Once Upon a Curse: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (Which Village Book 2)

by L. C. Mortimer

  There was something very strange about this moon, though.

  It was glowing, and it was shining down only in one place: Which Village. I sat, watching it from the entrance of my cave, and I wondered what I was supposed to do next.

  It rather felt like someone was calling me to Which Village.

  I thought I rather might like to go.

  Chapter 16

  Jaden

  The three of us hauled our captive around a tiny shack that was set up to sell tickets and plopped him down in the dirt. We were out of eyesight from the other guardians and we were out of earshot, as well.

  “What are we going to do with him?” Fiona asked.

  “We could kill him,” Natasha shrugged.

  I looked at her sharply, but she didn’t seem even slightly bothered at this idea. It was almost like she wanted to kill the guy, and that was a side of her I hadn’t seen.

  “We can’t kill him,” I told her.

  “Why not? He’s kind of ugly and a little dumb.”

  The man’s eyes went wide, as though the insult had been too much for him to bear. I stood there for a second, looking at him. I knew that both of the girls were waiting to hear what I would say. It wasn’t that I was in charge, but that I was the one who was closest with Eliza.

  That meant they trusted me to make a good choice.

  What was my choice going to be?

  “His clothes look expensive,” I pointed out. “He’s not from around here.”

  “And his ears are pointy,” Fiona noticed. “He’s a warlock of some kind.”

  “Not human?”

  “Not human.”

  “Interesting,” I murmured. I’d never seen a warlock up close. I hadn’t realized that their ears were pointy. They reminded me a little bit of an elf, only slightly meaner.

  The man had big, bushy eyebrows that seemed to have a life of their own, and his hair was really, really curly. It was long, too. Apparently, he didn’t cut it often. If I hadn’t been trying to fight him, I might have been jealous of the way he looked. He really was kind of pretty in a strange sort of way.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  He seemed like he was trying to speak. He was still hexed, so he couldn’t make any sounds at all.

  “He’ll yell if we take the spell off,” Natasha warned.

  “Are you going to yell?” I asked the man.

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He nodded, like he was trying to convince me that I should definitely, totally believe him.

  “Let’s try again,” I said. “If you yell, I will kill you. Understand?”

  His eyes widened.

  “She means it,” Fiona said. “Jaden’s a killer. Once she even killed a dog I had.”

  “What the hell?” I looked at Fiona. “I didn’t kill a dog. What? Why would you say that? I’ve never killed an animal.”

  “You’re trying to intimidate him,” Fiona said. “I’m trying to help you out.”

  “Come up with better lies,” I told her. “I want to scare the guy. I don’t want him to think I’m some sort of evil witch.”

  Fiona just shrugged, unbothered.

  “Here goes,” Natasha said.

  A second later, the spell was off, and I crouched over the man and grabbed his shirt collar. He was still tied with enchanted rope, so he couldn’t go anywhere. His wrists and ankles were bound.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came with the warlocks,” he said.

  “Yes, I gathered that on account of your ears,” I nodded toward the pointy ears. Damn, they were cool. I fought the urge to touch my own ears. I wished mine looked like his.

  “What do you want?” Fiona asked.

  “Why have you come to this place?” Natasha joined in.

  “Who is your leader?”

  “What does he want?”

  “Why did you all come here together?”

  “How many of you are there?”

  Both of the girls were spitting questions out so quickly that I almost felt bad for our hostage. He seemed like he actually wanted to answer the questions that were being thrown at him, but he couldn’t seem to figure out which question to answer first.

  “Ladies,” I said. “Give him a moment. Let’s start with the basics. What’s your name?”

  “Rock,” he said.

  “Funny,” I rolled my eyes. “Try again.”

  “Rock,” he repeated, a bit more quietly.

  “Your name is Rock?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a last name?”

  “That is my last name.”

  “Okay. First name?”

  “Freddy.”

  The man sighed, and I suddenly knew why he went by his last name. I would, too, with a name like Freddy.

  “All right, Rock, why did you come to Which Village?”

  “The mayor called my boss,” he told us.

  Wow, this guy just did not care about spilling his guts, did he? Talk about a lack of loyalty. He didn’t seem to care that we were all standing around trying to get information out of him. He didn’t seem to care that his boss was around the corner with a crowd of people surrounding him.

  He was just giving us whatever we wanted.

  I mean, I was happy about that, but it was still a bit unnerving to have someone give information out that easily.

  “The mayor called your boss?” Fiona asked. She and Natasha looked at each other, confused.

  “Why would she call him?” I asked. It wasn’t like Eliza was the kind of person who would bring trouble to town.

  If anything, she tried to avoid trouble. I’d even say she tried to actively avoid trouble. Eliza was struggling to settle in as mayor, which was understandable. She’d been an attorney for a long time.

  While she’d worked helping people set up their wills and deal with real estate problems, she had been able to primarily stay out of the spotlight. Most of the time, people chose to live in Which Village because they wanted to disappear and hide away from people.

  Usually, someone living around here wasn’t going to call up past enemies.

  So who was the guy in the center of the barrier?

  Why was he after Fiona?

  And what did he really want?

  Chapter 17

  Natasha

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “James.”

  Rock’s answer was tight and clipped. He didn’t like James very much, did he? Strange. It was kind of unusual to be dealing with a guy who didn’t like his boss.

  Most of the time, people who participated in invasions were quite fond of their leader, so it was a little weird that Rock didn’t seem to like James. I wondered why. Maybe James was the kind of guy who tricked people into working for him, or maybe there was even blackmail involved.

  It was nearly impossible to say.

  “Why do you hate him?” I asked. Jaden looked at me sharply. I knew she thought I was getting off-topic, but it was a valid question.

  What was it about James that made his employee dislike him so much?

  “He’s not a nice person,” Rock said.

  “Elaborate,” Jaden glared once more. She was trying to look menacing, but she mostly looked constipated. I’d have to work with her later on figuring out how she could try to make herself seem more angry and upset without destroying any chances of someone taking her seriously.

  “He’s head of the Werewolves Council.”

  Everyone fell silent, and I could practically feel the confusion radiating off of Jaden. Of course, nobody had told her about the Werewolves Council. Nobody would have wanted to be the one to break the news to her.

  “Jaden, there’s a council of warlocks and witches who hunt and kill vampires.”

  There.

  That was the simplest, easiest way to explain it. If she didn’t understand it after that glowing explanation, then she didn’t deserve to understand.

 
“What?” Jaden’s voice came out a whisper.

  “They hunt werewolves,” Fiona said a bit louder.

  “Shh, she could hear you just fine,” I admonished Fiona. We didn’t want to screw this thing up. Whatever James was doing, it was happening now.

  All of a sudden, the sky went dark and the moon went bright.

  What the hell was happening?

  “He’s doing it,” Rock sighed.

  “Doing what?”

  “He thinks there’s a werewolf around here. He’s proud of himself, you know. He’s hunted over a hundred of the things.”

  “What does he do when he catches a werewolf?” Jaden hissed out.

  “He kills them, of course,” Rock shook his head. “Pretty sad, really. He’s pretty good at it, but what a pathetic thing to be good at, you know?”

  “Don’t think about it,” I said to Jaden. “We can’t go after James like this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re outnumbered,” Fiona said. “Look, dear. Most of the witches are within that circle.”

  We peered around the corner of the little building we were hiding behind. Sure enough, there was a huge, semi-clear dome that stretched over the audience.

  “The witches in there can’t use their powers,” Rock filled us in. “That’s a trick James learned from Eliza long ago. She was his student, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know,” Jaden snapped. “Apparently, there are a lot of things I didn’t know.”

  “Look, I’m sorry we didn’t tell you about the Werewolves Council, but why would we?” I was tired of her whining. “All you ever do is talk about your husband and search for him. Was I really going to be the one to tell you there’s an evil organization who wants to destroy his kind?”

  “You should have.”

  “Not a chance in hell,” I told her. I meant it, too. I might have tried to be a good friend to Jaden, but I wasn’t the person who was going to ruin her hope.

  “Whatever. How do we break into the barrier? Rock?”

  Rock sighed and shook his head.

  “Look, now, I’ve given you all I know.”

  I reached for his ears and grabbed each of them and tugged.

  “Ouch! What’re you doin’?”

  “What I have to. Now tell us how we break the barrier.”

  “Can’t.”

  I tugged harder.

  “Stop! Please!”

  “Tell us!”

  Jaden and Fiona both looked at me like I was mad crazy, but I didn’t care. The people inside of that barrier weren’t just people I knew.

  They were people I loved.

  People I cared about.

  “Look, you can’t break the spell. You just can’t. I’m not being mean. I’m not hidin’ nothin’.”

  “Are you Irish?” Jaden asked, cocking her head.

  “What?”

  “Irish. Are you Irish? You sound Irish. Doesn’t he sound Irish?”

  “He does, a little,” I nodded. Rock’s accent had been bothering me. I hadn’t been able to place it at first.

  “What are you doing here if you’re Irish?”

  “That’s a bit of a rude question,” he said. “You can’t just ask people why they live in your country.”

  “No, I’m asking why you came to work for the Werewolves Council.”

  “I can’t tell you that,” Rock insisted.

  Damn, this guy was something else. He didn’t like to share information. He didn’t like to share stories. What was he good for? That was what I wanted to know.

  “Just tell us how to get inside,” I said.

  I bit my tongue, fighting myself from saying more.

  What I really wanted to do was scream at Rock and tell him he was the worst warlock I’d ever seen, but I didn’t.

  “Unless the person who casts the barrier pulls it down, there’s only one way to break the dome.”

  “Tell us.”

  “A werewolf has to run through it,” Rock shrugged. “It’s the only way.”

  Chapter 18

  Eliza

  “Don’t do this,” I said to James.

  “Do what, exactly? What I came to do?”

  “You know as well as I do that hunting werewolves is useless and pointless,” I told him.

  “I know nothing of the sort,” he snapped. James looked around wildly, as though he was waiting for some sort of secret weapon to appear.

  I didn’t have one.

  I didn’t have anything.

  If he’d pulled this kind of trick when Alicia had been around, I might have had some sort of backup. As it was, I didn’t. I was alone. I was all alone.

  Sometimes it felt like that was how I’d always been.

  “You can’t do this.”

  “You called me about a werewolf problem,” James told me. “We’re going to get rid of it.”

  “No, I called you for advice. I called you because we used to be friends.”

  “Oh, Eliza. You’re so wrong. We were never friends.”

  “We were.”

  “We never were,” he repeated. “Think about it.”

  And so, I thought.

  I thought back to all of the classes I’d attended with him as the instructor. I thought back to all of the times he’d told me I was important to him. How many days had I spent studying under his careful and watchful eye?

  How many times had I gotten swept up in him?

  I’d never been in love with James, but maybe he thought I had been. Our relationship had been passionate and wild, but not in a sexual way. We’d both just really, really loved magic. We’d loved having adventures and spending late nights working on spells.

  We’d done everything in our power to wrangle all of the magic that we needed, and then we’d walked away.

  I’d walked away.

  James had been an angry sort of person, and it had taken me a long time to realize it. Once I’d finally understood just how spiteful and hurtful he could be, I had chosen to go. I’d left. I’d come to the village and I hadn’t looked back and even now, I didn’t want to.

  “Please,” I tried once more.

  I knew that we didn’t have a lot of time. James had hexed the moon, just as the previous coven leader and mayor had. He’d taken things a step further, though.

  He was trying to lure Stanley, and there was a part of me that thought he was going to be able to do it.

  The witches that surrounded us had obviously realized that James was trouble. A couple of people had already started trying to fight him, but his warriors quickly put them in their places.

  “Sorry,” he called over his shoulder. “Your magic is no good in here. Warlocks only within the dome.” He turned back to me. “I have you to thank for this little spell.”

  “I cast it on you one time,” I snapped, irritated that he’d used my own recipe against me.

  “One time was all it took,” he said.

  “When are you going to admit that this is all just a tirade? This is all just because you have a bias against werewolves?”

  “I don’t,” he shrugged.

  “You obviously do. This is a lot of work for one werewolf. Maybe you hate them, or maybe you just hate me.”

  “I loved you!”

  There.

  He yelled the words, and the look on his face was of utter shock. I couldn’t tell which of us was more surprised by what he’d said. There was an audible gasp from the audience as his words sunk in.

  “So that’s why you came.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Revenge because I didn’t love you.”

  “It’s not revenge.”

  “Then what is it?”

  We heard a growl, all of a sudden, and everyone turned to look at the exterior of the dome. It was clear enough that we could see out into the darkness. The moon was shining right on top of us, though. It was shining here as a sort of beacon, as a spotlight.

  Whatever was out in the darkness would be lured to this very spot
, and that was how James was going to catch him.

  “Ah,” James smiled. “I see that the end is here for our little friend.”

  He waved the wand around in a little loop, watching me. I knew what he was going to do.

  As soon as Stanley – because it was definitely Stanley out there – leapt through the barrier, he was going to kill him with the wand. The other warlocks were waiting for the signal from James to let them know when they should make their own moves, but I wasn’t going to let that happen.

  I couldn’t.

  I’d lost the love of my life the year before and I knew how terrible that pain really was. I couldn’t let Jaden feel that pain anymore. Not again.

  “James,” I cleared my throat.

  “Eliza?”

  “You know, you’re right.”

  “I’m right?”

  “Yes,” I nodded. “You’re right.”

  I tried to remember how to flirt. Damn, it had been a long time, and James was really not my type. Still, the words came flowing back to me as I neared him.

  “About what?”

  “About everything,” I shrugged.

  I reached for him and placed my hands on his chest. He seemed surprised, but he didn’t push me away. Was he going for this?

  For me?

  Was he believing the words that were coming out of my mouth?

  I needed him to.

  I needed him to believe all of this because if he didn’t buy it, then we were out of luck. If Stanley breached the barrier and James still had his wand, he was going to be killed right away. James would be sure of it.

  There was a reason that James was the head of the Werewolves Council, and it had nothing to do with the fact that he knew a lot of magic. He was the head of the council because he loved hunting, and he loved hunting nothing as much as he loved hunting werewolves.

  “Eliza?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t know about your feelings,” I whispered, looking up at him. “I hope you can forgive me.”

  “How could you not have known?” James’ face softened just a little, and I felt almost bad about what I was going to do.

  Not bad enough that I didn’t do it, though.

  “Oh,” I whispered, leaning up into his ear. “I did know. I knew it the entire time. I just didn’t care.”