“Probably not,” Hildy agreed, sneaking a look at the Jezibaba who was pretending great interest in her manicure.
“So you’re really going to be a Shifter Wanker,” Carol said.
“Shifter Whisperer,” Hildy corrected.
Carol grinned. “Same difference. Where are you planning to be this mystical healing person?”
Hildy sighed and rubbed her nose. “Near Chuck’s shifter colony in West-effing Virginia.”
“Wait. That small town you swore never to go to?”
Hildy nodded. “Go ahead. You can laugh now.”
Carol did just that. “Oh, Hildy. You’re going to be wearing flannel shirts and denim for the rest of your life.”
“Never,” Hildy said, glaring at her laughing friend. “My expensive wardrobe will not go to waste. I’ll learn to magically transport wherever I want to go.”
“How? You get nauseated going from here to outside the building.”
Hildy shrugged. “Fabio can teach me. He’s superfast at it.”
“The man has to move fast in order to keep ahead of the cooties following him.”
“Pot. Kettle. Black,” Hildy said. “He’s my brother. Don’t make me kick your Baba Yaga ass. You wouldn’t want anyone to know you got beat up by a Shifter Wanker.”
“Speaking of wankers,” Carol said, nudging Hildy with her shoulder. “Your bear… he’s quite the specimen.”
“Touch him and you really will die, Carol.”
“Since we shared a dragon once, I thought you’d be more open-minded.”
Hildy punched Carol hard and knocked her sideways. “That’s for teasing me about Chuck.” Then she did it again. “And that’s for all the lesbian jokes.”
“So I’ve lost your love and affection to a bear then?” Carol asked.
Laughing, she let Hildy chase her around the room. When they finally stopped, Hildy was hugging her. She hugged back.
Carol sighed, happy not to have lost her friend for any bad reason. “I’ll come visit and take you to dinner. You can even wear pink and I’ll never say a word. I had freaking tea in China with the Jezibaba. This new power stuff is awesome. Thanks, by the way. It’s quite the rush to have it all. I can see why Isobelle wanted this for herself.”
“You’re welcome. I know you’ll put it to good use,” Hildy said. “The Jezibaba left us.”
“I know,” Carol said. “She and Professor Hottie have some things to work out. Did you hear Nathaniel is leaving too?”
“So no handsome warlock nookie then?”
“Ewww… no. Even I have standards. Plus, I can’t pick favorites that way,” Carol said. “I’m sure enough men will cross my path to keep me away from my own kind.”
“Do you know how ridiculous you sound?”
“No more ridiculous than your choice of career,” Carol declared.
They both laughed at their conversation. It was like nothing had changed, but it all had changed. And it was going to change even more.
“Are we good now?” Hildy finally asked. “I’ve got a handsome bear in my bed waiting to cuddle me. He sleeps like twenty hours a day. I don’t want to miss the few minutes he’s awake.”
Carol snickered and nodded. “Feels right with him, doesn’t it? I got to feel the mating energy in him. Talk about real power.”
Hildy shrugged. “It feels strange, Carol. This all feels strange, but I think in a little while, it will feel right. At least we’ll always be friends. Won’t we?”
“Absolutely,” Carol said. She touched Hildy’s shoulder. “Go hug a bear. Better yet, kiss him and make your dreams come true. We’ll talk again before you leave.”
“Chuck has been the perfect gentleman… damn it,” Hildy complained.
Carol laughed. “And I’m sure you’ve been a perfectly behaved witch.”
Hildy twirled a lock of hair. “Only because it’s been so long and I was never this interested before. It’s hard being brave when it matters this much.”
Carol snorted. “If you can fight a dark witch without your power, you can surely seduce a bear who can’t even look at you without getting a stiffy. This is not going to be hard, Hildy. Just kiss him and let nature take care of the rest.”
“Shut up, Carol. This is different.”
Carol narrowed her gaze. “Well, I’m the Baba Yaga now and I say it’s no different at all.”
Hildy snorted. “That’s just your job title. You’ll always be freaking Carol to me.”
“Fine. Just remember anything I do to help you is technically your fault because you’re the reason I have all this power now. Now it’s payback time.”
“Carol… don’t you dare zap me,” Hildy ordered.
Waving a hand, Carol giggled as she sent her squealing, less magical best friend instantly back to Chuck. Using omniscience, she saw Hildy land screaming on top of a suddenly very happy bear. Chuck laughed as she fought to untangle herself from him. Then he groaned and deftly rolled a suddenly moaning Hildy under him before he kissed her very thoroughly.
“Now that’s a good use of my freaking power.” Sighing and satisfied, Carol ended the spell, mostly because being a voyeur didn’t do anything for her. She was more a participating kind of person. However, thinking Hildy was finally going to get lucky in love made her very happy.
“I think I’m really going to enjoy being the one and only Baba Yaga,” Carol said aloud, wishing someone was there to be happy with her. A couple of yaps at her feet had her looking down at the dog form of her familiar. “Hey, Ahmed. How’s it going, buddy? You sticking around to help me?”
Two more yaps and he jumped into her arms. Carol hugged him as Ahmed laid his head on her shoulder. “Thanks for staying,” she said. “Tomorrow we’ll look for a new place to live—no cats allowed. How about we decorate our new place with an Arabian nights theme?”
A growl by her neck had her giggling.
“Okay. I get it. It would be a constant reminder of home. Disco-rama then?”
A lick on her neck made her smile.
“Great. Retro 70s, it is. Twirling disco balls on the ceilings of every room—yeah, I like that. Let’s go listen to some Bee Gees and get inspired. Staying Alive should be our theme song anyway.”
Epilogue
What happens to a Jezibaba when she’s no longer needed? Well, that was the only remaining question, wasn’t it? Retirement was a strange concept now that it had become her reality.
Needing time to think about everything that was changing, the Jezibaba walked while she searched for Damien. She finally found him standing outside in the cold, staring at the spot where he normally shifted into a dragon.
His normal arrogance was not to be found in his drooping shoulders and bowed head. Humility just didn’t look good on him. But then it didn’t look so great on her either.
“Planning to escape under the cloak of darkness?” she asked.
“No,” Damien said, turning to the Jezibaba. Or had she lost that title? “I was going to say goodbye tomorrow. The school is officially closing. Students have been reassigned to another less volatile academy. Rather than accept a work transfer, I decided it was time I returned to the cave. It will probably be good for me to spend the next couple centuries as a dragon. Maybe I can stop another Thane from developing before he leaves the horde.”
“You did your best with that young dragon, but he just wasn’t willing to let you save his soul, Damien. Dark magic has a powerful allure. Not many can resist its siren call. Even Zenos wasn’t immune. What do you think the Goddess used to transform him?”
“Morgana used dark magic to make Zenos?”
Jezibaba shrugged. “She used the equivalent of it for a goddess. So there’s no reason for you to own any guilt about Thane because he could not be fixed. He willingly chose his own destiny, and it chose to end his life. He had more than enough chances to turn the darkness away.”
Damien snorted. “You’re being quite kind. I think I’d like it better if you gloated about being righ
t. I deserve that.”
She smiled at his admission. “How can I gloat? It could have gone the other way. I half expected it to given what a strong will you have when it comes to getting what you want from a person. You just weren’t around him along enough.”
“But it didn’t go my way,” Damien said. “My failure to accept the evil you saw in Thane has now destroyed this university. It could just as easily have cost you your life. In my arrogance, I really thought sparing him might turn that young dragon around. But I never followed up. I never made sure he was serving out his sentence. I just went about my business until he came to burn the school and gave me no choice except to try and kill him. Ahmed in Thunderbird form stood on him to keep me from doing so. He was saving the bastard for Carol.”
“So you screwed up with Thane,” Jezibaba said, waving it away with her hand. “So what? Is that any reason to slink back to your cave? To live with your mother like some dried up old bachelor?”
Damien laughed. “Well, it's not like I’ll be sleeping in her basement while she pays the bills. It is my cave after all. It’s my hoard that supports my family.”
Jezibaba snickered at his bragging. “I just meant… oh, never mind. I guess I’m wasting my breath until you tire of this self-pity kick you’re on.”
“No. Tell me what you’re really thinking. I know you haven’t been telling me the truth for a while, but you’ve really got nothing left to lose now. I’m heading home tomorrow, no matter what you confess.”
Amused at his self-flagellation, Jezibaba turned to hide it and walked away, her gaze on the ground. “I guess I thought you meant all those things you’ve been telling me for the last decade about us being mates.”
“I meant them, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’ll never be able to trust me again. I can’t have a mate who hides the truth of her life from me. That’s worse than having no mate at all.”
Jezibaba turned and walked to the dragon who’d captured her heart nearly from the first moment they met. “If you leave me, I’ll become Zenos, wandering from person to person looking for someone to put out that constant fire burning inside me. You’re the only man who’s ever done that, Damien. It’s a good part of why I’ve never shut you out of my life. Even my disappointment in your judgment didn’t stop me from wanting to be with you.”
“You’re talking about lust, Elenora… not love.”
“I think it’s very arrogant of you to feel so sure about my feelings.”
Damien leaned forward and kissed her forehead, letting his lips linger there for a moment before he spoke again.
“My time with you has been the best of my life, even with the emotional distance between us. But I can’t go on like this. At the moment, I trust my judgment even less than you do, and that’s what I’ve been struggling with for the last decade. Don’t make me keep confessing this, Elenora. I hate being wrong and hate admitting it more. However, no matter what I feel, I can’t change the past. That’s our real problem.”
When he moved to walk away, Jezibaba grabbed him by the shirt. “Nothing is a problem until we let it become one. Don’t go home to your damn cave. Come with me. I…” Pride stole the words from her tongue, but love gave them right back. “Damn it, dragon… I don’t want to lose you.”
Damien covered her hands with his and felt her grip tighten.
“No. Don’t pull away and don’t leave,” she pleaded. “All that matters is that Thane got what he deserved and he’ll never harm anyone again. Justice is done and over where he’s concerned.”
“Is that really all that matters?” Damien asked.
She leaned against his shirt, listening to his heartbeat under her ear. She couldn’t imagine never hearing it again. “Don’t make me come crawling to your cave in dragon form to steal you away from your mother. That woman scares the shit out of me.”
Damien laughed against her hair. “My mother scares you—the most powerful witch in the world?”
“I’m not the most powerful anymore,” Jezibaba said. “There’s a new witch in town. Her power makes mine look positively wimpy.”
“Wimpy?” Damien asked.
Jezibaba raised her head. “Yes. Did I not use the term correctly? Carol and Hildy say that all the time.”
“No, it was correct, just… inelegant.”
“And inelegant is a better word? I don’t even know what that means.”
Damien snorted at her disgust over his vocabulary. “I don’t know anymore either.”
“That’s because you’re thinking about going back to live in a freaking cave for the rest of your life.”
Damien slipped arms around her and hugged her close. “What else can I do? I have no job, no purpose, and no mate. I have nothing left.”
Jezibaba sighed and hugged him back. “It’s okay, dragon. I took another job. I can support you in your old age.”
“Another job?” Damien asked, pushing back to look at her.
“Sort of,” Jezibaba said. “Morgana made me a deal… and there’s this fairy named Leelu…”
“Leelu? Daughter of Queen Arraign? Tell me you’re kidding,” Damien said fiercely.
“No. Leelu has a serious problem,” Jezibaba said.
“That she brought on herself,” Damien declared.
“How can you say that? Her mother put a curse on her.”
“Because Leelu is the Thane of the fairies. She’s a bad seed.”
“She didn’t seem all that bad to me.”
“Why is Morgana involved?” Damien demanded.
“I don’t know. She stopped me from arresting her. Then later I saved her life when I found her starving outside Morgana’s grove. Our paths keep crossing.”
“Not without some help from a conniving goddess, I’d bet.” Damien dropped his arms and paced away. He ran a hand through his hair. “I thought you were planning to retire and go live in your beach house.”
“I am. Only later. First, I have to do some things to help Leelu free herself from her curse. Morgana said I could keep all the magic she gave me for as long as I work with her.”
“Queen Arraign knows about this quest?” Damien asked.
“Well, I didn’t tell her. Who would tell her?”
“Everyone who hates Princess Leelu, that’s who.”
Jezibaba snickered. “Damien… you rhymed.”
“Oh, for Goddess sake. You’re the most infuriating woman I’ve ever met. Why do I even bother? It must be your ass. It’s exceptional, but I wish you wouldn’t keep trying to wear it on your damn shoulders. You’re being manipulated.”
“Hey now,” Jezibaba said, flat palming his shoulder hard. “You can still leave tomorrow and go back to your cave. I don’t need your help. I just thought you might want to come along and keep me company.”
“As what? Your dragon consort?”
Jezibaba nodded. “Yes. Okay. I like the sound of that.”
“Well, I don’t,” Damien said firmly. “Promise to be my mate and maybe I’ll come along.”
“Promise? What do you mean promise? Like some pre-marital arrangement among the mortals?”
“Yes. I want you to introduce me as your future mate. I want to sleep with you every night—all night—not wake and discover you’ve left me. The leaving stuff has to stop now.”
She poked a finger into his chest. “You’re the one who was flying home to his mother, Mr. Pants-On-Fire.”
“Only because you don’t love me.”
Jezibaba leaned back, stunned. “Of course I love you. Why don’t you think I love you?”
“How could you?” Damien demanded.
“I don’t know. I just do. You’re the academic with all the answers. I’m just the witch who gets shit done.”
Damien drew in a calming breath. When he let it out, smoke curled out of his nostrils. “You really love me?”
Jezibaba nodded. “Yes. Do you think I beg every male to stay with me? I assure you I do not. It’s usually the opposite. I snuck away from many and
never returned. Didn’t I always return to you? And I was working when I left, damn it.”
Damien laughed. “Well, no more late night work. You’re in my bed from dark until dawn. You got that?”
Jezibaba crossed her arms and tapped a toe. Finally, she nodded. “Okay. I can live with that constraint. I’m tired of midnight runs to fight bad guys anyway. From now on, I want to do my fighting during daylight hours. Please inform all nefarious characters we meet of our agreement.”
Damien snorted at her teasing. He was an idiot where she was concerned. He put his hands in his pockets and stared at the ground. Then a smile started blooming on his face.
“I can’t believe you finally admitted that you love me.”
Jezibaba shrugged. “It’s not that big a deal.”
“Of course not. It just changes everything… that’s all.”
“It does?” Jezibaba asked.
Sighing, he walked closer. He took one hand out of his pocket and played with the buttons on her shirt. “I ought to burn your damn clothes off and take you where you stand. I’m nearly that desperate to prove my point.”
A delicious shiver went through her. “Well, the kids are all gone. What’s stopping you, Professor Smoke?”
Damien snorted. “Not wanting anyone else to see your beautiful body. I consider it mine and mine alone. Do I have that right?”
“Been that way for a couple decades now,” she whispered.
His mouth hard on hers was a celebration all its own. The heat between them had not changed, but putting the past away had returned their lovemaking to a higher form of bliss.
She wrapped her dragon in her arms as his fingers expertly worked buttons loose. Then he was pressed along the front of her, sending excitement through every cell.
She pulled her mouth away and gripped his arms. “Want to see my beach house? It’s got a view of the ocean and its own private beach. We can go skinny dipping.”
“Thought you had to save some wicked fairy’s cursed ass,” Damien teased, slipping his hands behind her hips and tugging her tighter against him.
“She’s waited a century already. She can wait a bit longer. I need a vacation,” Jezibaba said.
Magic and Mayhem: To Yaga Or Not To Yaga (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Baba Yaga Saga Book 3) Page 9
