Never Been Witched

by BLAIR, ANNETTE

  He stood straight. “Seriously?”

  “Look at me. I’m too drunk to lie. Not one of my battery-operated boyfriends can hold a candle to you. You’re the best of the best, human-wise, as well, Boy Scout.”

  He grinned and pushed the kayak toward the water while she fought her heavy eyelids for control. The way the kayak rocked made her feel like the baby on the treetop.

  The next thing she knew, cold fingers reached for her, and gravity had a field day. Salty bubbles filled her mouth. Whooshing deafened her.

  The bough had broken and dropped her in the sea.

  Air, icy, stinging, slapped her in the face. Her neck snapped. “I’m awake!”

  Dripping wet, Morgan turned and grinned. “It’s about time. You slept through a flip and roll.”

  “Did we live?”

  “I’ll let you know later. Go back to sleep.”

  “Okay.”

  Then he was urging her out of the boat.

  She opened her eyes long enough to see the lighthouse.

  When he got her standing, he peeled her wet clothes off her and carried her to the shower.

  She woke around nine the next morning, bare-assed beneath the blankets, her hair in a tangle of wayward witch curls, because she’d fallen asleep with it still wet from the shower. She got up, put on a pair of Bad Girl on Board panties, buttoned herself into one of Morgan’s tan cotton shirts, and followed her instincts to their makeshift studio.

  He looked gorgeous sitting at his drawing board, jeans unsnapped, chambray shirt open to reveal a sliver of gorgeous bare chest, sleeves rolled up, his attention on his work, with no idea of how edible he looked. Yummers.

  Chapter Seventeen

  DESTINY cleared her throat to catch Morgan’s attention.

  He looked up to take her in, from her bare legs to her electric-shock hairstyle, and he couldn’t seem to get enough of looking at her. “You slept through the night,” he said.

  She might be no closer to finding her psychic goal, but she sure was closer to seducing him, and he’d damned well better cooperate. She turned, lifted her shirttails, and flashed her Bad Girl panties his way.

  The twinkle in his eyes said it all. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  Were they talking about food? “Yes. Are you?”

  “I am.” He picked up her portfolio. “May I?” he asked. “I didn’t dare without your permission, but after seeing the ladybug painting in the kitchen, I wanted to see more.”

  Uh-oh. The lighthouse. “I’m shy about showing my work.” It wasn’t true, of course, but he had a shock in store if he kept going.

  “You? You’re not shy about anything. I received more than enough proof last night and today. Please, Kismet. Let me see what your mind has seen. I’m fascinated.”

  “And disbelieving.”

  “That’s what intrigues me about your work; the realism in your visions make disbelief difficult.”

  And there was the rub. She accepted the inevitability—karma or fate?—glad the painting of him as a boy in a cassock still sat in a drawer. “Go ahead,” she said.

  He opened her portfolio and whistled. “You’re good.” He flipped through her paintings, made several positive comments as he viewed them with the eye of an artist. His suddenly frozen stance and haunted expression told her that he’d found the lighthouse painting. “Destiny?”

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t. You can’t.”

  “Yes, I do. You told me about the renovations you planned.”

  His head came up. “What?”

  He hadn’t found her painting of the lighthouse, then? “What?” she asked, stepping toward her portfolio. “Oh, I forgot about the angel.” Holy angel’s wings, she’d painted a picture of Buffy, Meggie’s angel. “No wonder I forgot,” she said. “Look at the date. I was a kid when I painted that one, too.” Seeing it put a psychic and predestined spin on her choice of the lighthouse as a place in which to heal emotionally and find herself spiritually and psychically.

  Morgan cleared his throat of more than a slight tickle as he gazed at her with a dull, wounded expression. “Des, you painted this angel the day Meggie died.”

  Destiny stared at the painting, tears blurring her vision, until she got a flashback of one of her misty dreams: two babies being christened together. “Oh, Morgan, Meggie was your twin!”

  Her words about broke him. He fisted his hands, swallowed hard, and shook his head, not in denial of the fact but in denial of his ability to respond.

  Of course, he couldn’t speak, but she didn’t need him to.

  She combed the hair at his temple and let her fingers linger. “That’s why her smile made me think of yours.”

  He turned his face into her caressing hand and kissed her palm. “I can’t imagine what the ghost of a child would have to smile about,” he said. “I can rarely think of a reason.”

  “Caramello talks to your sister the way she talks to you. Meggie likes it.”

  Morgan’s eyes widened then narrowed, and Destiny couldn’t tell if he chose to deny or accept his sister’s ghostly presence. Either way, fate, or her psychic goal, had been hiding here all along. She’d been meant to come here, either for Meggie, or Morgan, or both.

  Then again, making Morgan remember seemed to be Meggie’s goal, so maybe she’d simply been fated to help. The trick would be in finding out how.

  Morgan cleared his throat, turned away from her, and slipped the angel painting to the bottom of her portfolio. He straightened his spine, the muscles in his arms and hands tense again.

  Ah, now he’d found her painting of the lighthouse.

  He brought it to the window, portfolio in hand, to get a better look. He turned to her. “Do you have any other surprises for me in here?”

  “Maybe you should stop looking.”

  “Destiny, this is a painting of the lighthouse the way I want it to look in the future, after I remodel it, and it’s dated four years ago.”

  “I’m aware of that. I painted it before I set foot on this island for the first time, before I knew this lighthouse existed.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. I painted it for one of my college art classes.”

  “This is my home the way I envision it, the way I haven’t finished drawing it, painted in the colors I envision, coral, big surprise, and white on brick, and modernized to fit my architectural vision. Four years ago, you painted the picture that I have in my mind now, at this moment, of a restored and enlarged lighthouse I haven’t yet purchased?”

  “Psychic,” she said. “Put that in your pipe and debunk it.”

  “These multilevel decks overlooking the water with granite fountains and the boathouse; they’re barely formed ideas! Look at this, you put a nautical-designed stained glass window in the round tower window. I’ve already had that design commissioned. You even put peach geraniums in the coral window boxes I planned to build. Coral, of course.”

  “But I didn’t paint your design exactly,” Destiny said.

  “Well no. Thank God, or I’d think you were psychic.”

  “Good Goddess, you’ve got a thick head. I am psychic, or your ideas wouldn’t have been preserved on canvas before they came to you.”

  “But you painted the tower as nothing but a heap of scattered bricks, which clearly is not the case. So there is a flaw in your gift.”

  Morgan, grow up. “Time is the only flaw. The tower hasn’t collapsed . . . yet.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  DESTINY’S lighthouse painting made Morgan ill. Panic increased the vague and nauseating miasma of grief and guilt pulling at him, making it heavy and heartbreaking.

  For an unending minute, he nearly gave in and let the heaviness swallow him, but he rallied, fought the pull, and shoved it away. “You’re wrong about the tower,” he snapped. “It won’t collapse. It can’t. It’s as structurally sound as the day it was constructed.”

  “Morgan, that’s my vision of the future. Face it. The to
wer could collapse.”

  “But only after I finish the remodeling, right? According to your painting?”

  “Not exactly. Psychic visions are open to interpretation. If my sisters were here, we’d be arguing those exact details.”

  Not set in stone, then. His trembling insides calmed. “Arguing in what way?”

  Destiny took the painting. “Storm, who sees the present, might argue that this is telling us the tower will fall now, and make the renovations necessary.”

  Morgan nodded. “Go on.”

  “Harmony, who sees the past, especially with her sense of touch, would touch the bricks, walk around inside the tower, and tell us something about its past that might affect its future, possibly explaining away my vision or explaining why it will, or it must, happen.”

  “I think you’re all three certifiable.”

  “Morgan, I don’t want to be right. I hope to the Goddess that I’m wrong. But this is what I saw in my mind’s eye. No more. No less. I don’t usually find the objects representing my painted view of the future, but sometimes, like now, I do.”

  Morgan winced inwardly. Like Meggie’s angel. He knew what Buffy looked like, because Meggie had drawn Buffy’s picture for him once, almost the same picture as Destiny’s, down to the same childlike style. Meggie said that Buffy guarded them both, and, good grief, had he believed Meggie back then? How could his sister have seen their guardian angel? How could he have believed her? “I suddenly have the mother of all headaches,” he said. “How many of your visions come true?”

  “Blessed thistle if I know. I don’t drive around looking for ladybugs crawling on coffeepots. I capture a moment in my mind’s eye, paint it, and move on. I usually forget about it afterward. I don’t track the results.”

  “Usually?”

  “Well, yeah. Sometimes, they end up in my face, like Meggie’s angel. Like this lighthouse and your plans for it.”

  He took her hand, a simple act, but a privilege he appreciated like the intimacy to do so. “Let me prove to you that the tower is structurally sound.”

  “If that would make you feel better, fine. After a shower and breakfast, I’d love to. I’ve been dying to go to the top. I love heights. And maybe once you see that I’m right, you’ll admit that psychics do exist.”

  He was so antsy that poor Destiny still had a piece of toast in her hand when he whisked her into his inspection. He took her for a thorough examination while he explained what he checked and why. He went over every aspect of the lower structure, starting at the foundation and working his way toward the birdcage lantern light at the top. He looked for bad wiring, cracks, chinks, mold, and mildew. He emptied his architectural bag of tricks looking for a problem, any problem.

  He checked flooring, joints, walls, angles, framing, as he searched for damage or the potential for it. “Pipes and electrical are up to code,” he said. “No faulty wiring, no rust, lead paint, or leaks. The bricks don’t even need pointing.”

  “They look pointy enough to me,” Destiny said.

  As they climbed the tower’s circular staircase, she glanced back down. “Look, Morgan, the stairwell looks like the center slice of a nautilus shell. Eighty-eight circular steps. What a gorgeous sight.”

  “You think so? Look up.”

  “That’s the biggest and most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s a light,” he said.

  As she circled it, he checked framing, angles, and more electrical wiring. “See,” he said, “no water or air leaks, and the seals and grounding wires are in perfect condition. Everything is up to code. This tower is as sound as if it were built yesterday.”

  “Okay, okay. So you still don’t believe in psychics,” she said, “but you’re missing the beauty here.”

  “I’m not comfortable in towers,” he said, thinking of Meggie but pushing his wave of nausea aside.

  “You’re not comfortable in towers, and you’re buying a lighthouse?”

  “I love this light station,” he said. “That’s the name for the light keeper’s home. But I feel trapped in the lighthouse, the name of the tower that houses the lens.”

  “You’re nuts,” Destiny said. “Look at this. This gorgeous light is an architectural work of art, of science, of brilliant minds from a time without the precision tools we now have at our disposal. It’s absolutely breathtaking, but, explain it, please.”

  “It’s a revolving second-order Fresnel lens, a classic beehive design with bull’s-eyes, made in France around 1880, and electrified around 1900. The prisms refract and reflect the light, depending on where they’re placed on the lens. They focus the light rays into a beam that can be seen from about twenty nautical miles away.

  “The prisms are harder than flint glass; we can’t touch them, because they break easily. You have a good eye. This is a world-class piece of history. Your favorite hobby. It takes two men to open the lens, like a lotus flower, just to change the bulb. It stands six feet high and weighs about thirty-five hundred pounds.”

  “I’m in awe,” she said. “And so are you. I can tell that you love it.”

  “I do. I love the intricate workmanship of the lens, its sheer beauty, but I’d love it better if it wasn’t in a tower,” he admitted. “Not that I’ll ever move it.”

  “I’m sorry I doubted you.”

  “I’ve forced myself to overcome my aversion to towers, so I polish the brass on the light whenever I come to stay. The light station has always welcomed me and allowed me to relax and forget the problems I left behind. The fact that it has a tower attached to it seems—”

  “Like fate to me,” Destiny said, finishing his sentence.

  “If you started coming here as a teen,” she added, as if she were looking far into his past, which he hated, “then losing Meggie must have been one of the driving forces behind you coming here in the first place. Do you still talk to Buffy like you used to, or did Meggie get sole custody when she passed?”

  Buffy? Nobody but he and Meggie knew their angel’s name. He’d swear they didn’t. So how did Destiny, who claimed to be psychic, know, unless she was?

  Morgan rubbed the back of his neck. Every time she said something scary like that, he felt sicker. He hadn’t been able to leave his problems behind this trip. His past was beginning to plague him, even here, though maybe he should blame Destiny. But how could he, when she was the . . . cure . . . he’d always needed?

  Get a grip, Jarvis.

  She wasn’t a cure. She was a reminder of the horrible memories haunting him. Dreadful mistakes. Some from his deep past, like the toppled tower, with symbols of more recent errors, like the cassock.

  “So,” Destiny said, watching him. “This is you relaxed? Because, frankly, I think sex would relax you a whole lot more.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “DON’T look so scared,” Destiny said as they made their way back down the tower stairs. “I’m not going to attack you. I was speaking about sex for fun not fright.”

  Morgan stopped. “Scared? I’m not afraid of sex.”

  Destiny noticed the way he belatedly caught her query. “I don’t doubt it. You wouldn’t be reading so much about it, if you were.”

  Morgan covered his face with a hand and massaged his brow for a minute before he scrubbed his face with both hands, and looked her in the eye. “You’ve been looking at the books in my library.”

  “You’re a man with eclectic tastes, Eagle Scout, and you’ll try to teach yourself just about anything, won’t you? I take it education was the mechanism that helped you forget?”

  “What do you suppose I was trying to forget, smart-ass? Never mind; forget I asked.”

  “Heck if I know. Sweet sassafras tea; whatever it is that Meggie says you need to remember, I suppose.”

  “I hate when you do that.”

  “What? I’m trying to put together a puzzle, and you’re hiding pieces from both of us. You can tell me what’s bothering you, you know. I may have gotten the vision to come here beca
use I’m supposed to help you.”

  In the keeper’s room, as they left the tower, Destiny got an inclination to go to the closet beneath the stairs. She went in and found a pair of old leather suitcases and took them into the parlor.

  Morgan followed her.

  Destiny laid the cases on the floor and opened them. “Look at the gorgeous old clothes.”

  “Why would you be the one to help,” Morgan asked, obviously still ticked, “whatever it is you imagine that I need help with?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Destiny said, unpacking a woman’s pristine white linen day dress. “Because I’m the only one who can see and talk to Meggie? And Horace and Buffy, of course. And you can’t talk to them.”

  Horace appeared before her. “That belonged to my wife, Ida. She sewed the dress, made the lace, and hand stitched the embroidery. The other case is filled with my things.”

  “Cool,” Destiny said.

  “What?” Morgan asked.

  “Never mind. I was talking to Horace. Come on, Morgan. Tell me what’s been driving you to come here for so many years.”

  “You’re the psychic; you tell me.”

  “Hah! It doesn’t work that way. Besides, I think you’re psychic, too.”

  Not only didn’t Morgan laugh, he took exception to her suspicion, judging by his frown. So much for teasing him into some kind of smiling admission. She supposed that getting further into bed with him would be too much of a freaking karmic complication, anyway, so why did she want him so badly?

  As if he could read her, he pulled her into his arms and lifted her off her feet to swing her in a circle. “Speak psycho to me,” Morgan said.

  Horace disappeared as quietly as he’d arrived.

  “Psychic.”

  “Right, that,” Morgan said. “Impress me.”

  “Okay. I sense a connection between you and the cassock. Put it on so I can paint your picture wearing it. You’re certainly stodgy enough to be a priest.”

  He set her down like a hot potato.