In the Company of Witches

Mikhael was also as good as his word. She didn’t get a second glance from anyone they passed, his chameleon spellwork flawless. She almost didn’t feel it, except for an occasional sense of warm air passing over her skin. When she glanced into a decorative mirror in passing, she saw an average-looking woman, attractive but not exceptionally so. She suspected he had a similar dissembling cast over himself, since the man blended like John Cena at a reunion of the Oz Munchkins, yet no woman who passed them tripped over her own feet or walked smack into a parking meter. Pleasingly enough, though, he looked as he always looked to her. She wondered if he’d excluded her from the spell to give her that pleasure. It was both an arrogant and amusing thought. He didn’t underestimate the impact of his looks; that was for certain. She liked that, because she was no different about her own. It was what it was, an asset to be enjoyed, but never to be mistaken as a substitute for true substance.



At the next antique store they visited, they were greeted by a clacking noise, followed by a piercing train whistle. The proprietor had an old model train set in operation, the cars trundling along the track cordoning several displays. While Mikhael slowed down to take a look, she went to the second level to check on a nineteenth-century Louis XV walnut armoire that had caught her eye. As she wandered through that upper level, she caught glimpses of him through the array of merchandise. What she saw intrigued her enough she came to the rail, leaning on it to watch him.



The set had ten cars. He’d taken hold of the controls and was putting the train through its paces, switching tracks, stopping and reversing, hooking up another car. An older man sitting on a bench nearby was discussing it with him, apparently a train enthusiast. Fascinated, she watched him and Mikhael enter a deep conversation, where terms like scale, track radius, gauges and steam versus diesel reached her ears.



Mikhael Roman liked toy train sets. Absorbing that astonishing fact, she bought a bag of caramel creams dipped out of an oak barrel of bulk candy, and then drifted down the stairs. Taking up a discreet position, she leaned against an old metal light post being used as a store display.



The older man was talking about how he’d built sets with his grandfather. Mikhael was courteous, attentive. He was listening, not just patronizing the man until he could get away, and even offered some feedback of his own about his experience with steam engine sets. Then he paused, glanced over his shoulder and found her there.



“Time to move on to the next store?” he asked. The other man followed his gaze, his wrinkled face creasing in a smile.



“Always a good idea to keep them moving, son,” he advised. “The longer she’s in a store, the more she takes a mind to buy.”



Raina arched a brow but let that pass as Mikhael motioned to the store proprietor. “I’d like this set,” he said, producing a wallet and handing over cash that covered the price. “No change. Please box it up and I’ll have someone return for it by the end of the day.”



The store owner nodded, returning with a receipt Mikhael pocketed; then Mikhael slipped a hand under Raina’s elbow. “Going to get the armoire?” he asked.



She hadn’t thought he was paying any attention to her whereabouts, but she should have known better. “Thinking about it. She wants four thousand. I gave her an offer of thirty-two hundred and my number if she decides to take it. With those three mirrors, it would be perfect in one of our period playrooms.”



“Or your bedroom.” Mikhael held the door for her, his hand at the small of her back to guide her out.



“It’s not nice to read a woman’s mind, Mikhael. We like to be a mystery. I had no idea you liked toy trains. You could have knocked her down on that price.”



“It was fair. And it’s model trains or model railways. They’re not toy trains.”



“True. I’ve never seen a movie where one was set up under a tree to delight the children on Christmas morning.” She chuckled as he gave her a not-so-gentle pinch on her ass. She pushed him in retaliation, but slid closer when he gathered her under his arm, continuing their stroll down the sidewalk. “Do you want me to send Li to pick it up? They’d probably enjoy playing with it, if you aren’t as covetous of your toys as Lucifer.”



“Li doesn’t need to fetch it. Once it’s boxed up, the package will disappear and the manager will remember someone came for it. Normally, I’d send it to my cache in the Underworld, but I can reroute it to your house. There are trains scaled for outdoor garden size, you know.” He glanced down at her. “You could add it to your landscape design. It’d be a good mix with the whimsical bronzes.”



“I might need a consultant to help me with that. I don’t know a lot about toy trains. Model railways,” she amended. “As far as your new friend back there, why is it men always assume that a woman is using his money to shop?”



“Because a man will pay for a woman’s company, in a variety of ways. Not always the direct one.”



She snorted. “Well, that’s honest.”



“It’s primal.” Mikhael shrugged. “A woman has to know a man can take care of her to be worthy of her company, of her offspring. Doesn’t matter how times have changed, whether she intends to have children, or how capable she is of doing for herself; she will still instinctively, chemically, gravitate toward the man she knows she can rely upon for protection if needed. Unless there’s an overriding social or genetic factor in her makeup that prefers him to be the weaker one in their relationship.”



“Why is it I so often have the urge to Taser you?”



“From a certain genus of female, I think that’s considered a sign of affection.” He eyed her bag of caramels.



“Would you like one?” she asked sweetly.



“You just want the sadistic pleasure of saying no when I ask.”



“You don’t know everything.” Unwrapping one, she lifted it to his mouth, brushed her fingers over his lips in a way that heated his gaze. “I would have bought you a train set. Just to prove I’d take care of you, if I was so inclined.”



“And are you?”



“You’re too much of a horse’s ass for me to get such an idiotic notion. But I don’t mind indulging your fantasies of being a kept man.”



He chuckled, gave her another pinch, this time a gentle one on the curve of her breast just under her arm. She elbowed him in his hard stomach. He kept his arm around her waist, but she slid hers around him as well, thumb hooked in the waistband of his jeans. The ripple of powerful muscle against her upper torso was a pleasant feeling.



As he guided her past a sidewalk display outside a knickknack store, she put out her hand, making the colorful mini-flags display their flutter in passing. “So the items in your vault can be called to you when needed.”



“Yes. Basic conjuring.”



“It’s still a pretty impressive distance,” she observed. “Say you’re in the forest, and there are no innocent bunnies or fawns for you to terrorize. You get bored. You call up your train set, lay it out on the ground and have at it?”



“Once, when I was in the Appalachians, pixies came out to play with it. They put pebbles and flowers into the cars. A very displeased frog.” She looked up in time to see the muscles tighten in his face in a way that was almost a smile. “They can be hyper, so I had to calm them enough they could ride on the cars without knocking them over. It was tricky to do without offending them. They’re pretty sensitive.”



“What happens if they get offended?”



“You get no sleep at all, because every time you drift off, they pull your hair or stick a bug up your nose.”



“Good thing you don’t sleep much, because you don’t excel at being inoffensive.”



“You just don’t appreciate me the way they do.”



“Hmm.” She snorted. “So how big is this depository of yours?”



“Gold digger.”



“Just checking out my security options.”



BY EARLY AFTERNOON, THEY’D HIT MOST OF THE STORES along the riverfront and found a place to get a sandwich. He paid for her lunch, waving away her money. While they were eating on the restaurant’s porch, he nodded to the old movie theater across the street. “Want to go see a movie? Next show starts in a few minutes.”



She followed his gaze. The Aimway was a vintage nostalgia theater, a small place with a scroll woodwork facade and movie posters framed in gold filigree. Mostly they showed movies already out on DVD, but Ramona said that was part of the fun, going to see favorite movies the way they’d originally been viewed. She’d been ecstatic about watching Gone with the Wind on the big screen. Raina would have liked to see that one, but had made the usual excuses. Though she expected Ruby and Ramona had guessed why she didn’t leave the house much, she preferred not to talk about it. A woman had her pride, after all.



Collecting their sandwich garbage, she tossed it away and waited, looking across the street at the theater facade while he left a tip on the table. When he joined her on the sidewalk, he laid an arm over her shoulders, fingers caressing her upper arm.



“Have you ever been in a theater?”



“Of course.” Not. She’d seen movies in which people went to the movies. He gave her a look.



“Let’s go see this one, then.”



She blinked up at the marquee. “It’s New Moon. One of the Twilight saga. Teenage girl angst?”



He shrugged. “Have you seen it?”



“No.”



“Neither have I. We’ve got time, and if we don’t like it, we can leave. You’re interested in vampires, right?” He tapped her nails, the vampire design in red and black.



“You really need to be as unobservant as most males.”



“Raina. You haven’t seen a movie in a theater. Right?” At her twitch of assent, his fingers touched her jaw, making her look at him.



“Then let’s go. And don’t lie to me. Not now, not ever.”