Never Date A Warlock (Sister Witchcraft Book 4)

by J. D. Winters

And like that was their cue, the rest of the crows from the tree flew inside in a great storm of whipping wings and shrieking beaks. They cawed and clawed and almost completely covered the woman up. She fell backwards, whipping her hands around in completely useless ways.

  Then I was on my feet, and so was Lucy.

  “Tea!” I shouted, and the thermos she’d artfully hidden somewhere was in my hands, the top half-screwed off. I finished the job, dropped my rose-hips in, and then had to duck away from somebody’s grabbing hands. Probably one of the parents - Randall was grabbing at birds who were occupying his screaming, swearing fiancee.

  I dove under the table, somehow, and was right at Hank’s feet. He was still in the same position like he’d been locked there, and was staring down at me.

  I didn’t know if this would work, but I had to try. I gave the thermos a shake, hoped my magic would work like magic just for once, and threw the entire contents into his face.

  That got him to move. It was still hot, and the smell of the tea had shifted with the rose-hips, even though they’d only been inside for seconds. Was seconds enough? Was he on my side? Did I guess things right?

  Could I trust the warlock?

  He’d fallen back toward the wall, looked me right in the eye, and said, “I’m wet.”

  Then, with a snap of his fingers, green flame burst out from his fingertips, and flew right at Sibyl.

  Chapter 27

  The fire whipped at her so fast I didn’t even have time to scream. It looked almost like lightning, it was so thin and quick. Little green tongues whipped around my sister seemingly in a dozen places at once. She shuddered…

  And then stood up, the ropes tied around her falling to a dozen pieces, all of them sliced right through and still sizzling. She turned, crouched into a fighting position just as Randall turned and bellowed like a bull, ready to charge.

  “Kick the flower!” I said, Sibyl glanced at me, and in a micro-instant of that glance I could feel us having a whole day’s worth of argument.

  Her: I’ve done this more than you.

  Me: Yes, but I know what’s going on here.

  Her: I can handle this.

  Me: Obviously not, you were captured.

  Her: Agh, you’re so frustrating!

  And then she did just what I’d said, and whipped out a high kick like you’d see in a movie, which looked like it was going to catch the charging man in the jaw, but went just a tad to the side and knocked out his handsome boutonniere, sending petals spreading out and around him.

  It didn’t stop his charge, but by the time he ran into Sibyl his eyes had grown confused, and he’d turned enough so that instead of a potentially bone-jarring blow, it was like a way too aggressive hug. They still ended up on the ground, but Randall’s last minute shift placed himself between Sibyl and hard contact with the floor.

  She bounced right up from it, then dove toward Trish.

  “Birds!” she shouted.

  I yanked another hair from my head (more than one, ouch!) and then just screamed, “Thanks, you can go!”

  It wasn’t a magic spell, but I filled it with magic thoughts, as much as I could possibly muster, and the birds whipped up like a weird, teeming black wave and crowded up on the ceiling. Their wings were still flapping, they were still cawing in a cacophony that sounded like something out of hell, but they got out of the way. Feathers were everywhere, floating in the air, resting on the ground, and sticking to Trish’s wounds.

  She had many. She looked… terrible. Sibyl barely glanced at her, but grabbed her little purse right out from under her.

  Trish shrieked, and the demon in my mind bellowed, hard enough I could barely stand. Even the crows stopped cawing, and several dropped out of the sky onto the ground, like a shockwave had hit them. Lucy screamed and dropped into a crouch. It was like having something in my head that was trying, very hard, to get out.

  Sibyl grabbed something out of the purse - that little pair of test tubes, and slapped it hard against the wall. It shattered, and the liquid spread out like a hand from the spot of impact.

  The demon scream died instantly, like someone had turned off the sound.

  There was a roar in my ears for several seconds. I shook my head back and forth, until I realized the roar was silence.

  I stood up straight, looked at the God-awful mess in front of us, smiled at Hank who was stepping around crows coming towards me. Then I promptly fainted.

  When I came to, there was an enormous clamor, with all kinds of people and lights and bedlam. It was exactly what I didn’t need, including a visit from Officialdom in the shape of a couple of cops who wanted to know what happened.

  Which was a problem, because according to the law and court systems and all the very smart people who know more than me, nothing happened. A demon was not in possession of a house. A woman filled with jealousy at not being able to be a demon slayer did not use its power to give her old mentor a heart attack, because those things did not exist and could not happen.

  A bunch of crows did not burst into the house at my demand and attack a woman using magic because that, too, couldn’t happen. So nothing happened, and there was still a broken window, a woman covered in bird-caused contusions, a chair that had a dozen tiny pieces of rope neatly severed around it, a drenched man in a coat who smelled vaguely of roses, two very confused septuagenarians, and a newspaper man with a growing bruise on his face.

  All kinds of official craziness happened. At one point I think we were all going to be charged with trespassing until someone realized that the owner of the house was the recently deceased Wilhelm Spengler, so there was nobody but the county to press charges. Which they wouldn’t so…

  By the time we were being allowed to go home, I was with Lucy and Max, who was groggy and sleepy-eyed, with a comical amount of bandaging around his head so he looked like he was going on a mummy audition. Hank and Sibyl had slipped away before any cops arrived, which left a lot of the heavy lifting to me and Max, which meant mostly Max because, despite his knocked noggin, he knew best how to talk to cops.

  “What did you tell them?” I said to him, as we got in the car to go away.

  “Started as a tryout for me as wedding photographer. You had last minute catering plans to discuss. And then there was an enormous fight, Trish broke out the window, and the crows were offended.”

  I waited to hear the real cover story, and kept waiting.

  “Do you think anyone believed it?” I said.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know the real story, either, and… I don’t know. I just want to go home and get to sleep.”

  “But that can’t be the end,” I said. “I mean, the demon is still in the house. It’s just bound there. So…”

  “Sibyl said get out and go home,” Max said.

  I nodded, deciding that, however much it rankled me right this second, the whole sisterly trust thing kind of had to be a two way street, and not just when it was convenient to me.

  “Trish murdered that man. She didn’t poison him or pull the trigger of a gun, but her actions ended his life just as assuredly.”

  “Looks like it,” Max said, his voice hollow and tired.

  “Well, that stinks,” I said.

  “I’m sure someone will do something about it,” Lucy said, pasting on a grin and looking a little desperate to cheer me up.

  “Sure. Just like someone will do something about Hank having the books,” I said, then I pounded the arm rest of the car in frustration. Three books of magic, sitting right there within arm’s reach, and I fainted instead of grabbing them. Some magic finding witch I was turning out to be.

  Lucy’s grin got huge and genuine, and she seemed to shake with a silent but deep laughter.

  “What?”

  “Well, I got good at hiding cookies, and thermoses, right? Well…” She made a little gesture with her hands, opened her coat, and three books spilled out. The first were the two I knew, the last was the one I didn’t not, but which looked familiar some
how. I held out my hand, and Lucy put that one in it, looking pretty smug. Well, that was justified. So much for me fretting about whether she could or could not do magic. It wasn’t my magic, but why should it be?

  I looked at the cover, and knew it had been made by Grand-Mere. It wasn’t the book of Circe, but it was something new, something connected to her… And it had the words “My Gardening Tips” embroidered on the front.

  This had been hers, and it had gotten into Trish’s hands. Her magic had been subverted, with demon powers and whatever else, in order to do bad things. That made me angry. That made me so angry I could start spitting, shouting, and everything… except I didn’t have the energy for it. I could be angry later. Today, I needed to sleep.

  I laid back and knew that, though all my troubles weren’t over, several of them could wait.

  Sibyl opened the door just a crack for us before we could even touch the knob, glanced us over, then whispered the words, “Dog park.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Oh, they’re finally back,” she said, pulling the door open wide. In the sudden light I could see her face was much worse for wear than I’d anticipated - bruises, that cut on her lip, everything I could see in the dark of the front room was amplified and more terrible here in her own little domestic space.

  “Oh, honey,” I started, but before I could give her a compulsory hug the moppets rushed and grabbed me and Lucy, then switched off.

  “We’re so glad you’re okay,” Cathy said, who for some reason had tears pouring town her face while she laughed.

  “You didn’t hurt any dogs, did you?” Molly said, looking very serious.

  Lucy and I looked at each other, and while neither of us had any idea what she was talking about, we both shook our heads.

  “No, we took care of it without hurting any dogs,” I said, looking Molly right in the eye. It was true, after all.

  “Well, be that as it may,” Gary said, stepping just a couple of feet way from his recliner, as if getting too far away from it would commit him too much to some sort of cause, one he wasn’t entirely keen on. “There has to be something done about it. Packs of wild dogs taking over a dog park, knocking people over left and right? That’s… it’s not what should happen.”

  “Did any of them bite your neck and shake you like a rabbit?” Cathy said, her eyes going wide with excitement.

  “Dogs don’t do that,” Molly said, still super serious.

  “I saw it on a video on-line. A dog hunting a rabbit, and it just shook him right up.”

  Molly gasped, then she looked at Lucy, feeling for her hand as if she was going to drop dead on the spot from delayed dog-shake syndrome.

  “No, no, it was just a complete mess. Some birds got in on the act, too. It was like… that movie where all the birds attack. What was that called, Lucy?” I said.

  She shrugged. “Pigeons from Hell?”

  “The city council should have a meeting about it,” Gary said.

  “Sure, I agree,” Sibyl said. “I’ll talk to Tom about it in the morning. They didn’t seem to be local dogs, though. Maybe they were just passing through.”

  “Do dogs do that?” Lucy said. I shot her a dagger look, but Sibyl just shrugged.

  “With a weird act of nature like this, who knows? Tomorrow, we won’t even believe it happened.”

  “Trampled by dogs,” I said, shaking my head.

  And then again I said it, after a long shower when Sibyl knocked on my bedroom door, and came in with Lucy. “Trampled by dogs?”

  “It can happen, is almost impossible to check out and a little embarrassing, so nobody really wants to follow up on it. I’ve got a dozen of those from my days… back when I did this all the time.”

  “Really?” Lucy said.

  “Oh my gosh, you didn’t fall into a bee hive at bee-keeping camp. I bet you never were AT bee-keeping camp!”

  “Demon wasp attack.”

  I was ready to laugh, before the bad part of it caught up with me.

  “That means lying,” I said. Not in a judgy how dare you kind of way, but just realizing that it was inevitable, and sad, because the only people who we had to keep in the dark were the people who loved us enough to care. It doesn’t feel right, even if it is necessary.

  “You’ve been keeping things from Gary all over the place, and this is just one more. I’m not going to argue about it,” she said.

  “Neither am I, Sib. Just sad, about everything. About you going on your own when we said we wouldn’t,” I said, giving her a pointed look, waiting for the flood of defensiveness or I know better than you or…

  “You’re right. You knew we needed to work together, and I can’t use this magic worth a damn. But at least… it’s mostly over. I’ve already contacted others about coming and getting the demon out of there.”

  “How? When?” I said, finding a sudden hidden well of energy bursting inside me. I was suddenly ready for more horrible and deadly adventuring.

  Sibyl shrugged. “I’m out. I doubt I’ll see them, until they come to get the book back.”

  I shook my head. “No, I need that book. That’s how we’re going to find the book of Circe. Kashmir and me, we’ve—”

  “No,” Sibyl said, all the recent sisterly warmth completely gone from her voice. “I was nearly killed because of that thing. It’s too dangerous to be out in the open. It needs to be hidden away.”

  “Sure, I get it. Later.”

  “Now.”

  “Who’s got the book?” Lucy said, innocently.

  Sibyl held out her empty hand, and made a grabby motion. “I do. Once you give it to me.”

  Lucy shook her head. “Nope, too much angry talky, and I need to get to sleep. We did a whole lot tonight.”

  “Wait!” Sibyl said, and Lucy did not wait, she skedaddled.

  “I’m gonna—” Sibyl started, and then she flinched when I touched her shoulder.

  “You’re not in charge, Sib,” I said.

  “You are?”

  “No. We decide these things together, don’t run roughshod over each other, and… where did you get the blood of the innocent freely given?” I said, remembering the necessary ingredient for the demon binding spell.

  “Oh, that’s easy. I’m on the board of the local blood drive. Every six months I siphon off a little from someone who looks innocent. Easy peasy.”

  She stood up to go.

  “Wait, there’s a lot of other questions I have. Like the meeting with Wilhelm, and the envelopes you didn’t open.”

  “It didn’t matter anymore. It’s done,” she said, way sharper than she had to.

  “Whoa, calm down. I just wanted—”

  “Go to bed,” she said, like she was telling her kid.

  “Hold on, Sibyl. If he knew about the demon and—”

  “He didn’t tell me anything. He said I should leave town until someone still on the team could take care of it. It was just a courtesy visit, and that he needs somewhere to hide the book until more malties came,” and then she left the room quickly.

  “Gosh,” I said, getting ready to be very offended and mouth off about it to anyone who would listen. Which was no-one today, because I was here on my own.

  A picture of my sister’s life suddenly came into my head: all of her philanthropy, all of her boards and her PTA and her volunteering and being on police civilian review boards… she was keeping her finger on the pulse of the entire town, not just to fill empty days. She was watching and waiting and being ready, in case she was ever called on again.

  And when someone did come to town, it wasn’t to bring her back in with the cause. It was just a warning, and an order to stay away. Oh, and hold onto the book for the real heroes. I didn’t understand what my sister was going through, and I probably couldn’t. I was moving into my new job, doing the exciting things I was doing. She’d been moved out, and couldn’t go back.

  Thinking about that, and determined not to think about anything else until I woke up, I went t
o bed, and slept.

  Chapter 28

  I have to admit I cried a little when I got into my kitchen, and saw that back refrigerator filled with sample scones. I would need to call about half a dozen places I was going to get supplies from and cancel orders. For many of them, it would be too late to cancel and this wedding which was going to make my new reputation in town would probably just throw me in the poorhouse.

  It could even spell the end of Auclair Tea Shop, if I didn’t find some new way of making money, and fast. Maybe I was too quick to put an end to Lucy’s cookie enterprise.

  I sat on the floor of my immaculate kitchen, and just stared, weeping. I felt a little better when a nose nudged me from behind, and then Kashmir, who was not predisposed to compassion, crawled into my lap and just stayed there, being warm and furry.

  Then, opening time came around, and I had to let in my lovely but basically completely unprofitable regulars. The Secret Angels filed in with their usual grins and jokes, but maybe they caught my mood because it wasn’t long until they were silently knitting while sipping their tea.

  Even the animals they made looked more subdued. Lana was working brown yarn into a rather dull looking Walrus. Beth had black and red yarn intertwined, and for whatever reason was making a spider. Why would some poor sick kid want a wool spider? I didn’t know, I didn’t ask, I just leaned against the front counter and stared out the window.

  Then the door opened, and Mr. Handsome walked in. Wearing the same clothes he’d been in yesterday, and looking like he hadn’t managed to get either the shower or the sleep I had, he should have looked rough and unpresentable. But he had that kind of quality to him that a day’s worth of stubble and a pack of dust on his jacket somehow made him look handsomer, while after last night I had looked… well, like a pack of wild dogs had trampled me.

  “Give me a special blend,” he said, sitting at a table far enough from the Groves sisters, who were all looking at him with big-old saucer eyes, that they couldn’t overhear us without straining. I didn’t say a thing to him until I had the tea ready, and then I only sat across from him after he gave me a very long look, and I felt I couldn’t not do it anymore.