Never Been Witched (21 page)

“Yes. Congratulations.” Destiny started picking up plate shards. “That’s why she
knows
we went to see your parents today.”

Morgan rubbed the back of his neck. “Meggie always did have a temper, but if she knows where we were, she knows how lucky she is that she wasn’t there.”

“Ah, you made her smile.”

“That’s something—no!” he snapped. “It’s not, because Meggie isn’t here!”

Chapter Thirty-three

SADDENED by his response, tired of arguing, Destiny almost folded. But some things were worth fighting for. “Your sister is here, slam it.”

More than anything, Destiny wanted Morgan to open up about his past, to believe in Meggie’s spirit. Half the time, he seemed to believe that Meggie could exist on the spiritual plane, and the other half, he argued against it and his own instincts. An understandable reaction, but frustrating, nonetheless.

“Destiny,” Meggie said. “Tell Morgan to go into the parlor and wait for you. I want to show you something.”

Destiny translated his sister’s wishes to Morgan.

“Fine,” he said, shaking his head, as if one of them needed a shrink.

“Try to show some enthusiasm,” Destiny whispered. “She can see you.”

“Try to show some sanity,” Morgan snapped. “I can’t see her.”

Meggie shrugged and led the way to the captain’s chest in the closet beneath the stairs.

Destiny stopped short of picking it up. “I know about this chest, Meggie.”

“Morgan needs to look inside at the things he put in there,” Meggie said. “It’s time.”

“Ah.” Destiny dragged the heavy chest into the parlor.

Morgan jumped up to help her. “Destiny, what are you doing with this? Put it back.”

“No. Meggie wants you to look through it. Now. With me here. She said it’s time.”

“I could almost believe it’s her, she’s such a pest.”

Meggie gave a thumbs-up.

Morgan carried the chest to the center of the Persian rug and knelt beside it.

“Go ahead,” Destiny said, reaching for the latch. “Open, open, open.”

Morgan sat on his heels. “I know what’s inside.”

“Meggie says you have to look and remember.”

“Can’t I do it alone?”

“No. She’s shaking her head no. You have to share your memories with both of us.”

“Both?”

“Me and Meggie.”

“Of course. Anybody ever tell you that you’re as bossy as my mother?”

“Whoa. Anybody ever tell you that witches are rumored to be capable of turning princes into toads?”

“You think I’m a prince?”

“I think you’re a pain in the—”

“Buttkuss,” Meggie said. “Tell him.”

“Meggie says you’re a pain in the buttkuss.”

He looked around. “Buttkuss? I’m starting to believe you might be psychic, Kismet.”

“Good one.” Destiny wrinkled her nose at him. “Show me what’s in there.”

He opened the chest, lost the twinkle in his eyes, and took out a ratty old rag doll, scorched around the edges. “This is Samantha. Meggie loved this doll. The authorities found it in the tower. My mother threw it away, but I fished it out of the trash. I—” He shook his head as if he couldn’t go on.

Destiny touched his hand. “It’s okay.”

“I took Samantha with me to the seminary. A doll. Imagine. No wonder I kept it under lock and key. I’d take it out when I missed Meggie. Eventually, I left it here. Meggie told me to take care of Samantha, if she couldn’t. She said there’d be a fire, and Samantha would be in danger.”

Destiny’s head came up with her radar. “Wait.
Meggie
was psychic?”

“She made my parents—well, mostly my mother—furious when she predicted the future.”

“Didn’t they understand when the things she predicted happened?”

“No, that just made them madder.” Morgan held the doll up to his face. “She doesn’t smell like Meggie anymore.” He set it on his lap, took out a metal flute and played it. “She warned me to be careful with this, that her throat hurt when she looked at it. She was right.”

“What happened?”

“I was playing it on my way into the house, and the flute got to the door before I did. It cut my throat up. Lots of blood. Fast ride to the emergency room.”

Destiny knuckled his throat; she needed that badly to touch him right then. “Why did you keep the flute?”

“To remind me that Meggie was right, and I was wrong.” Morgan shook his head with regret. “So very wrong.” He looked up. “Meggie talked and laughed all the time. Mother spent half of Meggie’s life shushing her. Meggie would have reacted the way you did today. She would have laughed at my mother’s nonsense. Mother said that Meggie’s predictions were insane, and she meant that literally.”

Destiny gasped at the cruelty, and she felt hurt radiating from Meggie even now.

Morgan looked around. “You weren’t insane, Meggie,” he called. “See?” he said to Destiny. “Now I feel a little insane. Why would she be here, anyway? Why not at my parents’? Never mind. Dumb question. Who’d go there if they didn’t have to?”

“Meggie attached herself to you, Morgan, and when you started coming here, she stayed, knowing you’d return.”

“But why? Why didn’t she just move on? Aren’t ghosts supposed to do that?”

“Not if they have unfinished business.”

“What’s Meggie’s?”

“You, apparently.”

“This is crap. I’ve had enough.” Morgan shut the chest.

Destiny opened it on command. “She says you have to remember.”

“Look, Kismet. Part of me wants to believe you, but—”

“You’re frustrated and falling into your old habits of disbelief. It doesn’t help that you went home today.”

“Are you implying that I let my mother influence me?”

“She’s a powerful woman who influenced your entire life. Old habits, as they say. I dare you to take out your electronic debunking equipment to prove there are spirits here. Meggie says you never turn down a dare.”

“The brat,” he muttered, as he went upstairs. “No, scratch that,” he said, stopping in the middle of the stairway, recognizing his turn toward belief. “Tomorrow I’ll take out my debunking equipment and put this ghost talk to rest.”

“Tonight,” Destiny said, ready to do cartwheels, she was so close to proving to him that ghosts, psychics, and magick did, indeed, exist. Close, but no cigar. Yet.

She passed him on the stairs and turned to look him in the eye. “You believe, but you don’t. I understand. It takes time to go against a lifetime of disbelief.”

“Tomorrow, I’ll prove I’m an idiot for this belief creeping into my good sense, without my permission.
Tonight
, I plan to practice my new skills.”

She took his hand to lead him the rest of the way up the stairs.

“I want more lessons,” he said. “I want to see what you have in your toy box—great pun, eh?”

“Shh. Meggie can hear you.”

“Shh,” he whispered. “I want to bury my memories in your—”

Destiny stopped, and he walked into her. “You have memories?” she asked.

“None that I want to keep or acknowledge. Subject closed.”

Chapter Thirty-four

SUBJECT closed, until she opened it again, but Destiny knew how to bide her time and choose it wisely. “I want to see your angel tattoo,” she said as they got to the bedroom. “Is it Buffy?”

“It’s Meggie’s drawing of Buffy. I’ve kept it for years.” He emptied his pockets and took the folded paper from his wallet to show her. “The tattoo artist used it as a model.”

“Good thing you didn’t put it on your butt.”

“Sacrilege.”

“Even I know that.” She took the drawing. “Wow, Meggie is a good little artist. It’s Buffy to a T. See the colors? I told you, red and blue gown, and a gold sash.”

“Yeah, yeah, Sassy Ass. Let’s play with the toys.”

“Shh. Not yet. Let me lull Meggie in a way that won’t hurt her like we did last night.”

Morgan’s stricken expression said he believed more than he wanted to. “I’d never knowingly hurt her.”

“She’s aware of that. But she died an innocent, and she’ll always be one. While
you
are anything but.”

“About time.” He sat at the foot of the bed. “Go ahead and protect Meggie, nutcase that I am for saying so.”

Destiny went to the top of the stairs where she could see Meggie, protected in her angel-wing cocoon.

 

When she got back to the bedroom, Morgan caught her around the waist with a growl. “Low blow on the camera thing.”

“I speak only truth in prayer.”

He grabbed her by the buns and pulled her up to his knees at the edge of the bed. “You speak a different language.”

“Different from you.” She began to unbutton his shirt. “Your mother thinks that you and she speak the same language. Is that true?”

“Ouch! Another low blow. Your wit is as sharp as your wand tonight. Want to see mine?”

“With whom would you rather align yourself? Your sweet-spirited sister or your narrow-minded, mean-spirited mother?”

He kissed her. “You know the answer to that, but you’ll look like a fool tomorrow, if I take out my debunking equipment.”

“I beg to differ, and you
will
take it out. I’ll dare you again and again until you do.” She straddled him.

“If Meggie
is
goading you, she’s still a brat. What else did she tell you about me?”

“Meggie is at rest for tonight. You and I are wasting time.”

“You had to mention my mother. I’m not turned on anymore.”

“This afternoon, in your parents’ house, your mother was calling your name while we plucked our brains out.”

“Rebellion!” he said, snapping his fingers. “Rebelling with you, Kismet, makes me hot.”

“So let’s rebel.” She got off his lap, placed her red suitcase on the bed, and opened it.

Morgan looked closer. “What are they?”

“Surely your sex books mentioned how women manage on their own. There were enough chapters about how men do, which turned me on like crazy, by the way.” She raised the first object. “This is a dual-action, multispeed kangaroo vibrator.”

“Okay. Let’s use it.”

“That’s only half the fun.”

“Tell my pecker that.”

She placed a second suitcase on the bed, a smaller one, and when she opened it, Morgan grabbed his heart, and his eyes glazed over. He fingered a red bustier and held it in front of her. “Put it on. Put it on.”

“Not without the scarlet panties and spikes that go with it. What are you, a heathen? Do you want me to put it on in front of you, or do you want me to go in the other room to put it on, so you can get the full effect all at once?”

“Oh, I want the full effect. Not sure my heart can take it, but I’m game. Besides, I’ll get the effect coming and going—pun intended—when I remove it to reveal every delicious inch of your flesh and when I come my brains out. Before you go, name some of the rest of these man toys for me, will you?”

“Yellow garter belt,” she said, dangling it in front of him. “Sheer fuchsia bikinis with a slit-crotch entry system.”

Morgan groaned.

“Purple camisole with matching V-string bikinis. I brought high heels to go with each set.”

“No more. I can’t take the heat. Neither can the studly spire. He’s doing an Irish step dance.”

“Your aura has been growing and getting brighter by the day, but right now, if I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were happy.”

Morgan gave her a wicked grin. “Hey, if the big guy is happy,
I’m
happy.”

“Man brain doing your thinking?”

“Who cares? Man brain just learned how. Cut him some slack. He’s in practice mode.”

Destiny knuckled his studly spire to get a wild rise out of him before she turned on her heel and left the room.

“Oh, wicked girl,” Morgan shouted after her. “Naughty, teasing, wicked playmate, you will
so
get what you deserve.”

When she got back, Destiny stopped short. Morgan the grumblestiltskin, ex-virgin, ex-priest, naked on his bed—their bed—beneath her scattered underwear, a pair of yellow V-string panties swinging from his boner like a flag run up the flagpole in a high wind.

His aura had turned blue with white edges, which meant pure and
loving
, which she would never tell him.

“It’s raining bras,” he sang to the tune of “It’s Raining Men,” while wiggling a foot to wave her fuchsia underwire. He sat up and lost half his rain. “Sex on a hot tin roof,” he said, licking his lips as he looked her up and down. “You look good enough to eat, and I’m starved. How do you prefer your foreplay?” he asked, raising a vibrator in each hand. “Bunny à la Mode or Pig in a Blanket?”

Oh, we got trouble, right here on Paxton Island. Morgan the Magnificent could play. He could try new things and make himself look like an ass to amuse her.
Begone, trip wire to my heartstrings.

She could so fall for this man, and it scared the blessed thistle out of her.

Morgan rose on his knees and bowed. “I remain at your command. A feast awaits.”

She got into the bed, pushed him back, and climbed on top of him to abrade his dick with the crotch of her scarlet panties, and her breasts fell from her scarlet bustier into his gleeful and expectant face. “I’ll take the bunny,” she said, “for bunny ears are tidbits of orgasmic delight. And you, my good man, shall get porked—which, by the way is a gnome, not a pig—to within an inch of your man glue.”