Witchy Woman (2 page)

He set the statue on a tabletop, intending to let Judy have a better look at it. As he pulled his hand away
he scratched his finger on a sharp edge—the panther’s back claws. A drop of blood welled up on his fingertip.

Tess, her attention glued to his every move, grew pale at the sight. “Oh, my God …”

“It’s nothing,” he said in an effort to alleviate her unwarranted distress. “Just a nick.” He shoved his sore finger into his mouth.

Without further ado she grabbed her friend’s arm in a death grip. “I saw a beautiful lamp at Filene’s that your aunt would love,” she said in an insistent voice. “We can go tomorrow and look at it. But now we’d better leave, or we’ll be late getting back to work. Good-bye, and thank you.” Her nod included both Nate and Anne-Louise as she dragged a befuddled Judy out the door.

“Well, how odd,” the shopkeeper said. “I can’t tell you how many people have expressed an interest in that piece and then changed their minds. I’ve dropped the price on it twice. If I go any lower, I won’t make a profit at all.”

“Anxious to get rid of it, are you?”

She shrugged noncomittally. “I’m actually rather fond of it,” she admitted, “but I’d never make a living in this business if I kept every piece I took a fancy to.”

Nate, still inclined to purchase the panther even after it had scratched him, picked it up gingerly and replaced it on the high shelf. Maybe after he got paid for the Moonbeam Majick story, he’d come back and buy the piece as a reward.

“I noticed you were interested in the dolls,” Anne-Louise
said. “Could I show you any from the window?”

“Ah, no, not today.” He was wondering whether he should try to catch up to Tess and talk to her. But what would he say? Rather than risk irritating her, he decided to wait for another day. He could easily stage a coincidental meeting of some sort. “How did you break your leg?” he impulsively asked the shopkeeper. He’d never been shy about expressing his curiosity.

“Oh, it was the silliest thing,” she said. “It was the same day I bought the statue, as a matter of fact. I remember because I decided to run upstairs to my storage room for some reference books, to see if I could figure out what on earth I’d bought. And on the way down, I just tripped over my own two clumsy feet. I’ll bet you I’ve been up and down those stairs a million times over the nine years I’ve owned this shop, and I’ve never tripped before. Silliest thing.”

Nate wasn’t sure why, but Anne-Louise’s explanation gave him an odd, unsettled feeling in his gut. “I’d better be going too,” he said to the woman, although he wondered if he might not buy a doll for his sister after all.

When he exited the store he was surprised to find Tess and her friend still in sight. They stood in the middle of the sidewalk half a block up, apparently arguing.

“… because that vase was no more antique than the ones you can buy at Wal-Mart, that’s why,” Tess was saying.

Nate stood transfixed, marveling at the sight of Tess
in the throes of a passionate opinion. She was a fiercely magnificent creature.

“How do you know?” Judy retorted. “You don’t even like antiques. And the stone cat? What was wrong with it?”

“You don’t want that thing in your possession, not even for a minute,” Tess insisted. “It’s …” She lowered her voice. “It looks evil.”

Judy stared as her face reflected disbelief, then acceptance. “All right,” she said, suddenly subdued.

Nate saw his chance and made his move. “Excuse me, ladies, but I couldn’t help overhearing.”

“It’s hard not to overhear when you’re eavesdropping,” Tess said, although she softened the comment with a crooked smile.

Nate spread his hands in a gesture of surrender, trying his best to be disarming. “Guilty as charged. But it’s an occupational hazard. I’m a freelance writer, working at the moment for
Boston Life.
Nate Wagner.” He held out his hand to Judy, who seemed the more receptive of the two.

Judy shook his hand warmly. “I’m Judy Cosgrove, and my suspicious friend here is Tess DeWitt. What are you working on, a story about how corporate women spend their lunch hours?”

Not a bad idea, he thought, filing it away for later. “Actually, I’m doing an investigative piece on antique shops,” he improvised. “I understand there’s quite a lot of deception that goes on—faked authenticity certificates, price gouging, bilking the unwary customer, that sort of thing.” Another not-so-bad idea. If nothing
else, he’d come away from today’s adventure with some story ideas to pitch to various editors. “And I just wanted to ask …”—he turned to Tess—“you, the suspicious one—Tess, did you say?”

She nodded, arms crossed under those perfectly medium-sized breasts, as if she wasn’t buying a word of it.

“How do you know the vase isn’t a real antique?”

She shrugged. “I saw one just like it in another shop, same crack and everything.”

“Really? Which shop?” He was liking this crooked-antique-dealer story more and more.

“I don’t remember,” she replied with a toss of her head, making her hair dance again. He liked her hair. It was a natural honey-and-sunshine color that couldn’t have come out of a bottle. That weird, black-haired kid he’d seen on TV all those years ago could never have grown up into this fair, delicate creature.

“Well, if you do remember, or if you hear of any horror stories concerning antique dealers, I wish you’d give me a call.” He handed both women his card. Tess handled hers gingerly by the edges, dropping it into an outer pocket of her vinyl purse. He was hoping she might reciprocate with a card of her own, giving him legitimate means to call her, but she didn’t.

Judy, however, did. “I love antiques, but I’m always paying too much for things,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many times Tess has saved me from a tragically ignorant impulse buy. I know all the shops—which ones overcharge the most, which ones offer bargains. If you’ll call me later, I’ll tell you what I know.”

“Thanks. I’ll do that.”

“Oh, Mr. Wagner?” It was Tess who spoke up, surprising him.

“Please, call me Nate.”

She fixed him with a stare, her eyes holding an otherworldly intensity. “Do be careful.”

A chill snaked its way up his spine. “Excuse me?”

And then she seemed perfectly normal again. “You should be more careful when you handle old things in antique shops. That cut on your finger—no telling what kind of germs you picked up. You should wash it out with alcohol as soon as possible.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll do that.” Had he only imagined that fleeting strangeness about her? As he watched the two women walk away from him, he suddenly knew, beyond a doubt, that Tess DeWitt was in fact Moonbeam Majick.

At five minutes until five, Tess sat at her desk with her head in her hands, utterly drained. If she had to take one more phone call or track down one more glitch in one more program, she would go mad. What she needed was a bath—a long, hot, blessedly isolating bath. The tub seemed to be the only place she could empty her mind and achieve total relaxation.

The tension was worse than usual after her unnerving lunch hour.

Despite the constant battle of dealing with her “gift,” she didn’t think much about the old days anymore. Fifteen years was a long time, and she’d forgotten
most of the events prior to her thirteenth birthday. The nightmares had stopped years before, and the image of her mother’s face was only a blur in her mind, so infrequently had they seen each other in recent years. But seeing that blasted red panther had brought it all crashing back.

She’d only been a child when she’d last seen the statue. But there couldn’t be two pieces so alike. Besides, she had felt the evil emanating from that unholy cat. Without her even touching it, the vibrations had reached toward her like a blackened, skeletal hand reaching from the grave.

She had no doubt in her mind that the Crimson Cat could kill. As a child, she had watched her uncle sicken and die less than a month after finding the statue in his attic among her grandmother’s effects. She remembered overhearing whispers about a curse and, little by little, piecing together the story.

Apparently a Gypsy woman who practiced dark magic had placed the curse on the cat statue a couple of hundred years ago, then had vindictively given the cat to Tess’s great-great-grandmother, a white witch. The curse had proved so powerful that it had been passed from generation to generation, ending with Tess’s mother.

Tess shivered as she recalled the transformation that had taken place, the stranger her mother had become after she had inherited the statue. In Morganna Majick’s case, death would have been a kinder fate.

It was rumored that even casual possession of the statue—holding it, or touching it—could cause bad
luck. To actually own it invited disaster. And the more one valued the cat, the worse that luck became.

Tess thought back to the shopkeeper and her broken leg. She would bet her last dollar the accident had occurred after Anne-Louise had acquired the statue. And the cut on Nate Wagner’s finger. No coincidence, that.

Nate Wagner. A strange warmth flooded her as she rolled his name around in her mind.

She’d noticed him right away, standing by that window and pretending to look at the dolls when all the while he was eyeing her, and his covert attention had given her a small thrill of feminine delight. After all, how often was it that a tall, dark, and rakishly handsome man looked at her twice? Or rather, how often had she allowed it?

She had recognized his story about his sister for the subterfuge it was, and had forgiven him for it. Her ego, she supposed, had wanted to paint him as a good guy. It wasn’t any fun to flirt with a slimeball.

But then there had been that business with the Crimson Cat, and all she’d wanted was to get out of that shop. A part of her—an unfamiliar part—had wanted to linger with the appealing stranger, but raw fear had won out and she’d fled. Only when she’d seen him again outside, in the sunlight, had she admitted that she might have overreacted a bit.

He was undeniably sexy, even in worn corduroys and an old windbreaker that should have seen the inside of a garbage can years before. He had a lean face with a prominent, almost hawkish nose and warm
brown eyes. His hair, wild and curly and brown like his eyes, blatantly defied conventional styling.

Of course, when he’d told her and Judy what he was up to, she had realized that his interest in her hadn’t been personal. That hadn’t stopped her from feeling a strange, sensual pull toward him. She shivered with delight at the memory.

She hoped a cut finger was the worst that would come of his brush with the curse. But as she’d held his business card ever so gingerly, she had felt the aura of danger that surrounded him. She’d given him the best warning she could under the circumstances. Anything stronger, and he would have dismissed her as a nut.

She wondered if there was any other precaution she could take for his benefit.

His card was in her purse. Though she seldom deliberately called on her extrasensory abilities, this time she really had no choice. It was her fault that Nate Wagner had touched the cat in the first place. If she hadn’t seen it and stared at it with her mouth gaping open, he wouldn’t even have noticed the statue. She owed him this small bit of effort.

She plucked the card from her purse and studied it:
NATHANIEL
WAGNER
,
FREELANCE
WRITER
. An address in Cambridge. Next she held the card between her clasped hands, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

The first sensations to hit her mind were comfortable ones, like a warm breeze on a languorous summer day, adding to her favorable impression of the man. But, gradually, the comfortable feeling became less so. Warmth turned to heat, languor to need, and the
breeze became a caress, a human caress. She felt his touch against her face, on her neck, her breasts.…

She wrenched her eyes open and the vision disintegrated. “Good gravy,” she muttered. That sort of information was hardly pertinent. Unfortunately her powers were unpredictable at best. The sensitivity was almost always there, whenever she came into physical contact with a person or thing, but Tess had no control over which vibrations she received when.

She cleared her mind, took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and tried again.

There was a crowd pressing against her from all sides, and a roar reverberating in her ears. A sudden shove, the sensation of falling … panic, a mad scramble for safety, a hot wind that brought near death and—

A sharp tap on her door and
pop!
The vision was gone.

The door opened and Judy stuck her head inside the office. “Aren’t you ready to go home yet?”

Tess glanced at her watch. It was already five-twenty. Quickly she thrust Nate’s business card back into her purse. “Come on in. I was just finishing up.” She began stuffing papers into her briefcase, papers she probably wouldn’t even look at once she got home. But executives at her place of employment always carried briefcases. It was part of the uniform, as were the conservative suit and low-key jewelry.

“Hey, Tess,” Judy began in a low voice, “I’m sorry about hassling you today.”

“Hassling me?”

“Outside the antique store. I realized, too late, why you were upset.”

If Judy knew why she was upset, Tess would have to give her friend credit for a few psychic abilities of her own.

“That panther statue,” Judy continued. “Did it remind you of something from your past?”

Hmm, not a bad guess. Judy was Tess’s closest friend, and thus one of a select handful who knew about her past as Moonbeam. But even Judy knew only the barest facts about Tess’s nightmarish childhood. The only people who had known the whole truth were a social worker, since transferred to another city, a kindly judge, who had died years earlier, and the psychiatrist she had seen during her teenage years.

And her mother, of course.

Even her aunt, who’d ended up as Tess’s dutiful but distant guardian, didn’t know how bizarre life with Morganna had become toward the end.

“Yes, it did bring back the past,” Tess answered. “I know my behavior must seem irrational to you.” Judy, while entirely sympathetic to the hardships Tess had endured, didn’t believe in anything remotely supernatural. That was one of the reasons Tess liked her so much. She didn’t have to hide her abilities around Judy, because Judy would never believe in them anyway.