Witch Angel

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Witch Angel Page 7

by Trana Mae Simmons


  “It’s five miles from where you took off running into St. Francisville, the closest town,” he drawled in that lazy voice. “You want to borrow this for the trip?”

  Mouth thinned in anger, Alaynia stomped forward and swiped the canteen from his grasp. She twisted the top free and took a greedy swallow, then poured some water into her cupped hand and splashed it around her neck. Replacing the lid, she swung the strap over her shoulder and began walking down the road at a slower pace.

  “Thanks,” she called back. “I’ll ask someone to return the canteen to you later.”

  After a second, she heard the horse’s hooves again. Instead of receding, the sound kept pace with her. She stiffened her shoulders and refused to glance behind her, kept walking, staying in the shade along the tree-lined roadway. For what she judged to be about an eighth of a mile—once around the health club track—her irritation continued to mount. The horse plodded along in her wake at the same, steady pace, never narrowing the gap nor attempting to pass her. And never stopping.

  She paused to take another swallow from the canteen and the hoofbeats paused. When she resumed her forward march, the plop of hooves continued. Gritting her teeth, she kept her eyes resolutely ahead of her, ears hopefully straining for the sound of a car engine coming down the road.

  Instead, she heard only birds in the overhead branches. Once a blue jay streaked across the road, its shrieks of annoyance at her intrusion mirroring her own growing vexation. The same tangled underbrush she’d had to wade through in search of her keys grew beneath the huge trees, negating any thought of moving off the roadway. The horse’s hooves plopped.

  Soon she realized one of the sounds she’d thought was a bird also kept pace with her. The whistle rose and fell in the cadence of a tune, which imitated the beat of a Sousa march. As soon as she realized her steps were matching the beat, she clenched her fists and whirled.

  The horse tossed its head at her unexpected movement, but Shain tightened the reins and casually leaned his arm on the stallion’s neck. “Had enough walking?” he asked.

  “Damn it! Go away, will you? I can take care of myself!”

  “Sure you can,” he said agreeably. “You’ve been doing real good so far.”

  “Look, you just go on back there with your friend Jake and make sure my car’s there for me when I get back from St. Francisville with a mechanic. I’ll handle things on this end.”

  “Only mechanic I know in this entire parish is Jake,” Shain said with a slow grin. “Closest thing you’ll find in St. Francisville is a blacksmith. You bring him out here to look at that car machine, he’ll probably go back and send the parish sheriff out to pick you up—ship you down to New Orleans to an asylum.”

  “I am not crazy,” Alaynia gritted. “You and Jake are the ones who’re out of your minds—trying to convince me that it’s 1875.”

  Shain shook his head sadly. “The only reason I’m not carting you into town myself and shipping you off is because I saw you appear. And I’ve spent enough time with Jake to know there’s changes coming up. Who’s to say that one of them isn’t a time machine, which could’ve brought you back here from the future?”

  “My car is not a time machine!”

  “Well, the year sure as hell isn’t 2005,” Shain said with a shrug. “And you’re sure as hell real, so there’s got to be some explanation. But if you go running around in St. Francisville, spouting off about it being 2005 to people who didn’t see you appear out of thin air like I did, you can bet that cute bottom of yours that you’ll end up in a nuthouse. You better come on back to Chenaie with me.”

  “And just how will you explain me to the rest of the people you say live at Chenaie?” Alaynia demanded with a toss of her head. “Since you seem to have it fixed in your mind that I’ve appeared out of nowhere?”

  “Been thinking about it while I followed you,” Shain mused. “Figured we’d say you were Jake’s niece. You came out here to surprise him—found out he didn’t really have an appropriate place for you to live while you visited him. I’m doing the neighborly thing and letting you stay at Chenaie.”

  “That’s mighty obliging of you, since Chenaie belongs to me.”

  “That’s another thing you’re gonna have to keep quiet about. Look, they used to burn witches at the stake up North. And there’s enough voodoo practitioners left among the Negroes to get people spooked, if you go on insisting that you’re from over a hundred years in the future. It could be mighty dangerous for you around here, Alaynia, unless you listen to me.”

  Alaynia swallowed a new stab of fear. This couldn’t be happening. The mirage couldn’t have been a time warp. Things like that only happened in people’s imaginations.

  “Take me into St. Francisville,” she pleaded. “I’ll decide what to do from there.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Shain said, evidently losing his patience. “I’ve got a plantation to run, and I don’t have time to waste protecting you in town. Besides, you probably don’t have a dime of spendable money to use to get a place to stay. Jake’s your only hope of figuring out how to get back to wherever you came from—and I’m the only one who can protect you while he works on that.”

  Alaynia twisted around to stare down the road. It stretched endlessly ahead of her. If Shain was telling the truth, it would still be another four-and-a-half-mile walk into town—four and a half miles of suffering in this humid heat. Besides, Chenaie was where she’d been heading anyway. Maybe at her planned destination, she could reason out this mess.

  “I still don’t believe you,” she said as she faced Shain again. “It’s going to take more than just your saying so to prove to me that I’ve traveled back in time.”

  “Suit yourself.” Shain turned his horse around and started back down the road. “When you come to your senses, anyone can tell you where Chenaie is.”

  “Wait!” Overlooking her long skirts, Alaynia took a stumbling step after him. Her hem ripped and she jerked her skirt higher. When she glanced up, she saw Shain turn the horse sideways and extend a hand to her.

  “I ...” Shrugging her shoulders in defeat, Alaynia trudged toward him. “I guess maybe I’ll go have a look at Chenaie.”

  Shain withdrew his hand when she reached for it. “First you have to promise you’ll go along with the story I made up. Hopefully, Jake will get your machine hidden in his barn before anyone sees it. He values his privacy, so his place is back where no one bothers him, but I want your word that you’ll keep quiet about the rest of this.”

  “I don’t have much choice at this point,” Alaynia spat. She swept a sweat-matted curl from her cheek. “Otherwise, you’ll leave me standing here in this heat to die.”

  Shain chuckled under his breath and held out his hand again, removing his booted foot from the stirrup at the same time. “Suppose that will have to do,” he said as she placed her hand in his. “Always did admire a plucky woman. I think you and Jeannie are gonna get along fine.”

  Alaynia swung up behind the saddle. Squirming, she adjusted her skirts, then grabbed his waist as the horse started off. Almost immediately, she adjusted to the horse’s smooth gait and dropped her hold to the saddle cantle, unconsciously flexing her fingers at the lingering feel of the firmness of Shain’s muscles.

  Shain glanced over his shoulder. “Appears you’ve been on a horse before.”

  “I’ve ridden, yes,” Alaynia replied shortly.

  “Southern women usually ride sidesaddle.”

  “Women in 2005 ride astride,” Alaynia countered. “It’s a heck of a lot safer.”

  “That’s what Jeannie keeps trying to tell me,” Shain admitted before turning his concentration back to the road ahead of them. “Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself while we travel?” he asked. “Where’d you learn to ride?”

  “At the orphanage,” Alaynia replied bluntly. When Shain shifted around with a sympathetic look on his face, she stared steadily back at him. “I didn’t even know I had a Great-Aunt Tilda until a
couple months ago. In fact, I didn’t know I had any relatives at all.”

  “And since your great-aunt passed on,” Shain said, “I guess that leaves you alone again.”

  “I’m used to it,” Alaynia said with a shrug. “I’ve been alone for a long time.”

  Black tossed his head up and whinnied loudly, sidestepping across the roadway, and Alaynia threw her arms around Shain. She held on even after he steadied the horse and pulled it to a halt. Beneath her tightly clenched legs, she could feel the stallion trembling.

  “Snake slithered across the road,” Shain said quietly. “Black hates them. Sit still for a second, until Black realizes the thing’s gone.”

  Alaynia clenched her arms tighter, burying her face on his broad back. Not only the horse hated snakes. Despite the muscled barrier of Shain’s back, she could feel her skin crawl as she thought of how frightened she’d been digging through the underbrush after her keys—the keys this man had tossed into that dangerous territory.

  Gritting her teeth, Alaynia pushed herself upright again. “You didn’t worry about snakes when you made sure I had to go after my keys.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be foolish enough to pull a stunt like that. I told you I’d be back with Jake.”

  “Crazy Jake!” Alaynia said with a huff. “And you were acting just as crazy as you said Jake was. What did you expect me to do—wait there for you to bring back another demented person for me to deal with?”

  Shain nudged a willing Black forward once more, shaking his head as he rode. “Looking back on it, I can see how I probably scared you,” he half-apologized in a grudging voice. “But I’m afraid our code of manners in the South doesn’t contain any rules for dealing with strangely-clad women from the future, who appear bent on emasculating us.”

  Alaynia drew in an indignant breath, but Shain continued, “What do you do for a living? You must be ... what ... twenty-five? Been out of the orphanage for a while, I guess.”

  “I’m a historical interior designer,” Alaynia replied, a tiny smirk on her face. He’d missed her age by five years, and her thirtieth birthday was still fresh enough in her mind for her to derive a certain satisfaction at his misjudgment. She’d spent her entire twenty-ninth year dreading the upcoming milestone—looking back on how much she hadn’t accomplished and realizing that ahead of her stretched out more months—years—of penny-pinching and browbeating contractors into finishing their jobs on time. More than once, she’d raced to get her final check from her current job in the bank a day before the electric company turned off her power.

  The health club had been her one extravagance. No, not an extravagance, she reminded herself. People expected a woman interior designer to look sharp—reflect the image they were paying her to style into their surroundings. She always managed the dues somehow, but her stomach churned every time she thought of peanut butter and celery sticks ...

  “... don’t you think?” she heard Shain say.

  “Uh ... sorry.” Alaynia pulled her thoughts back to Louisiana. “I’m afraid my mind was wandering. What did you say?”

  “I asked if you didn’t think that was a better job for a woman than being an inventor, like Jake thought you were when I first told him about you. We always allow our women pretty much of a free rein to decorate, once a house is up—within what we can afford, anyway. Gives them something to occupy their time when they aren’t busy with the children.”

  “And just how many children do you have, Mr. St. Clair?” Alaynia asked in a deceptively sweet voice.

  “Since I’m not married, I’d have to answer that none,” Shain said with a chuckle. “And I thought we’d been calling each other by our given names.”

  “Then I guess your sister ... Jeannie, did you say her name was? Does Jeannie have children?”

  “Jeannie’s only fourteen. I haven’t even begun looking for a husband for her yet, but in a couple years ...”

  “How old are you?” Alaynia demanded.

  “Thirty-two.” Shain shifted around to look at her again. “What’s all this got to do with your being a decorator?”

  “A woman designer,” Alaynia gritted. “A proper job for an unmarried old maid, isn’t that what you’re implying?”

  Shain’s face creased in puzzlement, but before he could answer, Alaynia went on, “If you think all I do is pick out pretty curtains and furniture covers, you’re mistaken, Mister St. Clair! I’ve got a degree in architecture, and I’ve washed more sawdust out of my hair than you’ll probably ever see in your life! I restore old buildings to their former grandeur, and my business cards read, ‘Architectural Restorationist.’ I’m also not married because I choose not to be married! If and when I decide I’d like to share my life with a child—that I can afford to raise one—I’m perfectly capable of having one on my own, without a man intruding in my life!”

  “That ought to be a hell of a trick,” Shain scoffed. “You’ll have to tell me sometime how women in the future procreate, without a man around to help accomplish the conception.”

  Alaynia lifted her chin to reply, but Shain turned back to face the road. “Right now, we’re coming into Chenaie, so remember who you’re supposed to be. Jeannie’s too smart for her own good at times, and we’re gonna have to be on our toes to make sure she doesn’t trip us up in our story.”

  Alaynia peered around his shoulder, dismissing her outrage at his chauvinistic attitude as new worries crowded her mind. Ahead of her, acre after acre of cleared fields stretched on both sides of the road. She recognized cotton plants in the rows closest to her, but beyond them were plants she hadn’t seen before. Several mules pulled plows through the rows of plants, and behind each driver walked a man with a hoe, chopping at stray weeds.

  “What do you grow here besides cotton?” she asked Shain.

  “Planted some sugar cane a couple years ago,” he told her. “But it’s not making a profit yet.”

  The road curved just ahead, and as soon as they rode around the bend, Alaynia saw the plantation house at the end of a dirt lane lined with Spanish-moss-draped trees. She drew in an astonished breath, recalling the pictures the attorney had forwarded to her, which he’d written were taken after her great-aunt’s death. This was definitely not the decrepit structure she’d anticipated.

  The road beneath the tree-shaded lane wasn’t weed-choked, and no tire tracks or hoof prints broke the evenly-distributed expanse of dirt. Closer to the front veranda, a smooth lawn lay in green splendor, and rose bushes riotous with blooms lined the entire front of the house. The drive curved in a circle in front of the house. Inside the circular area, neat flagstone paths wound between more plants, and here and there small, weathered statues were set on pedestals.

  A spindle railing across the front porch shone bright white, a perfect backdrop for the red, yellow, and white colors. On each side of the steps and both edges of the porch, huge columns supported an upper balcony. Windows sparkled with sunlight, and she couldn’t see even an inch of peeling paint. Yet it was the same house—her architectural eye left no doubt of that.

  “It’s Chenaie,” she breathed.

  “Hell, yes, it’s Chenaie,” Shain said as he reined the horse to a halt in the wide sweep of drive in front of the veranda. Swinging his leg across the stallion’s neck, he jumped to the ground and turned to reach up for Alaynia. “I told you that’s where we were going, didn’t I?”

  Ignoring his outstretched arms, Alaynia continued staring at the plantation house. It stood there in the splendor she had visualized when she had superimposed her imagination over the recent pictures. Growing fear clawed at her with sharp tentacles. Out on the dirt road, it had been easier to contradict Shain and Jake’s contention that she was a time traveler. Here at Chenaie—her Chenaie, which was already restored to the grandeur she’d thought she would have to bring it back to herself—she found irrefutable proof of their insistence. There was no other possible explanation, unless ...

  Gulping back her terror, Alaynia slipped a s
ideways look down at Shain.

  “Are you going to get down?” he asked.

  “Ghosts,” she breathed. “You all have to be ghosts. I ... I died when the car crashed, didn’t I?”

  “I assure you, Alaynia,” Shain said with a chuckle, “everyone here at Chenaie is very much alive, including you. Well, almost everyone. And you saw that your car wasn’t damaged—it just won’t run.”

  Alaynia’s eyes continued to widen in panic as he reached up and lifted her from the horse. When she tried to struggle free, he held her even more tightly in his embrace, trying to calm her fear.

  “Whoa, now,” he said. “I thought you’d already figured out that you had nowhere else to run.”

  “Please,” Alaynia responded with a whimper. “Please let me go home. I’m not ready to be dead yet.”

  “Hey.” Shain pulled her closer and cupped her chin in one palm. “What brought that on? No one’s gonna hurt you here at Chenaie. Look, I know we got off on the wrong foot, but I haven’t given you any reason to be afraid of me, have I?”

  Terror stricken, Alaynia stared into his brown eyes, searching for the spark of madness that would be her total undoing. Slowly she became aware of the tenderness she found there instead—the concern for her fear. His thumb gently stroked her cheek, and she fought the urge to rest her cheek on his broad shoulder, bury herself in the haven from the surrounding dementia she sensed he could give her.

  Something in Shain sparked in response, and he slowly murmured, “I won’t let anything hurt you, Alaynia. I’ll take care of you. Don’t be afraid.”

  “But I am afraid,” she admitted with a little moan of despair. “Terribly afraid. What’s happened to me?”

  Desperately she clung to him, closing her eyes in denial, still fighting the knowledge of her unexplainable predicament. She felt his hand in her hair, his firm arm holding her close. Right then his body was the only thing standing between her and the nineteenth century she had tumbled into, and she urgently needed something to bolster her failing courage.

 

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