With sudden awareness she half-rose, the blanket slipping until her white shoulders were bare in the room’s light. “Is Brentley listening?”
Stefan finished his teeth and rinsed his mouth out. “Brentley is out exploring. He usually makes himself scarce when we start losing clothes.”
Kaye said, “I owe both of you an apology. Remember how you used to call me a know-it-all?”
“I was absolutely terrified of how gorgeous you were. Cut me some slack.”
“No, you were right. I’m a know-it-all and a hypocrite, too. I thought for months that you were either lying about Brentley, or that you truly were a schizophrenic who shouldn’t be out loose. Troublesome, because I was so attracted to you.” She added that with a wistful raking of his flesh with her eyes.
Stefan approached the bed and sank down to sit beside her, one hand coming to stroke her shining black hair. He used his left hand, the one that she had healed. Examining her with care, he said, “This kind of came out of nowhere.”
“One thing led to another,” replied Kaye.
“Start with the first thing, then.”
“I want Cloda’s grimoire. I want to be able to use the spells in it, if they seem useful.”
He did look surprised, but not horrified. “Well, I suppose that’s understandable.”
“I wouldn’t summon hunger demons. But I might try using the spell that transfers power. My power, specifically. I’d very much like to know if I could get that to work for Milo. I’d pay for the spell, in pain, or in whatever way. I’d steal that grimoire, given a chance.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“I think I might. And I’ve been a little ashamed of myself all day, and afraid to tell you about it.”
“Because - why? I’m such a paragon of virtue?”
“You’re the best man I’ve known since Martin. And Martin died before he could be anything else but the best man I’ve known, ever.”
“Katie, no one knows better than me, what it’s like to lose someone you love when they’re barely an adult. Martin’s death wasn’t your fault.”
“I sent him out for a shake and french fries,” she commented, but then added, “I know it wasn’t my fault. Mostly I know that. So anyway, I was lying here wondering why I was ashamed to tell you about how much I covet that spell book. Which got me to thinking: why don’t I want you and Milo to meet? But I didn’t think the name Milo, I thought the name Martin. Then it hit me. Oh you idiot. Of course, of course. I feel guilty about you. It’s ridiculous.”
“No, it’s perfectly natural. It doesn’t even bother me.”
“Oh but there’s more. This might bother you, and maybe it should. For months, I wouldn’t believe that you had a ghost connected to you. I’m such a hypocrite. Remember that I’ve had a near-death experience.”
“When Milo was born.”
“Yes. But I’ve never told anyone this, not even Milo. It was too personal.” She opened her mouth to tell Stefan and was befuddled when the words did not come. When in her life had she been unable to speak, if she so desired? She gripped Stefan’s hand suddenly, thinking she needed to steady him, and realizing that she was the one shaking.
He held her with his dark eyes, patient. She steadied.
“All right. I was hemorrhaging. They lost my pulse. I was outside my body, just an observer in the corner. And then suddenly, Martin was there beside me. He spoke to me. Told me that I had to stay. You see? I talked to my dead husband’s ghost. And then, I refused to believe that you had Brentley. I acted like you were a head case. How could you bear to speak to me? We have to tell Brentley that I’m sorry.”
She hadn’t known what to expect as Stefan’s reaction, but chuckling wasn’t it. When her expression turned incredulous, he said, “You’re using your committee-meeting voice. Like you’re giving talking-points in front of a slide show. You’re trying hard to convince the committee that you’re guilty of a fairly long list of sins. You’re an excellent public speaker.”
“Thanks.”
“But I may be one of the few people who completely understands,” Stefan said. “You never told anyone before, because you knew they would try and convince you that it was a dream. A hallucination. A whopper dose of endorphins that your brain produced because you were in so much trouble. They’d say, ‘of course you believe that you saw your husband; you were an eighteen-year-old girl who was terrified and mourning for him.’ They’d tell you, in so many words, that it wasn’t real.”
As he’d spoken, he’d slipped close to her, burrowing into the cocoon she’d created, baring her to his eyes. His hands moved on her skin, the contrast of their skin colors and textures always exciting to her, making her arch into his touch, urging him to put his fingers here, and here, and there, especially there. He pushed her back down to the bed and lost the towel with one flick of his wrist, then was poised over her with his lips finding a path over her that made her writhe and groan. Still he spoke, though, words between long delicious explorations. “Of course, they might try to appease you by saying that it doesn’t matter, even if Martin was only a dream or a hallucination, because he seemed real to you and your belief saved your life. They’d think they were helping, but they’d still be telling you, unintentionally or not, that Martin had not truly come to help you. But I know that he did. I know it.”
Kaye eyes had been closed as she savored his touch, moaned for him to move to be inside her. Now she opened them to look up at him with surprised gratitude. “Oh baby, how do you know it?”
“Because I would,” said Stefan, doing her bidding, entering her body in one slick, deep motion and then carrying them on that motion, over and over again, the rigid intensity of his body burning into his words as he vowed to her, “I’d cross every line and barrier between every dimension that separates life and death, if you were in trouble and needed me. Would Martin do any less? I don’t think so. No, don’t cry, Katie.”
“Shut up, I’ll cry if I want. I’m not sad.” In fact she felt euphoric, a combination of hot sex and a dry blanket and someone who understood and said exactly the right thing. The tears on her face were probably from relief. She begged him, “Keep talking to me, lover, you have such a way with words.”
He did speak, but the talk only returned to her long-dead husband much later, after he’d finished with a languid description that reached clear to her curling toes. He let her rest her head on his chest and catch her breath. They’d both need to get into that hot shower now, she thought with a wicked smile.
Then he asked, “What did Martin say to you?”
She hesitated.
“Is it private? There’s no need to tell me, if it was private.”
Kaye had examined the moment in her head so often that she was no longer certain if the exact words were her husband’s or simply her own version. She mused, “What did Martin say? It happened so fast. He said I had to stay with Milo. He said I had to heal myself. And he said something about the afterlife that was absolutely useless and amounted to this: it’s unexpected. My poor Marty.” She wiped a final stray tear from her cheek and came to a decision. “Let’s wait until Brentley is with us again. I’ll tell you both the whole story. Then, as soon as possible, we’ll go to Boston when Milo has a day off.”
“Whatever you want is fine. But I think you’re overreacting, just because your son and I have never exchanged a manly handshake. Milo and I aren’t really strangers. He’s called me a couple times. Like last April – he wanted to know what you might like for your birthday - which is funny because I was going to ask him the same thing. We’ve messaged each other on Facebook. He comments on my show blogs.”
“He does?”
“You don’t read my show blogs?” Stefan crooked his head to look down at her slyly. “I write the best show blogs of this whole bunch and you don’t read them?”
“No,” Kaye said without shame. “I don’t read anybody’s. I’m the worst writer of us all, and it bothers me to be bad at something. Not to me
ntion the outrageous number of people who want to have sex with you - your comments sections are a little hard to stomach.”
“You’re not jealous.”
“The hell I’m not. I’m insanely jealous. If any of those gothic drama queens get near you, I’ll stomp them. They think you’re a project they can fix. Well I have news for them: you’re my project.”
“From head to toe.” His hand in the air, like it was an oath.
*****
Ardelia took issue with Rosemary’s pajamas at once, despite the fact that they were men’s style with long pants and sleeves, and there was absolutely nothing alluring about them, unless one found blue plaid alluring.
“You can’t be strutting around my house in your bedclothes like that,” Ardelia said nevertheless, right in front of Andrew. Andrew had circumvented a scolding by putting on track pants and a t-shirt, which were his standard pajamas except that they didn’t fall under Ardelia’s troublesome “bedclothes” category. One should apparently not even give the suggestion of going to bed in front of the opposite sex.
“You’re right. I ‘m sorry.” Rosemary went back to the bedroom and got her bathrobe.
Ardelia was not finished scolding. “Don’t you girls have no modesty no more?” she tutted from her couch corner, where she stabbed a needle and thread at a badly faded eyelet pillowcase.
“Andrew and I travel a lot together,” said Rosemary, arranging herself in the chair that faced the grimy window, tucking her legs under herself. She was small enough that she could curl into the moldy old chair like a squirrel in its nest. “We’ve spent plenty of nights in close quarters, you know, like camping, and all that. We’re used to seeing each other like this.”
Though speaking to Ardelia, she looked to Andrew with an innocent smile, for she was telling a bald-faced lie. There had never been a time when she wasn’t fully aware of his presence, in every state of dress and undress she’d ever seen him, from elegant evening clothes with his hair combed neatly against his head to the rumpled bedhead of a cranky morning and those ancient sweatpants he seemed to have saved from high school. She had lived with this awareness in a kind of sweet lusty purgatory. She’d had to monitor her thoughts carefully lest she shout telepathic harassment at him, wolf-whistles and leers coming from the raunchiest part of her mind. But he had to know. Andrew was not easy to fool.
Even now he held her gaze as if he couldn’t believe she would spin such a tale; but he too spoke to Ardelia, adding to Rosemary’s explanation. “And we both grew up with brothers and sisters. You get used to seeing all kinds of things.”
“Not in a Christian home, you shouldn’t,” Ardelia informed him.
Andrew shared the couch with her, he at the opposite end, taking up rather a lot of space with his long arms and legs. His posture was wide open, and if Ardelia had wanted, she could have scooted right under his arm like they were on a casual date. He wasn’t going to let her get away with that statement so easily. “Come now, Miss Ardelia. Christian home or not, boys and girls are always going to fight for their turn in the bathroom. Pajamas, underwear and all, it’s bound to be seen.”
Proudly Ardelia stated, “I ain’t never paraded myself in front of any man.”
Andrew had to laugh. “Well, with brothers and sisters, I think it’s less about parading and more about brawling, but—”
In a matter of seconds Ardelia’s face went from roughly red to deadly pale and Andrew put his hand out. “Miss Ardelia - are you all right?”
Of all the team, Andrew was the only one who hadn’t received any direct nastiness from Ardelia. Maybe she was simply susceptible to his good looks, maybe he was – well, no maybe about it – he was the politest of them all and had earned no animosity from her. But the look she gave him now was barely short of hostile.
“I’m sorry,” he said in quiet surprise. “I said something wrong, didn’t I? I’m blind in here, Miss Ardelia. There’s a protection spell on you. Most of the time when I talk to people, I can read the signs and I know which way to go. Not here.”
Apparently Andrew was taking the right tact, being honest and humble, making Ardelia feel special. Her words were curt but not without interest. “I’ve heard you talking, all you young folk. You’re some kind of seer.”
“I have some skills. Nothing I’d use to hurt you, or anyone. But they do not work here. Every time I try to use a trick I call my sneak, I run into a mason jar full of pins and nails and red wine. And I can feel every one of those pins.”
His words made Ardelia laugh, quite an unusual sight. Like Cloda, Ardelia was missing many teeth.
Momentarily Ardelia asked, “What sort of witchery do you do?”
“I’m psychic. I can read minds.”
“That there’s a fib.”
“No, honestly I can. Ordinarily.”
“You gotta touch’em?”
“By touch, by proximity – er, if I’m standing close enough to them, that is – or if I can hold onto something they used recently, that can work too.”
“Well you’re good as witch yourself, then.” This accusation from Ardelia was tinged with actual teasing.
Rosemary had to suppress a smile. Too bad she wasn’t catching this on tape, but she doubted Ardelia would allow herself to be charmed by a beautiful blond if the camera was rolling.
Rosemary caught the old woman’s attention, “You may not practice witchcraft yourself, but you seem to know a lot about it. Did you get training from your mother or grandmother, or both?”
Ardelia laughed again, harder, more strangely. Her laughter echoed in the storm outside, rain and thunder pounding in time with her words. “Who was my grandmamma? Who is my mama? I got it in my blood from the women in the family like all the women do. They said I had a gift for it, til I gave it up for Jesus, and I was mighty young when that became the case. But I had to do something because I couldn’t stand it no more.”
“Couldn’t stand it,” Rosemary repeated. “So did they stop teaching you then, or . . .?”
“It never stopped until they got what they wanted out of me, Little Miss. But being with Jesus made it a little easier to bear.” Ardelia suddenly jabbed at the air with her needle, and the jab was punctuated by a blast of thunder outside. “Cloda mighta showed you her stickmen and her spell books but she didn’t tell you what she and Willie got up to, did she? Oh she’s mighty proud of what they did when she’s just boasting away to me. She ain’t so proud that she wants it on your TV show, though. No, Miss Fancy’s smart enough to know how folk would look at her then. Same way they looked at me, when Willie was killed in the county jail.”
“All right, Miss Ardelia. Let’s speak frankly, then.” Rosemary leaned forward, peering at their elderly hostess. “Cloda says that Elton has cast some kind of spell on the townspeople of Slope. She wants to stop him. What do you think?”
When Ardelia failed to respond, Andrew tried to coax her. “You must have seen something strange is happening to the town. It’s crumbling down around you. And the people are sick and exhausted and existing on what looks like a couple cans of food a day.”
That image got her talking. “I think Elton must buy them cans, and give it out at the factory,” Ardelia said. “Because the folk don’t go to the market. They don’t do nothing any more but sleep and work. Nobody’s talked to me in months. Every day it’s the same.”
Rosemary exchanged a concerned look with Andrew, offering the neutral comment, “How strange.”
“It ain’t strange,” said Ardelia. Suddenly her sagging face was positively spooked, as if someone had been walking on her grave, and she sprung off the couch with surprising speed for someone her age. Andrew scrambled up out of politeness. Ardelia went to her front door, swinging it open to look out on the storm that pounded down on Slope. She muttered, “Ain’t nothing strange about it. Willie was having his way with women most of his life, him thinking the Lord was never going to catch up to him for it, and finally them girls at the rocking chair factory went to the l
aw and said enough’s enough. They came to get him and you know what happened next. They took Willie off the mountain and it kilt him.”
Rosemary said she was very sorry.
“No better than what he deserved,” Ardelia commented venomously. “That rocking-chair factory kept our family fed for a hunnert years, and Willie had to use it like his own private whorehouse and he never asked no woman whether being his whore was to her liking or not. He was the devil himself. I hated him. I hated him. And Cloda, she and Willie’s thick as thieves, and wicked as serpents. She’d swear on the Bible that he never touched nobody, when she knows perfectly well that he did. She of all people would know.
“Elton took over the rocking chair factory after Willie died, and he put everybody come back and work there, promisin’ that everything was going to get better. But every-since then the people hereabouts have been sick, the whole town is sick and getting sicker by the day. I’m sure we’re all going to die from it and maybe that’s best.”
She caught herself on these last words and stopped, her murky eyes wide with surprise. Rosemary and Andrew watched her warily. The rain slammed down hard, in great soaking sheets, and Rosemary was certain that soon they’d sink. Never mind the mountain. They’d go ahead and sink anyway, mountain and all.
Ardelia words come out in pants as she caught her breath; had she somehow been exerting herself? But she’d only been standing there watching the storm. The woman begged, “Oh leave me be; I’m too old. Too old for this.”
They hadn’t asked her anything, though. Rosemary didn’t know to whom Ardelia was speaking. She rose and went to Ardelia’s side, put her hand to the old woman’s arm. “Hey,” she said. “We want to help them. Can you tell us how to do it?”
“Oh you fool child, don’t you know that there’s no help for it? Cloda always gets her way.”
Witches Page 17