Something About Witches (25 page)

“I can feed myself.” She snatched the fork away from him and stuffed another mouthful in, reaching for the syrup.

“Lovely table manners.” Putting a napkin by her elbow, he picked up his own fork and repeated the command. “Eat. We won’t talk for a bit.”

That part almost made her smile. Derek took food consumption very seriously, actually preferring to eat in silence. Since she really didn’t want to talk about a lot of subjects, it suited her as well. However, while they ate, she shot surreptitious looks his way. Mostly he was studying the scenery outside as he chewed, though occasionally he glanced toward her. His knee pressed against hers because of the length of his long legs. She didn’t scoot away.

The warm kitchen, the good breakfast smells, the sunlight bathing them, made things feel lazy and slow. After she ate as much as she could, it therefore seemed pretty natural to sigh and lay her head on his broad shoulder. She closed her eyes to take another quick five-minute doze, letting the rhythm of his body’s minute shifts as he chewed, swallowed, cut and speared each bite, take her to that resting state.

Breakfast was the most aromatically comforting meal of all, and when Derek’s scent was part of that concoction, coffee and leather, laundry detergent and the sandalwood shaving soap he used— it just enhanced the effect.

It intrigued her, thinking of him doing his laundry. From the times he’d stayed with her, she knew he didn’t handle mundane chores with sorcery unless it was a teaching exercise to hone skills. In his opinion, doing otherwise was a misuse of power and also negated the importance of doing tasks in the way they were intended to be done.

Only a man who’d lived hundreds of years could feel that
way about vacuuming. She’d be happy to break all the rules of sorcery to do the Mickey Mouse Sorcerer’s Apprentice thing and have her vacuum roll out on its own.

However, from what she could tell, he liked doing such things. The world was full of men who hated chores and house maintenance. Derek acted like it was a vacation to wash dishes, fold laundry, measure and hammer a shelf in place for her. Standing back from everything, all her fears and insecurities, she remembered how he’d captured her heart. He was a unique spirit who seemed to understand the precious value of every simple moment, and when he was with her like this, she understood it, too. Things seemed clearer, more in focus. Steadier. Less painful.

Like now. She could rest her head on his shoulder, know he’d let her be, let it stay quiet, no matter what they’d be fighting about later.

After a time, he shifted, used one hand to scrape her stool even closer to him. Then he slid his arm around her so she could pillow her cheek on the inside of his arm, the firm curve of pectoral. His hand lay on her hip, fingers stroking there, over the soft give of her buttock. When he lifted his coffee to his lips, she smelled the pleasantly bitter aroma, for he drank it black and strong. Then there was the clink of the fork, the smell of maple syrup, his jaw moving against her hair as he ate another pancake.

Probably twenty minutes passed that way. She didn’t think she’d been this…. still, in a very long time. She dozed some, but mainly she just let herself be hypnotized into a tranquil zone by his rhythm, the calm energy around him. When the screen door creaked, suggesting Linda was returning, she opened her eyes to see the platter of pancakes was empty except for her two chocolate chip ones. He was mopping up the maple syrup on his plate with the last few bites of his sausage.

As she straightened, blinking, a wet nose touched her hand. It wasn’t Linda but Theo, who’d simply nosed open
the warped screen door and come on in. “Did those young’uns leave you behind, Theo?” Derek asked, reaching down from her hip to scratch his ears. “Or have you had enough of that nonsense and thought you’d come get some leftovers?”

He picked up a sausage link she now saw he’d deliberately set to the side and offered it to the dog. Theo took it with polite stateliness and then moved to the corner of the kitchen to collapse into a sun spot, propping his chin on a one-foot stool that was left next to the pantry. A piece of furniture every short woman needed, Ruby knew, because home builders assumed everyone was Abraham Lincoln’s height. When Derek stayed with her, she hadn’t needed such a thing. In fact, he usually tucked her short stepladder under her kitchen counter so he wouldn’t trip over it. A small, familiar ritual of his comings and goings in her life.

She slipped off the stool. “However this Great Rite is going to happen, I need to go and do some things to prepare for it. Thanks for breakfast.”

Wiping his mouth with his napkin, he turned and leaned an elbow on the counter, hand lying loosely on his splayed knee. “We talk first, Ruby.
Particularly
if we’re going to do this thing tonight.”

“Is this the superpower cop talking to me, or Derek?”

“Whichever gets the job done.” He gave her an even look. “You used soul magic to drive me away from you.”

It wasn’t as much of a shock to hear him say it out loud as she’d anticipated. After all, if Raina knew it, that meant she’d probably learned it from Derek. But the angry feeling that sprouted in her chest like a thorny vine of Mother-in-Law’s Tongue was sharper than she expected. It didn’t feel like herself, scared her a little bit. But telling him the truth scared her more.

You
let
it drive you away.

That was entirely unfair and unreasonable, which was the only thing that kept her from lashing out with it. But her
cursedly transparent face must have shown it, for his expression tightened.

“You’ve been experimenting with spell and energy use that pulls from both the Light and Dark sides of the fence. Dipping into the Underworld’s well. Who’ve you been paying for that? And, more importantly, how much?”

“No one.”

His expression clearly said he wasn’t buying it, and she knew he wasn’t going to let it go. Derek didn’t follow the rules that civilized men did, and he wasn’t just hitting her with the demand of a lover and friend, but a cop who was in charge of this kind of shit as well. And no one took his job as seriously as Derek. A white knight in truth.
Shit.

Maybe she could give him parts of it, and that would be enough. Circling to the other side of the island, she took a stool there with the barrier of the counter between them. Of course, it put him square in front of her, those relentless eyes seeking the total truth.

“You know I’ve always studied magical theory, the unique way each magic user twines their internal energy with collective and divine energies.”

He nodded. She laced her fingers together, unlaced them. Though she took some moments gathering her thoughts, it wasn’t to prevaricate. This was complicated. And she appreciated that he said nothing, waiting. He was prepared to listen. In truth, this was the first time she’d ever been able to tell anyone about it. Despite what could happen when he forced her to discuss application instead of theory, she couldn’t help but feel some eagerness to explain it to someone who would understand the significance.

“I discovered that I could draw power from places recently…. visited by Underworld energies. Or places closely aligned with them. Harvest the residual rather than visit the store and pay the direct price for it. It’s like taking crumbs falling from a table, Derek. I figured out a way to
gather it up, meld Light with Dark magic. Like adding another metal into silver to make it into a stronger frame.”

“No one’s ever done that before.”

“No.” And it pleased her in an altogether dangerous way, that he acknowledged the accomplishment while showing little surprise that she was the one who’d figured it out.
Careful, Ruby. In this, he’s not your friend. He can’t be.

The insidious reminder made her hunch her shoulders, took away some of the pleasure of it. When she rubbed her hands over her arms, getting rid of the goose bumps, she was way too cognizant of how he caught the motion, how he interpreted it.

“All that study.” She gave a bitter laugh, lifted a shoulder. “Turns out I can’t cook a grilled cheese sandwich, but I’m a fucking gourmet genius when it comes to dishes that combine unexpected ingredients.”

“What changed?”

“One day, I started understanding the underlying spirit in the matter. I could see it, like puzzle pieces. I knew how to file and fit them, whether they were Light or Dark.”

It was amazing how great trauma, a life-and-death, soul-shattering event, could open the eyes. Some people saw the white tunnel, relatives waiting. She’d seen knowledge, like the tree in Eden, just waiting for her to grasp that apple, the serpent whispering to her to take the power.

She snapped back into the present again. She knew she really hadn’t answered the question he asked. But like a patient lawyer, he rephrased to get at the information. While, like a witness trapped in the box, she watched him change the angle of his attack and couldn’t move, a deer in the headlights.

“Why not focus on white Light magic, apply that genius there?”

Because it couldn’t do what I needed done.
“It’s like what I said about my shop, Derek. All that bullshit about not being able to use Dark magic without it exacting a price? Yeah,
they’re right. But if you’re willing to pay it, you can do good things with it.”

“You’re messing with the rules of the Universe.”

“Whose rules? Yours?” Her temper, and the storm that lay waiting behind it, sharpened her voice. “The Powers that Be? Those nameless forces who are so all-powerful and wise that they’ll let the weak and innocent go down because they just happen to see this great cosmic plan and how it all fits together? Well, fuck them. What I hate the most is that when I meditated, when I drew Light energy in myself, I understood that. I could feel the wisdom of it, and I knew it as Truth. But Truth doesn’t mean a good goddamn to those of us in the trenches. We’re not floating in the fucking clouds of enlightenment. It’s all bullshit.”

She’d said too much. She was breathing too fast, her face hot. Things felt light, floaty. She was going to break open in a minute, and she couldn’t. Derek rose from the stool, his expression grave. “Ruby, what happened?”

His lips pressed together, hard. She saw the knowledge flicker in his gaze. Panic clustered in her chest, and she wanted to do anything to keep him from saying what he was about to say next. But those words came out anyway, hitting her like a solid punch in the face. “What happened to our daughter?”

Raina.
Raina had told him. Of course. Treacherous, loving bitch of a friend that she was. But all Raina could tell him was that the baby had died because of a car accident.

The warmth of the sun-soaked kitchen died out of her, leaving everything cold and still. She remembered that stilted moment in the woods, the sense of something large and unstable he was holding back. He’d been carrying it around with him, and the strain of it was now in the hoarse note in his voice, his heartbreak capable of breaking hers anew.

She knew this man. Knew what it would have meant to him. She wasn’t one of those heartless women who thought
that because the mother carried the baby, the father had no right to make decisions about its life, its well-being. They bore an equal weight in the creation; the responsibility was shared. But that knowledge just made the guilt and pain worse.

She closed her fingers into tight, tight balls, as tight as the rock sitting in the center of her chest. “She died, Derek. And everything else died with her. You want me to do this tonight…. the Great Rite, I’ll do it.” She could do it, would do it, like any other ritual. Then she’d walk away. “Tomorrow, I go home, and I don’t ever want to see you again. Please, give me that. I can’t handle…. how you make me feel.”

She couldn’t handle feeling.

H
E WOULDN’T HAVE LET HER GET AWAY WITH THAT, SHE
was sure, but with fortunate timing, Linda came into the kitchen then to let her know some of the coven were arriving early to prepare for tonight. She left a white-faced Derek with her, and escaped to her guest cottage, Theo trotting along behind her. He wouldn’t have left that sunny spot, but that old-man worry wrinkle was back on his homely expression. He knew she was a mess right now, rattled down to the bone.

Dashing ice-cold water on her face, she threw up the pancakes, put a Deception potion together at double strength, took it down like a frat boy downing shots, and stood in front of the mirror, deep breathing until everything went back to where it should be. Calm, still, like a sludge-filled lake, everything trapped and suffocating beneath the surface.

What in the hell was she thinking? Why had she said she’d do the Great Rite when she knew it was a bad idea? Because the secrets in her life demanded ironclad control. She had to be able to sever the friendships with Raina and Ramona, turn her back fully on Derek, not by running, but by standing by
what she said in the kitchen. If she could do this tonight, she’d prove all of that was possible. She had to prove to herself she could contain everything inside of her without breaking.

There was a weariness in the bedrock of her soul, though, something that told her she’d taken this far beyond where it should have gone, but she’d faced that before. There was no turning back now. She just needed to get home. It would be all right once she got there.