“You’d pass out before you got halfway across the yard.” He crossed to the dresser and grabbed a crumpled t-shirt off.
“I think you might be missing the point.”
“I got the point, but I figure since dark matter spent the last six weeks torturing you, you’re smart enough not to do it.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“And smart enough to have some more soup, so you don’t weird me out with your hungry predator eyes.” Paul sniffed his shirt, shook it out, and pulled it over his wet body.
“Speaking of weird,” Sarah said evenly.
Paul grinned at her. “At least it’s not witch weird. I am glad you’re all better and home, even though you should have stayed in the hospital. I missed having someone to freak me out and argue with.”
“I’m here for ya.”
“It was weird sitting next to your hospital bed. I hardly got any grief, and no one swore at me.”
“Well, the witch is back.” Sarah hugged her knees. “At least partially. Did you bring my toothbrush from upstairs?”
“There’s a bunch in the drawer in my sink.”
She shook her head. “I want my ultrasonic one. Obviously you’ve never used one. If my house caught on fire it’s the only thing I’d try to save.”
“Don’t be so picky.”
“That’s not being picky. I haven’t brushed my teeth in six weeks.”
“Now there’s a pleasant thought.” Paul grabbed jeans off the floor and fled to hide behind the wall by the bathroom, peeking around the corner as he tugged them on. “Use one from my drawer, but please don’t use mine.” He threw his towel onto the sink and moved into view as he zipped his pants. “After six weeks I’m picky too.”
Sarah scrambled off the bed, knocking pillows to the floor. “Yeah, I can tell by the way you don’t even wear underwear.”
“Hey!” Paul held his hands up. “I haven’t done laundry since you went in the hospital. I ran out! Cut a guy some slack! Where are you going?”
Sarah didn’t turn. “To my room for my toothbrush.”
“Look!” Paul called, and Sarah heard him rooting in the sink drawer. “There’s like two dozen different kinds. You’ll have to make do with a manual toothbrush, princess. You’re not allowed upstairs.”
“Pfft,” said Sarah, and darted out of the room, slamming and locking the bedroom door behind her.
“Sarah!” Paul shouted from inside the room.
Sarah laughed as she hurried through the brightly lit kitchen. Paul pounded on his bedroom door, and his usual PG-13 swearing went up a couple notches. In seconds Sarah had zipped through the living room and hit the stairs. She made it halfway up before noticing Henry standing frozen at the top. He held an empty breakfast tray.
Sarah stopped in her tracks. “Hi. Henry.”
He shifted the tray and nodded, one curt jerk of his head. Even at five o’clock in the morning he wore khakis and a button down shirt, his hair slicked back with just a bit of an Elvis curl happening on his forehead. He looked every bit as beautiful to her as he’d looked under the love spell. ‘You go together’ bobbed into her mind, and despite everything she wondered if the logic spell could have been right.
Sarah listened, half expecting to hear random facts about him flitting through her mind, but nothing came. “Uh, how’s Kathleen?”
Holding the tray defensively against his body, he bared his teeth and hissed, “You leave her alone.”
“Of course. Look. I wanted to talk to you about Kathleen. I want you to know I don’t mean her any harm, and I’m sor—”
“Don’t you lie to me, you witch! You could have killed her!” Henry took a step down, looking like he might throw the tray at her.
Sarah fought her instinct to take a step backward. “Henry, I am sorry. You don’t need to worry. It was a bad situation and I wasn’t myself because of the sp—”
“What did she ever do to you, you soulless bitch?!”
That hurt. Sarah put a hand on the railing. “For what it’s worth I took the bulk of that spell to protect her. But I know I made her sick, and I am sorry I did that. She didn’t deserve it. It’s no excuse, but I got mad and—well, it’s really easy to do. One impulsive flash of anger got away from me. I was so jealous because—”
Henry took another step closer. “I don’t want to hear your excuses, and you’d better be sorry! She’s worth a hundred of you. Kathleen wouldn’t harm a fly, and you—you—witch! No wonder your ancestors were burned at the stake. As far as I’m concerned you should join them!”
“Wait a minute. For one thing that’s not true. If Kathleen had the same abilities I had, she’d have eviscerated me on the spot! She was doing her best to provoke me, and that’s partly why it happened!”
“You’re blaming Kathleen? You foul evil bitch!”
“No, I’m not! I’m trying to apologize, but if you recall—”
“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say! After what you’ve done, I can’t believe you have the nerve to speak to me. If it had been up to me, you’d have been disconnected from life support a month ago!”
“Whoa, Henry!” Paul had caught up, and raced up the stairs to stand beside Sarah. Putting a hand on her shoulder, he squeezed it. “Name calling and blaming won’t change a thing. Let’s break this up for now. I’ll take that tray downstairs for you.”
“No! Don’t try to smooth it over. And don’t you dare defend that witch. Are you afraid to rile her? I’m not!” He descended another step.
Sarah recognized the look blazing in his dark eyes: hatred. The smallest bit of dark matter writhed inside his irises, and sudden tears welled in hers. Love spell or not, I never expected to see hate in his eyes. This is my fault, and he’s right. Even if I was under a spell too, it was my fault. There’s no excuse for what I did to Kathleen.
Henry held her gaze like a circling hunter and she knew he’d meant every hateful word. She’d hurt the woman he loved and he wanted to destroy her for it. It pressed against her as a real and palpable danger, as though she could burst simply from Henry’s anger pressing against her. Something hit her then, cutting across her arm like a razor blade. It burned and Sarah glanced down to see blood trickling from the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
What?! The first explanation that came was that her IV wound had reopened. But then another razor sharp pain slid over her arm. Automatically Sarah tried to shove the burning sensation away. It was no use. That ability had gone with dark matter, and somewhere deep inside she knew nothing would bring it back.
Paul grabbed her around the waist as Henry took another step. “Back off, Henry!” He dragged her roughly down several stairs. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to make sure she doesn’t touch Kathleen!”
“Sarah, you’re bleeding!” Paul held her close. “Henry, just what are you planning to do to her? She’s not well.” He extended her bleeding arm. Red stained the sleeve of her white sweatshirt and thick droplets of blood fell, landing on his jeans and bare feet. “Hold your arm up,” he said, forcing it into the air. Blood splattered across the front of her shirt. It looked like Snoopy had been shot.
“It’s just a trick,” said Henry, but he sounded doubtful.
“She wanted her toothbrush. She wasn’t coming for Kathleen.”
“I wanted to apologize,” said Sarah, ignoring Paul’s warning hush against her ear. Ignoring the fact that she’d also wanted to see Henry again, to see if there was anything real between them. Warm tears filled her eyes. He was lost to her now, and it was her fault.
“Save it,” Henry bellowed, and turned and stomped back up the stairs. He paused at the top to bang the tray onto the landing. “I swear to God, Paul. You told me she wouldn’t even get out of the hospital for another week, and then, oh, miracle cure here she is! I want her out of this house!” He stormed across the landing and slammed a door shut behind him.
Sarah did her best to blink her tears back and sniffled. “It’s my house.”
“Ignore him.” Paul bent her arm, squeezing hard near her elbow in an attempt to staunch the blood flow. It surged over his hand. “You must have popped a vein. Let’s get to that bathroom before you ruin the carpet.” He gestured with his chin to the half-bath near the entryway.
Upstairs a door banged open and Henry shouted over the banister, “Here, and if she goes near Kathleen, I’ll have her arrested—or worse.” Something whipped over the railing, and Sarah sensed her electric toothbrush falling. A split second before she could grab it, another razor sharp pain sliced into her. The toothbrush clattered down the steps. Upstairs the door to Henry’s room slammed again.
“What the hell!” Sarah bent her right arm against her chest. Blood was already seeping through the sleeve. “Henry’s casting!”
Don’t be ridiculous.” Paul tossed Sarah’s bloodied sweatshirt onto the floor and pressed a gauze pad over one of her wounds.
Sarah sat on the toilet lid in her bra and sweatpants, one arm propped on top of her head to slow the bleeding. She watched Paul’s face to see if the blood bothered him, but arguing seemed to distract him.
“If my brother could cast, I’d never have survived adolescence. You can’t imagine what a couple of unsupervised boys on a ranch can get into. I thought you said all witches were female anyway.” He bit off the end of a bandage and glared at a deep wound. “That one needs stitches.” He crouched in front of the cabinet under the sink, searching.
“I said dark witches like me are female. It’s a gene we inherit. But we hardly corner the market on dark matter!”
“In this house you do.”
“So what’s your theory then?” Sarah averted her eyes from the deepest cut. It made her stomach drop out like on a roller coaster. “Separation of otherwise healthy tissue for apparently no reason? Is that a thing, Doctor EMT?”
Paul emerged from under the sink with a bottle of alcohol and a small paper packet. “Dang, Sarah, I can’t begin to formulate a theory about what goes on around this house.”
“Liar.” Sarah saw guilt flicker in his eyes. “You notice everything. Are you going to pretend you didn’t haul me down the stairs away from Henry to protect me?”
For the third time Paul scrubbed his hands in the sink, using an excessive amount of anti-bacterial soap. “Were you born without any sense of normal self-preservation? Did you not hear what he said to you? One thing he and I do have in common is meaning what we say. You need to stay away from him, not because he suddenly learned how to cast spells, but because he’s scared of you, and he’s protecting the woman he loves. A frightened man is a dangerous thing.”
“This was a cast. Not one, but three. If it wasn’t Henry casting, it was Kathleen listening up in my mother’s room and doing something.” Sarah could tell from his expression he didn’t believe her. He poured alcohol over his hands and tipped the bottle over her wound. She almost shot off the toilet seat. “Ahh!”
“Come on, this is nothing compared to what you’ve been through.” Paul stretched her arm over the sink basin and poured more of the liquid.
“You’re doing this on purpose you bas—”
He covered her mouth, his hand still dripping rubbing alcohol. Sarah shut her mouth. “That’s better. Now this will pinch a bit, but it won’t be as bad as you’re expecting.”
Sarah felt a needle jab into her skin, followed by a thread as Paul pulled. She shivered and kept her gaze on the striped wallpaper. “I’m not saying that your brother and Kathleen are witches! I’m saying they’ve been alone in this house for—how long? A month or more? Did you tell them the rules?”
“Henry can’t cook and Kathleen is in no condition to leave her room. I’ve been bringing them food that Henry nukes.”
“Cooking wasn’t the only rule! Did you clean up the spell books that were lying around?” She winced as Paul tugged the string more firmly through her flesh.
“No matter what they found, they wouldn’t fool with it, and for some reason I haven’t had much time for cleaning,” he said, sarcasm evident.
“Don’t take this personally, Paul. You know I appreciate everything you’ve done. But who knows what they might have found or gotten into? You’ve got Kathleen holed up in my mother’s room!” Sarah shivered, trying not to think of dark items they might have come across. Although as angry as Henry is, if they’d found something that bad I’d be dead already.
“I get the feeling you think of your mother as the wicked witch of the east—or was that the west? I can never keep those two straight. The green one.”
Sarah moved her arm off her head to grab his shoulder. Blood dripped onto her jeans. “Is that your gold standard for evil?! The Wizard of Oz?”
Paul stopped sewing, turning his intensely sad eyes on her. “No, Sarah. It’s not. My gold standard for evil used to be having to go through excessive airport security because of 9-11. That’s how sheltered my life was, until I found myself in the middle of sand and blood storms in the desert, watching good men cut to shreds because people can’t get along.”
“Paul,” she said, unsure what else to say.
“It changed after watching you fight the temptation to have anything your spoiled little heart wants, and watching what evil did to you when you finally had the good sense to tell it to go to hell. I went from thinking nothing mattered to the terrifying realization that maybe everything matters.”
Sarah held his gaze, her eyes watering with his. She let go of him, suddenly a few flesh wounds and her inability to cast meant little.
PAUL’S CLEAN SWEATSHIRT fell almost to her knees. Sarah stood in front of his bathroom mirror brushing her teeth with her toothbrush for the third time. Cleaned, stitched, and wrapped, the wounds on her arms still burned. She had to hold her elbows out at awkward angles and was stuck using Paul’s disgusting grape-flavored toothpaste, but feeling clean was heavenly.
Part of her wanted to march upstairs and see what Henry and Kathleen had gotten into. Another part of her worried that Paul was right. It wasn’t them. Maybe this was what happened to witches without dark matter. A sudden image of the green witch melting in the Wizard of Oz came to mind. Goosebumps rose over her skin. Maybe this is why she’d never heard of a witch sending dark matter away. Maybe it would kill her. She wished there was someone she’d dare to ask about it. She looked at Paul in the mirror, standing next to her and scrubbing his teeth like they were the floor. Foam trailed down his arm and dripped off his elbow.
Sarah rinsed her toothbrush off and said, “I can’t believe how much I’m sleeping.”
“You did just get out of a coma,” he said around his toothbrush.
“Yeah, but witches don’t ever really sleep. Earlier you said I was snoring!”
He rinsed his brush off and dropped it onto the counter. “Sounds like someone’s going to get their witch card revoked.”
Sarah’s chin wobbled and Paul frowned. “What are you really worried about?”
“I’m tired again! I napped all day! That’s not normal.” She felt teary, hormonal. Terrified.
He wiped his mouth on a towel. “Have you ever known another witch to go into a coma?”
“No, but I’m sure it’s happened. Not for long though. If we get hurt that badly, dark matter takes us.”
“But it didn’t take you.”
“It tried.”
“I know. But instead of worrying, why aren’t you glad it didn’t take you?”
“I am! It’s only—I’m not sure I’m a witch anymore.”
Paul grinned. “Sarah, you’ll always be a witch to me.”
“It’s not funny!” Her eyes filled with tears and she moved toward him, motioning him to bend down so she could whisper in his ear, “I can’t cast.” She didn’t understand why, but she didn’t want the house to hear. She didn’t really think it listened to her. It was just a house, but still.
Paul stood there a moment, examining her face. He bent down again and whispered back, “You’re still who you’ve always been, Sa
rah. Only now you’re free.”
Sarah leaned against him and he hugged her for a long moment, then Paul announced in a normal voice, “Sleep. It’s healing you, and I’ll make you pancakes for breakfast.”
She nodded, crossed the room and climbed into his bed.
“Hey, make yourself comfortable.”
“I know you’re policing me. You spent your day watching me sleep on the couch,” she pointed out with a yawn. “I’m just not sure if you think I’m hell bent on reuniting with Henry or poisoning Kathleen. It doesn’t really matter as long as you use pancakes for bait.”
“Good, because the reasons are too numerous to list.”
“Fair enough. Just shut the lights out when you’re done. They hurt my eyes.”
Sarah climbed under the blankets and closed her eyes. A couple minutes later she heard Paul reclining the big chair next to the bed. She wanted to tell him to shut the damn light out, but fell asleep before she could muster the energy.
A light at the end of the tunnel beckoned to Sarah, calling her by name. Dark matter whirled along the sides of the vortex, but soft beams of light kept it at bay. “It’s safe here, Sarah Elizabeth Archer,” the light whispered.
She pretended she couldn’t hear it. She was too warm and comfortable, and some part of her worried that if she went to that light, she would die.
Dark matter laughed; it had no form, and came to her only in sound. Come back or you will die, it whispered.
Sarah jerked awake, her heart hammering. The standing lamp behind the recliner was on and all three lights were pointed at her. For a moment she was tempted to whack Paul in the head with a pillow, but he sprawled on the chair with an open book resting on his chest, his head tipped back, and his mouth wide open. The strangest snores issued out of it, like the open mouth inhalations and guttural exhalations of a roomful of meditating yogis. Sarah wondered when he had last had a decent night’s sleep.
Quietly she pushed her blankets down, climbed out of bed and tiptoed to the door. It was locked. She sighed, knowing she’d never find the key. He probably swallowed it. Crouching down in front of the door to examine the lock, Sarah wished that the Harry Potter alohomora spell worked in the real world. I probably could have made it with dark matter.
Bitch Witch Page 19