*Corman

Before Corman could protest again, a police car came, rolling slowly down the street. The witch put the kickstand back on the bike and spun in her tracks. He followed as she jumped for cover behind the huge trash bin at the corner of the bar.

It stank of stale beer, cat piss, and whatever was covering the witch's clothes. They both held their breath, watching carefully until the police had passed.

"I'm going to jail for the rest of my life if you don't help me," Corman said. "I know you murdered that man, and for some reason I can't imagine, I helped you. Now, I know they are looking for two people—two people who don't look like us, but I saw the face of the man on my face in my car's rear-view mirror."

"What?"

"That wasn't clear. I saw—"

"I understood what you meant, but that isn't possible. You can't remember. Just like you can't be..." She stopped speaking to stare at him in fear. "You're marked."

"You mean the witch's mark on my posterior? Yeah, thanks for that, by the way. It was driving me crazy all day."

But now that he mentioned it, he realized the itching had stopped since the non-police officers stripped searched him with the glow wand. Would the burning and itching come back? He would lose his mind.

"No. I didn't mark you. That's not..."

"You keep stopping in the middle of your sentences. I have no idea what's going on, so you could at least form complete thoughts?" he begged.

"All right. I will make you a deal. I will erase your memory and the mark, plus make the people inside the bar think you were there all evening. You won't attract warlocks, because you'll be useless to them, and you'll pass all lie detector tests because you'll have no memory. I just need my..." She rummaged through her heavy bag.

"No. That's not good enough. My life is over."

"Not for long. It'll be back to exactly the way it was in a jiffy."

She presented a dried twig that she promptly put in her mouth.

Corman shook his head. "No, wait—"

Grimacing as she chewed, she swirled her fingers in his face.

He blinked, glancing around utterly confused.

"All good? Did that...work?" she asked.

"Did what work?"

"Huh. All right. I didn't feel anything, but those green beans were soaked in moonlight, so they must have some power. Okie-dokie. I'll walk into the bar with you to make sure everyone believes you've been—"

"Stop. I still remember everything. Besides, I asked you not to erase my memory. Why would do that to me?"

She rocked back on her heels, mouth closed. "This is bad. I really have no juice at all."

"My life is destroyed, and you're worried about juice?"

"No, I have no power. I'm completely drained. I need to recharge somehow." She sniffed the air, her eyes narrowed to slits.

All the hairs on Corman's arms and neck instantly stood on end. He recognized her like that—he remembered her, the sight of her at the front door of the man's house when he opened to greet them. She had sniffed the air like a wolf on the trail of a bunny.

"Recharge?" he asked, shifting away. "Are we talking about tree-hugging or people draining here?"

She scoffed. "Neither. At least, not here or now. If another witch was in the area, she might have charms or spells to help me go faster, but otherwise, I just have to wait. Which means, I have to hit the road. You're on your own."

"Take me with you until you have your magic back and you can fix my life."

She motioned to her motorcycle. "I can't."

"Please. If you don't help me, the police will take me in. I'm done."

"There's nowhere I can take..." Her eyes focused on the middle ground as her voice trailed off again before finishing her sentence.

He bit back a remark. Obviously, she was thinking of something. He had to hope it was a solution to his problems, and not whether or not she should collect his blood and organs in a bucket.

"There is a safe house," she whispered. "I could agree to take you there for a couple of days until I figure things out and recharge, but you would have to agree to have your memory of it erased. I insist on consent."

"Consent? Are you kidding?"

"Do you agree or not?" she snapped.

He nodded. As much as he hated the idea of a factory reset, he'd run out of options.

"Get on a shirt and jacket if you have one. We'll be on the highway a while." She uncurled her legs to stand.

He groaned as he got up. "Like I already mentioned. I don't have any shirts. You just burned them all to ashes."

"You have a whole bag of stuff from your bedroom." She pointed at his backpack. What do you mean you don't have a shirt?"

"I had to save my computers."

"But not any clothes?"

"Priorities!" He hugged his pack. "Come on, I was under pressure."

She huffed in resignation and handed him her bag. "Then you can borrow one of mine. Find something. And pretend you are wearing a helmet. Get on."

Of course, the only thing resembling a shirt in her bag was a semi-translucent night shirt with frills at the wrists and a neck-line that dipped to his belly-button.

***

After more than a four-hour drive on highways, backways and country roads through the hills of Pennsylvania and the bitter night, Corman regretted his choice to go with the witch. Not even the secret thrill of holding a woman as sexy as she was (when she was clean) made up for the cold and cramped muscles.

And he thought his ass hurt all day when it was itching. The non-stop journey on the back of her motorcycle had reduced him to a solid aching pain, through his battered butt-cheeks, up his spine, in his head and throughout his frozen torso, hands and feet.

Right before she cruised into a historical neighborhood with ornate houses and quirky lawn decorations, he was ready to beg her to find a motel. In fact, he pulled out his phone to check for the nearest one.

Earlier, before they left town, the phone had been a surprise win for Corman.

When he'd pulled on her filmy night-shirt, she'd told him to find another one.

"There aren't any other clothes in there, beside some undies, a pair of socks and another pair of leather pants," Corman said. "We'll have to stop at a store. Because you're right. I can't wear this."

"We aren't stopping anywhere for anything. Get on." She straddled her bike, leaving him the back half, and presumably, her bag to carry.

"But it's see-through. You can see my nipples through this thing." He fluffed his scraggly chest hair at the massive V neck. His nipples were so perky, they almost poked through the fabric.

"Aren't you glad you still have them? Just think, if I had arrived five minutes later, the warlocks would have removed them with their knife. Now, get on."

He couldn't argue with that. He took his spot behind her, wrapping his arms around her bag and her waist. At least he had his backpack to keep his back warm. They headed for the street, leaving the wail of firetrucks and police cars, and the thickening smoke of his cousin's burning house behind.

Two minutes out of town, she pulled into a gas-station. "Do you have money? I need a map."

"Why do you need a map?" he asked.

"To get us to the safe house. I've never been there before."

He slid his phone from the backpack. "What's the address?"

She gave it to him, dubiously, and then watched in amazed silence as he pulled it up on the GPS.

"That's incredible. I thought those phones were useless, brain-melting traps," she whispered. She cradled his hands in hers to stare at the screen.

His heart might have jolted at her touch. Although, it might have been a spike of matted hair jabbing his neck that made him quiver. "They are all things good and evil and in-between in one."

"Fascinating." She let go of his hands and twisted to face front again. "And here, I thought you were completely useless, too. Life is so funny."

He forced a chuckle in response. So, so funny.

She hadn't said anything else or stopped once. He had no idea how much gas the motorcycle used, but it was either very little or it had been magically enhanced.

Now she pulled into what he presumed was the safe house, which was utterly on the nose for a witch's house with its wrap around porch, three stories, multiple turrets, white shutters and lacy curtains at every window, and garden overflowing with hundreds of herbs and flowers.

What had he expected? A cottage made of pastries and candy in the middle of the woods? Or maybe a dilapidated shack that could have belonged to a meth-addict with the words dead inside do not enter spray-painted on the garage door, and zombies crawling out of the windows?

That thought would have been mildly amusing to him three days ago. But now, he questioned everything he had ever taken for granted, like the clear division between fantasy and reality. That gaping chasm the separated the world ordered by physics from a world of glowing purple wands and silver sparkles that make impossible things happen. What had the warlock, as the witch called the men, said? That the warlocks kept the chaos at bay? Something like that.

As he followed the witch to dark red front door, he honestly could not decide which was worse—creating a choose-your-own-health-insurance-adventure game, or standing on an ornately decorated, Victorian style, witch's safe house, and not knowing what was possible or real anymore.

*** Thank you for reading!!! ***