Kiss The Witch Part 34

She shook her head. "'Tis no trick. The mind sees what it will. I am here as you want me, but in your mind is all. I come neither clothed nor unclothed. Thou wished to see me in the flesh, so thy eye hath made it so."

"Yes, but now I see your face clearly and only a blurred silhouette of your body."

"Aye, 'tis by suggestion I blind thee. Still, you see me as ye wish."

I pa.s.sed my hand in front of my face and Ursula was naked again, veiled only in a sheer whisper of lingerie. Another pa.s.s, another look, and she was clothed in traditional seventeen century garb, hemmed to the ankle and b.u.t.ton to the neck.

"That's amazing. I see you any way I want."

"As you wish."

"Except I really don't wish to see you at all. Why aren't you home with your husband?"

"I am in body, but my mind is with thee. We are linked. Thou hath beckoned me through the witch's light."

"So, you are not really here?"

She shook her head. "In body, no."

"But if I were to touch you...." I crossed the floor and reached for her. Upon contact, a bright blue spark arced between my finger and her arm, sending a shock through my bones like a mini lightning bolt. I fell back with a shriek, jerking my hand involuntarily and slamming it against the sink.

"d.a.m.n it, Ursula. What was that?"

She pressed her finger to her lips and shushed me. Then she pointed to the door. I turned to see Carlos shuffling into the bathroom, blind to our presence. I stepped away from the sink and let him pa.s.s. He positioned himself in front of the toilet, opened his stance, took it out and proceeded to relieve himself. I turned to Ursula, who did not seem shy about watching him.

"Can you see him?" I asked.

She crowded her brows as if I had asked her a stupid question. I suppose I had. "Of course."

"Can he see us?"

She shook her head. "Methinks not."

And then she did something completely uncharacteristic, something I would have expected only from Lilith. She scooted along to the edge of the tub, leaned in closer to Carlos, and with her index finger she.... Well, she poked his thing, diverting a heavy stream of urine off to one side of the bowl and onto the floor. She pulled back and giggled, covering her mouth with her hands as if Carlos might hear. I fell back against the wall, laughing so hard I nearly p.i.s.sed myself. Carlos, who had been half-sleeping, or sleepwalking, I'm not completely sure, swung his aim back to the bowl, over corrected by a foot and sprayed the other side of the floor, missing Ursula's foot by inches.

"Ursula," I said. "I cannot believe you did that. You are a naughty, naughty girl, aren't you?"

"Please, Master Tony. Forgive me. I could not resist."

"I think you have been hanging around Lilith too long. She has definitely corrupted you."

"Aye. 'Tis Lilith's fault. I admit. I am what she made me, is all. What fruit falls doth falls not far from the tree."

"What?"

She shook her head, and then Carlos shook his and tucked it back into his pants. He washed his hands, but did nothing about the mess on the floor. As he turned and started back to the couch, I said to Ursula. "How did you do that?"

Again, she gave me that innocent look, though I was beginning to suspect she was not that innocent at all. "Do what?"

"How did you interact physically with Carlos if you're not physically here yourself?"

She gave me an unconvincing shrug. "I know not the laws of energy, only what the laws allows."

"So tell me again why you're here? You said I beckoned you, but I wasn't thinking about you when I saw that d.a.m.n blue light and followed it to the bathroom."

"Hark," she said, her eyes and ear pitched toward the ceiling. "My Dominic calls for me. I must go."

"No, Ursula. Wait. I have questions."

And like that, she was gone. I turned and headed down the hall back to the bedroom. The bathroom light switched off by itself, but not before the light spilling in behind me lit up the bedroom. I could see Lilith lying there, sleeping with her head at the wrong end of the bed. And me, also sleeping, though still sitting up with my back against the headboard. I felt a tug at my chest and the sensation of falling. The next thing I knew I was rus.h.i.+ng toward the bed. My conscious self snapped into my sleeping body and startled me awake.

I took a deep breath and let it out, feeling a little like a fish returning to water. Was it all a dream? I had to know. I got up and made my way back to the bathroom. There, on both sides of the toilet bowl, was Carlos' pee puddles. I mopped them up with wads of toilet paper, flushed them down the bowl and went back to bed. Sleep returned to me fast and easy. And if I dreamed of Ursula, I did not remember it in the morning.

EIGHTEEN.

I awoke at sunrise to find Lilith lying there watching me, her cheek upon my pillow, our noses nearly touching. She thinned her lips softly. Brushed my face with the back of her hand. Traced my eye with her fingertips. I tried to remember the last time she looked so beautiful to me. I could not remember.

"Morning," I said, smiling back at her.

"'Gmorn' to you." Her breath smelled fresh like peppermint. She had been up. Gone to the bathroom. Brushed her teeth. I rolled over onto my back, wis.h.i.+ng I had done the same.

"Sleep well?" I asked.

"Yup," she said, and she slid her hand under the covers, down my chest, across my stomach and lower. "You?"

"Yes. Like a babeee...." I shuddered at her touch. Her hand felt cold, but good. I unfurled my toes and splayed them outside the covers.

"Like a baby?"

I exhaled deeply. "Yes."

"That was nice last night. Wasn't it?"

"The wedding?"

"Yeah." She gathered me in her hand, squeezed and pulled gently. I gasped audibly, sighed and then found my body easing to the rhythm she had settled into.

"Yes. That was sweet. I think those two are meant for each other." I turned my head to look at her. She still had that smile, that angelic expression that told me she was happy to be with me. I kicked the covers off and crowded them to the foot of the bed. Shards of sunlight streaming through the blinds pinstriped my body, but the breeze from the ceiling fan negated its warmth.

"You were sweet," she said. "And you looked most handsome in that firelight."

Lilith had me at full attention, teasing me with her touch, dragging her fingertips over sensitive terrain before clamping down with utter authority. I arched my back and adjusted the spread of my legs. She nestled closer, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s warm against my side. I put my arm around her and cupped her tattooed cheek in my hand. She stretched out straight and did the same with her trophy.

"No. You were sweet," I said. "And beautiful. And amazing."

"Amazing at the wedding? Or afterward?"

"Both, but yeah, mostly afterwards."

She rolled her eyes up at me, wet her lips lightly and smiled. "You think that was amazing?"

Her words sent a rush of antic.i.p.ation through my bones. I closed my eyes, and in the shadow of my pride, she laid her kisses down, warming me with her breath, her thick hair tickling my skin as it cascaded over me like spider silk. I wanted to tell her I loved her, that I could not live without her. I just didn't want her to think it was for all the wrong reasons. In the end, I said nothing. I let her take me to the whims of her wishes, to a place as magical as any witch may know. When I came for her, she came to me and laid her head on my pillow.

I waited until she fell back to sleep before making a trip to the bathroom. I was standing in front the mirror, shaving and thinking about the night before when it started to come back to me. We had all consumed a lot of champagne. And as I have learned, anytime one mixes alcohol with witchcraft, one's memories can blur. I had nearly convince myself that what happened with Ursula and me after everyone had gone to bed was all a dream, a champagne induced twist on reality. Yet my heart told me otherwise. Deep down I knew I had linked with her. I summoned her simply by thinking of her. I connected to her on a non-physical plane and we exchanged thoughts just as tangibly as if we were in the same room engaged in conversation. It would be different if it were only my imagination. If I could see her, touch her, talk to her, and keep it all in my head, then what harm would that be? But that was not the case. Perhaps that is why I felt so guilty.

I finished shaving, leaned over the sink and rinsed the lather off my face with a splash of cold water. When I returned to the mirror, she was there.

"Ursula?" I wheeled about on my heels. "What the...." I checked the bathroom door. It was closed. The lock still latched from the inside. She was barefoot, wearing only blue jeans and a white b.u.t.ton-up blouse with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. "How did you get in here?"

She directed my attention to the floor. I looked down. There, stretched between my bare feet and hers, was that confounded electric blue vein. "D...did I do that?"

She hooked her brow, as if I really needed to ask. "Aye. Thou art filled with thoughts of me I see."

"No. It is not like that. I don't think of you all the time. I swear. It's just that this...." I gestured a back and forth finger point between her and me. "This, whatever it is we have here, it's a bit distracting. I can't get my head around it."

"Then you must stop thinking of me."

"Easier said, isn't it? Believe me. I want to stop thinking about you. You're a married woman now. I don't need to think about you. I don't need to think about anyone except for Lilith. I love Lilith. She is plenty to think about as it is. When I'm with her I feel...." I paused only long enough to read the look in her eyes. "You know, Ursula, there's something, ahm..."

"Yes?"

"I don't know. There is something about you. I cannot put my finger on it. You and I are tied somehow in ways that this witch's light has nothing to do with."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, and you know it. Don't you? Last night you said something. Made me think. You remember what it was?"

She shrugged ambiguously. "Pray tell, what?"

"You said that you were what Lilith made you, and that the fruit did not fall far from the tree. What did you mean by that?"

"Oh, that."

"Yes. Tell me."

She crossed her arms at her chest, the way Lilith does sometimes when she feels cornered into admitting she has done something wrong. With Ursula, however, I suspected it was not something she had done; rather something she had not, like tell me the entire truth about herself. Her eyes held mine steadily, seizing me in a grip that nearly seemed physical. At first, I thought she was peering into my soul, reading me, sweeping me for clues to see what I already knew. It is a witch's thing. I knew that. Lilith employs a similar practice with astonis.h.i.+ng success. But almost as soon as I thought it, I realized the opposite was so. She was not reading me. She was opening herself to me, allowing me past her defenses to see her at her most vulnerable. Her words to me then sounded like a confession.

"When I died," she said, speaking of her hanging. "They buried my body and cast my soul asunder. 'Tis what happened. I blame not one the more for this than I blame thee. 'Twas a different time and mine a different life. But when I tell thee, Lilith, my sister of the coven, and I are spun of the same cloth, I jest not. For she hath by whit of magick and some returned my bones to skeletal frame and covered them with flesh. She gave me eyes that I may see and a heart that I may love. Yet she had not the existential essence of my individualism. That which made me who I was did fracture with my soul. To this, she gave of what she had. 'Tis the fabric of my sister that thee look upon nowthat which thou sees deep within me. What good doth show in me doth dwell alike in thy lover's soul. If I am shy, 'tis the shyness she knows yet shows not to thee. Her temper is mine, though what little she gave me doth hide more."

Ursula's eyes broke from mine in favor of the floor. They settled there in a dim pool of light faded by her shadow. "She gave me love," she said of Lilith, "or what piece she could afford." Her eyes came back to me. "'Tis a seed this love. I want it not and yet it grows. A love for thee. Thou hast only but to smile and thy smile doth feed it so. 'Tis a curse and a blessing I know. For if not for thee this love I have, I would have no love for my Dominic."

I put my hand up to stop her. "Wait. Are you telling me that a part of Lilith lives in you?"

"Aye, 'tis the marrow of her soul what drives my spirit. That which makes her she is also me."

"You mean like a clone?"

"Not so much a clone, as we are more one than a copy of the same."

I shook my head. "I don't know that that means."

"It means I am she, as she is me."

"And we are altogether. Funny. All right. Enough with the Beatles lyrics. What does all this have to do with the witch's light? Why do we keep meeting like this?"

"Because thou art in love with me."

"No, I am not. I'm in love with Lilith."

"I am Lilith."

"You are Ursula."

She smiled coyly. "But for bones and bonds of time, we are both one and the same."

"Maybe, but you're also very different. I see that every day. You two are as individual as snowflakes."

"We are two sides of the same coin, she the heads and I the tails."

I laughed at that. "You can both certainly turn heads with your tails."

She slipped her hands down the backside of her jeans and rubbed her cheeks. "So my Dominic tells me."

In that instant, she was naked to my eyes. I saw her as my mind wanted to see her after her suggestive gesture. I closed my eyes and shook my head, remembering then why I could not have her popping up in my thoughts like that. When I opened my eyes again she was gone. I called to her. "Ursula." She reappeared, dressed in a winter parka, her eyes peeking through a fur-lined hood pulled around her face.

"Why are wearing that?"

She turned her palms up empty. "I wear only what"

"I know, only what I want you to wear. You are not physically here so I see you the way I want to see you." I looked down at my naked self. "How do you see me right now?"

She held the back of her hand to my face and drew it downward, as if stripping away a veil. I looked at myself again and saw my body as a blurred silhouette.

"This? This is how you see me?"

"Aye."

"But you can see me any way you choose."

"Of course."

"Okay, see then. What's the point? Listen, Ursula. We need to break this link between us. I cannot deal with it any longer. Tell me what we need to do."