KISS THE WITCH (32 page)

“
How did you interact
physically with Carlos if you’re not physically here
yourself?”

She gave me an unconvincing shrug. “I know
not the laws of energy, only what the laws allows.”

“
So tell me again why
you’re here? You said I beckoned you, but I wasn’t thinking about
you when I saw that damn blue light and followed it to the
bathroom.”

“
Hark,” she said, her eyes
and ear pitched toward the ceiling. “My Dominic calls for me. I
must go.”

“
No, Ursula. Wait. I have
questions.”

And like that, she was gone. I turned and
headed down the hall back to the bedroom. The bathroom light
switched off by itself, but not before the light spilling in behind
me lit up the bedroom. I could see Lilith lying there, sleeping
with her head at the wrong end of the bed. And me, also sleeping,
though still sitting up with my back against the headboard. I felt
a tug at my chest and the sensation of falling. The next thing I
knew I was rushing toward the bed. My conscious self snapped into
my sleeping body and startled me awake.

I took a deep breath and let it out, feeling
a little like a fish returning to water. Was it all a dream? I had
to know. I got up and made my way back to the bathroom. There, on
both sides of the toilet bowl, was Carlos’ pee puddles. I mopped
them up with wads of toilet paper, flushed them down the bowl and
went back to bed. Sleep returned to me fast and easy. And if I
dreamed of Ursula, I did not remember it in the morning.

I awoke at sunrise to find Lilith lying there
watching me, her cheek upon my pillow, our noses nearly touching.
She thinned her lips softly. Brushed my face with the back of her
hand. Traced my eye with her fingertips. I tried to remember the
last time she looked so beautiful to me. I could not remember.

“
Morning,” I said, smiling
back at her.

“
`Gmorn` to you.” Her
breath smelled fresh like peppermint. She had been up. Gone to the
bathroom. Brushed her teeth. I rolled over onto my back, wishing I
had done the same.

“
Sleep well?” I
asked.

“
Yup,” she said, and she
slid her hand under the covers, down my chest, across my stomach
and lower. “You?”

“
Yes. Like a ba––beee….” I
shuddered at her touch. Her hand felt cold, but good. I unfurled my
toes and splayed them outside the covers.

“
Like a baby?”

I exhaled deeply. “Yes.”

“
That was nice last night.
Wasn’t it?”

“
The wedding?”

“
Yeah.” She gathered me in
her hand, squeezed and pulled gently. I gasped audibly, sighed and
then found my body easing to the rhythm she had settled
into.

“
Yes. That was sweet. I
think those two are meant for each other.” I turned my head to look
at her. She still had that smile, that angelic expression that told
me she was happy to be with me. I kicked the covers off and crowded
them to the foot of the bed. Shards of sunlight streaming through
the blinds pinstriped my body, but the breeze from the ceiling fan
negated its warmth.

“
You were sweet,” she
said. “And you looked most handsome in that firelight.”

Lilith had me at full attention, teasing me
with her touch, dragging her fingertips over sensitive terrain
before clamping down with utter authority. I arched my back and
adjusted the spread of my legs. She nestled closer, her breasts
warm against my side. I put my arm around her and cupped her
tattooed cheek in my hand. She stretched out straight and did the
same with her trophy.

“
No. You were sweet,” I
said. “And beautiful. And amazing.”

“
Amazing at the wedding?
Or afterward?”

“
Both, but yeah, mostly
afterwards.”

She rolled her eyes up at me, wet her lips
lightly and smiled. “You think that was amazing?”

Her words sent a rush of anticipation
through my bones. I closed my eyes, and in the shadow of my pride,
she laid her kisses down, warming me with her breath, her thick
hair tickling my skin as it cascaded over me like spider silk. I
wanted to tell her I loved her, that I could not live without her.
I just didn’t want her to think it was for all the wrong reasons.
In the end, I said nothing. I let her take me to the whims of her
wishes, to a place as magical as any witch may know. When I came
for her, she came to me and laid her head on my pillow.

I waited until she fell back to sleep before
making a trip to the bathroom. I was standing in front the mirror,
shaving and thinking about the night before when it started to come
back to me. We had all consumed a lot of champagne. And as I have
learned, anytime one mixes alcohol with witchcraft, one’s memories
can blur. I had nearly convince myself that what happened with
Ursula and me after everyone had gone to bed was all a dream, a
champagne induced twist on reality. Yet my heart told me otherwise.
Deep down I knew I had linked with her. I summoned her simply by
thinking of her. I connected to her on a non-physical plane and we
exchanged thoughts just as tangibly as if we were in the same room
engaged in conversation. It would be different if it were only my
imagination. If I could see her, touch her, talk to her, and keep
it all in my head, then what harm would that be? But that was not
the case. Perhaps that is why I felt so guilty.

I finished shaving, leaned over the sink and
rinsed the lather off my face with a splash of cold water. When I
returned to the mirror, she was there.

“
Ursula?” I wheeled about
on my heels. “What the….” I checked the bathroom door. It was
closed. The lock still latched from the inside. She was barefoot,
wearing only blue jeans and a white button-up blouse with the
sleeves rolled to the elbows. “How did you get in here?”

She directed my attention to the floor. I
looked down. There, stretched between my bare feet and hers, was
that confounded electric blue vein. “D…did I do that?”

She hooked her brow, as if I really needed
to ask. “Aye. Thou art filled with thoughts of me I see.”

“
No. It is not like that.
I don’t think of you all the time. I swear. It’s just that this….”
I gestured a back and forth finger point between her and me. “This,
whatever it is we have here, it’s a bit distracting. I can’t get my
head around it.”

“
Then you must stop
thinking of me.”

“
Easier said, isn’t it?
Believe me. I want to stop thinking about you. You’re a married
woman now. I don’t need to think about you. I don’t need to think
about anyone except for Lilith. I love Lilith. She is plenty to
think about as it is. When I’m with her I feel….” I paused only
long enough to read the look in her eyes. “You know, Ursula,
there’s something, ahm…”

“
Yes?”

“
I don’t know. There is
something about you. I cannot put my finger on it. You and I are
tied somehow in ways that this witch’s light has nothing to do
with.”

“
Is that so?”

“
Yes, and you know it.
Don’t you? Last night you said something. Made me think. You
remember what it was?”

She shrugged ambiguously. “Pray tell,
what?”

“
You said that you were
what Lilith made you, and that the fruit did not fall far from the
tree. What did you mean by that?”

“
Oh, that.”

“
Yes. Tell me.”

She crossed her arms at her chest, the way
Lilith does sometimes when she feels cornered into admitting she
has done something wrong. With Ursula, however, I suspected it was
not something she had done; rather something she had not, like tell
me the entire truth about herself. Her eyes held mine steadily,
seizing me in a grip that nearly seemed physical. At first, I
thought she was peering into my soul, reading me, sweeping me for
clues to see what I already knew. It is a witch’s thing. I knew
that. Lilith employs a similar practice with astonishing success.
But almost as soon as I thought it, I realized the opposite was so.
She was not reading me. She was opening herself to me, allowing me
past her defenses to see her at her most vulnerable. Her words to
me then sounded like a confession.

“
When I died,” she said,
speaking of her hanging. “They buried my body and cast my soul
asunder. `Tis what happened. I blame not one the more for this than
I blame thee. `Twas a different time and mine a different life. But
when I tell thee, Lilith, my sister of the coven, and I are spun of
the same cloth, I jest not. For she hath by whit of magick and some
returned my bones to skeletal frame and covered them with flesh.
She gave me eyes that I may see and a heart that I may love. Yet
she had not the existential essence of my individualism. That which
made me who I was did fracture with my soul. To this, she gave of
what she had. `Tis the fabric of my sister that thee look upon
now––that which thou sees deep within me. What good doth show in me
doth dwell alike in thy lover’s soul. If I am shy, `tis the shyness
she knows yet shows not to thee. Her temper is mine, though what
little she gave me doth hide more.”

Ursula’s eyes broke from mine in favor of
the floor. They settled there in a dim pool of light faded by her
shadow. “She gave me love,” she said of Lilith, “or what piece she
could afford.” Her eyes came back to me. “`Tis a seed this love. I
want it not and yet it grows. A love for thee. Thou hast only but
to smile and thy smile doth feed it so. `Tis a curse and a blessing
I know. For if not for thee this love I have, I would have no love
for my Dominic.”

I put my hand up to stop her. “Wait. Are you
telling me that a part of Lilith lives in you?”

“
Aye, `tis the marrow of
her soul what drives my spirit. That which makes her she is also
me.”

“
You mean like a
clone?”

“
Not so much a clone, as
we are more one than a copy of the same.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know that that
means.”

“
It means I am she, as she
is me.”

“
And we are altogether.
Funny. All right. Enough with the Beatles lyrics. What does all
this have to do with the witch’s light? Why do we keep meeting like
this?”

“
Because thou art in love
with me.”

“
No, I am not. I’m in love
with Lilith.”

“
I am Lilith.”

“
You are
Ursula.”

She smiled coyly. “But for bones and bonds
of time, we are both one and the same.”

“
Maybe, but you’re also
very different. I see that every day. You two are as individual as
snowflakes.”

“
We are two sides of the
same coin, she the heads and I the tails.”

I laughed at that. “You can both certainly
turn heads with your tails.”

She slipped her hands down the backside of
her jeans and rubbed her cheeks. “So my Dominic tells me.”

In that instant, she was naked to my eyes. I
saw her as my mind wanted to see her after her suggestive gesture.
I closed my eyes and shook my head, remembering then why I could
not have her popping up in my thoughts like that. When I opened my
eyes again she was gone. I called to her. “Ursula.” She reappeared,
dressed in a winter parka, her eyes peeking through a fur-lined
hood pulled around her face.

“
Why are wearing
that?”

She turned her palms up empty. “I wear only
what––”

“
I know, only what I want
you to wear. You are not physically here so I see you the way I
want to see you.” I looked down at my naked self. “How do you see
me right now?”

She held the back of her hand to my face and
drew it downward, as if stripping away a veil. I looked at myself
again and saw my body as a blurred silhouette.

“
This? This is how you see
me?”

“
Aye.”

“
But you can see me any
way you choose.”

“
Of course.”

“
Okay, see then. What’s
the point? Listen, Ursula. We need to break this link between us. I
cannot deal with it any longer. Tell me what we need to
do.”

She unzipped the parker, wiggled her
shoulders and let it spill off her back. I was glad to see her
still in blue jeans with a cotton blouse buttoned to the collar.
“To cast the witch’s light, thou must link with another.”

“
Another
witch?”

“
Aye.”

“
Lilith?”

“
`Tis only natural, is it
not? You and she art thick and thin in love. What better way say
thee then to show it?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, Ursula. I
have to ask myself what’s worse, seeing you at every turn or seeing
her?”

“
I ask thee not what is
worse, but what is right?”

“
What is
easiest?”

“
In the end, right is
easiest.”

“
Then how do I do it? How
do I lose the link with you and link with her, preferably without
her knowing?”

“
I do not
know.”

“
You have to know. Find
out.”

“
As you wish.” And in a
blink, she was gone.

After my shower, I wrapped a towel around me
and went out into the kitchen. Carlos was there. He had made
himself at home, fixing coffee, eggs, bacon and toast. I told him I
was not hungry, but took a cup of coffee back to the bedroom with
me while I got dressed. Lilith was still sleeping. I closed the
blinds, pulled the covers up over her shoulders and kissed her on
the forehead. She cooed softly, rolled on to her side and curled
into a ball. It was all I could do not to climb back in bed and
spoon her until the sun slipped back into the night. At which point
I would return the favors that she had given me. If not for my
fears that Ursula might pop up in the equation, I might have done
it then. I could not imagine having to explain that one to Lilith,
or to Dominic, as I am sure Ursula would tell him. It would be so
simple, I thought, so utterly uncomplicated if we were not witches.
Yet the thought of that repulsed me. Simple is what I had before I
met Lilith. I lived without living and died without dying. It is
not so much that she completes me. She does. Those who know me see
it, and I wear that distinction like a crown. More importantly, she
defines who I am. Gives meaning to my life. Is it magic? Of course,
but it is not witchcraft.