Page 18 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

“She left because her husband, King Fionn, was unfaithful,” Soheila replied. “He betrayed her with a human girl.”

“Is that why she hates humans?” I asked.

“Perhaps,” Soheila answered. “Although the first thing she did on arrival here was to take a human lover. I believe she has stayed here to taunt Fionn with her own affairs. But nowshe has to choose between never being able to return and returning forever.”

“As will we all,” Ike said.

I stared at him, startled. Ike seemed such a fixture of Fairwick. Would he really consider going? And what about all the other supernatural creatures at the college and in the town? Liz had once told me that about 30 percent of the town, and 40 percent of the faculty, were otherworlders. What would the town and college be like without them?

“We must find a way to keep the door open,” I said, looking from Ike to Soheila to Diana and finally to Liz. “Did you really mean what you said about me having a spark?”

“Yes,” Liz said firmly. “Although your magic is erratic, you possess a great deal of it. In addition to your fey ancestry, you come from a line of powerful witches. We could train you.”

“Can I join this spell circle you’re calling?” I asked.

Unsure, Liz looked toward Ike.

“I think Brock would want Callie to be there,” he said in response. “The Norns are arriving tomorrow. We can hold the circle at our house and they can help.”

“We’ll work together to bring Brock back,” Liz said, “and find a way to keep the door open.”

Ike held out his hand and Liz took it. Liz’s elegant, manicured hand seemed to disappear in Ike’s broad calloused palm. Looking at the two of them I understood something about Fairwick I had never before fully appreciated. It had been founded as a place where fey and human could live together, but it was more than a neutral Switzerland between the warring factions of witch versus fey, human versus otherworlder. The conjunction of fey and human was precisely what made Fairwick strong. Without the fey, Fairwick would be a pale shadow of what it was now. As I watched Ike andhis two companions lift Brock up and carry him to a red pickup truck with the Valhalla Landscaping logo on its side, I swore to myself that I would find a way to keep the door between the worlds open.

Liz, Soheila, and Diana left soon after the Norsemen did to make arrangements for the spell circle. I asked again if I could help but they all insisted what I needed most was rest. I suspected they wanted to explain the volatility of my magical power to the members of the circle without my presence. I watched them leave the shelter of my front porch, wondering who belonged to the spell circle. Was it just witches? Or witches and fey? Well, I’d find out soon enough. I turned and went inside my house—my big, empty house.

I’d been doing a pretty good job this summer of not feeling too lonely. In the last two months I’d joined a yoga class, a book club, and a gardening circle. There was even a craft circle that Diana had convinced me to join though, as I kept explaining to her, I didn’t practice any crafts. I’d also been working to make my house more homey. But right now, with the clatter of rain echoing through it, it felt larger and emptier than ever. I stood in my foyer and listened to the echoes and wondered, not for the first time, what had possessed me to buy this huge, rambling old Victorian.

A flicker of colored light on the floor drew my attention to the stained-glass fanlight above the door.Oh yeah, he’swhat possessed me. The face in the fanlight was that of a beautiful young man. The first time I’d glimpsed it I had recognized the face of my fairytale prince, half-remembered from childhood dreams. I’d thought I made him up as a means of coping with my parents’ deaths. But I hadn’t. He was my incubus.

Huh, I thought,what if I had never moved here…?

The thought was interrupted by a plaintive squeak. I looked down and saw a small gray mouse sitting at my feet. I knelt down and held out my hand. He hopped on, his little body trembling.

“Hey, little guy, did the thunder scare you? Or are you worried about Brock?”

Ralph had started life as an iron doorstop forged by Brock with a spark from Muspelheim. He’d come to life during my first attempt to exorcise the incubus. I’d learned over the winter that not only could he understand me, he could also type messages on my laptop. I took him into the library now, explaining as we went the events of the day, ending with what had happened to Brock, thinking he might want to type a message for me on the laptop now. Instead he scurried up onto the bookshelves and disappeared behind them. A moment later a book fell to the floor—The Mouse and the Motorcycleby Beverly Cleary. I’d named Ralph for the motorcycle-riding mouse in the book and it had become his favorite since I’d first read it to him a few months ago. Apparently he wanted me to read it to him again. It was, I thought as I settled into the Morris chair by the fireplace and opened the book while Ralph curled up on the hearth, the one thing I could do that wouldn’t cause more trouble.

The rain lasted all that day and into the night, flinging sheets of water on the windows and pounding on the roof, a clamorous reminder of Lorelei’s rage. It was especially loud in my bedroom, where the ceiling had recently been raised to add a skylight. Brock had thought it would be good to let more light into the room.

“People around here sometimes get depressed in the winter when they don’t get enough light,” he’d told me.

Instead of light, though, the skylight now afforded me a view of murk-green sky the color of Lorelei’s eyes. In spite of how tired I was, I lay awake for a long time, twisting back and forth so often that my newly knit spine felt like a wrung-out dish towel, listening to the rain, hearing in its mournful sough and sigh a thousand recriminations for all my mistakes. I’d led the undines into the Borderlands and nearly gotten them killed, Ihadgotten Brock killed, I’d used a spell in Faerie, I’d had sex with Liam…

Twice!

True, women hooked up with their exes all the time, but most ex-boyfriends weren’t incubi. What had I been thinking? I’d taken one look at his sad eyes and forgiven him all the lies he’d told me, brushed my face against the rough stubble on his cheek, and shed my panties…

As he knew I would.

Each detail of his physical manifestation—the stubble on his cheeks, the way his arm muscles strained against the weight of the manacles I’d clamped on him, even the scars they left—all were calculated to make me feel sorry for him. How could I have forgotten that he was an incorporeal being? Those scars on his wrists weren’t real. He’d played on my sympathies just as he’d tweaked certain other attributes to play on my desires.

At the thought of those other attributes I felt a twinge low in my belly and between my legs. I squirmed at the memory of him above me, teasing me, and then…finally entering me.

I moaned at the memory and clamped my thighs together, but the pressure of my flesh only made me recallhisflesh.

For months I’ve done nothing but remember the exact contours of your body outside and in, he’d said.

How long would I remember the exact contours ofhisbody inside me?

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