Witches Anonymous (4 page)

Chapter Seven: Orlando and Marshmallows

Streetlamps flickered on as I walked to my WA meeting. A sickle moon was barely visible overhead. The buzz of cricket song rose and fell around me and I kicked at the leaves blowing past my feet in a kid’s game to keep my mind off my ex and my sister. I kept one eye out for Luc, my nerves jumping at every moving shadow, but no demon emerged from the dry leaves swirling in the alleys or the darkened doorways. Having readied myself for what seemed like his inevitable appearance, I was almost disappointed when he didn’t show up.

I was even more disappointed when Emilia did.

“Amy,” she said, materializing from behind an oak tree. I flinched, my hand flying to my heart. She didn’t seem to notice. “Stop seducing Lucifer.”

Dropping my hand, I let out the breath stuck in my throat and started walking again. “Come off it, Emilia. You know I’m not the one doing the seducing. Like I told you earlier today, you wanted to play with fire. Now you’re playing with fire.”

She fell into step with me, her high-heeled Gucci boots clacking on the sidewalk. The Dark Side was obviously working for her in the fashion arena. She’d never cared about designer labels before. “If you really want to be free of him, let me bind your powers.”

I stopped in mid-step. “You think I’d let you—a witch who blows up her kitchen making a simple love potion—bind my powers?”

Annoyance flashed across her features before she shut it down. Then she turned on her charm. What charm she had, anyway. “Why put yourself through these stupid Witches Anonymous meetings? Let me help you. Once I bind your powers, Lucifer won’t want anything to do with you. Solves both our problems.”

Fudge sauce could have dripped from her smile. Shaking my head in disbelief, I continued on my way. “In your dreams.”

She stayed put, but her eyes bore into my back. Her normal voice trembled with a guttural sound. “You always were a spoiled-rotten, holy terror of a bitch.”

So much for charm. And what was with the eerie octave of her voice?

Ignoring the shiver that went through my bones, I stopped. We’d had this fight one too many times growing up…I knew exactly where to sprinkle a dose of salt. The sisterhood of the magic witches. “And you always were an overachieving, first-born, bossy prude.”

As if unseen hands were attacking me, the leaves at my feet sprang up and whirled around my legs like a cyclone. Her anger slammed against me as if she were physically pushing me. I tripped, but caught myself before totally losing my balance. Good thing I’d worn my Pumas instead of my Choos.

Straightening upright, I saw Liddy across the street by the building’s entrance. A small calico cat wove its body through her legs in a figure eight. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she waved a little-girl-type wave. I waved back, keeping my hand lowered so Emilia didn’t see it. No way did I want Em to set her sights on my new friend. She, too, knew where to sprinkle the devastating sisterly salt.

“Look.” I turned to face her, trying to block Liddy from her view. Under the streetlamp, her skin appeared ashen and pale, but her eyes were clear and intense. Feverish-looking. Unblinking. Demonic.

I hesitated just a second, letting that sink in. Emilia had been acting out of character ever since Luc seduced her. Like she was possessed. Sleeping with the Devil could do funny things to a person, especially when the person had once been all goodness and light. Maybe Emilia had gotten more from her demon lover than a bonus orgasm.

That idea would have to be explored later. “Why don’t you pop over to my apartment and clean up the mess you made this morning, Emilia, and we’ll talk about binding my powers when I get home from the meeting?”

The demon in her flashed like heat lightning and I took a step back as another shiver ran through me. Yep, she was definitely possessed. By what, I wasn’t sure.

She saw my fear, or maybe smelled it. Her nostrils flared. “What, you didn’t clean it up yet? Oh, that’s right.” She snapped her fingers. “You aren’t acting like a witch anymore. No housekeeping charms. Poor Amy. She has to clean the toilet just like a human.”

She was right. I’d cleaned up the broken plates and the cats ate the French toast scattered on the floor, but there was so much damage, I’d been overwhelmed with the amount of cleaning, which was why I was trying to bribe my sister into doing it for me. One wave of her perfectly manicured hand and all would be repaired. “You can bind my powers if you clean up the apartment. And while you’re at it, scrub the toilet as long as you’re there,” I added. “Deal?”

Emilia hesitated for a minute, tapping her booted toes on the sidewalk. The demon receded a bit and my sister returned. “You trust me alone in your apartment?”

I did a mental inventory of potentially embarrassing items my snoopy sister might uncover. There was the erotica between the mattresses of my bed and the poster of a half-naked Orlando Bloom hanging on the inside of my bathroom medicine cabinet. An assortment of Luc’s S&M products tucked into the closet in the spare bedroom and my
Partridge Family
DVD collection stuffed behind my
Buffy
one.

The only thing that truly worried me was my spell book. Full of intensely potent black magic, if that fell into Emilia’s hands, she could hurt herself. Plus, she’d know all the hexes I’d developed to please Luc. Why should she get the credit, and pleasure, for my work?

“He-lllooo.” Liddy was crossing the street, grinning at me and doing that wave thing at Emilia. I didn’t have time to worry about protecting my sister from herself, nor was I sure I really wanted to. Not at the expense of Liddy’s good nature. “Sure, Em. Go for it.” I waved my hands in a shooing motion. “I mean it. Go. We’ll bind my powers later.”

“Bind your powers?” Liddy skipped up beside me. “You don’t have to do that, Amy. We renounce our powers once we’ve completed all Thirteen Steps.”

“Is that so?” Emilia’s lips stretched wide across her professionally whitened teeth. “Are you in Witches Anonymous too?”

Liddy nodded. “Amy and I are partners.”

Emilia’s gaze left Liddy’s face and flashed on mine before returning to my friend. “Really? You and Amy? Partners?” Again, her gaze cruised to my face with smug attention. “Something in your closet you want to tell me about, Amy?”

The cat had followed Liddy across the street and now slid against my leg, purring. I took Liddy’s elbow and pulled her a step back from Emilia. “My closet is full of interesting things you’ll never know about.” Spinning Liddy back toward the street, I gave her a little push. “Nice seeing you, sis, but we gotta go. Meeting’s about to start. We’ll talk later, ’kay?”

Dragging my friend away from Emilia, cool tendrils of magic, like Emilia’s fingernails, raked my back. “Oh, Amy?”

Caught in the spider’s web, I stopped and looked over my shoulder at my sister in her misleading, white haute couture.

The grin was still wide. “Why don’t you bring your
partner
home with you after the meeting? I’ll make a fire in the fire pit on your roof, and the two of you can fill me in on your relationship.”

“Ooo,” Liddy said, her head bobbing up and down at Emilia. “That would be great! We could roast marshmallows and give each other manicures. I just got this new nail polish, TinkerBell Tan, that dries in like five seconds.”

“Marshmallows.” Emilia’s eyes blazed feverishly again. “Of course. What else would we roast?”

The cat’s back arched and it hissed at her. Mentally, I did the same. “Later, Emilia.”

As Liddy and I crossed the street, I heard the spider laugh under her breath. “Oh, yes, Amy. Later.”

My apartment was still a disaster when I got home from the meeting. “Hello?” I called out, praying earnestly that Emilia had found something better to entertain herself with.

I needn’t have worried. Sensing something was off even though I couldn’t feel her anywhere inside my home, I stumbled into my bedroom. The closet door was open and all my shoes were scattered helter-skelter on the floor like a hobgoblin had gone Taz on them. The bitch went through my shoe collection. Why would she do that? What was she looking for?

The clicking of her high heels echoed in my mind. Her feet were at least two sizes bigger than mine. Surely she wouldn’t steal my shoes.

Eyeing the pile of discarded pairs, I searched for my favorite Dolce and Gabbanas. The black ones with the studs and ribbons. The ones Emilia had repeatedly asked to borrow back in the summer. Back when she was planning to seduce Lucifer away from me. She was such a copycat.

“I don’t believe it.” Cain and Abel had crawled out from under my bed and were now sitting on top of it. “She stole my favorite pair of shoes.”

The cats lowered their eyelids to half-mast in what I took to be sympathy. “Curse you, Emilia,” I said, looking up at the ceiling. “I hope you get bunions the size of Simon Cowell’s ego.”

Curses
. I slapped my hand over my mouth.
I had just cursed
. Leave it to my sister to push my buttons and get me to fail at my oath. Rubbing my forehead to stave off a headache, I chastised myself and re-swore my oath. No magic of any kind!

Curses…curses…

Oh, hell in a handbag. Kicking shoes out of the way, I shuffled purses, shoe boxes and jewelry aside to reach the secret hiding place in the back of my closet. Sure enough, my sister, the bloodhound, had discovered the very thing I didn’t want her to get her hands on. Besides the D&Gs.

She’d stolen my spell book.

I could easily envision Emilia sitting in her favorite recliner with a glass of wine and a pad of sticky notes, marking all the spells she wanted to try, giggling like a possessed woman.

How long before she found the best spell of all?

I flopped on my bed between the cats, and pulled my pillow over my face.

The Atomic Sister Slave spell was one of my favorites, even though I’d never used it. Keisha had added the touch of voodoo to up the potency. That’s why we’d named it Atomic. Just having the wicked incantation gave me the feeling of superiority to Emilia. No matter how she taunted me, no matter how many of my boyfriends she stole, I always knew that one verse of the wicked spell and she’d be my slave. Power, my friends. Deep, satisfying power.

But now that power was in her hands. The moment she found that spell, my freedom would be over. I’d be begging her to let me be her slave. I’d offer to handwash her delicates, polish her pentacles and tell her how beautiful she was.

Yeesh
. So not going there.

Fear is an energizing emotion. I bolted off the bed, rummaged through my closet again and finally found what I was looking for—my power crystals, karma circle necklace, and several gremlin statues I’d used as domain guardians years before. In the deep recesses of the far corner, I came across a Do Not Disturb sign that read Go Away instead.
What the hell
. I pulled that out too.

When my doorbell rang ten minutes later, I had the crystals washed and set in the four points around my apartment and one in my pocket, the necklace dangling from my neck and the gremlins in place over every entrance. Busybodies, unwanted visitors and evil sisters beware. It wasn’t magic; magic was a slippery slope, which was why I had sworn it off lock, stock, and devil. The warding of my apartment and myself was preventative self-care.

Throwing the door open, I found Adam leaning against the frame with a sly smile on his face. His arms bulged under the sleeves of his gray T-shirt and his jeans sported a silver belt buckle with the Chinese ideogram
Fu
.

Good Fortune. Yes-sir-ree. Good fortune was exactly what I needed.

As I shut the door behind me, I hung the Go Away sign on the doorknob as a finishing touch.

Chapter Eight: Fake Snakes

Since my apartment was such a disaster, I’d decided to entertain Adam on the roof of my building. I avoided lighting a fire in the fire pit, lest it act as a beacon to any supernatural sources out and about. Instead, Adam and I laid low, staring at the stars and eating spoonfuls of Sin City Chocolate from a bucket he had toted up to the roof in a classic fireman’s hold.

“The guys at the station are throwing a Halloween party Saturday night,” he said, twirling the spoon between his fingers and kicking back on the lounge chair next to mine. “A costume party. I thought maybe, if you wanted to, we could go together.” He snuck a look at me. “As a couple.”

Pausing my spoon halfway to my mouth, I thought of Lucifer and his warning. There was no way I was letting him scare me off my growing relationship with Adam. Besides, I needed something to take my mind off Emilia and Lucifer and my rotten track record with men. Having grown up in Eden, most of the male population knew about my love life—a lot of them had helped me earn my ribbons before I got desperate enough to hook up with Lucifer. I had finally run out of available, worthwhile men. Next stop was online dating. Yeesh.

But then there was Adam. “I
love
costume parties.” I finished licking the ice cream off my spoon. “Especially Halloween ones. What famous couple should we go as?”

“I was thinking…” He checked out the stars before glancing back at me. “Adam and Eve. You know, since I’m Adam and your great-great-however many greats-grandmother was Evie, and we do live in Eden…”

I let him trail off, watching his sudden shyness as he searched my face in earnest for a response. He was so darn cute, I could have kissed him.

Having never done cute before, I found it charming. And sexy as hell. “And what, dear Adam, will we wear?” I teased. “Fig leaves?”

He chuckled. “We never wore fig leaves.” Pulling up short, the smile fell from his face. “I mean, um, never mind. Fig-leaf costumes will work, or we can pretend it’s after The Fall and wear animal skins. Fakes, of course,” he added.

“Of course,” I said, conjuring up images of the two of us. Mostly naked images. Heat rose in my face and I glanced at the moon to make sure it hadn’t suddenly grown full. Nope, it was still the quarter moon I’d noticed earlier. After clearing my throat a touch too loudly, I swallowed another spoonful of ice cream. “And we need a serpent—fake, of course—and an apple.”

Tossing his spoon into the bucket, Adam pulled me beside him on the lounge chair and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. His earlier hesitation evaporated and he brought his lips to mine in a slow, soft, brush of skin to skin. There was nothing demanding, just inviting.

Welcoming the feel of him, I returned his kiss. His lips were cool from the ice cream and he smelled like chocolate. As we did a slow perusal of each other’s lips, the initial coolness of his turned hot. Taking my cue from him, I chased his tongue with mine, advancing and retreating. One of his hands gripped the back of my neck and the game of cat and mouse ended.

My stomach fluttered like a manic butterfly and my thighs tensed with lust. I held him by the shoulders and pushed the length of my body against his. He broke the kiss, out of breath and staring at my lips. “You are going to make one hell of an Eve, Amy.”

If he only knew. I teased his lips again with mine, enjoying their soft, inviting pressure. “And change the history of the world while I’m at it.”

Pulling his head back an inch, he peered into my eyes. “Huh?”

I waved the spoon, still in my hand, in dismissal. “Never mind.” Cuddling into his chest, I let myself once again enjoy the mental image of him in nothing but a fig leaf. “You are going to make one heck of an Adam, Adam.”

We giggled together, coconspirators.