Bitch Witch (18 page)

“It’s good. Did you dig that splinter out? The one you got from the stocks yesterday?”

“Yeah, look,” he said and held his hand out so she could see the swollen red wound. “That stupid thing was two inches long, and thick!”

“I’d like to use that. There’re several things here from you and me. If I let Henry’s necklace soak in the middle of this too, it’ll make it stronger.”

Henry ran his finger over the list from the old potion book. “It doesn’t say a cross.”

Collects wine, mostly as an investment. Knows how to Tango.

“Oh, it never would,” said Sarah, “but it’s tied to you both and it would give it a lot of oomph.”

“Well, I threw out the splinter,” said Paul.

Sarah shot him a stink eye.

“Seriously, like you keep yours? Tell me there’s a collection of Archer women splinters in that stupid basement. Not that I’d be surprised.”

“Where did you throw it? I can see it was pretty large. You didn’t flush it, did you?”

“Fine!” Paul turned on his heel and stomped out of the kitchen toward his apartment.

Henry chuckled. “You two fight like my fiancée and her brother.”

Sarah turned her stink eye on him.

“I meant my ex-almost-fiancée.”

Tries to be politically correct, but doesn’t often mean it. Flosses after every meal.

Henry’s smile vanished. “If you knew how I felt, you’d never worry about her.”

Sarah fought the urge to throw her arms around him and forget about the stupid spell. She knew exactly how he felt because she felt the same way, but she also knew it might not be real. “You know, Henry, if this logic spell works properly you might want to catch the next flight home. The truth is, maybe you do want Kathleen to be your fiancée.” It hurt to say it, but she managed, confident it couldn’t really be true.
I’m a witch! If this attraction was purely a spell, surely I’d know!

But even if it was real for her, that didn’t mean it was real for him.

Henry sat down on a kitchen stool, the look in his Jack Sparrow eyes pained. “I’m going to be brutally honest with you, Sarah. I don’t really believe in this witch stuff. I mean I’m not stupid; you shoved me into the air somehow and suspended me up there. I felt what happened in the basement yesterday. And those sparks between our hands when we touch—I’m not a stupid man. I realize you’re somehow other, though I’m leaning toward Siegfried and Roy skills. Last night Paul explained to me what happened the night you met. I don’t mean to discount your beliefs, and certainly not your telekinesis, but to me this potion is a lot of mumbo jumbo. Everything unusual about you can certainly be explained by science. But I know what I feel for you is real. My mother always says love is the only true magic in the universe.”

When Paul came back, Sarah was on Henry’s lap, kissing him. Paul poked the bathroom wastebasket against her arm to get her attention. “Earth to Sarah. You have a job to do!” He turned his attention to the earthen bowl on the counter. “Is everything in here? I feel a bit of vomit coming up if you think that would help.”

“Suck it up, little brother,” said Henry.

“Toss the splinter in and Henry’s necklace, the one around your neck,” instructed Sarah.

“Shouldn’t you do it?” asked Paul, unclasping the pewter cross.

“It won’t matter.” Sarah extricated herself from Henry and gave him a last peck on the cheek.
Cheats on his taxes. Owns boots made of stingray. Plays piano.

Paul picked something out of the trash and shook the splinter out of a wad of tissue. He dropped the necklace into the bowl, chain and all.

I don’t know what half the spell books in the attic are bound in, so the stingray boots shouldn’t be a big deal.
Sarah set the earthen bowl on top of the priest’s shingle and laid the abacus over it. She leaned over the counter and stared, unblinking, at the concoction. Titles of books on economics and the stock market, books Henry had read, rambled through her mind. She shoved the useless knowledge and the niggling stingray fact aside to focus.

“It looks like you threw some random junk in there and tossed in water. Won’t it turn into a paste or bubble or something?” asked Paul. “So far all the spell stuff you’ve showed me is a bit of a disappointment.”

Sarah ignored him too, staring at the ingredients through the slats in the abacus. A little four note tune found its way inside her and she hummed it. “Hmmm, hmm, hm, hm.” Around her, the reassuring buzzing she’d come to love took up the tune.

After a moment so did Henry, his humming a rich tenor. Paul seemed to resist for a while, satisfied with tapping the rhythm out with his fingers against the edges of the shingle. Eventually he seemed to remember the whole thing had been his idea and hummed it too. Sarah blinked. Her vision seemed clearer and from somewhere a whispered reassurance entered her mind.
“You go together.”
She noticed Henry blinking too and grinned at him, wondering if he’d heard it too.

He winked.

I knew it!
The attraction between them would have been there even without a rebounded spell. She sensed it with the same certainty that she sensed outside birds flew over the house, and squirrels argued in the trees. A humming surety caressed her bones, and surely Henry’s, too.
All is as it should be.

But there is work to be done.

Sarah removed the abacus and put her hand into the bowl, lifting out Henry’s necklace to dry on a tea towel.
That is enough of that.
“You should make pancakes now, Paul. I like to get to work early.”

“We’ll go with you,” said Henry, “and drop Paul off at the police station to get my rental. He can drive it back here and I’ll take you to work in yours.”

Paul stared at Sarah. “Wait! Didn’t it work on you? It didn’t, did it?”

“Did it work on you?” Henry arched a critical brow and Paul crossed his arms.

“Don’t look at me like that. Something happened. My vision is so clear I think I can see through time. I definitely can
see
all the cobwebs I missed in here. It’s obvious you never dust, Sarah. But don’t you two feel any different? You don’t, do you?”

“Yes,” said Sarah. “I do. It worked. The choices I need to make are perfectly clear. And I think you’re right about the basement, Paul. I’m going to hire someone to clean that stuff out and dispose of it. If I’m going to put the witch behind me, that’s a good place to start.” With the spell coursing through her, the idea of going back down there didn’t seem frightening.

“My father sits on a museum board out of Boston,” said Henry. “Some of that stuff may have historical value. Bet they’d send a curator to take it off your hands. It would be a good tax write off.”

“I don’t want any publicity,” said Sarah.

“Of course not. You’d be another anonymous donor.” Henry smiled.

“Great!” Paul interrupted. “I’m so glad you realize you’re some sort of a hoarder witch. But I meant do you two feel any different about each other? Sarah, are you still in love with Henry? Henry, how do you feel about Kathleen?”

Sarah returned Henry’s knowing smile. No wonder he did so well in the business world; people would do a lot for a smile like that.

He wrapped his left arm around her and fished in his pocket to pull out his cell phone. “Now that I’ve participated in one, I can safely say that I still think spells are a load of garbage,” he said as he texted with his thumb. “But I know exactly how I feel about Sarah, and—uh—the ex too!”

Sarah peppered Henry’s cheek with kisses.

Paul groaned, glaring at the mess on the counter. “Something went wrong! It didn’t work! Sarah, did you do it right? I mean you dumped all this junk into a bowl and what? You didn’t even stir anything.”

“It worked,” she said. “I know exactly what I have to do.”

“Me too,” said Henry, laying his cell phone on the counter. “It has nothing to do with that bowl of junk, but I sent a message to Kathleen, and I’m taking Sarah out to dinner this weekend. I have an important question to ask her.”

“What? Are you high? You just met!” shouted Paul, throwing his hands into the air.

“I’m being logical, Paul. Isn’t that what you wanted? There’s no point in leaving Kathleen dangling. She’s a good person and she deserves to know what I’m doing here. And life’s short, you know that. I’m thirty years old and Sarah and I want to be together. Don’t be upset, be happy we found each other.”

Paul began to pace. “It’s not real!”

“Let’s say you’re right,” said Henry. “Let’s say what we both feel is a spell. So what? We feel the same about each other. Be happy for us.”

“It’s true, Paul,” Sarah agreed. “Who does it hurt if we’re together?”

“Me.”

Sarah searched his face as he stared at her, not sure what he meant.

“I have a sensitive gag reflex,” he said.

Sarah rolled her eyes and Paul sighed. “See, you can’t name one person it would hurt!”

“Yes I can! Kathleen. Yourselves. The truth. Reality. Your future miserable selves. I could go on. Are you going to move to Dallas, Sarah, to become an oil baron’s wife? Join the Daughters of the American Revolution? Start getting Botox? Or is Henry going to move here and help you kick your witch habit? Maybe he can wet vac the dark matter out of the basement for you, or help you burn enchanted clothing in the backyard by moonlight. Which is it going to be?”

“Either way,” she said, certain the love spell couldn’t do any harm when their feelings were based firmly in reality.

Henry smiled. “Kathleen can take care of herself, Paul, and I don’t see why Sarah and I can’t summer in New England and spend the rest of the year in Dallas or at home. She’ll love Oklahoma.”

“Oh, screw it. Make your own damn pancakes, Sarah.” Paul knocked the box of pancake mix flat on the counter. “I’m going back to bed!” He stalked to his room and slammed the door.

H
enry’s hair dripped with rain as he hopped into the passenger seat and jammed a small overnight bag into the back of Sarah’s Jeep. He returned his attention to Paul running across the parking lot of the police station. “He’s in a pretty bad mood. I didn’t think he was going to come get the car for me.”

“Yeah,” said Sarah. She didn’t need her witch senses to tell her that Paul was pissed at both of them. Steady rain blurred her vision through the windshield, and she turned the wipers on as fast as they’d go. “Paul’s pretty disappointed we didn’t come around to his way of thinking.”

Lucidity hadn’t upset Sarah. Clarity had freed her. The morning’s logic spell had made the facts clearer. It made perfect sense, she told herself. The love spell was only a boost to the truth both Sarah and Henry felt. What did it hurt if they were bound together? For once a love spell only added flavor to the truth.

She frowned as Paul slammed the door of Henry’s rental car too hard and sped out of the parking lot, tires squealing.

Henry sighed. “Last night while you were holed up in your room I asked him what his problem was with us. When we were in high school we had this rule where we never dated each other’s friends. I don’t mean only old girlfriends either, I mean hanging-out-with-friend friends. The rule kind of faded away as we got older. In fact, Paul dated my fiancée—I mean my ex-fiancée—once before he was deployed. So I asked him if this was like that, that I was stealing his friend.”

“I’ll always be Paul’s friend.”

“He said it wasn’t that. He said we just don’t belong together.” Henry shook the rainwater from his dark hair. It beaded on his good suit jacket and he brushed it off, splashing Sarah. He noticed too late and his lips twisted into a smile very different from Paul’s. Sexy.

The logic spell kept Sarah from reacting to that smile in the middle of the police station parking lot. It also made her focus on what Henry had only moments ago taken from the suitcase in the trunk of his Mercedes. Maybe part of Paul’s anger was because he’d also noticed the small box Henry held in his hand.

That Sarah could understand.

“Henry,” she said as she slid the Jeep into first gear, her mind still clear and logical, “you’re not seriously going to give me that ring, are you? Paul is right about the fact that we’ve just met. I’m not ready to think marriage. In fact, you should probably know that the only Archer women I’ve ever heard of who got married were back in the day when they did it for property ownership.” She looked at Henry for his reaction.