Witchery, p.10
Witchery, page 10
"Come to thy priestess; come, fierce and strong; come, live within me; come, we are one."
The words wound themselves around his mind. The final three kept echoing in an ever-fading whisper and he found himself unsure whether it was real or some trick of the night, and the whispers of the waves and the wind. His knees bent without his permission and he sank into the sand, watching her in silence. The sun breathed its last and vanished beneath the waves at the same moment..
Slowly, she lowered her arms. Her hair danced in the wind that was suddenly more powerful than before. She stood for a long time, facing the sea, meditating or pondering in silence. Sometimes, he thought he saw her lips moving, as if she were speaking to someone. Time ticked by, but he didn't make a sound. He couldn't bring himself to interrupt, wasn't even certain he would be able to if he tried. What she was doing seemed... sacred. And he got the feeling he was witnessing one of the mysteries he had come here hoping to solve. So he watched as she moved around the circle, wafting incense smoke, tossing something—a glittering stone, he thought—into the sea. Finally, she straightened and lifted her arms again.
"Thank you, my Lady. Merry meet and merry part. With me always, in my heart. Hail and farewell."
He could see something leave her body, perhaps just tension. Or maybe something more. The glow of the firelight seemed to dim just a little, but that could have been his imagination. She walked forward then, to one of the four candles, held her arms out wide, and slowly drew them together, as if closing a pair of curtains. She said something too softly for him to hear as she snuffed the flame, stood still for a moment, then repeated the action at the next candle, and then the next, and the last. Then she walked around the circle of seashells with her palm flat toward the sand, and finally she moved out into the foamy water that washed gently up onto the shore, knelt there, and pressed her palms into the wet sand. A wave rolled in, washing up to her elbows, soaking the dress where she knelt. Yet she remained until it seemed she had finished whatever it was she was doing. Rising, she brushed the sand away from her hands and her dress, turned, and looked him straight in the eye.
"Thank you for not interrupting."
He blinked, surprised. "You knew I was here the whole time," he said, and it wasn't really a question. He had a feeling this woman was as aware of him as he was of her.
She smiled. The firelight on her face did something to her eyes. She'd been beautiful to him when he'd seen her at the studio today. Beautiful, though it made no sense. It wasn't on the surface, certainly not when she'd stood flanked by two of the most glamorous beauties in the business. His sense of her beauty was based on something inside her, something that could not be seen.
Now, it was more. Now, like this, she was stunning. Inside and out.
"You can come out by the fire, if you like. I've already taken up the circle." As she spoke, she walked back toward the fire. "Grab those two folding chairs and bring them along, will you?"
He glanced to his left, saw two beach chairs sitting there. He picked them up and carried them with him across the sand to where she waited, and set them near the fire.
She sat down, and he did the same. He couldn't seem to stop looking at her, trying to nail what it was that drew him. There was something wildly attractive about her. Forbidden and natural. Her eyebrows were fuller than most women wore them these days, and her hair—God, her hair was everywhere. Untamed, long and wavy, its color a lustrous honey-tinted brown that glowed bronze in the firelight. Her feet were bare, coated in damp sand. Her breasts were heavy and unbound underneath the loose, flowing dress she wore. He liked that best of all. The weight of them.
He shouldn't be noticing, he reminded himself. She worked for him now.
"I'm surprised to see you here," she said. Was she nervous? He didn't know what the hell this was, but it made him nervous, too.
"I told you I'd see you later. I always say what I mean." He reached up impulsively, to brush a bit of sand from her cheek. But the moment his fingers touched her skin, she stiffened and pulled back, her brows drawing together in a frown.
"I'm sorry." He drew his hand away, held it in midair. "I swear I'm not one of those casting couch assholes you hear about. I don't do that. Never have. Never will."
"I know that."
"How on earth could you know that?"
She smiled mysteriously, as if that was her answer. "It's not you. There's something else..." She looked at him with narrowed eyes, then said, "Stand up a second, will you Alex?"
He was puzzled, but he rose. She did, too, going closer to the fire and bending to pick up a large shell with some dried leaves inside. She took a flaming stick from the fire and touched it to the leaves. They blazed a little. She blew gently until the flames died and smoke billowed. Then she moved toward him, knelt in front of him, and blew the smoke at his legs and feet.
Alex closed his eyes in a mingling chaos of anguish and desire. God, she was killing him.
She moved behind him, still blowing. Then higher, her breaths pushing smoke toward his thighs and buttocks. She came around to the front of him again, blowing gently at his groin.
His hands twitched, wanting to bury themselves in her hair. He fought the urge and hoped she didn't notice how turned on he was, but hell, he was only human, and there was an earthy wild woman kneeling in front of him blowing on his crotch.
She stood, still moving around him, still blowing gently, wafting smoke over his belly and chest, his back and sides, his arms and shoulders, his neck, face, and head.
When she finished, she blew a little smoke at his chair and the area where he'd been sitting. "Better?" she asked.
He looked down at himself, frowning. When he managed to look past the fact that he was more aroused than he'd been in a decade, he realized he felt... different. As if he'd just stepped out of the shower. And the dull ache that had been knotting his lower back all day was gone. "Yeah," he said. "I do feel better."
"You should. You were practically reeking with negative energy."
"Yeah?" He sniffed his shirtsleeve. "And now I'm reeking of...?"
"Sage." She smiled at him, sitting down in her chair, nodding for him to do the same. "Who have you been hanging around with lately, anyway?"
"What do you mean?"
She shrugged. "Well, I'd hate to think all that darkness in your aura was coming from you. Actually, I know it's not, or I wouldn't be so—" She bit her lip, stopped herself. "You must be picking it up from somewhere else."
"You wouldn't be so...what?" He searched her eyes and wondered which one of them was going to be the first to admit that they were each sitting here thinking about ripping the other's clothes off.
She averted her gaze. "Nothing. I just... nothing."
No, he decided. He wouldn't bring it up, either. "Could it be the actresses?"
"They're self-centered and vain, but I don't think they're malicious. This feels... dark."
He shrugged, averting his eyes, ignoring the warning bells going off in his mind. He'd been feeling the same way himself for weeks now. As if there was some shadow clinging to him like a parasite. He was tired, moody, didn't feel well. He kept thinking it might be the house. But damn, he didn't want it to be the house. He loved the house.
Time to change the subject. "So, what were you doing when I arrived? Magic?"
"Not really."
It was not the specific answer he would have liked. "Listen, you have the job. This isn't a test. And just so we're clear on this, if you send me packing and tell me never to show up at your place again, you'll still have the job. There are no catches, no hooks. But I...want to know more."
"About what I was doing when you arrived?"
He held her eyes. "For starters." She just looked at him, waiting, as if she knew he wasn't being honest. "All right," he admitted. "What I really want is the truth. What really goes on?"
Her brows rose. He decided he liked them. You couldn't tell what a woman was thinking when her eyebrows had been plucked, waxed, colored, and perfected. Hers were expressive. Now they were expressing—what? Surprise?
"What really goes on?" she repeated.
"Not the kinds of things you would normally reveal to an outsider. I want the truth. I want to know what it's really like. Ritual magic. Covens. Spells. Curses. All of it."
She lowered her eyes. "I'm not sure you have the stomach for it, Alex."
His gut knotted up when her lips formed his name and her voice spoke it. He tried to shake off the feeling. What he was asking her was important. More important than she could know. "I have the stomach for anything you can dish out."
She tipped her head to one side, meeting his eyes once again. Hers glittered with something close to anger. "Are you sure? We're talking about some pretty heavy stuff here. Bloodletting. Ritual orgies. Animal sacrifice. The Scourge."
He held her gaze, his own unflinching. "I can handle it."
She pursed her lips and turned her head away. "We don't do any of that stuff, Alex. Where do people get those ideas? This is a spiritual belief system, not a cult." Lowering her head, she shook it slowly. "You created the show—are you telling me you didn't do any research at all?"
"Of course I did. I just—lately I've learned some things that contradict what I thought I knew."
"From whom?"
He shook his head. He wasn't going there, not with her.
"Tell you what," she said. "I'll loan you a book or two, so you can read up on the subject. And then we'll talk some more. All right?"
She's lying.
He frowned, ignoring that whisper in his mind. "You're going to give me one of those light, fluffy, 'harm none' books, aren't you?"
"Harm none is the core tenet of the Craft, Alex."
"So you all keep telling me."
"We all?" she asked. Then she frowned. "You sound as if you've been doing some digging on your own."
He nodded, getting to his feet, frustrated and angry. Even more angry that he didn't want to leave this spot, this woman. He wanted to stay. For her, not the information he sought. "I really hoped you'd be different. Willing to tell me the truth," he said. "I'm disappointed that you're only giving me the same party line as the rest of the so-called Witches in town."
"So-called?" She got up as well. "Maybe if you told me just what it is you're looking for?"
He sighed, shaking his head. "Look, Melissa, not every character in this show is a do-gooder. I mean, we need opposing forces. Villains. The polar opposite of good Witches who play around with white light and moonbeams."
She stood very still, pinning him to the spot with her eyes. "Don't mess with malevolent magic. You don't want that kind of energy clinging to you. Trust me on that." Then she frowned. "You've already been messing with it, haven't you? That's where all that negative energy came from."
He held her gaze. Eyes like black velvet, deep and dark and potent. "Don't be so dramatic. It's not as if any of this is for real."
She closed her eyes as if praying for patience. "It's for real." Her words emerged as a whisper, one that sent shivers of reaction creeping up his spine, into his nape, tingling along his scalp. But not so much as when she opened her eyes again and they locked onto his, held them.
Something moved between them. Some energy he couldn't have put a name to even if he'd tried. It tugged him bodily, so much so that he swayed forward. He gripped her upper arms, and she tipped her face up. And then he lowered his head to kiss her.
She turned her face away, so his mouth only grazed her cheek.
"I don't... I can't..." She drew a breath. "Go, please," she whispered.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean–" God, the woman pulled him in like gravity, and if he wasn't careful, he'd be the next me-too villain, and deservedly. What the hell was this? Since when did he hire a woman he knew nothing about and proceed to make a move on her? It was wrong on so many levels he couldn't count them all. "I'm sorry."
He turned and hurried back up the stone steps, around the little beach house, and to his car. He would get his answers, just apparently not from her. She was unwilling to give them, so far, and it was too dangerous to be alone with her.
He returned to the mansion that belonged to him now, pulled into the driveway, and sat there for a long moment, staring up at the huge granite stones of the place. He thought about the events of the past several weeks, as if thinking about them, analyzing them, would cause them to make sense. They didn't. They still didn't.
And now there was yet another inexplicable event unfolding in his life. An attraction to a woman he'd just met that felt like the most powerful force in the entire universe. Maybe he needed therapy.
CHAPTER THREE
Mists rose from the river far below, engulfing the suspension bridge and the couple who stood upon it. Melissa stared through the rising, newborn clouds, at the man who bore a striking resemblance to Alexander Quinn, except that he wore black ritual robes and an inverted pentacle of solid gold with diamonds winking at each of its five points.
A woman stood near the railing, her back to the man, her flowing white dress dancing in the moisture-laden breeze like a living thing. Her wild golden hair was damp with the kiss of the air. Melissa couldn't see her face, but she knew the woman was weeping.
The man spoke, though his lips never moved. Go on. Do it. Do it, now! He pulled something from his pocket, a small white-robed doll with hair like the woman's. Do it! He shoved the doll toward the railing.
The woman began to climb over it.
"No," Melissa whispered, then she shouted, "No, wait!"
But neither of them could hear her. It felt as if she wasn't really there, but was watching them the way she might watch actors on a silver screen.
The man moved closer to the rail, held the doll out over the water. As he did, a pair of hands, strong astral hands, attached to nothing and no one, appeared behind the woman, hovering above her shoulders.
The woman turned, as if suddenly aware of the presence, and Melissa gasped as she saw her face. It was almost like looking into a mirror.
Do it! the man commanded, and then he flung the doll over the rail.
The astral hands pushed her.
She fell silently, the only sound was her white dress fluttering behind her. Like an angel cast from heaven, she spiraled downward. The water opened where she plunged into it, then closed around her, swallowing her down.
Melissa screamed.
The sound of her own voice shocked her awake, and she found herself sitting bolt upright in her own bed. Her skin was damp with sweat, her heart pounding, as she looked around the room.
But the room was real. She was there, in the beach house, and the rest had just been a dream.
"No," she said softly. "Not a dream. Something else—a prophecy, or a memory, or something—it was too vivid to be just a dream."
She glanced at her nightstand. The clock read 2:00 a.m. A soft tone emanated from somewhere in the living room, startling her for just a second, before she recognized the familiar sound of phone telling her she had a text. Sighing, she got out of the bed, padded into the living room where she'd left the phone, and scrolled to the messages. It was an audio text. She hit the playback button, and then shivered at the sound of Alexander Quinn's deep voice.
"We're meeting with the writers in the morning, Melissa. Ten a.m., my office."
Pushing a hand through her hair, she wondered if she should just quit now and have it over with. She wandered through the living room, toward the table in the back where she'd dropped the reams he'd given her the day before. As she did, she looked up, through the glass doors.
There was something on the beach—a woman with long golden hair and a flowing white gown.
Her heart tripped and she lunged forward, hands pressing to the glass, eyes straining.
There was nothing there. Maybe it had just been a reflection, a trick of the moonlight on the water, or a stray light on her glass doors. But she couldn't quite shake the feeling that she'd just seen the woman from her dream standing in the sacred space of Melissa's own circle.
She checked her locks, just in case. Then she picked up the manuscript and took it with her back to her bed, where she felt safe.
She wanted to do this job right—and for more reasons than just the money. She'd made a promise to her Goddess that if she could land this position, she would do it justice, set the record straight on prime-time network television. For her Craft, for her fellow Witches, for all those who'd died due to ignorance in the past. She was going to shine a light. She was going to make a difference.
She would not quit.
It wasn't easy, forcing Alex and that troubling dream from her mind. Something was going on with him—with the two of them, maybe. She felt it in her gut, and she never ignored her intuition. It was usually dead-on. She was as afraid of him as she was drawn to him. She knew he felt that attraction, too. The air between them practically sparked when he was close to her.
What was the dream then? A warning? Was Alex to become her lover or her killer? Or both? Or was the dream just a manifestation of her own fears of failure and of this sudden, potent desire?
She couldn't dismiss him or the questions from her mind, only push them to the back long enough for her to do her work. She spent the rest of the night with her copy of the season's story arc, a stack of episode-by-episode breakdowns, and a red pen, which ran out of ink, so she had to finish in blue.
She wasn't exactly fresh when she turned the final page at 7:45 a.m. But at least she was prepared. She spent a half hour doing yoga, fifteen minutes in the shower, and just had time for her morning ritual before she had to begin the transformation into working-girl Melissa. The change involved taming her wild hair into a nice neat bun, corralling her breasts within the confines of a bra, putting on a nice, slightly more civilized-looking outfit that included an ivory-colored sleeveless blouse, a blue broomstick skirt, and a pair of straw-like sandals.
Then she drove her beloved lime-green Bug into the city, into the traffic, whispering prayers of protection to keep from being hit by the frantic driving tactics common to L.A.
