She wouldn’t be detained, and left him to tidy up his notes and reflect on the forthcoming village meeting.
That night he dreamed of her again, of a beautiful, naked Evie in his vicarage garden, lying on the lawn while blossom petals rained down on her luxuriant flesh. She was sleeping in dappled shade, the light playing on the curves of her breasts and hips.
He approached her, preparing to wake her, but before he could reach her a long, black snake streaked across the grass and alighted on her body, its glistening, muscular length winding itself around her helpless breasts and slithering lower. A jewel-red tongue darted in and out as it made its inevitable path to her sweet pink pussy.
Adam tried to shout out, to dive forward, but he could neither speak nor move, frozen and unable to prevent the serpent from gliding between Evie’s soft lower lips and disappearing up inside her.
Aghast, Adam looked on, expecting Evie to wake in a paroxysm of terror, but she slept on, her lips moving slightly in exhalation, her face flushing pink. The exposed end of the snake lashed against her clit rhythmically and, to his horror, Adam realised that she was in a state of sexual arousal.
Her fingers curled and she arched her back, panting now, sighing for more. The snake hissed in triumph, knowing that it had her in its thrall. She rocked into orgasm, her entire body seeming to bloom in that moment of epic vulnerability, epic pleasure.
And now she was lost, belonging to the serpent, destined never to be his.
He woke up gasping and crying.
Out near the barn where the man had murdered his sweetheart then hanged himself, Evie ran along the path under a starlit sky. The moon was full enough that she didn’t need a torch. She wore only a baggy cardigan on top of her gypsy skirt and halter top, and flip-flops on her feet, but she wasn’t cold, despite the clear sky and the late hour.
Soon she would be warm enough.
She stopped by the overgrown wishing well, looking down into its dry depths. Then she stepped back, shut her eyes and took a moment to concentrate her mind.
Three times clockwise she circled the well, three times anticlockwise, then three more clockwise revolutions.
Kneeling at the tumbledown brick, she spoke some words in an arcane tongue, the meaning of which she barely knew.
She kept her eyes low and shut while the excitement danced figures of eight in her belly and the air grew fierce and hot around her.
She knew now to hold her nerve right up to the point where it seemed she would burst into flames. That was how long it took.
The critical point was reached and she met it head on without fear, without resistance. She was through. She had succeeded.
Gentle fingers tickled her under her chin and she fell into an embrace.
‘Oh John,’ he said. ‘Oh, my love, he’s here.’
Chapter Four
A PASSER-BY WOULD have seen nothing more than a beautiful woman on her knees in the dark by the broken-down mess of the old wishing well, but that wasn’t what Evie saw.
She saw a man in a ruff and an embroidered cloak with thick, dark hair to his shoulders and a pointed barb of a beard. Strong, proud features were softened by the glow of adoration in his eyes and the fond curve of his lips.
She saw her one true love.
Her one true love who had been dead this past 300 years and more.
‘The preacher?’ he said, pulling her up and cradling her head against his shoulder.
‘Yes. He has come.’
‘And do you think …?’
‘He is the one. I’m sure of it.’
‘Is he inflamed by you?’
‘Oh yes.’
John took her face in both hands, pinching the blushing flesh of her cheeks.