A Witch In Time (20 page)

“Brought you something,” he told me.

I giggled. He was holding his hands behind his back, but ... “Er, I am so not noticing the length of crutches stretching south of the border there.”

“What?!” He spread his legs just a bit and glanced downward between his knees. “Oh, that’s cheating, Maggie May-I.” His blue eyes sparkled with good humor into mine as he leaned down to kiss me. “Just had to be sure it was the crutches,” he teased with a wink. Then he glanced down at the baby in my arms. “Cute baby.”

“Speak of the devil,” Mel interrupted conversationally. “We were just talking about you.”

“Were we?” Marcus glanced back and forth between me and Mel and the others. “All good things, I hope.”

Jane’s gaze was still parked in a southerly direction. “I’ll say.” The last ended on a swiftly indrawn breath as Margo’s elbow connected with her ribs. “I mean, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

For once I was glad he wasn’t wearing the black leather pants which were so vintage Marcus. After all, they were what had originally caught my eye. Well, that and the hair that waved just so around his nape. And the playful glint in his eyes. And then there was that first kiss that neither of us saw coming, and . . . well, yeah. With Margo’s track record and Jane’s obvious appreciation? I felt both my pride and my protective nature kick in simultaneously.
That’s right, girls, he’s all mine.

A smile slid into place on Marcus’s face, as though he had been reading my thoughts. And for all I knew, he had been. Drat him.

“Uncle Lou and I just got back. Did you get my text?”

“Oh!” I had forgotten to plug my cell phone back in, and it was nowhere near charged enough even to blip a new message warning. “No, sorry. Dead cell phone battery.”

“No probs. Aunt Molly had a pair of crutches out in the garage from the time she sprained her knee last winter, so I brought them along just in case you didn’t have any yet.” He glanced around the room. “Um, do you?”

“No, I haven’t had a chance to get out yet,” I told him with an appreciative smile. “Actually I haven’t even had a chance to figure out how I would be getting home. I can’t exactly drive Christine with this monstrosity, now, can I?” I tried lifting my ankle, but honestly? I was starting to get a bit tired, and I had an idea that the shot for pain they had given me when they casted it was starting to wear off, because the whole thing was beginning to throb.

“The yellow looks good on you.”

“Aw, thanks. I think.”

“And I brought my truck.”

“Thank you times two. Now if you have a solution to the housing issue I am facing, I’ll be yours forever.”

He winked at me, and I had a feeling any reticence had everything to do with our keen listeners. “I’ll get back to you on that.”

Now that he was here, I was enjoying a resurgence of hope that he would rescue me. Did I mention hospitals were not on my list of favorite places? Between the sticky, plaquelike energy, the weird night, the broken ankle, and now Mel’s so-called friends, I knew I was approaching the top of an empathic volcano that was reaching maximum pressure capacity. I could feel it building within me, and if I didn’t find a way to release it soon, the energy migraine I felt encroaching on the fringes of my consciousness would be a best-case scenario. I needed to get away from this place, from these people, before things got any worse.

Despite my weariness, I sat up a little straighter, a little prouder as I faced them. “Ladies. As you might have guessed, this is my boyfriend, Marcus Quinn.”

“Marcus was the one who came out to my house a couple of months ago when we had that . . . problem. You remember, Margo,” Mel reminded her. And then she looked at her askance. “Of course, you did leave awfully fast.”

I groaned, though I did my best to school my expression into neutrality so as to betray nothing to the others. The incident Mel had referred to so casually was one of the most frightening, most otherworldly experiences of my life to date. And of Mel’s, I should hardly need to remind her. It was not something to be taken lightly.

Mel had been ordered to bed for the bulk of the summer due to complications with her pregnancy, and like any dutiful sister, I’d had no choice but to honor my mother’s request that I help out. Certainly Greg wouldn’t have been able to handle Jenna and Courtney, a houseful of cleaning duties and responsibilities, and a more-than-full-time career as a hotshot family attorney, so Mom and I had done our best to fill in. But I’d never expected to find that the strange paranormal occurrences in Stony Mill had wormed their way into one of the newest and most highbrow subdivisions in town, and after discovering that it wasn’t solely relegated to the psychic abilities of my two young nieces and their protective spirit guides—whom Mel and my mother liked to refer to as their “imaginary friends”—but in fact was a dark entity of unknown origin and significant power that reached far beyond the realm of my limited experience, I knew then that I had little choice but to call for reinforcements. In other words, Liss and Marcus, and their magickal Bag O’Tricks. The two of them had come out to Mel’s house without question, without protest, without a thought as to previously scheduled plans or inconveniences. Together they had pooled their considerable energies and talents in order to send the dark spirit packing, back to the nebulous existence he had come from, and they had worked to ensure that whatever portal he had used would not be utilized by others of his ilk. All simply because it was I who had asked them for help. Because they knew they were needed.

And how had Mel chosen to repay them for their generosity of spirit? By exposing them as witches and purveyors of paranormal pastimes. And as you might guess, around these parts where Sunday morning church service attendance almost—
almost
—beats out attendance at the bars and strip clubs on Friday nights, no witch is a good witch, no spirit is a good spirit, and anyone who partakes of such deeply disturbing offenses must therefore be no good by default. Popularly held beliefs and traditions are hard to fight . . . especially when the town newspaper gets in on the act. Before you could say “String them up, stake them down,” word had spread around our small, provincial town. Liss had been turned away from City Hall for a permit she had been trying to obtain, and business at Enchantments was down. Way down. And as much as Liss would have liked to blame it on the blistering summer weather, we both knew the truth of it.

Mel knew nothing of this. Mel was as oblivious to any sense of wrongdoing in the matter as she was to the nature of the spirit she had allowed into her house through ill-advised and uninformed use of a Ouija board with the very same friends who were sitting with her in this hospital room today. To Mel, the spirit had been taken care of. Vanquished from her home and banished from her responsibility, and along with it went her fear.

It was never good to get so used to the spirit world that you let your guard down. An open channel was the metaphysical equivalent of leaving a master key hanging from the brass door knocker on your front door, along with a sign that says, “Come on in, help yourself.”

A light had gone off for Margo at Mel’s reminder. “Oh, I remember Marcus. I do indeed,” Margo said, gazing at Marcus and me with renewed interest.

I could see the brain waves blitzing madly behind her eyes. I braced myself, waiting for what I knew would be coming next.

 

 

 

 

“So. You’re the wizard in town. Mel told us about what you did.”

Marcus laughed. The sound was gentle and relaxed, but his energy was on guard, his shields on intercept-and-deflect mode. “Someone has been reading the Harry Potter books, I take it?”

“Harry P—” Margo sucked in her breath. “I would
never!
”

“Too bad,” he told her. “Fun, fascinating, and fabulous—that can be pretty hard to find in literature these days; I highly recommend them. But just so that you know, I don’t call myself a wizard.”

“No? Well, what do you call yourself, then?” she demanded, rather imperiously, I thought. “A warlock?”

With a smile smooth enough to charm a cobra-and maybe that was his point?-he raised a conciliatory dark brow in her direction. “How about . . . dangerous to know?”

“Oh . . . oh, my . . .”

His tactic worked. In an instant, Margo went from confrontational to profoundly, blissfully mum. I could have kissed him.

“I think I read in an article last Halloween that they’re just called male witches now, Margo,” Jane offered up helpfully, unaware of her friend’s discomfort.

Marcus nodded pleasantly. “That’s right. Since we’re discussing semantics, the word ‘warlock’ in the olden days referred to an oath breaker. And since I value my integrity and honor, that label isn’t one I choose to own.”

“Oh,” Jane said, a little confused. “Well, that makes perfect sense, then.”

“Here, Maggie-sweet. Let’s get you up out of that chair and try these crutches on for size, eh?” Marcus said. “Who’d like a turn with the baby?”

Mel reached out and pulled the two bassinets toward the edge of the bed. “Would you mind setting her in her crib?” she asked him. “I’m getting a little tired, I think.”

Marcus leaned over and wrapped his hands around the tiny, blanketed form nestled snugly in my arms, lifting her against him like an old pro. “Aw, come here, little one,” he crooned in a way that made my heart beat a little faster. His eyes, oh so blue, lifted to mine, and all of a sudden I was finding it difficult to swallow, or even breathe. Then he straightened, the baby cradled against him, and as I watched he jostled and rocked her gently.

I don’t know what it is about the sight of a tiny baby in a man’s big hands, but it was an image guaranteed to jar loose the mechanisms of even the most tightly wound biological clock. I could feel mine stuttering doggedly to life, and I had to take a deep breath and try to lock it down in the farthest dark closet in the corners of my mind.

Now. Was. So. Not. The. Time.

“Which one do I have?” he asked Melanie.

Mel the Madonna smiled beatifically up at him. “That would be Isabella. And this,” she said, gazing down at her daughter in a way that made me forgive her instantly for being a gossipy wench, “is Sophie.”

“Isabella, pretty Isabella,” he crooned over her. Checking the name card on the bassinet to be sure he got her in the right one, he set her gently down and stroked her pink cheek. “You are going to be a heartbreaker someday.”

Oy. So,
so
not the time.

Turning back to me, he said, “We can do this two ways, Angel.”

Marcus’s favorite movie was an oldie but a goodie called
Romancing the Stone,
and he liked to quote it whenever possible. He also liked to tell me that I resembled a young Kathleen Turner, and that was the first thing that had attracted his attention. I’d take that as a compliment any day—Kathleen Turner back in the day was H-O-T
hot,
and if Marcus wanted to see me through those particular rose-colored glasses, I was more than happy to let him.

“Quick like the tongue of a snake?” I quoted back, playing the game.

“Or slower’n the molasses in January.”

“Hm. I pick slow,” I told him. “At least it’s cold in January. This cast is starting to get itchy already.”

He laughed and extended a helping hand to get me to my feet. Balancing on one foot while he fiddled with the height of the hand rests on the crutches wasn’t as easy as it looked. By the time he was finished with one, I was ready to sit back down again.

“Oh no you don’t,” he said, catching my backward glance at the wheelchair. “Let’s get you some practice on your new set of stilts.”

I didn’t relish practicing within full view of either Margo or Jane, so as soon as I got the swing of things, I headed for the hall with Marcus in pursuit.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa there, Turbo,” he said. “Not so fast.”

I slowed down, then stopped altogether in the corridor. “Sorry about that. I just couldn’t do this in front of them.”

“They are a bit ... intense, aren’t they?”

“That’s a nice way of putting it. I can’t believe I just spent the last hour or so with them. That’s a full sixty minutes of my life that I can never have back.”

Marcus got back to business. “Let’s see you do this,” he said, indicating the crutches.

“Didn’t I just . . . do ... this?”

“Humor me.”

Putting on my this-is-silly-but-whatever-you-say face, I swing-hopped my way down the corridor, pirouetted on one foot and two stilts (elegant, let me tell you), then swing-hopped my way back and flashed him a saucy look. “How’s that?”

A slow, lopsided smile curved his mouth. “Did anyone ever tell you that you look really pretty when you’re trying to be cheeky?”

I wrinkled my nose at him, but I liked it, I liked it.

“See?”

“What do you think?” I asked, sticking out my cast, which went from my pink-painted toenails to just below the knee.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so cute. Except maybe your sister’s babies. Whose idea was the yellow?”

I grinned. “Mine. Why be dull?”

“Oh, Maggie-sweet, you are anything but dull,” he drawled in a low growl, his eyes flashing at me. And then he slipped in close a moment and, putting his arms around me, kissed my temple. “Did it hurt?”

I sighed, melting into him. “A little,” I admitted. “But nowhere near as bad as I would have expected a broken ankle to feel. It is starting to throb a little now, though.”

“We should get you off your feet.”

“Aw, so soon? I just got back on them.”

“No sense rushing things. The novelty will wear off the crutches pretty fast when they start rubbing your skin raw.”

A broken ankle, an ugly cast, chafing, and possibly having to move in with my mother for the duration? This was getting better and better.