Daisy gazed out at the desert wash behind her Scottsdale, Arizona home and uttered an inferno spell to reheat her tea. The air immediately surrounding her grew static, as it always did with spell casting, but dissipated as the spell found its object of intent. The result was instantaneous. After a few sips, she set her cup on the flagstone and leaned back to let the spa jets massage her muscles. The warm water soothed her and she began to drift toward sleep.

A hand caressed her stomach. It moved to her breast. She mewed at the pleasure, hovering between sleep and wakefulness. The hand gave a hard squeeze. In an instant, Daisy shot up out of the water, coughing and spitting.

What the hell?

What was with the weird dreams lately? Her third this week. They began in an erotic fashion but always ended in pain.

Maybe I’m a closet masochist.

To get her mind off those uneasy thoughts, she dove into the adjoining pool. The frigid water shocked her muscles and she came up gasping.

“Shit,” she uttered. But it worked and all she thought about now was the cold.

With another inferno spell, she heated the pool to a tolerable temperature and started a few laps. Some spells came as easily to Daisy as breathing and she used them to assist her in daily life. This world was hard enough on those without paranormal abilities not to use them. And being an inherent witch gave her certain advantages.

Daisy began to tread water in the deep end. Her eyes drifted to the wash on the other side of her wrought iron view fence then moved upward. The desert sky burst with orange and pink hues, like soda spewing from a bottle, as the sun dove toward the horizon. A fuchsia-colored glow reflected off the nearby McDowell Mountains where she’d spread her mother’s ashes. Though it had been five years, she missed the woman terribly. Probably always would.

Saguaro cacti looked like many-armed sentries standing guard in the wash, and she imagined them watching over her mother’s spirit. Quail cried their mournful ga-gaa-ga-ga songs, interspersed with an occasional pip-pip-pip. In the dim light, Daisy could just make out the teardrop-shaped plumes bobbing on their heads as they marched in a line. She smiled and continued to tread water.

A silent owl flew overhead, landed on the view fence and gazed down at her, eyes as round as marbles. She usually thought owls were beautiful, but this one left her with a less than fluffy feeling. In fact, she felt there was some wicked intelligence behind those large eyes, and it looked directly at her, or perhaps into her. Daisy shivered despite the warm water. As she backstroked to the shallow end, the owl’s eyes followed her.

“Go away,” she uttered, sounding more like a frightened child than a thirty-five-year-old inherent witch.

Much to her relief, something caught the owl’s attention and it flew off. Seconds later, the shrill screech of a desert hare meeting its death reverberated through the wash and she winced. Then it went silent. She pushed away disturbing thoughts about nature’s cruelty and took in a deep breath to calm her nerves. The distinct scent of creosote, with its minute, waxy leaves, wafted to her, reminding her of the monsoon season. The desert had been Daisy’s home since birth and she let the familiar sights and sounds put her at ease as she finished her laps.

When she’d had enough exercise, she swam to the beach entry and rested. Movement caught her corner vision and she turned to the wash. A dark figure stood just the other side of the wrought iron slats, under the nearest palo verde tree, an unruly thing with as many thorns as leaves. Daisy couldn’t make out the distinct green bark in the waning light but that didn’t matter. She saw the man.

Her heart tap-danced against her ribs. “Hello?” she said, hoping he was just a neighbor who’d wandered off the marked trail. “Can I help you?”

The figure said nothing so she readied a trussing spell. When the figure didn’t move, Daisy scrambled out of the pool and shrugged her robe on over her shivering body. After she shoved damp feet into flip-flops and wrapped her wet hair in a towel, she took another glance around the wash. No one. The sky had already gone purple and her paranormal blood didn’t give her night vision.

A passenger jet hummed overhead, lights blinking in a consistent fashion, on its way to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport. Two other planes crisscrossed the sky on their way to and from Scottsdale Airport, bringing a burst of engine and propeller noise down on Daisy. Normally, she would execute a muzzle spell to keep them from disrupting her quiet, but she didn’t bother tonight. She watched the passenger jet streak across the night sky, a couple of stars peeping out in the backdrop.

Thank goodness Noah would be home soon from his business trip. Not that she couldn’t defend herself if she had to, but she felt better when her husband was home where he belonged.

She studied the wash again. Perhaps a nearby saguaro had been the culprit, its shadowy visage fueling her imagination, though she was fairly certain she’d seen a man. Maybe he was another paranormal, but she had no idea what kind of powers he possessed. There were many types of paranormals, of which inherent witches were one. Most paranormals had no distinguishing marks and there were a number of them living in and around Scottsdale.

He didn’t seem eager to show himself again, and she didn’t intend to stay out here to find out whether he could overpower her. Safe as her North Scottsdale community was, no one was completely protected anyplace, especially a woman alone, inherent witch or not. If attacked, Daisy would fair better than a mortal woman, but she had no desire to test her magick out on that theory. No damn desire at all.