Love and Other Calamities

by Virginia Nelson

  “Ambrose Foster,” he said abruptly, and his gaze locked on hers.

  She couldn’t explain it, couldn’t understand the whys or wherefores of it, but her heartbeat sped a bit when she held his gaze. He had gorgeous lashes, lovely eyes, and a body built for sin.

  Too bad he is an asshat.

  “Is that your name?” she managed in a voice that came out a smidge breathier than she might have hoped. Why did she react to this man this way?

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Not that it matters.”

  Her head cocked and eyes narrowed as the confusion set back in. “What does that even mean?”

  “Look, sorry about this,” he said, then he lurched across the distance separating them.

  Her hands came up automatically to block him if he intended to shove her into the water again. She braced herself and planted her hands on his shoulders to grip him. If he tried to hurl her over the edge into the waterfalls, he was coming with her.

  But he didn’t shove her. No, instead he pressed what felt suspiciously like a rock against her forehead firmly.

  That close, she could smell him—he smelled wonderful, like bourbon and vanilla blended into one heady scent. His fierce expression did lovely things to her body, but she still wasn’t sure what he was doing.

  “So…what part are you sorry about—lunging at me like you were gonna try to throw me over the edge or shoving a rock against my forehead?” Bobsy asked in what she thought was a reasonable tone, considering.

  “Shh, give it a sec,” he replied, staring at her forehead aggressively.

  “Okay,” she said with a shrug. He wasn’t hurting her, and although she had no clue what he was trying to accomplish, it was still the most action she’d seen in ages. He was attractive, smelled nice, and seemed intelligent enough.

  Too bad he is weird.

  After a few more long moments of him pressing a rock against her forehead, he sagged in defeat. “I thought for sure that would work.”

  “What exactly were you doin?” she asked, reaching for his rock. He gave it to her with a disgruntled little huff of sound. It was a smooth stone, rounded on all corners like it had been found near water. The center was gone, and she remembered reading something about rocks with holes somewhere… “Nice rock, though.”

  He reached for his rock again, but she dodged his grab easily. “Give it back,” he said.

  Holding it up toward the falls, she looked through the hole. “Oh, I remember what these are for.”

  “Yeah?” he asked. “Well, that one is a dud.”

  “You didn’t even try to look through it,” she explained. “I seem to recall these being used to look into the unknown, or into fairy worlds or something.”

  “That one is powerless,” he replied with a shrug. “Dud.”

  “Wait!” she said, a devious smile curling her lips. If he could be an utter weirdo, she could hold her own. “Can’t you see it?”

  “See what?” he asked leaning closer to try to peer through the rock she still held out toward the water.

  “If you look through the hole… I see it! Isn’t it magical?”

  He stepped even closer; his gaze fixed on the rock in her hand. “Do you really see something through there? Wait… maybe I do, too…”

  She snorted and chucked it over the edge, watching as it vanished in the falls below. “No, you didn’t, because people don’t look through rocks as it does literally nothing. Later, Ambrose.”

  With that, she considered the day won, and she walked away.

  Chapter 4

  The cat wove between her legs, clearly trying to make Bobsy fall to her death on the stairs. “Would you knock it off?” Bobsy growled at Peter, nudging the cat with her sock clad big toe. “You’re going to kill me one of these days.”

  “I thought you read all about cats and their psychology,” Peter replied, bopping his little head against her leg before flopping to lay on her foot unhelpfully. “Slow blinks mean love; bunting means a cat trusts you…”

  “Yeah, whatever, Peter Peter Cat Food Eater, you and I both know you’re more familiar than cat, and besides, cats do that because they can’t speak. You never shut up. And you know what stairs are, and how I could trip and die, which is why I’m considering it a murder attempt,” Bobsy replied, moving away from the cat toward the coffee pot that was calling her name. “Good morning, by the way, you pest.”

  “Love you, too, witchy-poo,” Peter replied. “So, what were you babbling about last night? Something about rocks?”

  “So, the date sucked, as I told you. Guy was clearly more interested in himself and what he could get out of me than meeting any of my needs, and you can guess that would translate to the bedroom, so that was a big nope for me.”

  Peter jumped onto the kitchen counter to better watch over Bobsy as she ground her coffee, loaded the water into the machine, and got it brewing. “I thought that one self help book you were listening to on audiobook had a whole chapter on why it is sometimes okay to be greedy?”

  She booped his nose, knowing the cat hated it, and reached for a mug. “It is okay to sometimes be greedy, which is exactly why I would also like to get off when I next do the deed. My gut said I wouldn’t get that with Kevin, so we parted ways in mutual agreement.”

  “He dumped you?” Peter asked, so she nudged him off the countertop.

  “Cats aren’t supposed to put their hairy buttholes on countertops,” she reminded him cheerfully when he let out an irritated little mew of sound.

  “Witches aren’t supposed to be this bad at dating,” Peter replied, utterly unrepentant. “But you’re distracting me because you don’t want to tell me about the date.”

  He wasn’t wrong. She was still trying to process the strangeness that was Ambrose the Duckboy. None of his actions matched how she felt when she was with him. Sure, part of that could be explained away by her simply being curious because his motivations confused her. Also, how did he know her name? Also, why did he smell so damn good?

  “Your coffee is going to get cold, if you just stand there staring at the mug all day,” Peter pointed out, disturbing her wandering thoughts.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, and cupped the mug in her hands. Taking a gulp, she enjoyed that sweet, perfect moment when the first sip off the day slides down the throat like an internal hug.

  “Why are you apologizing to me?” Peter asked with an annoyed twitch to the end of his tail. “Details, pronto, tell me about the date. Something happened, otherwise you wouldn’t be woolgathering.”

  Bobsy snorted. “I’ve no wool to gather,” she replied, meandering toward the living room of her lovely little cottage. She loved this house, from its whitewashed window frames to the grey wood floors. She’d decorated in hopes of soothing her soul when she came home from a hard day of saving the world—cottage core vibes all the way. The color scheme was simple, mostly greys and warmer whites, broken up by her plethora of plants. Each plant had stones she’d set in the earth around their bases—amethyst in the string of pearls hanging in the window from a macrame basket holder, quartz points decorating the soil in her bromeliad, a few geodes hanging out in her banana palm…

  Of course, thinking of rocks brought her mind back to the river rounded stone with the hole in the center the man had pressed against her forehead with such fervent enthusiasm.

  “Okay, Peter, you want me to spill the tea?” Bobsy asked the cat, who’d followed behind her and now sat cleaning his whiskers at her feet.

  “I’d rather if you didn’t spill anything, honestly,” Peter replied with a dry glance from his slitted eyes.

  “It means—never mind. So, like I said, the planned date was a bomb, then on top of that, the waterfall wasn’t even at full blast or whatever. Just a gentle trickle…” Bobsy trailed off, curling up on her chair to sip her coffee.

  He said his name was Ambrose. She liked that name—it meant immortal one, and beside that, it just sounded elegant in a way that Bobsy didn’t. She told herself names di
dn’t matter overmuch, but his felt good… right.

  She needed to focus. The weird thing about him wasn’t how delicious he smelled, nor was it her need to talk to him nor her desire to spend more time with him. The really weird part was the question of what exactly he’d hoped to accomplish with the rock or by pushing her into the water.

  “Maybe he can tell I’m attracted to him? Could that be why he abruptly does weird stuff—like a deterrent to remind me he’s not for me? But that doesn’t explain how he knew my name…”

  “What are you babbling about?” Peter asked as he leapt onto the arm of her chair. “Who can tell you’re attracted to him? Your date? But I thought you said it went poorly?”

  Bobsy shook her head. She wasn’t ready to talk about… whatever it was.

  Chapter 5

  Ambrose

  After Bobsy abandoned him at Blackwater Falls, Ambrose found himself knee deep in the river searching for the rock. He knew Jennet wouldn’t be happy if he returned without it, although the thing clearly didn’t work as intended.

  Then again, Ambrose couldn’t find it in himself to be overly bummed that it hadn’t worked. The witch, Bobsy, must have cast some sort of spell over him—it was the only thing that made sense. Otherwise, why would he find himself staring at the way the light caught on her hair? On the way her lashes dipped low over the warm color of her eyes? Rethinking over and over the way her hands felt as she’d gripped his shoulders?

  Ambrose shook his head in annoyance. He might be new on the job and it might be his first solo mission, but he knew better than to fall for the machinations of a witch. He had a responsibility—to destroy all witches—and he took it seriously.

  Or he had, prior to meeting this particular witch.

  Finally retrieving the hagstone—he’d been told that the rock would sizzle upon impact with her flesh, rendering her little more than a puddle of goo in seconds—he headed back to his car to report to the tribunal.

  The drive wasn’t far—they’d set up a base near the tiny town of Assjacket, West Virginia, in hopes of finally defeating the witches that were reported there. His mission was Bobsy Blatherskite, a witch of supposed great power and darkness. According to their reading on the subject, she’d thwarted the plans of the high ones more than once over the duration of her lifetime and needed to be stopped before they went on with the Plan… because otherwise she’d stop them from completing their goals.

  Not that anyone told him what Jennet’s or the tribunal’s goals were, not exactly.

  Jennet Salazar was like a father to Ambrose. He’d been adopted by the Salazar’s at the age of four, according to Jennet, but Ambrose didn’t remember a home beyond theirs. He didn’t even remember Salazar’s dead wife, Merga, but according to Jennet, she’d wanted a baby so much after the evil witch, Bobsy Blatherskite, murdered their child, and left Merga sick. So they’d adopted Ambrose, given him a home and family, and taught him to hunt the most evil thing on the planet—

  Witches.

  Sure, it sounded like something out of a fairy tale—witches, werewolves, and ghosts, oh my!—but he’d spent too long training to disbelieve. After all, if witches weren’t a plague on human society, why would Jennet have spent so much time, energy, and money on finding ways to defeat them?

  Then again, some small part of his mind reminded him, none of the supposedly foolproof ways to kill witches had worked on Bobsy.

  Maybe she isn’t a witch?

  With that thought in mind, Ambrose knocked on the door to Jennet’s study. After less than a second or two, Jennet’s deep voice rumbled, “Enter!”

  Ambrose sighed. He knew that Jennet was an old-fashioned kind of man, spending more time with ancient tomes than people most of the time, yet he still thought saying things like “Enter!” instead of a cheerful “Come in!” was a bit overdone.

  “Ambrose, lad, how did your hunting go? Did you slay that demon bitch?” Jennet practically salivated with glee.

  Ambrose shrugged. “The hagstone was a dud.”

  “Dud?” Jennet said, brow crumpling in confusion.

  “A dud. It didn’t work. I pressed it to her forehead and literally nothing happened.”

  Jennet sat down hard in the large leather captain’s chair behind his desk. “Ah, it is as I feared,” he said slowly.

  “That she’s not a witch? I mean, don’t feel bad. It was an honest mistake—”

  Jennet barked with laughter and smacked his desk. “You do know how to lighten a mood,” his father figure proclaimed between bursts of glee. “Not a witch… I’ve told you, she’s a very powerful witch.”

  “Well, she didn’t die when I dunked her,” Ambrose began, ticking the item off on one finger.

  “Luck,” Jennet said with utmost certainty. “Clearly the witch either cast some sort of spell to protect herself before going to the park, since she knew there would be a body of water there, or else she’d cast some sort of protection spell over herself when you neared the waterside, knowing the chances of becoming wet on her outing.”

  “What? No, she didn’t expect to get shoved in the duck pond. I don’t know as much as you do about witches, but—”

  Jennet stopped him midsentence with a wave of his large hand. Ambrose worked not to cringe—years of experience taught him Jennet’s moods were fickle, and he might hit upon the slightest provocation—and waited to hear what Jennet wanted to say.

  “That’s exactly it,” Jennet said. “You don’t know as much as me about witches, and I’m telling you, this one was prepared. I recall you saying she didn’t even look nervous as you walked around the perimeter of the body of water, correct?”

  Ambrose nodded, remembering their walk together. Even in silence, he found her presence companionable. Enjoyable.

  He shook his head, annoyed at himself yet again for falling for what had to be a trap set by the witch—some kind of weird allure which was intended to distract him from his mission.

  “Yes,” he agreed aloud. “She seemed very calm and undisturbed by her proximity to the water.”

  It was true enough—she’d seemed calm and comfortable with him, not on the alert whatsoever. If the equivalent of an acid bath lay only feet away, there was no way Ambrose could’ve maintained the level of cool she’d displayed while walking alongside the pond.

  And everyone knew water would be fatal to a true witch.

  “See? More proof that she’d prepared herself and therefore believed she had nothing to fear,” Jennet said with a triumphant grin.

  “I guess…” Ambrose agreed, but even he could hear the doubt in his tone.

  “You’ll learn, in time, to distinguish between a failed technique and a technique that didn’t work because the witch prepared for such an instance,” Jennet replied, giving him an awkward pat on the shoulder.

  Ambrose wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be comforting or not.

  Ticking another finger off on his hand, Ambrose pointed out, “And the hagstone did nothing.”

  “Did you press it against her forehead, as I instructed?” Jennet asked, lip curled in disgust. “I know how hard it is to force yourself to touch one of them, but sometimes it is an effective method.”

  Ambrose didn’t find touching Bobsy hard whatsoever. As a matter of fact, he’d recently had a dream in which he did a bit more than touch her…

  He’d kissed the witch in his dream, under a beautiful blooming cherry blossom tree while the sun danced on her hair and her skin glowed as if lit from within. Nothing in the dream was scary, it was just so peaceful being under the tree with her that he’d leaned closer, tucked a strand of her hair behind the delicate shell of her ear, then kissed her.

  It didn’t feel like a first kiss, not even a little, more like coming home. Familiar and safe and warm and…

  “Touching the witch wasn’t the problem,” Ambrose said instead of admitting to his weakness for this particular hell spawn. “I planted the rock against her forehead, held it in place, and nothing happened. Nothing
at all—no physical signs of distress, no melting into goo, nothing at all.”

  Jennet nodded. “She’s very powerful. I don’t know what personal warding she’s using, but it must be powerful indeed to accept the touch of the hagstone against her flesh. Wait, is her hair long?”

  Ambrose tilted his head. “What does her hair have to do with anything?”

  “Answer the question, boy!” snapped Jennet in a tone that left no room for disobedience.

  “Yes, she has long hair,” Ambrose replied.

  “Ah, well, perhaps you didn’t make skin contact at all. Perhaps her hair protected her,” Jennet explained, and his tone was comforting this time. “Don’t feel bad, m’boy. These things happen, especially when you’re new to the job.”

  Ambrose smacked his palm down against his father’s desk. “Her hair didn’t block the stone.”

  “How can you be sure?” his father replied, going back to his paperwork as if Ambrose had lost his interest. “Witches are tricky souls.”

  He couldn’t say he’d felt her skin against his fingertips, felt a resonating pulse of electricity from the contact that sizzled across his flesh and made him feel alive for the first time in his long life. Instead, he simply said, “I’m sure.”

  Jennet shook his head slowly, still not looking up from his papers. “Of course you are, because they’re tricky. She wants you to believe she’s unstoppable, that she’s not a witch, that the techniques don’t work. She wants to fog your mind, betray your senses, trick you into thinking she’s just an ordinary woman. It is the way of their kind.”

  Ambrose balled both his hands into fists at his sides. His father didn’t get it—he hadn’t been there, hadn’t experienced any of it. He simply lumped witches into one solid category with no room for outliers or the unusual.

  As he’d grown, that was the one thing that kept causing little tidbits of disbelief in Ambrose—the gray areas. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe his father was trying to do good, just that he saw the world in black and white when there were so many other colors, shades, and tones to the world in reality. Ambrose wished sometimes he could see the world in the same clear-cut way as his adoptive father, and others…