Bitch Witch (7 page)

Shut the hell up!

Someone wrapped their arms around her waist and lifted her off her feet. Sarah nearly pissed herself.
This is real!
There was no denying the arms were warm and real. Dark spots appeared in her vision.

“Sarah! Sarah!” The arms swung her around and plopped her flat onto the floor of the attic. “Stop! Stop screaming! You’re okay! Please stop screaming!”

Paul Revere Longfellow crouched beside her.

I’m not screaming!
The sound continued to vibrate into Sarah’s bones and she worried what he’d think when he realized the disembodied screaming came from nowhere. One of his hands pressed over her mouth and the screaming shut off.

Oh.

My bad.

“Breathe,” he said, lifting his hand cautiously off her mouth. “Come on, you’re going to pass out. Breathe in on one, hold it for two, three—DO IT, Sarah.”

Sarah obeyed. Paul’s face appeared to be covered in scintillating sparkles.

“Again. In. One, two, three, OUT! Pay attention.”

Paul looked good in sparkles.
Listen my children and you shall hear of sparkly darkly Paul Revere.
A whispery chuckle took the last of her breath.

He patted her cheek roughly. “Do it!”

Sarah closed her eyes. Her head ached. Her throat ached. She still clutched the book to her chest as Paul wrapped both his arms around her, to hug her against his body. Definitely sealing the deal.

Everything went black.

SUNLIGHT FILTERED IN through an open window. Someone was mowing the grass. It smelled good. Sarah turned her head in that direction and saw heavy turquoise draperies.
My mother’s room!
She sat up, still clutching the spell book in her arms.
Not good!

Fear descended in a rush even as her eyes frantically searched the room. Since they’d gone, she’d occasionally worked up the nerve to come in here and hunt for a dark item that had gone missing.

A shivery breath escaped her when she didn’t find it.

“You don’t look much better,” said a familiar voice. Paul sat on the edge of the bed beside her. He leaned forward and brushed hair off her face. “You should have sat up slowly.” He used both thumbs to wipe the tears from under her eyes.

Tears. My tears are on his skin now.

Sarah let the book thump to the bed beside her. Dark objects were the least of her worries.
There’s no point in worrying about the past now. None whatsoever. Not when the future is nothing but dark matter.
He’d surely carried her downstairs from the attic.

“Why are you in my house?”

“I made a copy of your insurance card and brought yours back. You said you wanted it. I could hear you screaming from down the street. I thought someone had broken in.”

“Why do you keep coming around here?” She knew why, but wondered what he thought.

“I’m staying nearby until the car’s ready. What happened, Sarah?” he asked.

Her mind raced for a truthful answer that would be acceptable. “I thought I saw something creepy inside a trunk. I guess I had a panic attack.”

In the full on sunshine Paul’s eyes were the softest brown. Trust-me eyes. Black lashes ringed them, so thick it looked like he wore eyeliner. Sexy eyes. Those eyes were studying her own rather intently. Sarah cleared her throat.

Paul frowned. “You should have a cup of tea with honey. Your throat must be raw after all that screaming.”

“How did you get inside my house, Paul?” She always locked the doors when she was on the inside.

“The key under the front mat,” he said. “You know, that’s just not safe. I was certain you would have moved it since I saw it, but there it was.” He rubbed his neck with his horse-tattooed left hand.

That neck was thick. Why did men have big necks? Why was it so hot? The horse’s tail was visible on the back of Paul’s neck, and his hair curled down over it a bit. He moved his hand from his neck to slide it beneath her hair, touching her neck and stroking the fine hair that grew there. A sudden urge to purr hit Sarah.

Stop it, dumbass! I’m as pathetic as the neighbor guy Aunt Lily cast on, and he used to pluck her chin hair!

“I’ve never heard anyone scream like that and I told you I’m an EMT. I’ve pulled burn victims out of car wrecks. You were terrified. Is someone threatening you?”

A little laugh escaped.
Yeah. You are. Dark matter too. The blood in my veins. The blood in yours.

“That hah sounded like a yes. Is an ex bothering you? Did he do something in your attic to scare you?”

Sarah swung her short legs toward the edge of the bed and scooted in his direction. “No, nothing like that. Look, I’m okay.”

Paul took her left hand and extended her arm to peer at it. There were so many bruises and gouges it looked as though she’d been pounded by a hammer with nails in it.

“You didn’t do that to yourself. I know what abuse looks like. Sarah, you can tell me the truth. I know you don’t know me, but sometimes it helps to tell a stranger.”

Something in those words echoed in Sarah’s head.
What if I did?
Sarah had seen plenty of men afflicted by love spells. Some ended up in jail. A couple killed themselves. One mowed the grass outside right now, unable to leave the house that Lily had once lived in, drawn to her even after her death. Did any of them know why they acted like they did? Would it have mattered?

What if she told him?

Today Paul wore a polo top, leaving a lot of the horse visible. Placing her fingers on the horse’s head she patted it in a friendly way, as though attempting to ingratiate herself to a real horse before jumping on its back.

“Do you have an open mind, Paul?”

He considered this. “I’m almost always willing to hear both sides of a story, but I’m pretty firm about right and wrong.” He glanced at her damaged arm. Sarah wondered what the EMT would think if that arm healed itself right in front of his eyes. She took a breath. Every family had secrets, but she doubted they held a candle to witch family secrets.

“Do you believe in fate?”

He licked those amazing lips of his. “I suppose I’d like to, but I fought in Afghanistan.”

“And?”

“And it seems a first world luxury.”

Sarah took her fingers off his tat and ran one across her lips, gazing into his eyes. “Do you understand physics?”

“To a community college level maybe.”

“Mmm. Well, you mentioned right and wrong, could you sum that up as light and dark?”

“As long as it’s still politically correct to do so.”

“I’m a witch.”

Paul’s expression remained blank. “As in Wiccan or devil worship?”

“Oh, for pity’s sake. Neither.”

His gaze swept her face as though searching for signs of imbalance he’d previously missed, but he gamely asked, “Harry Potter?”

A whisper of a laugh escaped her. “Oddly enough, you’re getting warmer if you’re thinking Voldemort. I’m a dark witch by birth. It’s passed down in blood, and we do tend to stick together. The reason I asked you about physics is because scientifically that’s what witchcraft boils down to. It’s easier to keep religion out of it, but it has to do with right and wrong or light and dark. Dark witches have a genetic predisposition to manipulate dark matter for our personal benefit. Are you familiar with dark matter or dark energy?”

“Are you going to tell me that dark matter did that to your arm in the attic? Because if you are, I’m going to suggest we head for the emergency room and an MRI.”

Sarah sighed.
And this is one reason we don’t tell. Nobody wants to hear it.
She rubbed her hand over the bruised and shredded skin of her arm. It didn’t hurt because she chose not to let it. “Nobody hurt me, Paul. I saw something that brought back a very bad memory, so bad that dark matter flowed through me. Because I didn’t manipulate it or cast it back out into the world, it hurt me like this.” She could very well have pulled it deeper inside, into her heart. That’s what her mother and Aunt Lily had done. The pond they’d ended their lives in had probably been to make it easier for her when the outside world looked for cause of death.
We did it for you.
Sarah shuddered.

“So dark matter has a hand and fingernails? Because I know a handprint when I see one.”

“It can take any form.” Sarah held her hands toward him, palms up, and opened a channel from her core to them. Two handfuls of red and orange fire took form as though her hands were the logs of a campfire. Against bare skin some of the flames leapt close to a foot into the air.

Paul shot off the bed, backpedaling straight to the floor and onto his backside. “Holy cow!”

Sarah pressed her hands together and extinguished the flames.

“That’s dangerous! I don’t know if you used chemicals or what, but that is downright stupid in this old house! You could burn the whole place down.”

“Like this?” she asked. She held her palms outward for the briefest second, and half the room burst into flames around them. Flames licked the curtains and canopy above the bed, smoldered against the floral wallpaper, and then vanished. Not even the smell of smoke remained.

Paul had crab-walked backward a few more feet, and dropped to his backside on the floor, his long legs outstretched. Opening his mouth his lips formed the word “How,” but no sound came out and he closed it again, staring at her.

“It’s as easy for me as it is for you to make a fist, but it comes from here.” Sarah pointed at the area of her heart. “It’s a limited capability, like strength or energy is to you.” She gestured toward the wooden wardrobe. “You know you can push that armoire over, but not a car. We have no real limitations like that thanks to dark matter. Dark matter itself is unlimited, and witches can access it for additional power, but, let’s just say it’s very expensive to use. There is always a cost for casting with dark matter.”

“I don’t know why, but I half believe you,” he managed in a thick voice.

“It’s true. The night I met you in the Target parking lot, that bomb was me.”

Again his mouth opened and closed.

“I try not to do that. I had PMS.”

A faint huff of laughter shot out of Paul’s mouth.

“I guess it sounds kind of funny, but really it’s not. When dark matter flows through a witch, it increases in volume. Causing dark matter to expand in the universe is a very bad thing, and there are consequences.”

“Like with gravity or anti-matter?”

That must have been a really good community college.
“Even more immediate problems. There’s always a backlash for casting. That woman in the pickup was rude to me, so I did something to her. The cost for it came due. We call it an aftershock. I tried to pay it myself—that’s why you found me flat on my back on the pavement—but I’m afraid it got you too.”

Paul looked at his forearm as though he expected to find it black and blue and shredded like hers.

“I wish,” she continued, “that what it did to you had been as simple as bruises. Dark matter is as intelligent as light, but it looks for weakness and takes advantage.”

“Are you telling me this dark matter stuff is evil?”

“Yes, and it wants me.”

He widened his eyes. “It doesn’t already have you? You’re not evil? Voldemort sure was.”

The comment hurt. She blinked, hoping her eyes wouldn’t water, and glanced away from his candid brown ones. “I’m trying not to be, but I am a dark witch.”

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”

She met his eyes. “Call it like it is, Paul. Don’t be polite to evil. It gets a good foothold because people don’t want to be rude.”

“Sarah, this is the oddest conversation. You’re not pulling my leg, are you?”

She bit her lip and considered how to respond. She settled with flicking two fingers at his black cowboy boots. A force slid Paul two feet closer to her. He shoved to stand immediately and backed up to the door.