Which Witch is Which? (The Witches of Port Townsend)

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “Moira?” Earl pressed.

  “No,” she said finally. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand why I can do these things if I’m not supposed to help people. I don’t understand why helpin’ people brings nothing but trouble to my door. I don’t understand one goddamn thing.”

  The truck bumped along in silence for the space of a few moments.

  “It ain’t your job to save everyone, Moira. Sometimes folks need to experience what they’ve got comin’ to them. Sometimes that’s what it takes to learn.”

  “And if they won’t learn? You’re just supposed to sit back and watch them hurt?”

  “Pain ain’t the problem for most people” Earl answered. “Pain is just the booby prize for dancin’ with their demons.”

  Moira shivered despite the oppressive wall of body-temperature humidity beginning to kick up from the marshes. “Or for dancin’ with me.”

  “You can’t think like that, girl. You was made the way you was for a reason. I believe that.” Engine grease hid in the creases of the thick finger Earl brushed by his eye. “We all do.”

  Never had an entirety sounded so small.

  “Thanks, Uncle Earl,” Moira said.

  Little Earl’s uneven smile hitched up further in her direction, a sure sign she was in for some ribbing. “You keep talkin’ that nonsense, we’re going to have to fix you up with Beau Enos once you come back.”

  Taken together, Bucephelus Enos’s nickname sounded to Moira like a part of the body that ought to be kept out of the sunlight. Which, when she thought about it, could be pretty well applied to the rest of Beau as well. He’d spent most of their childhood peeking up skirts and dangling from trees, pretending to be a possum.

  He also wore his underwear outside his pants on occasion.

  “You been threatenin’ me with Bucephelus since kindergarten,” Moira snorted.

  “And he’s still willin’. Why, ever since you healed him up after them kids got aholt of him—”

  “We are not fixin’ to talk about that,” Moira interrupted. She took a breath against the memory as it rose, trying not to recall the taste of fear on Beau’s split and bleeding lip, nor the shocking size of what she’d found beneath his patched overalls.

  “Well,” Earl said at last. “You keep talkin’ like a fool—”

  “I might as well marry one,” Moira finished for him. “You know, that never did make any sense.”

  “Don’t have to make sense.” Earl straightened in his seat and raised his chin in mock pride. “I’m an old bastard from Looziana. So long as I’m colorful, I’m doin’ my job.”

  “Then you’re due for a raise, by my estimation,” Moira laughed.

  “Been tellin’ management that for years.” Earl winked.

  Moira’s breath caught at the sight of the New Orleans airport rising from the flat flood plain stretched out before them. “Thanks for bringing me all this way,” she said, slipping her feet back into the sandals she had discarded when she folded up cross-legged in the passenger’s seat.

  “’Course,” Earl answered. “Was the least I could do. You fixed okay for money?”

  Moira jerked a hasty nod. She’d resort to other means of acquiring cash long before she would let Little Earl give her a dime. A worm of dread already gnawed at her gut, thinking of him spending the gas money to drive back to Terrebonne. “Will you check in on Uncle Sal for me?”

  “Often as I can,” Earl agreed.

  “And don’t let him drive the Badger,” she said, depositing the keys in the dusty cup holder between them. “Last time he tried, he just about tested if it’s amphibious.”

  Earl picked up the keys and dropped them into the front pocket of his worn work shirt as he pulled up to a curb in front of the wide terminal doors. “She’s safe with me. You got a plane ticket?”

  “Not yet,” Moira admitted. “But I will.”

  “They let you buy them things with cash? I didn’t think you had any cards.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be able to work something out,” Moira said, gathering straps and adjusting pockets.

  “So long as it’s something and not someone. Promise me that?”

  Moira flashed him a disarming smile and planted a quick peck on his cheek before scooting out the passenger’s door. “No.”

  Chapter Three

  Yes.

  First she would say it. Then she would scream it.

  Only fair for taking his seat.

  Nicholas Kingswood allowed himself a leisurely glance down the length of the interloper’s long, tanned legs, ending in bare feet propped up against the seat in front of her. The slut-red lacquer on her shapely toes brought to mind candy apples. His mouth watered in anticipation. He’d suck them until she cried. Until she begged.

  Millennia on this planet had left him with precious little tolerance for small annoyances. After a few thousand years, they tended to add up.

  Head tipped against the window, dark eyelashes feathered against her cheeks, the woman appeared to have nodded off waiting for other passengers to board.

  It had been a couple weeks since he fucked in an airplane bathroom. Those legs would look marvelous braced against a wall on either side of his hips.

  But then, her delicate fingers would be equally attractive wrapped around his cock, though the best view would have to be obstructed beneath a blanket. In his opinion, a quick jerk was the only acceptable use for those cheap-ass scraps of fabric in the overhead bin.

  He might even make her come as a reward.

  Right after she got the fuck out of his seat.

  He followed the line of her legs back toward the seat in question, and was delighted to find the view just as promising. Denim cut-offs and a skin-tight black tank top dipping low across breasts rising in time with her measured breaths. Wherever the HooDoo Shack was, he would have to make a pilgrimage simply to thank them for splashing their name across those tits. He had every intention of tracing the graphic with his tongue. But first—

  “They’re real.”

  Nick looked around, but saw only the flight attendants scuttling around in the galley. Which is precisely how he had arranged it, save for one detail: her.

  “You stand there with your mouth hanging open much longer, some critter is like to set up house in there.”

  This time, he saw her lips move—the sole sign indicating she had said anything at all. Her head remained against the window, her eyes closed, her arms crossed against her flat stomach.

  “I’m sorry?” Nick forewent an accent, though anything British typically spread legs the quickest. His Yorkshire would have been nice for her. A taste of the crude gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It drew out the hard “U” in any word to a guttural grunt. His cock twitched at the thought of spitting filthy words into her ear while he pounded her against the aluminum sink. But with her smoky, honeyed southern drawl, any accent off the continent ran the risk making her feel uneducated. It wouldn’t do.

  Her lids lifted, revealing aquamarine eyes twice as cold and hard as the gems they resembled. “What for? Staring at my tits ain’t a crime. Hell, it’s practically a pastime where I come from.”

  Nick treated her to a rueful laugh as he ducked under the overhead bin and slid into the roomy first-class seat with a practiced ease. At six-foot three, performing this maneuver gracefully had taken the better part of a century to master. But master it he had, like so many other pursuits.

  His leather attaché case stashed beneath the seat in front of him, he turned toward her to shrug out of his suit coat, watching for the telltale flick of her icy eyes assessing his broad shoulders. It didn’t come.

  She only chewed her full lower lip and slid an uneasy glance at the bag by her feet as passengers began to shuffle in like livestock through a chute.

  Had the bag moved just now? He had been too distracted by her white teeth sinking into the red pillow of her lip to give the matter his full attention.

  “I hope you’re not t
oo hard on them,” Nick answered at last. “I imagine even the most cultured academic could be quickly rendered witless in your presence.”

  The woman rolled her eyes and snorted. “If they had any wits to speak of in the first place. Most men don’t, in my experience.”

  Nick made a show of rolling the cuffs of his tailored dress shirt back to reveal powerfully sculpted forearms, always a trump card in his favorite game. “I’m not most men.” He reached a hand across the empty seat separating them. “Nicholas Kingswood.”

  She looked at his hand from beneath dark lashes. Only a split second, but her hesitation told him things she herself would not.

  “Moira J—” she paused, rearranging her thoughts before grasping his hand with surprising force. “Moira Malveaux.” The name rolled from her tongue like a bolt of silk, but the palm she pressed into his was as rough as any laborer’s. God, but that friction would be delicious when she—

  Pain seared through Nick’s fingers, shooting up his veins like white-hot fire on its way to his heart. In its wake came a rush of pleasure so fierce and dark, it threatened to steal his consciousness.

  A witch.

  Nick read the fear plain and pale on her face as she released his hand with a sudden, horrified gasp. Had she recognized him?

  They stared at each other in stunned silence, neither of them capable of summoning words to circumscribe what had just happened.

  Until hers came in a jet that would shame a fire hose.

  “Oh God!”—a word that in her pronunciation sounded more like gaw-uhd—”Did I smush your lil’ hand? I’m so sorry! I forget sometimes that not all folks are used to physical work and all. Here you are in your nice suit and your soft hands, and I go grabbin’ it and shakin’ like a coyote with rat.”

  The swell of defensive anger had Nick volleying reckless words in reply. “Soft? You think power comes from jerking off a fishing rope? I could show you—”

  “Would you like me to hang up your coat, Mr. Kingswood?” The flight attendant’s arrival dragged him back into the present moment, the slideshow of gore and torment that marked his long life evaporating under fluorescent cabin lights.

  He could feel himself collecting, gathering once again into something solid and stable. “Would you?”

  “Certainly.” The smile she gave barely scraped the bonds of propriety. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Scotch, neat.” He turned to Moira, who had begun to fiddle with her bag, apparently unaffected by his words. “Anything for you?”

  She shook her head no, but didn’t look up.

  When he returned his gaze to the flight attendant, he discovered her glaring at Moira with undisguised loathing. “Nothing for the lady,” he said, by way of dismissal.

  “Let me know when you find one,” the attendant muttered, turning on her heel and shoving her way through the passengers.

  “She don’t like me.” Moira had ceased worrying over her bag and was now sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, her heels pressed close to the frayed edge of her denim shorts.

  “Why is that?” Nick asked.

  Moira looked beyond him to something in the aisle. “Same reason he does.”

  Nick glanced in the direction of her focus to find a paunchy, middle-aged pilot leaning against the bathroom door, his face bearing a hazy expression of the “I just got fucked good and hard” variety. The pilot winked at Moira and sauntered toward the cockpit.

  Nick didn’t recognize the feeling at first—this immediate need to wipe the smile from the pilot’s face with his knuckles and relieve the bastard of his teeth with the heel of his leather loafer. Jealousy?

  Impossible. He understood it in theory. Jealousy implied someone else had something he wanted. In actual practice, he’d never been presented with such a scenario.

  When Nicholas Kingswood wanted something, it was his.

  “You!” Nick barked at the pilot.

  The asshole could hardly manage a facial expression with muscles so thoroughly sex-slackened. “Yeah?”

  “Zip your fucking pants,” he growled.

  Several gasps and whispers rose from the seats surrounding them as the pilot looked down and jerked his zipper up.

  The flight attendant scurried over, depositing the scotch on Nick’s armrest. He took the first silky swallow and turned back to Moira, who was twining a long, thick auburn lock of hair around her finger.

  “So is that how you acquired my seat?” The look she gave him made it clear she expected a lecture. Nick had other plans. “Very resourceful of you.”

  She shrugged, the gesture somehow childlike and innocent in contrast to the revelation he had just received. “He needed it anyway.”

  Aspirated scotch burned up Nick’s nose and choked off the air to his lungs. The offending liquid found its way back up in a cough that sent a spray onto the seatback in front of him. “He—” Nick had to fight off another spasm “—what?”

  “He needed it anyway,” Moira repeated. “Sometime folks have problems. Sometimes I can…help.”

  Nick took a moment to appreciate the way Moira’s breasts bounced when the airplane started to back away from the jet bridge. A small flicker of pleasure warmed his chest. This would be so much easier than he had thought. “So you’re a healer? That’s remarkable.”

  “Of a kind.” The bag in front of her seat squeaked. She nudged it with her foot.

  Nick shot the rest of his scotch and waved his glass at the flight attendant, who unbuckled herself from the jumpseat despite the squawks of her neighbor about takeoff. She hurried through fastened bins to pour and deliver the second drink, returning to her seat just as the plane powered into abrupt acceleration.

  “And what would a healer be hiding in there?” Nick asked, nodding toward Moira’s bag.

  “Nothin’.” Moira picked at a string on her edge of her shorts, pulling it until it snapped.

  The sound slid through Nick’s center, taking root behind his cock. When she plucked another, recognition registered. The small snaps were a perfect replica of the slapping sound their flesh would make as he pounded her. He caught her hand when she reached for a third. “Don’t,” he ordered.

  “Sheesh.” Her arms resumed their crossed position beneath her breasts. “Someone’s awful jumpy. I wouldn’t think a big man like you’d be scared of a little plane ride.”

  His ardor quickly mutated into irritation. “I’m not scared of a plane ride. I just don’t think you can stand to lose anything off those shorts.”

  Moira’s dark brow inched toward her hairline as a sly smile twisted her lips. “I’d have thought you’d like that, seeing as how you were gawkin’ earlier.”

  The engine’s roar swallowed his denial as the plane lifted from the earth in a breathless lurch.

  Nick felt the blood pounding in his throat, his temples. “I was not gawking. I was wondering what you were doing in my seat.”

  “Gawkin’.” She settled back against the headrest with a self-satisfied smirk and let her eyes fall closed like the conversation was over.

  “I was not—”

  An unexpected sensation brought his words to a screeching halt—the smooth length of her finger pressed against his lips.

  “Shh,” she yawned. “I’m fixin’ to nod off.”

  Rage rattled through Nick, mixing with the simmering irritation like a volatile cocktail. This insolent witch had shooshed him? Him? The one before whom warlords groveled and kings bowed? The one who measured time not in minutes, but in the shrieks of the defeated? The one who had made rivers from the blood of his enemies and built mountains from the bodies of the conquered dead?

  No. She hadn’t recognized him. He doubted if she even recognized herself or had any clue as to the power pulsing just beneath her skin.

  She would know him. She would submit. She would surrender, or he’d be damned.

  They both would.

  Chapter Four

  She’d be damned if this puffed-up, self-importa
nt peckerwood was going to ruin her first airplane ride. Even if he did look like the devil’s own lawyer. Hair the color of a dark roux, eyes like sunlight through Jack Daniels, and body like a college linebacker—or at least the college linebackers of her acquaintance—Nicholas Kingswood had predator written all over him.

  She’d seen more genuine smiles on a rat snake, and she had no intention of being another notch in his probably-imported belt.

  True, she could have just moved, but he was awful fun to look at.

  Even now, she stole a glance at the man fuming in her peripheral vision. He was remarkably big. She had seen enough of men that clothes didn’t hide much from her anymore. If her estimations were correct, it was a wonder Mr. Kingswood could bring his knees to touch at all. Poor Bucephelus would be jealous as hell.

  Moira allowed herself to imagine what a man that size would look like hard. In the absence of the sleep that fled from her like a thief, it helped keep the tidal wave of borrowed emotions at bay.

  So many people, so little space.

  Their combined sorrows, joys, and resentments swirled around her, seeking a path into her mind like electricity trying to ground itself.

  “No one smirks like that in their sleep.” His voice—deep, dark, and buttery as pork ribs left overnight in a smoker—punctured the thin film of her vivid visualization.

  She opened one eye and tilted her head toward him. “You the nap police or somethin’?”

  “If you’re not sleeping, the least you can do is finish our conversation.”

  “No,” she sighed. “The least I can do is nothin’. Which I’d like to do, if you’d quit pesterin’ me for five minutes.”

  The muscles bunched beneath the shadow of stubble on his strong jaw.

  Goddamn, but he was fun to annoy.

  “Pestering you? You take the seat I paid thousands of dollars for, and I’m pesterin’ you?”

  Moira ignored the perfectly mimicked rendition of her own twangy patois. “Yup.”

  “Unbelievable.” He reached down to his attaché case, withdrew a sheaf of papers and began leafing through them.