Witchy Woman (7 page)

“Good idea. Where’d I leave my purse?”

“I’ll buy it,” he said decisively, throwing fifty bucks onto the coffee table. “I’m the one who doesn’t believe in curses. Maybe it’s like voodoo. You have to believe in it before it can harm you.”

“You didn’t believe in it—or even know about it—when you got pushed in front of the subway train.”

“That was a coincidence. C’mon, let’s go. You left your purse in the entry hall.” He gingerly picked up the cat. Tess noticed that he kept the paper sack wrapped around the creature so that he didn’t actually touch it.

So, he didn’t believe in bad luck, hull? Maybe not, but he wasn’t taking any unnecessary chances.

Tess locked Judy’s front door as Nate hovered protectively behind her. She appreciated his concern, but she wished he’d go on ahead with that nasty animal. She could literally feel her skin crawl when she was close to it. Her scalp prickled. Every hair stood on end.

She dropped Judy’s key into her purse and turned. That’s when she saw the man again, the dark one who’d been loitering on the sidewalk when they’d arrived. She gave an involuntary gasp and, without even
thinking about it, laid a restraining hand on Nate’s arm. Immediately, vibrations from the cat traveled through Nate’s body, through his clothes, and up her arm to settle like a cold shroud around her heart. She jerked her hand back as if she’d been burned.

“What is it?” Nate asked.

Tess gathered her wits. “That man. He was here when we arrived, just hanging around. He gives me the creeps.”

“He’s probably just waiting for a bus or something.”

“Buses don’t come down this street, and this isn’t the sort of neighborhood where people loiter.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do? He’s not exactly committing a crime.”

Nate was right, of course. She was getting paranoid. But she kept remembering what Anne-Louise had said about a swarthy man wanting to buy the cat.

“Just keep an eye on him,” Tess said in a low voice. “He might be a mugger. Don’t let him take us by surprise.”

“Shoot, why not?” Nate muttered as they scurried down the sidewalk toward his car. “Maybe we’ll luck out and
he’ll
steal the cat.”

The man didn’t seem to be paying them a lot of attention, but neither did he stroll away. Tess watched him warily from the corner of her eye while Nate chucked the Crimson Cat into the trunk of his beautifully restored Ford Fairlane. She felt better once the thing was out of sight.

She also felt better once she was safely inside Nate’s
car with the doors locked and his big, reassuring body next to hers. She even felt an alien urge to scoot across the old-fashioned bench seat and sit next to him. She’d spent her whole life edging away from people, hoping she wouldn’t have to make an excuse for why she didn’t want to hold hands or hug or cuddle. She didn’t know quite how to handle this weird compulsion of hers to share Nate’s space.

Before he put the car in gear, he glanced over at her, invitation in his eyes. “It’s warmer next to me.”

She looked down. “I know. I just …”

“Are you involved with someone else?” he blurted out.

“No! It’s nothing like that.”

“A bad experience with a man?” he asked more gently.

She wanted to crawl under the seat and avoid his probing gaze. “I have reasons for acting the way I do. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me. Is it just a general distrust of the male sex? I’d feel better knowing it’s not personal.”

Dammit, why did he have to be so endearing? All right. If he wanted to hear the truth, she’d give it to him. “If I touch you, I’ll be able to read your mind. Everything you’re thinking.”

Nate didn’t reply for a few moments. Instead he put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. Then he chuckled. “That’s a frightening thought.”

He didn’t believe her, of course. But at least she’d defused his question. Any more cajoling, and she’d
have given in, scooting across the seat to tuck up against him. Instead she fastened her seat belt.

They’d gone less than ten blocks, neither of them saying anything, when Tess heard a
whump
and a
flap-flap-flap
as the car listed to the right.

“Aw, hell,” Nate said. “A flat.”

Tess put her head in her hands. In one respect, she was relieved the curse had apparently followed them. Maybe the pressure would be off Judy now. In another … she and/or Nate was in the grip of a curse! She’d never been cursed before. For the first time in a long time she wished for Morganna’s guidance. Her mother was so learned in so many areas, including everything arcane or occult. But all of that knowledge was locked inside a brain that was no longer fully functional.

“Hey, Tess, you don’t think that statue is responsible for this, do you? ’Cause I’m here to tell you, my tires needed replacing a couple of months ago and I didn’t do it. It’s one of those things I put off even though I knew I shouldn’t.
That’s
why we got a flat.”

“I know,” she said, trying to sound convinced. “I’m sure you’re right. I’m just a little jumpy.” That was an understatement. “You do have a spare, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I’m not
that
foolhardy.”

“Then can I help you change the tire?” Keeping busy might prevent her from dwelling on unpleasant possibilities. “You’re injured.”

“You just stay warm inside the car. I’ll have the job done in a few minutes.” He got out and slammed the door.

Despite his assurance that he had everything under control, Tess got out too. The weather had turned distinctly unpleasant, cold and misty with a biting wind. Even wearing Nate’s jacket, she had to wrap her arms around herself and clamp her jaw firmly shut to keep her teeth from chattering.

Nate, seemingly oblivious to the cold in his shirtsleeves, had to open the trunk to get the tire and the jack. Tess averted her eyes.

Nate noticed, but he didn’t say anything.

I don’t believe in luck, good or bad, Nate told himself as he set about the task of changing the tire. All this was a giant coincidence. But he had to admit, discovering the statue in Judy’s apartment had made his heart jump into his throat.

One thing was for sure: Tess believed with all her heart that the statue really was evil, that it caused bad luck. The fear in her lovely blue eyes was too real to be an affectation. He didn’t believe it was a simple superstition, either. Her fear went deeper than that. There was something personal in her aversion to the stone cat.

She’d seen it before their encounter in the antique shop.

Whatever the story, he intended to find out more about it. Who knew, perhaps it tied in with Tess’s Moonbeam Majick history. Might make an interesting sidelight to his story.

It seemed to take him forever to change the tire.
The jack was balky. Every single lug nut was a challenge, as if they’d all been welded on. The spare was low, too, though it would probably make it to a service station.

Since Tess hovered nearby during the entire ritual, he asked her to hold the lug nuts. He couldn’t help but notice that when he asked for them back, she dropped them one at a time into his hand rather than risk touching him.

When she handed him the last lug nut, he made a point of brushing her hand with his. Was it his imagination, or had he actually seen a spark flare between their two hands in the darkness? He heard her sharp intake of breath.

“Keep your mind on business,” he murmured to himself.

“What?” Tess said.

“All finished.” He gave the last nut one final twist with the lug wrench. The wrench slipped, and he banged his hand against the rough road surface, scraping his knuckles raw. In deference to Tess, the string of curses that spouted from his mouth were only mildly obscene.

“Oh, are you okay?”

“I’ll live.” He stuck his injured hand under his arm and squeezed his eyes closed until the pain subsided a bit. How many tires had he changed in his life? he wondered. And he’d never hurt himself before.

Hell, the damn panther statue was giving
him
the willies.

Since Tess still seemed to want to help, he let her
ratchet the jack down while he wrestled the flat tire into the trunk. In a couple of minutes they were back on the road. They stopped at the first service station they came to for a shot of air into the spare, then continued on their way.

“My place is a lot closer than yours,” he said as casually as he dared. “It’s been a long, miserable day, and I’ve got a good bottle of brandy tucked away for just such an occasion. What do you say we stop there and warm up a little before I take you back to your place?”

“I really need to go home,” she said. Her voice held just enough hesitation that he persisted.

“But what about the cat?” He knew she would feel guilty sticking him with it. “Maybe we should stop at the nearest bridge and drop it off.”

Tess shook her head. “Won’t work. It’s been tried.” She glanced over quickly at him to see if he’d caught the significance of her revelation.

He had. “You know this cat, then? You don’t just hate cats in general?”

She sighed. “Can’t you just take me home?”

He had her now. “
I’m
the one who plunked down fifty bucks for the cat and lobbed it into my trunk. It’s mine now. The least you could do is tell me about it. Explain what I’m up against.”

Again she sighed. “Okay. Did you say something about brandy?”

He suppressed a smile of satisfaction. Once he got Tess going about this bad-luck statue, the conversation
would naturally segue into her past as Moonbeam. Perfect.

He felt only a small stab of guilt at manipulating her with this superstition nonsense. Maybe when all was said and done, he would do her a favor by convincing her that superstitions weren’t legitimate. After all, it couldn’t be much fun to live with this kind of fear all the time.

Nate lucked out and found a parking spot within half a block of his apartment house. After he and Tess had gotten out of the car and he’d locked the doors, he headed for the trunk.

“No!” Tess cried. “Leave it where it is. For God’s sake, don’t bring the thing into your home.”

“Okay, maybe you’re right,” he said. “The less we handle it, the better. Right?”

“I would think so.”

Nate was more and more intrigued. He couldn’t wait to get her talking.

As he unlocked his front door at the top of the stairs, he felt a sudden reluctance to allow Tess inside. He was such a … bachelor. Earlier, at Judy’s place, he’d been congratulating himself for knowing how to load a dishwasher. But how long had it been since he’d tidied up his own place? A couple of weeks?

With a shrug he ushered her inside and flipped on a light. Could be worse, he decided. A couple of empty pizza boxes, a beer can or two, some unopened junk mail, and wilted plants. Besides that, everything was basically clean. He sat Tess down on his pride-and-joy leather sofa, but before her rear even made contact
with the cushions, she wiggled sideways and landed in one of his two tweed club chairs instead.

“The sofa’s more comfortable,” he said.

“Not for me.”

He puzzled over her explanation, but she didn’t elaborate. So he shrugged and launched a whirlwind cleaning tour of the living room, the leavings of which he thrust down his garbage chute. Then he grabbed two glasses from the kitchen along with the unopened bottle of cognac.

He found Tess sitting exactly where he’d left her, perched nervously on the edge of the club chair, hands clenched, eyes darting around.

“You look like you could use a snort of this,” Nate said, sitting on the sofa, wishing he could have finagled a way to sit beside her. He poured a generous measure of the amber liquid into each snifter, then handed her one.

“I think we should drink to Judy’s swift recovery,” he said, sincerely meaning it. As little time as he’d spent with Judy, he genuinely liked her. And he could tell that Tess loved her like a sister.

She nodded and flashed the beginnings of a brave smile. “Yes, that’s an excellent idea.” They clinked their glasses, then each took a sip. “Mmm,” Tess said after swallowing. “Burns all the way down. Good.”

“It’ll warm you all the way to your toenails too.”

After his second sip of brandy, he set the snifter on his mahogany coffee table. That’s when he noticed one of his reporter’s notebooks, sitting on the table inches from Tess’s right knee. Aw, hell. All his notes about
Moonbeam Majick were in there. If she should stumble onto that information, she would know that he’d engineered their supposedly random meeting at the antique shop. She would know why he was pursuing her, why he was so curious about her, and she wouldn’t be happy about it.

Although he had to admit, his curiosity extended far beyond journalistic instincts at this point. Part of him, that small part that was still innocent and believed in fairy tales, wished he’d never offered to write this story. It wished he’d really been shopping for a doll for his older sister and had chanced a meeting with a pretty blonde he’d known nothing about except that he liked her figure and her smile and the hypnotic sound of her voice.

That tiny, irrational part of him was wishing like crazy he had a chance in hell of getting her to forget all this curse nonsense and go out to a movie with him.

Yeah, right. He would be lucky if she didn’t throw his brandy in his face and abandon him to his fate with that damn cat.

Still, if he snatched the notebook away now, she would be suspicious. He would simply not leave her alone with it again. He would sit there, guarding it like a German shepherd, till it was time to take her home.

“So,” he said when she sat back in her chair, looking as if maybe the brandy was taking effect. “Tell me the whole story about this wretched statue.”

“You won’t believe it,” she said flatly. “You’ll just think I’m a total basket case.”

“Try me.”

If anything, she seemed even more reluctant. “Look, the brandy is nice and everything, but why don’t I just call a cab—”

“Try me,” he said again. “I can’t guarantee I’ll believe you a hundred percent, but I promise not to laugh at you. And I’ll take you home as soon as you’re done.”

“Promise? It’ll sound pretty outlandish to you.”