Witch Is The New Black (16 page)

“Depends on what you’re making.”

“What if I told you it was spaghetti and meatballs?”

“I’d call you a liar.”

Ridge grinned. “You’d be right. I’m a crappy cook. How does pizza from Alphonso’s and a cold beer sound?”

“Better than the can of ravioli you burned the other day when you were making lunch.”

“Did you smell that all the way out here?”

“Siberia smelled it.”

He tipped her chin upward. “You’re funny. Very funny. So are we on for tonight?”

Her toes were all but curling in her new running shoes as his thumb caressed her chin. “You bet.”

“So meet me up at the house at about seven?”

“Done deal.”

Ridge leaned in close and whispered, “You do know you’re not putting me out, right? I always get the feeling you think you’re taking me away from something really important. I’ll have you know, that’s not the case.”

“Everyone’s been really nice about this, and I feel so guilty when I consider there are plenty of things everyone
could
be doing other than babysitting me.”

“I like having you around, Bernie,” he drawled, low and husky.

What did she say to that? I like being around while you drive me and my libido around the bend? She stunk at small talk and flirting. Was there a class for
that
?

Her heart throbbed as she looked up at him. “Then make sure you have plenty of beer. If we’re moving bodies of water, we might need more than a six-pack.”

“You bet. See you tonight.” He dropped a light kiss on her lips, one she wasn’t at all prepared for, one that made her want to slip her arms around him and drive her body against his.

Instead, she murmured a “later” and headed back out into the heat, feeling lightheaded and dizzy, her heart crashing in her ears. She went to sit on the bench at the table under the pecan tree and put her head on her arms to ease the pitch and roll of her stomach, and closed her eyes.

“Can I talk to you for a sec?”

Her head popped up at the sound of Calla’s voice. “Of course.”

“So, I’m thinking of asking Bernie if she’s considering staying here in Paris.”

Bernie frowned, confused. “Okay…”

“I’d kill for an event coordinator, and I think I have the budget for it now. She’s amazing with the seniors; they love her more than they love tapioca pudding on Tuesdays. I won’t be able to pay her a huge amount, but I really need to free up some time to handle the business end of running the center. She’d be perfect for the job, not to mention all the horses really like her. I know it seems a little early to make a choice like this so quickly, but Bernie’s good people. I feel it in my gut. Smell it with my werewolf nose. Anyway, I know you said you were going back to Dallas once you got this place fixed up, but first, I hope if you hire someone to run it, you’ll still let the seniors come to garden and ride the horses.”

Bernie opened her mouth to ponder out loud if Calla might have a touch of heatstroke when the woman held up a hand.

“No. Don’t say anything yet. Just think on it. Also, I was wondering if Bernie decides to take me up on my offer, when the time comes for her parole hearing, would you give her a recommendation? I doubt she’ll need it, with all the glowing references she’ll get from the seniors and Winnie, but as a just-in-case?”

Wait. First, Ridge wasn’t permanently staying in Paris? And why the hell was Calla asking her to give herself a recommendation. Stranger still, why was she talking about her as if she wasn’t even present during this conversation?

Bernie looked down at the table, unsure where to go from here, when she caught sight of her hands.

That weren’t her hands at all.

She held one up to the sunlight, her eyes going wide.

Wait, were they even
her
eyes?

She flapped her hand as though she might shake off this strange skin covering her own.

What the fuck?

Then she looked down at her chest. Her hands plucked the T-shirt she wore; it was the same one Ridge had on earlier in the barn. The one she’d watched him put back on while drooling over him.

Bernie’s hands flew to her chest. Her big man hands. To her flat, ripply chest.

Panic surged in a rush of her heart punching at her chest—or Ridge’s chest—her pulse racing.

Calla leaned over and tapped her on the arm. Her laden-with-muscles arm. “Ridge? You okay?”

The world began to spin then—spin just like she was on a mad carousel, twirling out of control.

There were gasps, but they were vague and far away.

Very far away.

* * * *

“Bernie girl! Wake up, Sweetness! C’mon, snap out of it!” Fee coaxed, his flair for the dramatic clear in his voice. He used a paw to knead her arm, his claws grazing her skin.

“Bernie,” Ridge called, running his big hand over her forehead, his voice, as opposed to Fee’s, calm and gentle.

“Here, take this, Ridge,” she heard Flora say. “Put it on the child’s forehead.”

The cool material of a cloth forced her heavy eyes open. She lifted her head and immediately held up her hand, letting out a long sigh of relief. “It’s my hand!” she yelped. Oh thank God, it was her hand.

Instantly, she let her hands roam over her chest, caring little about how lewd she looked. “My breasts! These are my breasts, Ridge!”

His face was amused, his chuckle almost uncomfortable. “So they are.”

“No! You don’t understand. A minute ago they weren’t my breasts! They were yours. I mean, not
yours
, they were…” What the hell did she mean?

Ridge sat down next to her, pressing the cloth to her face. “Just sit still and let me tend to you.”

As nice as it was to have Ridge’s hands on her again, Bernie batted him away. “Don’t you get it? A minute ago, it was
your
hand on
my
body.” She frowned. “I think. I don’t know.”

Now his grin was wicked. “My hand was on your body though I was in the barn? Wow. I’m better than I ever gave myself credit for.”

She gave him a shove with a roll of her eyes. “No! You know what I mean. Or maybe you don’t.” She let out an exasperated sigh. “I was
inside
your body. Or I possessed your body—or—or…” How did she explain this without sounding like she was crazy?

Winnie dropped down on the bench of the picnic table across from her, the surprise on her face startling Bernie. “What’s wrong? Did I do something wrong?”

Winnie’s grin was triumphant when she shook her head. “No, you did something very right, Bernie!”

“How are my delusions figuring into this?”

Winnie bounced in her seat. “I just figured out how you robbed a bank without knowing how you did it, and that means we can go to Baba Yaga and the Council and have your parole abolished!”

Now Bernie’s head really spun. “
What?
”

Ridge dropped the cloth, his eyes pinned on Winnie.

Winnie gripped Bernie’s shaking hand. “You, my unwitting witch, are a shifter.”

Huh? Wasn’t that what they called Calla?

Fuck, she didn’t want to insult Calla, but there was only so much magic and mythology one person could handle.

It was enough that she could make things disappear and cast spells, quite another if she was going to need to shave every eight hours and crave small bunnies for lunch.

“You mean like Calla shifts into a werewolf?”

“No, I mean like a witch who shifts into
anything
—a person, an inanimate object, whatever. When a shifter first comes into his or her own, it usually happens under highly charged emotional circumstances, and that explains how you ended up in that bank that day, Bernie.”

Her mouth fell open. “I can’t process this. It’s too much…”

Calla squeezed her shoulders when Winnie said, “Then let me process it for you. I’m betting you and Eddie had an argument of some kind just before he went into the bank, am I right?”

“Who’d argue with somebody as pretty as Green Eyes?” Gus asked, clamping his hand on Bernie’s arm with affection.

But Bernie nodded with slow recognition. “Yes! Eddie and I argued about—Never mind, we just had a huge argument in the parking lot of the bank. I was so angry and hurt I almost couldn’t see straight.”

“I bet! And then he went into the bank, waved a gun around, got the bank manager to open the vault, and in you walk, but no one sees that because the cameras are disabled and he’d knocked everyone unconscious. Now, if you were in a fugue state, which is what I’m guessing happens when you shift because you don’t appear to remember it, you would have followed him into the bank and run right into him in the vault,
looking exactly like him
. This is the part where I’d bet dollars to donuts you freaked Eddie out completely. In a panic, he knocks the bank manager out, or maybe she just passes out, and you end up in the vault with all the money!”

“Holy…” Ridge muttered as all eyes landed on him. “That’s why you were passed out in the pantry, Bernie! You’d shifted into Violet earlier in the evening. It explains why Violet behaved the way she did.”

Bernie’s eyes flew to Ridge’s face. “Violet behaved the way she did…?”

He held up a hand. “It’s a long story, and I’ll explain later. Suffice to say, you shifted into Violet but behaved much more like Bernie. You didn’t once question why I was calling you Violet. But you sure had all your rules in place for, as you call it, an appropriate ex-con boss relationship.”

Bernie’s mouth fell open as Calla’s eyes widened. “So she’s shifting into people but retaining her morals and personality traits and doesn’t remember any of it?”

Winnie bounced in her seat. “I think so! So if that’s true, you fell asleep in the bank, woke up as Bernie, and somehow, in the melee of the police arriving, that son of a bitch got out of the bank unnoticed.”

Ridge tapped his finger on the picnic table, his eyes intense. “Something’s been bugging me since you told me all of this, Bernie. I was going to ask you about it tonight while we studied. Do you think you could draw the tattoo on Eddie’s arm from memory?”

She’d only seen it a hundred times. “I think I can.”

Flora dug in her purse for a piece of paper and a pen, handing it to Bernie, who drew the symbol, making the group go silent—deathly so.

The seniors’ silence scared Bernie far more than anything else. They were never silent. “
What?
Is it bad?”

“That’s an ankh, Bernie,” Ridge said with a tone so grave, her heart sped back up.

“And that means?”

Winnie squeezed her hand again. “Some witches use the ankh to symbolize eternal life.”

Bernie gasped, taking in a mouthful of hot air. “Wait, that means that Eddie’s…”

Ridge’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “It means that Eddie’s likely a warlock.”

That motherfluffin’ son of a bitch.

Chapter 11

“W
ell, Bernie girl, I think we’re coming into the home stretch.” Fee sat on her bed atop one of the yellow and blue pillows. “Now that we have some answers, we can move forward.”

Fluffing her hair, she set the brush down and applied some clear lip gloss she’d picked up at the pharmacy in town, preparing for her third study date with Ridge this week since she’d found out she was a shifter.

“We don’t have all the answers yet, Fee.” But they’d been looking for them for almost a week, since she’d shifted into Ridge.

“We have more than we had coming into this.”

“That’s true. Now we need to find out how I’m a witch shifter, or whatever, and if my parents were witches, why they were just pretending to be humans.”

“Yeah. That’s still a big puzzle, but we have more pieces to this crazy jigsaw of your life than we ever did before.”

“And then there’s Eddie…” She still couldn’t believe Eddie was a warlock. But what else could explain how easily he’d accepted her propensity for so many accidents?

Fee grunted. “The swine of all time swine? The warlock in wolf’s clothing? The traitorous dink of bottom feeders? If I ever run into that slimy bastard, I’ll give him hemorrhoids the size of asteroids with a side order of the clap. It’ll be like a damn standing ovation in his ball sac.”

The dread in the pit of her stomach grew. She’d thought about Eddie all week long, and the longer she thought, the more dots she connected.

“I think he knew about me, Fee,” she said quietly. “I don’t know how he knew I was a witch, but I’d bet he did. I think I was so desperate to find just one person who wouldn’t write me off as bad luck that I fell right into his trap. This makes me Miss Pathetic 2015.”

“Noooo, B-Bop, this makes you just a girl who was adrift, far out at sea. A nice, sweet, lonely girl who grabbed onto a life raft that sank like the
Titanic
. But you’re not that girl anymore. You’re stronger and smarter, and you’ve found us. No clap-riddled motherfucker is gonna take you away from us now.”

More tears stung her eyes at Fee’s words. But she couldn’t dwell on how stupid she felt or she’d never move past it. She’d had enough hiding for three lifetimes.

Being here in Paris, having these people trust her enough to help her, was something she’d always be grateful for.

“Do you think he knew before we began dating?”

“I’d bet my tutu on it.”

“But why? Why would he date me and not tell me I was a witch?”

“I think you have a power so rare, so unique, he thought maybe he could extort you somehow. Use your powers for whatever his end game was—like hitting Fort Knox or something. I don’t know, Bernie. And we don’t even know the full extent of your powers yet. But he was up to no damn good, the asshole. Doesn’t matter anymore. You’re here, safe with us.”

Was she safe? What about Doris—whom she hadn’t seen since that night at bingo?

“Yeah, about the extent-of-my-power thing. As if I didn’t have enough on my plate just being a witch, now I can shift into other people. I’m having a hard time digesting all this.”

“You scared the hell outta me out there at the farm that day. You’re not just a shifter, but a damn good one. You looked exactly like Ridge—sounded like ’em, too.”