Witch Angel Read online

  “You’re the senior angel here,” she whispered with a mixture of fright, along with anger and embarrassment over her fear. “Who—or what—is that thing? An evil spirit?”

  “No. A spirit, but not an evil one, Sylvia.” Francesca spoke to the apparition. “Tsk, tsk, Basil. You’re scaring the bejeebers out of Sylvia here. Take on your normal form immediately.”

  “Says who?” the apparition snarled. Instead of obeying, it screwed up its muzzle and drew back its upper lip to bare a pair of sharp fangs. Smoke issued from two large, green, pointed ears on its head, and it hissed out a mixture of steam and flames.

  Sylvia stared at the apparition in fascination, less fearful now that Francesca hovered between her and it. When the smoke covered its face for a second, she glanced over the rest of its body—then broke into unrestrained laughter.

  “Oh, Frannie,” she said around her laughter, “look at him. He’s making himself a monster on top, but he can’t change his lower body! But where are his wings?”

  “Basil’s a human spirit—a ghost, not an angel,” Francesca explained. “Ghosts don’t have wings.”

  “Well, none of the human spirits I ever worked with ever looked like that. But then, I’ve never run into an earthbound human spirit before—a ghost. Say.” Sylvia studied the ghost in an appraising manner. “That lower part of him’s pretty cute.”

  “Like one of those hunks?” Francesca asked.

  “Could be,” Sylvia mused in reply. “Let’s get a closer look.”

  Basil snorted in anger and disappeared in a cloud of mist. A split-second later, he reappeared, this time in the form of a man somewhat resembling an older version of Shain, who was still nursing Alaynia down below the three hovering figures.

  “Stay away from me!” Basil demanded. “How dare you attempt to examine me like I was some blooded stallion up for auction! And I’ve already ordered you out of my space!”

  “Basil, Basil,” Francesca said with a shake of her blond head. “You didn’t used to be like this. What in the world’s come over you?”

  “You just said it,” Basil growled in a low voice. “The world’s come over me, along with what they call progress. You can both just heist your tails back to wherever you came from, because ...”

  “Tails?” Fists clenched, Sylvia flew at Basil. “Why, you male chauvinist pig. Women don’t have to put up with being called names like that!”

  Before Sylvia reached him, Basil disappeared again, reappearing after she whooshed by in the same place he had occupied. “Girl, I’ve been practicing my craft for almost two hundred years, and if I don’t want you to touch me, you won’t.”

  “Don’t you dare call me a girl, you ... you ghost!” Sylvia sputtered as her anger heightened. “You listen here, buster ...”

  “Calm down, Sylvia,” Frannie said.

  “Then do something,” Sylvia demanded. “Or let me. Our powers have to be stronger than his. We’re lots older!”

  “It doesn’t work that way, Sylvia,” Francesca informed her companion with a sigh of annoyance. “I’ll explain later. For now, I can do without your remarks about our age. But since you brought it up, please behave yourself and try to act like you have a little maturity to go with your years of existence.”

  Francesca crossed her arms and turned a stern look on the ghost. “We’ve been sent here to tell you that you need to send Alaynia back to her own time immediately, Basil.”

  “Hah,” Basil sneered. “I might not have been around quite as long as you, Francesca, but I know that I’ve still got a measure of free will here, just like I had when I was alive. I’ve got no intention of sending that little chit back there, so she can destroy the peace of my plantation.”

  “Basil ...” Francesca began, but the ghost wasn’t there. Without apparent effort on his part, he had disappeared, leaving behind empty air where he had hovered.

  * * * *

  Beneath the live oak tree, Shain heaved a relieved sigh as Alaynia opened her eyes fully, blinked, and screwed up her face in a frown as she tried to focus. He set the canteen down beside him and barely managed to tighten his grasp on her when she lunged away with a gasp of fear.

  “Hey, easy,” he murmured, as though soothing a still-unbroken colt. “You’ll feel better in a minute.”

  “I’m fine now,” Alaynia said in a flat voice. “Get your damned hands off me.”

  “Well, if you aren’t the ungrateful female,” Shain muttered. “Maybe I should just throw you back inside that machine and see how long you last.”

  “That would be preferable to lying here while you undress me further.” Alaynia glanced down at the handkerchief over her breasts with a meaningful look. “Let me up.”

  Shain released her and rose, eyes narrowing in resentment at her implication. “You don’t even have enough clothing on to notice if you lost a piece. When we get to the plantation, you’ll have to wait somewhere until I bring you out one of Jeannie’s dresses. My household staff will think someone attacked you, if they see how you’re dressed now. And if my field crew notices you, they’ll think I made a morning call at Polly’s Place and brought one of her girls back with me.”

  Sputtering in indignation, Alaynia scrambled to her feet. She swayed and grasped for support. The nearest stability available was Shain’s chest, and she leaned against him, fingers curling into his white shirt. Her forehead fell on his shoulder, and he chuckled wryly and wrapped his arms around her.

  An unfamiliar scent rose from her hair, and Shain tried to place it while she clung to him. Not honeysuckle alone—more like a mixture of that and wisteria. Whatever the blend, he couldn’t imagine one of Polly’s girls using anything so faintly enticing. They usually slathered on a perfume strong enough to withstand their evening’s exertions.

  “I ...” Alaynia pushed against him and leaned back in his arms. “Look, I apologize. I know you were only trying to cool me off. But I don’t appreciate one bit your insinuation that I look like a prostitute!”

  Shain trailed his gaze downward. The handkerchief had fluttered to the ground when she jumped to her feet, and her blouse still gaped open. He had to admit that the scrap of rose lace probably had an easy job maintaining those breasts at a proper pout. Still, he’d turn Jeannie over his knee if she ever even thought about going out without a corset on her newly-blooming figure.

  Alaynia gasped and reached to button her blouse. As soon as she had it closed securely, she twisted from his grasp. Her quick movement evidently brought on lightheadedness, and she grabbed the arm Shain held out.

  She took two deep breaths and appeared less woozy. Still holding his arm, she bent down and removed her shoes. Dangling them in her fingers, she took a step back, steadier now without her heels sinking into the dirt.

  “I’ve got some mineral water in my cooler,” she told Shain. “I’ll probably be all right as soon as I get some liquid in my system.”

  * * * *

  Shain sauntered along behind her as she walked toward the car. Lord, did that man ever move more decisively than a languid walk? She stepped more firmly in counteraction to his lazy stride and grimaced when her bare feet kicked up swirls of dust.

  “You’re not going to jump back in there and lock yourself inside, are you?” Shain asked as she reached for the back door handle.

  Alaynia threw an irritated glance over her shoulder. “I think I’ve got a little more sense than that.” In deference to the heated door handle, she gingerly pulled the door open and ducked in to reach for the cooler in the middle of the seat, along with one of the Styrofoam cups in the open plastic bag. She should have remembered she had those drinks with her earlier, but she excused her lack of memory. She’d had other things on her mind ... especially after she noticed the man now standing too close.

  And she heard that man whistle under his breath as her skirt rode up until it barely covered her hips. When she backed out of the car, her rear hit him right where she could feel the start of his arousal—and a second later, she
whirled and hit him with the cooler just below his belt buckle with a satisfying thud.

  Hands clasped protectively over his privates and a look of stunned betrayal on his face, he landed spread-legged on his ass. Alaynia smirked in satisfaction as she swung the back door closed and stepped over his outstretched legs. She set the cooler down and reached inside the still-open driver’s door to grab her key ring from the ignition switch.

  “This stuff’s pretty wicked,” she warned Shain as she turned around, the mace firmly in her grasp. “It’s not that pepper stuff. It’s what the cops use. And I’ve practiced with it until I’m a pretty good shot.” Keeping both the mace and her eyes trained on Shain, she reached down and fumbled the cooler lid open.

  Shain glared at the leather-covered cylinder in her hand. “Goddamn it,” he snarled as he rose to his feet. “You knew I was behind you, and you backed into me! It was an accident.”

  “Yeah, and that thing was just accidentally growing between your legs!” Unable to remove the screw cap from the mineral water while she held the mace in her other hand, Alaynia placed the Styrofoam cup over the bottle’s stem and settled for running the bottle around her neck. Cool water dripped down her chest, pooling between her breasts. She sighed in pleasure.

  Shain shook his head. “Let me tell you something, lady.”

  “Alaynia,” Alaynia interrupted, wondering at the same instant why on earth it mattered to her if this man knew her name. “Uh ... I seem to remember you yelling your name through the window. Shain, was it?”

  A derisive sneer on his lips, Shain bowed. “Shain Christopher St. Clair of Chenaie Plantation, at your service, Alaynia whoever the hell you are!”

  The mace started to slide from her suddenly numb fingers, and Alaynia reflexively tightened her grasp. “You ... you can’t be! He said Chenaie had been empty for five years.”

  “He obviously misinformed you. Chenaie hasn’t been empty for even five days since my grandfather built it seventy years ago.”

  “Then there must be two plantations with the same name around here,” Alaynia said in protest. “My Chenaie’s almost two hundred years old, not just seventy. Maybe you know it as Oak Grove, the English translation for Chenaie?”

  “Nope,” Shain denied. “I know every plantation in this end of Louisiana—even the new names for those the damned Yankee carpetbaggers picked up when the rightful owners couldn’t pay those hellacious taxes on them. There’s not a two-hundred-year-old manor house in the bunch of them. Chenaie’s one of the oldest in this end of the state. You’d have to go to New Orleans to find anything older.”

  “Your grandfather can’t own my Chenaie,” Alaynia insisted. “I’ve got a deed to it in my briefcase.”

  “My grandfather’s been dead for over twenty-five years,” Shain informed her. “I own Chenaie now, and I don’t care what kind of a case you’re carrying your deed around in; it’s fake. Probably came from some damned carpetbagger, who also lied to you about the age of the manor house.” He eyed her suspiciously. “I suggest you find who sold you that bogus document and try to get your money back, whatever good that’ll do you. He’s probably hightailed it into Yankee-land by now, where he’s drooling over your money and laughing up his sleeve.”

  “I didn’t buy it—I inherited it!” Alaynia insisted. A bead of sweat rolled down her forehead, into the corner of her eye, and the saltiness stung. She backhanded the pain and inadvertently pressed the release button on the mace. A stream of liquid hissed out and spattered against the Styrofoam cup capping the bottle of mineral water, which she now held near her waist.

  Horrified, Alaynia shut her eyes and threw the bottle and mace away. She stumbled backward, came up against the open driver’s door, then lurched sideways. Her foot hit the cooler, and bottles and cans clinked as it tipped over. She lost her balance completely and landed with a thud. A stabbing pain shot through her hip, which had ended up on the edge of the cooler lid. Eyes firmly closed, she rolled over twice, away from the car.

  When she finally dared open her eyes, she saw that Shain had ducked to the back of the car when she tossed the mace away. His gaze followed the cloud of mist, which trailed from the car’s door to the middle of the road, and then his eyes centered on the Styrofoam cup, now curling in partial disintegration.

  Obviously seething with fury, he glared at her sprawled figure. “Damn you! What the hell were you trying to do?”

  Alaynia scrambled to her feet and held out her hands. “Don’t get in that mist,” she pleaded, though the cloud was quickly dissipating. “It’ll burn your eyes terribly.”

  “As if you give a damn,” Shain snarled. “You’ve been threatening me with that stuff for the last five minutes! What the hell’s in that container—some type of acid? You almost sprayed it in my face!”

  Aware of her defenselessness against his enraged anger, Alaynia cautiously glanced around for her mace. It lay a fair distance from Shain’s boot. As soon as her eyes fell on it, he took a few steps forward and bent down, tanned fingers closing around the leather case. He straightened and studied the cylinder, apparently discerning that it was safe enough to handle as long as he kept his finger away from the release button on its top. He damned sure wasn’t going to give it back to her, though. With a flick of his wrist, he sailed the key ring across the road, where it disappeared in the underbrush.

  “Damn it,” Alaynia shouted, “I didn’t mean to fire it—it was an accident. And my car keys are on that ring!”

  The trail of mist had disappeared by now, and Shain shrugged. “You’re real familiar with accidents, aren’t you? You’ve accidentally wrecked one of Jake’s machines, and accidentally scared my horse half to death. Tell me, where did you accidentally lose the rest of your clothes?”

  Alaynia scurried behind the feeble protection of the driver’s door, but Shain only reached down to grab one of the bottles of mineral water. When he glanced at her wary face, he smiled grimly.

  “I’ve got to tell Jake to make me one of those things,” he said in a nonchalant voice, his anger evidently appeased somewhat in face of her apprehension. He nodded his head at the ground, where quickly-melting ice cubes lay scattered among the cans and bottles, and lifted an inquiring brow. “How long’s it keep that ice frozen?”

  “All day,” Alaynia replied in a grudging voice. Without her mace, she didn’t feel nearly as confident, especially with his taller height towering over her on the other side of the door.

  Shain lifted the mineral water higher. “Too bad I don’t have an opener with me. This sure would taste good.”

  “It twists off.” Her voice came out still less than friendly, still cautious.

  “Oh.” Shain closed his fingers around the cap and turned it. Tossing the cap aside, he extended the bottle to Alaynia. “Here. You didn’t get to drink the other bottle you picked up.”

  She licked her dry lips and cautiously stretched her arm over the car window to accept the bottle. Jerked her hand back as soon as her fingers closed, and moved a couple steps backward before she tilted the bottle to her lips.

  Shain shrugged and picked up another bottle. While he unscrewed the cap, he sauntered toward the horse Alaynia had noticed tied down the road.

  “Uh ...” She took a step or two after him. “Uh ... where are you going? I want to ask you some more questions about Chenaie.”

  Shain ignored her until after he untied the reins and swung into the saddle and turned the horse around. Then he took a deep swallow from the bottle.

  “Good,” he said in a somewhat surprised voice. “You ever get by my Chenaie, maybe you’ll give your recipe to Jeannie, to pass on to our cook.”

  “Mr. St. Clair. Shain ...”

  “Don’t worry,” Shain said. He drank another swallow, then reined the horse back down the road. “I’ll ride over to Crazy Jake’s and have him come get you. But that’s all I’m going to do for you. Your next accident’s liable to prove even more hazardous to my health!”

  Alaynia stared open-m
outhed after him until he disappeared in a bend in the road. Then she stomped over to the driver’s door and slid into the seat. Yelping, she jumped back outside, bumping her head on the door frame in her haste to escape the hot seat leather against her bare legs.

  “Damn!” she muttered. “Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn! Damn it to Hell!”

  Suddenly she gawked down the road. He was sending who after her? Jake? Crazy Jake? Shain himself was definitely a touch light in the head, insisting that he owned a plantation the attorney had assured Alaynia had stood empty ever since her elderly great-aunt, Miss Tilda, entered a nursing home.

  She hadn’t had much of a chance to try to make sense of his strange behavior so far. Instead, she’d been too busy trying to overcome her bout with heatstroke and keeping out of Shain’s reach. He didn’t own a car? Had never heard of a garage or phone?

  If Shain was an example of a sane man in Louisiana, what sort of man would he send back here—a man Shain himself called crazy. Crazy Jake.

  The heck with trying to figure out how Shain could claim ownership in a plantation with the same name as hers. She had to get out of here before Crazy Jake arrived.

  She couldn’t get to the gym bag in the trunk, which contained her running shoes. She’d locked the glove box over her rental papers after she picked up the car, and the trunk release button was inside it. The keys were lost somewhere across the road in dense underbrush it would be fruitless to search. Besides, she’d read that Louisiana snakes were poisonous. And what good would the keys do her if the car still wouldn’t start, although at least she’d have the mace again. She grabbed the expensive heels again and slipped them on with a grimace at her dirty feet.

  Crazy Jake. Yep, Shain had definitely said Crazy Jake.

  “Get the hell out of there, snakes!” Alaynia yelled as she stomped her feet heavily while she trudged across the dirt road.