A Witch In Time (29 page)

“Some task that doesn’t take a lot of brain capacity. One that allows your body to work on autopilot,” Liss elaborated. “Oh, you can sit in front of your black scrying mirrors and crystal balls, certainly, but it’s so much easier to simply get busy and let your mind empty itself. And that’s when your Guides start dropping the real whiz-bang-doodles at your feet.”

Hm. I’m not sure I’ve ever been the actual recipient of a whiz-bang-doodle in any way, shape, or form . . . but I would take her word for it.

Gen offered, “I’ve always enjoyed sitting on the end of the dock, fishing for whatever wants to come up and take a nibble.”

“I’ve always been partial to scrubbing the floor,” Marcus said. And when we girls looked at each other and giggled in spite of ourselves? “What? It’s very methodical and soothing.”

I didn’t know about Liss or Gen, but the last time
I
had come across Marcus scrubbing the floor, he was on his hands and knees wearing his black leather pants. The ones that had very early on emblazoned themselves in my mind’s eye because of their habit of stretching ever so impressively across some very attractive parts of his anatomy. Still grinning, I patted his hand. “You do have very clean floors.”

“Thanks.” He looked at me askance through blue eyes sparkling with good humor. “I think.”

“Never mind that, ducks,” Liss told me. “You go home and take a long, hot bath tonight, and see where that gets you. You’ll be surprised what comes around.”

Skeptical to the end, I glanced pointedly down at my ankle, which was once again complaining about dangling in midair. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed . . .”

Not to mention the pain meds that made my head spin just the littlest bit mixed with hot bath water sounded like a killer combination.

“So? I’m sure Marcus can come up with something to keep your cast dry.”

The absolutely scandalous level of interest Marcus suddenly displayed at the prospect of helping me with the intricacies of my bath made my heart skip a beat.

And with that suggestion planted securely in his mind, Marcus seemed all the more eager to get me home. To ...
rest.
Yeah, that’s it. Rest.

“Oh, wait a moment! I nearly forgot.” Liss disappeared behind the velvet curtain that led to the back office, returning a moment later with a small box. “For Melanie, dear. Just a little something witchy that no new mummy should be without.”

I took the box from her. “Something witchy, huh? Um, nothing that Mel will see as ... scary, right?”

Her laughter tinkled through the air, pure and perfect lightness of being. “Do I look like the type of person who would gift a woman whose body is being ravaged by invading hordes of hormones with something designed to set those very invading beasties on fire with fear?”

“Hm, good point. You’re far too civilized for that.” I hefted the box in my hands. “Dare I shake it?”

“It’s a pretty little mobile crafted out of the most beautiful crystal beads. Very good energy. Protective and very soothing. I would have purchased two, you know, had I known in advance of the impending arrival of twins. I’m usually spot-on as far as expectant mums go, so that rather surprised me, I must say.”

Join the crowd.
“Protective and soothing sounds perfect. Especially with Greg gone missing.”

“Poor Melanie,” Liss tsked. “I take it she was caught unawares by her husband’s discontent?”

“She was in denial.”

“The more open she is to change, the easier the next months will be for her. Resist the energetic tides, and she will find herself powered along by forces much stronger than she could ever be. She needs to use this time to go inward, to grow strong and bolster her sense of self. How she deals with this will determine the next grand design in her life.”

I gazed with surprise at Gen, who didn’t usually offer much in the way of metaphysical insight. Thanks to a lifetime of hiding her ability, Gen was far more circumspect than that. Seeing the dead . . . that couldn’t have been a popular motif among her peers. Certainly at St. Catherine’s we had been taught that the dead should stay dead, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. “Thanks, Gen. I’ll tell her.”

“Melanie will be fine, dear,” Liss said reassuringly. “She’s a strong girl.”

That I could agree with. Melanie had always come out on top. Granted, her life up until now had been one shining gold moment after another, but it didn’t matter. She had always possessed an innate sense of trumping right over anyone who might stand against her. Despite her moment of vulnerability at the hospital, something told me the outcome of this current hiccup in her life would be no different.

Greg would be smart to watch his back.

 

 

Marcus took me home (where there was a full bag of clothes waiting for me on the porch—thank you, Steff!), and after seeing me safely ensconced on the edge of the bed, he went into the adjoining master bath to run a tub full of hot water. I could tell that Liss’s suggestion had really seized hold of his imagination, because he seemed to have little else in the forefront of his mind. Lifting my cast up onto the bed with a sigh, I settled back on my elbows to watch him as he adjusted the knobs, set out fresh, fluffy white towels, and—be still my heart—lit a couple of candles.

“Wow,” I told him as he came back into the bedroom, drying his hands on a towel, “you really go all out.”

“For you, yes.” He put his hands on his hips and leered down at my prone figure. “Although, if you’re going to display yourself so invitingly, I might have to rethink the whole bath idea. Or at least postpone it.”

There is nothing like coming into one’s own power as a woman, of knowing just what effect every movement has on her man. Feigning a yawn, I stretched my spine and rolled my shoulders, all the while watching him through lowered lashes.

But then there is nothing like a man who knows his own power over a woman, either. Not in an aggressive way, but in a way that leaves no doubt as to what is going on in his mind. Especially when he leans in ever so slowly like a jungle cat, leveraging his body over yours. Taking you with his energy without touching a single part of you.

“Especially,” he whispered, allowing himself a brief nibble at the base of my throat, “when you do something like that.”

I was breathing much faster when he just as slowly peeled his energy and his body away, leaving me to wonder who was the victor in that all-too-brief tussle of the sexes. He extended a hand and pulled me to a sitting position.

“Bath first.”

Well, at least
that
left the evening open-ended. I got to my feet and reached for my buttons... and froze, suddenly shy as I realized he was intently watching my every movement.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen bits and pieces of me in all my, erm, glory, but I had never actually purposely . . . undressed... in front of him. This was new territory.

So much for claiming my feminine power.

If he’d noticed my hesitation, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he got up and headed for the door, calling back, “You go ahead while I get you a fresh cup of tea. Your robe’s on the end of the bed.”

Robe. Yes. I slipped out of my clothes in a heartbeat and reached for it, grateful for its deep folds. Marcus was back before I had even had a chance to sit back down. He set the mug of steaming tea (chamomile by the scent wafting upward on the vapors) on the vanity, then stepped aside to let me through into the bathroom.

It hit me then. There was no way around it. I would not be able to lower myself into the tub without assistance. Not without risking life and limb. Both lower extremities, and my neck, to boot.

While my mind worked a mile a minute figuring all of this out, Marcus it seemed had already made the same calculations on his own. I felt his fingers tug at the knotted belt of my robe. Almost at the same moment, he leaned in and gently kissed me, effectively stifling my embarrassment.

Had I been embarrassed? Really? At that precise moment I couldn’t imagine why.

His hands grasped mine as he backed away and slowly, irrevocably, he lowered me into the bathwater, maintaining eye contact with me the whole time as he took care to keep my casted ankle from slipping over the edge. The temperature of the water was perfect, hot enough to make me tense up as my skin became accustomed to it, but not hot enough to make me yelp and try every possible movement to prevent scalding the whole of my backside. I forgot my moment of modesty as a boatload of bubbles and a wave of water closed around my body. Leaning my head against the angled back of the tube, I closed my eyes with a blissful sigh.

“Oh, wow. This feels... fabulous. What a good idea.”

“I’ll say.”

I slitted my eyes open to peep at him. He was standing at the end of the tub, a folded towel held forgotten in his hands and a light of naked interest glittering in his eyes that sent an arrow of longing straight through me. When he realized I was watching him back, he cleared his throat and carefully, solicitously lifted my ankle in order to place the towel as a cushion beneath it. Then he rose again, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and said, “I’ll just ... give you your privacy and wait out here.”

My privacy? I blinked, confused, as he shuffled back to his bedroom, his shoulders hunched.

Hm. Grandma C? Now is not the time, okay? Stuff it.

He left the bedroom door open at least. If I leaned forward just so, I could see his denim-covered legs lounging on the bed. Much too far away.

A nice, relaxing bath. Yeah.

I did relax, though, much to my surprise. I must have been more tired than I thought because my eyes drifted closed and my mind began to waft around on the dream currents of never-neverland almost instantly. I wasn’t sleeping so much as floating.

My eyes flew open and I stared at the bright lights above the vanity in dismay.

Anthony Nunzio.

That’s
where I’d heard the name before.

Frannie’s special midnight caller.

It was him. Frannie’s mystery man and the intruder in her home were one and the same.

Why had it taken me so long to remember that?

I blame the painkillers. I’m usually much quicker on the draw.

What had he said to her that night? The words were faint in my memory. Was it really less than forty-eight hours ago? Somehow the last two days seemed to fill a lifetime.

Regardless, the incident at the hospital proved one thing a lie: the Watkinses had told the police that they didn’t know their intruder.

At least one of them did. And I was willing to bet, maybe even more than one.

It was the knowing again, that deep sense of truth that came sailing out of the nebulous nothingness, just as Liss had promised it would if I but silenced my thoughts. That certainty that said You. Are. On. The. Right. Track.

But which one? Who besides Frannie knew about Tony Nunzio? Who besides Frannie would care?

Who would care that Frannie and Tony ...

That they what? That they had shared some sort of association between them? It certainly seemed likely. Even probable. Showing up, after hours, when her husband and family were likely to be away. Skulking about in stairwells and shadows, waiting for the most opportune time to approach her.

To approach her for what purpose, though? What was it he’d said?

I relaxed back into the warm water and closed my eyes, willing myself to drift. It had worked once just now; there was a good chance it could happen for me again.

At first all I saw was the darkness penetrated by distinct red swirls where the vanity lights were burned into my field of vision. I let my focus go softer, shift inward, until my breathing began to slow, naturally, into a deep and rhythmic continuous wave. Ebb and flow. Flow and ebb.

A blank screen appeared in my mind’s eye, white and shimmering in the fluid darkness. Bemused, I stared at it, watching it bob in and out of sight—out, the harder I focused on it, and in, the more that I let come what may. I breathed deeply through the excitement that had cropped up at the first sign of this new turn in my abilities and worked hard to just be still, of mind and of body.

“Get away from him
. . .”

The memory floated through my mind, crisper and clearer than it had been that night at the hospital when sleep deprivation and confusion had ruled the moment. I resisted the temptation to latch onto it and clutch it in my hands, turning it over and over in my mind to try to wring out the rest.
Patience,
I reminded myself.
Let it come.

“Gotta get out of town for a while
. . .”

All of a sudden Jordan Everett popped into my head again. Jordan whose death was a result of heart failure attributed, most likely, to either steroids or other drugs, verdict still being out as to which. Oh my God. It made sense. Tom had said Nunzio had had run-ins relating to drugs in his past. What if he never stopped? What if he just got smarter about it? Or just lucky enough not to get caught?
Until Jordan died.
Had Nunzio been supplying drugs to kids in town? Kids like Jordan? Maybe that’s why he told Frannie he was leaving.

But he would be back.

There was something in Frannie’s voice that had caught my ear, a low and throbbing urgency that was out of place in the drowsy-lambs-and-dancing-butterflies dreamworld that was the norm for New Mommyland. It was obvious she was afraid of him for some reason known only to her, even though he didn’t seem to be threatening her in the brief exchange I had overheard. But there are many ways to threaten, to influence. To manipulate. Maybe she was afraid for other reasons. Not necessarily for her own welfare, but...