Witching Moon (11 page)

“I thought that house burned down,” Starflower whispered. “I mean Jenna Foster died in a fire.”

“Only part of the house was damaged. A thunderstorm put the fire out. Austen Barnette owned the place then. He still does.”

“Do tell,” Willow murmured.

“Your boss?” Starflower asked.

“Yeah. The old dude has his fingers in all kinds of pies in town.”

“Cow pies?” Razorback smirked.

Everybody laughed.

Falcon waited for them to settle, then continued. “I don't just work out at the estate. I come down here to fix things at a bunch of different shops for him. He's got residential property, too. Like the cabin. He had it built back up so he could rent it out.”

Razorback laughed again. “Yeah, to unsuspecting goobers.”

“So if that woman is living there, maybe she's…she's absorbing some kind of aura from the place. Maybe the house has Jenna Foster's powers.”

“Maybe. But there are ways to find out if it's the house or her.”

Again the conversation halted while the girl served the drinks.

Razorback took a swig of beer. “Like how?” he demanded.

“I saw her come to town a little while ago. She was doing some shopping on Main Street. We can test my theory tonight.”

Starflower felt her nerve endings tingle as a buzz of excitement went around the table.

Falcon lowered his voice and began to describe his plan. It was clever, damn clever. Starflower liked it. Willow seemed excited by the idea.

But Razorback had an objection. “We've never tried anything in town before. It could be dangerous.”

Falcon fixed him with a direct look. “Who's going to know?”

 

AUSTEN
Barnette wouldn't have liked knowing that he was the subject of conversation among the witches. In this case, ignorance was bliss. At least for the next few moments.

He was sitting in his study smoking one of his specially imported Cuban cigars when the phone rang. It didn't ring in the office because he always turned it off by eight o'clock.

In this day and age, he could have let an answering machine screen his calls. But he hated many of the devices of the modern world. So, instead, he used James.

The old butler picked up the phone in the kitchen. Then he decided whether it was worth bothering the master of the house.

Austen waited for the verdict. When he heard a knock on the door, he looked up. “Come in.”

James shuffled into the doorway. “Mrs. Della Waverly would like to speak to you. Are you available?”

He considered his answer. He had given a very generous donation to the historical society because he believed in keeping the town records in good order. The history of a place was as important as its present and its future. But he was interested in more than historical records. When he'd given the donation, he'd made it clear that the ladies who ran the society would come to him with certain information.

In a way, he'd been waiting for this call. So instead of answering James, he simply picked up the receiver.

“Della,” he said in what passed as a jovial voice for him. “What can I do for you?” He and the woman went way back. Not just the two of them, but their families, too. Over the years the Barnettes and the Waverlys had stuck together when the going had been rough. Della's husband had been one of his best friends. Greg had been struck with a heart attack ten years ago when they'd been out on a deer hunt. A good way to pass, he'd always thought. Out with your buddies having fun.

He brought his attention back to Della.

“There was a man in here a few minutes ago going through old newspaper editions,” she said, her voice filled with importance.

Austen sat up straighter. “What man?”

“That Adam Marshall.”

“My head ranger. Yes.”

“He said he was looking for material from the year the park opened.”

“And?”

Della heaved a sigh. “You know that article on Jenna Foster? The one we cut out of the paper?”

“Of course!” he snapped.

“Well, somebody put it back.”

“How the…heck could they do that?” he asked, modifying his intended curse.

“Well, I don't mean it was taped into the paper. But somebody stuffed it into the bound volume.”

“I appreciate your telling me,” he said.

“I took it away from Marshall. And I didn't tell him anything else.”

He kept his voice calm and even. “You did fine, Della. I appreciate your informing me,” he said again. “But Marshall won't be any problem.”

“I just wanted to be sure.”

“Thank you, Della.”

She cleared her throat. “I put the article in my desk drawer. Should I burn it?”

“Yes,” he answered, making the decision for her. Then he let the old bat prattle on for a few more minutes before extricating himself from the phone call.

He dragged in more cigar smoke, then blew it out in a heavy stream.

A long time ago he'd taken care of that article in the historical society records. He'd also made sure there wasn't any other mention of Jenna Foster or her daughter in the newspaper. And he'd made sure Sheriff Harold Delacorte did the right thing.

He'd thought that the whole incident had gone away, at least in public. Now he knew somebody had disagreed with that decision.

Who the hell had gone against him?

Well, he had a lot of enemies in town. A lot of people could have done it.

Of course, the article didn't say anything damaging. But years ago there had been other materials that could be more of a problem. He'd had those destroyed, too.

At least he'd assumed so. Now he was thinking it was better to be safe than sorry. But he couldn't exactly send James down to the historical society. He'd have to go himself. In a couple of days, when his joints didn't ache so much.

He leaned back in his desk chair, puffing on his cigar, thinking about the good citizens of Wayland, wondering who had dared to put that article back into the paper.

ADAM WALKED SLOWLY
up the block, pretending interest in the shop windows. But really, he was watching the people going by on the newly bricked sidewalk. It was after nine, and he thought that this was the time when the kind of men and women who had been cavorting around the campfire might be out and about.

Of course, he had no hard evidence of that. It was just a hunch.

He eyed a lanky guy holding hands with his girlfriend, a young woman with medium-brown hair. From where he stood now, either one of them could be part of the group from the other night. But he had no way of knowing, and that set his stomach churning.

He'd relied on his wolf senses for all of his adult life. But they were no help to him in this situation. The smoke had clogged his nostrils, and the paint on the dancers' faces had obscured their features.

Of course, there were bits and pieces he'd focused on. Maybe if the little brunette would take off her tank top, he'd recognize her breasts, he thought with an inward laugh. Or maybe not. Probably he'd been too far gone to recognize anything. And lucky for him he'd been in the shadows, so they wouldn't know who he was either. At least he hoped to hell that was true.

He wandered along toward the Winn-Dixie, thinking that he could pick up a six-pack of bottled water.

After that, he might as well head home, because it was starting to get dark. And he wasn't going to see much without his werewolf's vision. He was halfway to the grocery store when he felt a tingling sensation at the back of his neck.

Stopping in his tracks, he lifted his head. The atmosphere around him had the charged, heavy feel of the air before a storm, yet there was no gathering of dark clouds above the town.

His breath stilled in his lungs. Something was about to happen, but he had no idea what.

As if to give him a better view of the downtown area, the street lights flicked on. Twenty feet down the sidewalk a woman stepped out of the drugstore, the yellow glow shining down on her blond hair.

One of the women at the campfire had been blond. A real blonde.

Was that her? Her height was about right. And her body type. At least he thought so. But he couldn't be sure of anything. Dammit.

She looked like she was waiting to cross the street. When she turned her head to check out the traffic, he knew who she was.

Sara. The woman who had been in his thoughts almost constantly over the past two days. He had only spoken to her once, in real life. But he had dreamed of her, stalked her house, held countless conversations with her in his head.

 

SARA
looked toward the parking lot across Main Street. She'd felt closed in and cut off from the world in her little cabin, so she'd come to town and checked out some of the antique and clothing shops. Her last stop had been the drugstore to pick up a few things she needed, like paper towels and toothpaste.

Pausing on the curb, she opened the zipper of her shoulder bag and fumbled inside to locate her keys.

A woman alone was supposed to have her keys in her hand when she stepped outside a store, especially after dark. She'd started doing it after there had been a rape on the college campus. Probably the advice wasn't so important in a small town like Wayland, but she figured that the habit wasn't a bad one to keep.

With the hard metal keys clutched in her fingers, she stepped between two parked cars and looked both ways up and down Main Street. There were no vehicles coming, so she started across the street. Halfway into the traffic lane, a sudden pain knifed through her head.

It felt like a blast from a ray gun cutting through flesh and bone, slicing into the soft tissue of her brain.

The needle-sharp sensation made her gasp, made her vision blur. For a moment all logical thought completely fled her mind. She didn't know where she was or who she was or even what she was doing. Her whole body had gone rigid, unable to move. Unable to function on any rational level.

She didn't know how long the spell lasted. Just when she thought the unendurable was going to send her to her knees, the intensity lessened. Below the surface of the pain, like bubbles bobbing up through layers of swamp water, she sensed words forming in her mind.

Not her words. Words beamed in from some other consciousness.

Watch out, Sara. You're in danger. Danger. Danger. There's a truck coming. Get out of the street. Watch out Sara. You're in danger, danger, danger. The truck, the truck, the truck.

She raised her hand, pressing her fingers to her forehead as the warning echoed in her mind like vibrations coming off the surface of a drum, sending the words bouncing around the inside of her skull.

It wasn't one voice but a babble of people, men and women, all saying the same things like a Greek chorus.

Watch out, Sara. You're in danger. Danger. Danger.

Her skin had gone clammy. Her heart was pounding wildly in her chest. Somehow through the cotton filling her brain, she knew that she had to bring her thoughts into focus. Danger. She was in danger. But the pain in her head had made it hard to think, impossible to move.

Her fingers clamped around the cold metal of the keys that were still in her purse, deliberately pressing the teeth into her flesh, as she struggled to anchor herself to reality.

Looking to her left, she saw that a black pickup truck had rounded the corner and was coming toward her, as she'd been warned. And she had to get out of the street before it mowed her down.

But she couldn't move. Feeling like an insect caught in amber, she simply stood there, watching the truck bear down on her.

 

ADAM
sprinted down the sidewalk, the scene burned into the tissue of his brain like a flaming brand: Sara in the middle of the street, and a black pickup heading right for her.

He couldn't get there in time. It was all happening much too fast, yet some part of him felt as if he were viewing the scene in slow motion. With no thought for his own safety, he leaped between parked cars, crossing the few feet still separating him from Sara as though his running shoes had sprouted jet propulsion devices.

He grabbed for her, his fingers tangled in her knit top, clutching the fabric as he pulled her away from two tons of metal speeding down the blacktop.

She screamed as his hands dug through her shirt and into her flesh, screamed again as the vehicle whizzed by.

Raising his head, he tried to get a look at the driver. He thought he could make out a large head covered with a cap and shoulders hunched over the wheel. But he only caught a fleeting glimpse through the back window, and he couldn't even be sure if it was a man or a woman.

He lost sight of the driver in the wash from the tailwind. It buffeted them so strongly that he was almost knocked off his feet. Swaying, he braced his hips against the side of a parked car, pulling Sara against himself to prevent the two of them from tumbling to the pavement.

She was safe. And in his arms. His breath wedged in his throat as he folded her close, cradling her slender body protectively against his. She was trembling. Her fingers must have let go of the plastic shopping bag she was holding, because he heard it drop to the ground.

“It's okay. You're safe with me.”

“They warned me,” she rasped, her fingers closing and unclosing on his arm.

He didn't understand what she was saying. All he knew was that at this moment in time, he needed to shut out the world and simply hold her. Closing his eyes, he wrapped her tightly in his embrace. An inarticulate sound welled in his throat as he lowered his face to the top of her head, unconsciously moving his lips against her golden hair.

In response, she lifted her arms, clinging to him as though they had been separated for a long, long time. And now they were finally together again.

The strength of his emotions made no sense. But as he gathered her against himself, he was filled with an incredible feeling of connection to her, as though the two of them had known each other for a thousand lifetimes. He had never believed in destiny. Yet at this moment, he understood that she was the woman the fates had ordained for him.

And she seemed to understand that, too.

As they stood at the edge of Main Street, clinging to each other, he forgot where they were, forgot why he had folded her into his arms. The feel of her body pressed to his was too overwhelming to leave room in his mind for anything else. He would put her in his car. Take her back to Nature's Refuge, where he could keep her safe. Where he could keep her for himself. She belonged to him as no other woman had ever belonged to him. And he belonged to her in the same way.

A voice snapped him back to reality. “Hey, buddy, you all right?”

He remembered, then, why he was holding Sara and why she was clinging to him.

“You all right?” the voice asked again. It came from somewhere outside the invisible bubble that enclosed himself and the woman in his arms.

He wanted to ignore the intrusion, but he knew that if he didn't answer, the questioner would persist.

“Yeah,” he replied, without shifting his attention away from Sara.

“Who was that jerk?” asked the man standing a few feet away.

“I'd like to know,” Adam growled, the low, strained quality of his voice coming as much from annoyance with the guy who wouldn't leave him and Sara be as his reaction to the aborted hit-and-run.

But it wasn't just one guy, he suddenly realized. A whole crowd of evening shoppers had gathered on the sidewalk, destroying the private moment.

Lifting his head, he stared at the people who had materialized around them.

“We're fine,” he said again, addressing the group at large.

He heard Sara swallow hard. “Yes, fine,” she echoed automatically, even though her skin was pale as moonlight, and she was staring up at him with wide, shocked eyes.

Somebody thrust a plastic shopping bag at him, and he took it, then used his shoulders to part the sea of humanity so that he could draw Sara away from the center of attention and into a little courtyard between two buildings.

She was still shaking, and he draped the hand with the shopping bag awkwardly around her shoulder, stroking his other hand up and down her arm. He was waiting for her to pull away from him, but she stayed where she was.

Did she feel what he did? The intensity? The sudden need to caress her mouth with his.

The anticipation of the kiss burned through him like a fire devouring him from the inside out. He knew how it would be. Passionate. Consuming. Branding.

The reality of her overwhelmed him. He was swamped by sensory input: the sweet smell of her hair, the feminine shape of her body, the fine tremor that went through her.

Every instinct urged him to claim her mouth, to claim her for his own. Yet at the same time, he felt as though he had broken through solid ground and was sinking into the black waters of the swamp. In some part of his mind he knew that if he lowered his mouth to hers, there would be no going back. Not ever.

She stared up at him, looking shocked, and he thought maybe she felt the same thing he did. Maybe she knew that they stood on the brink of some discovery that neither one of them was prepared to make.

While emotions roared through him, Sara took the decision out of his hands and pulled away from him.

“Don't,” he managed, feeling as though his own flesh were being torn from his body.

Her eyes were wide and round. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper. “I have to go.”

“Sara.” His fingers closed over her arm.

“What do you want?” she asked, her voice a little stronger.

Seconds passed as they both waited for the answer. He couldn't give it because he was afraid to frame the words, even in his mind. All he could say was, “I want you to be careful.”

“I will,” she told him, then pulled away and fled into the darkness.

 

FALCON
joined the clan where they had gathered in the lot in back of the ice-cream parlor.

Razorback's head swung toward him. “Where did you park, man?”

“A block over.”

“What if someone made your license plate?”

“I smeared it with dirt. There was no way to see it.”

“Clever!” Copperhead approved.

Razorback kicked his foot against the blacktop.

“So what did you think about the woman?” Starflower asked the group.

“Did you see her go stock still like she'd been drilled with a laser? She got the message we sent her, all right. She knew the truck was coming,” Razorback said, his voice emphatic.

“She didn't get out of the way,” Grizzly pointed out. “She just stood there in the middle of the street.”

“She was spooked. Didn't you see the way she went pale, the way her hand went to her head.” Starflower jumped back into the conversation. “We did it too strong.