Witchy Woman by Karen Leabo

place in his trunk, and since she also refused to go anywhere in the car while the cat was there, she allowed him to talk her into taking his motorcycle to the sanitarium where her mother lived.
    The day had cleared and warmed up, so the elements weren’t a problem. The problem was putting her arms around Nate’s waist. Well, there was no help for it, she thought as she gingerly grabbed onto his belt loops. Anyway, she’d touched him before and nothing terrible had happened. His vibrations were starting to feel familiar to her. Even pleasant.
    As they made the thirty-minute trip out to Braintree, where the sanitarium was located, she focused on the passing scenery. But Nate’s essence was always there, simmering in the back of her mind, taunting her with sensual images that would take over her whole consciousness in a heartbeat if she let them.
    But she never let them, not entirely. If she had, the experience would have swamped her, overwhelmed her, knocked her clean off the bike. To her delight, she discovered that she could control the sensations if she applied herself. She remembered a long-ago lecture her mother had given her about learning to control her powers and shield herself from negative energies, but atthe time she’d been disinterested, preferring to avoid those negative vibes rather than managing them.
    At the time she’d hated the gift that made her so different from other children and had no intention of developing it, the way her mother wanted her to.
    She wished now that she’d listened. Then she would have a better idea of what was going on. All she knew was that for the first time in her life she was holding on to another human being for an extended length of time, and the experience was not unpleasant. A surge of hope filled her, despite her current dire circumstances, despite the terrible task that lay ahead of her.
    Tess directed Nate to turn down the long, tree-lined avenue toward the private sanitarium where Mildred DeWitt had resided for the past fifteen years. It was expensive, but despite the DeWitt family’s problems, they’d had money. Tess’s father, who’d died when she was two, had left a sizable estate and life-insurance benefits. Tess and her mother had lived simply, so there had been plenty left when “Morganna” had been committed. Although she’d only been thirteen, Tess and her guardian, a cool and disinterested paternal aunt, had put the money into a trust for her mother’s care.
    The sight of the lovely old redbrick building, with its stately white columns and huge oak trees, filled her with a sense of dread. She’d approached the sanitarium countless times over the years, always hoping that things would be different. Each time her hopes were dashed.
    Nate pulled the motorcycle into a space in the visitorparking area and cut the engine. Somewhere a bird called. An oriole, Tess thought. When she’d been a child, she and her mother had spent hours walking the countryside, gathering the herbs and wildflowers needed for various concoctions. Mildred had patiently schooled her distracted daughter on how to recognize local species of flora and fauna.
    Some of it had stuck, Tess realized. She could still recognize certain birdcalls and wildflowers.
    “These are some digs,” Nate commented as he helped Tess off the huge bike. He stowed their helmets in a compartment on the back of the Harley. “Is it as comfortable inside as it looks from out here?”
    “All the comforts of home,” she quipped. He would see soon enough. For all its luxurious trappings, Tess had always considered Dowling a chamber of horrors. Though she assiduously avoided touching anything while she was there, the vibrations assaulted her anyway—so many lost souls, confused, sad. No matter how qualified the nurses and doctors, no matter how kind and caring the attendants, the very air smelled of desolation.
    The star horror was Morganna herself.
    The front entrance hall could have belonged to a luxury