Entwined Destinies (10 page)

It’s my weekend away from the studio, and Mason is washing Fancy. He’s very meticulous about it. Soaping, rinsing, scrubbing, detailing, waxing. I’m almost jealous.

Still, I’m not about to let all his hard work go to waste. I set up a lawn chair nearby and watch him exert himself in the sun. I refuse to lift a finger, of course. It needs to be obvious that he’s
my
entertainment. Mason actually stops working briefly to go inside and make me mint julep to quench my thirst.

Payment, he tells me, for the denim cut-offs I’m wearing, not to mention the button-up shirt I’ve tied off my belly. I did it for him, of course. My way of sabotaging his attention span. Mason can’t help but get an eyeful.

“Hey, pump jockey,” I say, pointing at a smudge on the bumper, “I think you missed a spot.”

“You don’t say? Here, let me get that for you.”

Mason obliges, rubbing the dirt off while unnecessarily flexing at the same time.

“Better?” he asks.

“Much, but I am curious about something. Does it normally take this long to wash a car? It seems like you’re distracted.”

“Only when I’m beset by a stunning masterpiece.”

I lower my sunglasses so he can see my eyes.

“The masterpiece accepts your compliment.”

I start to assume shameless poses straight out of a 1950s girly magazine, bending over provocatively to put my empty glass on the ground. Stretching across my chair to grab a book. Mason gets wise to my tactics and turns the tables.

He takes off his shirt in a comically exaggerated way. He scours the rims of his car tires while tensing every band of muscle in his thick arms.

To cool off, he turns the hose on himself. Splattering shards of water onto his naked torso in a fine mist, raising the nozzle above his head like a shower while shaking his head back and forth.

It’s like I’m watching a shampoo commercial in slow motion.

Finally, Mason leans over the hood, straining over the width of his car, balancing on one foot. He’s trying to clean a spot he could have easily reached by walking around the vehicle. The crack of his firm ass peeks above his shorts. I gasp, mockingly scandalized, but it’s actually too much for me to bear. I throw ice cubes at him from my glass.

“Cool it off! I’m hot enough out here without you adding to my temperature!”

“Hey, I’m just washing my car,” he throws back. “I’m not responsible if your engine overheats.”

“You should be!” I say. “I’m going to burn up at this rate. You’ll look over here, wondering where I went, but all you’ll see is a little puddle of juice where I used to be. Flash-melted by the radiance of your tight ass. That’s on your conscience.”

I suck the last drops of mint julep from the bottom of my glass.

“You know, you’re right. It is my fault. Here, let me cool you off.”

Mason predictably turns the hose on me, but I was asking for it. I squeal like a child who loves the attention and try to wrestle it from his hands. He picks me up and feeds the nozzle down my shorts, drenching my nethers.

“Maybe now I’ll actually get some work done.”

He laughs at the look on my face and then kisses me for the indignation of hosing me down.

More than ever before in my life, I feel loved.

I’ve never felt this kind of attachment to somebody before. It flies in the face of every piece of advice my coven gave me over the years. Candice and Saffron encouraged me to widen the emotional distance between me and the men whose lust I was siphoning, not shrink it.

I wanted the same distinction, a clear divide, or so I told myself. That’s why I created a persona for each man, the woman they wanted to see. I never showed them who I really was beneath it all, which only added to the mystery and, by extension, inspired their lust.

Mystery allows men to imagine whomever they want, and once I figured out whatever that was, I fed it. As a result, men only ever saw the façade of a woman while I sustained the act and drained their stamina. The authentic part of who I was remained safely tucked away.

Most men lack the perceptiveness to even look behind the mask. The fine art of conversation was usually lost on them once they had their way with me. It became all they wanted, which only fed the quicksilver pool.

Mason never saw a mask, possibly owing to having met me during this sabbatical. No, that’s not the reason. I simply didn’t want to turn myself into somebody else with him. He was so comfortable in his own skin. I wanted to feel that way too for a chance. I wanted to feel his skin against mine.

Then I got to know him, and the more I learned, the more I wanted. Now I’m eager to hear everything Mason has to say. I want him to share all of his messy thoughts and feelings.

Conversely, I want Mason to know who I am as well. I want to remove that last secret between us.

Admittedly, I didn’t at first. I failed to understand why people share everything with each other, but I’m starting to understand the value of full disclosure now, or at least where the impulse comes from. For all the good that insight will do.

I’m bound by a pact to Candice and Saffron. Not just that, but they’ve always been really good to me. My loyalty to them trumps anybody else in this world. I wouldn’t have stayed young for this long if it wasn’t for them. I wouldn’t have met Mason.

I brought the subject up once before, years ago, pointing out that people openly call themselves witches in this day and age. That it’s more accepted. I even had the youthful arrogance to say that people are more open-minded now than ever before. Candice and Saffron actually laughed at that.

They told me that the popularity of witchcraft has waned and waxed many times throughout history. They can each personally recall being favored and reviled in equal measure at different points in their lives. Acceptance comes and goes in cycles, they told me.

I couldn’t argue at the time. A part of me knew they were right. Most women who call themselves witches aren’t truly spellcasters. At worst, they’re pretenders going through the motions. At best, they’re repeating old rituals out of reverence. What they aren’t doing is altering reality, like we do.

I suppose there’s another reason we keep our existence a secret. It’s the same reason we try to keep the pool of quicksilver full at all times. All it took was one meeting for me to be convinced. My one and only so far.

The man with the golden eyes.

He’s the warlock we collectively stand against. The reason Saffron weaves stronger and stronger magical wards every year. It’s all meant to keep Felix Eichmann away from Trixie Harridan. To protect her from his depredations.

It’s been a constant vigil ever since Trixie was born. Waiting and watching over our ginger-haired charge. Looking for any indication that she’s ready to take back what she lost, what Felix Eichmann stole from her before she even knew there was something to steal. Her magical inheritance. Her potential.

Trixie and I became friends when she was old enough to be approached casually. Kumi did all the legwork and guided me through the contrived meeting. The redhead and I bonded immediately and became close friends in the months that followed.

I introduced Trixie to Candice and Saffron shortly thereafter. Now our friendship as five women is quite natural, which must be the strangest for Saffron, watching her daughter grow up without being able to act like a parent.

Normally we all watch over Trixie—except for me right now, of course. When it’s time to go back in two months—which I’m trying really hard not to think about—the triptych will be complete again. The oldest and most powerful type of coven. Maiden, Mother, Crone, with Kumi watching over us as a lone predator.

Despite our titles in the coven, we all look like we could be Maidens. Candice and Saffron remain extremely able-bodied, which is the first purpose of any quicksilver pool.

A single mortal life is not enough to master the art of witchcraft. To hear both of my mentors tell it, you would have only begun to scratch the surface by the time you died of old age. To avoid that waste of knowledge, you must first stop aging.

Saffron figured it out a long time ago and eventually shared her secret with Candice, and then, many, many years later, they both shared it with me.

While the first benefit of not aging is perpetual youth, it’s certainly not done out of vanity. You feel young, but must work hard to maintain your youth. Apparently, she was thirty-five when she perfected the ritual. Saffron proved that perpetual youth is possible, but that the work of staying young multiplies if done alone.

According to the oldest member of my coven, staying young is a full-time job when you’re a solitary witch. It’s all you do. There’s no time for anything else, which kind of defeats the purpose of studying witchcraft. That’s why she eventually created a coven to help share the load. That way we all tend to the quicksilver pool.

My understanding of the pool is that it can be filled, it can even be made to overflow, but it doesn’t stay that way for long. It’s always looking for ways to escape the reservoir, trickling out through invisible cracks. That’s why the Maiden, Mother, and Crone work so well as a coven. The Maiden gathers. The Mother contains. And the Crone weaves.

Siphoning the lust of men is the easiest way to fill a quicksilver pool. Siphoning your own lust works as well, but with weaker results. There are other methods, of course, like blood sacrifice, ritual performances, and seasonal offerings, but those aren’t my specialty.

Candice and Saffron groomed me for another purpose, namely seduction. They chose me because I’m attractive to many types of men, and natural enough at spellcasting that they could teach me as time went along.

That was a lifetime ago.

I was born during the Year of the Fire Dog, right after World War II. To hear my parents tell the story, I was conceived the night the war ended. Thanks for that image, Mom and Dad.

That being said, my body doesn’t look a day over eighteen. I’ve been with Candice and Saffron for fifty years now, but there’s no sign of aging on me whatsoever.

I actually started to dress more conservatively in recent years to account for my targeted tastes. There are always men willing to sleep with an eighteen-year-old, but I grew tired of those lovers. I grew more interested in maturity after a while, men who could put a woman’s pleasure before their own, at least for a little while.

I also like a man who takes what he wants from my body and doesn’t give a damn about my needs. It’s their lust I want, after all, so balance in all things.

Mason understands that about me and does both. When he gives, he does so wholeheartedly, expecting nothing in return. When he takes, it’s voracious.

I like to think his desire for me has nothing to do with the seductive bag of tricks that I’ve used for decades. Mason surprised me, after all, before I had a chance to ply those skills on him. He met me when my guard was at the absolute lowest point it had ever been, when I was the most vulnerable. A painter.

Which is to say, Mason saw me for who I really am.

Candice and Saffron maintained me at my prime, a bountifully curvaceous weapon of youthful lust, but I’m actually a sixty-nine-year-old woman. A sixty-nine-year-old woman who has painted her whole life. That’s the real reason I can even hold a torch to the classical masters.

Mason came upon me while I was doing exactly that. I thought he might become a pleasant distraction at first, but I was wrong. There’s nothing distracting about Mason. He’s all consuming.

There’s so much more at play between him and I now. So much more commonality than I suspected there would be, and much of it is unspoken. Not everything, as we recently discovered, but that only means we’ve already endured a little adversity together. We’ve become a stronger as a couple because of our separation.

Mason wanted to share his secret with me shortly after we first had sex. He warned me about his dark side. His wolf. I didn’t know what he was talking about at the time, so I resisted the secret. The urge to share everything.

Now I understand what he must have been feeling at the time. The only difference is that I know all his secrets, but he doesn’t know all of mine. The secret of being a witch feels like a chasm growing between us more each day. It’s both who I am and the lie in our relationship. I’m starting to hate that.

Mason might suspect there’s more to me than being a painter, but he doesn’t push for that information or pressure to open up. This feeling I’m having, this compulsion to share all that I am, it’s coming from me alone. He has been positively forthcoming by comparison. I’m drawn to him because of it. I want to follow his example.

Mason might be a wolf, but he’s a young wolf. Young in comparison to my lifetime. He was turned sixteen years ago. I’ve been keeping the secret of being a witch three times that long. Strictly in terms of time, it’s a bigger secret, with more at stake than my needs alone.

Not the least of which includes the protection of Saffron’s daughter. My responsibilities back in the city. Trixie mustn’t be allowed to fall into the wrong hands… again.

I am as Candice and Saffron made me. I’ve heeded their wisdom and built up my resistance to intimacy, never letting a single man in. Not before I presented a counterfeit version of myself for them. Jessica the charlatan, a body for an affair in exchange for their lust. Until now.

My heart was always out of reach before, protected before it had a chance to feel anything… and that worked. For years that worked. Moving from one man to another over decades until I fought bitterly for this time. To be alone with myself for a change.

That’s when Mason sniffed me out, nine months into my sabbatical, and singlehandedly undermined half a century of emotional discipline. My mentors can tell what’s happening to me, whether talking to me in person or over the phone, and they aren’t pleased.

It takes decades to understand what’s possible with witchcraft. It takes centuries to truly bend those possibilities to your will. Candice and Saffron freely admit that neither of them can hold a torch to the legendary witches, like Baba Yaga or Lilith.

They place me on par with the sorcery of Morgan le Fay. It’s flattering, I suppose, but also a little scary. They speak about such women as if they actually knew them.