WITCHY WOMAN

By Karen Leabo

Published by BooksForABuck.com

Copyright 1998/2006 by Karen Leabo. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real events, characters, locations, or dialogue is strictly coincidental.

This work is available in electronic form exclusively from www.booksforabuck.com. You may read Chapter One for FREE. If you like it, you can buy the entire e-novel for only $3.99 by clicking the Buy Now Button.

This book was first published by as Bantam Loveswept #891 in July, 1998.

CHAPTER ONE

She didn't look anything like a witch.

That was the first thing that struck Nate Wagner when he finally got a solid look at the woman he was following. In fact, with her short, wispy blond hair and sea blue eyes big enough to swim in, Tess DeWitt reminded him more of a siren than a sorceress.

His reporter's brain made quick, mental notes on her appearance: medium height, slim build, great legs. Kissable mouth.

He quickly deleted that last attribute from his list. This wasn't about sex; it was about a great story.

Or maybe not. His informant must be wrong, Nate decided as he trailed a discreet distance behind the woman, who casually licked an ice cream cone while she ambled along the sidewalk of a fashionable Back Bay street with a friend. This lovely woman with the come-hither eyes could not be the notorious Moonbeam Majick, the child witch who fifteen years ago had captured the attention of Boston and then scared the whole town silly.

Nate remembered the incident clearly, although at eighteen he'd been scarcely more than a child himself. "Moonbeam," a skinny, pre-pubescent girl with wary, suspicious eyes and long black hair, had been a popular guest on a local talk show. Appearing with her mother, Morganna Majick, Moonbeam had been billed as the most gifted young psychic in the country. And indeed, her on-air "mind reading" performances had been impressive, although most people, including Nate, dismissed them as parlor tricks.

Then one day during her routine she stopped mid-sentence and treated the show's host, one Don Woodland, to a piercing stare that gave him and everyone who was watching a case of the willies. "Be careful going home today," she intoned mournfully before continuing with her routine.

That evening, as he'd crossed the street on his way to the subway station, Don Woodland had been killed by a hit-and-run driver.

Moonbeam's "amazing prediction" was in the headlines for several days as she and her mother were swamped with demands for psychic readings. Not everyone was so favorably impressed, however, Some angry citizens, most notably the family of Don Woodland, demanded an investigation, hinting that perhaps Don's tragic end was no accident. Others, even more hysterical, accused Moonbeam of putting a witch's curse on Woodland. They called her a devil-worshiper and suggested she should be put away.

Subsequently there was an investigation--not by the police, but by the Department of Family Services. Someone had complained that Morganna was no fit mother. At the very least, Morganna was practicing devilish magic of some sort, as indicated by the pentagrams, black candles, and other more sordid evidence uncovered in her house, and she was indoctrinating her daughter into the practice as well. Moonbeam was removed from her mother's custody, and no one heard a word about her ever again.

Until now.

A friend of Nate's, Barbara Kirkland, had tipped him off. The notorious Moonbeam was actually Tess DeWitt, an innocuous product manager who worked for the software company where Barbara was a secretary. Nate figured it would make a good story--"What Ever Happened to Moonbeam Majick?" The editor of Boston Life magazine had told Nate to go for it. If it turned out to be interesting and sordid enough, Nate might even be able to sell it to a national publication.

But first he had to gain the cooperation of Tess DeWitt--if she was indeed Moonbeam, which he really doubted now that he'd seen her.

The two women paused to look in the window of an antique shop. Nate strolled by them, listening to their conversation. As he passed Tess, he got a whiff of the most delicate, indescribable scent. He inhaled deeply, wanting a second helping, but all he got was a noseful of exhaust from a passing car.

"I can't go inside with an ice cream cone," Tess said to her friend, a tall woman with an outlandish hat perched atop her short red hair.

"Well, come inside when you finish," the friend said. "I need you to help me pick out a birthday gift for my Aunt Dora. You're always so good at knowing what someone would like."

"You know, Judy, this shop has the highest prices in town," Tess admonished with a shake of her head. Her hair, which caught the brisk autumn breeze and fluffed up around her face, fell back into place in an artfully windswept order that Nate had seldom seen in real life--only in the pages of magazines.

"Price isn't everything," the woman named Judy replied.

Nate paused near the two women, pretending interest in a collection of old dolls that sat in the antique shop's front window. From the corner of his eye he watched as the redhead went inside, leaving Tess alone. Tess didn't seem to mind. She finished her strawberry ice cream with sensual abandon, biting off the end of the cone and tipping back her head to catch the last few pink drips. Then she threw the rest away and delicately wiped her mouth and fingertips with a paper napkin.

"Are you interested in dolls?" she asked.

Nate's head jerked around. "Uh, yeah. Well, no, not for me." Way to go, Wagner. She'd caught him loitering. Quickly he improvised some cover. "I was thinking about my older sister, though. She had a baby a few weeks ago and now she's feeling kind of down. I thought a present might perk her up." The story was true, for the most part. "She likes dolls." Or she had when she'd been six years old.

Tess walked over and stood beside him so that she could study the collection of dolls herself. This close to her, Nate could catalogue additional traits: skin like fine china, a neck impossibly slim and graceful, breasts that were neither large nor small, but softly rounded and natural looking beneath her cream silk blouse.

"Hmm, I'm afraid I don't know anything about antique dolls," Tess said, "but the one on the far left is pretty."

"Yeah, I guess. Maybe I'll go in to have a look at her." He moved toward the door, but Tess didn't follow his lead. "Are you coming inside?"

She made an obvious grimace. "Might as well." He opened the door, which announced their entrance with a cheerful jingle of bells, and she stepped in ahead of him.

The store, which was crowded with furniture, glassware, and knick-knacks of every description, smelled strongly of lemon oil and lavender, not an unpleasant combination. Nate watched with interest as Tess closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as if acclimating herself to some rarefied foreign environment. She didn't appear comfortable.

"Tess, I'm over here," the redhead called, waving from across the store. "Look at this wonderful Chinese vase I found."

Tess went to join her friend, leaving Nate to figure out how he was going to further his acquaintance with her. He had already decided on the best approach for his story: He would get to know her first, then ease into the subject of the occult and see if she nibbled. Then he would act like he'd only just that moment thought of writing a story about her. Not entirely aboveboard, perhaps, but he had scared away more than one sensitive source by being too up front.

Noticing another group of dolls closer to where the two women were chatting about a rather ordinary-looking blue-glazed vase, he ambled over.

"Three hundred dollars seems a lot to pay for a cracked vase, Ming Dynasty or not," Tess was saying.

"But it's so old--almost four hundred years!"

"Hmm. I don't know ..." Tentatively she touched the vase, again closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. "No," she said decisively. "I'm sure your Aunt Dora wouldn't like this piece. How about ..."

She quickly scanned the shop's contents until her gaze caught abruptly on something very near Nate. He thought at first she was staring at him, until he realized the focus of her attention was something above and behind him.

He turned to see what it was. There, sitting in a place of honor on the top shelf of a massive bookcase, was a stone figurine of a jungle cat of some sort, a panther, maybe, crouched as if ready to pounce. The stone was red--deep, dark, blood red??and the cat had iridescent yellow stones for eyes. It was quite a striking piece.

"I don't believe it," she murmured as she came closer.

Nate stepped aside to give her access. Then, realizing the statue was up too high for her, he reached toward it himself, intending to bring it down for her closer inspection.

"Don't touch it!" she cautioned, but it was too late. The figurine was already in his hands.

It was heavy, and warmer than cold stone should have felt. "What's wrong?" he asked as she backed away from it. "I thought you wanted to see it."

"P-put it back," she said. Those huge blue eyes of hers clearly reflected her dread.

Judy, who had come up behind Tess, was apparently as confused as Nate. "Why?" she asked. "That's a beautiful statue. How much is it? I think my Aunt Dora would love it. It's Chinese, isn't it?"

Nate looked on the bottom. The price seemed very reasonable considering the tags he'd noticed on some of the other items. "It's fifty dollars," he told Judy.

"Perfect!" Judy exclaimed, reaching for the statue.

"No!" Tess barked. "Judy, listen to me. Your Aunt Dora would hate that statue. Trust me on this one."

"But you don't even know my Aunt Dora."

"I know what old ladies like, and that statue is all wrong for an old lady."

By now their heated words had drawn the attention of the store's proprietor, who had been seated behind a roll top desk attending to some kind of busy work. She hobbled

over--she wasn't old, but she did use a cane because her entire left leg was encased in a cast--a pinched expression on her thin, aristocratic face.

"May I be of some assistance?" she asked, peeking over the top of her reading glasses. Then her gaze fell on the statue in Nate's hands. "Oh, I see you've found one of my favorite pieces."

"Where did you get it?" Tess demanded without even a semblance of polite curiosity.

The proprietor, whose name tag identified her as Anne-Louise Morrell, didn't seem to notice. "A young gentleman brought it into the store one day. He seemed quite anxious to part with it, though I'm not sure why, and he wasn't particular about compensation. I paid him a pittance for it--that's why I was able to price it so low." She paused, looking expectantly from face to face.

"How old is it?" Judy asked.

Anne-Louise was only too happy to wax enthusiastic. "Oh, it's very old. I can't say for sure when or where it originated, but have you ever seen the carved figures displayed at the Palace of Versailles? This one is very similar."

I'll just bet, Nate thought. And if the expression on Tess's face was any indication, her thoughts were running along the same skeptical track. Still, the statue was worth fifty bucks for aesthetic value alone, never mind its value as an antiquity. If this Judy didn't buy it, he just might.

He set the statue on a table top, 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 ..."

Reflexively he shoved his sore finger into his mouth. "It's nothing," he said in an effort to alleviate her unwarranted distress. "Just a nick."

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. Any lower and I won't make a profit at all."

"Anxious to get rid of it, are you?"

She shrugged noncommittally. "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 celebration.

"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 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 other-worldly 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 today 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. Even the nightmares had stopped, years ago, 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 last she'd seen the statue. But there couldn't be two pieces like that. 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 inherited the statue. In Morganna Majick's case, death would have been a kinder fate.

Tess hadn't seen the cat since shortly before she was taken away from her mother--until now.

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. Tess 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 rakish man looked at her twice? Or rather, how often had she allowed it?

Too, 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 ago. 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 didn't stop 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 him. 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, just as the conservative suit and low-key jewelry were.

"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 ago; and the psychiatrist she had seen during her teenage years.

And her mother, of course.

But 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.

"It's okay," Judy said, dismissing Tess's apology with a wave of her hand. "Anyway, you were right. Aunt Dora doesn't even like cats. Come on, let's get going. I have an aerobics class to get to."

Per long-standing arrangement, Tess walked Judy to her car, then Judy dropped Tess off at the Copley Square T station.

As soon as Tess pushed her way through the turnstile, it hit her. The subway! That was the atmosphere she'd sensed in her vision. Now she wished she had taken the time earlier to relax with Nate's business card. Maybe she could have encouraged him to take a cab or something. Because what she'd seen in her mind's eye had already taken place. She knew it.

This concludes Chapter One of WITCHY WOMAN by Karen Leabo. Why not risk $3.99 and buy the entire e-novel now. You can simply click the PayPal button. Or check with www.booksforabuck.com for more of the web's best and most affordable electronic fiction.

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