Witches

by Christina Harlin

  Impressed, Andrew exclaimed, “The Omaha book slut! She certainly must be the terror of Nebraska. Should we do an episode about her?”

  “Are you mocking me?” Rosemary demanded, too giddy to summon even a pretense of anger. She leaned forward from her chair to his kneeling form before he could answer and kissed him soundly on the lips, like the finalizing of a deal. Then she drew back and tasted her own lips to see what it was like, to let him see her licking his taste from her lips.

  She knew that he liked her mouth. His eyes inspected it often, unconsciously, when he didn’t realize she was aware, or that he was staring, or that those moments made her body contract with desire.

  He took the invitation, as she had wished him to. One of his hands wrapped around the back of her head and coaxed her to him again for a longer version of kissing, slow and steady, letting her follow his lead, yet most definitely leading. She had imagined kissing Andrew Fletcher at least a thousand times, and he would be surprised (maybe) to know how many times she’d come within a breath of just grabbing him and trying it. In all her imaginings, she’d had a plan. That was her mistake; thinking a plan would stay where her mind could grasp it. She had read that kissing was the human body’s way of testing physical compatibility, through taste and pheromones and whatnot; but she had never guessed the reality of how it would make her feel when it was finally with someone she wanted.

  She’d meant to pay more attention, to the pheromones and their chemistry; instead her focus flew to grab snapshots of her pleasure: Andy’s golden whiskers, the smell of his skin, the soft cotton of his shirt collar and then the skin beneath it. There was no way to organize her thoughts or plan her motions; she was caught in a rhythm from a deeper place, where fish know how to swim in schools and birds know how to fly in flock. When the chemistry is there and igniting, the steps require no thought. He opened her with the tumbling lock she hadn’t known was holding her closed and everything came spilling out.

  She forgot that they were in a ridiculous place, Andrew kneeling on the floor, she on a plastic waiting room chair, here in a fur-scattered, pet-shampoo-scented animal hospital, with its gritty linoleum floor and the snapping fluorescent lights around them.

  When he released her from his lips she gave a little whine of disappointment, eager to go back for more. He put his forehead to hers and said, “I’m going to do this right. I’m going to be so good to you. You’ve never had a good relationship and I’ve never made one happen either, so by God, this time, I’m going to do this right.”

  “You’re not going to do something cheesy like talk to my Dad, right? You won’t go in there and ask him if you can pitch woo - because he’ll tell my brother and I will never hear the end of it.”

  “Should your brother ever dare to tease you again, I’ll smack him with a glove and duel him at dawn.”

  What had happened after that? There was a night to get through in uncomfortable chairs, watching out for a resurrected cat. They texted back and forth: with Sally as she, Kaye and Stefan made their way to St. Louis; and with Greg, as he made sure Judge was situated at the hospital and then went to prep the van and truck for the next day’s trip. The clinic’s night attendant turned on a laptop and they heard the soft blips of technology from the back room and the occasional sounds of animals. They played game after game of Scrabble on Rosemary’s cell phone, weariness making them terrible at it.

  Rosemary would have been content to stay up all night misspelling words with “ie” in them - or was it “ei”? - as long as Andy’s face was there each time she looked up. Still, she’d stopped a natural disaster that day. Maybe catching a few minutes of sleep would do her some good. Rosemary gave up and fashioned a bench for herself out of the plastic chairs. She curled onto her side, tucking her legs under her bedraggled skirt. As if tucking her in for the night, Andy knelt by her side. “Are you cold?”

  “I’m all right. Doesn’t matter. I can hardly keep my eyes open any more. Andy if you’re afraid of commitment, I’m going to scare the shit out of you. I’m your girl for as long as you’ll have me.”

  He kissed her goodnight, his lips lingering on hers as six of her heartbeats fluttered past. Against her cheek he murmured, “I’ve been yours since you walked in my door.”

  *****

  Now in her half-dreaming state, Rosemary couldn’t remember if she was still at the Animal Hospital, or in their St. Louis hotel. But there was someone in the bed with her, which quickly became clear. It all came back to her: her new bedmate, Ardelia Baker, a good Christian woman.

  The windows were covered with extra sheets, to protect Sally (and how Ardelia had grumbled about that!) but Rosemary sensed the morning had come, and her phone’s clock confirmed, it was the miserable hour of 6:15 a.m. She rose, rather sore from the uncomfortable bed, picked her bag off the floor and crept away to get her chance in the bathroom. Honestly she didn’t know how the big men of her team were managing in here; the bathroom was so tiny that she could barely turn around without bumping something. The grubby mirror was worth crap-all when it came to make-up or hairstyling, but from the sounds on the roof, the rain had yet to stop and there seemed little point. She’d be scraggly and drenched soon. She cleaned up and shimmied into temporarily dry clothes and jammed her baseball cap back on her head.

  Her temporary morning grouchiness (damn the hour, damn the rain, damn the cramped accommodations) was soothed the moment she stepped onto Ardelia’s front porch and saw Andrew there. He’d found a reasonably clean lawn chair and had set himself up under the least leaky corner of the porch to continue reading Sense and Sensibility, which she’d seen him with for the last few days. How he was reading in the faint light, she had no idea – or maybe he was just “feeling” the book, as he so often did. A shadow of whiskers on his long, aquiline face and the faintest rings under his eyes made him look mysterious and dangerous, and of course his thick golden hair curled when it got damp. He could pass easily for some romantic poet from the moors, who’d been out roaming, mourning a dead lover, or whatever those guys did all night on the moors.

  At the sound of her footsteps, Andrew glanced up, then turned his eyes back to his book to find a finishing spot. Tucking in a bookmark, he rose and jammed the book in the back pocket of his jeans, a habit she found absolutely adorable. He was always accidentally sitting on a book, surprising himself every time.

  “I do love that little red hat,” he told her, giving her cap’s brim a tug.

  “Oh really? Well maybe I’ll buy one for you. How was your night?”

  “I had to share with Greg, who hogs the middle. I think he and I might have to get married now. Honestly, he could have at least asked me out to a steakhouse first.”

  Rosemary smothered laughter under a hand, blushing with a mixture of envy and delight.

  “May I dig a coffee out for you?” asked Andrew, gesturing to the cooler behind him. There were a number of iced coffee drinks chilled inside.

  “You’re sweet; thank you.”

  He buried his arm elbow-deep in the cold water and ice chips, coming up with a bottle of sugary caffeine goodness which he passed to her with a slight bow.

  “Where did you get that chair?” Rosemary asked as she cracked open her coffee. “It wasn’t here yesterday.”

  “I dragged it up from the yard. I was awake godawful early and there’s not enough light to read inside. I’m prepared to take a reaming from Ardelia for daring to do it.”

  “The crankier she is, the better. Our viewers are going to love her.”

  Andrew grinned. “Always looking for a fight.”

  “Not a fight. Just a little entertaining banter.”

  His next words came from out of the blue. “I would like to take you out to dinner, when we get off this godforsaken wet mountain.”

  “I’d love to,” she said in delight and surprise. “Oh my god, I love eating! Where should we go? What should I wear? Do you have a favorite place? Can I show you someplace new?”

  “You know
what I like? Going to the Supercenter and getting their lunch special. You get two slices of pizza, two hots dogs and two drinks for like six bucks, it’s a real steal.”

  Rosemary nodded enthusiastically. “That really is a good deal! I love Supercenter hot dogs.”

  Andrew shook his head with amazement. “I was kidding. Romy for Chrissakes, I’d at least take you somewhere with forks.”

  “They have sporks at the Supercenter.” Throughout this teasing she’d edged closer, and his head had tipped nearer, and now when she said “supercenter” her mouth brushed his. “I don’t care where we go. The company is all that matters to me.”

  He shifted over her, an arm looping around her waist to pull her toward him, murmuring, “Then maybe we could—”

  Sally suddenly rushed out the front door, shoving her wide-brimmed hat onto her head as she came, and whispering fiercely, “There she is! There she is!”

  Sally ignored the entanglement on the porch, giving Rosemary a fair chance to disengage herself from the compromising position and shake her head clear, a quick warm glance back at Andrew before she said, “What is it, Sal?”

  Urgently Sally pointed toward the ragged town’s shacks. Sure enough, there was movement on the shabby porches. One door had opened on a tumbling shack, and another soon did the same, across the street. The weak flashlight beams appeared again, as they had the night before, as the townspeople came out of their homes and gathered in a loose group near the edge of the town.

  Talking fast, Sally explained, “I met one of them last night. There she is now. She gave me a phone.”

  Sally looked back hopefully at Andrew, who was nonplussed, and Rosemary, who was wildly intrigued. A nighttime meeting! “Please tell me that you—”

  “I recorded it on my camera,” Sally assured her. “Uh, more or less. I’ll show you in a minute, but let’s go talk to them while we can.” She took off through the mud, kicking up a mess as she went. Rosemary hurried behind her, as Sally greeted the townsfolk, “Excuse me? Hello! Hi there!”

  The group had formed a line. As they shuffled to their places, one of two of them raised their eyes to find the source of the greetings. They all seemed so washed out. Grey faces and grey clothes under all this grey sky and grey rain. Rosemary could barely distinguish features on them. Once more, there were thirteen of them altogether.

  “Good morning,” Rosemary called. Andrew came to stand beside her.

  Having stepped off of Ardelia’s property and away from the pointy protective spell that guarded it, Rosemary’s telepathic web expanded at once to its ordinary limits, as if this part of her mind was thrilled to be freed from bondage, eager to feel out the people before her. She felt that Andrew’s sneak had also cast out to see what he could learn about this odd group of town residents.

  “They’re all thinking the same thing,” said Andrew curiously, heedless that he was speaking of people within earshot. “They’re all thinking that it’s time to go to work, and really nothing else.”

  The line began to move in almost an exact reverse of what they had witnessed the night before – thirteen people with thirteen crappy flashlights, heading toward the woods.

  Sally, who had been trying to catch the eye of one of the younger women, finally reached out and snagged the woman’s shirt sleeve. “Hello? It’s me, Sally Friend. I was in your house last night.”

  The woman looked at Sally, or seemed to look straight through Sally, adopting a wan smile. “Time to go to work,” she said, pulling her arm free.

  “Don’t you remember me? You gave me your phone.” Sally held up a cellphone with a neon pink cover affixed with cat stickers.

  The woman’s attention wandered back to the trail. Rain fell on them all, their worn clothes quickly becoming sodden and lank.

  “Where are you going?” Rosemary asked their retreating backs.

  “We’re going to work at the rocking chair factory,” one of them finally called over his shoulder – or her shoulder; it was impossible to tell. This was all the response Rosemary got, and one by one the line of people disappeared into the thickening woods down a path Rosemary could not see.

  *****

  Eventually, everyone was up, and congregating around the porch to dig in the cooler and a couple of grocery sacks for breakfast, then standing awkwardly munching energy bars or absently spooning at cups of yogurt. Sally showed her phone’s recording to everyone out here on the porch, two of them at a time hunkering over the screen. The middle-of-the-night visit was such excellent show material that Rosemary knew their viewers would believe it had been staged.

  In point of fact, she asked, “Do you think someone’s playing us?” When Sally grew concerned, Rosemary added, “Not that I mind. If they want to play us, let them. I just like to know what we’re dealing with.”

  Kaye didn’t buy it. “If they’re setting up a mystery on purpose, they’ve gone to a lot of trouble, and put themselves through what looks like a miserable time.”

  “I’ve got to say, they weren’t thinking the way people do ordinarily,” Andrew reported. “Sounded like hive-mind thinking to me, and that’s something I only get when I’m unfortunately close to angry mobs.”

  Judge’s eyes widened. “Does that happen to you a lot?”

  Andrew shrugged. “It’s happened once or twice. I was pretty unpopular in Chicago for a few months. Anyway, there’s something really odd happening here and it seems to be affecting everyone in town except Ardelia.” He whispered her name when he said it.

  “I wonder if this is the problem that Cloda was talking about. The thing she needs help with,” thought Rosemary aloud.

  Resentfully Sally muttered, “I think another one of her little spells has gotten out of control. This chick I talked to last night? She didn’t even seem to be present in her own body, and I don’t think she could remember how to use a phone.”

  “Our all-terrain vehicle should be here soon,” Rosemary said to reassure the young woman. “We’ll find out what Cloda has to say about this. The damned weather is really horsing things up for us.”

  Andrew had begun to wander around, looking at each house individually, and every now and then he’d touch an object and cock his head to the side, as if listening for sounds. “This town is in awful shape. There’s a nasty pall hanging over it. But if it’s coming from a specific source, I can’t find it.” Looking up at the team, he then admitted, “Of course, with the amount of water in the air and who-knows-what kind of protection spells all around, I guess that doesn’t mean much. Can Brentley do any better?”

  Stefan shook his head. “Well, not really. However - just to be safe - I’m going to ask him to watch out for us, in case we start acting strange. If there’s some kind of actual spell work in place, it’s probably meant for living people and he’s probably immune to the influence.”

  “Yes, yes, give him a safety word,” said Rosemary. “How clever. Let’s use landshark, that’s always a good one. If Brentley says landshark, it means we’re all to get in the van and leave Slope.”

  “Well that doesn’t seem -” Kaye began, but then sighed and smiled at Greg, who was of course filming them all. “Yes, what a great idea!”

  Judge eyed the pink phone Sally held, his attention having been drawn by the cat stickers. Then he asked, “Can we power it up and look at what’s on it?”

  Glances were exchanged, as everyone quietly wondered if opening someone else’s cell phone was really an ethical thing to do. Then Sally said, “She gave it to me, after all. Maybe she wanted me to look at it.” Brightening a bit, she added, “I did promise her I’d charge it for her.”

  “Give it here, then,” said Greg. “Let’s open it up.”

  *****

  The phone was a common model and soon enough, Greg was able to produce a compatible charger out of his seemingly bottomless bag of technology. They plugged Tina’s phone into the wall in the men’s bedroom, and then gathered around to see if they could get it powered on and working. The phone came t
o life with no trouble, but then threw up password screen.

  “Password protected,” said Rosemary, handing it hopefully to Andrew.

  He held the phone for a moment, his eyes going distant. He had their answer fast. “Ermine, but it’s spelled wrong,” he said after a few seconds. “Wait.” He perused the phone’s touch screen carefully and mimicked some movement over its keyboard picture. “Ermine with a number three used for the letter ‘e’. Her pet cat’s name? Huh.” In a short time, he had the phone cooperating.

  “She has a cat somewhere?” Judge looked fretful.

  “It’s a childhood pet,” said Andrew. “Long gone.”

  “You can pick up passwords!” exclaimed Sally. “That’s incredible and terrible!”

  “You better stay off my phone,” Judge warned. “I have secrets in there that’ll take years off your life.”

  “I use my powers for good, not evil,” Andrew told them. “Here, Greg, you’re the guru – get us into Tina’s stuff.”

  Rosemary felt a flash of pride and intense pleasure; the pride, because Andrew was so good at this kind of stuff, and the pleasure, because he had just picked up the woman’s name and said it aloud, probably without even realizing it, and she found that casual mastery to be sexy as hell. Sally was not so subtle, exclaiming, “Her name is Tina!”

  “Oh, yes,” said Andrew. “I suppose that it is.”

  Meanwhile, Greg worked quickly and they were treated to a short contacts list, page after page of phone lottery games, and long, sad series of photographs of whatever Tina had done in 2013 and 2014, which included a good number of selfies taken in her bathroom mirror, looking a whole lot healthier and plumper than the woman they had just seen wandering off into the forest. So many pictures: meals she’d eaten, various people who must be friends and family. A seemingly endless round of holiday pictures and then another seemingly endless line of a small town high school graduation. Here were some photos of a picnic outing, and here were some of a nicely remodeled classic car on the dirt road of Slope. From what they could tell, the phone had not been used since the previous October.