NEVER BEEN WITCHED.

by Annette Blair.

With love and thanks to:.

Lynn Haberak, for opening her childhood home to friendship and creativity, and to Catherine J. Jenssen, CJ, for creating a home in which writers may flourish.

Live, Love, Laugh!.

Dedicated to:.

Summer Retreat 2007.

Where this story was born.

Chapter One.

DESTINY Cartwright sought peace in her ritual circle but found self-censure instead. Drat the Goddess of mischievous matchmaking pranks. How could a psychic witch lust after a paranormal debunker?

What were the odds?

Talk about a lousy chooser. Not that she wanted to marry the hunky debunker: six feet of baditude in tight, torn jeans, chest-baring unbuttoned shirts, shaggy, burnished bronze hair, wide shoulders, and a five o'clock shadow.

She wanted Morgan Jarvis, architect, for sex, for a while, as a boy toy, no commitment-no after burn, aftertaste, or regrets.

She'd faced facts. The odds of identical triplets all finding their soul mates were nil to "No way, Jose!" Since Harmony and Storm had found theirs, that made her the single girl out.

Lightning did not strike thrice.

Yes, Morgan would probably try to debunk her every goal: psychic, magickal, emotional, and spiritual, if either of them ever discovered what they were.

Self-discovery. That's why she'd come here, to find those goals and the path she should take to reach them.

Now, in the dark parlor of the Paxton Island Lighthouse, she sat surrounded by votive candles representing earth, air, fire, and water, situated north, south, east, and west, one in the center for spirit. The crystals between each cinnamon candle refracted their flames like stars, the ageless echo of breaking waves at high tide adding an earth rhythm to her magick.

Though her particular brand of clairvoyance allowed her to see the future of others, never her own, she had envisioned this lighthouse-as lost in a fog, and as much in need of comfort as she-as the place to find her future, her psychic path, her reason for being. And if she was smart, she'd maybe spell her perverse attraction for Morgan Jarvis into the sea.

Alone, like this, she might be able to accomplish it, but if she allowed herself to be caught in his magnetic field, she'd get sucked right in.

She suspected that Morgan hid a soft, chewy center that he covered with a snarky rock-candy shell. She thought he might be hiding Morgan the Mystic, but after Harmony's wedding, Morgan the Mistake made more sense.

Destiny shivered as mortification threatened to singe her brows, until the moon slipped from the clouds, its beams piercing the windows, caressing her shoulders like a shawl, warm, protective, and forgiving. It offered solace and welcome with the affirming embrace.

Here, she could put her worries behind her.

Shadows danced in her circle, leaving the room's edges in darkness, including the stairs whose spindles she faced but could no longer see. Her flashlight had picked them out on arrival a short while ago, and her possessions now sat at the bottom, in large, wheeled carts awaiting transport to a bedroom upstairs.

Relief improved Destiny's spirits. She was here, not in Scotland with her well-meaning family auto-pairing her with Morgan Jarvis, so much a friend, he felt like family . . . to everyone except her.

Peace, Destiny sensed, was just out of reach.

Serenity. If only she could grasp it.

Her hyperactive cat's purring contentment attested to the tranquility surrounding them. She petted the caramel-and-marshmallow-swirl tabby. "You like the lighthouse, don't you, Caramello? I like it, too. I think it wants us here."

Destiny centered herself, a first step on this journey of self-discovery fired by a profusion of confusion over her elusive psychic goal and a riot of romantic fantasies over one maddening man.

Breathe in. Release. Breathe. Release.

Perhaps she should have saved her ritual for morning, except that- "Now feels right.

In the dead of night

I dare to invite . . .

Profound insight."

A tentative calm settled over her, obscurity filling the dark edges of her consciousness the way it claimed the periphery of the room. She closed her eyes and searched the recesses of her mind before letting her words pour forth: "Earth, water, fire, air

Angel guardians hear my prayer.

Help define my psychic brand.

For those who seek a helping hand.

"Moon, stars, high bright sun,

Light my way to souls undone.

My psychic goal with speed, reveal.

Harm it naught, I seek to heal."

Destiny opened her eyes . . . and lost her breath.

In her circle stood a man dressed as if for a centennial sail. Beside him, an apple-cheeked young girl sat in a grotto of bright white angel wings. Standing tall behind her: an angel.

Destiny's heartbeat trebled. Fear stole her breath, prickling her from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes. She shivered and clutched her cat so tightly that Cara me-owed and jumped from her grasp to circle, examine, and "talk" to the little girl.

Destiny had never seen her cat try so hard to communicate.

The child held her hand flat, well above Caramello, and the cat purred loudly, and arched as if into an actual caress.

The girl smiled, and the angel said, "Be not afraid."

Destiny about choked. Wait a minute. She tried to regain her composure. "The last time an angel spoke those words, didn't a virgin get pregnant?"

The angel remained passive, its lucent amber eyes deeply probing, while Centennial Man's eyes widened. "I don't think that could be an issue here," he quipped.

"I resent that!" Destiny fought a warm shot of embarrassment at her knee-jerk reaction and the truth of his words.

Despite the entities' lack of apparent threat, Destiny stood and pointed a large green fluorite crystal their way like a negative-energy scrub gun, because she knew-she knew-they were ghosts.

"Negative entities away.

Protection come to stay.

White light, elliptical in flight,

Surround me in a sphere so bright

As to sever threat and sight,

Of visions in the night."