My Favorite Witch (Accidental Witch Trilogy, Book 2)

291 Pages·2006·2.01 MB·English

by  Annette Blair

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My
Favorite
Witch
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Annette Blair
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BERKLEY SENSATION, NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are
used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is
entirely coincidental.
My Favorite Witch
A BERKLEY Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2006 by The Berkley Publishing Group.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by
mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes
copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to
criminal and civil liability.
For information address:
The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
http://www.penguinputnam.com
ISBN: 0-7865-6116-5
A BERKLEY BOOK®
BERKLEY Books first published by Berkley Publishing Group,
a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
BERKLEY and the "B" design are trademarks belonging to
Penguin Putnam Inc.
Electronic edition: January 2006
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With love to Chris Cabral—
awesome friend, calming force, revitalizing spirit,
who enhances my life and every life she touches
without ever using a wand.
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One
Newport, Rhode Island
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NHL Wizard Jason Pickering Goddard left the battered
podium to a round of applause and sat beside his grand-
mother on the gym stage ofSt. Anthony’s Home for Boys.
“Dreams die,” Jason whispered. “Life sucks. That’s what
they should learn. I didn’t do them any favors with that
‘dreams do come true’crap.”
His grandmother bristled without ruffling a manicured
feather. “Reality, they’ve got,” she said. “Hopeis what they
need.”
Jason winced. She might as well have said, “They’re a
hell ofa lot worse offthan you are, so stop feeling sorry for
yourself,” and she was right. But he sure as hell wished the
boys heading for the gym exits would stop looking back at
him with all that misplaced hero worship.
Damn it. He’d screwed up. It didn’t make sense, him
talking about dreams, not after he’d drunk himselfsense-
less and lost his.
Wait a minute....
Jason raised his chin and gave the woman who raised
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2 Annette Blair
him a sidelong glance. What he saw should not have
surprised him: a manipulating matriarch running a power
play. Well, well, well. He relaxed in his chair, stretched his
legs to ease the ache in his knee, and folded his arms across
his chest. “Gram, why did you really drag me here today?”
“What? Well...you never get to see the good that the
Pickering Foundation does.”
“Good? This place is falling apart.”
Every inch the society matron, his grandmother barely
winced before she tilted her head in belated approval. “My
point exactly.”
She was angling for something, Jason knew, but what?
“You want a bigger donation, just say so.”
The benevolent old fraud cleared her throat, fidgeted
with her Dior handbag, and looked everywhere but at him
before she patted his hand. “Thank you, dear.”
“I’d rather write a check any day than—”
“Raise a finger to help?” Sheer annoyance filled Gram’s
snapping hazel eyes. “You and every other member ofthe
idle rich!” She rose, braced on her ancient umbrella, chin
high, head at a regal angle, indignation in the set of her
shoulders and the straight ofher spine.
“Give me a break,” Jason said. “I wouldn’t be idle if—”
“Enough with the self-pity.” She tapped his cane with
her umbrella. “This is only a setback,” she said, echoing
his tired litany.
Jason squared his shoulders. “I willplay hockey again.
I’ll be back on the ice in no time. You’ll see.”
“Not according to the majority ofyour doctors.”
“The majority ofthem are wrong!”
“Ofcourse they are, dear.”
“Don’t take that patronizing tone with me, young lady.”
Bessie Pickering Hazard, seventy-seven-year-old chair-
man ofthe board ofthe Pickering Foundation, laughed like
a schoolgirl.
Jason grinned. Glad the old twinkle was back in her
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MY FAVORITE WITCH 3
eyes, he still wished to hell he knew what she was up to.
He’d seen this act before, and it didn’t bode well for the
poor sucker she’d picked as her latest mark...him.
Gram had accomplished some great deeds in her day,
and to pull them off, she’d played some steep angles. Just
thinking of the ways she might try to play him made Ja-
son’s tie so tight, you’d think somebody pushed a choke
switch.
Best rebound now, he thought, self-preservation riding
him. “How the hell does a gimp jock fit into whatever
scheme you’re trying to hatch this time?” he asked.
“Jason, dear, whatever are you— Ah, here comes the di-
rector. You remember Sister Margaret?”
They were force-fed sugar cookies and watered-down
cherry punch in the old art deco reception room, a show-
place ofmission furniture and teeming glass-faced trophy
cabinets. Untouched by time, the room remained the sanc-
tum where hopeful childless parents met with more-
hopeful potential adoptees.
Gram had purchased the turn-of-the-century, brick-and-
granite school building in the fifties specifically to house
St. Anthony’s, likely to keep herselfbusy while his grand-
father pursued other “interests.”
That she’d named it SaintAnthony’s after her faithless
husband, Anthony Bannister Hazard, was one of Gram’s
private jokes with God. Or perhaps she’d thought to re-
deem the philandering old buzzard. No one knew but
Gramps himself whether she succeeded, because he had
resided in the hereafter for more than twenty years now.
What Jason liked best, and feared most, about his grand-
mother was that in her entire life, she’d let nothing and no
one stop her. She was the strongest person he knew, man or
woman, and he loved her in the rare way she loved him,
faults and all.
As Jason opened the outside door, the scent of pine-
pitch wafted up from the sun-soft, cracked-tar schoolyard,
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4 Annette Blair
reminding him of the afternoons he’d spent waiting for
Gram to pick him up and sneak him offto hockey practice.
She’d said these boys needed hope, and hope, by damn,
he’d had aplenty back then.
Now, as then, Chilton, her octogenarian driver, saw
them and came around to open the door of her pristine,
sixty-three white Rolls, and stood waiting at attention.
The moment they exited the building, the boys at play
hushed and stood like statues, making Jason’s awkward
cane-clicking trek across the yard seem endless.
“I wish you had let me drive my Hummer,” he told his
grandmother, as ifthat might have given him control over
anything but the next brick wall that got in his way.
After the last brick wall, his glory days of voluptuous
female groupies and instant male bonding had come to an
abrupt, iftemporary, halt.
Like the fans who’d once rushed and crushed him, but
now avoided meeting his eyes, the boys from St. Anthony’s
emanated a kind ofdisappointment and pity, and remained
a safe distance away.
As ifto disprove that theory, a three-foot carrottop be-
gan a lone, tenacious approach his way, from across the
schoolyard, capturing Jason’s full and curious attention.
Though they had already made eye contact, the eager
boy found it necessary to tug on Jason’s cuff when he
arrived.
Jason grinned despite himselfwhile something pulled at
his chest like an invisible thread that connected his shirt-
sleeve to his heart.
Ignoring the pain in his knee, Jason stooped to the boy’s
level, bit off a groan, and received a wide, deep-dimpled
grin for his efforts. “I’m gonna play hockey, too,” the out-
going boy said.
“Good for you,” Jason said. “What’s your name?”
“Travis. Travis Robinson.”
“Well, Travis, ifyou want to play hockey, you do know
that you have to practice every day?”
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MY FAVORITE WITCH 5
The tip ofhis grandmother’s umbrella made hard con-
tact with Jason’s right shoulder blade.
“Ouch! What?” he asked, turning.
“No rink to practice,” Travis said, reclaiming Jason’s
attention. “No money for ice time, Sister Margaret
says.”
An incoherent apology died on Jason’s lips when the
boy threw his small but steely arms around Jason’s neck.
“Take me home,” Travis said, his voice choked and desper-
ate. “I want ’dopting bad. You don’t even have to teach me
hockey.”
Poleaxed, Jason inadvertently embraced the tiny, reed-
thin body in a bid for balance, and when he felt those frag-
ile bones against the muscles in his arms, a wave of
protectiveness assaulted him. His cane hit the blacktop
with a clatter, but it didn’t matter, because the boy’s stran-
glehold kept him from falling on his ass—figuratively as
well as literally.
An old nun rushed forward ringing a handbell. “I’m
sorry, I’m sorry,” she said as the schoolyard cleared ofboys
and she grabbed Travis by the shoulders and wrenchedhim
from Jason’s arms. “Don’t mind him,” she said. “He asks
everybody to take him.”
Chilton handed Jason his cane.
His name is Travis!Jason wanted to shout at the nun as
he rose and watched the boy get dragged away, his green
eyes huge and pleading as he looked back.
Hope now had a face—dirt-smudged, freckled, and
about six years old.
A minute later Jason slipped into the backseat of the
limo beside his grandmother and released a long slow
breath. “Son ofa—”
“Watch your language!”
“I hang out in locker rooms, Gram,” Jason said, stretch-
ing his leg and rubbing his knee. “Believe me, I amwatch-
ing my language. Did you pay him to do that?”
“Don’t be an idiot, and don’t let him rattle you. You
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6 Annette Blair
heard Sister Estelle, Travis asks everybody to adopt him...
as if he wants parents as much as you wanted to play
hockey.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Gram shook her head. “What boys like Travis Robinson
have to give can’t be bought; it’s called love. Scares you
doesn’t it?”
Jason did a double take. “What scares me? Love? Hell
no.”
“Possibly not. Possibly you haven’t learned to recog-
nize it. Who could blame you with parents like yours? Plus
you’ve been kissing too many starlets and models, on and
off that absurd celebrity reality show. The Best Kisser in
America,indeed.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t realize my contract said I had to
makeanassofmyself.Youknowdamnedwellthatassoon
as they called the show ‘promo,’ I was tied to it. Hell,
Gram,givemeabreak,Igavetheprizemoneytothefoun-
dation.”
“Yes, and we’re grateful, but it wasn’t enough.”
“Ah, here it comes,” Jason said with relief. “Play your
angle and get it over with. You’re killing me here.”
“Angle? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His
grandmother opened an engraved oval compact—a twenty-
four-karat guilt gift from the rogue—and pretended to
check her hair in the mirror.
Jason silently applauded the innocent act. “Gram, no-
body plays more angles than you.”
“Except maybe you.”
“Hey, I learned from the best.”
“Your grandfather?”
“Yeah, right.” Jason knew he’d inherited his “unfortu-
nate roguish ways” from his grandfather, but his skill for
playing angles was pure Gram. “Give it to me straight,
damn it. I’m tired and my knee is killing me.”
“Straight? You don’t hear straight.”