Hex, A Witch and Angel Tale

by Ramona Wray

  So, through gritted teeth bared in a tight smile, I said, “Sure. No biggie.”

  He was distracted, I decided, even as his soft lips brushed mine again, still tense, very different from the kisses our picnic had been strewn with. Then, with the promise to see me in the morning, he was gone.

  I barely dragged myself inside the house, my feet as heavy and cold as my heart. By the time I made it up to my room, I was dealing with a full-blown seizure and jerking uncontrollably.

  Warmth, I need warmth, the last barely functional part of my brain chanted. I crawled over to my closet without turning on the lights, losing my bag as I went. The curtains were fully drawn and my room was dark. I welcomed the darkness because it’d always been my friend, soothing and giving me strength, much like my own customized brand of mystical Red Bull. I drank it in eagerly, hoping it would make the cold less paralyzing.

  Standing in front of the open closet, I fumbled for some sweats to pull over my jeans and the heaviest sweater I owned. But it was too late. Every inch of me trembled so violently that it was clear I had no more control over my motor functions. Fingers curled into arthritis-plagued-like claws. My teeth clunk-clunk-clunked so badly my tongue was dangerously close to being amputated. My knees turned soft and failed me a second after the muscles in my legs became jelly. I fell in a mound of boneless, shaky mush.

  Then the blue tendrils came …

  Close. So close. Soothing. Warm. Could Lucian be in my room? Nah! How could he —

  My mind never got to process the end of that thought. I tumbled into darkness.

  It would have been hard to say how long I stayed lost, drifting through that amorphous nothingness. Maybe moments, or maybe years. I didn’t like it. As part of the freak-package, my mind never really checked out, not even when I slept. Some part of my consciousness remained active. Even in my sleep I was aware. Not now, though. Now, all I felt was lost, disoriented, and alone. It scared the daylights out of me.

  “Come back, Katherine,” a voice called from afar. “Come back to me, pet. Follow my voice. Come back to me!”

  Ryder! His voice was weak and, for some reason, he was calling me by another name, but I was sure it was him. My stomach tightened painfully. He was searching for me. He had come back for me. I had to find him! He’d be worried and scared and …

  With an effort that put Olympic weight lifters to shame, I pried my eyelids open. And yes, I was in his arms. He’d gathered me at his chest and I was resting there, snug as a bug in a rug, still shivering, but nowhere near as badly as before.

  But … wait; in the moonlight filtering through the curtains, his skin wasn’t golden but pale, almost silvery. Likewise, unless I was seeing things, his eyes were blue. I tried rubbing my face in an attempt to guide my eyesight into functional mode again, but the nerves and muscles in my body took no notice of my needs. As a matter of fact, my arms seemed awfully busy being coiled around his neck; they had no intention of giving one inch.

  “Lucian,” I cooed, not by choice. My darn voice was broken, too.

  “There you are,” he said, smiling down on me.

  His energy, those electric threads pulsing between us, fought my chill. I sensed it, hundreds of fingers, like candle-snuffers, extinguishing every last one of the freezing, sharp ends skewering my body. The cold was a living thing inside me, it groaned and twisted and struck back, but the blue tendrils were alive, too, and they kept on battling fiercely. In the meantime, I was a crippled mess.

  “Why did you come home alone? You were already sick when you got here. Where is he?”

  “C-couldn’t l-let … him see m-me … like th-this.”

  “Why not?”

  “D-don’t want … h-him to … s-suffer.”

  “Him.” His voice was as frigid as my chill. “What about you? What about me? Why should his suffering take precedence over yours? Or even mine? You can’t be so naïve as to think you’re only hurting him.”

  My vision had cleared enough to make out his face and I could see that he wasn’t just angry, but also decisively scared. For a while, neither of us spoke. Eventually, the chill began to slowly die away and I jumped at the opportunity to let go of him.

  “What are you doing in my room, Lucian?”

  “I felt the cold rising. I had to come and help.”

  “How? I mean, how can you feel it?”

  I scrambled to my feet, still shaky, using the closet’s open door to pull myself up. He followed suit.

  “You and I aren’t strangers,” he answered through clenched teeth. “No matter how much you want to deny it.”

  “Oh, I see. We’re not strangers, so of course it’s okay for you to lurk in my room.”

  I didn’t want to sound so harsh. He had helped me. Without him I would’ve still been lying on the floor, out for the count. But I was so angry! Angry that it had been his arms, and not Ryder’s, yanking me back into the land of the living.

  He laughed at my reaction, soft and tantalizing.

  “So how was your day, nice? It’s getting late and you’ve been gone for hours. Sure you’re alright?”

  His voice was silky, musical, and that smooth mask he always wore and called it facial expression had already snapped back on. I tried ignoring that Raisin, the little traitor, kept rubbing herself against his legs, purring contentedly.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but yeah, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Just because I nearly died, frozen to death by a metaphysical chill? Bah!

  He reached over to my desk and turned on the lamp. When the light spilled inside the room, his presence and everything else suddenly felt more real somehow. However determined not to, I succumbed again to light shivering, of the non-mystical variety, involuntarily wrapping my arms around myself.

  “Are you still cold?” he asked, opening his arms. “You’re always welcome to second helpings, you know.”

  I blushed, remembering how I’d nestled there, next to his chest. “Good to hear. I’m warmer already; a little hot tea and I’ll be good as new.”

  He gave a low chuckle. “You’re very brave, aren’t you? I like that in a girl.”

  “So let me get this straight. If I weren’t so brave, you’d back off ? ’Cause I’m willing. I’ll play the damsel in distress for you, if that’s what it takes.”

  He made a clucking sound with his tongue.

  “You really are the damsel in distress. You just can’t see it yet.”

  Evidently, my waspish tongue wasn’t enough motivation for him to back off. On the contrary, he was throwing himself into the verbal sparring with the same unhealthy enjoyment as always. One graceful, long stride and the space between us was closed. He smelled of … what the heck was that, fresh-baked cookies? He had on yet another one of his preppy Lacoste, or was it Calvin Klein, getups: chinos, white shirt peeking from under a V-neck sweater topped off by a navy blue blazer, and radically paired with a head of fresh-out-of-theshower, less-blond-than-usual hair.

  “I got here a few minutes before you did,” he said, in answer to my raised eyebrow. “I wasn’t going to let myself in, but your cat sounded hungry, so I thought I’d feed it.”

  Ah! That explained why Raisin was cozying up to him. The little feline traitor would sell her own mother for food.

  “So then you thought, what? Oh, I’ll just give myself a tour of the house.”

  He pulled a face, tilting his head to the side and looking entertained. Like I was putting on some hilarious one-woman-show for his benefit. I rolled my eyes, annoyed.

  “What do you want?”

  “To warn you.”

  Now we were getting somewhere.

  “What about?”

  “Your … boyfriend.” He spewed the word like it was dirt soiling his mouth.

  There was nothing paranormal about the sudden trembles that zipped through my body blindingly fast. Magic was never as sharp or as sudden, not to mention, it didn’t usually make me fantasize about insane things, the way I w
as doing now. I visualized the police unexpectedly raiding my house for drugs, illegal immigrants, or nuclear missiles, or anything else that might lead to them arresting Lucian. But of course no one came. No one would, either, at least not in time to keep him from opening his mouth.

  “He’s not who he claims to be. You’re in danger! And I let this go on long enough. It has to stop.”

  Now I was imagining myself sewing his lips together like in one of those cool horror movies. I could probably pull it off with a flick of my wrist, too, if I were willing to dip into the darker side of my powers. That, however, was something I never had done, nor would I ever consider. But, heck, even pouring hot wax in my own ears, to seal them shut, seemed disturbingly appealing right about then.

  “I don’t want to hear this,” I said instead. “Get out or I’ll call the police!”

  He smiled sadly, his eyes glimmering moist in the dim light. When his arm rose, his hand aiming for my cheek, I withdrew as far as I could, pressing myself against the closet door.

  “Do not touch me again!”

  “Forgive me. But I just don’t know of any another way to convince you of the truth.”

  He let his arm fall, but I never got the chance to exhale in relief. Proving scarily twinkle-fingered, his other hand grabbed mine in a blur of movement. Shockingly, a wave of excruciating pain electrocuted me. His life poured into my mind all at once and I screamed. Not just in pain, but in despair, too.

  Because it really was that bad.

  Chapter: Fourteen

  After the pain died down and my vision cleared, reality grew slowly concrete again. Soon, my brain awoke, albeit groaning and creaking like an old piece of machinery in dire need of oiling.

  Where was I?

  A strapping man sporting a pointed beard complete with dark mustache and dressed in bizarre clothing — an actual cape skillfully arranged on his massive shoulders and knee-length leather boots decorated with big jeweled buckles — shot me a reproachful look from next to an enormous fireplace. The thing was so big it could’ve accommodated Santa plus a few truckloads of toys without any problem.

  “I say, Lady Katherine, are you woolgathering again? Are you feeling alright?”

  Aha! So it wasn’t just the decor and the costumes that belonged to the Stuart period, but the people, too. British accent, fancy clothes, old-fashioned speech: I was getting the full ride. Still my treacherous lungs wouldn’t cooperate! I could hear the scream building up in my throat, grating the inside of it, and yet when I opened my mouth, nothing. In fact, all I heard was the sound of a not-entirely-unfamiliar voice, even and cool.

  “She is perfectly fine, Father. Merely suffering the aftermath of a poor night’s rest.”

  I didn’t hear the towering man’s answer, on account of dealing with the latest shocker. It turned out that the calm voice belonged to a girl attired in a dress that looked heavy and uncomfortable, the fabric laden with fl oral patterns and the neck adorned with a large lace-trimmed collar. Like her father’s, her curls were jet-black, falling freely around her childlike face. And while the voice sounded somewhat different, probably because of the pronounced British accent, that girl was J.

  She was … painting? In fact, we both were, I now saw. Each of us was standing in front of an easel, apparently working on the same subject, a portrait of the man by the fireplace. Except, one, I didn’t paint. And two, I especially didn’t paint wearing a bulky, old-fashioned dress you wouldn’t even catch me wearing on Halloween.

  What the heck was going on?

  My voice was still missing when the image around me became blurred. Suddenly, I was in some other room, with J pacing around me and talking fast, chipper, and with the same unbelievably pronounced British accent. The ceilings were high, the furniture and curtains looked heavy, antique yet new. The floor was covered in places by animal skins, a very disturbing sight. Both J and I were again dressed in weird clothes. Judging by all that, plus the fact that I didn’t see any modern fixtures, and I mean no TVs, no computers, not even a light switch, simple logic seemed to point toward the very illogical conclusion that we had somehow traveled back in time. This had to be the past. And while J seemed to actually belong here, since she walked, talked, and moved like she owned the … whatever century this was, I was definitely out of my depth. I may have been in my own body, but I was hardly the one driving it. I couldn’t even get it to speak, the worthless thing! Then again, maybe I wasn’t supposed to talk. Maybe I was here to observe, not intervene.

  But the biggest two questions were: how and why would Lucian bring me here?

  “… upon my word,” J wrapped up her discourse, pausing in front of me, hands on her hips. “That is the whole truth. What do you reckon I should do, then? Should I talk to Father about it beforehand or trust that William can handle it alone?”

  She returned to her pacing without waiting for an answer.

  “Father will be none too pleased, of this I am indeed certain.”

  Listening to those words coming out of J’s mouth was so bizarre it made me think of Eugene Ionesco and the Theater of the Absurd plays. Yet, here we were, in a manner of speaking, and J really was a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century British damsel who had exchanged the dramatic yet tasty makeup for ruffled dresses in colors and patterns my twenty-first-century J would never be caught dead in.

  She stopped abruptly and more or less flew over to where I sat, curling up at my feet in a colorful pile of skirts, her brown eyes twinkling with a manic fire.

  “Oh, Katherine!” she exclaimed, and her arms locked around me, head plopping in my lap. “Father won’t care about the difference in our stations. He’ll understand, won’t he? Oh, he will, say he will, for I cannot live without myWilliam! I do love him so! I cannot imagine being without him. But I shan’t speak of it, for it won’t come to pass. I shall make sure.”

  Then she was off again, back to marching up and down the room, her mouth and legs moving in the same turbocharged, amped-up tempo as before. It was hard to believe anyone could move like that without the involvement of caffeine or Coke, or a combination of the two, in industrial quantities.

  Then the massive gilded door to my right opened and a servant entered. Apparently, in this century, J and I were filthy rich. The man announced in a nasal, overly affected tone, “I beg your pardon, Lady Elizabeth, but you have a guest. Sir William Kingscott. Where shall I show the gentleman? The library, perhaps?”

  “Don’t be daft, man!” she countered sharply. “I should like to receive him right here. Make haste!”

  The stocky, stiff-upper-lipped manservant gave a bow. “Very well, milady.”

  My head was a beehive, buzzing as though with a thousand infernal bees. William Kingscott? Ryder, here? Hundreds of years ago? No, absolutely not — impossible! It had to be some kind of mistake.

  And a mistake it was, indeed, because when the gilded door opened again, it wasn’t Ryder that came through it. It was … Lucian. Wait, Lucian’s name was William Kingscott? What? Why? How?

  He glided across the floor almost without touching it and stopped in front of J, gazing at her with intensity.

  “Lady Elizabeth,” he breathed quietly, before his lips made contact with the back of her hand.

  And, lo and behold, my fierce-tempered, warrior-natured best friend actually blushed! The sweetest Kodak moment, and my camera was back in the twenty-first century.

  Then Lucian’s eyes met mine and everything changed. A fire was kindled and the blaze ate at me from within. Sweat coated my palms and air, sticky and solid, clogged my throat. He was the same old Lucian, and yet seeing him now was something of an epiphany. I simply couldn’t look away.

  Golden curls surrounded his chiseled, perfect face and I found myself wondering about their softness. Holy moly, what was I doing? Even if he’d only stepped off the GQ cover, why should I care? How could I, ever?

  And just before the image around me became fuzzy once more and the scene got switched again, it occurred to me t
hat he stared at me the same way I did at him, incapable of glancing away. Or at anyone else, including J, the girl whom I’d listened to professing her love for him with enough passion to set the world on fire. J, who in this time, was my … sister, maybe? Which meant — wait, what did it mean? Was I after my sister’s boyfriend? What kind of dysfunctional hussy was I in this century?

  When it became possible to see past the haze that concealed my surroundings momentarily, the scene was a very different one. The music, the company, as well as the incredibly elaborate threads, seemed to strongly suggest that I was at a party. Not just any party, either, but a masked, um, ball? Whatever the location, it was cathedral-majestic: arched ceilings, intricately ornate niched walls, lots of candelabra and mirrors, shiny marble floors, the works. As for me, I was all dolled up in a garment so extravagant it was probably worth enough to feed a small country. The dress was lime green, cut so low in the front that my breasts were basically out strolling on their own. My red ringlets were mostly pulled up into a high chignon and my neck was adorned with a really heavy necklace made of big red stones that looked like rubies.

  Before I could even attempt to get a sense of what was going on, I was already dancing with someone whose blond curls made my stomach take a steep tumble. Even from behind the cat mask hiding half his face, I still recognized him easily. Lucian again. And let me tell you, for someone who had never taken a single ballroom dancing class, I could sure twirl. How did I avoid getting dizzy and subsequently throwing up? Deepest of mysteries.

  Just like in an old movie, he whirled and spun me around until we pirouetted right out of the ballroom and onto a large terrace, which was conveniently deserted. Still he didn’t stop, but tugged at my hand, ensuring I followed him into the dark garden below. The night was chilly and the moon stayed out of sight. It wasn’t exactly the best time for a stroll in the garden. Then I was pressed against a tree trunk, the coarse bark poking painfully into my back through the dainty fabric of my dress, and he was kissing me. Worse still, my lips were kissing him back!