Chapter 23
Eloise lay on the couch looking at the windows that showed only the black vastness of the world beyond.
Just hours ago, Taylor White had made her feel beautiful, sexy, wanton.
She felt something wholly new now- cherished.
After he had given her pleasure, he had dressed her slowly, reverently.
And then he had brushed the hair that had fallen out of her messy bun out of her face and kissed her so gently she had to squeeze her eyes shut against tears, against the sadness in his lips and his eyes.
He drove her and Lady Macbeth to his cabin making sure she was safe before he kissed the top of her head (and was there anything quite as loving and deeply intimate as a head kiss from a man like this) before he left her to her thoughts peering out of a darkened window.
He had begged her not to hate him and she hadn't said so, but how could she hate him?
She understood, as terrifyingly sad as it was, that he couldn't love and therefore wouldn't put a woman through that.
But she feared her own heart was trying to do what his couldn't.
So when he pinned her in the storeroom, she wasn't sure there was any stopping what she wanted.
Just like him, she had thought about him this way, had played their earlier kiss over in her head; the same way she would at that tender age of hitting repeat on her beloved silver cd player.
She spent longer than she would admit to a soul remembering his taste and cementing that feeling of experiencing his soft, demanding lips against hers into memory.
She smiled into a corner of the blanket she had pressed against her cheek.
Sweet oranges and a hint of that smoked hickory.
She lazily pet the sleeping pregnant racoon as she relived tonight, letting the goodness of it circle around her bloodstream.
Then tomorrow she would close it off. She would not let the sadness overwhelm her.
They would be friends. He could be a man in her life that she cares for deeply, laughs with, enjoys talking to. He could be just a friend who makes her smile more than any man ever has; a man, who when she sees, something inside of her takes flight. That was possible. She would make it possible.
And she drifted off to those impossible hopes as her mind was pushed back into a dream from the other night.
A woman in white with a pretty, unknown face looked at her as she raised her hands and a dancing fire flickered and cracked, spitting embers into the dark sky.
Then she looked down when she felt something and gasped as dark red snapdragons, the black prince, drove up through the ground, cracking the earth and breaking apart the grass and its roots in a velcro ripping until they were curling around her calves and legs trapping her in place.
She tried to scream.
"Hey, Jenson has that varnish stuff and he said it's yours. He also offered to help and of course I'll help. I love that man," Ursula said with a dreamy smile.
Eloise had just walked into the kitchen with Lady Macbeth, who now had her own food dish next to Casper's and Sulphur's in the kitchen.
When Ursula saw the look on her face her ghost mug paused midway to her mouth. "What's wrong?"
Eloise held out this morning's Salem Settler and the Crescent Courier silently. Ursula skimmed both articles as Eloise poured herself a mug of coffee, finding a new one in the cabinet.
"Wow," she said putting both papers down, the Crescent Courier curling up into a black and white bat before taking flight and then poofing into sparkles and dust. "So, they're starting a petition to bring charges against us."
Eloise sipped her coffee and nodded. "Against The Lost Souls Witches, so props for our cool name."
Ursula snorted a laugh as she drank her coffee. "Hey, cool new mug."
Eloise held up the ceramic raccoon, the handle a striped tail. "Guess it's official. Lady Macbeth is part of the Lost Souls family. But what are we going to do?" she asked, bringing them back to the problem at hand.
Ursula's cheeks filled with air as she shook her head and then let it out in a sigh. "Is there anything we can do? They're entitled to their opinion."
She agreed with a solemn nod then narrowed her eyes as a thought formed. "Maybe there is something we can do. And it's a little crazy."
"I don't feel like I'm young enough to handle when you say that anymore."
Eloise made a face. "You look like you're twenty-seven," she waved up and down Ursula's frame adding, "and a half."
"That is very specific," she said in droll tone. "But regardless of my alarmingly youthful looks, have you heard my knees crack when I go down the stairs?"
"And I've heard you getting out of bed. You sound like a pro tennis player."
She rolled her eyes. "You're one to talk, town hot-flasher."
She gasped. "I told you that in confidence. Not to be used against me!"
Ursula groaned. "Fine. I'm in. What's your idea? And how much willow bark will I need?"
One hour later, they were walking up a brick walkway towards a sweet sage green cottage sitting on a plump piece of land that could use a little love with the gardening and perhaps a more welcoming front porch which was wide and empty.
But as the two women were about to walk up the steps they stopped and looked up. The black roof was moving.
A loud chorus of birds, different sounds of chirps and swooping songs clashed.
"What the..."
Ursula gave Eloise a fearful look which was returned.
They both looked back at the house and Eloise brought out her phone.
She smelled something in the air, something she had come to recognize was magic.
It was the same smell from the graveyard when the world around leaned in closer, when she was snuggled under the peach tree and the black willow sprouted from the ground, and still the same smell in the bathroom at The Dancing Snail when she had felt disoriented and then her words she didn't feel she had a choice to give were used against Bess.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm calling the detective," she whispered back.
"To tell him what?"
Eloise gave her a wide-eyed look. "That a scene from Hitchcock's The Birds" is playing out live on Carol Weatherby's roof?"
"Hold up," Ursula urged. "Think about this. That looks, to me, like another hex. There are about fifty starlings on her porch and a hundred more on her roof and that's not normal. If you call Taylor he will likely have to report it and we're here. At the scene of the, well, hex." She made a face.
She sighed and nodded her agreement, putting her phone back into her leather tote.
"You're right. Until now, we haven't been directly linked to one of these weird," she waved her hand towards the house, "hexes.
Okay, so what do we do? I don't think we should just turn and walk away and leave Carol to the birds. "
"Do you think they're dangerous?"
"Well, I wouldn't have put a starling on the top fifty most dangerous animals list, unless there was a caveat that there are enough to lift a house off the ground."
"Please don't tell me a group of starlings is called a murder?"
"A murmuration," Eloise responded.
"Number three-hundred and tenth reason I missed you; your knowledge of what groups of animals are called."
"Wait," Eloise said, holding up a hand and they both stopped and watched as the birds had stopped their chirps and swooping sounds, their black eyes trained on them.
"Are they looking at us?" Ursula asked from the corner of her mouth.
"I think we need to go."
"Agreed."
Then the birds, like they were of one mind, lifted their black wings, their white-spotted bodies taking to the air with incredible grace and fury.
They both cursed, grabbing each other's hand as they ran from the property to the sidewalk.
The birds came at them. The women could feel them at their backs like something was pressing in, both of them running the fifteen yards, hand-in-hand with survival on their heels.
Then, a chorus of cries pulled both of them to a halt as they watched the murmuration of black and white turn sharply as though there were an invisible barrier, swoop to the left in a large arc until they landed back on the roof.
Both women were bent over, hands on knees as they looked at the house and then each other.
"I think that's proof that our bourbon-soaked protection spell worked," Ursula said in awe.
"I think we need to call the police," Eloise said, and this time Ursula agreed.
"Anonymously?"
"There's too much probability that someone saw us. Or a doorbell camera did. If we hide it, we look more suspicious."
Ursula gave her a look. "I told you we're too old for your crazy ideas."
Eloise held up a hand as she dialed. "This had nothing to do with age. Did you see us sprint like we were in the WNBA?"
"Yeah, I'm actually quite impressed with us. I haven't needed to run like that since high school gym."
"Hey, Taylor," Eloise said into the phone, her eyes connecting with Ursula's, the same thoughts going through both of their minds. They knew what this meant.
This was only going to damn them as the witches of The Lost Souls.
Two hours later and the women were sitting across from Chief Theodore Landry who was wearing a stern face that said he knew how to play poker and once they were finished telling him why they were there, and that they had not done anything odd to Carol Weatherby, his poker face was still strong.
He tapped the metal table once and stood. "I'll be back. Sit tight."
"Okay, that man is terrifying," Ursula whispered.
"Are you getting a Tom Selleck thing from him?"
Ursula nodded her dark head which could use a brush. "And oddly mixed with Colin Farrell."
Eloise snapped her fingers. "That's it. I was trying to figure it out."
Ursula tilted her head. "But also Gumby."