The Water Witch (26 page)

“You mean like a note?” he asked, his gaze bent down, his fingertips deftly stroking my finger … which made me wonder what it would feel like to have those fingertips stroke other parts of my body.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said, shaking off the image of Bill’s hands on me. “It was a silly idea, though. He had to leave … in a hurry. He wouldn’t have had time to leave a note.”

“Unless he knew he might have to leave suddenly,” Bill said. “Then maybe he’d have hidden a note somewhere. I’ll keep an eye out if you like … There. It’s out.”

I looked down and saw a half-inch of jagged wood tipped with blood squeezed between Bill’s thumb and forefinger. “Wow, I really skewered myself!” I exclaimed, looking into Bill’s eyes, eyes full of compassion, and something more. Longing.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said, still looking into my eyes.

“It doesn’t hurt a bit now …” I said, leaning toward him. An inch farther and our lips would touch … but then my cell phone, which was in my pocket, chimed, startling us both.

“Oh,” I said, feeling as though I’d been woken from a dream. “I suppose I should get that.”

“Sure,” Bill said, dropping my hand. “Just make sure you put something on that. Those kinds of wounds can fester.”

“Uh huh … I will …” I said, blushing as I retrieved my phone from my pocket. There was a text from Duncan.

The Grove has descended
, he had written.
We need one more transformation to free your power. I’ll be there before dark
.

I
s something wrong?” Bill asked.

He was still crouched beside me, brow furrowed, a look of concern in his kind brown eyes.
What a nice guy
, I thought, immediately followed by
I have to get rid of him
. Liz had said to stay away from Duncan but I had a better idea.

“No, it’s just … that was my … um, advisor. He needs to speak to me about a project.”

“Your advisor? Is that the guy who was here before … the one with the messy hair? Sort of snooty-looking?”

I laughed at Bill’s description of Duncan Laird. “That’s him. He’s … Scottish,” I added, as if that explained the snooty look. “But yeah, he said this was important … so I’m afraid …”

“Oh, I see.” Bill got to his feet. “You want me to clear out.”

“It’s just that I’m afraid we’ll be in your way …” I stood up, too, and put my hand on Bill’s elbow. Then took it off again when I felt another jolt of raw heat and desire. “I really do appreciate how hard you’ve been working on the house. I
can’t thank you enough,” I said, my embarrassment making the words come out stilted and formal.

“You don’t have to thank me at all, Ms. McFay,” he said stiffly, picking up on my tone. “It’s my job. Shall I come back first thing in the morning … or maybe not quite
first
thing?”

I bristled at the implication that I might have company that early. “First thing will be fine, Bill,” I replied, matching his formality.

He nodded, put on his baseball cap, and turned to go. I bit my lip to keep from calling him back to apologize for kicking him out. I waited until I heard the front door close and then watched him drive away in his truck. I felt rotten about going all “lady of the manor” on him, but I didn’t want an audience for what I had planned.

I’d lay a trap for Duncan and find out for sure if he was the incubus. It bothered me that I couldn’t tell. If we were true lovers, as Liam had said in my dream, shouldn’t I have swooned in his arms? I certainly shouldn’t be falling into my handyman’s arms.

I headed for the bath off my bedroom to take a quick shower before Duncan arrived. I needed to look my best. Shucking off jeans and T-shirt in my closet I heard a clink as my jeans hit the floor. The Aelvestone rolled out of my pocket. I knelt down and picked it up. It pulsed in my hand like something alive. I’d already absorbed too much Aelvesgold from the spell circle, but I couldn’t resist closing my hand around it.

A wave of warmth swept through my body and buckled my knees. I sank to the closet floor, my back cushioned by a soft quilted suitcase that held winter sweaters and scarves. I let my head sink back onto the bag, the smell of wool and lavender
bringing back memories of being little and hiding in my mother’s closet.

I was five or six, small enough that I could fit in the space between suitcases. There were lots of suitcases because we were always going places. That’s because my mother and father went to faraway places to dig things up—wonderful treasure they sometimes brought back for me, like brightly colored beads and globby coins with smushed-in faces. Sometimes I went with them but sometimes they left me with Grandmother. I didn’t like that. Grandmother always looked at me as if I might be about to explode all over her white couch, which made me feel like I might throw up. She never touched me. This was supposed to be one of those times when they left me. The car to take me away was outside waiting, but if they couldn’t find me then maybe they would send it away and I could go with them instead. I heard them calling my name, making a game of it like they always did, my daddy calling “Kay” and my mommy calling “Lex,” but then they stopped right in the middle of my name and I heard my father say, “I hate her going there as much as she does. One of these times Adelaide is going to notice …?”

“There’s nothing to notice. She’s been warded.”

“That’s another thing. That can’t be good for her, having all those locks and binds on her spirit. It’s like she’s been caged up. Sometimes, Katy, I swear she looks at me like she’s lost. What if she has gotten lost? What if she’s lost now …”

I heard my father’s voice crack, and I couldn’t hide anymore, even if it meant going to my grandmother’s
.

“Here I am!” I cried. “I’m not lost …”

“I’m not lost, I’m not lost …” I woke in the closet, murmuring the words to myself. The Aelvestone lay on the floor by my side. How long had I held it? It had taken me into some
kind of fugue state. Into some part of my past … my mother saying I had been warded. My parents had known about the wards on me!

I picked up the stone. It throbbed against my hand like a trapped animal.
Like she’s been caged up …
My father had sounded scared. As if I might be in danger. Then why hadn’t they removed the wards? I shoved the stone into the suitcase with my winter sweaters.

In the bathroom I looked longingly at my deep claw-foot tub, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to surround myself with that much water.

She’s been warded …
I heard my mother’s words again as I stepped into the shower. Strange. I had very few memories from my childhood of my parents beyond the stories they read me at bedtime. That had been the time I’d loved best, nestled between them in bed, their voices alternating as they took turns telling stories about fairies, princesses, wizards, and magic …

She’s been warded …

It’s like she’s been caged up … like she’s lost …

My parents’ words seemed to float on the steam that writhed around me. Feeling skittish, I didn’t linger. I toweled off and then put on a rose-scented skin lotion that Liam had liked and a slinky blue jersey dress that he had loved. When I put it on—for the first time since he’d left—I could almost feel his hands on me. Catching my eye in the mirror I asked myself what I would do if Duncan were the incubus. Would I really send him back to Faerie?

I looked away and slipped the emerald-and-diamond ring Liam had given me onto my right ring finger. Then I went downstairs and straightened the library, plumping the couch cushions and picking up several books from the floor that Ralph, who had taken to hiding in the bookcases lately, had
knocked over. I picked up Fraser’s
Demonology
, which had fallen open at a woodcut of a winged creature with nasty claws that made me shudder, and reshelved it. Then I picked up Wheelock’s
Spellcraft
from the coffee table and turned to the chapter “Magical Disguises and How to Uncover Them.” It was divided into three sections (Wheelock, and all witches, I was discovering, had a thing for threes): a) Disguises for Self-Protection; b) Disguises for Sexual Uses; and c) Wards.

Wards? I hadn’t realized they could be used as disguises.

I read on.

It is this author’s belief that sometimes it may be necessary to hide one’s true identity to survive an attack from an enemy. Therefore the wards of disguise are included here to be used as a means of protection in life-threatening situations only. The author disavows responsibility for any other uses. If these terms are agreeable, please depress the author indemnity icon below
.

I flipped the page and saw that the next several pages were blank. Then I flipped back to what Wheelock called the author indemnity icon. It was a tiny picture of a closed book surrounded by a spoked circle. Small print below it explained that by touching the icon I agreed to the terms stipulated above and that I would not hold the author responsible for any mishaps attached to the use of the following wards and spells. There was some even smaller print below that I would have had to get a magnifying glass to read, but I was impatient to find out about these wards of disguise. Pressing the icon was like checking the “Agree to Terms” box on the internet, I figured. Whoever read the full text?

I touched my finger to the icon. The spoked wheel turned; the book shimmered and opened. A stream of text flew out and spilled down the page. Pages flipped so that the text could continue filling up the empty sheets. When the blank section
filled, the pages automatically flipped back to the beginning of the section.

Cool
, I thought.
Who needs a Kindle?

Twenty minutes later I understood why Wheelock had protected himself against the retribution of those deceived by these spells. The disguise wards he described could be used to alter a person’s face and body so thoroughly that husbands were unable to recognize wives and mothers didn’t know their own children. They could be used to impersonate another person—Merlin had given Uther Pendragon such a ward to make him assume the shape of Gorlois, Ygraine’s husband, so that he could lie with her and conceive Arthur—and induce emotional states of thralldom. Here Wheelock referred the reader to the section on sex, hinting that disguise wards were often used in sexual role-playing games.

Ew
. In my dream Liam had shown me how to use wards to increase sexual pleasure, but the idea of using the wards to assume other shapes—objects of fantasy and desire—struck me as … well,
icky
. But I supposed if they were used between consenting adults there was nothing really wrong with it.

Wheelock was clear, though, that cases in which one witch deceived another into having sex while under the influence of disguise wards constituted rape.

Most disturbing
, he wrote,
are the cases in which an otherworldly creature uses disguise wards to pretend to be human in order to seduce a human. Such stratagems have been used by Nephilim, succubi, incubi …

If Duncan were the incubus, why would he be using wards to disguise himself? When the incubus had incarnated as Liam, he hadn’t needed wards.

Reading farther, I came upon a possible answer:

Wards are often employed in order to fool a practiced witch
.

Perhaps the wards were necessary now that I was coming into my power. But how then could I determine if Duncan was the incubus?

There is a way to tell if a witch has been deceived by an incubus. Anytime a witch comes into contact with a warded disguise her own wards will be activated
.

I thought of how my wards had flared when Duncan touched me. I continued reading, looking desperately for an explanation for how I felt but finding no resolution of this conflict between desire and repulsion. What was wrong with me?

One of these times Adelaide is going to notice
, my father had said. And my mother had replied,
There’s nothing to notice. She’s been warded
.

Had my parents warded my power in order to hide it from my grandmother?

I opened Wheelock again and went back to the section on disguise wards. I found what I was looking for in a footnote at the bottom of the last page:

Wards have also been used to disguise a witch’s power, most often when a witch is young and may not be able to defend herself because her powers are not fully developed. If the wards are not removed at adolescence, the young witch may not even recognize her own power. Such a witch, rendered powerless by wards, is sometimes known as a Water Witch
.

I stared at the footnote until the print grew blurry—at first, I thought, because of the tears in my eyes, but then I realized it was because the print was actually fading. Apparently there was a time limit to the magically produced text. As the words vanished I recalled that Duncan had said there were three definitions of a water witch, but he’d only told me two of
them. Had he deliberately left out the third because he knew it applied to me—that
I
was a water witch?

I turned to the section on dissolving wards. There was a way that I could both undo the wards that had been placed on me
and
the ones Duncan was using to disguise himself. If I loved him, the minute the wards came off, he would become human.

But if I unmasked my incubus and I did not love him, he would be destroyed.

A
s I sat in the library sipping scotch and waiting for Duncan’s arrival, watching the sky darken and the rain begin again, I concluded it came down to a choice between illusion and reality.

When I was a teenager living in my grandmother’s cold, formal apartment, she chastised me for still reading fairy tales. “You’re trying to escape reality,” she told me. The therapist I saw said I was trying to regain the world of my childhood—the world in which my parents still lived. She was closer to the truth but not entirely on target. It wasn’t the world of my parents I was trying to recapture; it was myself. All those tales about children lost in the woods, princesses forced to live under the dominion of evil stepmothers, mothers watching over their children as trees or animals, princes charmed into beasts or frogs … were all stories about seeing through illusion into the truth. Perhaps my parents had told me these stories so I would know how to survive in a world in which they were absent, or the stories were meant to tell me who I really was.