Timeless(23)

Andrew coughed and waved his arms around. He shook his head, thinking about how alike Kat and her aunt were. "Seriously," he said. "Do you really think that's going to work?"

"Watch and learn, young Jedi apprentice."

Andrew shook his head again, and sank lower into his seat.

A young officer dressed in a crisp police uniform swung his leg over his motorcycle and walked towards the vehicle, a flashlight in his hand. As he approached, Mindy wound down the window and smiled up at him sweetly.

"Did you know you were speeding, ma'am?" he asked, sweeping the flashlight and his eyes carefully over the vehicle before turning back to her.

"Was I?" she replied, a look of surprise crossing her face. She looked across at Andrew, who just folded his arms and shrugged.

"Can I see your licence, ma'am?" he asked indifferently.

"Absolutely," Mindy replied, turning on the small overhead light and fishing around in her bag. A few moments later, she handed him her licence. "There you go, officer."

The officer studied the licence with the flashlight for a moment, then looked down at Mindy. "Did you know this licence expired ten years ago, ma'am?"

Andrew shot up straight in his seat. "What?"

Mindy held the officer's gaze. "Actually, the licence is new. I should probably just move along. And just so you know, I don't have any plans next weekend, and please call me Mindy."

The officer handed the expired licence back to Mindy. "That's fine, Mindy. I'm sorry to have bothered you. How about I make it up to you by taking you out to dinner next weekend ... if you don't have any other plans, that is."

Mindy wrote her number down on a piece of paper from her bag and handed it to him. "That sounds lovely. I'd love to."

The officer pocketed the piece of paper and gave her a wink. "You will be hearing from me, Mindy."

"Goodnight, officer," Mindy said, winding up her window.

A few moments later the officer was swinging a long leg over his motorcycle, giving Mindy a nod and a smile as he sped past.

"And that, Jedi apprentice, is how it's done in the witch circle," she said triumphantly to Andrew, who sat open-mouthed and staring at her in an equal measure of surprise and awe.

Eventually he found his voice and spoke. "There has to be a law against that."

Mindy flicked off the overhead light and turned the key in the ignition. "I'm sure there is," she smiled, pulling the car back onto the street without looking.

Andrew scowled at her. "Oh, and I thought you said you had a licence."

"I do have a licence," Mindy retorted.

"Yes, an expired licence, not a current one, so that doesn't count."

Mindy shrugged. "Now you're just splitting hairs."

"Well, just so you know. I'm driving the car home."

Mindy shrugged again. "Please yourself."





Chapter 11 – Be Still My Beating Heart.





Carmen paced back and forth across the cold stone floor of the dungeon, an underground room that had been used as a cellar in the 1700s for the Lancaster winery. Six flaming torches in sconces lined the walls, illuminating the damp-smelling room. Long fingers of cobwebs dangled ghostlike from long rows of timber racks. Empty of wine bottles, they had been forgotten about long ago. Agitated, Carmen walked in long, determined strides, her long black skirts sweeping the floor soundlessly behind her. In her hand, she held a long, knotted switch from a birch tree, which had been lacquered with poison from the bloodthorn flower. "I'll ask you one more time, girl. Who sent you to pretend to be a waitress so you could spy on me? Which clan do you belong to?"

The blond girl, who was dishevelled and weak from previous lashings, was chained by the wrists and ankles to the side of the dank dungeon. Her long blond curls, now damp and limp, clung to her face, neck, and arms. Frail and tired, she had lost her defiant attitude a day ago when, kicking and screaming, Henry had dragged her down to the dungeon at Carmen's request. Now, a day later, she was barely hanging onto life by a quickly unravelling thread.

"I've told you a thousand times already," the pretty girl pleaded, tears running down her cheeks. "Nobody sent me. I just moved here and I saw the job advertised in the paper. I just needed a job. I don't know anything about any witch clans," Matilda sobbed, her wrists and ankles bleeding from the rusty manacles restraining her.

"Liar," Carmen screeched, the coiled gold snake on her arm hissing. Poison from the bloodthorn flower burned into the girl's flesh as the switch slashed across her pretty, tear-streaked face. "You're a lying little witch. Now tell me which clan you belong to. Who sent you?" Carmen's hand came down again and again, whipping the girl’s face, throat and arms. Red, burning welts, beading with poison, rose across the girl's glistening, blood-soaked flesh.