Now, it seemed as though that progress hadn’t been quite as much as I’d thought it had been.
Why was I thinking about Alicia now?
She was gone.
Dead.
She wasn’t coming back.
The crowd seemed to realize that I was on stage and more than a few people turned to watch me. In front of the stage was a large open area where families were sitting on blankets or camping chairs waiting to see what would happen.
Later, there would be a concert here with a couple of local bands, but right now, it was only me.
I whispered a spell to charm my voice. I needed to be loud if I wanted everyone to hear me.
Don’t think about Alicia, I thought to myself.
I couldn’t afford any distractions today. I couldn’t afford to have any mistakes right now. I didn’t want to be thinking about everything I’d lost.
“Good morning,” I said, trying to smile. Then I succeeded. I forced a brilliant smile on my face and waved to the crowds. The people seemed to buy it because most of them waved back. A couple of small children ignored me entirely, but most of the parents and adults took a moment to wave.
That was good.
Nothing would be worse than trying to setup this incredible, magical event only to have everyone laugh at me or simply ignore the entire event.
“You’re all here today for one reason: to celebrate being a witch!”
The crowd cheered, and a couple of people howled out responses.
“I know not everyone present today is magical,” I said, producing a collection of tiny little orbs from my hands. I snapped my fingers and they started to spread out into the crowd, hovering around people like balls of confetti in the air. “But everyone present today is special. I hope you enjoy all of the wonderful activities we have planned for you. Today is day one of our three-day festival. Start wandering around to see what kind of treasures you can find! There will be booths with food, treats, and shirts. I know that Hector and Hannah will be selling potions at their booth and Lionel and Leslie will have trinkets at theirs. Start exploring to see what looks great!”
I took a deep breath. Everyone was paying attention. I could give any sort of speech imaginable in the courtroom but giving speeches here in front of everyone felt forced and awkward.
Uncomfortable.
I was a lawyer, I reminded myself. That was who I’d been a long time ago. I still had that strength and that power within myself. There wasn’t really anything I couldn’t do if I just believed.
Somehow, I managed to make it through the rest of the announcements and I was just about to step off the stage and pass the torch to Gregory, who wanted to give an update on some of the city fundraising efforts, when someone started a slow clap in the center of the audience.
It wasn’t the type of slow clap where everyone else joined in.
Instead, it was the type of clap someone did when they were ready to tell you what an idiot you were.
It was the type of clap someone did when they were ready to tell you how much they hated you.
“Well, that was lovely,” a deep voice said.
It took me a moment to find him, but after a second, I was able to see exactly who it was causing trouble in this moment.
Of course, it was the one person I hadn’t wanted to see.
“James,” I said slowly. “I thought I told you not to show your face here.”
The audience went silent. Drama. There was going to be drama. They could all sense it, and since they were all witches and paranormal creatures, they all loved it.
The few shapeshifters in our midst were on edge, I could tell. Each one of them seemed to bristle slightly, ears perking up. Even in their human forms, there were hints of their animal side. Someone who didn’t know what they were might not notice these small characteristics, but I noticed.
I did.
“Oh, you may have said something like that.”
“You just chose not to listen?”
“I did,” he nodded. James began to casually walk toward me. He was wearing a long trench coat and was carrying a cane. Did he need a cane? No. No, he didn’t.
I didn’t understand why he was carrying something he obviously didn’t need, but that was James. He was a bit unpredictable and a bit wild, but he was also cocky.
That was going to be his downfall eventually.
I was certain of it.
“Then why are you here?”
The audience members were swinging their heads from me to James and back again. They didn’t know who to watch or who to look out for. They just knew that whatever was going to happen next was going to change everything.
I knew that whatever happened next was going to ruin everything.
Months of planning had gone into this festival, and it was being threatened on its very first day. That wasn’t something I was okay with. It was terrible. I didn’t want our world to be threatened. I wanted it to be saved.
I wanted all of it to be saved.
“I’m here because of our little chat, Eliza. Did you already forget? Pity. That happens sometimes when women get old.”
I sighed, shaking my head.
“I don’t want to fight you, James. Please leave.”
“You don’t want to fight me?” He seemed to think I was being cute or sweet. He laughed and shook his head, as though this was the silliest thing he’d ever heard. “You don’t want to fight me?”
“No, James. I don’t want to fight you.”
I looked around for our security team members. There were six that I had hired just for the event. I anticipated literally no problems, which was why I’d hired so few. Apparently, that had been a bad decision because they were nowhere in sight.
James seemed to notice me scanning the crowd for my guys because he sneered.
“Looking for your guards?”
I turned back to James. Wait. Why was he asking me that? Did he know? How could he have known?
My stomach sank as I realized that I’d been played.
“What did you do to them?” I asked.
I was no longer nervous, at least. I was no longer even aware of the crowd as I looked at James and tried to figure out what he’d done to my people, to my men.
If he hurt them, I would never forgive him.
Well, I’d never forgive him anyway. It wasn’t in my nature.
That was one way in which Alicia and I differed. She could hold a grudge, sure, but she’d calmed down over the last few years and had been on a bit of a forgiveness kick when she’d passed away. She’d asked me time and time again to just let things go.
She’d asked me to just forget.
To move on.
To let things slide.
That had been something that was very important to her, in fact. She’d always been looking for ways to be a better person, and she’d wanted me to be a better person, too.
Right now, I was glad Alicia wasn’t here to see what I was going to do because she’d be hurt and disappointed. I was about to have to fight for the town, I knew, and nobody here knew just what a terrible creature James really was.
Nobody but me.
I closed my hand, and as I did, all of the little orbs I’d sent out into the crowd as pieces of decoration surrounded James. It was like tiny balls of light circling around him, but he didn’t seem scared or surprised.
Why wasn’t he surprised?
“Eliza, really?”
“Really. Leave.”
“You know I’m not going to do that.”
“I know that you are going to do that,” I spoke the words tightly.
In the corner of my eye, I saw Fiona, Natasha, and Jaden slinking into the area. They were late getting here, but they had probably been setting up their booth. It was my understanding that they were going to be selling pies or something like that. Something cute and simple and easy.
They weren’t here to fight.
Unfortunately, that was what it was going to come down t
o.
James wasn’t going to let any of us go until he got what he came for, and what James had come for was what James always came for.
Blood.
“Leave,” I said one more time.
“Make me,” he laughed.
I twisted my hand, moving it quickly, and the little miniature orbs began to swirl around him.
“Come on,” he yelled out. “You can do better! I taught you better!”
He shoved both of his hands out, and my orbs fell to the ground in a pile of tiny pebbles. No. He’d changed their structure. They weren’t pebbles, they were…
“Candy,” he said, picking one up. “Nice. See what you’ve done Eliza? All of these years being a witch and you still can’t do anything right. It’s time for you to step down.”
“I will never step down,” I told him.
“This guy isn’t welcome here!” Someone in the crowd started yelling. “Come on!”
I had to give credit to the people on Which Village. They were determined and brave when they wanted to be. Almost instantly, a group of witches began running toward James, but I already knew it was no use.
He laughed and snapped his fingers, and his crew – no, his army – appeared at the edges of the crowd.
“You all can back right up,” he said to the people there. “The party is over.”
Chapter 13
Jaden
I didn’t know who the man was in the center of the crowd, but I knew he was someone bad.
“What’s going on?” Natasha whispered quietly.
“Eliza doesn’t like that guy,” I said. I kept my voice as even as possible, but also as low as possible. I didn’t want to draw any attention to ourselves because whatever was about to happen was going to be something big.
We’d arrived at the opening ceremony a few minutes late. That was my fault, mostly. I’d accidentally dropped one of the pies as we were trying to arrange them. It hadn’t been de-hexed when we’d stopped at the table, and I’d had to wrangle it down to the table. In the process, I’d dropped it all over the sidewalk. Cleanup had taken longer than it should have.
“Why not?” Natasha asked.
“I don’t know.”
The second he started talking, I could tell something was wrong. Eliza’s entire body language changed. She became tense and agitated. Angry. Irritated.
This was someone she knew, someone she didn’t like, and he was about to do something horrible.
I may not have been a witch for very long, but I wasn’t an idiot. I’d traveled the world with Stanley and I’d met every type of man there ever was.
This guy?
He was the kind of man that brought trouble and chaos wherever he went.
I also noticed that as soon as he started talking, all eyes were on him. Nobody seemed to notice that the security guards Eliza had hired were nowhere to be seen. Nobody seemed to notice the snarling looking men who were slowly making their way to the edge of the crowd.
There was one guy close to where I was standing with Fiona and Natasha.
“Psst,” I caught Natasha’s attention and discreetly gestured to the man who was near us.
Who was this?
A spy?
A soldier?
Whoever he was, I could tell that he was working for the bad guy and not for Eliza, which meant he was about to do something really, really terrible.
“We need to get out of here,” I said.
Fiona and Natasha seemed to agree. Carefully, Fiona started coughing. She winked as she did, letting me know that whatever was happening wasn’t serious.
“Excuse me,” she said, pushing the man away. She coughed again and again. He backed up, looking completely disgusted at her inability to control her coughing.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry. I’ve just…it’s a coughing…fit…”
“Excuse me,” I said to the man. I wrapped my arm around Fiona protectively and started to walk away from the crowd with her. “It’s my mother. She needs her medicine.
“Nobody leaves,” the man said, stepping in front of us.
“Pity,” Natasha said, getting closer to the man. She hissed out a spell more quickly than I could understand the words, and instantly, the man’s mouth snapped shut.
His eyes opened wide almost instantly. He knew she’d done something to him, but he didn’t know what. I stepped closer, pulling a length of enchanted rope from my pocket, and quickly tied his hands together.
“All right,” I told him. “You’re coming with us.”
Chapter 14
Eliza
James wanted to destroy everything.
He hated werewolves, which wasn’t a surprise to someone who had known him a long time.
“What are you doing, James?” I asked.
I glanced around at the people in the crowd. They seemed to know something was amiss. If they didn’t have an inkling already, the armed men surrounding the announcement area would be revelation enough.
“Something I should have done years ago,” he laughed. He snapped his fingers, and almost instantly, a sort of dome closed over the area. I knew what it was because I was the one who had taught James that little trick.
“An enchanted barrier won’t keep us here,” I told him.
He should have known that. He should have known that something as simple as a tiny little enchantment wouldn’t be enough to trap us at the festival.
“Ah,” James laughed, shaking his head. “Is that what you think, Eliza? You think I haven’t learned from your mistakes?”
My mistakes?
I didn’t know what mistakes he was talking about. Long ago, I’d been his student, and I’d been good.
Wildly good.
I’d been wickedly good.
James had never had another student before me accomplish half as much as I’d been able to under his tutelage. It was only later, once I realized what a terrible person he was, that things began to turn around for me.
I’d left him. He’d been wickedly hurt, but I’d gone away from him. I’d left the council, not wanting to spend my life complaining about werewolves, and I’d moved to Which Village.
The rest of my life, I’d stayed.
I’d left briefly to attend law school, but then I’d gone back to the little village and surrounded myself with people who were kind and caring. I’d surrounded myself with people who were good and calm and kind.
Not people like him.
“I don’t make mistakes,” I told him.
A lie.
Everyone made mistakes.
“Is that so?” James cocked his head. His long, grey locks bounced as he did. It should have been illegal for someone so horrible to be so damn pretty. That had served him well as a werewolf hunter.
He had always put people at ease.
People looked at him and thought he was safe.
They looked at him and thought he was fine.
Nobody ever felt scared of the pretty villains. They were too busy worried about the people who were ugly or bad-looking to notice the beautiful villains who were always lurking right there, just mixed in the crowd with all of the other normal people.
“You did today,” James said. “You shouldn’t have called me.”
“Why are you saying that?”
What was he getting at?
“You know I can’t resist a good werewolf hunt,” James told me. Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out a wand.
It wasn’t just any wand.
It was long and ancient-looking. It had been his grandfather’s, if I remembered correctly. The wand was made out of some sort of stone. I squinted, trying to see it a little more clearly.
“Quartz,” he told me.
Oh yeah.
I avoided looking in Jaden’s direction. That was her name. Jaden Quartz. I hoped that she didn’t notice what he was doing because if she did, she’d run in and try to save the day.
Sweet Jaden always had a heart of gold.
>
Just like her mother.
“And now,” James waved the wand around. “Let’s see if the werewolves will come out to play.”
A stream of light shot out of the end of the wand and straight up into the sky. It pierced whatever dome barrier he’d set around us, ignoring the barrier to get to the sky.
Then, where the moon had been shining a moment ago, a cursed moon appeared.
It was big.
It was wild.
It was full.
Well, damn.
Chapter 15
Stanley
The moon called to me.
I could tell the second the sun changed to the moon because my entire body started aching with need. I’d been in my wolf body for as long as I could remember.
Sometimes when I slept, I dreamed that I was a human with a beautiful wife, but just as soon as I woke up, the dream faded away, and with it, any hope I had of remembering.
Had I really always been a wolf?
It felt like it. I spent my days doing what I considered to be normal wolf activities. I’d hunted. I’d run around. I’d napped.
Most importantly, I stayed out of the village.
If there was one thing I knew about living in the mountains, it was that nothing good ever happened in the village. Which Village, it was called, which I supposed was probably meant to be a funny name.
It wasn’t funny or clever, though. It was mostly annoying. That village housed the most delicious foods I’d ever smelled in my life. The last few days had been absolute torture as I tried to stay away.
Someone had been baking, and I knew exactly what they’d been making: pies.
There were apple pies and peach pies and, if my nose hadn’t deceived me, there were also blueberry pies.
That was what I wanted more than anything else.
I wanted pie.
Now, though, the moon was different. It had become bigger, stretching wide in the sky. Something had changed.
That wasn’t one of the normal moons I’d gotten used to. Since I’d been living in the darkness of the woods and lurking in caves around the forest, I’d paid careful attention to each and every moon that came out to shine.
Once Upon a Curse: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (Which Village Book 2) Page 5
