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“I can feel it.”
“Not black magic,” she says.
“No, but it’s witchery that’s practiced here.” I don’t know why I’m saying this, but I think back to several years ago when I wrote a magazine article on such obscure chapels, and pagan forms of worship. I saw something like this very table and stone carved alcove in an old art book. The design is so similar, even after all this time, I recognize it. But it’s not the recognition that stirs me as much as the old world feeling of this place, as if I’ve been suddenly transported to some medieval Spanish castle.
I can’t keep myself from hallucinating about goddesses and their attentive worshipers, about the female cycle and the power of earth that rises from female loins. There’s magic in these stones I tell myself. But how strange that it’s Miriam’s, not Tasia’s face that appears in my mind when I haven’t thought much of her in days. I see that earth bound woman with her brilliant eyes flashing as plain as day before me. Though it’s just for a brief instant; her image flutters away when Analise touches my arm.
“I was right…” she says mysteriously.
“About what?”
“That you’d love this place.”
“Love’s not the word,” I tell her.
“Oh, but it is. I can see it in your face. Can’t you just see this place with a dozen chanting women, some vestal virgin in sacrificial pain, writhing on this stone?”
She strides to the flat stone altar and runs her hand along it, almost as if she were making love to it. She scoots up on the granite and lies down on her back, mocking the ceremonial rights. “This is so cold,” she says shivering, though she doesn’t move. “Imagine being impaled by some brutal leather whore,” she imagines for me. She stretches her arms above her head, as if I were going to tie them. In her filmy dress, I can just see the line of her body shimmering through erotically. She pulls up her skirt, raises her knees and spreads her thighs wide apart, her naked cunt and plugged ass laid out like a feast.
“Tie me to this, Cassidy, make me lie here bound and naked all night long. I want to feel the spooks fly around me while the ghosts of my sisters play inside my cunt.”
“You’re mad!” I contend, laughing at her crazy talk.
Analise turns on her side, smirking deliciously at me. She props her head on her hand, the silliest whimsical grin on her fa
ce.
“I could drip wax all over you, impale you with a couple of massive pricks, until I’m ready to come back. Then I’d fist fuck you until you pass out,” I speculate for her.
“Would you whip me until I come?” she asks.
I smile.
“Would you then tie me face down…?”
“And let you lie on the cold slab as if you’d died, only to resurrect you hours later, and fuck your ass with a strap-on? Of course,” I tell her.
“You’d kill me,” she says lightly.
“Not literally, but you’d suffer because you like to suffer,” I banter back.
Such demonic eyes, I think, as I watch the ethereal blue glimmer turn strange. She’s like a blue-eyed wild bird, suddenly becoming some dangerous hawk.
“I knew you’d like this place,” she says jesting. She jumps up from the stone table and skips daintily out the door.
I follow, too spooked to stay here by myself. I remember to douse the torch as I leave, and when it’s dark, I run like the wind, feeling the ghost behind me trying to grab me back.
Chapter Thirteen
I hear a commotion in the front hallway as I’m retreating to my room. It’s nearly one a.m. and the music and dancing are still going on in the garden. But blaring in a crude counterpoint to that softer sound, I hear Tasia’s voice: the deep melody doesn’t blend with the more gentle sounds of merriment. I turn to watch the woman in full Gypsy regalia, stones and scarves and her dark hair flying wildly behind her. At the door, she turns with a remarkable speed, giving Peach, who’s following her, a sumptuous kiss on the lips and then a delicate and condescending pat on the cheek.
“Tomorrow,” she says, as Peach nods. Tasia smiles darkly, I’m sure she’s concocting some weird something, but where? Gone for the night, how interesting. Where does a woman like Tasia go? She seems so married to this house and its occupants, I can’t imagine her anywhere else.
Peach closes the door on her mistress, then retreats to the back of the house where she’s been staying. I don’t often think of what she does with her time now. I see her now and again in the dining room or on the beach, but rarely anywhere else. There was today, of course, and her curious invasion of my private moment. But mostly I imagine her cloistered like some nun, or even bound as I saw her days ago; it seems better on my psyche that I not think of her too much. Now, for the first time in days, I wonder about going to her. Without Tasia in the house, she should be free to do as she pleases. Or does the bitch control her even still? As much as the thought of her body next to mine arouses me, I won’t go to her. Rejection’s too painful.
I slip into bed, almost hoping I’ll spend the night alone; though I expect Analise will come to me tiptoeing in the wee hours. If she does, I won’t deny her; the release is much too satisfying to my body. I’m not sure how would have survived these days if I didn’t have her nightly capers to take away the sting of loneliness. There might have been a time when Analise’s entrance to my bed startled me. Now it’s as much a part of my night as turning the pillow over to feel the cool side against my neck.
I drift off to sleep wondering when she’ll wake me.
