Wickedly Powerful
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PRAISE FOR THE BABA YAGA NOVELS
“Witchy and wild, this book has everything I’m looking for.”
—Tanya Huff, author of Peacemaker
“Paranormal romance at its best.”
—Alex Bledsoe, author of the Eddie LaCrosse novels
“An addicting plot . . . Kept me glued to the page. I never had so much fun losing sleep!”
—Maria V. Snyder, New York Times bestselling author of Shadow Study
“An engaging world full of thoughtful, clever details and a charmingly dangerous heroine . . . Tightly plotted, with great fidelity to the Baba Yaga stories from Russian folklore that inspired the book.”
—Dear Author
“An exciting new series.”
—Tynga’s Reviews
“A good tale with fantastical creatures described in vivid detail, and with a lovely romance woven in . . . Equally engaging and enjoyable.”
—Harlequin Junkie
“A fun retelling of the Baba Yaga mythology in a modern urban fantasy setting.”
—All Things Urban Fantasy
“The kind of paranormal adventure that will keep readers up at night.”
—Fresh Fiction
Berkley Sensation titles by Deborah Blake
WICKEDLY DANGEROUS
WICKEDLY WONDERFUL
WICKEDLY POWERFUL
VEILED MAGIC
(an InterMix eBook)
Novellas
WICKEDLY MAGICAL
WICKEDLY EVER AFTER
(an InterMix eBook)
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
WICKEDLY POWERFUL
A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 2016 by Deborah Blake.
Excerpt from Dangerously Charming by Deborah Blake copyright © 2016 by Deborah Blake.
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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-98745-2
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / February 2016
Cover art by Tony Mauro.
Cover design by Sarah Oberrender.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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To Kathy, whose years of service in a real-life fire tower inspired this story and whose strength and love inspire me. Thanks for all the help with the book, and for being my friend. BMC misses you. And not just because of all the great baking. This one’s for you, babe.
To Caere, whose entire town mourned the loss of the nineteen Prescott Granite Mountain Hotshots crew members who lost their lives fighting the Yarnell Hill fire in 2013. Your personal grief made it all more real for me, and I remember thinking then, “What on earth is it like to be the one man who survived?” That thought stuck in my head and became a part of this book. Thank you for that, and for all the other things you have given me over the years. I wouldn’t be here and writing if it weren’t for you.
And for all those who fight fires, in any capacity, everywhere. Thank you.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, this book only came to be with a lot of help from a lot of people. In particular, my friend Kathy Fraser, who has spent many a summer high up in a fire tower in Wyoming and who kindly let me pick her brain, and then even more kindly read the entire book as I was writing it and gently told me when I was getting things egregiously wrong. Any remaining mistakes are my own. People often say, “Without you, this book wouldn’t exist.” In this case, that is nothing short of the truth.
I am fortunate enough to have a fabulous agent who not only takes care of the business aspects of my writing, but also reads my work before I inflict it upon my lovely editor, Leis, and tells me when I’m getting things egregiously wrong (you are starting to see a pattern here, I suspect). In the case of this particular book, I could tell about halfway through the first draft that Something Was Very Wrong, but I couldn’t tell what or how to fix it. Elaine gave me terrific editing notes that pinpointed the problems, and then my heroic writing partner Lisa DiDio brainstormed with me until we figured out how to fix it. Then Leis made it even better, as all good editors do. If you like this book, it is probably because of them.
Thanks also to my first readers, who did a stalwart job of giving me feedback and catching mistakes. Thanks especially to Karen Buys, who provided a second pair of eyes for proofreading at a time when I was so burned out I didn’t trust my own.
And really huge appreciation to all the folks who read and/or bought the first two books in the series and said, “We want more!” Here you go!
CONTENTS
Praise for the Baba Yaga novels
Berkley Sensation titles by Deborah Blake
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
EPILOGUE
Special Excerpt from Dangerously Charming
About the Author
ONE
THE EARLY MORNING fog blanketed the area surrounding the fire tower, stippling the windows with condensation and cloaking the ground below in mystery. Even the twittering of the birds was muffled, as if the world itself had fallen away behind the mist.
To Sam Corbett, perched on a stool in the tower with his coffee mug gripped between tense fingers, the fog looked like smoke and brought back nightmares.
Eventually, he set down the cooling coffee and turned his back to the windows, doing push-ups and crunches and working with the free weights until he had an excuse for the sweat on his brow and the tremors in his hands, and the sun had burned away the fog and welcomed in a bright new day.
The radio crackled around the time he was going into service, and Tiny’s voice from down below gave him a heads-up to exp
ect a scout troop within the hour. Sam scowled, feeling the scar tissue pulling at the skin on the left side of his face. He hated having people invade the tower; it was his space, his sanctuary. But of course, it wasn’t, not really. It was a job. And visitors were part of the job. Few of them stayed long anyway, after they’d met him.
At about nine thirty, Sam heard the clatter of feet outside, along with the usual preadolescent griping about the absurd number of stairs that had to be climbed to reach the top of the tower. He grabbed his Yankees cap, a souvenir of a long-ago trip to the Big Apple—a place far, far away from these woods around the Black Mountain in Wyoming, both geographically and spiritually—and tugged it down low over his forehead. The shadow it cast didn’t so much hide as soften the effect of his disfigurement. For Sam, this fire tower was as close as he could get to hiding, and as evidenced by the gangly figures currently wandering around the catwalk outside, it wasn’t close enough.
Sam went out the door and greeted Dennis, the scout leader, and the two women with him, probably mothers to one or another of the shouting, laughing boys they were attempting to herd. He had met Dennis before, but the moms were new, and didn’t do a very good job of covering up their shock at the sight of his face.
“Hey, Sam,” Dennis said cheerfully. The scoutmaster was a thin, energetic man who ran the general store in the nearest town. He happily made up boxes of groceries and necessities for Sam and had them delivered to the tower so Sam didn’t have to come into town as often; the two men got along well. “This is Claire and Felicia. They’re helping me out today. Ladies, this is Sam Corbett. He’s manning the fire tower this season; it’s his second year here, so he’s practically an old pro.”
“Hello,” Sam said. He didn’t say much these days, not liking the permanent rasp of his voice, damaged by the smoke he’d inhaled at the same time his face had been burned. He’d give the boys the tour, but Dennis would do most of the talking. The gregarious store owner didn’t mind, and it made things easier for everyone.
“Hi,” Felicia said, looking at the view instead of at him. She was a little plump, and still trying to catch her breath from the climb. “Thanks for having the boys here. I can’t believe anyone lives up in this tower for four months. Don’t you get lonely? I’d never be able to stand it.”
Sam shrugged. “I get more visitors than you’d think,” he said. There was no point in adding that he preferred the solitude; loneliness was a constant companion, no matter where he lived. “And someone needs to watch for fires. I’m happy to do it.”
Claire, the other mother, had been studying him unobtrusively, eyes hidden behind big designer sunglasses. She was blond and pretty, and stood a little too close for comfort. Sam had met her type before, and he had a bad feeling about what was coming.
Sure enough, she pulled off the glasses and stared at him more openly. “Sam Corbett. Weren’t you one of the Hotshots crew they called in a few years ago to deal with that terrible forest fire up on the ridge? I remember reading about what happened.”
He kept his expression neutral through long practice. “Yes, I was, ma’am. Shall we gather up the boys now?”
Felicia clapped her hands to her mouth. “Oh. Oh, that explains the . . . I mean, oh dear, I’m sorry. For, you know, the fire and everything.” Tears sprang into her eyes, and Sam’s stomach knotted. He didn’t know which reaction he hated worse—the voracious interest or the pity.
“Hazards of the job,” he said, as he always did. “I got off easier than some.”
Dennis rescued him, blowing a whistle to bring the scouts over for their informative tour of the tower.
“Boys,” the scoutmaster said, “this is Mr. Corbett. He’s going to tell you all about his job as a fire spotter, and show you how he watches out for fires so he can keep the forest—and us—safe.”
“Do you have to run down all those stairs to put out the fires?” one skinny boy asked with a hint of awe. He was staying well back from the railing, unlike some of the others. Not everyone liked the heights up there, but they’d never bothered Sam. Heights didn’t scare him. Nothing scared him anymore. He’d already been through the worst and survived. More or less.
“He doesn’t put the fires out himself, stupid,” one of the other boys said with a sneer. “Real firemen do that. He just sits up here with a pair of binoculars and watches.”
“Now, Tommy,” Dennis said, with the air of someone who has repeated himself so often, the response was automatic. “We don’t call anyone stupid, do we? And Mr. Corbett’s job is just as important as that of the people who actually put out the fires. In a way, he is a firefighter too.”
Sam tried not to grimace, hearing the echo of his own voice inside his head. That was the same thing he told himself every day. That the job he was doing was vital to the effort; that he was still doing his part, in the only way he now could. It was the one thing that kept him going.
The problem was, he didn’t really believe it, any more than that young scout did.
* * *
SAM SHOWED THE boys around the inside of the tower, and let them each take a turn looking out through the big binoculars in different directions. Most took their turns eagerly, almost hoping to be the one to spot a fire. He told himself not to be angry with the youngsters; to them, the prospect of seeing actual flames was an abstract idea, an adventure, not a grim reality. But he could still feel his teeth clench and his shoulders tighten.
Peter, the smallest of the scouts, squinted seriously as he looked through the lens, then pointed out into the forest with one slightly grubby finger. “Mr. Corbett? Who lives down there in that little house?”
Dennis and Sam exchanged glances. There weren’t any residences in that quadrant, and the ranger station was too far away to be seen from the tower.
Sam held out his hand for the glasses. “Let me take a look so I can see what you’re talking about,” he said, expecting something like a large, vaguely house-shaped boulder. Instead, once he’d adjusted the binoculars, he spotted the structure Peter was referring to—except that it wasn’t a house, exactly, more like a modern gypsy caravan on wheels, parked in a clearing in the forest.
“Huh,” he said. “Just somebody camping, I guess.” Or someone who had wandered into the woods and gotten lost. That happened occasionally too. Out of habit, he swung the glasses around to check out the surrounding area, and felt his hands grow clammy at the sight of a column of gray and white smoke, shooting up less than a mile from where the caravan stood.
Dragging a harsh breath in through scarred lungs, he turned to Dennis and said quietly, “You need to take the boys down now. Right now.”
Dennis’s eyes widened, but he didn’t ask any questions, just called the scouts and the two moms together, had them say a quick thank-you to Sam, and hustled them out the door and down the stairs. As soon as the last pair of sneakers was on the top step, Sam ran over to the two-way radio.
“Dispatch, come in,” he said. “It’s Sam. I’ve got a smoke.” He quickly relayed the coordinates, as well as the information that there might be a civilian in harm’s way.
The dispatcher called it in, sending the first response team on their way, then switched back to Sam and asked a few more questions about what he’d seen.
“So, this caravan you spotted,” the dispatcher said. “Did you see anyone near it?”
“Nope,” Sam said. “Whoever it was could have been inside, or out hiking.” Or just maybe, setting a fire.
They’d had too many fires already this season . . . some caused by a series of fluke lightning storms, but there had been a couple that no one had been able to explain. No sign of campers being careless with their campfires, or any indication that some moron with a cigarette had decided to go for a walk in the woods. Just fires, when there shouldn’t have been any. They’d been lucky so far and Sam had spotted them all while they were still easily controlled. But sooner or later
, they were going to run out of luck.
In Sam’s experience, you always did.
TWO
BELLA YOUNG SAT on the flip-down steps of her traveling caravan and stretched her long legs out in front of her as she looked at the surrounding forest with satisfaction. After being stuck in the dry mountains of Montana battling wildfires for weeks, mingling with local firefighters, she was happy to be back among the peaceful environment of the trees, listening to squirrels and blue jays squabble instead of people.
It wasn’t that Bella didn’t like people, exactly. She just liked trees and animals and mountains better.
In a way, that made her the most traditional of the three Baba Yagas who watched over the United States. After all, the original Baba Yagas, powerful witches tasked with guarding the doorways to the Otherworld, keeping the balance of nature, and occasionally—if absolutely forced into it—helping out some worthy seeker, had lived in the deep, dark forests of Russia and its Slavic neighbors.
These days, Bella’s sister Babas Barbara and Beka mostly handled the eastern and western sides of the country, leaving Bella happily stuck in the less-populated middle. That was just fine, since she and people, well . . . Let’s just say there were issues. Big, big issues.
The Black Mountain forests, on the other hand, suited her to a T. She hoped that whatever urge had brought her here was due more to wanderlust and less to some mysterious magical crisis. She was due for some rest and relaxation. Or at the very least, fewer things blowing up.
She took a deep breath, reveling in the sharp, resinous tang of pine needles and the deep, musty aroma of decaying leaves. Compared to the auto fumes of the city, they smelled better to her than the most expensive perfume.
“Isn’t that the best smell in the world, Koshka?” she said to her companion, who currently bore the guise of a gigantic Norwegian Forest cat (since it was difficult to either fit or hide a large brown and gray dragon in a small caravan).
All Baba Yagas traveled with their own Chudo-Yudo, although each dragon chose a different form. And pretty much anything else they wanted. Even the powerful High Queen of the Otherworld rarely argued with a dragon.