Read Online Witch Dance by Peggy Webb - Free Book Online Page B

Her trusted mentor. She wouldn’t insult him in that manner.
    “If you’re sure you don’t need anything . . . Good night, Kate.”
    Abruptly he wheeled away and was out the door before she could reply. Kate got out of bed and leaned against the windowsill. The walls of her clinic rose, ghostly, in the moonlight. It had taken four days to restore them. Four days of sweat and hard labor.
    Without the watchers on the hill. Without Eagle.
    Where was he?
    Kate opened the window and let the night breeze cool her hot face. Prickles still danced along the back of her neck.
    She tiptoed across the room and quietly closed her door. Then she turned the lock . . . feeling disloyal to Dr. Colbert. And somewhat silly.
    Instead of going to bed and risking the dreams, she went back to the window. The yard was so bright, it might have been a South Carolina moon hanging in the sky, a moon that rose up over the ocean and took its iridescent glow from the waters.
    Memories flooded her mind.
    “Can’t catch me . . . can’t catch me, Katie.” Brian’s hair was silver as he raced along the edge of the water.
    “I can, too. I can do anything because I’m Daddy’s girl.”
    Brian stuck out his tongue and raced off, his sturdy legs spewing up sand. He didn’t see the piece of driftwood in his path. When Katie got to him, he had blood on his leg and he was crying.
    She sat cross-legged on the sand and pulled him onto her lap.
    “It hurts.” Sniffling, he wrapped his arms around her neck.
    “It’s just a little blood . . . see.” She wiped it away with the tail of her T-shirt.
    Nobody would ask her where it came from. At thirteen, she was already the neighborhood “doctor.” Her patients ranged from stray cats to baby birds fallen from their nests to an occasional playmate who was not strong enough to withstand her threats. “If you don’t let me doctor you, I’ll punch your nose and really give you something to cry about,” she’d tell them.
    “See,” she told her five-year-old brother. “It’s nothing but a little ol’ scratch.”
    He ran a chubby finger along his injury, then gave her a watery smile. “Don’t tell Daddy I cried.”
    “I won’t.”
    “Promise?”
    “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
    “An’ Charles. Don’t tell Charles. He’d laugh.”
    Ten-year-old Charles probably would. He prided himself on being a man . . . just like his father.
    “I won’t tell Charles.”
    Brian wrapped his arms around her neck and gave her a kiss that left sand on her cheek.
    “I love you best in all the world, Katie.”
    “I love you too, Bee Boy.” It was the family pet name for Brian, a name he’d given himself when he was first learning to talk.
    “Will you love me always, Katie?”
    “Always.”
    “And take care of me forever and ever?”
    “Forever and ever and ever.”
    He wiggled out of her lap and flew across the sand with his arms outstretched. “You can’t catch me,” he yelled, his joyous voice lifting on the wind.
    A year later she’d broken her promise to Brian.
    His forever lasted only six years.
    Would nothing take the dreams away? Even wide awake she couldn’t escape them, couldn’t escape the guilt.
    Kate pressed her hands against her face and felt tears. Angrily she wiped them away.
    She was in Tribal Lands for a fresh start. She leaned her elbows on the windowsill, determined to see nothing except the trees and the mountains.
    And that’s when she saw the horse and rider silhouetted against the moon. A man sat tall and majestic on a horse as black as the night.
    “Eagle!”
    His name ricocheted off the walls of her room, mocking her. She was so mesmerized by him that now she was seeing mirages. Rubbing her hands over her tired eyes, she glanced at the hillside once more. The horse and rider were gone.
    She watched out the window awhile longer, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. Nothing moved, nothing marred the horizon. And yet . . . she was certain she’d seen them, the horse