Smoke on the Water Page 8

  “Better than barbed wire,” she said.

  “She didn’t get out this way.” Sebastian put the glass back on top of the wall. If she had there would have been a blood trail, both on the ground and on Mary.

  “Did you think she had?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  “You need to stop thinking for a bit.”

  “I’m not sure I can.”

  “Try.” She started down the path that meandered through the grass and the wildflowers. Unable to stop himself, he followed.

  They didn’t talk, and that was all right. It was soothing for a man who spent most of his day listening to others, to not have to for a change. Willow remained just ahead of him; the trail was narrow. Though he could have crunched through the unmowed grass to walk at her side, he didn’t. He liked the sight of her against the tall grass and flowers. If he just stared at her, at the path, it was as if the walls were gone.

  Willow pointed to a monarch butterfly perched on a fluffy white flower that resembled a snowball. Sebastian caught a glimpse of a statue overturned and half hidden beneath a swath of bright orange wildflowers. He stepped off the path, pulled it free, held the angel up for her to see. Willow brushed her fingers over the jagged edge of one broken wing.

  “I’ll see if Justice can fix it,” Sebastian said.

  “No.” She took the statue out of his hand, taking great care that their skin did not touch.

  He was both glad and sad. Glad because whenever they did touch there was a snap of electricity—both static and sexual. The first couldn’t be helped; the second had to end and the only way to make it do so was not to touch at all. But also sad, because he’d never had a reaction like that to any woman in his life, and he’d started to wonder if he ever would.

  Certainly there hadn’t been many women—lately there hadn’t been any. As a psychiatrist he knew that he’d been subconsciously punishing himself. He didn’t deserve love, a home and family when his sister would never have any of those things. But just because he knew what he was doing—and if he’d been his own patient he’d tell himself to forgive, if not forget, and move on—that didn’t mean he could do it any more than most of the people he advised could.

  “Not everything should be fixed.” Willow knelt and set the angel in front of the flowers, then glanced up at him. “Not everything can be.”

  His eyebrows lifted. How many times had she spoken exactly what he was thinking? More than could be a coincidence, except the other options were mind reading and witchcraft.

  He shook his head at the foolishness of his thoughts. “Doesn’t hurt to try.”

  She straightened and moved down the path again. “Sometimes it does.”

  He felt compelled to follow. He’d thought her fey. Was she weaving a spell?

  He was a lot more tired than he’d thought.

  His mother had been of Irish descent, and she’d told stories of fairies and elves—the little people—that her gran had told to her. As a kid both he and his sister had begged for those stories.

  His father had been Scottish—Frasier—as well as German and Norwegian. None of the three was a fanciful race and David Frasier, John Deere equipment salesman, had been the same.

  Despite Sebastian’s choice of occupation, his personality was more like his mother’s. Not that he believed in fairies and such, but he had liked hearing about them. He missed his mother daily, but he missed her most at night when he had the strongest memories of her sitting close and telling tales. Perhaps if he’d taken the time to tell his sister those same tales she wouldn’t have—

  A startled yelp had him hurrying forward just as Willow came barreling back. She bounced off his chest. He grabbed her forearms before she could land on her ass. That dual spark—physical and mental—zapped him again. But one glance at her ashen face, and he pushed her behind him.

  “No,” she said. “It’s nothing.”

  She caught at his clothes, but he wouldn’t be stopped. He charged into the tall grass.

  He’d slay whatever dragons she had.

  *

  Because Dr. Frasier was so tall, I could see him still, despite the wild overgrowth. His shoulders drooped on a sigh when he saw what I had, then he looked back. The disappointment in his eyes hurt, just as I’d known it would. He wanted to fix me.

  But I wasn’t broken. I’d been born like this.

  “Come here, Willow.”

  I shook my head.

  “It’ll be all right. I promise.”

  It wouldn’t be. That much I knew. But I went anyway, even though I wanted to flee in the other direction. What choice did I have? Not only had we needed a key to get in here, but I was pretty sure we’d need a key to get out, and I didn’t have one.

  My doctor stood in front of the stone birdbath. The storm of a few days past had filled it to the brim with water. The instant I’d seen the shimmery expanse of gray-blue I’d run.

  He held out his hand, and like a fool I took it. It was so damn hard not to. In my mind I knew him. In my heart I loved him.

  He smiled. I melted. Did he feel it too? This connection between us? At times he seemed to, and at other times he did not.

  His eyes were so kind, so familiar. I focused on them as he drew me closer.

  The sun was warm; the breeze was soft. He began to lower his head. I’d seen this before.

  My eyes drifted closed. My mouth lifted. I waited for the first touch of his lips, and the world shimmied with that sense of déjà vu.

  He smelled the same, like limes beneath the sun, or perhaps on ice. His hand in mine was so familiar I could rub my thumb along his index finger and feel the callus that had always been there every other time I’d envisioned his touch. The cadence of his breath was the cadence of my own. I knew exactly what he’d taste like when our lips touched.

  Then his mouth brushed my temple. His free hand patted my shoulder. “Shh,” he whispered. “Shh.”

  My eyes snapped open. That might work with Mary, but it wasn’t going to work with me. “I’m not a dog.”

  He stiffened as if he’d been poked. “Of course not.”

  He seemed like he wanted to pat me again. I narrowed my gaze, and he stepped back.

  Had everything I believed I knew about us—the kisses, the touches, the whispers, the love—been a lie? I didn’t think so. Nothing else I’d ever seen was. As this—him, me, us—was the only thing I’d ever prophesied that was good, it had to come true. It just had to. Otherwise what was the point of going on?

  “Willow?”

  I refused to meet his gaze. I’d see pity in his eyes and that I couldn’t bear. What kind of patient falls in love with her doctor?

  The pathetic kind. I was already pathetic enough.

  “Did you want to look into the water?” he asked.

  “Hell, no.”

  There was a reason I’d run from that still blue expanse. All I’d seen in it lately were death and destruction.

  “The more you face what scares you the less frightening it will be.”

  I was in no mood to be psychoanalyzed. Would I ever be?

  I fled in the direction of the picnic table and my no doubt cold cup of coffee. Why had I thought he would kiss me here in the sun? Our kiss would take place beneath the moon.

  I stepped free of the tall grass. Dr. Frasier’s assistant, Zoe, stared at our two cups, which still sat on the picnic table. She flicked me a glance. “Where is he? What have you done?”

  She seemed both frightened and furious; for an instant I wondered. Had I lost time? Had I done something I shouldn’t?

  No blood on my hands, my clothes. Why would there be? Certainly there had been once, there would be again. It would even be his. But it wouldn’t be because of me.

  Zoe stalked toward me, fists clenched. My own fingers curled. I knew better than to punch a nurse, but if she swung first the rules changed.

  “Zoe?”

  She stopped short a few feet away. Her fingers unfurled. The set of
her jaw relaxed, though the flush of anger remained.

  Dr. Frasier set his hand on my shoulder, and my own fingers loosened. I wanted to reach up and twine ours together, but I knew better.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  I kept quiet. I wasn’t exactly sure.

  Zoe’s gaze fixed on his hand, which he kept on my shoulder, the heat of his skin warming the sudden odd chill. “Are you all right, Doctor?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be all right?” He urged me forward with light pressure. I didn’t move.

  There was something about Zoe right now that disturbed me. Not only didn’t I want to get any closer to her, but I really, really didn’t want her any closer to him. Maybe I should have looked into the water. There was a reason it had been there, and maybe this was it.

  “Deux said the two of you came out here, but you didn’t come back. I got worried so I decided to check.” She shot me a glance; her fury seemed magnified by the thick lenses of her glasses. “Then you weren’t here.”

  “We were here,” he said. “We were admiring the birdbath.”

  “What’s in your hair?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Dr. Frasier had leaves in his hair.

  “Huh,” I said, and he cast me a quizzical glance.

  I reached up and pulled one out. Long and thin, I knew a willow leaf when I saw one.

  “Huh,” he agreed.

  We both peered back the way we’d been.

  There wasn’t a willow tree in the bunch.

  Logically I knew that the leaves had blown over the wall and stuck in Dr. Frasier’s hair. It was a coincidence that the leaves were those of a black willow. Though I was starting to wonder how many coincidences there really were in life. Especially in my life.

  “Black widow,” Zoe muttered as she picked up the coffee cups and emptied the dregs into the grass.

  “Willow,” I said.

  She snorted. I was going to have to keep my eye on her. She didn’t like me. I was pretty sure I knew why.

  I glanced at Dr. Frasier and he smiled. I didn’t smile back and his faltered.

  We were meant for each other. I knew that too. But Zoe could make life difficult for me, and from the expression on her face she planned to.

  “I’ll walk you to your room,” he said.

  “I’ll do it.” That was Zoe.

  “I know where it is.” I went to the door. Then I had to wait for one of them to unlock it.

  Luckily Dr. Frasier was closer, and he got there first. I had a feeling Zoe would have stepped on my foot, elbowed me in the ribs, or perhaps opened the door into my face. Childish behavior, but it had happened before.

  Not with her. Not yet. But it would. I didn’t even need to look into the water to know that.

  “When Mary wakes up I’ll come and get you.” He held the door for me as if we were on a date. Or at least I thought it was like that. The number of dates I’d had matched the times I’d been kissed.

  Zero.

  “I can get her,” Zoe said.

  Dr. Frasier didn’t even glance her way when he answered. “Your shift will be over by then.”

  “So will yours.”

  He ignored her. “You’ve been up all night, Willow. Get some sleep.”

  “You too.”

  I reached for the door as he retreated, and our hands brushed. Our eyes met. Time seemed to stand still.

  I’d sleep so much better when I slept with him.

  Memories of things that hadn’t happened yet tumbled through my mind. My face flooded with heat, and I fled.

  Before I went back to my room, I detoured to the library. I wanted to see if Mary’s Venatores Mali actually existed. Not that she couldn’t have Googled them same as I planned to, but it wouldn’t hurt to know what was truth and what was not. And if she’d totally invented them, I should probably know that too.

  According to Wikipedia, which wasn’t always accurate but didn’t make a habit of inventing witchhunting societies from the seventeenth century, the Venatores Mali were secretly commissioned by King James. The one with his name on a Bible. He’d also written a book on witchcraft.

  You’d think the two were mutually exclusive. But not when your name began with King and ended in a Roman numeral. James had two of the latter, being King James VI of Scotland and I of England. That many numerals would give anyone a God complex. He also had a hard-on for witches that would not quit. Hence the Venatores Mali.

  James had kept the society a secret, not wanting to appear more backward to the English than they thought a Scottish king already was. Having lost a buttload of people in the merrily burning pyres at Smithfield thanks to Bloody Queen Mary, the English had had it up to their eyeballs with religious fervor. The relative peace and prosperity of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth’s reign had made them less tolerant of anymore.

  The leader of the Venatores Mali was Roland McHugh. He’d executed more witches than anyone in history. Before he burned them, he branded them, believing the mark would cleanse their souls, banish their demons, and purify them of satanic whispers.

  Though no mention was made of what the brand looked like or what he had used to do it, I figured there were enough coincidences between Mary, Wikipedia, and my vision to think I’d found the right guy. That Mary thought Roland was coming back, even though he’d died in the Plague of 1636, was disturbing. That she thought he’d been speaking to her was even more so.

  I went to my room, but it was a long, long time before I fell asleep.

  I woke in the dark, and I wasn’t alone. I didn’t move, kept my breathing even, got ready to fight back if I needed to.

  Then the scent of sun and limes reached me an instant before Dr. Frasier murmured, “Willow?”

  I wanted to reach out, take his hand, draw him next to me on my bed, curl into him, go back to sleep. Instead, I sat up, tossed off the covers, stood. Lying in bed with him anywhere near only caused me to yearn.

  “Mary’s awake,” he said. “And she’s asking for you.”

  I bet she was.

  I stepped into the bright fluorescent lights of the hall and blinked until my eyes didn’t ache. Together we walked toward solitary.

  “Did you sleep?” I asked.

  “I had work.”

  “You should go home.”

  “I have to find out how Mary escaped. What if she does it again? What if someone else does?”

  I didn’t think that was going to happen, but as I couldn’t tell him why, I kept quiet.

  We walked down several long hallways. Solitary was located in the farthest wing still in use. Beyond it there were many more, but they were dark, cold, and dusty. Their entrances were blocked by padlocked gates so none of us could scoot down there and do things that we shouldn’t.

  Dr. Frasier stopped at a locked door, with a single small window. He glanced in. “I told her you would visit. It seemed to calm her.”

  I waited for him to open the door, but he didn’t.

  “I should probably go in with you,” he mused.

  “She isn’t going to tell me anything if you’re there.”

  “What if she tries to hurt you?”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  His gaze was drawn to the window again. I got uneasy and glanced in too. Mary sat on the bed, hands folded, waiting.

  “Why does she have a bandage on her forehead?”

  “There was some head banging. She stopped when I promised she could see you.”

  “Then let her see me before she starts up again.”

  “What if she decides to head-bang you?”

  “I’ve been in places rougher than this, with people scarier than Mary.”

  His forehead creased.

  “I’ll be fine.” I’d envisioned the faces of several people who wanted to hurt me. None of them had been hers.

  He unlocked the door and I went inside.

  “Willow!” Mary rushed forward, hugged me a little too hard. When she let me go, she scowled at the window. “Is
he out there?”

  The glass was one-way. “Could be. But he can’t hear us if we’re quiet.”

  He’d expect me to tell him what she said, but he wouldn’t believe the truth, would write it off as crazy talk. I’d have to figure out something.

  “What happened?” I asked, as we sat on her bed, side by side.

  “We did the spell, and I was transported.”

  I wanted to argue, but we had done the spell. She had disappeared from here and reappeared there. There’d been a time lag between the first and the second, but it had happened. I might have tried to convince myself that I’d imagined her blinking out of the library, except she’d been gone. I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t find her.

  “I saw the big, ugly, bald guy. He had the ring. He was a Venatores Mali, a hunter.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Eating a bratwurst.”

  I blinked.

  “Maybe a hot dog.”

  “Did he say something to you? Recognize you?”

  Mary’s forehead creased. “Why would he? He didn’t see me in a vision. Did he?”

  “No idea,” I said absently. “Why did you try and strangle him?”

  “He’s going to kill that woman on the altar with a meat cleaver. The witch. From the looks of it, she wasn’t his first.”

  I’d thought so too. Still—

  “You tried to kill him because he might someday kill someone we don’t even know?”

  “Has one of your visions ever not come true?”

  She had me there.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to go around killing the people I see in them.”

  “I do.”

  “Mary—”

  “Willow,” she interrupted. “If I wasn’t supposed to see, then why did I? If I wasn’t supposed to try and stop him, then why was I transported to the place where he was?”

  I had no answer for that either.

  She took my hands. “I didn’t see the tall, long-haired woman. But I bet the next time we do the spell, I will.”

  “Next time,” I echoed, and yanked my hands away. All I needed was for Mary to go poof while Dr. Frasier was watching.

  Or maybe I did. If someone other than me saw Mary disappear, or vice versa—I wasn’t exactly sure which one of us was causing this phenomenon, it might even be both of us—then I’d know for certain … what? That I wasn’t crazy?