Tragic Magic: Wards and Wands #3

by Royce, Rebecca

  Tragic Magic

  Wards and Wands #3

  Rebecca Royce

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Tragic Magic (Wards and Wands 3)

  Copyright @ 2019 by Rebecca Royce

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-947672-86-4

  Print ISBN: 978-1-947672-87-1

  Cover art by Crimson Phoenix Covers

  Content Editing: Heather Long

  Copy/Proof Editing: Jennifer Jones at Bookends Editing

  Formatting: Ripley Proserpina

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Rebecca Royce

  www.rebeccaroyce.com

  Dearest Reader,

  Thank you for taking this journey through the Wards and Wands universe with me. This is the third book in the series, the first one being Hexed and Vexed, and the second being Curse Reversed. There is also a novella I wrote with Ripley Proserpina as co-writer for the series called Meow, Baby. I loved writing these books. I loved the touch of realism to the fantasy of this world with witches and humans living side-by-side but not co-existing.

  This is the last book in the series, it is time for Ava’s best friend Melanie Syed to have her happily ever after. She has been on her own for some time and watched all her closest friends pair off. I am very glad to give her a happy-ever-after, eventually.

  I hope you’re doing well, and I am forever grateful to you.

  Hugs,

  RR

  For Autumn Reed who I know loves this series. She’s an amazing author. You should read her if you’re not…

  And a special shout out to Becky Stewart for coming up with the title when I faltered a few months back.

  As always, Ripley, Phyllis, Heather, Jennifer, Michelle, and Rachel… I can’t do this without you.

  Created with Vellum

  For Autumn Reed who I know loves this series. She’s an amazing author. You should read her if you’re not…

  And a special shout out to Becky Stewart for coming up with the title when I faltered a few months back.

  As always, Ripley, Phyllis, Heather, Jennifer, Michelle, and Rachel… I can’t do this without you.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Other books by Rebecca Royce…

  Foreword

  Dearest Reader,

  Thank you for taking this journey through the Wards and Wands universe with me. This is the third book in the series, the first one being Hexed and Vexed, and the second being Curse Reversed. There is also a novella I wrote with Ripley Proserpina as co-writer for the series called Meow, Baby. I loved writing these books. I loved the touch of realism to the fantasy of this world with witches and humans living side-by-side but not co-existing.

  This is the last book in the series, it is time for Ava’s best friend Melanie Syed to have her happily ever after. She has been on her own for some time and watched all her closest friends pair off. I am very glad to give her a happy-ever-after, eventually.

  I hope you’re doing well, and I am forever grateful to you.

  Hugs,

  RR

  Chapter 1

  Melanie sunk to the floor, staring at the message she’d received with disbelief. Maybe if she read it again, it would finally make sense, although she wasn’t sure how that could be possible. She skimmed the words once again as though they would change.

  Elliot Boothe requests your presence at his home on Tuesday at 3 PM to discuss the legal breakdown of his estate on the event of his death.

  She set the paper down. It said what she’d thought it had. Tears she didn’t want to shed waterfalled down her cheeks, and she wiped them away. With a flick of her hand, she sent her response. Yes, she would be there. It would be crazy for her not to go. He was a rich, powerful man, and she needed the clients to build up her solo practice or she was never going to make it on her own. Yet… still. Elliot. Dying.

  Melanie sucked in her breath. She’d always known he would die early, every member of his family had. It was part of the unspeakable curse, the one that could never be dispelled. It had destroyed the lives of his family for five generations, killed his father, and now was going to take out Elliot. But this was way too early.

  His father had been lost in his sixties, a tragedy even then. But this? Elliot was thirty-eight, in his prime, and still, the last time she’d seen him from a distance, a gorgeous man. She wiped her eyes. This was ridiculous. He’d asked her to come do a job and probably only done that as a last sign of respect and honor to her parents, whom he’d loved like family.

  Elliot had never really noticed her, nor should he have at ten years her senior. She had been five, drooling over him like he was everything out of a fairytale. He’d barely noticed her then and had been busy with his own life when he was fifteen, as was appropriate.

  When he’d been twenty-five, he’d all but ignored her when he visited, and she wasn’t sure she’d seen him alone since then. Melanie had been the daughter of his father’s butler and head housekeeper. His parents had been generous with hers, giving Melanie access to an elite education she’d otherwise not have had.

  She was the witch she was now because of that. Since launching her own law office three years earlier, however, she’d been on the brink of financial ruin. The only thing keeping it open was the fact that she’d always been able to invest money and turn it into profit. But that wasn’t going to work forever. She needed the office itself to earn or she was going to have to go back to corporate law, and the idea made her ill.

  Working for Elliot would be a great thing, particularly if he recommended her to his friends—before he died a horrible death. Tears flooded her eyes again, but she pushed them away. She stumbled to her feet and wiped at her eyes again. A little magic cleared her face so that she didn’t look a mess. It was ridiculous to be this upset over a man she’d not seen in years, particularly since she had always known this end would be coming, even if it was way too soon.

  Another message appeared in front of her, and she stared down at it. Melanie could go days and days without anyone contacting her about anything except work and now she was getting two messages in just minutes?

  It was an invitation from Ava. She sighed. Her best friend wanted her to join her for a dinner the night after she was scheduled to see Elliot. Melanie loved Ava, they’d been best friends since high school. In fact, Melanie loved all of Ava’s people. But lately—for the last three years—she hadn’t just been the third wheel in Ava’s relationshi
p with her husband and soul mate, Lawson, she’d been the seventh wheel in a three couple group that seemed to get together all the time.

  Ava. Lawson. Mitchell, Ava’s former fiancé, and his wife and soul mate, Eleanor, plus Stefan and Kim, who had come into the circle with Lawson. Sometimes it was even the ninth person out, when Ava’s twin sister Zoey and her husband Elijah joined them. Everyone had always been nice to her, always included her and whomever she was dating into their group. But when she was single—which had been true for the last year since she’d written off men—it had grown far more difficult to see them socially. She was smart enough to know they hadn’t isolated her; she’d isolated herself, but it didn’t make it any easier to deal sometimes.

  What made matters worse, Melanie had become a bad friend, and she knew it. She stared at the invitation. Okay, she’d go. Ava and Mitchell knew of Elliot, or at least that she’d grown up on his estate, and it would be good to see familiar faces after she ventured into the place she’d been avoiding for over a decade.

  Too many memories… good and bad assaulted her there. Not to mention her parents had since retired. There was no good reason for her to step foot on Elliot’s property.

  With a wave of her hand, she called up her daily agenda. There were things to do today. Dressing herself to look the part—a skill she’d learned when she was twelve and she’d scrounged through clearance and second-hand stores so she could look as rich as her classmates—she got ready to go to her office. She had a day ahead of her to do things like obsess over who hadn’t paid their bills and try to figure out what Elaine Evans’ soon to be ex-husband was doing with all of the money he claimed he didn’t have.

  Something just wasn’t right with what he displayed. He was good at hiding his truths. He’d coated himself in a huge amount of magic, and to others it might look right, but she had always been able to see through glamour better than most.

  Her magic couldn’t fail her now; her whole future depended on it. Melanie might never find her soul mate, might never join her soul to another person’s, but she’d be damned if she lived a mediocre life. She’d promised herself when she sat alone in the back of classes and the mean girls laughed at her for lack of vacation travel plans that no one would ever treat her like she was less than again.

  She was almost there.

  Melanie was going to make something no one could take from her, something she could be proud of the rest of her days.

  * * *

  Tuesday came a lot faster than she’d imagined. She’d been up working almost nonstop. The answer to cracking her current case was close. She could feel it in every cell in her body, and her inability to uncover the missing piece of information she needed to win made her want to throw something. But that was neither here nor there at the moment.

  Boothe Estate was like something out of a movie. When humans made films about witches—which were usually ridiculously cringe worthy at best—this was the kind of home they put witches in. It was huge, at least three mansions positioned in a triangle around the acreage. She’d lived in the back of the house, farthest from the front driveway. Her family had come and gone as they liked through a back gate few knew existed.

  The Boothes had been good to her parents, and kind and helpful to their daughter, but there had never been any question that her family was the help. She’d never been invited to the parties at the main estate or gone on the lavish trips her father sometimes accompanied Elliot’s father on.

  Mel lifted her hand to knock on the door and stopped. The truth was she’d loved Elliot from a distance with an abandon that could only be attributed to her youth and ridiculous imagination. She’d watched from the lower school as he’d been the king of the upper school, the crème-de-la-crème of the most elite in the witching world.

  Living with the curse had made his family what her father used to call “reckless.” They earned and lost great fortunes, always knowing they wouldn’t have to plan for a full life. They bought expensive items, laughed too loud, screamed louder, and drank too much. They also gave huge amounts to charity and loved each other with an abandon her restrained parents had found disconcerting. She’d thought it was beautiful.

  Melanie steeled her shoulders. Enough already. She knocked on the door and waited. As though time threw itself back decades and she was a little girl standing at the door, footsteps approached, making the clicking noise she’d always heard right before someone opened it. Melanie swallowed. It wouldn’t be her beloved father opening the mahogany wood entrance to the darkly lit interior, kept that way because the Boothes always hated bright lights as per part of their curse.

  The man who opened the door was young. She’d put him around her age, which was funny to think about. Her father had always seemed old to her, but he’d been younger than she was currently when he’d gone to work for the Boothes. It was here that he’d walked into the living room of this house and met her mother.

  “Hi.” The man’s eyes widened, and she understood his reaction. She had almost no ego, but she wasn’t disillusioned about her attractiveness. Melanie was physically beautiful and totally disinterested in it. Being gorgeous had never gotten her anywhere except one bad first date after another.

  Men who only wanted her for her long legs or big brown eyes were boring with a capital B. The dating scene had never gone well for her.

  “Hello.” She gave him a bland smile. “I’m Melanie Syed. Mr. Boothe is expecting me.”

  “Sure.” He stepped back. “I’m Edward Jackson. Right this way. Elliot told me that you used to live here?”

  They’d discussed it? She rubbed the back of her neck. “When I was a little girl. I grew up here. It’s been… almost ten years since I was back.”

  “Well, welcome home.”

  Time seemed to have paused inside the house. The smell hit her first. The cleaning products Elliot’s mother spelled on the house must still be what the staff now used. Lavender. Chamomile. Mint. There had never been a time she’d scented those things that it hadn’t reminded her of the cleaning days. The poor woman had died days after her husband did. Their souls had been truly bound together.

  Melanie lifted herself off the ground with a spell. It was habit as much as anything else. If no one walked on the ground, they couldn’t make it dirty. The butler had been walking, but lifted off the ground when she did. Maybe it wasn’t a rule anymore. Maybe Elliot didn’t care if everyone floated or not.

  “He’s in his office. Right this way.”

  She knew exactly where it was located but followed him just the same as it was polite. She wasn’t a young child learning to fly by dashing through this house when the family wasn’t home. She was here to do a job, even if surely Elliot must already possess a team of lawyers who could do this.

  The butler opened the door with a magical wave of his hand and closed it again after she was inside. It shut with a click.

  The room, bathed in burgundy, felt heavy, like the air weighed more in here. Elliot stood, his back to her, facing the window overlooking the garden outside. He turned his head slightly as Melanie entered the room. She gazed for a long moment, taking in the sheer size of him. He’d grown since she’d last seen him. He was broad shouldered, bulky, like he worked out regularly, though he’d been a skinny teenager. His brown hair had been cut short. Whiskers covered his mature face, but he didn’t look old.

  He wore dark sunglasses, which told her all she needed to know. The curse really had advanced. Elliot Boothe, the fantasy of her youth, had gone completely blind.

  “Melanie Syed.” He smiled, not showing any teeth or moving. “You came.”

  She swallowed. “Of course I did. You… ah… requested my presence.” Melanie winced, wishing she could suck the words back in the second she said them. Requested my presence? Internally, she groaned. That was… bad.

  He used the desk for guidance as he walked toward her. “Forgive me. I like to stand by the window. I can’t see it, but I swear I can feel the light.” He touched hi
s sunglasses. “I think with you I can actually take these off. You were here with my father when he passed. You know what the eyes look like.”

  She nodded before she realized how asinine that was. He couldn’t see her, obviously. “I remember what it looked like. You can take them off.”

  “Great. Because it’s like the icing on the cake of this misery that I have to cover up my eyes to not scare little children.” He took the glasses off and set them on the desk. He stared at Melanie from across the room, not quite looking at her but in her general direction. His eyes were totally white. Not just the irises. Not the corneas. The entire socket of his eyes were bright white, like the most intense shade of it ever. Neither snow leopards nor the clouds had anything on what the curse did to the Boothe eyes.

  Melanie walked toward him, not letting herself overthink it. His father had fallen into a huge pit of depression when this happened to him. She had to imagine that waking up totally blind one day to nothing but whiteness would make anyone feel lonely.

  She squeezed his hand, and he frowned immediately before he dropped their linked fingers. His hands hadn’t been smooth or manicured but tougher, with calluses that made her wonder what he’d been doing to get them. As far as she knew, he’d never had a profession. He invested money, as his father had before him, and had the Midas touch. Melanie had learned a lot of what she knew from his father, but what could he have been doing that would have given him those hands?