Which Witch is Which? (The Witches of Port Townsend) Read online

  Which Witch is Which?

  The Witches of Port Townsend

  Book One

  by

  Cynthia St. Aubin

  Cindy Stark

  Kerrigan Byrne

  Tiffinie Helmer

  Moira © 2014 Cynthia St. Aubin

  Claire © 2014 Cindy Stark

  Aerin © 2014 Kerrigan Byrne

  Tierra © 2014 Tiffinie Helmer

  All rights reserved

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The book contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, or stored in or introduced into an information storage and retrieval system in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-0692299883 (Ardent Publishing)

  ISBN-10: 0692299882

  Cover Art © 2014 Kelli Ann Morgan / Inspire Creative Services

  Interior book design by Bob Houston eBook Formatting

  Dedication

  To sisters, born or conjured.

  And to our readers, who make every day of our lives magical.

  Table of Contents:

  Prologue

  Moira

  Claire

  Aerin

  Tierra

  Prologue

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Tierra de Moray jumped with the knife poised over her palm. Ah, crap. She'd been found out. Now there would be hell to pay.

  “Aunt Justine, don't sneak up on me like that!” She'd have to start the chant over now. Everything had to be precise or the spell wouldn’t work, and it had to work. She couldn't go on like this any longer without going crazy.

  “You don't know what you're dealing with,” Justine said, her fingers curling at her sides. Her face lost its mask of youth and she looked more her true age of sixty than the glamour of forty. “You're dabbling in things you don't understand.”

  It wasn't like she hadn't asked over the years. “It’s a simple finding spell.” With a lot of summoning added in.

  “Tierra, listen to me. Some things are lost for a reason and should never be found.” Panic rose in her voice causing it to shrill and stir the wind in warning.

  “Are you ready to share those reasons with me?” Tierra demanded.

  Justine had raised her after her mother had died in childbirth. Whoever her father had been still remained a mystery as the de Moray women didn't keep their men. There wasn't a man alive who had what it took to live with a de Moray witch. One of the many things Justine had refused to speak of, and Tierra had asked, begged, and wheedled over the years to no avail.

  She waited with baited breath one last time to see if Justine would finally answer her questions. The tightening of Justine's lips was loud enough.

  “I thought so,” Tierra muttered, ignoring the hurt that came with her aunt's continued silence. “I need to find out. Part of me is missing. Once and for all, I'm putting an end to this.” Either she'd finally know what had been taken from her, or she'd lose this void that echoed in her soul for good.

  It was a two-part spell. She didn't waste energy if she could help it. Her movements were sure, confident as the earth whispered to her of ancient things, and directed her in the pathways of witches who'd practiced before her. Her bare toes curled into the lush grasses and rich soil underneath her feet.

  She was an earth witch and while she rocked on the spring equinox—and the solstices—it was the autumn equinox that was really her night to rule the world. She couldn't wait that long. The circle was closed. The elements of air, water, fire, and earth all present at four directions within the circle representing north, south, east, and west.

  Tierra untied the soft cotton shift and it drifted like mist to the ground. She stood naked under the tree limbs, having previously bathed with essential oils in preparation. The Pacific Northwest's old-growth forest of spruce, hemlock, fir, juniper, and bristlecone pines hovered over her in protection, their branches curved as though cradling a child. The air stirred and teased the long strands of her hair, the color of burgundy wine, in a dance around her torso. The scent of burning sage, lavender, and thistle wafted in the crisp night air.

  “This is nonsense, Tierra. Don't make me put an end to this.” Justine tried to break into the circle and was repelled back a few steps. It spoke to her aunt's level of power that the push hadn't sent her all the way home.

  Justine could try, but she wouldn't be able to enter the circle. Tierra had planned to perform this spell tonight, on the spring equinox with its blood moon, making sure she'd be more powerful. More powerful than her aunt.

  For as long as Tierra could remember, she felt as if a significant part of her had been ripped from her soul. The only thing that made sense was an article she'd read about soldiers who'd lost limbs in battle, and the phantom pain that never left them. She had all her arms and legs, fingers and toes, but on another level something just as important had been severed from her.

  Justine wasn't talking, and neither was the coven.

  The earth would reveal her secrets.

  “Stop this, Tierra.” There was a threat in her voice now as Justine tried to tear into the circle, her fingers shaped like claws. This time the circle tossed her back a few yards. The next attempt would knock her on her ass.

  Tierra restarted the spell her aunt had interrupted and raised the knife until the light of the blood moon glinted crimson off the blade.

  “Keeper of secrets, release what was taken,

  Hear me now—answer in three

  Return to me what has been forsaken,

  By earth, air, fire, and sea…”

  She continued to chant as power infused her body and the air charged with energy. Her aunt's yelling and repeated attempts to break into the circle disappeared as Tierra lost herself in the spell. Her lungs expanded, and her heart raced. New spring flowers swirled in a tunnel of frenzy as vapor in the air caught fire and rained sparks. She drew the blade across her palm and blood flowed into the copper bowl, mixing with the dandelion, myrrh, sage, and wormwood.

  Something tore free from her, stealing her breath, and the contents of the bowl burst into flame. Silvery, iridescent smoke twirled like ribbons into the starry, midnight sky, splitting and then shooting three different directions. An implosion shook the circle and the resulting percussion sealed the spell.

  Tierra was thrown backward. The soft meadow grasses reached up to cushion her fall. She lay there, catching her breath as her mind raced.

  The earth sighed and a truth she was never supposed to know manifested itself.

  Her spell had broken another. A banishing spell as old as she was.

  Whatever had been taken from her had also been banished never to be reunited. The acrid taste of pine was sharp on Tierra's tongue.

  “What have you done?” Justine whispered, though the words sounded like a scream inside Tierra's head.

  Justine's jade eyes were wide and scared, and her cherry-red hair had been teased into a chaos of twists and coils around her ashen face. Her aunt's mop of hair was always restrained, her clothes perfectly neat. Nothing about her was restrained
right now. She looked wild and desperate.

  Just how hard did Justine try to break into the circle?

  A skittering of fear shivered over Tierra's skin. Shaking, she climbed to her feet, breathing like she'd hiked to the top of the Olympic Mountains.

  “Would you quit overreacting?” she said, reaching for the shift to cover her nakedness as the cold needled in. “It's not like I just brought about the end of the world.”

  “You insolent witch.” Justine slowly got to her feet, her face a mask of anger and terror. “That's exactly what you've done.”

  Moira

  by

  Cynthia St. Aubin

  Chapter One

  “What in the Sam Hill you doing, girl?”

  Moira Malveaux shooed the teacup pig out of her suitcase and tossed in a handful of silky black panties. “Hog-tying a catfish. Packing. What’s it look like I’m doing?”

  Uncle Sal shifted his wad of snuff from one stubbled cheek to the other and adjusted the straps on his waders. Silver-black hair swooped from his orange trucker cap like wings. His lanky form invaded her small doorway with the slouching angles of a scarecrow. “What for?”

  Moira twisted her wavy mass of dark auburn hair into a bun which she secured with the well-gnawed pencil from her night stand. A breeze whispered across her damp neck like a lover’s sigh. “Don’t know yet.”

  “Packin’ a bag for nowhere. Well, that sounds like a fool thing to do.” Sal reached down to Moira’s pillow and tried to pet the little pig. It gave an indignant squeal and climbed back into the suitcase.

  “Oh I don’t think so, mister.” Moira scooped up her pet with one hand and kissed the downy spot between his ears before setting him in her sock drawer. The lack of fur gave his pink skin an almost human warmth. “Momma’s trying to pack, Cheeto. Besides, you know you’re coming with me.”

  “He’s coming with you where?” The brown gob of Sal’s spit sailed through the open window by Moira’s bed and married with the mossy sludge below.

  “Already told you. I don’t know yet.” A stack of tank tops and tight T-shirts joined the panties. Several pairs of worn cut-offs kept them company.

  “You ain’t gonna get very far with a plan like that.”

  Moira snorted. “Last I heard, you and plans were scarcely acquainted.”

  “Now that ain’t true a’tall. I was plannin’ on taking the General Custer out on the water this afternoon. I was plannin’ on taking my favorite niece with me. And I was plannin’ on heading to the HooDoo Shack to sink a few when I got back.”

  “You were plannin’ on making me stir you up a net full of crawfish so you have money to get shit-faced with Red, Mookey, and Little Earl.” Moira squelched the bubble of affection that rose at the mention of her unofficial uncles. Unofficial kin was the only kind Moira had.

  “Still a plan,” Sal protested. His self-conscious smile failed to soften the ice crystallizing around Moira’s heart.

  “‘Fraid you’re gonna have to figure out how to catch them fair and square,” Moira said. “My crawdad whispering days are over.”

  “Aww come on, Moira Jo! Ain’t no one can talk them out of the water like you can. My business will go belly up quicker than a whore in the bog if you take off.”

  Moira dropped her well-seasoned cast iron skillet into the suitcase and wheeled on her uncle. “It’s Moira Joule goddammit, and don’t you Moira Jo me! I’m about damn tired of you feeding me bullshit so I can keep you flush in booze and chew. I want to know what I am, and I want to know now.”

  “What do you mean what you are? You’re my niece.”

  As ever, Uncle Sal was as slippery as a corn snake when it came to any discussions of her past. Moira herself tended to crash through the underbrush like a wild hog, her arrival announced through commotion, her legacy—the destruction left in her wake.

  “You know any other nieces that can talk fish onto a line, or crawdads into a net?” she asked.

  Sal regarded the unfinished wood floor of the small bedroom where Moira had grown up the only student of his unconventional tutelage. “Not directly.”

  “Not at all. You know more than you’re telling me. I don’t know where I’m going, but I know there’ll be answers when I get there.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  The answer to this came easily, but not in a form Sal would understand.

  Words on the wind.

  Moira had awoken in the sweaty depths of the night to see the Spanish moss outside the window reaching for her like witches’ hair. Branches spread their fingers in slow motion. The world reorganized its spin around her—a new axis. Moonlight thickened the air to pale silk that slid across her skin, and her every movement unfolded through space as dense as seawater.

  And then, she’d heard it.

  Syllables spoken not to her ears, but to her soul.

  “Return to me what has been forsaken,

  By earth, air, fire, and sea…”

  The ground had been warm as she padded out of their small, tin-roofed fishing shack and walked to the bayou’s edge. Mud anointed her feet like a poultice, sending a tingling through her ankles and up her legs, clear to the space around her heart. Strange that such a sensation should be borne of earth and water alone.

  Animal voices added a haunting refrain to the incantation. The darkness alive with collective hums, chirps, and croaks of a thousand creatures, calling to her.

  Calling her home.

  Morning had found her naked as a jaybird beneath the cypress trees, feet on the bank and half-covered in moss. She’d pulled her negligee back over her head and walked into the house, knowing only that she needed to pack.

  Well, shower, eat some cold fried chicken, and then pack.

  A girl had to have priorities.

  “Well?” Uncle Sal’s expectant question reeled her back into the present.

  “You wouldn’t understand.” Moira leaned across the scarred leather suitcase so she could zip it closed.

  A foreign expression clouded the weathered brown skin of Sal’s face.

  Hurt.

  He sank down on the edge of her bed. Moira looked at the denim quilt dipping beneath him, already missing the weight of all those faded scraps cocooning her in at night. No way to pack it. Just another thing she’d have to leave behind.

  Moira sat next to him, their combined weight causing her mattress to groan in protest. Good thing she never brought her work home.

  “I’m sorry, Uncle Sal. I just…” Moira consulted the backs of her hands for an answer she knew wouldn’t come. “I just can’t be here anymore.”

  Uncle Sal shifted, his weight pulling her off kilter just enough so she had to lean the opposite direction to keep from sinking toward him. He had ceased to be a bigger object in her universe in any capacity save size. Was this realization a burden to her? Or a comfort? On this day, she couldn’t yet say.

  The little pig pushed his way out of the wallow he’d constructed in her pillow to scoot into her now available lap. His hooves pressed indentations into the length of her tanned thighs as he turned his habitual two-and-one-quarter circles before settling himself in the trough where her legs met. His warm belly against her skin brought a small measure of comfort.

  “If I told you where you come from, would you stay?” Sal ventured a sideways glance at her from beneath his dark brows.

  Moira let the look slide off into the ether, where all missed communications gathered.

  “I don’t know.” Moira felt the lie burn its way down her throat like the moonshine Uncle Mookey cooked up in a still he’d rigged from stolen car parts. The taste of dishonesty was twice as oily and half as pleasant.

  She did know.

  She knew that no matter what left Uncle Sal’s lips, she would be leaving Stump Bayou today. Yet the prospect of having this question answered proved too seductive to resist. There wasn’t another question on earth that could scoop out room beneath her roots, make her vulnerable to this kind of bargain. />
  “Was twenty-something years ago,” Sal began, pulling his ball cap off to mop the sweat from a liver-spotted brow with a wadded bandana from the pocket of his overalls. “Me, Red, and Mookey was out on the bayou but hadn’t caught more than heat rash and a chapped ass. It was hell for everyone that summer. Like the whole damn parish was cursed.”

  Something broke loose inside of Moira and skittered away into the shadows to avoid direct scrutiny. A curse.

  “It was almost sundown,” he continued, “and we’d just about give up and decided to come back when Mookey starts haulin’ in the net. Next thing I know we was ankle-deep in crawfish and Mookey’s hollerin’, ‘We done caught a baby!’”

  Wind stirred the red-black tendril that brushed Moira’s cheek. “You pulled me from the bayou in a net?”

  “Sure enough did. And a helluva lotta other critters too. Seems they was keeping you company. You shoulda seen Red just about water his britches when he tried to pick you up and a snapping turtle damn near made sure that fool could only count to seven.”

  Moira fought a smile as the scene played itself out in her mind. In addition to running the town’s only car repair shop, Uncle Red periodically provided entertainment as a part-time gator wrestler—a hobby which had cost him his left thumb and his right pinky.

  She saw Red as he must have been in those days—short and stocky with muscles earned by manual labor, blasted with freckles, clad in worn jeans and white tank top, his orange hair bright as molten glass in the dying sunlight. Uncle Sal always looked like pulled taffy next to Red. Moira could practically see Sal falling backwards off the rickety three-legged stool he perched on when gutting fish. His hooting laughter would have set the blue light flashing off his raven-black hair.

  All of this she could have conjured easily to memory. It was herself she couldn’t see. Couldn’t fathom the baby she might have been wriggling among the muddy creatures pulled from the bayou’s bottom.