Witch Angel Page 2
Chapter 2
July 2005
“Alaynia Cecile Mirabeau, where the heck did you go wrong this time?” Alaynia Cecile Mirabeau muttered to herself.
Loathe to admit she was lost—and reluctant to stop and ask directions in a strange place—Alaynia glanced quickly at the notes in her hand. The car wandered across the middle stripe in the two-lane country road, and an angry horn jerked her attention back to her driving. A dirt driveway up ahead came into view, and she flipped her blinker on and braked.
She must have missed a turn somewhere. In Boston, she could have pulled over and studied the street map she kept in the dash—after making sure her doors were securely locked. Here in the Louisiana back country, some of the roads weren’t even on the map she’d picked up at the rental car company. And evidently the directions she had written down when she talked to the Baton Rouge attorney were about as useful as her Boston street map would have been in a Southern city.
Alaynia pulled into the driveway and eased to a stop. A ramshackle structure lay at the end of the rutted path, and a tattered window curtain moved slightly. But before she could distinguish the features on the face behind the cracked window pane, a mangy hound scrambled from beneath a sagging porch. Snarling and snapping its teeth, it raced toward her car.
She hastily shifted into reverse and backed from the driveway. Retracing her previous path, she drove toward a crossroad she’d passed a few minutes ago, where she’d noticed a sign advertising Bar-B-Q painted on a right-pointing arrow. Surely a place that wanted customers wouldn’t have a vicious animal waiting to attack.
Aware of her penchant for getting lost when her thoughts wandered while she drove, she’d left the Baton Rouge hotel that morning with what she considered ample time to spare before her meeting with the attorney. St. Francisville, the lawyer had assured her when she called his office yesterday afternoon, was only a half-hour drive north of Baton Rouge. He would wait for her at the plantation manor house, five miles northeast of town. All she had to do was take a right on the first county road she came to after she passed through town, then bear left at each intersection until she came to a sign he would nail to a tree at the entrance to the plantation’s driveway. But, damn it, had he said the driveway where he would leave the sign was on the right or on the left? He’d given her his car phone number, but she wasn’t quite ready yet to call him and admit she couldn’t follow what he had assured her were explicit, uncomplicated directions to Chenaie Plantation.
Besides—she glanced down at her cell phone, which protruded from her open purse—talking on the phone while she drove could be just as distracting as rambling thoughts. If she couldn’t find out at the Bar-B-Q stand where she’d taken a wrong turn, she could call from the parking lot before she drove back onto the highway. She pushed the air-conditioning control up another notch, and cool air gushed from the air-conditioning vents.
July is not the month to visit Louisiana, the attorney had said when he first contacted her in Boston three weeks ago. Why don’t you wait until October or so? Your inheritance isn’t going anywhere.
Shimmering heat waves on the road ahead emphasized the attorney’s warning. Alaynia lightened up on the gas pedal and squinted at the mirage as the road appeared to undulate and disappear. But where at first the heat waves had looked like gently rolling breakers on an incoming tide, they suddenly wavered higher, towering halfway up the trunks of the huge jack pines along the highway.
She flicked a glance in her rearview mirror. No other vehicle in sight. When she looked back at the road ahead, she gasped at the closeness of the mirage after her split-second of inattention—and how high the heat waves now towered. They oscillated in a rippling barrier a hundred feet wide, so tall they even covered the tops of the pines. Her heart pounded in terror and she jammed her foot on the brake pedal. The car screeched down the highway amidst two black streaks of smoking rubber.
The heat waves shimmered over her. She twisted the steering wheel to aim the car into the ditch, but it slid inexorably through the shining barrier before it came to a halt with a jerk that snapped Alaynia’s neck and released the airbag.
* * * *
July 1875
Anger rankling, Shain St. Clair pulled his ebony stallion to a halt just beyond the boundaries of his plantation. “Whoa, Black,” he muttered.
The buggy carrying that damned carpetbagger, Fitzroy, disappeared down the road to St. Francisville, a trail of dust in its wake. He hadn’t really thought Fitzroy would turn back for another try at changing his mind, but he’d followed the Yankee at a distance anyway—ready to make his point in a less polite manner if the need arose. Back at the manor house, he’d been all too aware of his little sister, Jeannie, hovering within hearing distance.
One of these days, that bastard was going to go too far. Fitzroy had sent one of the stable boys out to call Shain away from his inspection of the fields, as though he had a right to interrupt the plantation’s daily business, and Shain arrived back at Chenaie’s manor house in an already testy mood. The sight of the portly Yankee on the front veranda—feet propped on the railing as he sat in a rocking chair sipping a cool mint julep—sent Shain’s rage boiling as hot as the Southern day.
Worse than that, he’d had to keep a cap on his fury and decline once again Fitzroy’s so-called business proposition. Now there would be another confrontation with his neighbors, who desperately needed the Yankee money the company Fitzroy represented would bring them.
His stallion pricked its ears, and Shain studied the underbrush beside the road. “Come on out, Cole,” he called.
Rifle negligently held in one hand, Cole Dubose stepped out onto the dirt roadway. Shain studied Cole as the other man walked toward him. More than once in their younger years, he and Cole had been mistaken for brothers. Cole’s hair still shone with raven highlights, but it hung well past his shoulders, even longer than Shain’s, which he’d been trying to find time to get cut. His friend’s clothing was clean, but ragged, and Shain would have bet there wasn’t more than a pound or two variation in their weights—or a half-inch difference in the breadth of their shoulders.
Despite his annoyance over his disrupted morning, Shain’s gaze softened as Cole approached. Cole’s lips quirked into a half-grin in the several days’ growth of beard, but the shadowy depths of his brown eyes didn’t lighten.
“Good thing Black’s got sharper ears than yours,” Cole said as he laid a hand on the stallion’s neck. “Been a Yankee patrol, you’d be on your way to prison camp now.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Shain drawled. “And reckon I could find me some disreputable swamp rat to help me escape again.”
Shain reached down and shook Cole’s hand. “Hello, friend,” he said sincerely. “How’ve you been?”
“Tolerable,” Cole replied. He nodded his head in the direction the buggy had taken. “You consortin’ with Yankees these days?”
“Hell, half of Louisiana is Yankee now. And they’re pretty easy to pick out—guess you recognized where Fitzroy had come from, even without hearing his Northern twang.”
Cole chuckled and brushed a lank of black hair away from his face. “Yeah, they’re the ones with meat on their bones. It’s gonna take the South longer than ten years to grow enough food to put back on all the weight its people lost during the war.”
“Look, Cole,” Shain said. “When are you gonna give up your no-account lifestyle and settle down? I tried to find you a couple months ago, after I fired my overseer, but even Tana didn’t know where you were. That damned overseer worked my field crew so hard that two of my men passed out from the heat. I’m keeping a close watch on Carrington, the new man, but he seems all right so far. He better be, for what I have to pay him. I sure as hell could use you, though.”
As Shain anticipated, Cole shook his head. “No offense, friend,” he said in a bitter voice, “but if I ever get the urge to baby a bunch of cotton or cane plants along again, I’d prefer doing it in my own fields
. And I’ve got about as much chance of that as we do of fightin’ the war over again and winnin’.”
“If you ever change your mind ...”
“I won’t,” Cole said flatly.
“Well, I’ve got to get back to Chenaie. Get your horse and come on. Jeannie will be glad to see you, and we can send word to Tana that you’re here.”
“I’m not in a socializing mood today. But I guess I better ride by and say hello to Tana and Little Jim before I leave. Knowin’ Tana, she’s probably already heard I’m around, and she’ll cast a spell on me if don’t stop in.”
“Tana hears you talking like that, adding fuel to the rumors she’s a voodoo practitioner instead of a healer, she’ll make you wish all she did was cast a spell on you. You recall that willow switch when she caught us spying on the girls at the swimming hole?”
“Ouch.” Cole grimaced. “Do I ever.”
“How’s Little Jim?” Shain asked. “Tana hasn’t brought him around in a while.”
“He’s the same,” Cole said with a shrug. “His body’s twenty, but his mind’s still five. He’s happy out there in the woods back of Chenaie—Tana doesn’t want him exposed to the nasty remarks he hears when she brings him into contact with what we call polite society. Little Jim doesn’t understand when people laugh at him, and Tana’s too proud to put up with them treatin’ her son like that.”
“She knows I’ll fire anyone at Chenaie I hear making fun of Little Jim,” Shain growled. “Hell, after the Yanks destroyed your place and murdered your folks, Tana could’ve gone anywhere. Instead, she came to Chenaie and took care of Jeannie when she heard my father’s sister was dying of yellow fever. I’ll never be able to repay her for that.”
“You’ve given her a place to stay, and a cabin of her own to care for Little Jim. But look, you said you needed to get back to Chenaie. I just came by to ask if you knew that a timber crew was markin’ trees on Chenaie land. You figurin’ on sellin’ off some timber? If you are, I think you ought to ride out and look at what that company’s doin’ to the forests they’re workin’ on now.”
“That son of a bitch!” Shain snarled. Startled at the angry voice, Shain’s stallion half-reared, then skittered sideways. Shain quickly brought him under control. “The man you just saw leaving was Fitzroy, and he works for that damned Great Lakes Timber Company that’s moved in down here in the South. I told him again today that I wasn’t interested in selling off Chenaie’s timber rights!”
“Looked to me like they were layin’ out a new roadway,” Cole said. “From where they’re cuttin’ now, they could save a full day haulin’ their logs to the river if they came across Chenaie land. Float the logs down to the sawmills in Baton Rouge faster and get the money in their pockets sooner.”
“They start clearing that roadway, you let me know,” Shain said in a deadly voice. “That was Fitzroy’s alternate proposition this time—if I didn’t want to sell the timber, he wanted to buy a right-of-way. I told him the same thing I did the last time he offered me one of his deals—not only no, but hell, no.”
“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Cole agreed. “Give Jeannie my regards, and I’ll see you another time—when I can stay longer.”
Cole disappeared silently into the underbrush, but instead of immediately heading back to his fields, Shain sat motionless on Black for a while longer. The timber company must have been pretty damned sure he would agree to a right-of-way if they’d already begun marking the land they wanted. Maybe some of the recent problems he’d been having on Chenaie weren’t accidents. Carrington, his new overseer, had been mentioning his own concerns lately.
Muted hoofbeats sounded as Cole rode away, back to the drifting lifestyle he’d taken up after he came home and found not only his home destroyed and parents dead, but the land seized by the bank for unpaid taxes. He could only imagine his friend’s heartbreak—the same misery he would feel if he lost Chenaie.
Black snorted and lifted his head. Suddenly a hell of a noise split the air—something between a puma’s shriek and a woman’s scream. Black danced wildly, ignoring Shain’s grip on the reins.
A brilliant flash of light rent the air, and Black neighed in frenzy, reared, and pawed in terror. Cursing the stallion under his breath, Shain clenched his thighs and wrapped the reins a turn around his hands. He shifted his weight forward and pulled the stallion’s head against its chest, bringing its front hooves back to the ground. The horse attempted one more plunge, but finally stood trembling beneath him.
With Black under control, Shain glared around him as he reached behind him for the pistol in one of his saddlebags. His arm froze in mid-swing. “Holy shit! What the hell’s that?”
Shain stared at the colossal, white—whatever it was—in the ditch across the road. Maintaining his firm hold on the reins, he closed his eyelids briefly, then slit them a hair’s breadth. The white—whatever it was—still sat there.
A cloud of smoke drifted across the road from beneath the black wheels, carrying a strange odor, which stank like burning kerosene when a lamp wick needed trimming. The thing crouched there growling—well, more like a grown barn cat’s gravelly purr—but nevertheless, warning Shain to keep his distance.
“Damn it, St. Clair,” Shain muttered. “You’re sitting here acting like that thing’s alive, when it’s probably just one of those machines that Crazy Jake’s always working on.”
But this machine looked a cut above most of the inventions Jake called Shain over to view. The glossy white paint gleamed, and whatever powered it made the engine run a lot smoother than anything Jake had come up with so far. But he damned sure didn’t have time to mess with one of Jake’s inventions right now.
A shadow flickered against the smoky window pane in the machine’s side, and Shain squinted as he tried to see through the reflected sun glare. It looked like there was a white air bladder inside it—but one a thousand times larger than the small airbags he cleaned from the insides of catfish. Catching a glimpse of a feminine face, he bit off a gasp and sprang from his stallion. That damned sure wasn’t Jake inside there!
Released from Shain’s hold, Black whirled and bolted down the dirt road. Shain took a hesitant step forward before he stopped in stunned amazement when the machine’s side split wide open and a pair of slender, feminine legs appeared.
Those damned sure didn’t belong to Jake—or Zeke, the elderly former slave who lived with Jake and made sure the inventor ate a meal now and then. Eyes narrowed in contemplation, Shain stepped back deeper into the shadows beneath the live oak’s branches.
Chapter 3
Alaynia shoved the collapsed airbag aside and slid out of her seat. The blast of heat outside the air-conditioned car hit her full force, and the ache in her neck and shoulders reminded her just how badly she could have been injured if it hadn’t been for the airbag and seatbelt.
She shrugged in irritation as she glanced at her wristwatch, then at the front of the car, trying to determine what she’d hit to trigger the airbag. The hood appeared undamaged, but since the car had landed nose-down in the ditch, she couldn’t really tell if maybe the bumper plowed over a piece of guard rail. She brushed at a trickle of sweat streaking her water-based makeup and started around the car door. Stopped when her heels sank in dirt.
“Damned if I’m going to ruin a pair of hundred-and-fifty-dollar shoes,” she muttered. “I’ll call someone to come pull me out.”
But the darned phone was on the passenger floorboard with the scattered contents of her purse! She propped her hands on her hips and studied the situation.
* * * *
Only Shain’s eyes moved as he tore his gaze away from the bare legs standing in those shoes with the ridiculously high heels and upward. The satiny material of the blue skirt ended an inch or two beneath gently rounded hips, outlining them perfectly. Her hands splayed on the swell beneath her trim waist. He couldn’t see her fingers, but a brilliant red color tipped her thumbs. The white blouse hung more loosely than the skirt, bu
t her back tapered nicely—what he could see of it beneath a riot of silky brown curls cascading past her shoulders.
She appeared at ease with the machine and reached back inside to twist something. The purring growl died, and then she reached farther in. The skirt slipped up farther with her movements and exposed more lush thigh. Way before Shain decided he’d had enough, she straightened, with a small black object in her hand. She pushed something on it, held it to her ear, then pulled it away to peer at it. Then she tossed it inside the machine and turned around. This time she held what looked like a key ring, some sort of leather case also dangling from it.
* * * *
“Oh!” Alaynia raised a hand to shade her eyes against the brilliant sun. “I didn’t see you at first,” she called toward the man standing across the road under a tree draped with Spanish moss. “Say, do you happen to have a phone I could use?”
When the man only stared at her, Alaynia cautiously unsnapped the leather case over the can of mace on her key chain. Darn it, she knew better than to immediately strike up a conversation with a stranger. A woman alone could never tell what might happen. She shifted the mace to her left hand and grabbed the car door with her right. If he ran toward her, she could be back in the car with the door closed and locked in a split second.
He took a few steps away from the tree, but still didn’t say anything. Alaynia shook her head as she studied him more closely. Definitely masculine. Probably at least six-one, and she’d always had a weakness for males with slightly long, black hair. His eyes appeared brown from this distance, but the shadowing tree limbs made an accurate determination of color impractical—even with him staring at her with that wide-eyed, astounded gaze.
And, good lord, where had he bought that clothing? It looked new, but the style seemed too outdated for even one of the dowdier Boston thrift shops to carry. His white shirt with semi-flowing sleeves should be cool in this heat and humidity, though, so maybe Southern men tailored their styles to suit the weather they had to endure, and the heck with fashion.