Liza had all the ladies gather in the center of the floor and form a loose circle. In the middle, she placed her iPhone on the ground. Bryar’s Facebook profile picture was the only image she had of her. It would work in a pinch.
“Witchcraft for the modern woman,” Mare snickered.
“We work with what we have,” Liza agreed.
The women joined hands and bowed their heads. Liza instructed them to focus their energy on Bryar’s face “before the energy saver kicks in and the screen goes black,” she told them.
Then, with Liza leading a soft, melodic chant, the women focused all their good will and energy towards Bryar’s face, and the event she was a part of.
When Colt strolled back through the front door, he was met with his favorite women standing in his living room, their voices joined together in what nearly sounded like music. Liza noticed the candles Mare’d lit were flickering, their flames shooting six inches into the air. She hoped Colt didn’t freak, and that Bridle wouldn’t notice them.
Colt stood in the doorway that separated the living room from the kitchen, quiet and respectful, until Liza closed the circle and thanked the universe and other women for their time.
“That was fun!” Filly exclaimed as she sauntered back to the easy chair she’d made a nest in. “And kind of powerful. I could definitely feel everyone else’s power!”
“There are few things as strong as a sisterly bond,” Liza agreed. She walked over to Colt and rose to her tiptoes to give him a light kiss on his cheek. He responded with a friendly pat on her bottom. “It’s extra helpful since you guys are sisters and you’re trying to help my sister. Hopefully that will give us a double dose of awesomeness.”
“I already am a double dose of awesomeness,” Filly yawned.
“I just came in to grab more cookies before I head back out to my workshop,” Colt explained. “But I’ll stick around if you need me.”
“Actually,” Liza said, “Bryar will be on in a few minutes. I’d kind of appreciate the support if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.”
Colt led her to the couch where he moved Mare and Bridle over and lowered himself to the plush cushions. Grabbing Liza around the waist, he pulled her onto his lap where she snuggled into his chest. He absently brushed her hair back from her face and kissed her forehead. At one time, Liza might have been embarrassed by such a show of affection from a man in front of his mother. She’d learned, however, that the Bluevine family was a demonstrative one. She liked that. Not once, in all her years with Mode, had he expressed such warmth towards her in public.
He’d barely done it in private.
“Look, there she is!” Filly shouted, nearly coming out of her seat.
Liza leaned forward in anticipation.
“She looks lovely,” Bridle murmured. Mare and Whinny voiced their mutual agreement.
My God, she’s gorgeous, Liza thought, with just a tinge of envy.
And she was.
As Bryar Rose sashayed across the stage in her beautiful Haute Hippie designer dress, she’d never looked more stunning. Her long blond hair hung nearly to her waist. She wore it in loose curls that framed her elvish features and petite frame. Her tiny waist and ample bosom were offset by the strikingly blue material that flowed around her like a queen ready for her coronation. Diamonds sparkled in her ears and around her neck. Her 6-inch high heels displayed her long, shapely legs and thighs that peeked out from the soft fabric with each step she took.
She looked like a Bohemian fairy princess.
Liza held her breath.
Bryar certainly looked okay. The smile she wore stretched across her face and lit her up like a Christmas tree. Her makeup was expertly applied. Liza leaned forward to get a better look. Nope, she thought, no signs of runs or smears or smudges. Her eyes were bright and lucid.
Maybe we did it, she sighed inwardly with tentative relief. Maybe everything is okay.
Kraz-e Jayze stood before her on the stage. His dark skin was practically luminescent under the bright lights. His expensive suit, tailored and obviously designer, was impeccable. The expectant smile he shot at Bryar, his former producer and girlfriend, held no signs of worry. When she reached him, he held out his hand, his manicured nails noticeable on the 60-inch screen Colt had insisted upon. He looked less rap star and more metrosexual, corporate banker tonight. She slipped her own small hand into his and looked up at him, her long thick eyelashes fluttering to the sound of raucous applause.
“Oh, good. I think it’s all going to be okay,” Whinny sighed with relief, echoing Liza’s own thoughts.
And then Bryar opened her mouth.
“Isht sooo niiiice to be with y’all tonight,” she slurred, her lashes now fluttering furiously.
“Uh oh,” Filly said, her eyes glowing.
“Your accent isn’t thick,” Mare remarked. “I didn’t realize she had such a southern drawl.”
“She doesn’t,” Liza replied, letting herself fall back onto Colt. “She doesn’t.”
Jayze, for his part, continued to beam. He took a step back, however, and Bryar stumbled a little. She’d apparently been leaning on him more heavily than either one of them had realized.
He moved forward to steady her again. “Hey there baby,” he said with a laugh. Liza wondered if she was the only one to notice the tremble in his voice. “How you doin’ tonight?”
Bryar giggled, flashing her pearly-white teeth. “Just fine and dandy, baby,” she replied.
When he opened his mouth to speak again, she cut him off. “Fine and dandy, fine and dandy,” she began singing. “My baby sure likes his caannnndddyyyy!”
Liza buried her head in her hands. “Oh my God,” she moaned.
Mare leaned over and gave Liza a friendly pat on the shoulder. “It will be okay,” she murmured, but she didn’t sound convinced.
Liza quickly envisioned herself on the stage next to Bryar. She imagined wrapping her arms around her sister, lifting her up so that she stood tall. “Give her strength and clear her mind. Help her through this challenging time,” she chanted furiously, trying to form the words through her nervousness. Unbridled fear ate at Liza, competing with her secondhand embarrassment.
As if she’d heard her on the other side of the country, Bryar suddenly straightened and looked around. “Liza?” she stage-whispered to the audience. “Liza Jane, you there?”
Liza groaned. The other women tittered, however; even Whinny stifled a laugh. “Sorry Liza,” she apologized, trying to hide her smile.
The camera panned to the crowd for audience reaction. Some had blank expressions on their faces; they’d seen it all before. Others looked amused, some disgusted. Still, others had the look of smug satisfaction. Liza wanted to reach in and throttle those people.
“What?” she barked at the television screen. “Like you’ve never been drunk or high on national TV before?”
She felt Colt under her, shaking. When she turned to face him, he quickly wiped the amused grin from his face. “Sorry,” he deadpanned.
“Ain’t no Liza here baby,” Jayze drawled, giving her a squeeze.
“Oh, don’t you hug me, you, you...horny toad,” Bryar all but shrieked, batting his arm away like it was an aggravating mosquito.
A few nervous titters erupted from the audience.
“Oh, that’s right,” Bryar smirked, turning to the crowd. “You know what this man, this staaaarrr, did to me last night? I found out he was cheating on me. C-H-E-E-T-I…” She let her voice trail off as she paused, gazing up at the ceiling as though it might hold the letters that formed the rest of the word. Then she looked down at the top of her dress. For a wild moment, Liza panicked, sure Bryar would start rooting around in there.
"Please don't do what it looks like you're about to do," Liza whispered. She frantically threw the correct spelling across the distance, using every ounce of energy she had left.
Bryar must have felt something, for as Liza collapsed against Colt again, Bryar straight
ened and her face flooded with delight. “No, no, no. Wait that’s not right. C-H-E-A-T-I-N on me," she declared confidently. "On me. I mean, who wouldn’t want a piece of this?”
On the last word, Bryar untangled herself from Jayze and did a brief shimmy, a la Beyoncé, in front of the entire country. The fringe on her dress sparkled under the spotlights.
Some of the male members of the audience hooted their appreciation.
“Oooooh yeah,” Bryar cried out, giving her own bottom a loud, friendly slap. Jayze, dazed, stepped back. The look on his face was no longer friendly–it was stunned. He frantically looked around, like he might be searching for an escape hatch.
“You like that?” she asked the crowd and the nearby television cameras that were quickly zooming in on her. “Cheater gave that up. And this!”
Turning on her heel, almost tripping and falling on her face in the process, Bryar gave the audience a view of her perky, ample backside.
That would have been enough, the little impromptu fashion show, but then she began to twerk. And, oh, did she move! As her elbows flew out to her sides, parallel with her chest, her bottom began wildly jiggling up and down. With her frenzied movements, Bryar's brilliantly blond hair sailed around her shoulders; Liza turned and buried her head into Colt’s shoulder.
“Oh my God,” she cried again.
“She’s pretty good at it, though,” Filly remarked with a trace of admiration. “She’s got good rhythm.”
“And she’s doing it in heels,” Bridle added helpfully. “Not easy.”
“I’m going to die,” Liza whimpered. "Mom is going to kill me. Somehow, this will be my fault."
The unscheduled dance session only lasted a few seconds. When Bryar spun back around, her face was flushed and her eyes were bright. If anything, she looked even more beautiful.
As the world watched in anticipation, Bryar sashayed back to Jayze. His deer-in-headlights look was comical; even Liza Jane found it amusing, in spite of her ever-mounting discomfort. She was now peeking at the screen through laced fingers, ready to return to the safety of Colt’s shoulder if necessary.
“I'm meant to give you a reward or something,” she said, her words starting to run together again. “Oopsie! Not a reward. That would be like a prize for some good you did. And you ain’t done nothin’ worth rewarding!”
Filly laughed. Mare coughed, discreetly attempting to cover up a chuckle.
“Trust me, ladies,” Bryar declared to the camera closest to her. “Nothing.Here.Worth.Rewarding!” She gestured to Jayze's body, starting at his head and slowly letting her hand travel down the length of his body to his feet, pausing briefly just below his waist.
A red-faced Jayze opened his mouth to speak, but Bryar cut him off. “Nuh uh uh,” she drawled, wagging her finger at him, diamond rings glittering. “You can talk in a minute. Ima be like Kanye. Ima let you finish!” Bryar giggled then, managing to sound both drunk and charming.
Leaning in, she suddenly grabbed Jayze’s shoulders, pulled him against her, and gave him a long, hot steamy kiss right there in the middle of the stage. Her fingers trailed up his back and grasped the back of his neck, pulling him deeper into the kiss. He didn't pull away as she pressed her chest against him and raised up on her tiptoes, so that were eye level with one another.
Then she turned, started to walk away, and promptly passed out, face first, onto the stage floor.
“Huh,” Filly said to the silent room as Bridle grabbed the remote and quickly changed the channel. “Wonder what would’ve happened if we hadn’t done the good-luck spell?”
Chapter Four
Liza Jane slumped on her sagging sofa and played with the dancing flame of a white candle. She watched as it leapt higher and higher into the air, blossomed open like a flower, and then shot back down the wick, leaving a blur of light behind. She did this by barely moving her finger up and down.
“Bryar is so screwed,” she sighed, flopping onto her back when she tired of playing with the flame.
By the time she’d returned from Colt’s, a little after midnight, there were five voicemail messages on her phone. They were all from her mother. She knew the dozens of text messages were from her as well. She’d turned her phone off after the first dozen.
Mabel was dramatic under ordinary circumstances; Liza could only guess what she’d be spouting now.
“Guess I’d better take stock of the damage,” she said.
The first message contained little more than the wracking sobs and muffled cries from a distraught woman.
The second one was more coherent. “Liza Jane, call me,” the hoarse voice pleaded before fading into a jumbled mess of words Liza couldn’t make sense of.
By the time she reached the fifth one, Mabel was filled with blind panic. “What are we going to do?” she cried into the phone. Liza could also hear the sounds of pots and pans rattling in the background. Her mother was a stress cooker. “What’s she going to do? She’ll never work again! She’ll end up on welfare and Food Stamps! No man will ever marry her! She’ll be a burden on us and society for the rest of our lives!”
And, wait for it, Liza thought.
“Why didn’t you stop her?!”
“Well, fudge sickles,” Liza muttered.
The candle flame shot up in agreement.
She’d thought about staying with Colt, and the idea of cuddling up next to him in his hand-hewn log frame with the fluffy featherbed and duvet cool against her legs did sound appealing, but she knew she needed be alone. There was no better place to seek solace or refuge than Grandma’s house.
That’s why she had returned to Kentucky in the first place. When Liza’s marriage fell apart, she’d gone back to the house her grandparents’ had left to her and her sister.
“It technically has both our names on it,” Bryar had told her when Liza called to talk to her sister about it, “but let’s face it–it’s your house. Go on and live there if you want; just don’t call me whining when the boredom overtakes you.”
Sure, Kudzu Valley could be a little stifling. She’d gone from a big metropolitan area where every country in the world was represented in the Yelp restaurant section to a place where fried frog legs and chicken livers were considered gourmet appetizers and mashed potatoes was a main course.
“Ethnic food” was the pasta bake at the local Pizza Hut.
The people were clannish, many of them with closed minds, it was hard to make friends if you didn’t belong to a church, and everyone was somebody else’s cousin. (And she still couldn’t wrap her head around why people referred to where they were from by county name and not town name.)
Each week the local paper dutifully reported the names, ages, and addresses of the people who’d been arrested for illegal drug use–some of them for having no more than one or two pills on them. A meth lab had caught fire in March, sending an acre of national forest land up in flames and the offender to the hospital with first-degree burns.
And then there was the fact that the county was dry. When they’d voted for alcohol sales back in February, half the county had responded with signs in their yard that read “Say No to Alcohol, Say Yes to Jesus.”
But she loved it there in Morel County. There was warmth and beauty and comfort there. Major newspapers across the country screamed about the area’s rampant drug use (an epidemic!!!), teenage pregnancy (a crisis!!!), and poverty (welfare moms who work the system!!!) but those who really “got” the place looked past those things and saw the county for what it really was–an oasis of a simple, comfortable life in the midst of chaos.
Liza Jane saw an untouched incorruptibility that took her back to her own innocent days of when she was a kid. She heard music in the mountains that surrounded her, felt a kindred compassion from the strangers who had taken her in and helped mend her broken heart, and each morning when she walked outside and felt the dirt under her feet, she felt at one with the place.
God, I am turning into a sentimental jackass, she snorted to herself.
But it was true.
* * *
AFTER A RESTLESS NIGHT of little sleep and lot of worry (she still hadn’t heard from Bryar), Liza walked into The Healing Hands feeling sluggish and bone tired. She felt like she’d been the one on the Xanax.
“You okay?” Mare asked with sympathy.
Liza was also running late. Her first appointment, a massage for a regular client, was in fifteen minutes.
“I’ll live,” Liza called from the treatment room as she took a chug from the sports’ style water bottle she’d started packing around with her recently. In an attempt to get healthier and lose weight, she was trying to go off caffeine beverages filled with sugar and drink more water. She’d never been much of a water drinker before, but she liked the taste of the water from Kudzu Valley. It tasted like the mountains. The tap water from work had a stronger, more metallic taste but it was still better than the bottled water from the store.
Liza busied herself with changing the sheets on the table, tucking in one of the fresh ones Mare had just pulled from the dryer. She lit the candles and brought out Taffy’s favorite incense–a combination of eucalyptus and lemon. The scent was overpowering but Taffy said it “invigorated her.” Once she left, Liza had to go around the entire building, spritzing something that acted as a neutralizer to tone it down a little.
Mare came and stood in the doorway and sniffed, wrinkling her nose. Liza could feel her watching her.
“You know, it really wasn’t that bad. I mean, famous people do stuff like that all the time. Some people probably even think it was staged, that Bryar was meant to do it for ratings or something,” she said. “That’s what some of my online friends are saying anyway.”
Mare, always trying to be helpful.
“I don’t know,” Liza sighed. She paused, massage oils in hand. “It was trending in my newsfeed this morning. It’s already gone viral, thanks to You Tube.”
Mare grinned just a little. “I never thought the day would come when I’d be friends with someone who’s the sister to a trending story. It’s like that game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”
Broommates: Two Witches are Better Than One! (Kentucky Witches Book 2) Page 3