Charmed by the Salem Witch

by Debbie Herbert

  “Beautiful, mysterious, shy yet strong, smart—”

  “Stop.” Sarah clamped her hands over her ears and laughed shakily. “That kind of charm might work in Alabama, but up here, we tend to take things much more literally.”

  Tanner leaned over and traced her lips with his fingers again. Bolts of desire made her thighs clench and her toes curl.

  “Do you know what you do to me?” he asked, his voice suddenly husky.

  “Same thing when you touch me. But you read my journal, so you already know that.”

  He gave a wicked grin. “‘Mister Tall, Dark, and Handsome’?”

  She swatted his hand away. “Don’t you dare throw my words in my face,” she said with a groan. “You’re in so much trouble.”

  “What are you going to do?” His breath fanned her face. “Spank me?”

  Sarah buried her face in her hands, torn between embarrassment and amusement. “You wish,” she mumbled.

  “Don’t be shy with me, darlin’.”

  The waitress plopped the bill on the table. By the smirk on her face, she’d overheard them.

  So what? Sarah lifted her chin and watched as Tanner quickly paid. They left the small Italian diner with its smell of garlic and meatballs and scurried to his truck, fighting a blast of chill air.

  Tanner hurriedly cranked the truck and turned up the heat. “Should be warm in a few minutes,” he said apologetically.

  “I know a way we can warm up.”

  Holy crap. Had she really said that out loud?

  Apparently so. Tanner grinned and pulled her next to him. His mouth was on hers, hot and demanding, and she responded with no hesitation. His kiss was as electrifying as it’d been last night. He drew her tighter, and then she was sitting on his lap, arms wrapped around his neck.

  She couldn’t get enough. It would never be enough.

  His breath mingled with hers, and the windows fogged. They were in their own little world, creating their own kind of magic. Tanner’s hands crept up her sides, past her rib cage, and brushed the sides of her breasts. She moaned against his mouth, and her hands began to explore, traveling the opposite direction of his—down past a broad chest and flat abs. His breathing grew heavier, and his head leaned back against the headrest, eyes closed. A few inches further down, her hands closed over the erection straining against his jeans.

  A loud pop exploded by her ears.

  “Hey, get a room!” someone shouted, rapping his knuckles on the passenger side window. Loud laughter ensued, and several people piled into the car next to theirs, slamming their doors shut.

  Sarah was out of Tanner’s lap in two seconds flat, huddling in her own seat, her head in her hands. How freaking mortifying.

  Tanner placed a hand on her thigh. “Hey, are you okay?”

  “No,” she groaned. Was it possible to die of embarrassment? Because if it was, she was a marked woman.

  “Sarah.” His lips were against her cheek, and he kissed her once more. A gentle, tender kiss that made her tingle all over again, in a different way. A way she’d never felt with another man.

  And that feeling was more exciting, and terrifying, than anything she’d ever experienced.

  4

  The background noise of the TV and chattering students filled the common area lounge. For the past couple of weeks, Tanner and Sarah met here during his afternoon office break. Their schedules didn’t mesh for lunch dates, and although they went out every night, Tanner enjoyed these meetings. He couldn’t see enough of her. His friends and family back home would be shocked if they knew how serious he’d become about one woman.

  Ignoring the din, he scanned the clusters of people and spotted Sarah in a corner of the room. She twisted a lock of her long hair while gazing out the window, and he knew something troubled her. Tanner hurried over and kissed the top of her head before grabbing the chair beside hers. “So serious. What’s wrong?”

  Her face momentarily lit up. “You know me that well?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He might have temporarily dropped out of college, and his grades were never stellar, but he was an A-plus student when it came to Sarah. He never tired of studying her features, the play of light and shadow in her gray eyes, the way the sunlight captured glints of burgundy in her dark brown hair. The shape and feel of her slight hips, the soft mounds of her breasts . . . stop it. Now wasn’t the time.

  “You have dark circles under your eyes. Another bad dream last night?”

  She sighed. “No, but I didn’t sleep well. I—I felt violated in my own room. Somebody’s been going through my things again.”

  Damn. “Anything missing?”

  “Nothing major—or private—like my grimoire or journal. It’s little things, stuff that I could have easily lost—a cheap comb, a pair of nail clippers, a tube of cherry lip balm.”

  “Strange,” he agreed. “But if that’s the case, why are you sure someone’s been in your stuff?”

  “Everything’s out of order. Not like it’s been hit by a cyclone, but books are stacked in a different place, papers are in different drawers, my folded clothes are a bit mussed. I know it sounds crazy, but I can just tell someone’s been there.”

  “It’s not crazy. Trust your instincts.” Whatever was going on, he didn’t like it. “Has anyone else complained of this? Maybe you should report it to the RA.”

  “No.” She crossed her legs and folded her arms at her waist, as if shrinking her very presence. “I don’t want to draw attention to myself.”

  “Don’t be that way,” he said sharply—more sharply than he’d intended. His anger wasn’t directed toward Sarah; it was toward all the foster families who had demonstrated nothing but indifference to a sensitive young teen who needed love, or at the very least, friendship and understanding. Instead, she’d learned to withdraw, to not be a ‘problem’ or cause trouble. As if a cloak of invisibility meant survival, acceptance at a very basic level.

  Sarah blinked at his harsh tone. “What way?”

  “Afraid of what people think. You have every right to be at this college. No one’s going to consider you a problem for seeking help.”

  “Maybe. I’ll think about it. If—”

  “Hey, there! Whatcha up to?” A tall redhead, dressed all in black, flounced onto the sofa beside them. A strong puff of patchouli trailed behind her like a toxic cloud.

  Tanner recognized her and turned his head. Sure enough, three others bore down on their group, the same ones who’d called him a cripple in the library. So these were Sarah’s new friends, the ones who formed their own coven and had invited Sarah to a few of their circles.

  The overly made-up blonde smiled seductively. “This must be Tanner.”

  “Excuse me,” Sarah said quickly. “Rebecca, this is Tanner.”

  Ah yes, the pushy one who’d tried to read Sarah’s spell book.

  “This is Bridget.” She pointed to the redhead, and then motioned to a rather plain girl with mousy brown hair who held her nose up in the air, as if looking down on everyone else. “This is Priscilla.” Her hand moved to the left. “And this is Ann.”

  Ann nodded and immediately turned her attention to Bridget. “I’ve got to rush to class, but I’ll be at our meeting tonight.”

  They sure believed in holding lots of circle meetings. Back home, his family’s coven only met once every full moon. What were they about? Playacting as goddesses and chanting nonsense? They acted phony and conspicuous. Witches back home were more discreet around strangers.

  This is Salem, he reminded himself. Customs vary.

  Tanner fought down an irrational wave of dislike toward Sarah’s friends. So they had made an offhand comment about him that wasn’t so nice. No big deal. He’d never been the type to hold a grudge. He rose. “Nice to meet y’all, but I reckon I better get back to work.” He waved at Sarah. “See you tonight.”

  “Y’all.” Bridget drawled out the word. “I reckon,” she mimicked, exaggerating his accent. She bent at the
waist, laughing.

  “Don’t you just love the way he talks?” Sarah asked, beaming. “I do.”

  Sarah might, but to Tanner’s ear, Bridget was laughing at him. He turned and walked quickly to the door, eager to get away from the group.

  “Those long legs of yours sure do walk fast.”

  He spun around, his face a mere inch from Rebecca’s. A faint scent of cherries drifted between them, and he frowned. Something was wrong.

  Understanding flashed. It smelled exactly like what Sarah always wore.

  It’s little things . . . a tube of cherry lip balm.

  And this was Rebecca, after all. The one who had no regard for other people’s possessions.

  “Could we go out for a drink sometime?” she asked, her breasts rubbing against his right shoulder. “I’d like to get to know you better.”

  She suggestively twirled a lock of bleached-blond hair and licked vampire-red lips. Bet she could suck the life out of any man who fancied a Barbie doll kind of beauty.

  He wasn’t one of those men.

  “After all,” she continued in a low, husky voice, “any friend of Sarah’s is a friend of mine.”

  Some friend. He pretended not to understand her invitation. “Sure. Sarah and I can meet you anytime for a cup of coffee.”

  Disbelief, then anger, flashed in her big baby-blue eyes. Before she could say another word, Tanner exited the lounge, lifting the collar of his jacket against the frigid wind. Damned freezing weather. If it wasn’t for Sarah, he’d have bailed on this job. Back in Bama, it was college football season. His heart pinched, longing for a Saturday afternoon at the stadium with just enough of a crisp breeze to let one realize that summer had passed.

  I’ll go home at Thanksgiving. Watch college football all day Saturday on TV, catch up with Michael and Skye and Callie. Introduce Sarah to his folks. Tanner stopped in his tracks. What the hell. This woman was seriously getting under his skin. He’d never brought home anyone to meet the family.

  He shook his head and made his way to the Admin Services building, by far the ugliest building on campus. Inside, it was all dreary gray walls and ceilings that gave the effect of working from inside a metal garbage can. In the IT wing, he went to his tiny office, flung his coat on a chair, and sat at his desk.

  Strumming his fingers on the cheap desktop, he reviewed his meeting with Sarah’s friends. When she’d first told him about them, he’d been happy for her. It was evident she hadn’t grown up with many close relationships. But now that he’d met them, he didn’t have a good feeling about the lot.

  It could be coincidence that Rebecca wore the same scented lip balm as Sarah. But the fact that she’d come on to him, and the way the others had acted, was . . . off.

  But he needed something concrete before he accused anyone of violating Sarah’s privacy. There must be a way to discover the truth and help Sarah. Someone was targeting her, messing with her mind. His fingers tingled over the keyboard. Perhaps if he delved into Sarah’s past, he’d find a clue. She might be in the dark about something in her background that put her at risk.

  Well, he wasn’t a computer geek for nothing. That, plus his gift for searching and finding, might unearth information that explained why someone could want to hurt her. Sarah’s past was like a huge black hole. If there was something there she wasn’t even aware of . . .

  Tanner switched to his personal laptop. No sense for the school to get in trouble if he was caught hacking into Social Services’ records. He racked his brain, recalling all the tidbits of information she’d told him regarding her past. Not a lot to work with: her parents’ names, place and date of birth, a name of a social worker.

  Hours later, he rubbed his temples and stared at the stacks of printed papers. He’d collected the names and addresses and reports of the various foster families, but there was no startling data. No leads as to anyone who might wish her harm, merely a documentation of agency apathy in shuffling around an unwanted teenager. And Sarah had never mentioned a traumatic incident, other than the shock of her mother’s death.

  He modified his search parameters and tried again. While waiting for the results, he pushed his chair back from the desk and looked out the window. Maybe his approach had been wrong. Maybe there was something about her parents or other relatives, not the foster homes. With a sigh, Tanner returned to his search, specifically targeting her ancestry. It was worth a shot . . .

  “Quitting time.” Mr. Higginboth stood in the doorway, a fatherly smile on his lined face. “You’ve been working too hard, go on home.”

  “Yes, sir. Need to tie up this report, and I’m outta here in ten minutes.”

  His boss nodded and waved.

  Tanner glanced back down at the monitor, and his eyes widened at the search results. Turns out, there was a major skeleton in the family closet, but it was no cause for alarm. Telling Sarah would only cause her hurt, and she’d had enough of that in her life.

  He scrolled down to the end of an ancestry report he’d generated in his what-the-hell approach to data-gathering. A name and connection to Salem had him rubbing his chin. Huh.

  Now if that wasn’t an interesting side note listed there on the old family tree.

  The darkness of the new moon was complete, except for the flicker of their flashlights and the distant lights of WCS behind them.

  Too damn cold to be traipsing around the woods at midnight, Sarah inwardly grumbled. Why couldn’t they have held a circle in the Clara Hall basement? It wasn’t like they could see the hidden moon. But Bridget had insisted they could still feel that which wasn’t openly revealed. Sarah much preferred to feel it from inside the relative warmth of the dorm basement, but she’d kept her mouth shut. As an initiate, her place wasn’t to challenge the other’s decisions. Especially the so-called high priestess.

  “Here we are,” Priscilla announced unnecessarily as they arrived at the small clearing the coven had consecrated as their sacred land for rituals.

  Priscilla set their cauldron in the center of the circular space, surrounded by tall quaking aspens and red maples. An ideal location for privacy—and atmosphere, Sarah couldn’t help cynically noting. She set to gathering small twigs with Ann and Rebecca. Bridget supervised, sitting on her rather wide ass while Priscilla stood by the cauldron, her haughty chin lifted high. She took the job as maiden to the high priestess way too seriously.

  Frankly, Sarah believed nobody else in the group wanted to carry the heavy metal cauldron and all the witchy supplies. As usual, she kept her thoughts to herself. Her friends’ eccentricities hurt no one, and she was grateful for their company. And, after all, learning more about witchcraft was one of the reasons she’d come to WCS. She was convinced they were the key to unlocking the mystery of her dreams.

  They dropped the twigs in the cauldron, and Priscilla, rather dramatically, lit the fire. She dug a sage stick from her purse and lit that as well. They all seated themselves around the burning cauldron as Priscilla walked the parameter of the circle, purifying the air and calling the elements.

  “I call on air for intellect, fire for passion, water for intuition, and Mother Earth for nurturing. On this night of the new—”

  Bridget abruptly motioned her to sit, as if Priscilla were infringing on her priestess territory. “That’s enough.”

  Priscilla ceremoniously sprinkled a vial of water onto the ground and sat at Bridget’s right side.

  Bridget raised a hand and drew a pentagram in the air. “Tonight the Goddess has descended to the underworld and is in mourning. We cast no spells this meet when the night is the darkest of all nights. It is a time of death and of rebirth, ebbing and flowing like the tides, endings and beginnings. A time of change.”

  As Bridget took a dramatic pause, Sarah looked up at the black sky, struggling to compose her face, her throat tightening with a suppressed giggle. They all dressed in black, their pentagram charms glowing silver in the starlight. Sarah shuddered under her heavy coat, chilled from the gusty wind. If
this was what being a witch was all about, she wasn’t cut out to be one. Not one little woo-woo thrill tingled down her spine. All she wanted was to go home and crawl in a warm bed.

  At least she’d learned it wasn’t for her. That was something. And strange as this group of women was, they had opened up to her, and she was humbled and honored by their trust.

  “Since it’s a time of new beginnings,” Bridget finally continued, “why don’t we all write down something we want to manifest in the next month?”

  Priscilla pulled out scraps of paper and pens from her purse and distributed them, and Sarah checked out the pen she’d been handed. A plain old Bic, no feathered quill or athame to cut open a vein and write the wish in blood.

  Ann caught her eye and gave her the barest of winks. Thank the goddess, she wasn’t the only one secretly amused at the process. Sarah scribbled a heart on the paper. Truly, casting a wish and contemplating change was fun. So what to wish for? All her wishes were coming true already. She had friends and a boyfriend and attended the college of her dreams.

  “I wish for a sign from Tanner that he loves me,” she wrote, quickly folding the scrap into thirds and throwing it into the cauldron.

  The flames leapt higher, hissing and sparking into the October wind.

  “As we will, so mote it be,” Bridget intoned. “And now to show our dedication to Mother, Maiden, and Crone, we shall each cut three strands of hair and throw them into the fire, a symbolic giving of ourselves.” Dutifully, Priscilla extracted a tiny pair of scissors from a miniature sewing kit, cut three locks of her frizzy hair, and passed the scissors to Ann, who did the same. Once everyone had her turn, Bridget spoke again. “This completes the new moon ritual. The next time we gather will be Samhain’s full moon. A powerful time when the veil between the worlds is thin.”

  She turned to Sarah. “We took a vote earlier. We’d all be honored if you would become an initiate and officially join our coven on All Hallows’ Eve.”

  Sarah’s throat closed up, this time with gratitude. Shame heated the back of her neck for her unkind thoughts during the ceremony. She’d never been part of a close-knit group before. A brief semester as a member of the French Club in high school hardly counted.