyes shone with love, real love, the kind I thought I’d never get.

  “This is for real?” I didn’t want to believe it, had never dared to think I’d feel this happy, this desirable.

  “I want you, Kit. I want to make you smile again.” His hands unhooked my bra and slid under the cups to touch my skin, slowly, sensuously, the light tickle against the recently freed flesh making me squirm with desire.

  I reached my hands up his shirt and scratched my nails down his back, pressing my chest against him so that no part of me felt left out. He kissed me again, pulling down my shirt to nibble along the collarbone. He kissed along my neck, my most sensitive area, and I froze as my world became centered on his lips.

  He moved up, and I could breathe again, almost panting now, pulling him closer to me, jealous of the fabric between us. He was slow, maddeningly slow, kissing along my hairline as his hands encircled my ribs. Slow was good. This wasn’t a charity lay. This wasn’t a quickie.

  I ran my hands over his broad shoulders. This wouldn’t be the last time I’d get to do this. This was my boyfriend whose tongue was in my ear. This was Fenwick who was putting that smile on my face. And he was in love with me. My best friend was in love with me.

  The sound of someone knocking on the door interrupted our mood like cold water. We froze mid-caress, hearts now racing for a different reason.

  “You expecting someone?” I asked.

  The pounding grew urgent, and someone called out Fenwick’s name.

  “No.” He glanced towards the door. “Could be an emergency.”

  “You’re right. You’d better get it.” I sighed and hastily re-hooked my bra.

  Fenwick got off the couch and pulled his shirt down. He leaned back in for one more kiss. “I’ll tell whoever it is to go away.”

  But when he opened the door, Fenwick stepped back quickly, eyes wide in surprise. I understood why when I got there. It was the vampire we met in the bar.

  Ted Palmer wore black cammo fatigues and a black tee shirt, with the butt of a pistol peeking out from under his canvas jacket. “I need your help.”

  “What do you need our help with?” Fenwick stared at Palmer’s gun as unswervingly as if it were fake double DD cleavage. “This isn’t just your computer crashing, is it?”

  “No. It’s a matter of life and death. Please. My friend will die if you don’t help us.”

  For do-gooder Fenwick, those were the magic words. He gave me an apologetic glance, then nodded. “I’ll help.”

  “So will I.” No way was Fenwick going to do this alone.

  He turned back, extending his palm out to indicate I should stay. “Kit, you don’t have to come.”

  I ignored him and swung on my jacket. “Do we need anything?”

  “No,” Palmer said. “Just hurry. There’s a car waiting down in the parking lot.”

  The three of us ran down the stairs and piled into a waiting Cadillac. The driver was a vampire as well, a pale w
iry guy, also dressed in SWAT team couture. He sped off quickly, turning the corners of the parking lot with a squeal of tires.

  “What’s this about?” Fenwick asked, trying to buckle his seatbelt.

  “Yeah, you’re not going to ask us to do anything illegal, are you?” I asked. People usually didn’t just wear guns out of fashion sense.

  “Shut up and do what you’re told, humans,” the driver said.

  I was about to suggest something painful and anatomically impossible, but Palmer interrupted me.

  “I’ll tell you what you need to know, but you must keep quiet about anything you see tonight. Is that understood?”

  “Palmer, you can’t tell them Guild business!” The driver said. “Why do we need them, anyway? Let’s just wait a few hours until—”

  “Morales—” Palmer said.

  “You don’t know that many humans, do you?” I asked. The two vampires shared a glance. “That’s it, isn’t it? You need humans to help you, and you couldn’t think of anyone else.”

  “We have people who usually help us in these circumstances, but there isn’t time to wait for them to arrive,” Palmer said.

  Morales muttered something under his breath. I didn’t hear it, but judging by Fenwick and Palmer’s expressions, it was pretty rude.

  “You would rather I had called one of your many human friends?” Palmer asked sarcastically. He turned to us. “Morales doesn’t trust humans very much. I’m afraid it’s not uncommon among Guild members.”

  “We’re discreet,” Fenwick said. “You can tell us what’s going on.”

  “This is a rescue mission. Our squad was called out because one of ours is trapped inside an abandoned building. Our enemies must have moved in and made it theirs, because we can’t get in without being invited. We need you to go inside and bring him out. That’s it.”

  “Sounds like fun.” Fear made me more sarcastic than polite.

  “I’m sorry I had to ask you this,” Palmer said. “But if we don’t get him out soon, he might die.”

  “We’ll be glad to help.” Fenwick had launched into Boy Scout mode, and could not be deterred.

  “You can stay in the car if you want,” Palmer told me.