The Queen of Swords: A Paranormal Tale of Undying Love (3 page)

The
woman reached for a reserve slip. “Of course, professor.”

After signing the form,
Cat hurried back to the table and slung her overstuffed satchel over her shoulder before retrieving the phone. “All right,” she agreed, a little out of breath. “I’ll come with, but only if you promise not to ditch me the minute we walk through the door.”

“Ditch
you?” Avery sounded affronted. “When have I ever done that?”

“When have
you
not
?” Cat lumbered down the library steps under the weight of her bag. “Promise, or you’re on your own.”

“Fine
. You have my word. I’ll stick to you like glue, all right?”

“All right.”

Ending the call, she picked up the pace. As she crossed the quad, she attempted a mental review of the lecture she was about to give on the history of the tarot, but her mind refused to let go of the stranger. His body might have vanished, but his essence lingered in her senses like haunting perfume. Was he the one she’d been waiting for? If so, it would explain a few things. Like her inexplicable attraction to all things Scottish and that deep-down feeling she’d had all her life that something was missing.

Chapter
2: The Cinderella Spell

Mayflower Cottage was a classic storybook Tudor with dark timbers, rustic shutters, and leaded windows. A meandering brick path led to a rose-covered front door. On the other side were beamed ceilings, wood floors, an eat-in kitchen with an Aga cooker, a cozy living room with a wood-burning stone fireplace, and two decent-sized bedrooms with their own vintage baths.

The back garden
, though on the smallish side, was charmingly landscaped with rambling beds of cottage flowers. In the center stood an enormous hawthorn tree. It being mid-May, tiny white blossoms covered the tree, making it look like an earthbound cloud.

Cat
found Mayflower Cottage so idyllic, she still had to pinch herself every time she came home at the end of the day. This evening, still smarting from the pinch, she grabbed a glass of wine from the under-counter fridge in the kitchen and headed for her altar, an old table she’d decorated with pentagrams, Celtic knots, and crescent moons.

The altar displayed the standard objects in a white witch’s arsenal: a pair of candles, figures of the god and goddess, a wand, a bowl filled with salt, an incense burner, and a ritual knife, bell, and cauldron. To these,
she’d added the rosary from her First Communion, a small crystal ball, assorted power stones, the velvet sack containing her runes, and the tarot deck she used most often. Just above, a wall-mounted shelf held her grimoire and other reference books, along with the various candles, herbs, and oils commonly needed for rituals and spells.

Setting her wine on the altar, she reached to the shelf above, taking down her jar of consecrated witch hazel, a small ceramic bowl, and her
book of spells. She shook some of the dried herbs into the bowl, opened her spell book to the charm she had in mind, and memorized the brief instructions.

She’d never cast this particular spell before
, mainly because she’d never had occasion to, but also because she didn’t believe in using magic to fulfill trifling desires. In this case, though, she didn’t think the goddess would mind. Why would Hecate give the herb the power to make women irresistible if she didn’t want them to use it?

After carrying
the bowl down the hall to the bathroom, she set it on the chair beside the claw-foot tub, and turned on the taps. As the water heated, she lit the candles and incense she kept on the counter and turned off the lights. She then stripped off her matronly work clothes: a gray pencil skirt, cream blouse, and sensible underthings. She took a moment to study her reflection in the soft candlelight. Perhaps she wasn’t as pretty as Avery, but there was nothing wrong with her body. She was trim, her breasts and buttocks were firm and round, and her stomach was nice and flat.

Taking a fresh towel from the cupboard, she set it on the floor beside the tub
and stepped over. The water felt warm and soothing as she immersed the lower half of her body. Picking up the bowl of herbs, she began to sprinkle the leaves into the water, speaking the incantation as she did.

Letting her body sink
into the magic-infused water, she visualized herself at the Rusty Cauldron, a goddess of beauty and grace in her favorite black dress, talking to the handsome Scot as if she owned him and the room. The spell, of course, would make her irresistible to every man present, so she’d need to be on her guard.

Despite being almost thirty, she
still had her hymen, a reality she found harder to justify with each passing year. When she was younger, it was easy to make excuses: she was on the paper chase, studying English literature first at two rigorous universities. Now, she was teaching full time while trying to finish her doctorate.

She
might be a virgin, but she was far from a prude. She simply valued sexual intimacy too much to squander it on someone she didn’t love. She was a witch, for pity’s sake. She wanted magic. And she’d rather take her maidenhead to her grave than dispose of it casually. Besides, she was saving it for
him.

Her
absent other half.

When she was a girl, she used to wonder if she’d been adopted.
It didn’t help that she looked nothing like either of her parents or any of her other relations. They were all fair-haired, short, and big-boned, while she was a willowy brunette. Her personality was nothing like theirs, either. She was curious, open-minded, and tolerant while they were closed-minded bigots. She was liberal, they were conservative. She was spiritual, they were religious. She was magical, they were, well,
muggles
to the nth degree. When she was sixteen, she found her birth certificate, which proved she wasn’t someone else’s child. The sense of incompletion, however, persisted. Then, she’d had her tarot cards read.

Closing her eyes, she
sank deeper into the water and steered her thoughts back to the Scot. What might his name be? What might his story be? Had he felt the connection between them as strongly as she had?

A smile twitched on her lips
as she summoned from her memory the strange things he’d said about vampires. That the really existed she already knew. Maud Edenfield, another witch on the faculty, had told her as much after she’d arrived in Wickenham. Talk about reality-bending discoveries. According to Maud, vampires weren’t only real, they also could be summoned as magical helpers and lovers.

“
Just be sure they’re thoroughly spellbound,” the elder witch had warned, “so they can’t use their powers against you. Vampires are crafty buggers, but the sex is beyond compare.”

D
ifferent kinds existed, apparently. Not all drank blood. Some could shape-shift. Others could travel through the ethers. Most were of the Unseelie Fae.

T
ired of thinking, she emptied her mind and concentrated on soaking up the magic while the water relaxed her muscles. When she felt sufficiently infused, she climbed out, scooped up the towel, and dried off. Heading back to her room, she went to the closet and pulled out what she’d pictured herself wearing. A vintage cocktail dress circa 1950, it was black with a silk chiffon overlay and a tasteful band of rhinestones around the neckline.

Slipping it on over her head, she
zipped up, pulled on a pair of fishnet tights, and stepped into a pair of pointy pumps. When she checked her look in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door, she liked what she saw. She looked sophisticated yet edgy. Audrey Hepburn goes Goth. Just what she was going for. Very different from the frowsy schoolmarm he’d met in the library.

Returning to the bathroom, she flipped on the lights and hung the damp towel over the curtain rod
before pulling out her cosmetics bag. She rarely wore much beyond a dash of eye shadow and a brush of black mascara, but tonight called for the heavy artillery.

Would he notice the transformation? Would he even be there? Her
intuition told her he would and, while it was seldom wrong, she still had her doubts. She’d never felt this kind of connection with any other man. He had to be the familiar stranger the cards foretold. Had to. She’d waited long enough, dammit.

The thought warmed her
face. She couldn’t believe she was having such depraved thoughts about a guy she barely knew. She didn’t even know his name. Or if he was dating someone or—
goddess forbid
—married. But he couldn’t be, could he? Because he was
her
soul mate. And Hecate wouldn’t send him after he’d committed to someone else.

T
he goddess might be mercurial, but she was never mean-spirited. She refused to worship any deity who was or to practice any faith promoting fear in the guise of love. Hence, her rejection of Catholicism, the faith into which she’d been baptized, and the estrangement from her parents. Whatever they might say, her beliefs were not satanic. What was evil about the magic of love and the natural world? Nothing whatsoever, that’s what.

She
took a breath and blew it out. This was not the time to work herself up about the hypocrisy of organized religion. Like killing in the name of God, the ultimate double-standard. What part of
thou shalt not kill
and
love thy neighbor as thyself
did those hypocrites not understand? Weren’t the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule pretty basic?

Oh, dear. Take a deep breath. Count to five. Let it out. Find some earrings. How about the pearls on the tray?

Picking them up, she worked them through the holes in her earlobes, then proceeded to brush out her hair and pin it up in a French twist. Finally, she dabbed a drop of
eau de violets
, her signature scent, behind each ear.

Now, where had she left her glass of wine? Right
, the altar. She had just enough time to finish it, and maybe have one more, before Avery got home. She might be charmed, but she still needed every ounce of courage she could get.

* * *

Where the devil were his diaries and his cherished portrait of Caitriona? He’d taken great care to mark his personal boxes, but the movers had obviously delivered some of them elsewhere. But, blast it all, where?

Worry tightened his gut as his mind skipped over the possibilities. Please let it not be in
Branwen’s bedchamber. The last thing he needed was The Spider Woman having access to his innermost thoughts and feelings. On second thought, the
last
thing he needed was for Caitriona to return yet again to plague his heart, but there seemed little he could do about it short of avoiding her like church. He could always leave Wickenham, of course, but he wasn’t prepared to go to that extreme quite yet.

H
e’d only just moved, dammit, and was still unpacking.

Speaking of which
, where the bloody hell were those diaries?

Raking his
fingers through his hair, he tried to think where they might be. He didn’t want to venture into Shelob’s Lair unless absolutely necessary. Deciding to start with the library, he willed himself there, rematerializing in front of the fireplace, which, to his surprise, was lit. He spun around, expecting to find Benedict in one of the nooks with his nose in a book. What he found instead gave his heart a jolt.

Shelob—er, Branwen—was perched in one of the wingback chairs flanking the marble mantelpiece in
a clinging dress the same shade of green as her eyes. The daring neckline exposed more of her impressive décolletage than he cared to see at this or any other moment.

“What are
you doing here?”

Branwen, who found reading a bore, generally had no use for libraries.

“Waiting for you,” she said with a look of allure. “I thought you might like a snack before we go out among the villagers.”

By “snack” she meant a nip of her blood and probably sex. Despite his aversion to her, h
e felt a distressing flutter of desire deep in his abdomen. It had been too long since he’d fed on feminine essence and the depravation now burned in his core.

“I’ll do.”

Pulling his hungry eyes away from her cleavage, he cast around for the box containing his diaries. He did not immediately see it among the unpacked boxes stacked along the shelves.

“Are
you looking for something?”

His jaw clenched as his mind reached for the nearest title. “
Dracula.
I have a hankering to read it again.”

“Shall I help
you look?”

He glanced her way, ready to tell her not to bother, but lost his words when his gaze landed
once more on her chest. Her nipples were clearly visible through the clinging fabric of her dress. The sight of it plucked his libido like a harp. He shut his eyes, swallowed, and pointed toward the stack of boxes he’d just scanned.

“Start over there, aye?”

He watched her bend over a box, her backside temptation made flesh. It was early yet and he’d not yet showered and changed for their evening out, so he still wore his kilt. Beneath his sporran, his body responded to the visual stimuli. How could he feel such powerful lust for a creature he despised? Well, perhaps
despised
was too strong a word. Despising her took more effort than he cared to muster on her behalf. He sometimes wondered if, in a strange, screwed-up way, he slept with her sometimes precisely because he was so indifference. She felt more, however, which made their infrequent trysts
les liaisons dangereuses
in the extreme.

She professed to be in love with him. Not that he believed her capable of the emotion. Love required a degree of selflessness
Branwen was entirely without. She thought only of herself. Still, her delusion persisted, keeping him at bay. He needed the act of love to be free of entanglements, and Shelob saw him as a fly in her web. What was it Tolkien had written about her? He retrieved the passage handily, having read it innumerous times: “…She served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness.”

The passage gave him a
lust-cooling chill. Returning his attention to the task at hand, he began hunting through the unpacked boxes in another part of the room. After a few moments, he heard her exclaim, “Eureka!”

“Did
you find
Dracula
?”

“No
. I found something much better.”

He turned to look, finding her back at the fireplace poring over a book. Panic set a hook in his gut. Was it one of his diaries?

“Oh? And what’s that?”

“
The Kama Sutra
. Whose is it, yours or Ben’s?”

“Mine
.” Cringing inside, he bit his lip. Her fascination with the ancient Hindu manual on sex was no doubt just another of her seductive ploys.

Still engrossed in the book, she walked toward one of the wingbacks and sat. “Fancy looking through the pictures with me? For
old time’s sake?”

He didn’t answer. He could think of nothing less
appealing. Or potentially dangerous.

“Listen to this
,” she said, calling his gaze in spite of himself. “When the female raises both of her thighs straight up, it is called
the rising position
; when she raises both of her legs, and places them on her lover’s shoulders, it is called
the yawning position
; when the legs are contracted, and thus held by the lover before his bosom, it is called
the pressed position
.” She raised her eyes, meeting his. “If I’d known you had books like this, I might have spent more of my time in the library.”

Gritting his teeth, he tore his eyes away.
The library was his refuge. From
her.
“You can borrow it, if you like.” With any luck, she’d take the hint and bugger off with the book to her room. Not that she’d ever been one for subtlety.

To his dismay, she stayed put.
“What’s your favorite position, lover?” With a sharp laugh, she added, “Never mind. I already know.”