The Lady Smut Book of Dark Desires (An Anthology) Page 2

  "I'm so sorry," Loretta said, as if she had just received news of a terrible bereavement. "How awful for you. I suppose it's lucky you can always run home to your mother."

  Jeanie tried to release an avalanche of potatoes onto Loretta using only the power of her mind without success. "I didn't 'run home'," she said as evenly as possible.

  "Oh, you know what I mean. It's good to have family," Loretta said, grabbing her spawn's hand before she grabbed another onion. "For when you fail. They're ready to pick you up."

  "Well, I should really be getting on with—"

  "Oh, don't let me keep you," Loretta said, wheeling her cart around and slapping her daughter's hand, which set off another volley of shrieks. "I'm sure we'll be running into each other all the time now!"

  Jeanie turned abruptly the other way, vowing to grab the sugar and hightail it out of the store, when another voice hailed her as she turned the end of the aisle.

  "You survived the Gorgon."

  It was another familiar voice, but not one that made her cringe. Jeanie turned to see Darren Flint looking a lot more grown up than he had when they last dated in high school. "Next time I'll get the mirror out of my bag first. Turning her to stone should have been my first step."

  His smile immediately reminded her why she had said yes when the quiet guy who sat behind her finally asked her out. It looked even more comfortable on his face now.

  "At least she only had one of the Gorgonettes with her."

  "You mean she's got more? The horror, the horror."

  "Rumor has it she's pregnant again." His whole demeanor had so much more confidence, too. He had turned into a rather attractive man, Jeanie noted.

  "I was surprised she graduated without a bun in the oven. And how are you?"

  "Well. Sorry to hear about the company going under. That's a shame."

  "Indeed it is. But I have a number of irons in the fire, so I'm sure something will come up soon." Could he tell she was lying? Jeanie didn't want to think about it too much.

  "I've no doubt. Anyone would be glad to have you." The warmth of his expression persuaded her to take more meaning from his words than he might have intended.

  Or did he?

  "Did your wife send you out for some milk?" Jeanie said. Wow, that was subtle!

  "I'm not married." The amusement showed plainly on his face. "You?"

  "No." Jeanie tried to think of something clever to say. She had to resist going through her pockets in hopes of finding something worthwhile.

  "So, that's good to hear. I mean—" He winced. "Not that it's good, but you know."

  "Yeah." Jeanie laughed and the tension she had felt melted away. "I'm after sugar for my mom's baking. You?"

  "Just odds and ends and something for dinner tonight. You free?" he added carelessly, his tone suggesting it didn't really matter one way or the other.

  "I, uh, I better check with my mother and grandmother. I think they may have something planned. But if not, perhaps tomorrow night?" Jeanie thought she had recovered well from her initial surprise. She was also grateful that she'd have a respite before the thought of a dinner date with someone she knew in high school.

  Knew? Dated, groped, explored a little fondling with—it all came back with surprising clarity. On top of the half-remembered dreams it gave her a strange flush of arousal that Jeanie hoped looked like nothing more than garden-variety embarrassment.

  They exchanged numbers and Jeanie trotted off to get the sugar, hoping it could be achieved without any further emotional rollercoasters. She managed to buy her groceries without more than a quick hello to a couple of people whose names lay in the furthest recesses of her brain.

  "Remind me not to venture out in public at this time of the morning," Jeanie said as she dropped the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter.

  "Oh dear," Beatrice said, relighting the burner under the kettle. "Who did you run into?"

  "Well, first Loretta Wanger."

  Her mother laughed. "Steele now, of course."

  "Oh yes, of course. One of her little darlings was trying to suck down a few extra onions while she badgered me."

  "Sorry to hear it, but at least that makes it a little easier now for you."

  "Easier?" Jeanie considered this as her mother nodded. "Oh, duh. Everyone's going to know now." She sat down at the table and covered her face in her hands. "Loretta's probably started the nosy parker phone tree and got the chatter covering half the county. 'Jeanie is a failure; news at eleven'."

  "You're not a failure," Gabriella scolded. "The company going under isn't your doing. You did nothing wrong."

  "Quite right," Beatrice agreed, setting a mug before her granddaughter. "You've landed on your feet right enough and you'll find a new path."

  "I am open to the possibilities," Jeanie said, her smile returning.

  "That's my girl," Gabriella said, laying a hand on her daughter's arm. "Walk among the trees, remember the old magic. Ground yourself well and then you'll be ready to fly again."

  "I know you're right," Jeanie said. "I forget how wonderful it is to be among people who know the magic. It's hard sometimes living in a mundane world."

  "Why do you think we're both so happy here?" Beatrice said, pouring the hot water over her teabag. "Our magic has its roots here. Generations back—and before that in the trees they brought from the old country."

  That reminded Jeanie of her strange dreams. "I was looking at the old wardrobe last night."

  "What brought that up?" Beatrice frowned.

  "I was opening the window in the jumble room to get a cross-breeze. I had strange dreams, too. Of goblin men. I think."

  Her mother shuddered. "I can't even think about them. They always give me such an unpleasant turn."

  "You were always fascinated by that story," her grandmother said with a hint of disapproval. "I know I must have told it to you a dozen times or more over the years. The terrible goblin men."

  "The lure of the forbidden? Though I find it strange that Laura would disappear after locking tight the wardrobe with such an impregnable seal. Strange magic."

  "I think she was protecting her sister. Old magic," Gabriella said, echoing Jeanie's thoughts from the night before. "Whatever awful thing happened to her, she didn't want her sister to share the same fate."

  "Laura's handprint is the same size as mine," Jeanie said absently, blowing on her too-hot tea.

  "You didn't—try anything?" Her mother's eyes widened. "I don't think that would be a good idea."

  "No, nothing like that. But I was wondering why you didn't just get rid of the wardrobe if it's got something bad inside it."

  Beatrice shook her head. "We don't know that there's anything bad inside it. It may be the charm that holds them at bay, that keeps things away."

  Jeanie considered this. "An inconvenient charm! You can't really put it on a bracelet, now can you?"

  They all sipped in silence for a while, each woman lost in her thoughts. "So who else did you run into?" Gabriella finally asked at last as she got up to check on the zucchini bread.

  "Darren Flint," Jeanie said and then immediately wished she hadn't because both her mother and grandmother got that zealous match-making light in their eyes. "Now, don't go getting ideas!"

  "Who's getting ideas?" Her mother said, batting her eyes with an air of supreme innocence.

  "You know his photography business is the talk of the town," Beatrice added. "Not to influence you in anyway, but it's well known he's quite a catch. I hear," she added hastily.

  "Well, then you'll probably want to know we're having dinner tomorrow night," Jeanie said with a sigh as the two of them squealed in girlish delight. "Now I don't want to hear a thing about it, especially this 'good catch' nonsense."

  "We'll be good," Gabriella said meekly and the two older women tactfully changed the subject to zucchini recipes to deal with the garden bonanza.

  Later as Jeanie walked out the back she saw even more of the green torpedoes ripening. Usually
they had tapered off by this end of the season, but it looked like no respite was in sight. She inhaled the aroma of the herbs in the kitchen garden where the two venerable rosemary bushes stood sentinels, then struck off across the paddock toward the orchards.

  Jeanie felt another stab of grief; how often Boo had followed her steps out this way, stopping to chase butterflies or poke a paw into a promising burrow. She strode between the trees admiring the green apples. They were a few weeks away from ripeness but she had eaten more than a few over the years, enjoying their tart taste.

  Today though she found her steps leading to the woods beyond the near orchard. Its cool darkness called to her and when Jeanie stepped into its quiet, she felt a part of herself go, "ahhh!" She turned to look back at the house and thought how comforting its shape was. As a child she had often hidden in the woods, imagining herself well into the wilds. Never mind that the county road leading back into town lay less than half a mile beyond.

  The stillness of the deep green filled her senses with calm. Jeanie realized that she still carried a great deal of stress from her failure, as she continued to see it. Let it go, let it go, she told herself as she walked along, open yourself up to new possibilities. With each step a little more of the tightness left her shoulders and by the time she came to the clearing by the stream, Jeanie was smiling.

  As she stepped into the clearing, she made a little gasp of surprise. It was still there.

  The fairy ring!

  She hadn't thought of it in years and yet there it was, as fresh as always. Jeanie knew the organic explanation for a fairy ring—after all mushrooms weren't single plants but parts of a whole system—but the delight this natural circle gave her never changed.

  Jeanie stepped into the ring. She closed her eyes for a moment, grounding and centering, then walked around the edge of the circle using her finger to cast a magical circle to match the fungi. "The circle is cast, I am between worlds." She sat cross-legged at the center of the circle, closed her eyes and reached for a magic she had not communed with for some time.

  "Come, Cerridwen, share a drop from your cauldron with me. I seek wisdom and inspiration and I will offer you apples from our orchard when they are ripe." Jeanie conjured the image of the bubbling cauldron, full of power and magic, and hoped for a taste. Her intense concentration made the forest around her disappear and only gradually did Jeanie realize that she heard a strange step in the silence and a song that grew audible bit by bit.

  Come buy! Come buy!

  The voices had an otherworldly tone that made her shiver. Jeanie opened her eyes but there was no song, only the silence of the trees around her. Reluctantly she got to her feet and opened the circle, feeling unsettled and a little disappointed. "I'll bring you apples anyway, Cerridwen," she called out. Never break your word with the ancients, and the Welsh witch goddess had a powerful reputation of settling scores.

  The phrase she had heard in her dreams! It was familiar somehow, and not just from that. It niggled at her memory like a toothache but by the time she had walked back to the house, Jeanie remembered what it was. She dug through the books on the bottom shelf of her red bookcase and found it.

  The Goblin Market. The cover had an illustration of a young girl being attacked by the goblin men. Jeanie shivered again. That's where her nightmares had come from. As a girl she had read and reread the poem, glorying in the terror provided by Arthur Rackham's illustrations as much as by Christina Rossetti's poem about the two sisters. She flipped open the book and felt a fresh sting of uncanny fear at the pictures.

  Two girls, Lizzie and Laura, just like great-great-great-grandmother and her sister. Jeanie turned the book over, frowning. Was it coincidence or connection? Did Rossetti know the same tragic story?

  She began to read the poem again, seeing it with the fresh eyes of an adult. It startled her to find the lines etched on the wardrobe, There is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather. Jeanie took the book in hand and went to look at the big oak wardrobe again. The other lines after it made her thoughtful, especially the exhortation to fetch one if one goes astray, To lift one if one totters down.

  Was Laura trying to keep her own sister from going astray?

  We must not look at goblin men, we must not buy their fruits. Jeanie found it easy to imagine not looking at the goblin men when she considered the horrid little men Rackham drew. Why would one want to look at them? She realized there was a lot she had missed in the poem as a child. There was a sensuality between the lines that seemed to be the real treat on offer. The sister who gives in to the desire to taste the sensual fruit pined away and nearly died.

  Their offers should not charm us,

  Their evil gifts would harm us.

  Talk about your forbidden fruit!

  Sweet to tongue and sound to eye, come buy, come buy! Was there something more appealing about these strange goblin men than the poem betrayed? Jeanie looked at the bound wardrobe and wondered yet again at the secrets it contained. With a thrill of fear, she reached up to fit her hand into the print made so many years before.

  Nothing happened.

  Jeanie smiled ruefully. What had she really expected? What price had Laura paid for her taste of the fruit? The goblin men had not accepted filthy lucre, but only a lock of her golden hair and a tear round as a pearl.

  When her mother called her down to lunch Jeanie was still immersed in the world of The Goblin Market. As they sat down to their fresh spinach salads, she opened her mouth to say something about the poem, but checked herself at the last moment, uncertain why.

  That night she dreamed of the goblin men again and awoke in the dark gasping for breath as she felt tight little hands around her neck. Jeanie got out of bed and stood by the cool air of the window until her heart had stopped racing. Come buy! Come buy! She shivered as the word echoed in her ears.

  In the moonlight the orchard swayed in a late night breeze. Normally the familiar surroundings soothed her thoughts like a soft blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Tonight the trees seemed to whisper with an uncanny menace as if they knew secrets Jeanie could not begin to guess.

  She told herself she was being silly with a shake, but she went over to her altar and took a pinch of salt from the oyster shell and sprinkled it at the window, reciting a charm of protection as she did.

  Jeanie got back in bed, but it seemed a very long time before her troubled thoughts let her ease back into slumber.

  In the morning she tucked her copy of Rossetti's poem under the stack of personnel folders she had carried away in hopes of constructing a stronger résumé. Out of sight, out of mind. Jeanie busied herself with homey tasks around the house, helping her mother beat the carpets and working with her grandmother to clear out the pantry of mystery jars half empty, filled with who knew what.

  "Smells kind of like mushrooms," Jeanie said sniffing gingerly at one such jar.

  "It shouldn't," Beatrice said with a frown. "I think it was some kind of fruit paste."

  "Eww!" On the plus side, they had a lot more clean jars to reuse.

  "What time is your date, err, dinner?" Gabriella asked as she poured some fresh lemonade out for all three of them.

  "Not until six," Jeanie said with reluctance.

  "Six?! You should be getting ready." Beatrice looked at her with alarm.

  Jeanie laughed. "It's not a date. It's just dinner with an old friend." But after her shower she chose the red silk blouse to wear with her jeans because she knew it flattered her skin tone, and she took a little extra time pinning up her hair so it looked casual but also more sophisticated than she normally had it. Might as well put her best foot forward. Who knew what gossip was already out there?

  Jeanie arrived at Darren's house with a bottle of wine and a few misgivings, which she tried to quash at once. It wasn't really a date, she reminded herself as she rang the bell.

  Or was it?

  Darren answered the door with a big grin, a touch too much aftershave and a bear hug. "Sorry! Hope I d
idn't crush you. I'm just so pleased you decided to come." He showed her around the neat little house quickly, steering her to the patio out back. "I spend most of my time here anyway." The wooden deck featured a few chairs, a big glass table and a gigantic grill. "This is the Behemoth," Darren explained, blushing a little. "I know it's a cliché but I do love my manly barbecue machine."

  Jeanie laughed and took the glass of wine he poured for her. "I enjoy having other people cook for me, so I will make no smart ass remarks of any kind. Unless the food is bad," she added with an arched eyebrow.

  She had no complaints about the plump shrimp cocktail he plunked down in front of her while he busied himself with the chicken and corn. The scent of barbecue filled the air as Jeanie chomped on the shrimp. The view wasn't much; the suburbia in town held few charms for her, but Darren had made his little patch of it quite nice. He had avoided the regimented look of most of the yards and gone with a softer, more natural look with clumps of bushes and little decorative trees here and there.

  They chatted about people they knew, about his photography business, about her work. He set the piping hot chicken barbecue before her then handed her a plate with a roasted ear of corn on it. Jeanie slathered it with butter and savored the creamy taste.

  "Fresh always tastes better," she murmured.

  "The right seasoning brings out the best flavor," Darren said with a strange smile that made her look down at her plate a little too quickly. "Eat all you want, there's plenty."

  Jeanie took him at his word. She had never been one of those dainty eaters. Life on the orchard was enough to keep her fit and when she went away to college disappointment in the taste of the food there had been enough to keep her from developing the freshman fifteen.

  "That was fantastic," Jeanie said as she wiped the last of the butter and barbecue sauce from her mouth. "Thank you so much."

  "It's a pleasure to cook for an appreciative guest. Another glass of wine?" Darren poured more into her glass then put his feet up and sighed happily as he sipped his. "It's great to have you back in town. Even if you're only visiting…"