Kisses and Curses

by Michelle M. Pillow

  A bright light shone on Lewellen’s face, cutting his words short.

  The trooper blinked several times before dropping his hand from where it rested on his gun. He nodded at Cora. “Everything seems to be in order, ma’am.” He went to her open door and picked up the paper ticket. “I’m going to let you off with a warning this time. Drive safe now.”

  He turned to leave, striding away.

  Cora stumbled along the side of the car after him in disbelief. Her voice soft, she whispered, “Where are you going? Don’t go! Arrest me. Take me in.” Even though she tried to cry out, it was like an invisible hand gripped her throat and kept her from screaming. She stopped near the opened trunk.

  She took several deep breaths, not looking inside.

  A small hand reached up, the short, childish fingers curling over the metal edge of the lid only to pull it down. It slammed shut. Cora jumped at the hard noise. Lewellen did not turn around. She was compelled to get back in the car to keep driving.

  “Please, help me,” Cora croaked, the words painful. “I’ve been kidnapped.”

  Chapter Three

  Two days later…

  Insects hummed, filling the night air with the chorus of the countryside. Leaves rustled in the breeze, crashing together. The cool air brought relief to the warmer day. The nature filling the estate grounds infused Euann’s magick, feeding his powers with its natural vitality. Warlock magick needed to draw power from somewhere. Sex worked, but the jolt was intense and short-lived. The life force of plants sustained. It’s why they preferred to live by nature. They could draw from multiple sources without killing a single plant.

  The Georgian-style mansion sat at the end of a long drive. He looked up at the imposing silhouette in the moonlight. They had been in Wisconsin for several years, but it still did not entirely feel like home. He missed Scotland. Or maybe he missed the idea of Scotland.

  This was one of the best homes they’d had in centuries. It wasn’t exactly easy to come by a mansion that could fit an extended warlock family—Euann, his brothers, their sister Malina, their parents, cousins, uncles and aunts, and the new spouses—with enough privacy to keep their magick in check, and enough amenities nearby to make sure they didn’t starve in the wilderness…or worse, suffer from boredom.

  Those who did not choose to live in the mansion took up residence in the town. Not everyone had moved to Green Vallis. He had family, cousins and second cousins, yet to come. From those early days in the barbaric Scottish countryside to today, one thing was for certain, MacGregors stayed together. It was the only way they could remain safe. The tradeoff for such a life was that they were instant local celebrities wherever they went. Not many people could afford a home with sixty-five rooms and over twenty thousand square feet of space.

  The mansion sat on a hill, overlooking the valley town of Green Vallis flanked by an expansive forest. There was only one road in or out—the long driveway leading to town. The MacGregors owned eighty acres, much of which was the forest that had a stream running through it. There were several outbuildings, including an old coach house from the late 1800s that they had converted into a garage for the brothers’ somewhat extensive vehicular habits.

  Euann was in charge of securing all of it. Despite the teasing of his family about his obsession with technological toys, Euann did cast good ol’ protection spells over the place. It was one of the reasons for his late-night walk. It was time to renew a few of them.

  Euann spotted lights through a small break in the tree limbs. Streetlights from town dotted the valley like stars. He walked the path leading into the woods and let his body pull energy from around him, taking a little from the trees, a bit more from the grasses and underbrush. He had thought the midnight walk through the woods would make him feel better. It didn’t. The sadness flowed through him like blood, invading every part of his being—including his magick. He couldn’t shake it.

  Iain and Rory were convinced he was pining over Charlotte, who had started dating their brother Niall. It wasn’t what everyone thought. Sure, the fact she was with his brother bothered him. He wished he and Charlotte had been meant to be together.

  So maybe it was a little like everyone thought.

  Euann did like Charlotte, but more to the point, he liked the idea of Charlotte. He wanted to be in love. He wanted to have the connection his brother Erik had with Lydia, that Iain had with Jane, that Niall had with Charlotte, that his parents had even after centuries of marriage. He wanted the other half to his soul, his fíorghrá, his true love, the person with whom he could share every thought.

  He wanted to meet his eternity.

  However, it wasn’t that longing that filled him at the moment. Euann had been thinking of his lost brother more than usual. Twenty-five years missing. Twenty-five cursed years. Not knowing what happened was the worst feeling. If only they had an answer.

  Kenneth wouldn’t leave his family, not like this, not for this long, unless he had no choice. To put all of them through so much heartache would be unthinkable.

  If only he could think of something they had not tried to get Kenneth back—a spell, an incantation, a necromancer. This was a magickal problem. There had to be a magickal solution.

  There had to be.

  They just hadn’t thought of it yet.

  Dammit, Kenneth. Just come home.

  Euann held his breath, listening to the sound of the wind in the trees, willing the answer to come to him and not expecting it to.

  A vibration by his ass caused him to jolt a little in surprise. He gave a small laugh and shook his head at himself.

  Euann pulled his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans. He doubted anyone was calling him at this hour, so it was probably a motion sensor being set off. Deer sometimes passed through, and he’d caught some beautiful footage of the animals in the woods surrounding the house.

  “Please be deer and not Uncle Raibeart,” Euann whispered to himself as he put his finger on the button to unlock the device. He had fifty-two cameras set up around the grounds. Well, not all of them were on the grounds. Five were spy cams he could place wherever he wanted. Then there were the microphones he attached to things like his brothers’ shirt collars when he was bored and wanted to cause trouble.

  He pulled up the recording to see what had set off the sensor. It was a small blur of movement, more human-shaped than animal. Hundreds of years trying not to see his uncle running naked in the woods told him the graceful movement wasn’t Raibeart.

  Euann checked the live feed, moving systematically through the camera footage to look for whoever was walking through the forest. When he couldn’t pick up a trail, he pointed his finger at the phone and ordered, “Reveal yourself.”

  Blue lights lifted in the surrounding forest to show the life force of birds in trees and small mammals in the underbrush. He wasn’t worried about anyone else seeing the lights. Only the person who cast the spell would.

  His phone screen magickally flashed through the security feeds, pausing on the views long enough to show him what hid in the darkness of each location. He watched it carefully until finally, it revealed a figure standing in the woods staring in the direction of the mansion. The security feed changed, and the image was gone, but he knew where to go.

  Euann gripped his cellphone as he ran through the trees, taking a shortcut through the denser woods. He jumped over fallen logs and dodged saplings. He wondered what would be at the other end of this hunt—a wraith, a mormo…ooh, or some kind of sexy wood nymph. That would be a fun change of pace after the chaos they’d been dealing with since moving to Wisconsin.

  Please be a wood nymph. Please be a naked wood nymph. Please be a naked wood nymph.

  What if it was Kenneth?

  The idea caused him to lose focus, and he tripped on a branch. He flew forward, landed hard on his stomach, and slid a few inches on the uneven ground. The noise caused by his fall was met with a gasp of surprise. The pitch of the voice gave way that it was a female.


  Please be a naked wood nymph.

  Euann pushed himself to standing and glanced around. A scrape burned his forearm. He dusted forest litter from his t-shirt and blue jeans.

  “Is someone there?” the woman asked, her voice shaky. She definitely was not a MacGregor. “Jewel, is that you? Come out of the woods. I don’t like it here.”

  Euann made his way toward the nearby walking path. He saw the curve of the woman’s hip before anything else. A long blue t-shirt fell to her thighs over black leggings. Her sandals were not optimal for traipsing about the woods at night. The darker colors helped to obscure her in the shadows. He pushed a tree branch aside to get a better look at her.

  The woman stood stiff as if afraid to move. She hugged her arms around her. Long brown hair lifted away from her shoulders in the breeze. Dark eyes met his. If not for the moonlight, she would have been standing in the shadows.

  Euann’s breath caught. He was transfixed.

  “I can explain,” she said.

  Of all the things that could have been running around the forest this night, it seemed wood nymph won. Just looking at her made his heart quicken.

  She shook her head in denial. “No, I can’t explain.”

  Her breathing visibly deepened. Euann moved closer, his eyes on her parted lips. He didn’t question the urge to go to her. This is what nymphs did. They drew men in, attracting them with pheromones. He did not try to resist. She was a vision, one he wanted nothing more than to kiss.

  Softer than before, she said, “You should run back the way you came.”

  Euann chuckled. “Run?”

  He wasn’t running anywhere. Why would he? Mesmerized, he lifted his hand, wanting to touch a strand of her hair against her shoulder and afraid she’d blow away like a spirit when he did.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The woman darted away from him before his fingers made contact. She hurried down the path, disappearing around a turn.

  Euann’s natural instinct was to follow. Every MacGregor had what they called their burden. Iain shifted into bird forms. Erik turned into a puma. Niall was a werewolf. Euann’s burden was that he could shift into the form of a gray fox. It had been decades since the fox tried to push itself to the surface. Their inner animal natures liked to react on impulse. His was telling him to chase her.

  Euann did not shift, but he did take off down the path behind her. He advanced on her quickly and when she suddenly stopped, he almost crashed into her back.

  Those lovely eyes turned to him, and she said, “You should have run the other way.”

  Euann frowned at her expression of fear. It had not been there before. Or had it? He’d been so mesmerized that he’d not observed what might be happening around them.

  She took an unsteady breath. Before he could ask what frightened her, he saw movement. The woman tried to place her body before his in a protective gesture. Her trembling hands lifted to her sides as if to further block him from view.

  He stepped aside to look down the dirt path.

  A child skipped out of the woods. The little girl couldn’t have been more than six years old. Her brown curly hair sprouted around her head in a wild mess and she had a smudge on her face like she’d been licking chocolate ice cream and it dripped down her chin onto her yellow dress.

  The girl giggled and shouted, “Found you. Now find me!”

  As the child ran down the dirt path, Euann found himself compelled to go after her. “It’s not safe out here for a child. She shouldn’t be here.”

  “She’s not the one in danger.” The woman jogged beside him. “You really should have run the other way.”

  Chapter Four

  “Here you are, Mrs. Twinkles, but only one.” Jewel pretended to have a British accent as she dropped a cube of sugar into a porcelain teacup. Hot liquid splashed over the side. The floral tea set looked to be antique, and not something most people would want a child playing with.

  Normally, Jewel spoke with the light Southern accent common in Oklahoma.

  The girl sat on the formal dining table, her legs crossed as she looked at her three playmates. She wore a sparkly pink princess gown complete with a tiara.

  Mrs. Twinkles lifted the cup to his lips to sip. Cora felt terrible for the guy. After he’d found them in the woods, Jewel had forced him to play hide-and-seek with them for hours. Then they were made to act like monkeys at the zoo. Cora’s hands still ached from hanging on the tree limbs.

  The child was tireless. Cora had yet to see her sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. In the late morning hours, Jewel insisted they go into the man’s home to play. And as if breaking into the man’s home wasn’t bad enough, Jewel also put him in a ruffled pink dress, complete with bonnet and bright pink blush. Not to mention the hair bow tied around his head.

  “Tea and biscuit, Mrs. Little?” Jewel placed a cookie on the plate in front of Cora.

  Late afternoon light shone through the window behind Cora. It was the only indication of what time it might be. Without the will to resist, she reached for the cookie and bit into it. The lace around her neckline itched terribly, but she couldn’t bring herself to scratch.

  “Mrs. Star over here will take another cookie, lassie.” Mrs. Star was a Scottish-accented gentleman who had walked in on the tea party. The blue silk ballgown hugged his frame, plunging in the front to show his chest. He’d been only too willing to sit down and join them. His actions seemed less forced as if he was there of his own volition. He held up his cup. “And a touch of the hot stuff, if ya don’t mind.”

  Jewel giggled. She lifted the small teapot and poured something into the man’s cup.

  “There’s the magick.” He lifted a pinkie finger in the air as he brought the tea to his lips.

  “Magick, magick,” Jewel pointed at Mrs. Star and Mrs. Twinkles before turning her finger onto herself, “magick, but,” she looked at Cora, “not magick.”

  Cora took another bite of the cookie. She never thought she’d be tired of cookies. But after her diet of cookies, candies, cake, and ice cream, she would have given anything for a health shake and a salad.

  “Poor Mrs. Little,” Jewel said. “You can have two cookies.”

  “Blue is not your color, Uncle Raibeart,” a man said from the other room, his Scottish brogue giving away the fact he was probably yet another occupant of the house. Cora closed her eyes and willed the man away before he fell into Jewel’s trap.

  “Iain, join us,” Mrs. Star, aka, Uncle Raibeart invited.

  Iain appeared in the doorway. He barely contained his laughter when he saw the nice man in pink ruffles. “Oh, Euann, what are ya wearing? This is priceless.” He fumbled for his phone and lifted it up. “Say cheese, pretty princess.”

  Euann grumbled but continued to sip his tea.

  Jewel frowned and stood up on the table. She stamped her foot. Iain laughed.

  “Girls only,” Jewel pouted, losing the British accent in exchange for her American one. “No boys allowed at the tea party!”

  Iain’s smile quickly faded as his kilt puffed out and turned into a green square-dancing dress complete with petticoats and a white apron front. “What the ever-lovin’—”

  The words were cut off when a chair dragged on the floor as it pulled out from the table. Iain was compelled to sit down.

  “How are you today, Mrs. ah…?” Jewel thought for a moment and pointed around the table in turn. “Twinkle. Little. Star.” And when she got back to Iain, she concluded, “Mrs. Dinosaur because your face looks grumpy.”

  Jewel giggled and knelt on the table as a teacup materialized before Iain.

  “Nice to meet you, grumpy dinosaur.” Raibeart wiggled his teacup with a grin. “I need a refill.”

  “More hot stuff,” Jewel said, walking on her knees to refill the cup for him.

  “Euann, what’s happening here?” Iain asked, his eyes focused on Euann.

  Euann looked like he wanted to answer but couldn’t.

  “Mrs. Twink
le can’t talk,” Jewel said. “She’s in time out.”

  Euann’s chair pulled him away from the table, spun him around, and then slid forward to make him sit in the corner of the room like a naughty child.

  “Ha! Blessed angels, thank ya for this gift.” Still another man appeared in the dining room doorway. He too tried to pull out his cellphone.

  “Rory, get help. She’s—” A large piece of material appeared over Iain’s nose and mouth. It tied around his head, and he was forced to claw at it to breathe.

  “Mrs. Grumpy Dinosaur can’t talk.” Jewel again stood and pointed at an empty chair. “Do have a seat, Mrs. Ballerina.”

  “What the fuck?” Rory’s hair pulled away from his face and grew into a ballerina bun. He tried to stop it by slapping at his head with his hands, but it was no use. A black leotard and shimmering white tutu replaced his slacks and button-down shirt. He lifted his arms and pirouetted several times before leaping toward the chair. He twirled before sitting down.

  Jewel clapped her hands. Iain managed to free his mouth from the gag. He tried to speak, but no words came out.

  “Jewel?” Cora tried to divert the girl’s attention. “Don’t you think we’ve kept these lovely ladies long enough? Shouldn’t we get back on the road?”

  “I like it here,” Jewel said. “It’s pretty, and it makes my toes tingle when I walk around. This can be our princess house.”

  “That would be the ley lines.” Raibeart reached across the table to steal another cookie. He took a bite and continued talking as he chewed. “This whole place is swimming with power. Hey, we got any shortbread cookies around here?”

  Jewel waved her plastic princess wand and materialized some on his plate.

  “Thank ya, love.”

  Cora couldn’t count the number of hours she’d been awake. Her eyes burned. She covered her mouth as she yawned.