Once Upon a Witch: A Wicked Witches of the Midwest Fantasy Books 1-3

by Amanda M. Lee

  “Stop talking about lice!”

  “Boy, you’re crabby.” Aunt Tillie made a tsking sound as she shook her head. “Are you not getting enough sex? I’ve heard that people become crabby if they don’t get enough sex. Bay, you should get on that.”

  “Oh, geez.” I slapped my hand to my forehead as Landon burst out in riotous chuckles. “I know how you feel when you say this family makes you tired. They make me tired, too.”

  “At least we’re in this together.” Landon’s smile was genuine as he pulled into the driveway that led to The Overlook. “Now, together, we can tell your mother what Aunt Tillie has been up to and come up with a plan.”

  Aunt Tillie’s face drained of color as she immediately started shaking her head. “You can’t snitch. That’s against the rules.”

  “Oh, I’m totally going to snitch,” Landon countered. “We need help and we can’t get it without telling the other witches in this family what’s going on. We don’t have a choice.”

  “There’s always a better option than snitching,” Aunt Tillie snapped. “I forbid you to do this.”

  “Oh, I’m going to do it.” Landon looked pleased with himself. “I think it’ll be the highlight of my day.”

  “LET ME do the talking.”

  Aunt Tillie was all business when we entered the inn, squaring her shoulders as she marched into the kitchen.

  Mom, Marnie and Twila barely glanced up when we entered.

  “Dinner is almost ready,” Mom announced. “We’re making a nice herb-roasted chicken with potatoes, and chocolate cake for dessert.”

  “That sounds great.” I fixed Aunt Tillie with a pointed look. “Doesn’t that sound great, Aunt Tillie?”

  “I would’ve preferred a good pork loin,” Aunt Tillie replied, not missing a beat. “I love a good pork loin, in fact.”

  “Maybe tomorrow.” Mom was clearly distracted as she dumped potatoes in the roasting pan. “Where have you guys been? Thistle said you had to run to town to help Terry. I hope it wasn’t too serious.”

  “It wasn’t the end of the world, but it has the potential to turn serious,” I clarified, my eyes never leaving Aunt Tillie’s face. “I think Aunt Tillie wants to comment on that part of it, though.”

  “I’m good.” Aunt Tillie lifted her nose as she scanned the kitchen. “Is that coffee I smell? How fresh is it? It’s cold outside, and these old bones need to be warmed up.”

  “You can have coffee in a second,” I said, grabbing her arm. “I believe you said you wanted to discuss something important with your nieces, right?”

  “You must have an ear infection,” Aunt Tillie replied, blasé. “I never said anything of the sort.”

  I narrowed my eyes, frustrated. “Aunt Tillie … .”

  “What’s going on?” Mom asked. She sounded as weary as Landon looked. “Did something happen?”

  “It did,” Aunt Tillie confirmed, bobbing her head. “Landon has lice. We need to wash his hair. I’m thinking it might be better to shave it off.”

  Landon scowled. He loved his hair. It was something of a trademark, and I remained uncertain how he could get away with shoulder-length hair while serving as an FBI agent. He claimed it was because of his undercover duties, but he’d only been under cover twice since I met him – and after his most recent stint went awry, I had trouble believing he would opt to go that route again.

  “You’re not cutting his hair,” I argued. “His hair is hot.”

  “Thank you, sweetie.” Landon beamed as he grabbed a cookie from the tray on the counter. “You’re good for my ego.”

  “You won’t think he’s hot if he gives you lice,” Aunt Tillie pointed out.

  “He doesn’t have lice!”

  “Don’t let her get to you,” Landon chided, his expression clouding over. “She’s trying to distract everyone from the real reason we’re in here. I won’t let her do that.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Aunt Tillie sniffed. “I think you’re trying to distract everyone because you’ve become attached to your lice. That’s weird, by the way. I think you should be locked up.”

  “Knock that off!” Landon was clearly at his limit. He planted his hands on his hips and glared at Aunt Tillie. “Tell them what you’ve done or I’ll do it for you.”

  Despite being backed into a corner, Aunt Tillie remained oddly calm. “You’re such a snitch.”

  “Oh, geez, what did you do now?” Mom asked, her hands buried in a chicken. I didn’t want to know what she was doing up there, but it was making me uncomfortable watching her work. “If you’ve threatened the guests or done something to Margaret Little I don’t even want to hear about it.”

  “You heard her.” Aunt Tillie was smug. “She doesn’t want to hear about it.”

  “You have to hear about it,” Landon countered. “We need your help to fix what she’s done.”

  “I haven’t done anything,” Aunt Tillie argued. “Mistakes were made – I’m the first to admit that – but you’re overreacting. Everything is fine.”

  “Oh, this is going to be bad. I can feel it.” Mom heaved a long-suffering sigh. There were times she thought of Aunt Tillie as another child. Unfortunately for her, Aunt Tillie was the child who refused to grow up and often grew more immature with age. “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Aunt Tillie answered. “They’re making things up as they go along. Whatever they say, it’s all lies.” She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I think the lice have crawled into his ear canal and are eating his brain.”

  “Okay, I’m done.” Landon shook his head, frustrated. “Aunt Tillie cast a curse on the new wishing well. It was supposed to affect the first person who made a wish – who Aunt Tillie assumed would be Margaret Little – but now it’s backfired and half the people in town are reporting odd occurrences.”

  Mom’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

  “So far most of the stuff has been minor,” I offered. “The Leerys had sex in the parking lot and mentioned heading to the greenhouse to take advantage of that locale for their next bout. Someone is flying over the property in a hoodie, as if he’s a really lazy superhero. Nelson Lyons has enchanted every girl in the senior class and enraged all of the boys in the process. Mrs. Little has suddenly become popular. Mr. Hyland apparently came into a bit of money and Danielle Simmons might be keeping a Star Trek actor prisoner in her house.”

  Mom stilled, dumbfounded. “Are you serious?”

  “What?” Aunt Tillie whined. “It’s not that bad.”

  “You are in so much trouble,” Mom barked as she jerked her hands out of the chicken. “How could you do this?”

  “And why haven’t you reversed the spell?” Marnie added, confused. “That should’ve been your first course of action.”

  “I don’t understand why she would want to give Margaret Little her heart’s desire,” Twila added. “It seems to me the opposite would be true.”

  “The wishes turn bad,” I supplied. “You start out getting everything you want and then they backfire on you.”

  “Oh, well, that makes sense.” Twila made a clucking sound as she shook her head. “I’m really disappointed, Aunt Tillie. This is not how you raised us. You told us it was against the rules to do something like this … and then you turn around and do it yourself. Shame on you.”

  “I always said the biggest rule was, ‘Do as I say, not as I do,’” Aunt Tillie reminded her. “As for the rest, well, it was supposed to be fun.”

  “I don’t think Nelson had fun at the diner tonight,” Landon pointed out.

  “It was supposed to be fun for me,” Aunt Tillie clarified. “As for reversing the spell, that’s been my intention from the start. Unfortunately, I was a little drunk when I cast the spell and I can’t remember everything I included. I tried dropping a reversal spell in tonight – that’s when Bay and ‘The Man’ caught me, by the way – but I’m pretty sure it didn’t work.”

  “Well, you�
��d better come up with a spell that does work,” Mom warned, her temper getting the better of her. “We wouldn’t allow the girls to act up this way when they were younger, so there’s no way we’ll allow you to do it as an adult.”

  Aunt Tillie offered up a theatrical eye roll as she crossed her arms over her chest. “I think you’re being a little dramatic. Things aren’t that bad.”

  “No, but they’re going to get worse,” Landon said. “You said the wishes would turn. That’s going to start happening fast. We need to reverse the spell before that happens.”

  “No, what you need to do is get people to reverse their wishes,” Aunt Tillie argued. “If they do that, it will buy us time so I can remember the ingredients I used in the spell.”

  Hope flared in my chest. “Will that work?”

  “If they reverse their wishes? Yes. The only problem is that you’ll have to get them to do it without explaining why.”

  Huh. I hadn’t thought of that. “This is a mess,” I muttered, rubbing my forehead. “How can we possibly accomplish that?”

  “We’ll figure it out.” Landon didn’t look particularly perturbed as he reached for another cookie. “How long until those chickens are ready? I’m starving.”

  I knit my eyebrows as I regarded him. “That’s it? You’re acting awfully calm, given the circumstances.”

  “If I’ve learned anything it’s that you can do whatever you set your mind to,” Landon said, breaking the cookie and offering me half. “This is no different. We’ll work together to figure it out.”

  It was a nice sentiment, but I couldn’t help but be dubious. “What if that doesn’t work?”

  “Then we’ll blame Aunt Tillie and dump the cleanup in her lap.”

  “Hey!” Aunt Tillie was affronted.

  “That sounds like a plan.” I mustered a smile. “Do you want to get drunk with me and watch Aunt Tillie conduct her research?”

  Landon grinned, the expression lightening up his handsome features. “Absolutely! There’s nothing I would rather do.”

  Aunt Tillie made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat as we walked to the door. “I liked it better when our biggest worry was your lice, Landon.”

  Landon was unruffled when he responded. “Get working, woman. You need to set this right … and soon.”

  “You’re not the boss of me.”

  “No, but I am,” Mom interjected. “If you don’t reverse this spell within twenty-four hours, you’ll be sleeping in the greenhouse until you do.”

  “Well, this just bites,” Aunt Tillie groused. “I have to do all of the work.”

  “You broke it, so you need to fix it,” I called over my shoulder. “You can’t blame us for this one.”

  “That shows how much you know. I can blame you for anything. I just … crud! This is totally going to ruin my weekend.”

  I wish the world was made up of bacon and we lived in a tree overlooking a maple syrup river. We could maybe add in a nice couch made of eggs and a table made of toast. Ooh, and a bed made of pot roast. I’d probably get fat, but at least I’d die a happy man. You and me in a world full of bacon … yeah … I’m pretty sure that’s my idea of Heaven.

  – Landon Michaels when explaining his version of a perfect world

  Ten

  “I say we hit Nelson first,” Landon announced over breakfast the next morning. He was surprisingly upbeat despite the fact that we drank a little more than we should have the night before. Once we got started we found it difficult to stop, and I was nursing a hangover that he didn’t seem to have, even though he still looked weary. “He knows something odd is going on. After his experience last night he’s probably ready to put this entire thing behind him.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to be as easy as that, but I agree he’s the most logical place to start because his wish almost ended in bloodshed last night,” I said, picking at my eggs and hash browns. “After Nelson, we can try to figure out who is flying over the property.”

  “You need to eat,” Landon instructed, tapping the edge of my plate. “I know you’re a bit hungover, but the food will make you feel better.”

  “You shouldn’t have let me drink so much.”

  Landon snorted. “Since when am I the boss?”

  “Men are never the boss,” Aunt Tillie announced from her seat at the head of the table. “You give them too much power if you make them believe that … and the last thing a man needs is too much power. Trust me. I know.”

  Mom generally allowed Aunt Tillie to run off at the mouth to her heart’s content, but today was apparently a different story. “When did Uncle Calvin ever have power over you?”

  I’d only met Uncle Calvin when traveling to the past in Aunt Tillie’s brain a few months ago. He died long before I was born. His spirit whispered to me a few times when I was a kid – encouraging me to go to Aunt Tillie or do something special for the family – but I got the feeling that he was a big pushover when it came to the Winchester women. That’s probably why he was remembered so fondly.

  “I never let him have power,” Aunt Tillie replied. “That’s why I know it’s a bad idea.”

  I sighed as I rolled my neck. “Landon has half the power in this relationship and I have the other half. We’re fine with things being equal.”

  “I don’t want to start a fight, but I’m pretty sure you have seventy-five percent of the power,” Landon argued.

  “I do not.”

  “You do so.”

  “I do not!”

  “Oh, geez.” Mom slapped her hand on the table to get our attention, ignoring the odd looks from the guests at the other end of the table. “Do you guys have to make this a thing? Sometimes I think you feed off the drama. Now is not the time for us to grapple with that.”

  “That’s what I said.” Aunt Tillie pulled out a haughty smile. “You and your boyfriend are far too dramatic. It wears on us all.”

  “Given what you’ve been up to, I wouldn’t cast stones,” Landon warned, reaching for the bacon platter. “Leave Bay alone. She’s had a rough couple of days … and come to find out, you’re the reason.”

  “Oh, bite me.” Aunt Tillie rolled her eyes. “I said I would fix it, so I’ll fix it.”

  “And you’re not leaving the house until you do,” Mom ordered. “In fact, you’ll be spending the entire day in the kitchen so we can monitor your research activities. We’ve divvied the day up into shifts. The good news for you is that I’ve got the first shift.”

  Aunt Tillie looked as if that was the worst news she’d ever heard. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “Obviously that’s not true,” Thistle offered, grinning like a madwoman from her spot at the center of the large rectangular table. “Perhaps we should divvy up babysitting shifts for every hour of every day from here on out to make sure you don’t get in trouble. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds as if you’re going to be at the top of my list until the next millennium,” Aunt Tillie fired back, incensed. “I don’t understand why you guys are so worked up about all of this. It was an honest mistake … and it’s one I have every intention of rectifying, so suck it up.” Aunt Tillie blew a dismissive raspberry, causing the guests to giggle as I focused my full attention on them for the first time this morning.

  “Where are the Leerys?” I asked, my stomach twisting. “Has anyone seen them?”

  “I saw them last night,” Twila offered. “They were feeling each other up in the library. Mr. Leery was actually trying to remove Mrs. Leery’s bra without taking off her shirt, because that’s something they used to do back in the day.”

  I inadvertently cringed at the visual. Mrs. Leery had quite the rack. Those things could be dangerous if they weren’t harnessed correctly. “Oh, well, at least they’re not hurting anyone.”

  “Unless Mr. Leery really does make good on his promise to rock Mrs. Leery’s world,” Twila supplied. “I think he could very well throw out his back if he goes that route.”

  �
��Okay, well, we’ll track them down later,” I said, trying to ignore the fact that Landon’s shoulders were shaking with silent laughter. “We should definitely start with Nelson. Given what happened last night, he should be easy to persuade.”

  “Maybe you can use that special place you have in his heart,” Landon teased.

  “Oh, stuff it.”

  “NO WAY!”

  Nelson took everyone by surprise when we approached him before he entered the coffee shop the next morning. We thought it would be an easy matter to walk him to the wishing well, have him reverse the wish, and then send him on his way.

  We were wrong.

  “What do you mean ‘no way’?” I asked, confused. “After what happened last night I’d think you’d be all for this.”

  “Well, I’m not.” Nelson was defiant as he crossed his arms over his chest. His gaggle of girlfriends stood by the front door of the coffee shop – all of them glaring at Thistle and me as we positioned ourselves on either side of Nelson – and I couldn’t help but wonder if the spell would cause them to jump us if we weren’t careful.

  “Well, you’re doing it,” Thistle snapped. “If I have to spend my entire Sunday tracking down people who made ill-conceived wishes, I’m not putting up with any crap. Start marching in that direction.” She pointed toward town square. “It will take five minutes and you’ll be done.”

  “I’m not doing it,” Nelson said, his voice low and gravelly as he clenched his hands into fists. “I don’t care what you say. You can’t make me take my wish back. This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  My mouth dropped open as the confusion washed over me. “People tried to burn you at the stake last night,” I reminded him.

  “Did that happen?”

  “No, but that’s only because Chief Terry stepped in when he did,” I replied, staring him down. “Who knows what would’ve happened if Landon and I hadn’t shown up when we did.”

  Nelson slid his eyes to Landon and offered him a derisive snort. “Oh, please. This guy didn’t do anything. You did all of the work to save me. I’m very thankful for that, by the way.”