Witchy Woman (8 page)

He nodded. “Start at the beginning.”

“Well, okay. See, no one knows exactly where the cat came from originally, but it’s really old. Back in the 1800s, there was this Gypsy woman who lived in the woods near a town in Connecticut. The townspeople didn’t have a doctor, or a priest, so they relied on the Gypsy for lots of things—cures for illnesses, blessings, good-luck charms, and some charms that weren’t so nice. The Gypsy had a thriving business, until my great-grandmother—her name was Lass—moved to town. She was a …” Tess searched for the word.

A witch? Nate was burning to ask. He’d read in his research materials that Morganna, Tess’s mother, claimed to come from a long line of witches.

“I guess in today’s society she would be called a healer or an herbalist, something like that. She offered herbal remedies and, um, blessings, and unlike the Gypsy, she didn’t charge money for her services. You can imagine what this did to the Gypsy’s business.”

Nate nodded.

“Only the people who wanted evil stuff—curses on their enemies, that kind of thing—continued to see the Gypsy because Lass wouldn’t touch black magic.”

Tess leaned back in her chair, relaxing slightly. “Well, the Gypsy finally decided she’d had enough. She came to Lass’s house with a gift, a supposed peace offering.”

“The cat statue.”

“Right. But she’d put a powerful curse on it, a curse that affected not only great-grandmother, but all of her descendants and, apparently, anybody who came into possession of the statue. It’s called the Crimson Cat, by the way.”

“Uh-huh.”

She set her glass down on the table with a thunk. “See? I knew you wouldn’t believe any of this. You think I’m a nutcase.”

“No, not at all. You’re merely recounting a bit of family legend. Nothing nutty about that.”

“Unless I believe it. Which I do. My great-grandmother sickened and died within months of receiving the statue—that was after her herb garden shriveled and her goats’ milk soured. Then my grandmother inherited the statue. She went through four husbands, each dying more tragically than the last until finally Grandma killed herself.”

Nate shivered despite himself. “That’s awful.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Then did your mother inherit?”

“No, not yet. My uncle got it.”

“Not the one who got the cut and lost his—”

“The very same. By this time the curse was well-known, so he decided to sell the statue. The collector who bought it died in a car accident on his way home.
The lawyer who handled his estate found the bill of sale for the cat in the man’s effects, and since the estate was in debt, he returned the statue and got his money back. Then my uncle tried to throw the thing off a bridge.”

“And what happened?” Nate asked, fascinated despite himself. True or not, it was a pretty good story she was weaving.

“A little boy from the village found the statue, undamaged, and dragged it up from the riverbed. His mother took one look at it, recognized it as belonging to my uncle, and back to my uncle the statue came. The little boy, incidentally, caught meningitis two weeks later and died.”

“This is really interesting, Tess, but you’ll forgive me for asking this. How do you know this story is true?”

“As a reporter, you’re obligated to ask, I guess,” she said. Nate was relieved that she didn’t seem to be insulted. “I heard the early part from a great-aunt. My uncle told me his part himself, shortly before he was killed in a plane crash. That was
after
the business with the splinter and gangrene, I might add. The rest I experienced personally.”

“I assume your mother got the statue next.”

Tess nodded. “It happened when I was ten. Before that, she was much the same as my great-grandmother was—an herbalist, a natural healer. Most of the women on that side of the family were interested in the healing arts and the arcane. Mother read auras and collected crystals and meditated twice a day. But as soon as the
statue arrived at our house, something sinister started happening to her. She turned to a darker sort of magic.”

Yes! This was the stuff Nate had been waiting for.

Tess got fidgety again. She picked up her brandy snifter, then set it down without taking a sip. She fiddled with some coasters, then with a brass candlestick.

Nate’s heart rose into his throat when she absently touched his notebook. Whoa, he told himself when he was ready to lunge across the table and grab the notebook from her. She hadn’t opened it yet.

All at once a strange light came into her eyes. She frowned as her gaze became unfocused. Then she flashed him an angry scowl, and he could have sworn he saw blue sparks coming from her eyes.

She threw the notebook onto the table. “You son of a bitch!”

“What? Excuse me?” What had he done?

“You’re using me. I trusted you. I was pouring my heart out to you, and the whole time all you want is to write a story about me. It was all a lie—all of it!”

Tess had to get out of there. She rarely got angry, but when she did, her temper could boil over into rage, and Lord help whoever was in her path. She didn’t trust herself to be logical or reasonable until the anger had run itself out; the best course of action was to get away from Nate and reclaim her precious solitude till she felt in control again.

“How did you know that?” Nate asked, sounding more bewildered than defensive. “How did you know I was planning to write a story about you?”

She narrowed her blue eyes and held up her hands in a classic spell-casting pose, like the Wicked Witch of the West. “My boogie-woogie witchy powers, how else? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to catch a cab home. I have to feed my black cat and brew up some eye-of-newt tea!” She grabbed her purse and headed for the door.

Nate was right behind her. “Wait, you can’t go!”

“Why not?” She jerked the door open and stepped onto the landing.

“You’re going to leave me alone with a cursed cat statue in my trunk?”

That gave her pause. Much as she wanted to see the last of Nate Wagner, she
had
gotten him involved in the cat thing. The beast was still in his trunk, and he didn’t take the threat seriously. What if something happened to him, something worse than a scratch or an uncomfortable brush with a subway?

Okay. If she were honest, she would have to admit that she really didn’t want to see the last of him, either. He was a most intriguing man, the first ever to touch her without making her skin crawl.

She folded her arms and looked at him mutinously. No sense in letting him off easy. “You lied to me.”

He conceded with a nod. “If I’d come right up to you and asked to write a story about Moonbeam Majick, what would you have said?”

“I’d have run as far and as fast as I could.”

“I figured that. I thought if you could get to know me first, trust me a little bit, then I could ease into the subject of your past.”

“And if I still was against it?” When he didn’t respond right away, Tess discovered she was waiting breathlessly for his answer.

Finally he said, “I don’t honestly know. I’d like to believe I would have honored your wishes. I can be a hard-ass sometimes, but I’m not ruthless.”

Did she dare believe him? Or was this just another cramping of the truth to manipulate her? Then it occurred
to her that she didn’t have to guess. She had a foolproof method of discovering his true intentions, even if he didn’t know the truth himself. “Give me your hand.”

“Huh?”

“Just let me hold your hand for a moment.”

“Okay.” He held out one hand, palm up, as if he expected her to read his fortune in the lines and creases there. Instead, she took his hand in both of hers, lightly touching it. She closed her eyes.

Damn.
He was so sincere, it was astounding. He had no intention of doing anything that would harm her.

“What are you doing?” he asked suspiciously.

“Shh.” There it was again, that flash she’d experienced earlier, but it was stronger this time. Skin against skin, breathing, scents commingled, the hot touch of fevered fingers, questing, murmured lovers’ words—

“What?” he asked more insistently this time.

She gasped and dropped his hand as if it were a burning coal. Holy moth-eaten cod. The images were stronger now, more distinct, too real to be dismissed as the frustrated yearnings of an overripe virgin. She and Nate were on a path toward intimacy, and their destiny was hurtling toward them at an alarming rate. Time was a fluid thing within the psychic world she knew, but she’d learned to guess.

A week, no more.

Destiny
wasn’t quite the right word, though, because free choice was always an option. Shadows of the
future weren’t carved in stone. Paths could be altered, the future could be changed.

“Tess! Are you okay?”

She realized she’d been staring at a blank wall, trancelike, for interminable seconds. Now she looked at Nate. The concern on his face, in the depths of those velvety brown eyes, was very real.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re zoning out on me, and I know you didn’t have that much brandy.”

“I was just thinking about something.” She cleared her throat, trying to bring herself back to full, here-and-now consciousness. “I should go home. Just promise me you won’t do anything with the statue until you talk to me.”

“Huh, don’t worry. I’m not going to touch it. Um,
will
you talk to me?”

“Yeah,” she answered, her reluctance somewhat feigned. She didn’t want to say good-bye forever. There was too much there to walk away from. “You’re right, I can’t stick you with the cat. I’ll help you get rid of it.”

“Let me get my car keys.” He started to duck back inside his apartment.

“No! I’m not riding around the streets of Boston with that
thing
in your trunk. I’ll take a cab.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll walk you down a few blocks to Cambridge Square. There’s always a cab hanging around there.”

She nodded.

Nate stepped inside his apartment to grab a jacket
off his coatrack—a leather bomber instead of his tweed blazer. Then he and Tess emerged from the building into the night. The wind had died down, but it was colder, and a malevolent mist hovered around the streetlights.

Tess shoved her hands into her skirt pockets and hunched against the harsh environment.

“Jeez, I forgot you don’t have a jacket,” he said. “Take mine. He started to remove the bomber, but she shook her head. Besides the fact that it was leather—cows didn’t die pleasantly, she’d discovered long ago—it was also intimately Nate. She’d had enough of that for one evening. Her body still tingled from holding his hand.

They walked to the corner, and when no cabs were apparent, Nate found a store with a front stoop they could sit on. A cab would be along shortly, he assured her.

“So,” he said, “do you really think a story about your past would be terrible?”

“Are you kidding? It would do my career irreparable harm. I’m a software developer with a conservative company. What do you think would happen to my reputation if people found out I was—that I used to be—that people once thought I was a witch? That I was called Moonbeam?”

“You were only a child.”

“A seriously disturbed child in a radically dysfunctional home who underwent years of therapy. That kind of mark on one’s past doesn’t go away. Even in this enlightened age, people aren’t tolerant of mental
aberrations. I do not want my past bandied about as fodder for anyone’s entertainment.”

He said nothing for a while. Then, abruptly, he changed the subject. “What were you doing with my hand?”

“Witchy stuff,” she said flippantly.

“No, really.”

“That’s what you’d call it. Let’s just say I have a highly developed form of woman’s intuition.”

“You were touching my hand the way you touched those antiques the other day,” he pressed. “And you got that same look on your face.”

She’d revealed enough of herself for one day, particularly if Nate was ready to rush home and type up her answers into a story she didn’t want written. “There’s a cab.” She rose from the steps, intending to step to the curb and wave the cab down. Suddenly a dark, solid form stepped in front of her.

Her breath caught in her throat. It was him, the swarthy man from Judy’s neighborhood. “Excuse me, miss.”

“I have to catch my—”

He grabbed her arm when she attempted to dart around him. “Please, I must speak to you.”

Dark, repugnant images assaulted her brain. Stifling, suffocating, evil … She jerked her arm away.

“Hey!” Nate objected.

“You have something I want,” the man said, his voice low, menacing. “Let’s speak reasonably about it.”

“Not a chance, Mac.” Nate put a protective arm around Tess’s shoulders. “C’mon, Tess.”

The man grabbed at her again. This time she didn’t attempt to pull away. A six-inch knife glittered in his other hand.

Nate froze, too, though he muttered a resigned, “Ah, hell.”

“No!” Tess shouted. She knew what he wanted. She also knew, with some inner wisdom, that to give him the statue would invite an even worse tragedy than had already befallen them.

The man brought his knife closer to Tess’s face. “Shut up. You’re only a child. What do you know?”

Then Nate, easygoing, friendly Nate, got a look on his face that Tess had never seen before, a nearly palpable fury that rolled off of him in waves. His entire body tensed, then he leaned back slightly. One of his feet shot out in a blur of motion to connect with the other man’s midsection.

In a tenth of a second the man was doubled over, groaning.

“Run!” Nate ordered, taking Tess’s hand in case she had it in her head to ignore his advice.

She didn’t. She took off running with him. They ducked into an alley, their legs pumping in unison. It was too dark for Tess to see much, but Nate led her on an unerring path around discarded boxes, garbage cans, and Dumpsters. Then it was through a small parking lot, over a low fence, and all at once they were in back of Nate’s building again.

“Is … he … following?” she asked, gasping for breath.

“I don’t think so.”

“What did you do to him?”