Melissa drove to the beach house, an hour away. She had rented it for the summer, with the option to buy if things worked out for her here. And it looked as if they were about to work out Big-Time.
A little voice whispered misgivings - it wasn't like her to experience such intense feelings for a man she'd just met. It was more than unlike her; it was unprecedented. And she had the niggling feeling there was something more going on with Alex than was apparent - something hidden beneath the surface. Something... unnatural.
Her body's reactions to him puzzled her - simultaneous chills and heat, fire and ice, assaulted her at once. She was curious, wary, and attracted.
And she knew better than to feel any of those things. The man was her employer! She had to get her head straight. She had to get to the beach.
She loved the sea, the shore. The East Coast had always beckoned her, touched something deep inside her, and been her home.
The Pacific had a different energy to it. A darker, older feel. As well it should. The sun set here. It rose in the east. The two seas were opposites and yet they were reflections of the same cosmic whole, the great pouring sea of death and rebirth.
She left her VW Bug in the driveway and hurried into the house she was quickly coming to love, peeling off her clothes on the way through. Then she stepped into the shower to rinse away the day's stress and the distinct weight of negative energy she felt clinging to her. She scrubbed it away, along with her makeup, her hair spray, and the frustration of coming face-to-face with the stereotypes that drove her nuts; let all of that baggage swirl down the drain.
When she stepped out again she felt measurably lighter. She pulled on a loose-fitting cotton kaftan of soothing turquoise, and nothing else. Then she padded barefoot through the small house and out the sliding doors in back. There was a natural stone shelf there, almost like a homegrown patio, and at its edge, steps led down to a tiny section of private beach. The beach house was modest. It was the beach that made the place valuable - far more than she could have afforded for much longer, had it not been for this new job.
The strip of beach was secluded, with the house at its back, groups of towering boulders flanking it, and the sea creating its fourth border. That sandy enclave had become her haven, her refuge, and her temple.
Here she could work magic. And she had no need for special effects.
Alex looked at the address he'd copied down, then up at the beach house. The numbers matched. He had the right place.
He was fascinated by the woman, the Witch. Mesmerized, maybe. He couldn't get her off his mind after she left, and though he'd fought the demanding urge for a while - a token fight, really - he'd ended up giving in and driving out here. He didn't feel as if he had much choice in the matter. And it wasn't just due to the insane events of the past few weeks of his life, either. There was something about her that lured him, pulled him, like gravity.
She lived on the beach. It seemed fitting. He thought of legends of sirens luring sailors to their doom and wondered if this was the same sort of pull those sailors felt.
He climbed the shallow landscaped steps to the front door and knocked. Then he waited, but there was no answer. A car was in the driveway, but no one seemed to be in the house.
And then the wind picked up and he heard it: a woman's voice, lifted in an enchanting, mesmerizing, haunting song and coming from the beach around back. He followed the sound, picking up the words as he went around the beach house.
"Come, Mother Ocean; come, Lady Night; come, Warrior Woman; come, bring your might."
He found the steps in the back and stared down at the woman on the beach below. And that thing, that powerful attraction he'd felt before, washed over him again like an ocean wave washing over the shore. For a moment, he couldn't breathe. He could only stand there, looking on, wondering what it was about her that sent his head spinning and tied his stomach in knots.
She stood in the sand, arms raised high above her head, a flowing blue dress dancing around her legs in the ocean breeze. There was a small fire crackling in front of her, its light melding with the orange glow of the sun, as it set over the ocean, to paint her body and hair in brushstrokes of bronze and yellow and red.
"Come, Moonlight Maiden; come, Graveyard Crone; come, Dark Enchantress, Goddess of the Foam."
Her voice seemed to grow hypnotic, more mystical with every verse she sang. As the sun sank over the sea and darkness gathered like a blanket, surrounding the firelight and the woman in its center, he noticed for the first time other tiny lights - candles, planted in the sand. Four of them, one just ahead of her, toward the sea, one to either side of her, and one behind her. And there was something on the sand in between them, leading from one dancing candle to the next in a gentle arc so that a circle was formed. As he was drawn ever closer, he squinted. Seashells. The circle was made of seashells.
"Come to thy priestess; come, fierce and strong; come, live within me; come, we are one!"
The words wound themselves around his mind. The final three kept echoing in an ever-fading whisper, and he found himself unsure whether it was real or some trick of the night. His knees bent, without his permission, and he sank into the sand, watching her in silence. The sun breathed its last and vanished beneath the waves at the same moment he sank down.
Slowly, she lowered her arms. Her hair danced in the wind that was suddenly more powerful than before. She stood for a long time, facing the sea, meditating or pondering in silence. Sometimes, he thought he saw her lips moving, as if she were speaking to someone. Time ticked by, but he didn't make a sound. He couldn't bring himself to interrupt, wasn't even certain he would be able to if he tried. What she was doing seemed... sacred. And he got the feeling he was witnessing one of the mysteries he had come here hoping to solve. So he watched as she moved around the circle, wafting incense smoke, tossing something - a guttering stone, he thought - into the sea. Finally, she straightened and rifted her arms again.
"Thank you, my lady. Merry meet and merry part. With me always, in my heart. Hail and farewell."
He could see something leave her body, perhaps just tension or tautness. Or maybe something more. The glow of the firelight seemed to dim just a little, but that could have been his imagination. She walked forward then, to one of the four candles, held her arms out wide, and slowly drew them together, as if closing a pair of curtains. She said something too softly for him to hear as she snuffed the flame, stood still for a moment, then repeated the action at the next candle, and then the next, and the last. Then she walked around the circle of seashells with her palm flat toward the sand, and finally she moved out into the foamy water that washed gently up onto the shore, knelt there, and pressed her palms into the wet sand. A wave rolled in, washing up to her elbows, soaking the dress where she knelt. Yet she remained until it seemed she had finished whatever it was she was doing. Rising, she brushed the sand away from her hands and her dress, turned, and looked him straight in the eye.
"Thank you for not interrupting."
He blinked, surprised. "You knew I was here the whole time," he said, and it wasn't really a question. He had a feeling this woman was as aware of him as he was of her.
She smiled. The firelight on her face did something to her eyes. She'd been beautiful to him when he'd seen her at the studio today. Beautiful, though it made no sense. It wasn't on the surface, certainly not when she'd stood flanked by two of the most glamorous beauties in the business, wearing a rather conservative skirt and blazer, her hair in a bun, her face lightly made up. His sense of her beauty had been based on something inside her, something not seen.
Now, it was more. Now, like this, she was stunning. Inside and out.
"You can come out by the fire, if you like. I've already taken up the circle." As she spoke, she walked back toward the fire. "Grab those two folding chairs and bring them along, will you?"
He glanced to his left, saw two beach chairs sitting there. He picked them up and carried them with him across the sand to where she waited, setting them near the fire.
She sat down, and he did the same. He couldn't seem to stop looking at her, trying to nail what it was that drew him. There was something wildly attractive about her. Forbidden and natural. Her eyebrows were fuller than most women wore them these days, and her hair - God, her hair was everywhere. Untamed, long and wavy, its color a lustrous honey-tinted brown that glowed bronze in the firelight. Her feet were bare, coated in damp sand. Her breasts were heavy and unbound underneath the loose, flowing dress she wore. He liked that best of all. The weight of them. He wanted to touch, to feel.
"I'm surprised to see you here," she said. Was she nervous? She should be. He didn't know what the hell this was, but it made him nervous, too.
"I told you I'd see you later. I always say what I mean." He reached up, impulsively, to brush a bit of sand from her cheek. But the moment his fingers touched her skin, she stiffened and pulled back, her brows drawing together in a frown.
"I'm sorry." He drew his hand away, held it in midair.
She only blinked, looking him over. "It's not you - it's... Stand up a second, Alex."
He was puzzled, but he rose. She did, too, going closer to the fire and bending to pick up a large shell with some dried leaves inside. She took a flaming stick from the fire and touched it to the leaves. They blazed a little. She blew gently until the flames died, and smoke billowed. Then she moved toward him, knelt in front of him, and blew the smoke at his legs and feet.
Alex closed his eyes in a mingling chaos of anguish and desire. God, she was killing him.
She moved behind him, still blowing. Then higher, her breaths pushing smoke toward his thighs and buttocks. She came around to the front of him again, blowing gently at his groin.
"Jesus," he muttered, and his hands twitched, wanting to bury themselves in her hair. He fought the urge and hoped she didn't notice how hard he was getting, but hell, he was only human, and there was an earthy wild woman kneeling in front of him blowing on his crotch.
She stood, still moving around him, still blowing gently, wafting smoke over his belly and chest, his back and sides, his arms and shoulders, his neck, face, and head.
When she finished, she blew a little smoke at his chair and the area where he'd been sitting. "Better?" she asked.
He looked down at himself, frowning. When he managed to look past the fact that he was more turned on than he'd been in a decade, he realized he felt... different. As if he'd just stepped out of the shower. And the dull ache that had been knotting his lower back all day was gone. "Yeah," he said. "I do feel better."
"You should. You were practically reeking with negative energy."
"Yeah?" He sniffed his shirtsleeve. "And now I'm reeking of... ?"
"Sage." She smiled at him, sitting down in her chair, nodding for him to do the same. "Who have you been hanging around with lately, anyway?"
"What do you mean?"
She shrugged. "Well, I'd hate to think all that darkness in your aura was coming from you. It couldn't, or I wouldn't be so - " She bit her lip, stopped herself. "You must be picking it up somewhere else."
"You wouldn't be so... ?" He searched her eyes and wondered which one of them was going to be the first to admit that they were each sitting here thinking about ripping the other's clothes off.
She averted her gaze. "Nothing. I just... nothing."
He licked his lips. No, he wouldn't bring it up. Not just yet, he decided. "Could it be the actresses?"
"They're nasty, self-centered, and vain, but I don't think they're malicious. This feels... dark."
He shrugged, averting his eyes, ignoring the warning bells going off in his mind. He'd been feeling the same way himself for weeks now. As if there was some dark shadow clinging to him like a parasite. He was tired, moody, didn't feel well. He kept thinking it might be the house. But damn, he didn't want it to be the house.
Time to change the subject. "So what were you doing when I arrived? Magic?"
"Not really."
It was not the specific answer he would have liked. "Listen, you have the job. This isn't a test. But I want to know more."
"About what I was doing when you arrived?"
He held her eyes. "For starters." She just looked at him, waiting, as if she knew he wasn't being honest.
"All right," he admitted. "What I really want is the truth. What really goes on?"
Her brows rose. He decided he liked them. You couldn't tell what a woman was thinking when her eyebrows had been reduced to a pair of plucked, waxed, colored, and extremely thin arches. Hers were expressive. Now they were expressing - what? Surprise?
"What really goes on?" she repeated.
"Not the kinds of things you would normally reveal to an outsider. I want the truth. I want to know what it's really like. Ritual magic. Covens. Spells. Curses. All of it."
She lowered her eyes. "I'm not sure you have the stomach for it, Alex."
His stomach knotted up when her lips formed his name and her voice spoke it. He tried to shake off the feeling. What he was asking her was important. More important than she could know. "I have the stomach for anything you can dish out."
She tipped her head to one side, meeting his eyes once again. Hers glittered with something close to anger. "Are you sure? We're talking about some pretty heavy stuff here. Bloodletting. Ritual orgies. Animal sacrifice. The Scourge."
He held her eyes, his own unflinching. "I can handle it."
She pursed her lips and turned her head away. "We don't do any of that stuff, Alex. My God, where do you get those ideas? This is a spiritual belief system, not a cult." Lowering her head, she shook it slowly. "You created the show - are you telling me you didn't do any research at all?"
"Of course I did. I just - lately I've learned some things that contradict what I thought I knew."
"From whom?"
He shook his head. He wasn't going there, not with her.
"Tell you what," she said. "I'll loan you a book or two, so you can read up on the subject. And then we'll talk some more. All right?"
She's lying.
He frowned, ignoring that whisper in his mind. "You're going to give me one of those light, fluffy, 'harm none' books, aren't you?"
"Harm none is one of the core values of the Craft, Alex."
"So you all keep telling me."
"We all?" she asked. Then she frowned. "You sound as if you've been doing some digging on your own."
He nodded, getting to his feet, frustrated and angry. Even more angry that he didn't want to leave this spot, this woman. He wanted to stay. For her, not the information he sought. "I really hoped you'd be different. Willing to tell me the truth," he said. "I'm disappointed that you're only giving me the same party line as the rest of the so-called Witches in town."
"So-called?" She got up as well. "Maybe if you told me just what it is you're looking for?"
He sighed, shaking his head. "Look, Melissa, not every character in this show is a do-gooder. I mean, we need opposing forces. Villains. The polar opposite of good Witches who play around with white light and moonbeams."
She stood very still, pinning him to the spot with her eyes. "Alex, don't mess with the dark stuff. You don't want that kind of energy clinging to you, trust me on this." Then she frowned. "You've already been messing with it, haven't you? That's where all that negative energy came from."
He held her gaze. Eyes like black velvet, deep and dark and potent. "Don't be so dramatic. It's not as if any of this is for real."
She closed her eyes as if praying for patience. "It's for real." Her words emerged as a whisper, one that sent shivers of reaction creeping up his spine, into his nape, tingling along his scalp. But not so much as when she opened her eyes again and they locked onto his, held them.
Something moved between them. Some energy he couldn't have put a name to even if he'd tried. It tagged him, bodily, so much so that he swayed forward. He gripped her upper arms, and she tipped her face up. And then he lowered his head to kiss her.
She turned her face away, so his mouth only grazed her cheek.
"I don't... I can't..." She drew a breath. "Go, please," she whispered.
God, the woman pulled him in like gravity. What the hell was that? Since when did he hire a woman he knew nothing about and proceed to make a move on her?
He turned and hurried back up the stone steps, around the little beach house, and to his car. He would get his answers, just apparently not from her.
He drove back to the gloomy mansion that belonged to him, pulled into the driveway, and sat there for a long moment, just staring up at the huge granite stones of the place, thinking about the events of the past several weeks, as if thinking about them, analyzing them, would cause them to make sense. They didn't. They hadn't then, and they wouldn't now.
And now there was one more inexplicable event unfolding in his life. An attraction to a woman he'd just met that felt like the most powerful force in the entire universe. God, maybe he needed therapy.