Ever Tempted (18 page)

“Then why don’t we find out? Let’s get Anna Marie here, get these spell books analyzed and translated, and then we can go from there. You only have a few days. You don’t have time to waste being unsure of the people who’ve saved your ass more than you know or care to thank us for.” Shelby got up from the table, slapped her plate into the dishwasher, and shoved the swinging service door half open. She turned back and flashed a tear-filled look at my wife. “Allie, I hope you aren’t scared of us now. We’d never hurt you.”

Allie said, “I know you wouldn’t.”

Shelby let the door swing behind her.

Great. Nothing like being the bad guy for the millionth time.

Kaitlyn pushed her chair out and picked up her plate. “We moved all the journals and spell books to the basement. It wouldn’t be a good idea for any of the staff to have access to them now. We can’t lose a single document. I’m going to smooth things over with Shelby.”

For lack of words to make the situation any better, I kept my mouth shut. If I’d tried, I probably would have screwed things up even more than they already were. As usual. That was one part about me that hadn’t changed for a hundred years. I never could get my point across with any member of the opposite sex without making a complete ass out of myself. I always ended up apologizing to someone at least once a day for my lack of people skills. “I don’t deserve any of their help.”

Allie leaned close and nudged me with her shoulder. “I know you mean well, but this is one of those times you have to get over your fear.”

“That and think my impulses through.” I slumped.

Allie slid her hand down my arm, then took it in hers. “Then they wouldn’t be impulses. That’s another of the reasons I love you. Your impulsive personality. Though it does tend to get you into lots of trouble.”

The thought of me flopping all over the bed with another faceless woman in a motel room played through Allie’s mind. She kissed my cheek. “I swear I’ve never met someone who attracts as much trouble as you. It must be the Kinsley good looks.”

She sounded just like my mom. I didn’t know whether it would be a good idea to tell her that their similarities in personality was another thing that made me love her so much. So I clamped my mouth shut and smiled.

“Rule number two: No girl wants to know that she reminds you of your mother.”
Kaitlyn’s thoughts slipped into the room as Allie gathered her dishes and slid out her chair.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get the hang of this whole filter thing. I might need some help,”
I thought back.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you or Shelby’s feelings. I value your friendship. A lot.”

“And I thought you were a hopeless case.”
Kaitlyn giggled wherever she was in the house.
“We love you too.”

“Y’all are thought talking again, aren’t you?” Allie shook her head as she started to the dishwasher with her plate and cup.

“Yeah. I know you hate that.” I picked up my plate.

Allie took it before I could shove the rest of my food into the disposal. “I don’t necessarily hate it. It just sucks that I can’t know what’s being communicated. I’m glad you’re making up with them. They are nothing like the woman I saw in my vision. A world of difference.”

I slipped close to Allie as she stood over the sink and caught her waist. What I wouldn’t give for a normal day with her. I would have blocked the kitchen doors with the heavy, antique table, flipped off the lights so no one could see in, and spent at least another hour alone with my wife. “You smell so good.”

Allie turned in the circle of my arms. “And you need to quit diverting the subject.”

“I got distracted.” I nibbled her ear.

Allie shoved me back and wagged her finger. “We have no time for distractions. It’s time to get serious.”

“When this is all over, we’re going to have a real honeymoon. One you won’t forget.” I planted my hands on the counter as she wiped stray water droplets off the marble countertop.

Her cheeks flushed. “We have eavesdroppers. Or did you forget?”

“They’re like the sisters I never had. It’s fun grossing them out.” I followed Allie out the kitchen doors.

“And apparently pissing them off,” she said with an eye roll.

“Well, if they’re good sisters, they’ll forgive me without too much groveling.” I slapped Allie’s backside just as she grabbed the basement doorknob.

“Flirting is nauseating. You’ve already got the girl. Stop fondling her,” Shelby called from the basement so Allie could hear too. She didn’t hold a grudge as long as I did. Another of my scintillating personality traits.

“Where I come from, that’s when it’s okay to start the fondling. With the social constraints of the 1800s, we were barely allowed to glance at each other.” I led Allie down the steps to the basement.

“Well, with the witchy twins growing increasingly nauseated in the 21st century, you’ll have to stop the distractions.” Shelby slapped one book shut and opened another.

“Easy. These things are a hundred years old.” Kaitlyn ran her hand over one of the leather-bound books in front of her. “I can’t believe we are actually reading one of our ancestor’s spell books. This is crazy.”

The girls had transformed the basement from a storage vault for boxes, old coat racks, wardrobes, dust cloth covered furniture, and creepy looking antique artifacts to a dark, mysterious-looking witches den.

Chairs and long antique couches had been placed in a U on one side of the room for their coven gatherings and the rest of the room had been transformed into a dark library with candlelit tables placed all over the room.

The basement had been updated with electricity, but the lighting was barely useful for reading, especially small handwritten texts or texts in other languages.

Books of all sizes were splayed open, some old, some new, all over the room.

“Are any of the writings in English?” Allie sat down beside Kaitlyn.

“Where’s your steaming cauldron and broomsticks?” Those were the only things missing in the room.

“You’ve known less than an hour, and I’m already so over your witch jokes,” Shelby said.

“Just trying to lighten the mood.”

“More reading. Less talking,” Kaitlyn said.

I didn’t enjoy making her mad as much as Shelby. She wasn’t as easy to get a rise out of.

On the table near the door to the catacombs, a black leather-bound book with yellow pages tugged at me. It looked like it would fall apart if I opened it. It was thicker than the others. I enjoyed reading in my previous lives and never let the length of a book scare me off.

My mood darkened a bit. I gingerly flipped the thick, yellowed layers of paper. Endless pages of dark magic complete with illustrations flashed by.

Allie turned the book to the left a little so she could better see one of the pictures. “Whoa. A man with two penises. That’s got to be a curse. With the help of these very detailed illustrations, surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to figure out what the spells are good for other than that last one, obviously.”

Kaitlyn and Shelby giggled.

Shelby flipped one book shut and went to another. “Yeah, we’ve run across a few doozies too.”

“Try a woman with a baby coming out of her mouth.” Kaitlyn flipped a page on the one she had previously been absorbed in. “But honestly, until Anna Marie gets here, I can’t make hide nor hair out of this mumbo jumbo.”

“Here’s one in English, but there’s only a few spells.” Allie sighed.

I looked over an ingredient list and shuddered with disgust. “Half a toad’s eye, one ounce of pig’s blood, and the first two teeth of an infant. This is gory. Is it worth going through all that trouble to gain someone’s undying devotion?”

“Grace Rollins and Eliza Moss thought so. As well as countless others. Dark magic has been practiced as long as people have roamed the earth,” Anna Marie said from the bottom of the stairs. She rushed to the girls and hugged them all. “I’m so glad to see all of you. I’m sorry it’s under such terrible circumstances.”

“Where’s T.D.?” Kaitlyn asked, taking Anna Marie to the book she’d been studying.

“He stayed back to keep the shop open and to keep our boys from killing each other or burning the shop down. They’re rambunctious at this age. Oh, this one is an old one.” Anna Marie lifted a book and looked at its binding.

Shelby shut the upstairs door and locked us in. “Yeah. Some of this stuff has to be a hundred years older than Eliza was when she used them.”

Allie stared at the doors to the tunnels with a worried look.

“Try almost a thousand years. This one dates back to 1215. You can tell by the binding and the skin used as backing. It’s real.”

“Please tell me you mean animal skin.” Shelby winced rubbing, her hands on her pants.

“Nope. Human. A sacrifice more than likely. They didn’t have morgues to steal skin samples from.” Anna Marie laughed at her joke.

I grinned but the girls horrified faces said they didn’t care for her joke. “Seriously, girls. If you’re going to learn to use these things, you’re going to have to get past all the discomfort of working with icky stuff.”

“I was born into this. I didn’t choose it.” Shelby went a bit green and held her stomach.

“I’m sure they sanitized it,” Kaitlyn said.

“Really?” Shelby could be so naïve.

“No, dummy. But if it had germs, they’re long dead now. Back to the matter at hand.” Kaitlyn flipped the book back open.

“I can probably help look through some of the books. The curse or a spell that might help us figure out how she created the curse is in here somewhere. I have a little background in linguistics.” All the girls looked at me with fascination.

I shrugged. “What? I got bored in 1998.”

“Smart people are sexy.” Allie grinned and flipped open a book. “Well, folks. I’m sorry, but about all I can do is analyze these crazy pictures and tell you if I find anything that looks like stick figures falling from the fourth story of a house.”

“You’d be surprised how much witches used diagrams and illustrations to help them flip through the old books. They rarely had tables of contents. It also might help if you try to read some of these journals.” Anna Marie held one open to the first page. “Her writing was neat, but it was small. I have trouble with fine print, and you never know what clues she could have given away in some of her personal writings.”

“Yeah, Allie. Read a journal.” I poked her in the side.

“It’s not alarming when the writing is about someone else. When it’s specifically about your soul in another body at a different time in the millennia, it’s unsettling to say the least.” Allie grabbed the book Anna Marie offered her and took a comfortable spot on the sofa.

“Being totally honest, while working with the Native Americans back home, I’ve rarely had this much excitement. It was nice to get a break from the everyday grind of providing them with stones for jewelry. When you called me for a stone to help with an exorcism, I was ecstatic. That was the only time in around three years anyone has called on me, and I got to use my true calling. White magic.” Anna Marie settled onto the couch with Allie, a spell book in hand. It looked a little newer than the one she’d had before.

“I just hope you can help us with the half-dead body we have stored in the catacombs.”

Anna Marie flipped a page. “What are you going to do with the corpse after it dies? She won’t last very long with an unfamiliar spirit inside her. A week tops.”

“We haven’t gotten that far yet.” Kaitlyn flipped a page.

“The pond is already occupied.” Shelby smirked. “She’ll probably end up at the bottom of the waterfall.”

“That’s another subject I wanted to explore. It would probably be in your best interest and all your future lives’ best interest to take Grace’s remains out of the pond and lay her to rest in hallowed ground. It’s not helpful that she’s at unrest. Water isn’t exactly hallowed ground.” Anna Marie looked at me and shoved her glasses up on her nose.

“These girls leave nothing out of a story.” I closed the book in my hand.

“I told them, just as I’m telling you now. I need to know every detail. Even the sordid ones. I know your past is full of things you’re not proud of, but they all need to be out in the open so we can peruse every moment for answers we’re looking for now.” Anna Marie looked back to the book. “Even things you may not think are remotely pertinent could help us solve the problem.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, visions of Grace walking from the pond with chicken blood spread all over her slapped me in the face. Nausea wrenched my stomach.

“Grace killed a whole henhouse full of chickens. Probably around fifty hens altogether. She smeared their blood all over her, the bodies of all the animals she left living, and then wandered the grounds naked.”

Anna Marie sat straighter and forgot the book in her lap. “Chicken blood? That’s unusual. Pig blood was normally the choice for spells, or in your case, curses. I need more details. Anything you can recall that struck you as odd or supernatural.”

Allie’s brows furrowed. “I’m wondering how many times you saw this woman naked.”

I groaned. “I’m sorry. I hate that we have to talk about it. If it weren’t for the blood part of the story, I wouldn’t have brought it up. It just strikes me as something witchy. In that lifetime, I had no idea about witchcraft other than what Pop told me about Eliza. He said she thought she could transplant a soul. At the time, I thought that was the craziest thing I’d ever heard. I never even thought to connect all of Grace’s antics.”

Allie sighed.

I sat down on a chair facing Anna Marie and Allie. Settling down beside Allie would have been more comforting while I had to recount such a terrible time in my past, but it was nice to be able to gauge her reactions to my stories so I would know how much damage control I’d have to do when we were alone later that evening.

“Tell me all about what she did that seemed to be witchy, as you call it.” Anna Marie grinned. Thank goodness she didn’t take offence.

“One night before Grace started coming across as completely off her rocker, sharecroppers woke me from a dead sleep. I remember being so scared that the place had been invaded by thieves or God only knew what. People were screaming, horses whinnying and trying to break down their stall walls, dogs going nuts at their tie outs. It was complete chaos. A sharecropper said, ‘Come quick, Master Colby. It’s terrible bad.’ People were running all over the property, trying to chase down the animals Grace had freed when she covered them with blood. She’d gone to the chicken pen and torn the heads off so many chickens I couldn’t see the ground for the carnage. At first, I thought it was pig’s blood, the way they were making such a ruckus. But they were simply loose and running scared. I don’t know how she got them to hold still to cover them with all that blood, but she left none of them clean. Grace walked from the direction of the pond holding two headless chickens by their feet, swinging them like they were a handbag. She was covered head to toe with the same blood she’d spread all over the animals. It sounds even crazier telling it than it was when it happened.”