Never Date A Warlock (Sister Witchcraft Book 4)

by J. D. Winters

  “So…” Hank said, brushing his hands against each other, still looking faintly ridiculous in the apron.

  “So, I’m going to have a lot to do before I’m ready for this wedding. And things are spiraling enough out of control without—”

  “Without having to worry about murders and warlocks and that kind of thing. In a perfect world, maybe I’d be a baker and just have to think about pastries, and the horrible amount of carbs that I’m foisting on the world.”

  I rolled my eyes so hard that I nearly knocked myself over. “I’ve never met a carb counter that didn’t have big weight problems.”

  “Of course not. If you don’t have a weight issue, why would you start taking nutrition seriously? But different people have different insulin response systems, right? And when those people who are highly insulin resistant—”

  “Start talking about magic,” Kashmir said, shooting a little spray of heavy cream across the floor of the shop and he whipped his head from his drink, “Or I shall start scratching both of you. There’s demons about, there’s Lucy’s mistake to fix. Get to it.”

  We looked at each other, and I nodded. “Lucy’s mistake is the first thing, we can get that fixed without having to do too much in the way of thinking about it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Hank said, standing his ground as I headed to the kitchen. Kashmir slipped right by the two of us and dodged directly onto one of the counters in there. “We need to keep talking about this. That sister of yours was essentially poisoning people, and that’s something I can’t just shine on.”

  “So, throw a teenager in jail, or help give sick people an antidote. Your choice,” I said, brusquely.

  Hank stood his ground for a second, and I could practically see the wheels turning in his head. Then he sighed.

  “I have to write a report about this stuff, you know. And tell people above me who might think… think I’m not being objective about this situation.” Then he stood aside.

  “Well, I have no such problem. I know I’m not being objective, but it’s my sister. I don’t have to be. I also don’t have to remind you, I hope, that your alternative seems to be some sort of extra-legal kidnapping, since you do not have a badge. And then you’d have to fight off a rambunctious and cute teenager who will not go easily, and her older sister who you like a lot already, I can tell, and who is an accomplished witch.”

  “Did I miss some list of your accomplishments?” he said, trying to look all smart.

  “Not to mention one of those Malleus Inifitus people who you’re supposed to work with… though if you’re working with them, I have to wonder why you were skulking around, hiding out and following one rather than accompanying them openly.”

  “Because Wilhelm Spengler was not working under the authority of the Malties. He’d stolen that magic book, and we figured he’d taken it to sell it. It’s my job to come and get it back. Do you know where it ended up?”

  I hadn’t told him about that part, and was now thanking my lucky stars (if I have any that are good luck, anyway) that I had not. And that I still had a great deal to find out from Sibyl about just what the heck was going on with this entire set-up.

  But first things were first, and I didn’t want to hear from Max that there was a massacre of vampire slayer wannabes at some biker bar that night. We needed to make some antidote cookies and we needed to make them now.

  “So,” I said, looking at Kashmir on the counter. “How do we make antidotes?”

  Cats cannot shrug, but Kashmir twisted his ears in a gesture that was plainly the same as a shrug.

  “You don’t know?” I said, getting a little panicky.

  “It all depends on what you’re trying to cure. Is it a delusion? Is it a panic? Is it a compulsion?” Kashmir said, sounding very pedantic.

  “Well, you saw what Lucy was doing, right? What part of Grand-Mere’s book was it from? You told me what was wrong with it and now…”

  Kashmir stretched, whirled around, and promptly fell asleep.

  I could only stare at him, shaking my head, wondering if I should go get some hair-clippers and show him my appreciation for his lack of help. He’d look handsome with the words ‘talking cat’ shaved into both sides.

  “I think I know what’s going on here,” Hank said, sighing. “I don’t have a familiar, most warlocks don’t, but I know how they feel about giving away magical secrets. I’ll be out front, twiddling my thumbs while you work up the recipe.”

  “Wait, I don’t think—” But Hank didn’t listen, and went out to the front. I couldn’t tell by the way he did it whether he was amused, irritated, exasperated, or all three. But I was annoyed because my familiar wasn’t supposed to be making these sorts of decisions for me.

  “Listen, kitty kitty,” I started, walking toward the familiar with my finger outstretched, pointing accusingly. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing—”

  “Protecting my charge,” he said, then he yawned obnoxiously, and continued: “From her own poor judgment. Now, we’ll have to be quiet in case he’s listening at the door, because this is an especially easy sort of recipe, and that means it’s easy to steal.”

  “What do I care if he steals it?” I said. “I’m learning things about magic just watching him. Those lines of chalk and charcoal on his hands? That’s all he needs to make his magic work. None of this three parts, focus, invocation, change stuff that needs so much preparation and planning. He flicks his fingers and fire comes out. Simple as that.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Kashmir said, moving his head down while he kept his eyes on me. That was the cat equivalent of shaking his head at something particularly stupid that I’ve said. “Did he tell you that himself?”

  “Yes, I thought it was pretty clever. And I want to figure out how it’s done. You and I are going to come up with something like it. Modern witching for the computer age sort of thing.”

  I smiled smugly at Kashmir, pretty proud I’d decided he was all wet. We were going to do magic my way.

  “So you didn’t notice the lighter in his other hand, the piece of paper tucked into it with the prepared spell?”

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “There’s one thing that warlocks tend to have over witches, and I’m not sure why it is, but they’re much better stage magicians. And do you know how stage magic works?”

  “Well, that stuff’s all tricks. It’s fake.”

  Kashmir jumped off the counter to the other one on the wall, beneath all the cupboards. He began nosing open different cupboards, keeping the ones open he wanted and re-shutting the others. “Misdirection. A stage magician gets you looking one way while he’s doing something else entirely. You’re looking at the hand gestures so he looks like something out of a comic book, making magic appear out of nowhere, while out of sight he’d doing the normal things that everyone does. And right now, pretending to be concerned about propriety while he’s probably just sneaking into your office and looking for Grand-Mere’s book, which you foolishly let him know existed.”

  “What’s that?” I said, again, then I went all cold, and raced out the kitchen door.

  There was, however no one in my office. There was no one in my shop, either, or on the front or out the back or anywhere. Hank had completely gone.

  Chapter 21

  “So,” I said to Kashmir, “Do I panic?”

  “That depends,” he said, standing in roughly the same position I had left him in before I scrambled out of the kitchen, back in, then out again to scour my office and discover the worst: that Grand-Mere’s book, which I had left on the desk in a locked room, had been taken. The lock had evidently been jimmied into, and… he stole it. The book was gone.

  “Depends on what?” I practically moaned.

  “On how much you know about Grand-Mere’s book. Have you ever read it cover to cover?”

  I shook my head, miserably. There was so much inside of it that I didn’t know, that I couldn’t grasp. Everything was so dense, that whenever I tried t
o just sit down and read it through, I got a whopper of a headache. Almost as if the information only wanted to be pieced out, a little at a time, and not give up its secrets too readily…

  Wait a minute…

  “He won’t be able to read it, will he? It’s got protections and stuff on it!” I said, getting back to my feet, having barely realized I’d sunk to the ground in a sad old puddle.

  “Some. And they are breakable, of course. Grand-Mere didn’t want anyone to be able to copy from that book, unless they were a fully fledged witch of the Auclair variety. Even the pain it causes you is just a sign that you’re not ready. A naif. A newbie. A witch apprentice floundering toward something hopefully better, groping blindly…”

  “Thanks, I feel so much better,” I said acidly.

  “It is not my job to make you feel better. It is my job to make you be better. And on that front, pull down the appropriate ingredients from the cupboards as I have opened them,” he said.

  I looked a little bleary-eyed at the cupboards, and scowled.

  “Those only have tea makings,” I said. “These are cookie eaters. I need to bake cookies—”

  “Not if you want to have any hope of curing them. The cookies worked like a slow-acting drug,” Kashmir said. “It wasn’t until a couple of batches before the effect would have been full of its power. If you want to rescue these people, and figure out if what we suspect about the demon taint is true—”

  “Time out. Demon taint?” I said.

  “You said it without realizing it when you described that house. Lucy had been there, and the feeling about spiking the cookies with magic had undoubtedly come from there. So that means it’s demon tainted. And a powerful tea will cure that much faster than a slow-acting antidote cookie. I’ve watched how Grand-Mere worked for years, child. I know what I’m talking about.”

  “But I need Grand-Mere’s book to know if I have the recipe right,” I said, feeling another wave of despair come over me.

  “Then I suppose it’s hopeless,” Kashmir said, and sank into another immediate sleep.

  I stared at him, annoyed and helpless, but luckily, he opened one eye and said, “Too bad. Oh well, at least you don’t have to worry about being a witch anymore.”

  “Listen, you,” I started, but Kashmir kept going on and on.

  “There’s nothing wrong with running a tea shop. A tea shop that doesn’t make enough money to go on and that will inevitably close without the benefit of the extra income and prestige being the local witch brings. It’s noble to fail, or so I’ve heard.”

  I grimaced, and tried to come up with a really witty retort that would just put that cat in his place. Unfortunately, it is impossible to do that to a cat. They know their place, and it is always one step ahead of you, and from a somewhat higher elevation. Always looking back, and looking down, mostly literally.

  This was too much. It felt like everybody was in some way telling me I didn’t know what I was doing. Hank had put one over on me. Sibyl wouldn’t listen to me about how she didn’t know what she was doing. Lucy went off on her own and screwed up, and if they’d all just listened to me for Pete’s sake…

  Then why don’t you listen to you, smarty pants, if you’re so good, and figure out what you need to do all by yourself?

  “Well, I just might,” I said, filled with defiance.

  “Just might what?” Kashmir said, pausing in the middle of lapping up on his leg.

  “Oh, wouldn’t you like to know?” I said, dashing toward the cupboards.

  Twelve minutes later, after a flurry of measurements, adjustments, and the application of a strong dose of mint and eucalyptus oil, I had a thermos filled to the brim of 100 percent cookie antidote. It was practically the same recipe for making a simple cold remedy, only I had to burn up some wax paper above it, wafting the smoke down into the pot just before it brewed, whispering the words I had written in butter on the paper. I did not remember that strictly from a recipe of Grand-Mere’s, it just seemed like the right way to perform this action, to make my intention and focus become one with the tea.

  Clear was the word. I thought it the most appropriate way to get the heads of Lucy’s accidental victims out of the fog of over-enthusiastic cosplay that had befell them. They didn’t need to be cured like they were sick. Their minds were confused, clogged up with some nonsense. I didn’t want to replace it with any suggestion or forced notion of my own. I just wanted to poor folks to be clear. Heck, it might have been a cure for most any mental confusion… Maybe I needed a good dose of it.

  Except that would be bad. I was very careful not to do what came natural to anyone brewing up a concoction like this - I didn’t put my head over the wafting steam and breath it in, just to make sure it had the sinus (and mind) clearing properties that I had infused it with. That might clear my own head out, which maybe would mean I could solve the investigation of the murder and all the weirdness going around town with a newfound perspective…

  Or it might mean all the thoughts I had about it would clear right out of my brain, and leave me happily ignorant and completely stupid. Magic could work like that - I think it had a sense of humor, so the smart practitioner doesn’t accidentally cast the spell on herself.

  “Add in some cookie dough. Just an essence, it should make it work better,” Kashmir said, nudging a small mixing bowl toward me with his noggin.

  “So the cookie dough is the key?” I said.

  “Using part of a spell to break a spell. Not too much, or it won’t be a tea anymore.”

  I pinched out a tiny amount of dough, just enough that I could smell it on my fingers. Then I got a thermos from another cupboard that Kashmir had opened, gave the concoction a final stir, and said a little prayer. Carefully, I decanted the mixture into a thermos, keeping my eyes on it carefully while what was apparently just normal tea poured into my receptacle. All my attention, all my senses were focused hard on what I was doing.

  “Ooh, that smells kind of weird. What’s it for?”

  The smart practitioner also doesn’t get so easily sneaked up on, nor does she scream and practically spill everything she’d just spent the last hour working on all over the floor. I only did one of those things - the top of the thermos was screwed on tight while I screeched like an owl.

  “Spaz much?” Lucy said, as I caught my breath and glared at her. She looked on with complete innocence, like it was completely normal for her to be able to get into my kitchen without all of my defenses screaming out that I was being invaded. Then I realized exactly why I hadn’t been warned when I saw the expression on Kashmir’s face, as he lay on the kitchen floor, his smug little head looking up at me with half closed eyes above a big pillow made of paws. He had an overactive sense of humor too.

  “I give you too much lee-way,” I told him. “And you… I’ve got things to say to you, kid,” I said, pointing my finger at Lucy.

  I was in high dudgeon because of a million things, and Lucy wasn’t really behind any of them, but she wilted under my gaze as if she were the only blemish in my otherwise perfect life, and looked so ashamed I felt like I’d just scolded an innocent puppy.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, starting to sniffle. “I’ve just become real good at sneaking and hiding with a little trick or two from Grand-Mere. And then the cookies… I know what I did was wrong but I didn’t know I was doing it and if it means I can’t do anymore magic I guess… aw…”

  “Lucy,” I said, and I handed her the thermos.

  “Oh, no, I’m going to have to drink this? What, does it destroy all your magic powers? I bet it does. Oh, I deserve it, though, don’t I?”

  “Shut up,” I said as sweetly as I could. “Shut up and please lead me to where your weirdos hide out and do their weirdness. I think what we’ve got bottled up in there is a cure, and we need to get it to them soon as possible. Then, when all this craziness is over, we’ll go over your cookie recipe and figure out what you did wrong.”

  She looked up at me with s
eeming incomprehension, or maybe it was just bare skepticism.

  “Big sister promise,” I said, hand on heart. This big sister promise thing wasn’t something I’d ever said before, but it seemed like it should be.

  She grinned, and gave me a kiss on the cheek, then bounced out the back. I followed her, less bouncing, more grim determination. I was righting a wrong.

  It didn’t take long for us to go to the congregation place of the benighted slayer wannabes. It wasn’t in some industrial den, where steam would shoot out of random pipes every few minutes like the set piece at the end of every action movie. We were fresh out of industrial areas in little Lafay. Nor was it a trendy nightclub, which we actually had one or two, believe it or not. Not L.A. chic, or anything, but some decent places to go and not find a seat, overpay for drinks and have people assume you were up for all kinds of things you weren’t.

  These mind-warped weirdos might have been bedeviled and haunted destroyers of the dark things that came out at night… but they also really liked cookies. I’d expected we’d find them crowding inside of Lang’s Tasties just a couple of blocks to the east.

  Lafay had several little collections of cute streets with shops and restaurants and their own flavors. Auclair Tea was in what could be called the cozy part of town, where teenagers don’t have to be told they’re not welcome - they just don’t want to come. Lang’s Tasties was next door to a candy store, which was next door to the only movie theater in town, one that only showed a couple of movies at a time. To get to a multiplex, you had to drive a whole ten minutes down the freeway to a bunch of outlet shops, which might as well have been in a different country.

  So, for young people who liked to stay local or who were bereft of wheels, the Lafay Royal was about the only game in town. When I was in high school there was a local arcade there that had been on its last legs, and had obviously closed down in the meantime. That would seem like a great place for a gang to hang out, since nothing had taken its place.