Page 74 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

“Callie, it’s me. Are you all right? I saw you running from the woods and came to see if you were okay. You looked frightened.”

I edged past Duncan to the porch railing and looked up into the sky. A large branch had fallen at the edge of the woods.

“I thought I heard something in the trees,” I said warily. “For all I knew it was you, come to finish what you started and claw out my other eye.”

Duncan blanched. “Callie, I’m sorry. I can explain…”

“Really?” I leaned against the porch railing and crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m waiting.”

“That spell you cast summoned a creature—some kind of imp with bat wings and claws. It flew between us so quickly I couldn’t stop it, but when it struck you I pulled it away from you and then chased it into the woods.”

I snorted. “I don’t believe that for a minute. I was holding your hand. When I turned…” I faltered. I had turned and the slash of claws had blinded me. I’d assumed it was Duncan—or Duncan turned into a clawed beast—but really I hadn’t seen the thing that had attacked me. “If that was true, why didn’t you come back?”

“I followed it into the woods. I didn’t want it to come back to hurt you. I chased it all night and finally cornered it, but it lashed out at me just as it did at you. This is what I got for my trouble.” He took a tentative step closer to me and rolled up his shirtsleeve. Five deep gashes ran from elbow to wrist.

“You could have done that to yourself,” I said.

“Really?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow. “Could I have done this?” He turned, ripping off his shirt to expose his back, which was raked with claw marks. I reached out to touch one and he winced.

“You weren’t at the meeting today,” I said.

“How could I go with these marks on me?” he asked, turning to face me. He was close, his bare chest radiating heat across the few inches that separated us. I felt a tug, like static electricity or centripetal force, pulling me toward him. My heart, newly bound to the door, beat erratically. Were heart palpitations part of the warning I hadn’t read?

“Ann Chase told me you asked her to recommend you as my tutor. She thinks you’re the incubus.”

“Is that who you think I am?” he asked, lifting his hand to my cheek and gently tracing the scratches over my eye with his fingertips. I shivered at his touch, suddenly aware of how cold and wet I was. “Is that who you want me to be?”

“I…I don’t know,” I said, my voice trembling. “I thought I might love him. I thought if I saw him once more…as he really is…then I’d know.”

There was a flicker in Duncan azure eyes, a shadow that swam in and out of my vision as Duncan lowered his head and pressed his mouth against my mouth. The instant his lips were on mine the shadow resolved into the shadow that had moved through the trees and I felt a jolt of fear. I tried to pull away but he wrapped his arms around me and held me tight, his lips locked on mine, his tongue probing my mouth, his bare chest pressing me up against the porch railing. But now instead of warmth rising off him, I felt cold. Pure ice-water cold. I wasn’t sure if Duncan was the incubus but I was sure of one thing: he feltwrong. I summoned the sizzle of energy I’d felt last night when I released my wards, wriggled my hands between our bodies, andpushed.

Duncan flew across the porch and hit the front door so hard the doorbell chimed and the glass fanlight shook in its frame and cracked. A sliver of green glass plummeted straight down onto Duncan’s bare chest and lodged there like a miniature dart. Duncan winced and brushed it away, streaking blood across his chest. He wiped the blood on his pants and got to his feet, his eyes locked on mine.

“I’m getting a little tired,” he said, biting off each word as he moved toward me, “of these mixed signals.”

“I don’t think there was anything mixed in that last signal the lady sent you.”

The voice, low and ominous, came from behind me. I turned around and found Bill, hands clenched into fists, glaring at Duncan.

“This is between Callie and me,” Duncan said. “I don’t think we need the handyman to weigh in.”

I moved closer to Bill and put my hand on his arm. “Bill’s right. I think you should leave.”

Duncan narrowed his eyes at Bill, clearly assessing the threat he represented. The muscles in Bill’s forearm clenched under my fingers, turning hard as steel. I could practically smell the testosterone in the air. Any second now the two men would fly at each other. I stepped between them and felt the hair on the back of my neck rise. “If the two of you are going to fight over me like two dogs fighting over a bone, I’m going to talk to you like dogs. Go home, Duncan. You stay, Bill.”

Duncan lifted one corner of his mouth in a half smile–half snarl and walked past us, getting close enough to brush against Bill’s arm. I felt Bill tense, but he remained still. We both turned, though, to watch Duncan walk down the stairs. When he got to the bottom he looked over his shoulder at me. “Remember that this was your choice, Callie.” Then he walked across the street to the Hart Brake Inn.

It wasn’t until he was halfway across the street that I felt a release of the tension in the air and then I nearly collapsed. If Bill hadn’t steadied me with his arm, I’d have slumped to the floor. “Let’s get you inside,” he said, helping me toward the door.

“Okay,” I said, leaning against him and letting him practically carry me over the threshold. I felt weak. It wasn’t just the release of tension; it had something to do with the power I’d used pushing Duncan away. “Thank you for coming to my defense.”

“You looked like you were doing a pretty good job yourself,”he said. “I’d have stepped in sooner, only I wasn’t sure you wanted me to.”

“You were watching us?”

Bill pointed up. At first I thought he was pointing at the fanlight, which I saw to my dismay was indeed cracked. A splinter had come loose from the stained glass eye of the young man, making it look as if a single tear was falling from his eye. “I was on the porch roof,” Bill explained when he saw me staring at the fanlight. “I didn’t mean to listen in, but I couldn’t help hearing…I heard you say you thought you loved someone.”

“Oh, that,” I said. “I thought Duncan Laird was someone else…” I looked up at Bill. “I’ve been pretty confused lately. I seem to keep making mistakes…”

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