She held the smoky amber fumes in her sinuses as she gathered the blood-ruby skein of her hair into a mass atop her head and secured it with a chopstick the way she’d seen Tierra do. The woman was a veritable fount of knowledge when it came to kitchen coiffeur.
Above the sink, the mirror captured her in the oval of it its gilt Victorian frame and held her there. Moira had never been one to linger in front of mirrors. The small toothpaste-flecked shaving mirrors Uncle Sal had kept in the bayou shack where she had been raised had never been much good at showing her more than scattered pieces of herself. Which, she supposed, might have had something to do with the idea of herself she had when arriving in Port Townsend months ago.
The reflection she saw now told a far different story.
Once, a pale strip of flesh on her otherwise tawny shoulder marked where her tank top blocked the low Louisiana sun. Now, the Northwest’s endless gray skies had leached all but a golden ghost of her lifelong tan.
Her fingers floated up to trace the oblong scar at the top of her left breast, smooth to the touch, not yet pale. She turned to examine its twin on her back, a purple-red mark hiding in the shadow beneath her shoulder blade.
The place where the bastard known as Conquest to Bible-reading types had put his flaming arrow through her heart. Of course, an arrow hadn’t been the only thing Nick Kingswood had driven inside her that day. With knees weakening at the memory, Moira grudging admitted the scars of that joining ran much deeper than she liked to think.
Banishing the invading Horseman from her head, she struck a match across the small box on the counter and lit the four white taper candles set in the east, west, north, and south before snapping off the overhead light.
A man’s face swarmed upon the sudden dark.
Moira yelped and grabbed for a towel. “Christ on a corndog! What the hell are you doing in my bathroom?”
“Admirin’ the view, mostly.” The face clucked its tongue and whistled through the space where his two front teeth should have been. “Damned if you don’t look even purtier than I remember.”
Moira stared at the face, scrambling for recognition of the features, through which the clawfoot bathtub was still visible. Hair color was impossible to tell given the spectral green glow. Not much of a chin to speak of. Ratty little ghoste-stache like a fungus infecting his upper lip.
It was the eyes that finally gave him away. Well, eye really.
Only one of them was focused on Moira’s face. The other one had rolled upward to consider the ceiling.
One eye’s lookin’ at you, the other one’s lookin’ for you, Uncle Sal used to say.
“Skunk Hurley?” Moira asked. “Is that you?”
“I knowed you’d recognize me!” Skunk’s face bobbed happily toward Moira, who took a step back.
“Say, Skunk?”
“Yes’m?”
“Seems my Aunt Justine mentioned you’d got yourself dead by trying to breathe bayou water after a night on the ‘shine.”
“That’s about how I reckon it happened. We’d seen us one of them beer bongs on the TV down at Skinny’s bait shop and one the boys had a rubber hose—”
Moira held up a hand. Where she came from, the recounting of injuries suffered under the influence of high-octane potables had a way of turning into epics that would shame the Odyssey.
“Point being, you died down in Stumps Bayou, right?”
“Yes’m, that’s right.”
“So what exactly are you doing here?”
“Well now, that there is an interesting story.”
“Can it be a short one?” She glanced longingly at the tub, the conjured bubbles already going lacey in spots.
“After they fished me out of the bayou, I watched the boys thumpin’ me on the chest for a while and hollerin’ at me to breathe and such. But it’s like I wasn’t in my body no more.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And all of the sudden I see this bright light, just like—”
“On TV,” Moira finished for him.
“Right, like on them angel shows. So I start walking toward it like you’re s’posed to do, and wham!” Skunk went to smack one hand with the other but missed by a healthy margin, his spectral hands eddying with the current of air as they whooshed passed each other.
Probably down to a depth-perception issue on account of the one eye, Moira figured.
“Wham what?”
“Wham a demon with a flashlight pops me upside the head and I woke up here.”
“A demon with a flashlight, you say?” This fragrant bit of fuckery had Juicy Lucy Pleatherpants written all over it. It would be just like the infernal walking mattress to funnel all the spirits Death hadn’t claimed straight to the de Morays’ door just to amuse herself once she’d run out of puppies to kick and orphans’ tears to splash into her martinis.
“And may I ask why you felt the need to crawl into bed with my Aunt Justine? You pert near scared the dust off her old cooch.”
One of Skunk’s eyes looked down at the ground sheepishly. The other had lodged squarely in the region of Moira’s towel-clad tits.
“I thought she was you.”
Moira felt an involuntary twitch in the hand closest to her wand. “You know, Skunk, it’s a damn good thing you’re dead already, because if you weren’t, I might just have to hitch you to a truck tail-first and drag your sorry ass all the way back to Louisiana.”
“Aw come on now. It was dark and—”
“And I’m going to give you to the count of three to get the hell out of here before I use my wand to zap up a ghost gator and feed him your one good eye.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“One—”
“All right, all right. But don’t expect me to come warn you the next time—”
Pop.
Skunk vanished as quickly as he’d arrived with a sound like someone snapping bubblegum. Just like him to show up, be annoying as hell, and take off before relaying any useful information.
Deciding not to pay too much attention to the implications of his unfinished sentence, Moira cracked the window to let some steam escape and stepped into the tub.
Pillowy bubbles climbed the skin of her ankles and calves as she lowered herself into the water, pausing to adjust in increments before sinking up to her neck, eyes sliding closed, head falling heavy against the rolled towel she’d propped at the tub’s top rim. With tiny bubbles whispering in her ears, Moira sank a washcloth into the delicious heat and draped it over her face.
Perfumed tendrils of steam tickled her nose with the scents of sage, lemon balm, rosemary, and—butter on top of the ritual-washing biscuit—hyssop.
If it was good enough to tackle a leper, it might could handle the unholy gumbo of demonic zombie-ghost-horsemen cooties Moira figured she’d been hauling around.
She could feel the individual water molecules moving in response to her proximity, sliding over her in an affectionate caress. Her blood rose nearer to the surface of her skin in reply, moving through her limbs in a languid dance.
One lazy hand fumbled blindly at the stand next to the tub, seeking the glass of whisky, but finding nothing.
“Looking for this?”
Moira froze, chills riding down her back as if a bucket of ice water had been sluiced over her.
Without even removing her washcloth, she knew who’d spoken the words.
The one—the only—Nicholas Kingswood.
Chapter Two
Moira tugged the washcloth from her face and found herself rendered momentarily mute by the unexpected sight of Conquest by candlelight.
Darkness made itself his ally, revealing only the parts of him best suited to stunning his prey senseless with an intoxicating mix of fear and wonder. The ponderous outline of his body, feral beneath the thin carapace of tailored shirt and slacks. Long of limb and easy in the way of predators well within their turf.
His eyes, dark thieves that they were, stole flame from the candles around her bath, burning as
he stared down at her, whisky in hand. Were the light better, Moira knew they would be the exact shade of the smoky liquid swirling within that glass. Ambient amber lit from realms unfathomable.
She could smell him in the humid room, steam carrying the scent of his skin with its attendant memories. The whole wild weight of him brought to bear upon her.
Nick lifted the glass to his nose and inhaled deeply.
In that moment, Moira marked just how much he favored the wolf both in feature and in aspect—his keen eyes brightening and angular nostrils flaring with appreciation for the scent. She knew the way he moved. With an eerie animal grace and unforgiving sense of purpose.
And then, there was his predilection for taking her by way of canine congress. In the long night they’d spent together, he’d left his share of bite marks on the back of her neck. He’d held her that way as he drove into her from behind.
Moira sank down in the bath, crossing her arms over her hardening nipples, which she was pretty sure he’d already noted beneath the filmy layer of bubbles.
“Macallan,” Nick said, sipping the whiskey. “Old. Good.”
Nicholas Kingswood’s lips were the one feature at odds with a visage perfectly suited to the task of domination. Generous. Sensitive. Soft.
“I wouldn’t know.” She retrieved her washcloth and pressed it to the area below the nape of her neck where a sympathetic memory plagued the surface of her skin. “I haven’t had the chance to taste it yet.”
“Where are my manners?” Nick asked.
She had been about to comment that Nicholas Kingswood wouldn’t know manners if they stabbed him in the ass cheek with a spoon shank when he descended, hawk-like, upon her. All sudden shadow and sharp hunger.
One of the things Moira found downright vexing about immortals was their ability to move at speeds incomprehensible to the human eye. Even when that human happened to be a witch in possession of all manner of handy Druid powers with which to annoy and astound the common apocalyptic Horseman.
None of those powers would aid her now.
Not when Nick’s mouth claimed hers with all the certainty of an invading army, overthrowing all thought and intention with an onslaught of sensation beyond sanity. The taste of whiskey. The scent of smoke. The sound of roaring of blood.
The heat in his lips. The silken slide of his tongue. The unbearable tingle of every follicle as he filled his fist with a handful of her hair.
The feel of him. Him. Always him.
Each and every pore in her human body yielded to his immortal matter, offering itself up to his mastery.
Moira could no more refuse him than the tides could refuse the moon.
And in her body’s answering, she understood all kinds of things. Why the sun drew the earth into its orbit. Why wolves raised their voices to the moon. Why bolts of velvet nightly unfolded overhead. Why dew separated itself from air to weigh down petals and clover.
She let herself exhale into him the taste ash and rain. The taste of their joining.
Their breath tangled, ragged in the aftermath.
Where the glass had gone, she didn’t know. She knew only that she was twice as drunk as she would have been had she finished off the whiskey and had another shot to spare.
“You. Here. Why?” She asked when she’d recovered air, if not the ability to speak in complete sentences.
“Big tub.” Nick stirred the surface with one long finger. “Plenty of room for two.”
The scrim of foam he’d parted joined again in his wake. “You just want to know if I can do dirty things to you with the water.”
A devastating grin carved itself into his cheek and Moira knew part of him was pleased. The same part creating one hell of a tent in his fancy trousers.
Good thing she didn’t remember the exact, staggering length and girth of what Nick kept hidden in there.
Good thing she didn’t want to touch it.
Not even a little.
And her not wanting to touch it had not a damn thing to do with her wrapping her hand around her wand instead.
Moira swallowed saliva that had pooled beneath her tongue for reasons that surely had nothing to do with Nick.
She attempted to clear her throat, but the sound that came out instead approximated the pained croak of a constipated bullfrog.
Okay. Maybe she did want to touch it.
“Well?” Nick’s bemused smile left no question as to whether he’d guessed the direction of her thoughts. “Can you?”
“Please,” she scoffed. “I could make you squeal six ways to Sunday with no more than an ice cube and a commercial break. But that don’t mean I will.”
She thought she saw Nick’s lip quiver then. Longing maybe. Or some asshole comment itching to break loose of his tongue. Even money as to which.
“Not even if I lick this whiskey from your nipples?” Nick dipped a finger into the glass and let a single drop hover like a tremulous jewel from his fingertip before collecting it with an unnaturally dexterous flick of his tongue.
Moira prayed the squeak she’d just heard had been Cheeto stumbling upon some hidden treasure in Tierra’s compost heap and not a burp of unfettered lust squeezing from her throat.
“I’d rather suck a syphilitic skunk,” Moira declared with little conviction.
“You mean that?” A cabbage-green glow illuminated the corner of the bathroom as the hopeful visage of one Skunk Hurley materialized above the toilet bowl.
“The fuck?” Nick staggered back a step, catching himself on the sink.
Had she been an air witch instead of a water witch, the sigh Moira heaved might have generated a small hurricane.
A bath.
All she wanted was one measly hour’s peace in a solitary fucking restorative bath. Apparently the End of Days was determined to shoot even that straight to hell.
“Skunk, Nick. Nick, Skunk.” Moira used her toes to nudge the hot water back on, long past caring who saw what anymore. “Maybe y’all should go grab a beer or something and figure out ways to ruin my life that doesn’t involve tag-teaming me while I’m in the tub.”
Nick’s raised eyebrow seemed to be suggesting that, given different circumstances, he was not opposed to the idea of tag-teaming her in the tub. “How do you know this ectoplasmic turd?”
“Same way I know you,” Moira said. “I fucked him once.”
She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Not because they came out sounding more callous than she’d intended, but because the room darkened in concert with Conquest’s eyes.
“This?” The mouth she had admired earlier flattened into a cruel, mirthless line. “You gave your body to this?”
“She sure did.” Skunk, meanwhile was sporting a shit-eating grin of epic proportions. “Got my foot caught in a crawdad shucker and she humped me all better. She’s one of them witches, you know.” The verdant ghost whispered this with such simple, guileless wonder that Moira felt an unbidden stab of sympathy for him. As she had the day she’d found him limping home under a barrage of taunts from comelier boys whose mothers would have raced them to the nearest emergency room for an injury half as horrific as the one Skunk had suffered. At the time, she hadn’t understood what prompted her to tug him off the old oyster shell path and into an abandoned fishing shack curtained by Spanish moss.
She hadn’t known what she was then. What she might someday cause.
But Nick had.
He had known her of old, preparing for her through centuries upon centuries and longer.
Her mind ran out of track when she tried to follow him into the past. She grew dizzy peering beyond her own lifetime, then through the lives of the parents whose passion had made her. Back, back to when the world was new and people hadn’t lost their grip on everything that mattered.
“He knows what I am, Skunk.” Her voice had acquired a good measure more patience than she had when banishing him earlier. “But you haven’t got the first foggy clue what he is. You’d best get yourse
lf on out of here before you find out.”
“No ma’am.” Skunk looked at Nick with undisguised dislike. “I don’t believe I’m going anywhere. I don’t like the way this suit-wearing shitweasel is lookin’ at you.”
“You mean with two eyes?” Nick shot the remainder of the whiskey, but promptly sent it back to the air in an atomized cloud when Moira thumped his Adam’s apple with her wand.
“You may have an armchair made from the skulls of your enemies, but in my presence, you won’t be making fun the Skunk Hurleys of the world.”
Nick rubbed his throat with two fingers as he turned to the hovering specter. “I think it’s time you left so Miss de Moray and I can have a discussion.”
“And how are you figuring on makin’ me?” Skunk managed to look belligerent even without a face of flesh and blood.
“With this.” Nick slid the sleek cell phone from his pocket and performed a rapid series of swipes with his thumb.
“Pfft.” Skunk rolled his eye. “I’m dead, remember? What’s a piddly little ol’ phone gonna do to me?”
Nick said nothing, only waited with the phone pressed to his cheek.
“Nick. You don’t have to—”
“Reaper?” A broad grin stretched across Nick’s face—an expression which Moira found to be more frightening on him than out-and-out bloodlust. “Yeah, it’s Nick. How’s Gussy? Good, good. Say, do you still have some of that tincture that reduces ghosts to the spectral equivalent of anal leakage?” Conquest’s eyebrows lifted genially. “You do? Excellent. How soon can you be at the de Moray mansion?”
“On second thought, you always could handle yourself,” Skunk reasoned.
Poof.
Only when Skunk vanished for the second time did Moira realize she’d forgotten to ask him what he’d meant when he hinted at warning her earlier.
Moira blamed the apocalyptic Horseman towering next to the tub. He had a particularly annoying habit of emptying her head of such useful thoughts.
Which Witch is Wild? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 3) Page 17