Witch of Warwick (Dark Coven Book 1)

by Heather Young-Nichols

  The rain stopped, but a thundering storm brewed around us, betraying me. I was as confident as I felt, but I was also ready for a fight if it came to that and the air around us reflected that. Though if our white magic involved the elements, I wondered what their dark magic involved.

  No. That was a question for another time.

  Ashley stopped the words from coming out of her mouth, but Taylor… She just stuck her tongue out at me and finished the spell.

  And it worked.

  A grey fog raced toward me, darkening as it went.

  Thunder rolled with my fear. I wanted to believe the protection spell would work. I wouldn’t be hurt. But I’d never done this before and was still scared as hell. My stomach clenched as did every muscle in my body. What the hell would their spell do to me?

  But our spell worked too. The now black smoke turned green and stopped about a foot from me, bouncing like a rubber ball back at them, striking Taylor in the chest.

  There was no gasping for air. No trying to break her fall. Taylor’s eyes went unfocused and her body slammed, full force, against the ground with the worst thud I’d ever heard. My stomach churned and the saliva in my mouth thickened.

  I was going to vomit.

  Ashley screamed in pain and fell to her knees beside her sister.

  Her eyes flared at me as if this was my fault but they’d attacked me. I had done nothing but protected myself. This was all on her sister and while I might’ve felt bad for Ashley having lost another family member, I wouldn’t feel bad.

  My jaw was clenched so hard that it began to ache and I looked back at Luken, who only nodded. I wet my lips and took a deep breath, then walked slowly over to where Ashley sobbed over her sister.

  “I’m sorry this happened, Ashley,” I told her.

  “You’ve always hated us,” she said back, voice like ice, without looking up at me.

  I shook my head, though she wouldn’t see it. “You two tormented me, but I didn’t want this to happen. Tried to stop it even.”

  “You wanted her dead.”

  “I didn’t.” Frustration filled me, but I knew that Ashley wasn’t being reasonable. “I tried to stop her, Ashley. You stopped. I am sorry this happened to your sister, but I’m not sorry for protecting myself.”

  Ashley sobbed into her sister’s chest, then took a breath of her own and stood to finally face me. I was ready for anything.

  “You’re right. You did.” She glanced back down at Taylor, whose eyes were still open and staring at nothing. Then her eyes found mine again. “But she always bought into the garbage my dad used to tell us. I never understood why we couldn’t all just live our lives.” She wiped a hand across each cheek to dry her tears. “She had more hate in her heart than I ever did.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to her about that. I had no idea if that was true or not. But if she said it was, then it probably was.

  “Can you and I come to an agreement?” I asked. “So we don’t have to continue this until we’re all dead?”

  She wrapped her arms around herself and nodded. “Yeah. Truce.”

  I nodded twice and said, “Good. Now I think we have to call the police.” Then I glanced over at a very dead Taylor lying on the ground which threatened to cause me to vomit. She was so young. If I never saw another dead body in my life, that’d be just fine with me.

  “Right,” Ashley agreed, then she pulled her phone out of her back pocket. “What are we going to tell them?” She was doing a pretty good job of keeping herself together for the time being.

  Shock, I assumed. I didn’t cry when I found my grandma but I also hadn’t seen her killed.

  “I don’t know.” That was when I searched out Luken and he came over just because of the look on my face. Miller followed behind him. “I think they’ll know what to do.”

  The police arrived, as did an ambulance, even though we’d told them she was dead and for sure wasn’t coming back. Procedure, they’d told us. As I thought, Luken and Miller figured out how to handle this. He told them that she’d been struck by lightning and given that the clouds were just dissipating, I guessed that they would believe it. Though if they checked weather records, we might have some problems. But that was a problem for a different day.

  I don’t know what I’d have done without Luken and Miller.

  Once everyone cleared out, the officers took Ashley home, Miller, Luken, and I walked back into the house. He put his arm around me, as if I needed the comfort and honestly, I kind of did.

  “I don’t even know what to do now,” I told Luken. Everything about what I’d known and everything about how I’d grown up had changed in the course of a week and I didn’t know how to handle it.

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  And the way he said “we,” I knew I’d be all right.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Miranda

  In the two weeks after Taylor had died in my backyard, Luken spent a lot of time and energy making sure I was OK with everything that had happened. We talked for hours on end, learning about each other and yes, discussing the incident. Having sex. Learning how to please one another and boy, did I have a lot to learn, but he was happy to teach me. About that and witchcraft.

  Miller and Luken spent hours talking me through spells and when it was appropriate to use which herb. We thumbed through the grimoire at least three time. I marked pages with sticky tabs as to which spells they thought were too advanced for me right now and which I should be practicing. They said that I’d actually begin to remember a lot of them without the book. Some I’d be able to tweak to not need the herbs though others absolutely needed them all the time.

  “I called Michael,” Miller told us as he dropped down onto a step beside us and grabbed a sandwich off the plate I’d made up.

  “What’d he have to say?” Luken asked him. Luken was two steps below me and Miller beside me on the same step.

  “He needs us back in a week.”

  Luken groaned but I bit the inside of my cheek and set the rest of my sandwich back onto the plate where I’d leave it, uneaten.

  This was the moment I’d been dreading. Of course, Luken would have to go home. Of course he would. I’d just hoped it’d be further away.

  “A week?”

  “Yeah. He said the garage is asking when we’re going to return.”

  The garage was where the two of them worked as mechanics. It worked for multiple reasons. They knew how to fix things the regular way but if there was something they didn’t know, they were advanced enough that they could magic their way out of it.

  “Of course they would,” Luken said then sighed. His gaze locked with mine and swallowed hard.

  “That’s not the only reason,” Miller told us which put both of us on alert. “He wants us to bring Miranda with us.”

  “What?”

  “He said if you want to be part of the coven you should be in Echo Valley.”

  I scowled. “But… but this is my house.”

  “You don’t have to go,” Luken told me. “If you don’t want to. I technically don’t have to go either. At least not because he says so. More because I do have a life there that even if I was going to stay here with you, I’d have to wrap things up there.”

  Miller raised an eyebrow. “You’d leave the coven?”

  Luken nodded but I wasn’t going to let that happen.

  “No way,” I told him. “They’re family, right?”

  “They are but so are you.” He took another big bite of food. “Is there a reason for the deadline.”

  Miller scratched the back of his head. “Yeah. Turns out there’s a dark coven trying to expand. Mila Dannemiller’s parents are part of it.”

  “Fuck,” Luken muttered. “Mila?”

  He shook his head. “They don’t think she’s part of it but her parents are and it’s a… satellite church that’s attached to Mather’s church. Michael thinks Mather was basically the leader which means someone else will step in. Until we take t
hem down.”

  “Take them down?” I asked with the full outrage I was feeling. “Are you guys Delta Force or something?”

  They both chuckled. “No,” Luken told me. “But this is what our coven does. We stop the spread of dark magic when we can. Like making sure you choose white magic. Stuff like that.”

  “Yeah,” Miller agree. “So…”

  I looked up at my house that we now had a week to get into some sort of shape before having to leave. “So we leave in a week. I’ll bring my grimoire.”

  Luken sighed like he was relieved to hear me say this. “Thank you,” he whispered then leaned up and kissed me gently.

  I couldn’t remember ever leaving Warwick… well, other than quick trips nearby but never overnight.

  “Where will I stay?” I asked.

  Luken lowered his brows. “Girl, please. My apartment.”

  “Oh right.” I’d forgotten that he had his own place.

  But then after having lunch, we had to actually do something in the real world. Especially now if I was leaving on Saturday.

  The secret house was still secret.

  Luken and Miller came up with a way to shed the cloaking that kept it hidden. Spells Grandma had cast should’ve dissipated when she died. This one hadn’t which meant it wasn’t just a simple spell. But after a lot of discussion between the three of us, we decided to keep it hidden. Not only because it’d be a huge surprise to the rest of the town that suddenly this beautiful house was attached to the shitty one. But that was a big part of it. I wasn’t ready for all the secrets to be out in the world yet.

  Instead, we decided to use some of my newly found money to fix up the old place. I didn’t want to go overboard, but there was no reason to live the way we had been and we’d do as much of the work ourselves as we could.

  “What do you want to do on the outside here?” Luken asked as we were working on cleaning up the yard. Not landscaping just yet but clearing out some overgrowth.

  “What’d you mean?”

  “Do you want to paint? If so, what color? Or we could hire someone to do siding, which lasts longer.”

  I didn’t know what I wanted. “Do I have to decide now? We’re leaving soon.”

  He smiled over at me, his big arms full of branches. “’Course not. Whatever you want, whenever you want.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek, trying not to smile. “Whatever I want? Whenever I want?”

  “Yup.” After he had time for that to sink in, how I’d asked it, his head snapped my way, but I was already backing up toward the house. I knew it wouldn’t be long before he came after me. Luken smiled wide, his messy black hair making him look more playful than he usually was. “What do you want, Miranda?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered with a shrug, but I kept moving toward the house. I’d turn and run any second.

  “I think you know.” He took a few steps in my direction.

  I shrugged again, then turned and ran. His heavy footsteps followed, gaining on me as I got inside the house.

  “I’ll just stay out here and continue cleaning up,” Miller called after us.

  Never in my life had I thought I’d have someone to run from playfully.

  Never in my life had I thought I’d have someone who wanted to chase me.

  I had both in Luken.

  Thank you for reading Witch of Warwick!

  Preorder Devious Magic (The Dark Coven 2) which will appear in The Elementals!

  Also by Heather Young-Nichols

  New Adult Romance

  Pushing Daisies

  Daisy

  The Fallout Series

  Last Good Thing

  A Little More Touch Me

  Hard to Say Yes

  Courting Chaos

  Cross

  Ransom

  Booker

  Dixon

  Something Irish

  Harbor Point

  Love by the Slice

  Love by the Mile

  Love by the Rules

  Gambling on Love

  Highest Bidder

  Highest Stakes

  Highest Reward

  Finding Love

  Making Her Mine

  Making Him Hers

  The Empowered Series

  The Gremlin Prince

  The Goblin War

  Standalones

  Moonstruck

  Written with J.A. Hardt

  Dirt on the Diamond

  After Office Hours: Seducing the Professor

  Bound by Magic

  About the Author

  Heather Young-Nichols is a multi-published YA and contemporary romance author and a native of the great and often very cold state of Michigan. She is better known at home and to her friends as the Snarker-in-Chief, a job she excels at beyond anything she could have imagined. She loves many things, but especially cold coffee, hot books, and baseball. But not necessarily in that order.

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  heather@heatheryoungnichols.com

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