Marguerite’s car was one of those tiny hatchbacks no one in America buys – the kind that makes a Focus look roomy – and it smelled of incense. She drove far too quickly along a winding, hilly road that cut a ditch through the countryside, with only one casual hand on top of the wheel. Her other hand alternated between a crystal ball shifter stick and my lap.
“So you told me what made you leave the Colonies, but not what brings you all the way over to this island, and to my little county in particular.”
“Your county, is it?”
“I like to think of it that way.”
“Castles, really. Roman remains, standing stones – that sort of thing. The sort of thing we don’t have in Arizona. I like to take pictures, and I used the money I got from pawning both of her rings to buy the camera I always wanted. And a few lenses I didn’t even know I wanted until I talked to the salesman. But your county in particular? Well, I guess the Foxhound Inn got a good review in Let’s Go, and it’s not a long bus ride to Ardesbury. The stone circle there is supposed to be nice, but this weekend – tomorrow – there’s going to be a witches’ faire, a real one, in the circle for the first time in, like, 800 years.”
“Twelve hundred.” She punctuated he interjection with grinding gears as she upshifted to crest a steep rise.
“What?”
“Twelve hundred and seventeen years, and that year’s faire barely counted, since it ended early with the slaughter of nine women.”
“Oh, that’s awful.”
She patted my thigh. “It’s what happened, but it’s the past now. You can’t dwell on the past and and enjoy the present, now can you? That’s the lesson I get to teach you tonight. For example, did you know that you’re an even luckier man than we’d thought, dear? As it happens, I’m going to the stones tomorrow anyway, so rather than bundle off early and spend an hour yawning on a bus, you and I can have a lie-in and a leisurely breakfast and I’ll take you over with me. I’m something of a popular figure in the coven, so if you don’t disappoint me tonight – and I don’t expect that you will – I’ll put in a good word with my sisters tomorrow. If your cards come up right, you may have beds and breakfasts waiting wherever on the island you want to go.”
I glanced over at her. “You’re a witch?”
“Of course I am!” Her hand slid down between my thighs, and she broke her stare on the road ahead long enough to give me that licentious wink again.
-
I suppose I was lucky, I decided, because if she-who-will-not-be-named had waited another three days to tell me that she was cheating, I would have been trapped in a horrible marriage for a lifetime. Instead of having my heart broken all at once, it would have broken slowly, crumbling to chalky dust over the years. I told Marguerite about what life with her used to be like, before we were engaged. We used to have the best conversations – about things I liked and cared about – and I could make her laugh with just a glance. We used to have the best sex; except it wasn’t just the sex. There was foreplay. We’d kiss for an hour before we even took our clothes off. Yes, I was one of those peculiar men who preferred foreplay to anonymous sex, especially kissing and nibbling, or anything mouth-related.
“Does that sound too fetishy? She could make me hard just by sucking on my finger.”
“No, dear. It sounds healthy.”
She used to nibble my ears and lick my neck, and I loved it. And she loved it when I went down on her, which made me all the more eager to do it. She would come out of the shower on the mornings she worked early and wake me up by sitting on my chest, wearing nothing but the towel wrapped around her hair. In the last few months, though, all of that intimacy just withered away. There was no more laughing naked, no more playful tickling. The kisses were brief and grudging. When we actually had sex, it was always from behind, always doggy-style.
“I guess that way she didn’t have to see my face.”
Marguerite patted my cheek. “It’s a lovely face, dear.” She was half turned in her seat with her right arm draped over the wheel.
“I’m sorry – I’m talking too much, aren’t I?” I was. I hadn’t even realized that we’d arrived and were now parked halfway around the loop in her gravel driveway.
“Shush now.” She gathered up my hands and pulled them to her lap. “Come over here.” I leaned forward and she drew me over the e-brake, across her breasts and against her lips. The way we kissed was as sexy and sticky as warm butter melting into honey; her lips puckered and plumped and sucked against mine, and mine pushed greedily back into hers until we both needed air. I settled into the soft part of her neck while she rolled the lobe of my ear between her teeth. “There is one thing, though,” she breathed between nips.
“What’s that?” I was dangerously close to leaving her with a hickey.
“Before I let you – a stranger, though an undeniably delicious stranger – into my home, I need to see your passport.” Her smile was a bit embarrassed when I pulled away. “Well, you could be a serial-killer, couldn’t you? Even a witch has to be safe.”
I was sitting on my passport, so we both got out of her car. The shadow of a high-peaked, wood-shingled roof loomed over us and blotted out much of the purpley evening sky. I couldn’t make out all of the details of the house, but it seemed very old, made of stacked local stone like the pasture walls that sectioned up the countryside. Bushy plants that smelled of an herb cabinet bristled out of planters and pots and garden plots. Vines crept up around thick-framed windows. But I wasn’t paying attention again; she had come around to my side of the car, so I fished my passport out of my pocket and handed it to her.
“Thomas Alden Moore.” She read my name carefully, enunciating each syllable, then glanced up at me.
“Yup. That picture makes me look like a terrorist, but I promise you I haven’t had a beard and hair like that since college.”
“Thomas Alden Moore? That’s your real name – your given, Christian name?”
The way she said my name again was peculiar, more like a suspicious bureaucrat than the woman whose bosom had pillowed me a minute earlier. I thought it best just to play it off. “All of my life!” My middle name was a little odd, after all.
“Thomas Alden Moore.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
And then something between us clicked – like pins suddenly dropping into place in a lock – and she was laughing and leading me into her house by the hand. All the awkwardness between us was gone, and I was laughing too, and I didn’t even know why. She sat me down on a couch in the middle of her house. There was only one large room, plus a workspace joined by an open doorway, so from the couch I could watch her bustle around the whole house. Behind me was a hearth fireplace, which she had roaring faster than should have been possible. She turned down the covers on a four-poster bed, latched shut the doors of her wardrobe, and flicked the center knob on a large gas stove. With a pink-eared smile she pulled down a string of laundry that had been stretched across the windows to dry. Not all of the undergarments pinned to the line had been the ‘practical’ type. The walls and corners and rafters of the house were crowded with clutter – the kind of clutter that takes a lifetime or two to accumulate: huge copper pots and cast-iron cauldrons, rows upon rows of glass spice bottles and crockery flasks, books on odd shelves and bookcases full of knickknacks and crystals, candles, animal skulls, photographs, porcelain dolls, astrological charts, woodcuts, a paint and easel set. What caught my eye, though, was the clichéd, black satin, wide-brimmed hat jutting out from the wall. The conical peak was so tall it couldn’t support its own weight and it seemed to have permanently creased near the top. Draped from a hanger beneath the hat hung a black dress with a serrated hem. “Is that-?”
Her smile was coy, cast at me over her shoulder. “That’s for Halloween. But, I bet you’d like it if I- Listen, you sit here with your eyes closed. Promise me you won’t open them no matter what you hear, and I’ll slip into something less comfortable. Drink this.” She pushed a cup of tea into my hands and slid her fingers over my eyelids to close them. The tea smelt of cloves and cinnamon and warmed my belly at the first sip.
It wasn’t until several minutes later when I heard the clattering of cooking pans in the kitchen that she called out, “Oh, I’m sorry, dear, you can open your eyes now.” I’m fairly certain her timing was intentional, though: the first thing I saw was her bending over the open oven door to slide a pan onto the center rack. Her round, pantyhose-confined ass didn’t just peek out from beneath the serrated hem of her Halloween dress, it leered at me. She closed the oven door with a clang, caught up her teapot with a hotpad, and sashayed back to the couch. The nylon clinging to her thighs swished with every step, and her high-heeled maryjanes clopped against the stone-paved floor. “Drink,” she urged as she refilled the mug in my hands. I’m certain she knew that when she bent over to pour, the v-cut of her dress spilled wide open in front of me. “Just a few minutes more and I’m all yours,” she called as she clopped back toward the stove.
As promised, a few minutes later she was back on the couch; or, more specifically, she was sitting cross-wise in my lap and feeding me oven-hot buttery cookies from a plate painted with purple pansies. And since she kept my mouth full – either with cookies or her spiced tea or her kisses – she was the one to chatter and tell me about herself.
Despite my best intentions, I found it difficult to listen attentively. She squirmed in my lap much more than was strictly necessary, despite her skirt riding up and my now-wrinkled corduroys providing the only real barrier between her ass and my increasingly engorged lap. (Her pantyhose and lacy briefs absolutely did not count.) The wide brim of her hat shadowed both of our faces, giving us a sense of secrecy and privacy that forced me to stare right into her dark-ringed eyes. Her eyes were a springy shade of yellow-green flecked with brown; they were as vibrant as a teenager’s, and I hardly even noticed the wrinkles around them now. Several inches lower, the leather corset she wore over the Halloween dress created a deep cleavage between her pale, quivering breasts; they were just too far into my periphery for me to glance down without making it obvious. The black satin opera gloves she wore were busy twirling my hair or roaming beneath my shirt when they weren’t shoving cookies in my mouth. Still, I did my best to pay attention.
She had grand-children, and no, that didn’t bother me, even if I’d never been with an older woman before … She’d been with plenty of men, but she preferred to think of herself more as a connoisseur tart than a wanton trollop … This house had been in her family’s name for more than a millennium … Her hobby and primary source of discretionary income was cosmetic chemistry.
“All that means,” she explained, “is that I mix my own makeup and sell a bit to my sisters and to the boutique shops nearby, too. It’s high quality cosmetics, of course, but I blend in a few herbs and botanicals – witchy things. Little mood enhancers to make the woman more confident or the boy across the table more gullible.”
I held up a finger to stop her so I could finish chewing the cookie in my mouth. “Did you use them on me?”
“I’ll give you your answer if you answer me this: Do you like the results?” She winked and changed the subject.
At last I told her that I was stuffed to the point of bursting and couldn’t possibly eat another bite, and she showed me the empty purple pansy plate. “It’s about bloody time, Thomas. I was just getting ready to go bake up another half-batch. At least I can be flattered that you like my special cooking.” She shimmied off my lap and pulled me up after her.
I found myself following without resistance; I was full and warm inside, and my muscles felt loose. Like she’d served me alcohol. “Wait… special cooking? What did you give me?”
Her grin was large and full of white teeth. She walked backwards, leading me by both hands toward her bed. “The tea had a muscle relaxant, but particularly targeted. You had about the same dosage as two of those Viagra pills, but much safer.” Her words swam through my head, and I found myself grinning back. “And the cookies— I didn’t expect you to eat so many, but you should find yourself quite open to persuasion. Which is good, since I thought I might tie you down to the bed and do all sorts of naughty things to you.”
“Oh.”