Page 35 of Spellbound
“Another bad boy who breaks the law.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“He may even have been a little worse. What was his name again?”
“Joe was what they called him,” Janet said.
“Joe was arrested by the revenuers and was on the chain gang. The authorities might have done something similar to you for ignoring all those posted signs and climbing up that waterfall.”
“Oh, I think the chain gang is a stretch.”
“Maybe nowadays. Maybe not so much back then. After all, making a little shine for your own consumption doesn’t seem all that bad. And at least we know he must have had some magic in him too.”
“How do you figure that?”
I began numbering them off on my fingers. “He saw spirits. He did healing. He managed to hide his son in the woods with the agents all around them. And he faced down that demon in the shed.”
“Demon? That’s a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?”
“Is it? It called your great grandmother’s name and walked around up in the loft crying. It was trying to lure the girls up there with it, and there were those long fingernails…sounds like it could have been a demon to me.”
Asher stood up. “Okay, that’s it, I’m done. I know I started this, but I didn’t think it through. Turns out I don’t like ghost stories after all.”
I reached for his hand to kiss his knuckles. “I’ll protect you.”
I saw his grandmother’s eyes widen a bit and she gave me an interested look. “But as much as I hate to eat and run, Asher and I do have some things to talk about, so I think we’ll go back to my place for a while.” I stood up and held out a hand to him. “Ash,” I said, “Are you ready?”
He bent down and kissed his gran on the cheek and said goodnight. We waited until she went in and locked the door behind her, and then I took his hand to walk him out to my truck.
“Maybe I should stay at the cottage tonight. I need to do a little work on my paper, and it’ll be quiet tonight.”
“Well, you could. If you’re not scared from those ghost stories.”
“On second thought…”
“Good. You’re going with me. Like I told your grandmother, I have a few things to talk to you about. In fact, I’ll go in and grab your laptop. We need to talk about that.”
“About my laptop? What does that have to do with anything?”
We’d reached the truck by then, so I opened the passenger door and picked him up to put him inside because he still couldn’t manage it with that leg. He blushed like he always did, and I leaned over to make sure his seat belt was buckled. And that’s when he angled his chin up, closed his eyes and puckered his lips, asking me to kiss him again. Of course, I did. I gave him a hot, eager kiss that succeeded in making me hard as a rock by the time I was done. Was this ever going to end? I wasn’t under any kind of spell, so this was all me. I’d meant to distract him from his question, but it had backfired a little. I stepped back and took a deep breath, as if that would do any good. Then I walked around to the front of the truck and got in.
As I turned on the ignition, the lights came on, and I saw a white mist rise up right in front of the truck. It looked like fog or smoke, but it clung together like a single entity, and as soon as the lights hit it, it began drifting toward the woods, out to the trees where it joined the mists that were rising there like burial clothes. Then it moved away so fast I wondered for a moment if I’d imagined it. Rosalyn would say it was only fog or a light mist coming off the creek. And maybe it was.
I said a quick protection spell anyway before I put the truck in gear and pulled back around to the cottage.
“Stay here and I’ll go get your bag,” I told him, and he nodded. As an afterthought, I said, “Lock the doors.” I left him looking puzzled and went inside to grab his bag and a change of clothes for him. Too bad he’d unpacked here, because I had a feeling that had been a big waste of time. Or it would be if I had anything to say about it.
Once we got settled back at my place with the fire going, and a glass of wine on the table in front of us, I had him turn on his laptop.
He gave me a puzzled look and said, “Okay, now what?”
“When you were sleeping, after we talked earlier…”
“Yeah?”
“I looked through your bag to see your notes.”
His lips tightened. “Why?”
