The Family Spells: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance

by C. M. Stunich

  Maybe I should've taken that bitch up on her advice, ordered petals from her store or listened to what she had to say? But then, I'd tried to look up an alternative spell in every fucking tome my coven had, not to mention online. There was nothing. If there really was a spell for E.D. that didn’t have red rose petals in it, then she'd probably made it up with her own coven.

  I'd actually bowed out of guys' night last night, sitting on my couch and sulking as I tried to stroke my cock into some semblance of an erection. No luck. I couldn't get it up, not even for myself. I’d considered calling Angelina to complain, but she’d have teased the ever living shit out of me, and then told me to go buy a dildo and a strap-on to put it in.

  With a growl, I stalked into the last shop on my list—apparently the last witch shop in the Seattle Metro Area. If our community would just fucking come out to humans, we could be done with all this hiding shit, and then maybe there'd be drive-thru magic shops as common as friggin' Starbucks.

  I wasn’t in the store five seconds before I spotted the crystallized petals sitting on a shelf directly in front of me. The shop owner was busy talking with another customer, so I pulled out the cash for the item, chucked it at her and left before she could ask me what I needed the damn things for. None of her business anyway.

  I headed outside, tucked the small glass container into my pocket, and headed home on my bike.

  I still lived with my grandmother, at age thirty-two. Did that make me a douche?

  "Is that you, baby?" she asked, as I stepped inside the small round, living room, and headed for the solarium where all the best tomes were kept. My grandmother was over a hundred years old, but she looked seventy, at most. That, and she most definitely hadn’t lost her hearing or her intuition.

  "It's me," I said, flipping through book after book until I came to the one with all the creepy ass anatomical sketches. Used to scare the shit out of me as a kid—especially the page with all the giant dicks drawn on it, dicks that I'm pretty sure were sketched by my grandmother's hand. See what I mean? Traumatizing as fuck.

  "Do you need help finding something?" she asked, pausing in the entrance to the solarium and watching me with a bemused half-smile. If she wasn't basically my mom, I'd probably get pissed at the patronizing look on her face. My own mother was a drug addict and a loser who ran off with some coven devoted to getting high. Hope she rots. Unfortunately, the bitch was still alive out there somewhere. "A certain spell perhaps?"

  "I'm fine," I muttered as I leafed through the pages, hoping my grandmother, Lulu, would fucking leave.

  No such luck.

  I had not had many lucky days lately.

  "Is this something you'll need the coven's help with?" she asked, and I gritted my teeth. I preferred to work alone. Being a witch blew. It was like being born with shackles on your wrists, ankles, and neck, chaining you to the idea of herd mentality for the rest of your natural life.

  "We're soulmates." That woman's voice echoed in my mind and made me shiver. Soulmates. Please. I didn’t buy into the idea of soulmates, not by a long shot. It was all a bunch of basic bullshit invented by covens desperate to keep their members in check.

  I shook my head and kept browsing through the tome.

  "Don't take too much into your own hands, Hex," she warned, but I was barely listening. I had the ingredients I needed, and as soon as I found the spell … aha! Fuck yes! I slammed my palm down on the page and then quickly flipped the tome closed before my grandmother saw. Last thing she needed to know about was her grandson's limp dick.

  "I'm not. It's a simple spell, no big deal. A cantrip, really." I snatched some bits off a few plants, bounced up the steps with the tome under my arm, and gave my grandmother a quick kiss on the cheek. "I'll be in my room. Text me if you need me."

  "I will not text you," she said as I moved over to the side door and let myself out into the courtyard. "If I need you, I will summon you." I rolled my eyes as I slammed the door behind me, pausing when I noticed my familiar, Connard, sitting on the half-wall that separated the brick path from the flower beds.

  "You left me behind," he said, his tail twitching behind him. His orange eyes narrowed as he stood up and stretched, launching himself onto my shoulder and batting at my ear with claws extended. I growled and slapped him back, but only earned myself a bite in the process. "A witch never leaves their familiar behind. What the hell is wrong with you?"

  "I was working on something," I said as I unlocked the door to the small studio apartment, connected to my grandmother's house by a trellis covered in wisteria.

  "You think I don't know about your useless cock? I know everything, you asshole," Con said, licking his chest as I made my way up the circular staircase to the living area. This whole bottom level was set aside for coven meetings. I barely glanced that way as I ascended, letting myself into my place and locking the door behind me.

  Sunshine streamed through the windows, highlighting my pathetic excuse for a bachelor pad. It was too damned nice in here to be a single dude's hideaway. Grandma had her hands in everything. I smiled as I approached the counter and found a plate of fresh cookies under some aluminum foil. Used to piss me off as a teenager, Lulu invading my privacy all the time. Now I sort of liked it. Who doesn't love to come back from fucking a pretty girl to find home-cooked meals on their counter?

  "Yeah, well, maybe I just needed some time alone."

  "You mean you needed time with Violet," Con said as he hopped off my shoulder and onto the counter, padding over to his bowl of food and water near the sink. Most people don't like their cats on the counter—try arguing with a cat that can speak your language, is pumped full of magic, and is bound to your very soul. Fucking impossible.

  "She'll get used to you eventually," I said as I started laying out items on the counter. With a flick of my fingers, I used magic to page through the tome until I came to the spell I was looking for.

  Yeah, there's a spell for fucking everything—even erectile dysfunction.

  "A witch is a familiar's other half. Violet hating me … means she will never be right for you."

  "Who says I want a girl that's right for me?" I asked as I whipped out a mortar and pestle—granite, because spells are always weirdly specific about this shit—and started crushing herbs. "I'm marrying Violet because she's not right for me. I don't want over-the-moon, swallow-the-stars, kiss-the-earth blowout love bullshit. You know that."

  "You found our soulmate yesterday: I sensed it!" Connard hissed, arching his back, all the fur along his spine fluffing up as he snarled at me. "You can't hide things like that from me, it isn't right."

  I paused and looked into Con’s eyes. When I did that, I swear, I could see the universe churning away. With a sigh, I set the pestle down and crossed my arms over my chest.

  "Yeah, I saw her," I admitted. "So what?"

  "So what?" Con yowled, rolling onto his side and batting at the air with his black paws. "You're such a moron! Your soulmate is my soulmate. I want to meet her—and her familiar."

  "I didn't see her familiar," I said, taking back up the pestle while Con rolled back onto his belly and hissed at me again, reaching out to leave a bloody scratch along the back of my hand. A drip of blood fell into the mortar and sizzled. Oh well. I needed some anyway.

  "Right. And I'm assuming your soulmate is a witch? Don't even bother answering—I know that's a yes. Clearly, she has one. What I find ironic is that you went to your soulmate's shop looking for a dick-fixing spell."

  I gritted my teeth and ignored him, taking the jar of crystallized rose petals from my pocket and setting them on the counter.

  "There's something not right about those," Connard said, leaning down and sniffing the jar. "Those are not roses."

  "Like you can tell," I said, unscrewing the top and tossing three of the petals in the mortar. "They're coated in this crystal shit." I smashed them until they were nothing but paste. This shit already looked gross and smelled worse
, like fucking fennel or some crap. And I was going to have to rub it on my dick?

  On the plus side, once this was done, I'd jack it a few times to make sure I didn't blow my load too fast, and then I'd head over to Violet’s and fuck her brains out—if she'd let me. I couldn't frigging wait.

  "Those are not roses," Con insisted, batting at me again. I ignored him and added some floral infused water from the cabinet. Grandma insisted every witch, no matter their level of power, age, or gender, keep a kitchen stocked with all the basic spellcraft supplies. I'd probably never follow that advice if she didn't keep my cabinets stocked for me.

  Yep, I was a total douche.

  Cursing under my breath, I finished up the paste and then held my hands over the mixture.

  Glancing over at the tome, I read the spellwords and ran my tongue over my lower lip. Only an idiot messed around with changing the words on well-established spells. No way I was taking any chances with my dick.

  "In lost lust and carnal need," I whispered, drawing the Nordic rune for male followed by fertility and power. "In vibrant red heat and wasted seed. In the bloom of a rose, rose red, I call this power to my stead." Swirling my hands over the mixture, I drew energy up through the ley lines—streams of power—that ran underneath the building, and forced it into the paste. Some spells required ritual, dances, chanting, spell circles, but this one was fairly easy, something I could've cast at age fourteen.

  Not a chance in hell I'd mess this one up.

  "Those are not roses," he said again, but I wasn't an idiot. I could quite clearly see they were roses. Besides, the bottle was labeled, the shop I bought them from legit.

  "You're being paranoid," I said with a smirk, snatching up the mortar and leaving the pestle on the counter. I took it into my room and slammed the door, locking my familiar out. I could hear him yowling curses at me from the direction of the kitchen, and knew I was for fucking sure going to find a bunch of stuff covered in sticky cat spray.

  Whatever.

  Screw him.

  My cock and I had business to attend to.

  I pulled up some of my favorite porn on my laptop, grabbed a bottle of lotion, and settled in for an afternoon of fun. It'd been months since I'd been able to jack off. I felt like I was slowly starting to lose it.

  "Witching finally," I grumbled, unzipping my jeans and slathering my dick up with the green paste. It was cool and smelled like mint and roses as I groaned and covered myself in it, putting my palms out and chanting the rest of the spellwords over my crotch. "Fair weather fair, bring spring to my staff, bring heat to this lair."

  I waved my hand and felt the magic flow into my shaft, warming my body like the rays of a summer sun.

  As the spell worked its magic—pun intended—I started to rub and tease at my cock, doing my best to work him into his full glory. Instead, all I got was the spell paste all over my hand.

  "What the hex…" I grumbled, wondering what the fuck was going on. A dud spell. That hadn't happened to me since my friggin' balls dropped. I rolled to the side, grabbed my box of wet wipes from the nightstand and cleaned myself up.

  Once the paste was wiped away … I saw what I'd done.

  The door to my bedroom creaked open with Con hanging from the knob. He dropped to the wood floors and landed on all four feet, looking at me with big, orange eyes.

  "Those were not roses," he repeated as I looked down at my purple-dyed dick and let out a violent scream.

  I'd just dyed my flaccid junk.

  Like I said, there's a spell for everything—even dying your cock purple.

  At least my balls were spared.

  Male witches were rare, and nine outta ten times, they were born from a union between a witch and a non-witch.

  Thus me.

  Werewolf and witch.

  Weird fucking combo.

  "You're positive he was half-demon?" I asked, feeling my stomach drop to my knees. A demon-witch. Great. Exactly the sorta guy I wanted around my kids. The twins looked up at me from inside their playpen. They were both in wolf form at the moment, tails wagging, tongues lolling. I'd always sort of hated kids before, but I loved all four o’ mine more than my own heart. The only love in my life that came even close was my wife. My beautiful fucking wife, bent over the table in the kitchen studying old lineage tombs with a magnifying glass.

  "He was half-demon," she confirmed, biting her lower lip in an aha moment. She stood up quickly, whipping her red-orange hair over one shoulder and smacking me in the face with it. That smell of hers, like broomsticks and books, washed over me and turned my dick to stone. She was medusa to my cock, swear to goddess. "And there aren't many covens who associate with demons period. That should narrow it down."

  Grace scurried over to another set of books on a different table while I pulled out my phone and Google-searched witch demon coven Seattle, Washington.

  Coven Wyrmwood popped up right away.

  "Coven Wyrmwood," Grace murmured, tucking some of her wavy hair behind one ear. I did my best not to check out her ass in her tight jeans, but it was damn near impossible. I was ready to make another set of twins with my wife. "That only took me, what, an hour?"

  "Could've done it in seconds with Google," I murmured, but she wasn't listening. Gracely liked to do stuff the traditional way. I could respect that, but my wolf side got antsy sometimes. I could feel him behind my ribs, pacing and snarling, ready to go find this demon asshole and tear him a new one.

  How dare he upset my wife like that.

  How dare he disrespect my store.

  And yet at the same time, I was thinkin’ good riddance. I liked our family the way it was. The last thing we needed was yet another alpha male in our midst.

  Ophelia yipped, and I glanced down at her, smiling in spite of myself. Picking up two wiggly puppies was a cure for anything, even testosterone-fueled rage. I grabbed my twins and tucked one under each arm. They could probably use a walk and a feeding before nap time. Tell me how many other seven month old babies you know that need a mile run and a bite of raw chicken before being put in their cribs?

  "Google-schmoogle," Grace said, picking up an enchanted broom, and sliding it under the leather strap on her back. She added a pair of cursed revolvers next, tucking them beneath her jacket. "The internet is never right about the Numinous." She glanced back at me with a red brow raised. Numinous—non-human, non-animal species of the world. And she was right, too. I was more likely to find memes about Twilight when I searched werewolf than information on how to treat the twins for their fleas. "Coven Wyrmwood is old, established, and non-traditional. They don't like the prying eyes of outsiders, and they could care less about oracles and soulmates."

  "Didn't the original Crone that started Coven Wyrmwood kill all her soulmates for power or something?"

  "That was Coven Triad," Grace murmured, chewing on the end of her hair as she hid a few extra spell scrolls beneath her leather jacket. "But you're on the right track. The original founder of C.W. broke her soulmate bonds, unleashing a wave of magic so strong it killed every Numinous within fifty miles."

  She flashed me her brightest, whitest smile as she turned around to face me.

  "Wish me luck," she said, and it was my turn to raise a brow.

  "Luck for what?"

  "I'm going over to pay a visit to Coven Wyrmwood," she said, grabbing a few random charms off the shelf and tucking them into various pockets. The last thing Grace grabbed was her witch's hat, covered in hexes and bits of spell material. No good witch ever went out without their hat, not when they were expecting trouble.

  "Not by yourself, you're not," I growled, feeling my skin ripple with the change. Something about the witch blood in me made spontaneous change about a hundred times more likely than with a pure 'were'. It was not my favorite trait. The twins started howling in my arms, thrashing around like they suspected something fishy going on between me and their mother.

  "You want to come?" she ask
ed, and she sounded skeptical. Rightfully so. I was liable to punch this guy in the throat soon as I'd ask him for help of any kind. Then again, Grace’s mother, the Mother of our coven, Coven Apothecary, was cursed with … well, we weren't entirely sure. What we did know was that we needed at least three complete soul-circles in order to conjure enough power to cure her. And paying a complete soul-circle—a group of witches with all their soulmates gathered together—to do it was out of the question. This spell would wipe whoever participated in it dry for weeks, possibly months. And while we had two soul-circles in our coven who would participate for free, hiring a third would cost upwards of several million dollars or more.

  We were not that liquid, not with the store and the house and the kids. We could start selling assets off maybe, but I wasn't even sure if we'd get there.

  No, going to talk to this douche was the right thing to do.

  "I want to come," I said, flicking my eyes to the left as Argent waltzed in, glowing like a goddess-damned lantern. Without another word, I passed the twins over to him. "I'm going with Gracely to see this motorcycle riding asswad."

  "He's not going to help us out of the goodness of his heart," Argent said, taking several licks to the chin from the puppies. He smiled, but it was tight. He didn't like this newcomer either. None of us did. We had enough soulmates. I didn't want one more. "You'll have to offer him something."

  "I'll offer to leave him alone," Grace said, exhaling sharply as she pulled a second broom out of the closet and tapped the wooden handle against the floor. The charms dangling from the bristles jingled merrily. At the last second, she switched out the one on her back—the one with an ivory handle—for the wooden one. Ah. Ivory was to demons as silver was to werewolves. Grace was choosing to avoid offending them over keeping herself protected. Not sure how I felt about that. "You didn't see the look in his eyes," she whispered, glancing to the side, toward a wall of jars filled with rare and expensive spell materials. Probably fifty grand worth of stuff right there—if we could sell it, that is. "He wants nothing to do with us. He'll do this spell, especially if we make a contract not to bother or contact him."