“How do we know he’s in a nearby hospital?”
“It would need to be somewhere close by for him to be communicating with you. That takes a huge amount of energy.”
“Besides,” Sarah pointed out, “his plane was in the area when it went down. He would have had to come in somewhere fairly close by.”
“Then wouldn’t the police have found him? Wouldn’t they have tied together the man who went missing from a plane crash site and the one who washed up on the beach?”
The two witches looked at each other. Something passed between them, but Reg couldn’t make out what it was. They knew more than they were telling her.
“He’s close by,” Sarah said. “I’m absolutely sure of that.”
Reg took out her phone and looked at it. A moment later, the screen lit up and it started to ring. Letticia looked at her sourly.
“That’s a neat trick.”
Reg remembered that Letticia didn’t like technology, particularly cellphones. But that wasn’t Reg’s fault, and they were in Reg’s house. She wasn’t going to live like a homeless person just because Letticia couldn’t abide a ringing phone.
The caller ID told her it was Corvin. Reg turned the screen away from Sarah so she wouldn’t see who it was. She needed to take the call. Twice she had met with Corvin and their plans had been foiled by Starlight, and she didn’t want him getting the wrong impression. Playing hard-to-get might work with some guys, but she had a feeling that Corvin wasn’t one of them. His ego was too big to be chasing her around making a fool of himself. If she didn’t make some sign to him, he would move on to the next woman on his list.
“Sorry, I need to take this,” Reg said, and swiped the screen to answer the call. She said “Hello,” but didn’t pursue the conversation until she was in her bedroom and the door was shut. “Sorry about that,” she whispered to Corvin. “I have visitors and I needed to find somewhere private to talk.”
“Good,” Corvin purred into the phone. “I’m glad that we’re alone. Who is visiting? Anyone I know? A client or something else?”
“Sarah and a friend of hers.”
Corvin waited, not saying anything else. Reg wondered whether she should tell him any more details.
“Letticia,” she offered finally. Maybe Corvin would know her. Maybe he wouldn’t. Reg didn’t have to be guilty of leaking any details to him. Just because she had mentioned Letticia’s name.
“Letticia?”
“I don’t know her last name, I don’t think Sarah said. An older woman.”
“She’s the leader of Sarah’s coven.”
“Oh. Well, sure. I guess that’s why Sarah went to her for advice.”
“What advice did Sarah need?”
Reg was uncomfortable. “Why do you need to know? I thought you were calling to talk to me, but if you want Sarah I can put her on the phone. It’s my understanding that Letticia doesn’t like phones, so if you want to talk to her, you’ll have to come here.”
“Is that an invitation?”
Reg paused. “No. I was being facetious.”
“I could come there and be facetious too.”
“No. Please don’t. It’s crowded enough here already.”
“Crowded? Who else is there?”
“Sarah and Letticia. And Starlight. And me. That’s more than enough for this little place.” She almost added “and Warren,” but managed to bite her tongue.
“So what did Sarah need the old crone for?”
“Isn’t that sort of rude? Whether you like the woman or not, it’s really poor taste to be calling her names…”
“What?” Corvin laughed. “I’m not being insulting, Reg. A crone is a term of respect for an older witch. Sort of like an empty-nester, only wiser.”
“Oh.” Reg added that one to her mental file. She needed to do more extensive research if she didn’t want to get caught up on things like that. She didn’t claim to be an expert, but people were going to expect her to have at least some understanding of the culture in Black Sands. “I didn’t know that.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to, since you’ve just recently started to pursue your calling.”
“I’d like to get together again,” Reg said, before he could ask her anything else. “I assume that’s why you called?”
There was a scratching on the bedroom door. Reg ignored it. Starlight didn’t need to follow her everywhere she went. If she opened the door for him, he’d only turn around and decide he wanted to leave again two minutes later, when he discovered that she didn’t have any food or entertainment for him.
“I would like to get together again,” Corvin agreed. “Are you feeling better?”
“Better?”
“You thought you might be coming down with something. You were tired, not sleeping well.”
“Oh, that. Well… still not any better, but I’m trying to just push through and pretend I’m not. Sarah and her friend have some ideas.”
She made it sound like they were coming up with an herbal cure for her, rather than that they were determined to find a dead man who wasn’t necessarily dead.
“That’s good. I hope you’re feeling more like yourself soon. So, are you free to go out for dinner tonight? Maybe a movie, if you don’t think you’d fall asleep in the middle of it.”
“Um… I don’t think tonight is going to work, actually. But I didn’t want you to think I was putting you off. I do want to do something, I just have other plans for the rest of today.”
“Things don’t really get popping in this town until after midnight. We could still do something later on.”
His voice was soothing. He didn’t have quite the same presence over the phone when she couldn’t see and smell him, but she still ached to see him again and to continue where they had left off.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to stay up that late. I really am sorry.”
“Don’t worry your head about it. We’ll work things out. Where are Sarah and Letticia taking you tonight?”
Reg opened her mouth to answer, then realized that he was fishing again. Why was it so important for him to know all of the details of her life? She didn’t insist on knowing how he spent every minute of his day. She wasn’t even sure there was such a thing as a full-time warlock. Did he just do magical work, or did he have to have a day job to pay the bills? She pictured him in jeans and a tight shirt, ready to do some manual labor to make ends meet, and gave herself goosebumps.
“Call me tomorrow,” she told Corvin. “Actually, don’t bother calling me, just come on over tomorrow, and we’ll work something out. Okay?”
“Alright,” he sounded pleased with that, even if he hadn’t managed to worm any further information out of her. She would need to be more careful about what she said about him. She didn’t know if he liked to know things just for himself, or to spread gossip, or because he was a reporter for some community newspaper that needed a big scoop. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Regina Rawlins.”
She blushed at the way he said her name in a low, seductive tone, and then he was gone. Reg patted her face. She was going to need to splash cold water on herself again, but not to wake herself up, this time.
She went over to the door and opened it, finding Starlight sitting on the other side, his ears back so he looked like an owl, apparently not impressed with being shut out of the room.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. You don’t even want to be in here,” Reg motioned to the room. “You just want to be in here because it’s where I am.”
He yowled at her in a particularly vexed way and entered the room but, as she expected, he didn’t jump up on the bed to go to sleep, but immediately circled back around to Reg and brushed past her legs, his fur tickling her skin. She watched him closely, not about to be lulled into a false sense of security and get bitten on the leg again.
“You don’t fool me, puss. You probably know I was on the phone with Corvin, and you don’t want me to get together with him again.”
Star
light looked up at her, clearly communicating his disdain.
“Corvin is the reason you got that piece of hamburger today. However much of it you got away from me. And if we go out again tomorrow night, maybe I’ll bring you something home again. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
He sat down and regarded her.
“No cat is going to tell me what I can and can’t do,” Reg told him. “No more biting, or there will be no table scraps for you. It’s no wonder you got sent to the pound.”
After she said the words, she remembered why he had been at the shelter, and regretted them. He hadn’t been given up by an owner who couldn’t stand his hijinks anymore. His owner had died, and there had been no one else to take him. As a foster child, Reg could relate to that feeling of being unwanted and abandoned. Just discarded, of so little value that no one would take her for more than a short period of time.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Starlight,” she told him, bending down to scratch his ears and his chin. “I didn’t mean that. I’m glad you’re here and I’m not sending you back to the shelter. I know it wasn’t your fault that you were there, and it’s not your fault that we haven’t been getting along with each other either. We just both have different expectations. It can’t be easy for you, all of the strange comings and goings around here. You just want to sit down and relax, and there are all of these weird people coming and going.”
He purred his forgiveness, rubbing against her hand and sucking up the attention. The poor beast was just starved for affection. If she gave him lots of attention and watched for those times when he was feeling overwhelmed by company, maybe everything would be just fine. She’d figure out what things triggered his bad behavior and change them.
Reg laughed at herself. All through her childhood, she’d been the subject of those evaluations. The ABCs of behavior modification. What is the antecedent? What behavior does it trigger? What are the consequences of the behavior? Change the environment, and you could fix the child’s behavior. Only, it was never quite that cut-and-dried. People were messy and behaved in unexpected ways. Reg liked to know what reactions she was going to get from her behavior, and she didn’t want some do-gooder mixing it all up. Changing Reg’s environment and people’s reactions to her behavior drove her out of her mind. She needed things to be predictable and within her control.
“Cats can’t understand people and cats aren’t psychic,” she told Starlight. “So why am I still talking to you?”
But she knew exactly why. Because once Reg was finished with talking on the phone and expounding her philosophies to Starlight, she was going to have to go back out to talk to the two witches, and things were going to spin out of Reg’s control once again.
⋆ Chapter Fourteen ⋆
“Okay,” Reg faced the two crones. “So what do I do?”
“You don’t need to do anything yet,” Sarah said. “You can just enjoy a nice, relaxing ride, and Letticia and I will take you to the hospitals. We’ll make sure he’s safe and that his loved ones know he is alive.”
It sounded simple. But Reg had a feeling that it wasn’t going to be anything of the sort. Her life had not been simple since arriving in Black Sands.
“You don’t want me to drive?” Reg checked. If Letticia didn’t like technology, she probably didn’t want to drive, and Reg had no idea whether Sarah drove. Maybe she just used a broomstick.
“I’m quite capable of driving,” Sarah assured her.
They traipsed out to the garage and Reg saw the big, black jeep. Somehow, it wasn’t what she had pictured Sarah driving. An old station wagon, maybe. Something understated. Letticia hopped into the front passenger seat, leaving Reg to select a seat in the second row. There were no seatbelts, but she was sure she would be just fine with Sarah driving.
Until Sarah actually started driving.
Reversing out of the garage, the tires squealed, and Reg was thrown forward against Letticia’s seat, bruising her mouth and nose.
“Oh, I’m sorry, dear,” Sarah apologized blithely. “Hang on to something.”
Reg did. She hung on for dear life all the way to the first hospital. It wasn’t exactly the nice, relaxing ride that Sarah had suggested it would be. She was relieved when they reached the hospital and immediately jumped out, needing solid ground under her feet. Her face was throbbing and she was feeling dangerously carsick.
Letticia stayed in the jeep. Sarah flicked on her flashers and climbed out.
“Do you feel something, Reg? I had hoped that we would just be able to stay in the car unless you felt like Warren was here.”
Reg leaned against a pillar. “I needed to get out for a minute.”
“Of course,” Sarah agreed, frowning.
A white compact car pulled up behind the jeep. Reg heard it thunk into park and heard the door slam after the driver unfolded himself from the seat. She concentrated on breathing long, slow breaths.
“You are a menace on the streets, woman,” a familiar voice criticized. “They should take away your license!”
“I don’t have one.” Sarah smiled at him.
It was Corvin. Reg stared at him. Was he part of a hallucination? Was she really that sick? Maybe the whole thing was just a fevered nightmare. When she woke up from it, everything would be back to normal.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, in spite of herself.
“He followed us,” Sarah said. “You really shouldn’t have taken his call.”
“How did you know…? And I didn’t tell him where we were going!”
“You didn’t need to.”
Did Corvin have some mystical extrasensory powers as well as his natural attraction? Had he read her mind?
“Everyone in the neighborhood can hear when Sarah’s out in that deathtrap,” Corvin pointed out. “She’s not exactly difficult to track.”
Sarah sighed. “What are you doing here, Corvin Hunter? You don’t have any business with us.”
“For one thing, I want to make sure that you don’t kill my date before I get a chance to see her again.”
Sarah eyed Reg, obviously disappointed with her. She had, after all, warned Reg that Corvin was dangerous and that she shouldn’t be seeing him. So far, Reg had done nothing but flout her advice in that department. But Sarah didn’t repeat her warnings in front of Corvin.
“So, what’s going on?” Corvin asked casually, looking at the hospital. “Are you here to visit someone?”
Reg wasn’t sure what to say about it. She took a couple more deep breaths. The nausea was starting to fade. Corvin looked from Reg to Sarah, waiting for an answer. At first, Sarah seemed to have no intention of giving Corvin any information. But as he stared at her, Reg saw her face begin to flush. He remembered how Sarah said that even as an old woman, she still felt Corvin’s pull.
“We’re just looking for someone,” she told Corvin, patting at her hair. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Looking for who?” Corvin prodded.
Reg turned away from them, hoping it would help her to resist Corvin. She could still feel his eyes on her and could still smell his rose scent.
“He’s not here,” she told Sarah. “We should go. And you…” Reg looked back toward Corvin, but stared way past him, off into the distance, to avoid his pull. “You can stop following us, or we’ll call the police.”
“Oh…” He chuckled. “You’ll call the police, will you? And just what do you think they’re going to do?”
“They can tell you to back off and help me to get a restraining order,” Reg growled. “You can’t stalk three defenseless women all over Florida.”
“All over Florida? A restraining order wouldn’t be valid outside this jurisdiction. And if you think that the police would be able to do anything to stop me…” He laughed again. “That’s not the way it works around here, Regina.”
Reg looked at Sarah, not understanding. Sarah sighed and shook her head. “I’ll explain it to you in the car.”
Without look
ing at Corvin again, trying hard to avoid breathing in his scent, Reg got back into the jeep. Sarah went around to her side and climbed up into the driver’s seat. Reg watched her close her door and put her seatbelt on. They pulled out of the loading zone, and Corvin’s car fell in behind them.
“So explain,” Reg ordered. “Why is it he doesn’t have to listen to the police? Is he some big crime boss around here?”
“You’ve felt his influence,” Letticia said. “Do you think the police would not? Do you think they would be able to resist him? It takes strength to be able to walk away from him.” She looked over her shoulder back at Reg, as if evaluating her. “Few women would have what it takes to push back against him.”
“What about men?”
“His natural influence there is less, but still substantial. And combine his charm with a small spell or two…”
“So you’re telling me he can control the police? He doesn’t have to listen to anybody?”
“It would take a lot to convince the police of anything. Him standing with a smoking gun over a dead body, maybe. As far as getting them to stop him from following you, no. There are rules in our community, though, and he could be taken before his coven if he broke them.”
“But him stalking and harassing us isn’t against the rules?”
“No. You can put up wards against him. Learn to use your powers to protect yourself against his glamour. But you can’t restrict his freedom of movement if he hasn’t done any harm.”
Reg’s head spun. She rested it against the inside of the jeep, then decided that was a really bad idea when Sarah bumped over a curb going around the corner. She leaned back against the headrest and held both hands to her temples.
Magic wasn’t real. Spirits weren’t real. She didn’t have any powers and neither did Corvin or anyone else. Yes, he was handsome and had natural charm and powers of persuasion, but that was all it was. There was nothing unnatural or paranormal about it. Despite what the self-proclaimed witches said, Reg could go to the police at any time to deal with Corvin. She just didn’t want anything to do with the police. She didn’t like that she was already on their radar when she had only been in town for a few days. She didn’t want to attract further attention.
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