Maggie Shayne - Mark of the Witch

“Owwwww.”

I was facedown on my bed and hurting like hell, and when I tried to roll over, a strong male hand on my shoulder kept me lying where I was.

Who the hell is that, and what is he doing in my apartment?

I twisted my head to see. It was him. Of course it was him. Hunky Father Tomas was sitting on the edge of my bed. His face was twisted with what looked like worry, and his hands held gauze and a bottle of something aromatic.

“Father Tomas? What happened? Why are you here? And why the hell am I hurting so bad?” I craned my neck a little farther and got a nice clear view of my own bare ass. “I’m naked!” I tried to roll over again, but his hand held me still.

“It’s all right, I’m a priest.” He wasn’t trying to be funny. He tugged the bedsheet up a little to cover my cheeks. “Lie very still or it’ll hurt even more. If you’ll stop trying to roll, I’ll show you what’s hurting in the mirror.” The bed moved as he got up and walked to my dresser. I tried to remember whether I’d left anything embarrassing on it. Tampons, undies. I wasn’t exactly an immaculate housekeeper. He was back in seconds, holding my silver hand mirror at an angle that allowed me to see my back. And when I did, my stomach heaved and I closed my eyes. My back was covered with deep, long cuts. Stripes. Like a whip would leave behind if—

A whip .

“Shit.”

The nightmare or memory or hallucination or whatever the hell it was came back to me so hard and fast I had to jam my face into the pillow to muffle the sob that lurched inside my chest. I was pretty sure he heard it anyway.

“What happened last night?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I turned far enough so my words could emerge unmuffled. “I was … I was trying to work a spell. You must have seen the living room.”

“I saw the circle. The candles. Figured that much out.”

Frowning, I twisted my head a little farther. “The circle. The candles … that’s all?” He hadn’t mentioned the shattered window, broken glass, toppled lamp, tangled curtains.

“Furniture piled in the kitchen?”

I blinked. “There was a storm. It smashed the window to hell and gone.”

He was staring at me, silent.

“Didn’t it?”

He shook his head slowly. “It must have been part of another nightmare,” he said. “I spotted you on the roof. You damn near went over the side, but …”

“But you saved me.” I no longer cared if he saw my tears. He’d seen my bare ass and my living nightmare. What were a few tears?

“I was across the street in my car. I saw you up there and—They’re going away.”

“What?” I was confused by the sudden change of subject.

“The wounds, they’re … they’re going away.” He held up the mirror again.

I ignored it. Pushing past him and his mirror to get to my feet, dragging the sheet with me and holding it in front of my body, I turned my back toward the large mirror on my dresser and looked over my shoulder at my reflection.

The stripes across my back were closing up, forming small pink lines, like battle scars, but then they started fading, too. There was a tattoo, as well, on my lower back, and I knew damn well I’d never had a tattoo in my life. Odd little symbols in neat rows. But they, too, were fading fast. Ten seconds, I stood there. Tomas came and stood right beside me, staring into that mirror. I didn’t even care that my ass was exposed again. Ten seconds, and at the end of them nothing remained of those ghastly wounds except for a few smears of blood Tomas must have missed in his ministrations.

I looked at the floor, belatedly pulling the sheet the rest of the way around me.

“This thing—it could have killed you tonight, Indira.”

It was true. I shivered with the knowledge that it was absolutely true.

“Next time I might not get to you in time.”

“What can you possibly do about it?”

“Take you with me to Ithaca. I’ll help you solve this thing. I’ll make it go away, I swear I will, if you will just help me keep the demon where he belongs in return. Please, Indy. Before he can hurt you any more.”

“Why Ithaca?”

“It’s where we need to be. I’ll explain more on the way. All right?”

I hated to admit that I was losing my skepticism. I hated to even think about believing any of this. But it was real. I’d seen it, right there in my own mirror. I’d seen it. I was still shaking, and it pissed me off. But I ignored that and nodded, a quick, jerky motion that was anything but graceful.

“All right,” I said. “You win.”

Tomas had told me to take the day to get ready, and to phone if I needed him. I didn’t. I made arrangements at work—I had five days’ vacation time coming, and if that wasn’t enough, I could tack on a few sick days. I didn’t need to tell them I was actually talking about my mental health. I packed up my things, enough to last a week, got some cash out of the bank and tried to call Rayne. She didn’t answer, so I had to settle for leaving her a snotty voice mail message asking if she’d lost her mind, sharing my most intimate confessions with a demon-fighting priest.

That night, I took an antihistamine along with cold medicine, and for once, I didn’t dream. Slept like a rock, in fact. And damn but I needed it.

Next morning I showered, dressed and met him out front as planned, even while wondering if I’d lost my freaking mind to be buying into any of this.

Of course, the bloodstains on my sheets said I wasn’t crazy at all. What was happening to me was completely insane, but I wasn’t imagining it or dreaming it or hallucinating it—it was real. And who the hell else was going to help me figure it out? Who else would even believe me?

Rayne, maybe. But I’d gone to Rayne. And she had basically handed me off to this priest. As angry as I was at her for that, I trusted her. She wouldn’t set some lunatic on my trail. She must believe he could help.

He pulled up right on time to take me off to Never-land in his sagging chariot.

Father Tomas’s car was an aging, once-white Volvo station wagon that looked as if it had been through a series of natural disasters. Its color had yellowed to a sort of dull cream that was flaking off in places. He stowed my gear in the back, like he was a gentleman and I was a helpless little female. I stood on the curb just staring at the car, sort of in awe that anything that ancient could still run.

He caught my expression and smiled. “It’s a classic. A 1967 Amazon.”

“Looks like you found it in the Amazon.”

His smile didn’t falter. “I’m restoring it myself. It’s a … hobby, I guess.”

“Heaven help me. My savior is not only a priest but a motor head.”

He opened a door that looked as if it weighed a ton and held it for me. “Trust me, she runs like a dream.”

“She looks like a nightmare.” Still, I got in and dutifully buckled up, surprised that the inside looked pretty nice. Definitely a lot better than I’d expected.

In seconds he was behind the wheel, turning the key, smiling at the sound of the engine. “Hear that?”

“Sounds like a car, all right. So it only looks like it’s going to fall apart on the road, then?”

He rolled his eyes. “Mechanics first, comfort second, cosmetics last of all. It’s the unwritten motor head code.”

It was comfortable, I had to give him that. There was enough room in the back to transport a small sofa. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but it was big. Despite the super-soft leather and the ultracozy seat, though, I still felt like shit, no matter how I sat.

“Your back?” he asked.

I sent him an almost irritated look, though I was secretly impressed and a little surprised by how much attention the guy was paying to me. “It doesn’t really hurt. It’s like a phantom pain, every time I remember—” I stopped there, because giving voice to anything more would only conjure it again. The brutal lashes of the whip. Oh, shit, too late. “You don’t miss much, do you?”