A Witch's Handbook of Kisses and Curses (25 page)

“Shit!” I whispered, tilting forward as my weight shifted. I grabbed at the board, and my hand brushed against a cloth-wrapped bundle tucked away in the space underneath. “What’s this?”

There was a stack of photos under the bundle . . . and one of the buildings in the corner of the photo looked awfully familiar. I pulled on the bundle, but it wouldn’t come up without pulling up more boards. I popped another board out of place and pulled the cloth up, bringing the stack of photos with it. They showed long-range shots of me, walking away from the clinic in Kilcairy. There was another one of me out to dinner with Stephen in Dublin. And another, with Penny, just before I’d left for Kentucky.

“What?” The cloth slid out of my hand and to the floor with a dull
clunk
. My hands shook as I pulled the cloth loose to find the plaque—the acorn-shaped plaque I’d believed was smashed and stored in pieces in Jane’s shop.

Jed had taken it. He must have switched the bundles when he took my bag out of my truck and then “accidentally” dropped my bag to make me think the plaque was broken. I was so stupid. I knew something was off with the age of those clay bits, but I’d wanted so badly to believe that I held two of the Elements, that I could trust Jed, that I shut down any doubts I should have listened to.

“I lost the fight with the coffeemaker,” Jed said, carrying two mugs into the living room. “Just think of the loose grounds as ‘sprinkles.’ ” He saw me on my knees, with the plaque in my hand. He dropped the mugs to the floor with a clash of broken pottery. “Nola, please.”

“Don’t,” I ground out. “There’s no trying to convince me that ‘this isn’t what it looks like.’ Just explain to me, why the hell do you have this? Why would you make me think it had been destroyed? Why would you even want it?”

Jed blanched, and his gaze immediately shifted downward. “I’m so sorry.”

“I didn’t ask for an apology, I want a goddamn explanation!” I shouted. “You know why I’m here. You had pictures of me in your hidey-hole. You knew who I was as soon as you met me, didn’t you? You knew I was a McGavock, about the witchcraft, the Elements, all of it. And you’ve been pretending all this time to be this clueless, sexy, himbo neighbor man. Why? Who the hell are you, Jed? Is Jed even your real name, or did you pick it out of the
Redneck Alias Handbook
?”

“Nola.”

“Every word you’ve ever said to me was a lie.” I seethed. “Here I was feeling guilty for keeping things from you—my family, the vampires, my boyfriend—and you were outright lying!”

“Not every word,” he said, shaking his head. I shoved him away, cradling the bundle against my chest. “Please, Nola, you have to understand. There’s a good reason for this.”

“Fine, what’s your reason?” I growled.

“I can’t tell you right now,” he said, wincing. “There are things you need to understand first.”

“Bullshit.”

His voice was soft as a breeze as he said, “I never meant to hurt you.”

“Bullshit!” I yelled, pushing past him toward the door, the plaque pressed to my chest.

“Nola, please.” He grabbed my arm. At first, I thought he would grab for the plaque, but he was only trying to keep me from leaving. “The Kerrigans—”

Before he could finish his sentence, a rage I could only describe as volcanic bubbled up from my belly and surged through my arm to my hand. He knew the Kerrigans? Was he working for the Kerrigans?

And suddenly, Jed’s arm was on fire.

He yelped, waving his flaming sleeve back and forth, feeding the fire oxygen and making a small situation much worse.

“Stop moving!” I exclaimed, I shoved him into the kitchen and pushed his sleeve into the sink. I picked up the sprayer and shot an arc of water toward him. After
briefly dousing Jed’s face, I aimed the stream at his arm and put the sleeve fire out. His face was pale and dripping wet as we stripped him out of his sodden shirt. While the flames hadn’t left a mark on his flesh, the outline of my hand was clear, as if my palm had given him a contact burn. I jerked my hand away, unable to see anything but the blistered, bright-red handprint I’d left on his arm.

Backing away, unable to take my eyes from the mark of violence I’d left on his skin, I told him, “Don’t come near me again.”

I marched out of Jed’s apartment and drove directly to the shop.

*  *  *

How could I have been so stupid? How was it possible that Jed was some sort of witchcraft spy? Who was Jed, really? Was he working for the Kerrigans, or was there some new third party involved in the feud? How would the Kerrigans know someone from Tennessee? Was Jed really from Tennessee? Was the accent fake, too?

Oh, good night, I’d let that man see me naked.

I’d been had. I was the dumb henchman in the Bond movies who was distracted by female sidekicks with overtly sexual names who eventually strangled the henchman with their thighs. I’d been used. He’d never liked me. He’d never found me “adorable” or “sweet” or any of the little endearments he’d tossed about so casually. And I think that was what hurt so much. I’d really believed he liked me just for me. Not because of what I could do, because I was Nana’s heir, or because I fit conveniently into his life as his lovely normal girlfriend. For me.

I do not remember anything about the drive, other than that I skipped going to the store in favor of pulling over in the Half-Moon Hollow Baptist Church car park to scream and beat on my steering wheel. And at the BP station. And the Bait-n-Beer.

It was a long drive.

Maybe, on some level, I’d known. Maybe that was the root of whatever had kept me from telling the truth about why I was here, about the search. Some part of me must have known he wasn’t trustworthy, too good to be true.

No, that was a rationalization. I’d been completely taken in. I was a moron, a moron who would be taking a voluntary moratorium on dating for the foreseeable future.

Wherever Jed was, I hoped that burn mark on his arm really stung.

Yes, I was committed to doing no harm first, but screw it, Jed had taken advantage of me. He’d known exactly what he was doing. If anybody had some magical blistering coming, it was him. If that meant I was sending bad energy out into the universe, so be it.

*  *  *

I worked. I sulked. I searched. After I finally cooled off, I spilled my sorry tale of floor busting and betrayal to my vampire friends. While Jane stroked my head, Gabriel practically had to climb onto Dick’s shoulders to hold him back from marching out of the shop and “whipping that boy’s ass!” It is really difficult to explain to your vampire ancestor why it’s not OK to smash your sort-of-boyfriend’s
lying face in for betraying you to another magical family. It’s even more difficult to explain that it is not a legal reason to evict someone from the house he’s renting from you.

Dick settled for showing up later at my side of the house with a copy of
The Notebook,
a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food, and a bottle of wine, dropping them off on my doorstep, patting me on the head, and departing without another word. I was really starting to love that man.

Jed’s proximity didn’t seem to be much of an issue, as I hadn’t seen him since the “handprint incident,” as Jane had dubbed it. His windows remained dark and the driveway empty, other than my car. The house felt empty, too, as if I could sense the absence of his energy from the other side of the walls. I tamped down the sense of loss and longing I felt. It didn’t make any sense to miss someone I barely knew, someone who had only been sent to track me. With the Kerrigans clearly close on my trail, I needed to focus on my efforts to find the athame and the bell—not tracking down my erstwhile neighbor and shaking answers out of him.

The one person who seemed thrilled with this situation was Penny, who answered the news that I’d recovered the intact Earth plaque with a whooping cry that woke up her husband, Seamus. She even took back her previous mockery. She was concerned to hear about Jed’s part in it, however, and insisted on sending some reinforcements to the Hollow.

“No, I’ve got all of the help I need here,” I told her
as I parked my car in front of the house. “Indestructible vampire help that won’t end up being used against me as some sort of bargaining chip.” Over Penny’s protests, I added, “Just keep an eye on the Kerrigans still in country, let me know if they start traveling in large groups or stockpiling spell supplies. Speaking of which, how go the preparations for the binding?”

“We have everything we need except for the Elements,” she said. “Everyone here is very proud of you, Nola. I know it’s difficult, spending all of your time searching for something that you don’t believe makes a difference, but it means a lot to us that you’re trying so hard.”

I made a noncommittal noise as I walked across the yard. Could I deny the validity of the Elements or the magic my relatives practiced, now that I was creating mini–water spouts and setting sleeve fires with my mind? Something inside my head, the logical, resistant way I looked at the world, was shifting. And I wasn’t entirely sure I was comfortable with that.

“And look how far you’ve come!” Penny exclaimed. “Two down already. We know you’ll be able to find the next two before the deadline. You just need to stay focused, keep your eye on the ball, stay on target, follow through the swing.”

“That’s enough of a pep talk, Pen.”

“Oh, thank goodness. I was running out of cheerful sports metaphors.”

I bid Penny good-bye as I approached the front porch. As was usual lately, my side of the house was lit, but Jed’s
half was dark. I was actually a bit nervous about walking across the darkened steps. But I made it to the front door unscathed and was in the process of unlocking the
new
new locks when a sleepy voice mumbled, “Nola?” from the porch swing.

I cried out at the familiar voice, turning toward the porch swing, hands raised. “Stephen? What the bloody hell are you doing here?”

Never sneak up on an irritated witch, sorceress, or conjurer.

—A Witch’s Compendium of Curses

A
t least I avoided punching anyone’s breasts. I did, however, blow up the glass globe on the porch light. This time, it was not my fault. People really had to stop sneaking up on me.

Stephen was sitting on my porch swing with his raincoat folded over his suitcase and flowers clutched in one hand.

“I just had to come see you, darling,” he said, his voice sleepy and hoarse from the strain of his long flight. “I know we left things in an awkward place. I wanted to apologize in person.” He pressed the flowers into my hands, a pretty but generic arrangement of roses, the sort of thing you could buy in one of those airport vending machines by the arrival gates. “Aren’t you happy to see me, at all?”

I offered him a stilted smile, accepting the flowers. “I just wasn’t expecting you.”

That was the feckin’ understatement of the century. I
felt guilty. I’d expected to feel annoyed and embarrassed if I saw him again. But the interesting thing was that I wasn’t embarrassed at the thought of Stephen meeting my friends and judging them. I didn’t want them to meet
him
. He no longer fit into my life, which had expanded and changed and become so much more complex since the last time I’d seen him.

It would have been so easy to relent, to apologize for having been harsh with him, to go back to him and reclaim some sense of normalcy. Clearly, things weren’t going to work out with Jed, and I didn’t have a talent for being alone. But I couldn’t do that to Stephen. I was still angry at him, on some level, but he was a good man. I didn’t want to make him a consolation prize. At one point, I’d seen our future together, bright and clear, but I couldn’t look at him that way anymore. We were just too different. I’d spent so much of my time working to make him happy so he would stay with me and give me the kind of love I wanted so badly. I didn’t think about whether that made me happy or not.

Now I sincerely doubted it would.

“Penny told me all about you discovering your grandfather and your family here. I’m sorry you felt like you had to lie to me about it. I suppose that I deserved it, though, after the things I said.”

I arched an eyebrow. Why didn’t Penny tell me she’d told Stephen where I was? It wasn’t like her to share information with him at all. I stared him right in the eye as I said, “Yes, you did. But I am sorry for the things I said. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have hung up and
called back the next morning.” I opened the door and ushered him into the living room. “Tea?”

He nodded. “Please, and then I’d like you to explain a few things to me.”

“I will; I just need something to do with my hands.”

I put the kettle on to boil and pulled out the bags of oolong, which he preferred. As my hands moved, I tried to figure out exactly what I wanted to tell Stephen. My chronically unhelpful brain was coming up blank. So I went with the “let it all just tumble out of your mouth” method.

“I didn’t tell you about coming here to meet relatives because I didn’t want you to have one more thing to hold against my family. I could almost hear you in my head. ‘Here we go, another dramatic debacle, courtesy of the McGavocks.’ You say those things so often I don’t think you even realize you’re doing it.”