“You might have t-told me, so I wouldn’t think it was all my fault.”
He sighed. “I know. But the witches’ council swore us to secrecy. Your brother doesn’t even know about it.”
“So he thinks I’m a natural-born screw-up.”
“You could put it that way. I wouldn’t. But you could.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. You did what you thought was b-best. I imagine at the time it was the only thing you thought you could do.”
“I appreciate you understanding.”
I wasn’t really as understanding as I was letting on. Actually, I was still more than a little mad about the whole thing. Maybe there wasn’t anything else they could have done. Logically that made sense. But emotionally, I would have liked for them to fight for me, even if it was only a little.
If I ever had kids, which I had always doubted would come about, maybe I would see things differently. For now, I was going to pretend things were all right, even if they weren’t, completely. They were my folks. I knew they loved me. I didn’t want them beating themselves up over this.
I hugged him and climbed back into my car. After I started it, I had to stop and take a deep breath before I pulled away. So much had happened in the past few hours! I felt like, in some fundamental way, I was almost a different person than the one who had gone out to deliver those singing telegrams.
As I drove away, I thought again about Angela Vandermeer. I was sure my dad was probably right: she was just some human playing around with things she wasn’t even aware of.
But if that wasn’t true…if she was a witch…could there be something else behind this that wasn’t clear? Was she really after revenge on Ronnie Holt, or something else?
With those thoughts filling my mind, I didn’t even notice the vehicle pulling up behind me while I was stopped at a red light a few miles from my parents’ house. I didn’t know it was there…
Until it bumped into the back of my subcompact with a crunching of metal and plastic and a shattering of glass.
Chapter Seven
The impact threw me forward against my seatbelt and the steering wheel. I’m sure I cried out, more in surprise than pain, but I don’t really remember. It wasn’t a huge crash or anything, just a minor fender-bender. But it was totally unexpected.
So much for a witch’s instincts. When I was distracted, I was as clueless as any human would be under the circumstances.
I straightened up in my seat and looked around through the rear windshield. The other car still had its headlights on, and they half-blinded me. From the height of them, I knew it wasn’t a car at all, but rather a pickup or SUV.
I started to reach for the door handle, then hesitated. I’d read many times that a woman alone shouldn’t get out of her car when she’s involved in a minor traffic accident, because carjackers and even worse types use that as a tactic to draw a victim out where they can get to her. Since my car doors were already locked, it would be better to stay right where I was.
I reached into my purse and pulled out my cell phone. The thing to do was call 9-1-1, I told myself.
Before I could do so, somebody tapped on the window next to me.
I looked over, apprehension making my heart slug harder in my chest. I relaxed slightly when I saw a woman standing there. Big hair, obviously dyed a startling shade of red, jeans and a shirt with pearl snaps instead of buttons…
I’d been rear-ended by a cowgirl.
“Honey, are y’all all right?” she asked through the glass. “I am soooo sorry! I never noticed that light was red until it was too late. That jackass boyfriend of mine was callin’ me on the phone again, he just keeps callin’ even though I already told him to go climb a stump, and I just couldn’t stop in time. Thank God I was able to slow down some, so it don’t look too bad, if you want to come see what I did.”
She was so upset I didn’t doubt her sincerity. I turned off the car, opened the door, and stepped out, phone still in my hand. “I’m f-fine,” I told her.
“You’re gonna have to have a new bumper, for sure,” she said. “My insurance’ll cover it, don’t you worry. Have you called the cops yet?”
As I stepped toward the rear of my car with her, I shook my head and said, “Not yet. I was j-just about to.”
“Good. Gene!”
Her sudden yell startled me. I was looking at the damage to my car, but her shout made me jerk my head up. A big, dark shape came out from behind the blinding headlights and lunged at me. At the same time, the woman knocked the cell phone out of my hand. It skittered away across the pavement.
I screamed as Gene, whoever he was, grabbed me. Arms like the trunks of small trees went around me and closed tight, squeezing the breath out of me and turning my scream into a squeak instead. I tried to struggle, but as Gene lifted me and my feet came off the ground, all I could do was kick my legs futilely.
“Don’t worry about it, hon,” the woman said as she reached into the front seat of my car to get my purse. “We just want your credit cards and whatever money you got. We ain’t gonna hurt you…too much. You might want to quit fightin’, though. That just gets Gene excited.”
I was too full of terror and panic to heed that warning. I kept kicking and trying to squirm out of Gene’s grip, but it was useless. He was just too big and strong.
Why didn’t another car come along? I asked myself wildly. It was Halloween. Surely people ought to be out and about.
I had the tips I’d earned earlier in my purse, and it was enough to make the woman grin and say, “Trick or treat, Gene!” as she pulled it out and waved it at him.
I still couldn’t get my breath, and I felt like I was about to black out.
More headlights appeared, gliding through the night toward us. My heart leaped with hope. I thought Gene would let me go and he and the woman would make a run for it, but that didn’t happen. If anything, Gene’s grip on me tightened, as if he didn’t intend to let me go until he was through with me.
Tires squealed to a stop. A cop, I thought. Let it be a cop.
“Hey! Let her go!”
The voice belonged to a man, but probably not a cop since Gene and the woman didn’t seem particularly worried. In fact, the woman yelled, “You better get out of here, mister, if you know what’s good for you!”
The newcomer didn’t leave. He ran forward into the glare from the pickup’s headlights and said, “I told you to let her go!”
I caught a glimpse of a medium-sized man with dark hair. That was all I had time to see before Gene literally flung me against the pickup’s hood. The shock of the impact stunned me. I knew that I bounced off and fell to the pavement, but I barely felt it.
I could breathe again, so I struggled to drag air into my lungs. I lifted my head and saw Gene hit my would-be rescuer in the jaw. The man stumbled back but didn’t fall. He didn’t look like he would be any match for Gene, who was twice his size, bushy-bearded, and wearing biker leathers and chains.
Gene swung again, a looping, roundhouse punch that looked like it would tear the newcomer’s head off if landed. It didn’t, because the man ducked under it and stepped in to hammer a punch of his own to Gene’s midsection. Unfortunately, Gene looked like it didn’t bother him at all.
I grunted as the woman who had lured me out of my car stepped up and kicked me in the side. The pointy toe of her cowboy boot dug into me and made me gasp with pain.
“You shouldn’t’a fought us!” she yelled at me.
I was dizzy and not seeing too well, but I saw her draw her foot back to kick me again. When the cowboy boot started forward, I managed to get my hands up and grab it before it crashed into me. With a grunt of effort, I heaved on it and upended her. She fell back against the open pickup door and scrambled to grab it and keep from falling.
I grabbed the front bumper and used it to brace myself as I fought to get to my feet. My would-be rescuer was still fighting with Gene, but he was definitely getting the worst of it. Gene k
ept slugging away at him and driving him backward. If the guy fell, Gene looked mad enough to stomp the life out of him with those biker boots.
I stood up, ran at Gene, and jumped on his back.
I know, it was probably a dumb thing to do. If I had thought about it, I might have tried singing a spell and casting it on him. But with all the fear and pain I was feeling, the idea never occurred to me. I hadn’t cast spells in the past, so I didn’t think about doing it now. Instead I got my arms around his neck – what little there was of it – and tried to choke the monster.
That didn’t work. He roared, groped behind him, and got his hands on me. Suddenly I found myself flying through the air as he flipped me off his back. I might have broken something crashing to the hard pavement, if I hadn’t collided with the man who’d tried to help me instead. He broke my fall, even though we both wound up sprawled on the road.
“Damn it, Gene, come on!” the woman cried from the pickup. “Let’s get out of here!”
Finally she had realized that it was too dangerous to be fighting like this out in the open, even on a country road. I saw headlights in the distance, coming this direction.
Gene didn’t flee immediately, though. He stood there for a few seconds, glaring down at us, and then he growled. Literally growled, like a wild animal.
But then he turned and lumbered back to the pickup. Doors slammed, tires screeched, and the pickup made a sweeping U-turn and then rocketed off into the night. I blinked as I watched the red taillights dwindle.
Beside me, the man groaned and tried to sit up. “Are…are you all right?” he asked me.
“F-f-fine,” I said, even though I was far from it.
“We’d better get…out of the road then. After all that…we don’t want to get run over.”
He was right about that. He took hold of my arm, and I didn’t try to pull away. I put my other hand on the pavement to brace myself. Together, we struggled to our feet and stumbled over to my car.
A car went past us without slowing down. At least there was one Good Samaritan left in the world.
“Do you have a phone?” he asked me.
“S-somewhere. I d-don’t know where it w-went.”
“I’ll use mine to call the cops then.”
I leaned against the fender and pushed back the hair that had fallen into my eyes. “It w-won’t do any g-good,” I said. “They g-got away. I didn’t even get their l-l-license n-number.”
“Hey, you’re really shaken up, aren’t you? Are you sure you’re not hurt? I can call an ambulance.”
I had some pain in my side where the woman had kicked me, and a stinging on my palm told me I’d scraped it one of the times I fell to the pavement. But other than that I thought I was all right.
“I don’t n-need an ambulance. I st-st-stutter.”
“Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“D-don’t worry about it.” I managed to laugh. “You s-saved my life.”
“I don’t know about that. They were just robbers, weren’t they?”
I wasn’t sure. There had been a crazy edge to the woman’s voice, and Gene…well, like I said, Gene was a monster. I thought there was a good chance they might have killed me. Boyfriend and girlfriend redneck psycho killers. It sounded like something from TV. Unfortunately, such things really existed in the world, I supposed.
“I d-don’t know what they were, but if you hadn’t come along when you d-did…” My voice trailed off, but the implication was obvious. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” The headlights on his car were still on, and in their glow I could see that he was probably in his late twenties, with close-cropped dark hair. His chin had a little indentation in it, just enough to be visible. He wore jeans and a t-shirt with a jacket over it against the cool October night.
Yeah, he was handsome. I couldn’t help but notice, even under the circumstances.
He leaned against the fender, too, and stuck out his hand. “Donovan Cole,” he introduced himself.
I figured it would be impolite not to shake hands with him. “Aren McAllister,” I said as I shook.
“Erin?”
A lot of people make that mistake when they meet me. “Aren,” I repeated. “A-R-E-N. It’s an old Scottish n-name. It means…”
I paused. He had let go of my hand, but he was still leaning companionably on the car next to me. He said, “It means…?”
“Power,” I said.
And that was exactly what I hadn’t known that I had, until today.
Power.
“I’m glad to meet you, Aren McAllister,” Donovan said. “Although it wasn’t exactly a meet cute, was it?”
I thought about the encounter with Gene and his female partner and had to suppress a shudder. “Nothing c-cute about it,” I said.
“I agree.” He straightened and went to the back of my car, bending over to study the damage. “You’ve got a broken taillight and a crumpled bumper.” He checked the rear wheel wells, running a hand around inside them. “But I don’t see any reason why you can’t drive it. A cop might stop you for the broken taillight, but under the circumstances I don’t think you’d get a ticket. It’s obvious you’ve been in an accident. You can still file a claim with your insurance company. I’ll give you my contact info, in case they want to get in touch with me to confirm what happened.”
“Thank you,” I said as he took a business card from his wallet and gave it to me. I didn’t look at it just then but stuck it in the pocket of my jeans instead.
“W-Would you let me use your phone to call mine s-so I can find it?” He handed me his phone, and I dialed my number hoping the phone hadn’t broken when it was thrown.
The song Island in the Sun led me to my phone. I handed his back to him and said, “Thanks.”
“If you’d like, I can follow you back to your place,” he offered. “Just in case there’s some damage to the car that’s not apparent. You don’t want to get stranded.”
Warning bells went off in my brain again. Donovan Cole certainly seemed like a nice enough guy, but you can’t be too careful in this world.
He had risked his life trying to help me, though, and that wasn’t an exaggeration. Gene could have killed him. And it wasn’t like I would be taking him to my apartment. He would know which complex I lived in, but that was it. And we’d be in different cars on the way.
“It won’t be an inconvenience for you?” I asked.
“Not at all. I don’t have any plans for the evening.” He grinned. “I’m a little old to go trick-or-treating. Anyway, I’ve already had dinner with a witch tonight.”
“A…a w-witch?”
He laughed. “Don’t be scared. I’m talking about my mother.” He shrugged. “Not very nice of me, I know…but you don’t know my mother.”
I considered his offer for a second longer, then nodded. “All right,” I told him. “You can f-follow me home.”
But Donovan Cole wasn’t a stray animal, I reminded myself.
I couldn’t keep him.
Chapter Eight
I poked around in the grass at the edge of the road until I found my wallet, where Dye Job had dropped it. The cash was gone, but she hadn’t had a chance to take my credit cards or driver’s license. With all the hoopla, I hadn’t had a chance to count how much I’d earned in tips, and I sorely hated losing it all.
When I got behind the wheel, I worried a little that the car wouldn’t start, although there was no reason why it shouldn’t. The damage was slight and on the other end from the engine. It was just that the way this day was going…
But the engine caught as soon as I cranked it and ran smoothly. Donovan had returned to his car – a Jeep, actually – and pulled around behind me. I lifted a hand so he could see that I was all right, put my car in gear, and started along the road, listening to see it there were any unusual scrapings or clankings coming from anywhere.
The car seemed to be fine. Feeling relieved, I headed for the lights of Corpus Christi sprawled
out across the nighttime landscape.
It took about twenty minutes to get to the apartment complex. I pulled into the parking lot. There were no assigned spaces, but plenty of empty slots were available tonight. A lot of people were out partying because it was Halloween, I supposed.
Donovan pulled in a couple of spaces away. I got out, locked my car, and went along the sidewalk toward him. I was moving a little gingerly because my side hurt where that bitch had kicked me.
He opened the driver’s door of his Jeep and got out, but he kept his right leg inside the vehicle. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked with a worried frown. “I can take you to the emergency room. You might have a broken rib.”
“No, it’s not nearly that b-bad,” I said with confidence. “I think it’s just a b-bruise.”
“Well, if you’re sure…” He started to lower himself back into his Jeep.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You want some c-coffee?”
So much for my resolve not to let him know exactly where I lived. I wasn’t sure what prompted the invitation. Sure, I was grateful to him for his help, although to be honest he’d been getting his ass kicked when that other car came along and Gene and Dye Job ran. But I wasn’t in the habit of even flirting with a stranger, let alone inviting them to my apartment.
Sometimes, though, you’ve just got to go with your instincts.
He smiled and said, “Coffee sounds great. But…you’re sure? I don’t want to intrude…”
“It’s f-fine. Come on.”
He stepped all the way out of his Jeep and closed the door. “Never argue with a pretty girl, that’s my motto,” he said.
I could have given him some grief about calling me a girl, but since he’d coupled it with “pretty”…I supposed it wasn’t too offensive.
He fell in beside me, close but not uncomfortably so, as I headed toward the stairwell. “Car run all right on the way here?” he asked.
“It seemed to run fine,” I told him. “No weird noises or anything.”
“Good. When you call your insurance company tomorrow, don’t forget to tell them that I can back up your story.”
Misadventures of a Tongue-Tied Witch: Boxed Set Humorous Witch Series Page 5