Pretty Witches All in a Row (21 page)

“Oh right, you had to investigate me too.  What else did you find out?”  Her eyes narrowed as she snapped on the coffeemaker and turned to lean against the counter, facing him.

“Probably a little more than you’d tell a fella on the first date.” 

“Is that what this is?  Our first date?”  A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

“First date?  Hell no, we’re way past that… I’d say we’re up to… at least the fourth date.”  He pretended to count on his fingers. 

“That far huh?  There must have been some interesting information in those files about me.”

“Nothing bad,” he assured her quickly.  “A lot of it’s public record stuff, where you were born, siblings, your marriage.”

She winced at that last.  “Don’t remind me, I’ve been trying to forget about him for the better part of the last decade.” 

“That bad, huh?”

“Not the most fun year of my life, no.  You were married before too, right?  To Veronica’s mother at least.”

“Yep, I was married for twelve years,” he nodded.

“Wow, twelve years… what happened?”  She came to join him at the kitchen table. 

“I wish I knew,” Nick admitted soberly.  “For years I thought things were fine and then all of a sudden she couldn’t get away fast enough.  She reached some limit and couldn’t take anymore.  That was it, no counseling, no trying to work things out, she moved out and we’ve barely seen her since.”

“That must have been rough on your daughter.”

“She likes to pretend it wasn’t that big of a deal, but I know it hurt her like hell.  She’s a tough cookie, but no one’s that tough all the time.”  He was silent, lost to his thoughts for a moment before he shook himself out of it.  “But we’re fine, V and I, we make a great team.  I have absolutely no complaints where she’s concerned.”

“You’re lucky to have each other,” Annaliese agreed, reaching out to cover his hand with hers. 

Nick stared at their joined hands for a moment, his thumb moving lightly to stroke the back of her thumb.  “That’s me; lady luck is my patron saint.  I think she’s definitely shining down on me tonight.  Though you might not think so by the time I make you go through all of this stuff.”  He patted the box.  “Why don’t you get started going through her magic book and I’ll get our coffee ready.”

Annaliese gave his hand a brief squeeze and let go with a nod.  “You got it.” 

Rising from the table, Nick puttered through her kitchen, looking for and finding coffee mugs, spoons, sugar and creamer, even helping himself to a package of Nutter Butters as she paged through the book.  He watched her mix her coffee, noting that she liked it very sweet and light. 

Annaliese absently grabbed a cookie and munched as she pored over the book.  “I’m not seeing anything that looks like what we saw in there at all.” 

“What kinds of things are in there?” he asked, doing his best to read the curvy handwriting upside down.

“Oh the usual, spells for success, for a peaceful home, to banish debt, personal empowerment, healing spells…” 

“Oh yeah, the usual,” he replied nonchalantly.  As if any of that was usual.

Her lips twitched at his reply and she looked up from the spell book.  “You think I’m pretty crazy with all of this stuff, don’t you?”

“No, not crazy exactly…” he hedged.  “It’s a little unusual is all.  It doesn’t hurt anybody, so who am I to say whether or not any of it’s real?”

“You want me to show you something real?”  Her eyes twinkled with what could be mischief or excitement, he couldn’t decide which. 

“What’s real supposed to mean?  I’m assuming we’re not talking about you twitching your nose and your crazy Uncle Arthur appearing in his pajamas, am I right?”

Annaliese giggled at that.  “No, that wasn’t what I had in mind.  But some things can be tangible enough.  I could read the Tarot for you… no, that might not be enough to convince you….”  She tapped her finger against her lips as she considered the question.  “There’s nothing wrong with you…”

“Just what every guy dreams of hearing,” he muttered, finding that an odd thing to say.

“I meant that you’re perfectly healthy, no injuries, so I can’t work a healing spell on you.”

“You can do that?”  His brows came up.

“Yes, to some extent.  I’m not a doctor, and the best treatment for an open wound is still stitches, you should still take antibiotics for an infection, that kind of thing.  But sprains and strains, headaches, the odd rash, I can help with those.  I’ve always had a knack for it.”

“Interesting,” he replied noncommittally.  “Now I know where to come the next time I throw my back out.”

“Ooh, you’d probably do better with a massage therapist to start with.”

“Awww, massage isn’t part of your therapy?  There goes that fantasy,” Nick grinned. 

“Poor baby, you look like they just cancelled Christmas,” she laughed, patting his shoulder in sympathy.  “Anyway, the point was… there’s nothing wrong with you for me to work with.”

“Not on the outside maybe.  I wear my scars on the inside.” 

“That’s very sad.”  Her head tilted to one side as she regarded him and Nick instantly regretted saying anything of the kind, it was too close to the truth. 

He cleared his throat.  “It’s okay; I don’t need any kind of demonstration.”  Remembering his coffee, he took a deep drink. 

“I think maybe you do.”  She came to a decision and rose from the kitchen table.  “I’ll be right back.”

“Feel free to slip into something more comfortable,” Nick grinned, munching on a cookie. 

Annaliese didn’t respond, returning a minute or two later with one of the candles from the vigil.  “I don’t normally do this in front of others.  I don’t like to draw too much attention to this ability and I dislike the whole parlor trick mentality.”  She sat back down again opposite him. 

“Don’t like to do what?  Are you gonna tell me my fortune?” he smiled widely. 

“Yes, I predict that your jaw is going to hit the table in the next ten seconds,” she deadpanned, before taking a deep breath, her eyes closing for a moment before she opened them again, her gaze fixed on the limp wick of the candle. 

“What are you…?”  Nick watched her curiously, wondering what she could possible have in mind.  What was supposed to happen?  Was he supposed to believe that she could light the candle with the power of her mind?  He was about to open his mouth to say something sarcastic when she passed her fingers across the wick and a flame sprang to life, burning brightly with a steady glow.  “How did you…?”  It had to be a trick, there was no way she could have done what he’d seen.  “Those are trick candles?  They have to be…” he frowned, taking the lit candle out of her fingers. 

Annaliese watched him struggle over it with amusement.  “It’s an ordinary candle,” she insisted. 

“Bull… there’s no way…”  Nick passed his fingers through the flame, snatching them back as the searing heat registered.  “Impossible,” he decided, blowing the flame out.

“Why, because magic isn’t real?”  She cocked a single brow at him, passing her fingers across the blackened wick again, bringing it back into flame. 

“That is so cool…” he murmured, studying the lit candle again.  There had to be a trick to it though, there was no way she was doing that all on her own.  Nick blew the candle out again, holding it farther away from her.  “Can you do it without touching it?”

“Sometimes, it doesn’t always work without the direct contact,” she hedged.  “It’s much easier if I do it like I showed you.”

“And you can do it with any candle?”  He looked around the kitchen, spotting a dusty pillar candle decorated with sea shells on the window over the sink.  “Can you do it with that one?” 

“Sure, but this is the last one,” Annaliese vowed, rising from the table, she went to the sink and pulled the candle forward.  Focusing on the candle, she went through the same motion again and the candle burst forth with light. 

“Unbelievable…” Nick muttered with a shake of the head.  In the span of a few minutes she’d shaken his belief in the walls that separated fantasy from reality.  If this was possible, what else was out there that he didn’t know about? 

“It is kind of neat, isn’t it?”  She gave him a lopsided grin. 

“Have you always been able to do that?”

“Since my early teens, I’ve always had an affinity for fire, it’s my element.”

“Can all witches do stuff like that?”

“Not all witches, only those that have the talent.  Everyone’s got some measure of magical ability built into them, and with practice you can develop it into something more.  But this gift is a little unusual, at least from what people admit to when you talk to them.”

“Everyone, huh?  Does that mean you could teach me to do something like that?”

Her eyes widened at the suggestion.  “I… don’t know, maybe.  It depends on what you have to work with, your aptitude.  If you have an affinity for fire, or maybe water is your element, there are a myriad of factors that come into play.  It’s more than that though, like I said it’s not about parlor tricks.”

“What else can you do?” he asked eagerly, setting down the candle. 

Annaliese shifted from one foot to the other, “I don’t know… different things.  That’s the most visually spectacular I suppose, the rest of if it is more… subtle.”

Rose’s comments on the front steps of the shop came back to him and he couldn’t resist asking.  “Can you make people fall in love with you?”

“You tell me,” she met his gaze evenly. 

A flash of panic went through him.  “Did you… did you put some kind of whammy on me to make me fall for you?”  He didn’t want it to be true, in the worst way he didn’t want it to be true, and the look he gave her was pleading.

“Are you saying that you’re falling for me?”

“Damn it Annaliese!  Don’t screw around about this.  Please, tell me if you did something, I deserve to know.”

“No!  I didn’t, what did you call it… put the whammy on you, for chrissakes!” she practically shouted back at him.  “I don’t do that, I happen to think it’s unethical for one thing.”

Nick recoiled a little at the vehemence in her voice, wondering if he’d struck a nerve.  Had this come up for her before in the past?  “What’s the other thing?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“What?”

“You said you thought it was unethical for one thing, what’s the other thing.” 

Annaliese blew out the pillar candle and reached for her coffee cup, bringing it to the sink and pouring it out.  “I would never do that,” she said softly.  “How could you be with someone and never know if any of it was real?”  A long drawn out sigh left her lips and she shook her head.  “Relationships are hard enough without bringing that kind of doubt into it.”

Nick watched her in silence, digesting what she’d said.  “I’m sorry,” he offered finally.

“It’s alright,” she replied without turning around, rinsing out the cup and setting it in the bottom of the sink.

“No, it’s not.  I didn’t mean to insult you, it’s just… something Rose said earlier was bugging me, and I jumped to some conclusions I shouldn’t have.  I
am
sorry,” he repeated the apology. 

“What did she say to make you jump to that particular conclusion?”  Anna turned around to face him.

He waved the question away, wanting in the worst way to change the subject and get back to that easy conversation again.  “It’s not important.  Why don’t you come and sit down again, we’ll finish going over this stuff?” 

Annaliese nodded, resuming her seat.  “You said something about an inventory of her ritual room?”

“Yeah, I’ve got it here…”  Nick dug through the files for a moment until he retrieved the one he wanted.  “Here we go, this is everything that was in the room… and here is all the stuff from the altar table.”  He pointed on the print out to the right spot. 

“Okay, let’s see what we’ve got here…”  She scanned it quickly at first and then went back for a second look.  “Do we have an inventory of the stuff at Meiliyn’s place to cross reference?”

“No, not yet.  Her place was trashed.  You saw the pictures; I imagine it’ll take a while to sort it all out for the report.”

“I sort of saw the pictures; they were pretty small and just of parts of the room.”

“I know, I’m sorry about that, but I didn’t think you wanted to look at the rest of the room.”

“I don’t particularly want to, but it’s hard to get a feel for the whole scene when you’re only seeing part of it.  Take the pictures of Skye’s place for instance.  I had no idea the pentacle was inverted when I first looked at it, I had to see it in context for it to make sense.”

“That’s true,” he replied, lost in thought for a moment.  “Alright then, let’s go.”  Nick rose from the table abruptly.

“Go where?”  She blinked up at him in confusion.

“To Meiliyn’s place, to the crime scene.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, not at all, unless you don’t want to.  I could understand if you’re a little bit squeamish about it after all.”

“It’s not on my top ten ideas for how to spend the evening with a good looking guy…”

“Just
good
looking?” he fished.  The look she gave him spoke volumes, but he didn’t lose his grin.  “So what do you say?  Feel like a little bit of Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys detective work?”

“Should I be worried that you count yourself as one of the Hardy boys when you are, in point of fact, an actual detective?”  A slender brow was raised.

“Sergeant.”

“Whatever.”

* * *

They took his car, diverting to the downtown precinct to pick up a key to Meilyn’s apartment.  “At least we can turn the lights on this time, no one’s likely to notice or care that we’re in this particular apartment from outside at this hour.”

“Good, because as memory serves, she doesn’t have as many windows as Skye’s place.  Even with you here, this kind of creeps me out a little.”

“Don’t worry none darlin’, I’ll protect ya,” Nick grinned, locking the door behind them and snapping on the lights. 

“Why does that not make me feel any better?” she smirked back, moving deeper into the apartment.  “I know it’s just my nerves, but it feels really… off in here.”

“What do you mean?”  Everything felt alright to him, apart from being a little stale without any windows open or the heat circulating, it felt like… a vacant apartment.  “I don’t feel my spidey senses tingling, I’m pretty sure we’re all alone in here.” he stated with some confidence.  If there was someone lurking inside he was sure he’d be able to sense it.