Which Witch is Wild? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 3)

by Kerrigan Byrne

  Julian not only looked up from the book, he clapped it closed with his thumb still inside. If he’d had a monocle, Moira was pretty sure he would have dragged it up to his eye at that moment and examined her through it.

  “Pardon the cliché, but don’t judge a book by its patois, mister.”

  Scientists measured the widths of atoms in quantities larger than the progress of Julian Roarke’s smile. “Well said, Moira de Moray.”

  “And that’s another thing.” She slid the book from his grasp and set it back on its stack. “If we’re really going to get Lucy’s cloven-footed goat, you better start practicing some pet names.”

  “Endearments, you mean?”

  “Yes, schnoodle-bum, that’s exactly what I mean.”

  “Schnood—”

  “You try to analyze this, and I promise that big old brain of yours is like to explode. Just go with it. Try not to think too much.”

  Now, Julian Roarke really did scoff.

  “Try this. Pick any animal and a dessert you like and slap them together.” She counted every crease in his translucent eyelids when he closed them, scanning the vast stores of information living in his head.

  “Ocelot tiramisu?”

  Moira blinked. “It’s okay, darlin’. We’ll work on it.”

  “No,” Julian insisted. “I’ve made a study of every language ever spoken on this planet. I have billions of words at my disposal. I can do this.” He took a deep breath, perfect white teeth dimpling one side of his lip in concentration. “Stagtart!”

  The biggest, warmest smile she could muster plastered itself on her face. “That was good. The way you put the one word after the other word. And said them together.”

  Julian’s expression was at once sheepish and forlorn. “You sounded just like Aerin then. Struggling to conjure a compliment when truer words are in your mind.”

  “I know,” Moira met his clear-eyed gaze. “I miss her too.”

  Then she did something that surprised them both. She took his gloved hand in hers.

  The warm, buttery leather between her fingers was the last thing she registered before a tidal wave of loneliness threatened to shake her very soul from its moorings.

  This was Julian.

  In that moment, Moira knew she was perhaps one of the only two women in the Earth’s history to reach out a hand of comfort to this man, this being, and that felt like something she might someday be proud of.

  But now, it only registered as a profound ache in her sternum. Her healer’s heart called to suffering personified.

  “Julian Roarke,” she said. “Can I ask you something?”

  “That you may, my little tortoise truffle.”

  This time, her smile was spontaneous and genuine. “Hey! That ain’t half bad. And the diminutive really added something I think.”

  Julian accepted the compliment graciously, waiting in polite silence for her to continue.

  “Anyhow, I was wondering. I don’t suppose you’ve ever had yourself a good, old fashioned platonic cuddle?”

  One of Julian’s dark brows rose in a quizzical expression. “A platonic…cuddle?”

  “Yeah, you know. Where you just snuggle up to someone for no other purpose than to be close to another body?”

  “I cannot say I’ve ever done such a thing.”

  “Maybe we ought to try it sometime. I have the feeling it might do you some good, and if whatsherhooves happened to walk in on something like that, I’d bet it would piss her off something royal. Two birds, one stone and all that.”

  “I suppose we might endeavor to try it some evening when we can arrange for the creature in question to interrupt us.” The addition of a mischievous grin to Julian’s face peeled at least a decade away from his careworn eyes.

  “All right then. I’d say we have ourselves a plan.” She squeezed Julian’s hand, willing whatever solace she could give to seep through the leather’s pores and find a home among his bones.

  And it was precisely in this position, with Julian’s hand in hers, their heads bent in collusion, that Aerin found them.

  Chapter Nine

  Lucy’s teeth ground together hard enough to send a throbbing pain from her jaw all the way to her temples. Well, technically they weren’t her teeth, but she felt the pain all the same.

  Lousiest fucking day ever.

  First Killian Bane had slipped from her grasp with the aid of that pregnant cow of an earth witch, and now her soggy water witch sister was simpering all over Julian? Her Julian?

  Worse still, Julian wasn’t just tolerating it. He looked like he might actually be enjoying it. And this when he refused to lay so much as a gloved finger on Aerin ever since Lucy had taken residence in her body.

  A vehicle Lucy had been enjoying, for the most part. If there was one thing she’d always resented about the way things had down, it’s that she’d been denied the opportunity to at least test-drive a human body. Sure, they were prone to all kinds of diseases and dysfunctions and made unpleasant noises after consuming food, but the temporary nature of the vessel itself made everything so deliciously…intense. Midnight voyages with naught but a broomstick between her thighs and velvet darkness sliding across her naked skin. Surrendering to sleep after a difficult day of lies and subversion. The first sip of coffee in a morning still undecided.

  Of course, there were other advantages too. Though she had not been able to actively bed Julian while wearing Aerin’s skin, she could wander the air witch’s mind endlessly, picking memories of their coupling like books from a shelf and lazily flip through them.

  Lucy had always suspected Julian Roarke of harboring animal hunger beneath those bespoke suits of his, but even she had been surprised by the ferocity with which he’d taken Aerin against the brick wall of an alleyway their first time. The grainy, unrestrained violence of it still weakened her knees.

  Well, Aerin’s knees, technically.

  Try as she might, she hadn’t been able to temp Julian into a repeat performance.

  Could the incomprehensible sight before her now be the reason why?

  Lucy paused for a moment to savor wave upon wave of jealousy and betrayal surging up from the subconscious pit where Aerin lived now. The denial that followed was like the disappointing aftertaste of an otherwise lovely vintage, the sentiments accompanying it so predictable and boring.

  Moira wouldn’t do this to me. She’s my sister.

  Julian loves me. I felt it.

  And what do you feel now? Lucy floated this question down to Aerin, waiting for the inevitable reply. This was one of the games Lucy had discovered she enjoyed immensely: tormenting a soul while wearing the body it belonged to.

  She really ought to get extra credit for this sort of thing. Queen of Darkness level: Fucking Expert.

  Lucy already knew the answer because she felt it too.

  Genuine budding affection between Julian and Moira.

  But something else too. A trace of rabid jealousy clinging to the air like the whiff of cigar smoke you get after its source has left the room. She would know who it belonged to even if she hadn’t had the chance to practice so frequently in the last weeks.

  Nicholas Kingswood, a man whose emotional signature was about as deep and complicated as a spit wad. He was somewhere nearby, as were the fire witch and Drustan. Lucy could sense them as well in this pathetic cocktail of family discord.

  “Aerin, honey! There you are.” The over-brightness of delivery combined with that buzz-saw of a yokel accent made the water witch sound like a braying mule, in Lucy’s opinion. “Julian here was nice enough to sit with me on account of I’ve been worried sick.”

  “Oh?” Lucy asked. “And what part of Pestilence holding your hand was supposed to make you less sick?”

  They leapt apart the moment they had seen Aerin, of course, but their proximity on the window seat still felt like ample reason for the indictment.

  “I should think you would be glad that I was here to offer comfort to your sister in yo
ur absence,” Julian said in a voice almost accusatory. “Miss de Moray experienced considerable stress when she received the bit of news that Killian sent to Nicholas by way of raven.”

  Feeling Aerin’s stomach flip was one of Lucy’s least favorite manifestations of human fear.

  “News?” Lucy struggled to keep her voice neutral. “What news?”

  “Tierra’s gone.” Moira’s eyes were large with unshed tears. “Looks like she helped Death bust out of Hell and that bastard took off with her.”

  “Where?” As soon as she registered the surprise on their faces, Lucy knew she’d asked this with too much excitement and not enough worry. Oops. “I mean, what the shit? Why would he do that?” She paced toward the window, wedging herself down between Moira and Julian.

  The water witch shifted to accommodate her. As well she fucking should.

  “Perhaps to protect her,” Julian suggested. “With five of the seven Seals opened and the consequences well upon us, the world isn’t exactly the safest place for a woman with child at the present moment.”

  “If only we could figure out where the raven came from,” Lucy said, moving Julian’s hand to her knee. If Pestilence was going to pretend not to be sneaking around behind Aerin’s back, then he could fucking well pretend to be in love with her. “We might be able to find them.”

  “Fat fucking chance.”

  Lucy glanced up to see Claire, Dru, and Nick standing in the parlor’s oversized entryway. It was the last of these who had spoken.

  “The raven left as quickly as it came,” Nick added. “We haven’t got shit to go on.”

  “Where on Earth have you been, Aerin?” Claire seated herself on the couch and folded her black leather boots beneath her.

  As tempting as it was to launch an offensive, Lucy’s first priority was some serious damage control. After all, Killian had finally worked out her identity, and the brood sow could have warned her sisters by now. Judging by the fact that she hadn’t been met by burning torches and pitchforks at the door, Lucy guessed word hadn’t yet reached them. But if her miserably long life had taught her anything, it was to never assume you had the upper hand.

  Especially when all the evidence was there to support it.

  “Oh, here and there,” Lucy said. Translation: to Hell and back. “Business that needed taking care of.” I.e., selecting a taskforce of her most repugnant minions to search for Bane. “What happened to the coffee table?”

  It had taken Lucy this long to notice what had been bothering her about the room. Other than Julian and Moira’s pathetically wounded souls tenderly humping each other by the bay window, that was.

  Claire slid a nervous glance toward Moira.

  “We were all talking about what we were going to do to get Tierra back, practicing a couple spells and such, and Claire up and torched it.”

  Liar, Lucy and Aerin thought in unison.

  “And what did you decide?” Lucy threaded her fingers through Julian’s and dragged their clasped hands into her lap.

  “Pardon?” Moira asked.

  Hard to follow the conversation when you’re a filthy fucking liar, isn’t it, you hideous hillbilly bitch?

  “About Tierra,” Lucy clarified. “How are we going to find her and Bane?”

  “We figured it might be best if we paired up and searched the area around Port Townsend first. You know, check all the places Bane’s been calling home so far. The barracks at Fort Warden. That place out in the woods that, uh, got flooded.”

  From the looks on their faces, Nick, Julian, and Dru all took exception with Moira’s use of the passive voice regarding the unfortunate end of their former dwelling.

  “Then we were going to meet up at Manresa Castle at nine o’ clock tonight,” the water witch continued. “Unless we find Tierra sooner.”

  “Fine,” Lucy said. “Julian and I will take the barracks.”

  “I’m afraid we already grouped up while we were waiting on you.” Moira managed a decent expression of regret. “Nick and Claire, me and Julian, and since you can fly and all, we thought it might be best if you broke off on your own to keep an eye on things from up there while Dru acts as base.”

  The fresh wave of jealousy oozing from Nick’s direction paled in comparison to the blast of hatred, hurt, and despair welling up from Aerin’s pit.

  Moira is trying to get rid of me. My own sister. What in the actual fuck? How dare she? I will fucking rip every hair from that backwater slut’s empty head and force her to eat her own chitlins. And Julian. If that douche lord thought he was lonely before, wait until every human on Earth associates his face with the wellspring of disease.

  Well now, Aerin, Lucy thought to her captive. That’s the first intelligent idea you’ve had all day.

  “Very well,” Lucy said, rising on Aerin’s best pair of Saint Laurent stiletto heels. “Until nine.”

  Chapter Ten

  The world was ending.

  Nick didn’t need seas of blood or seven trumpets or an angel hurtling through the air crying Woe! Woe! and all that happy horseshit to know it. The incomprehensible spectacle before his eyes was all the confirmation he required.

  Exiting Port Townsend’s only western wear store was none other than Julian Roarke.

  In denim.

  The brassy snaps of his denim jacket caught the last of the early November sunlight, winking like dying stars as he and Moira stepped out onto Water Street arm in arm.

  And of course, the fussy bastard had coordinated his pants to the same hue as the jacket.

  If he was willing to give the abominable trousers covering Julian’s legs that distinction.

  Wranglers.

  Julian Roarke was wearing fucking Wranglers. Wranglers so tight, not even the microbes laying in wait within Pestilence’s body could fit between his skin and the fabric.

  They passed millennia in each other’s acquaintance without Nick knowing the precise shapes of Julian’s calves and thighs, and now Nick knew not only that, but that Pestilence carried his cock to the left.

  Nick was pretty certain he could have gone to the grave twice over without harboring that information somewhere in the unfathomable reaches of his mind.

  And it didn’t end there.

  He got as far as Julian’s narrow waist when he was nearly blinded by the flash of a belt buckle bigger than the hubcaps on his Ferrari Italia 458. Above it, Nick could hardly make out the material.

  Flannel.

  Pestilence, destroyer of entire populations, was tooling around Port Townsend in flannel.

  Nick realized he was power walking in their direction only when Moira’s eyes rose from the general direction of Julian’s denim-clad ass.

  From a distant galaxy, Claire’s voice called to him.

  He had temporarily forgotten they’d spent the better part of the afternoon and early evening pretending to traipse around the wilds beyond Port Townsend in the general area where their home base had been before Moira had power-washed it away.

  The memory of Moira wreaking havoc had given him a hard on not even the fire witch’s familiar could banish. The lithe little fox had appeared in the high grasses at the road cut and not let him out of its green-eyed gaze the whole time they walked, killing time.

  He hadn’t minded Claire. Not really.

  In fact, she was pretty decent company for a woman he had no intention of fucking.

  Not that the thought hadn’t occurred to him once or twice.

  Okay, maybe three times, but only because Claire wore leather. But the whole fire witch thing had ruled it out on principle. After his run-ins with the fire-breathing pork chop that was Moira’s familiar, he wasn’t all that eager to take on another being who might hurl incendiaries at him.

  A grudge fuck hadn’t been in the cards.

  Gods, how he wanted a grudge fuck. It might even release a little of the energy coiled like a viper at the base of his spine.

  Yogis had invented a word for that on his account. Kundalini. The release of
that energy, they had called the kundalini shakti.

  Nick knew one thing. His kundalini was about to shakti the fuck out of whoever decided to start shit with him. And there was no shortage of people who wanted to try. He felt animosity stirring up around him like silt from the bottom of a pond in reaction not only to his presence, but also to Moira and Claire’s. What the papers hadn’t taken care of, Reverend Bill Blanding and his milling, brainless groupies had.

  Warning anyone within earshot of the “evil” lurking in Port Townsend.

  Even now, pedestrians chose to walk in Water Street’s leaf-choked gutters rather than share the sidewalk with the four of them.

  The way Nick was feeling just now, he couldn’t say this was a bad idea on their part.

  “Well, Nick Kingswood,” Moira said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “Howdy, you all.” Julian reached up to tip his hat, the gesture somewhat compromised by the fact that the article in question was a trucker hat bearing the logo for somewhere called Clem’s Crab Cabin.

  “You need a contraction in that sentence, sugar.” Moira reached up and tugged on Julian’s ponytail in a way that made Nick want to break someone in half. “It’s y’all.”

  “Right. Yes. Howdy, y’all.” Julian’s rich, studied voice brought an alarming depth to the diction. This, in combination with the way his ridiculous yokel-wear emphasized the spare muscularity of his brother’s frame, brought Nick to the realization that he hated Julian Roarke.

  Hated his fucking beautiful face and beautiful voice and huge fucking brain and all the things it knew. Hated his ability to make Moira smile. Hated the childlike delight he lit in her eyes and the slack-limbed ease his presence lent to her lovely body.

  In fact, if Nick’s arms didn’t still ache with the memory of the desolation Julian wrought in his flesh, he might have tried to cram a fist through the back of his brother’s skull right fucking now.