by Kris Calvert
“Lord of Light. You ate the cupcake.”
Not only was he in love, he was compelled to speak the truth in my presence.
“I must have you. I’ll do anything, anything. May I kiss your feet? Give you a full body massage? Name it and it shall be yours. Your wish is my command. I’m like your own personal genie. Just let me love you and satisfy your every need. I will honor you and keep you—”
“Bazel,” I sighed dropping my hands to my side. “I told you not to eat the cupcake!”
Dropping the roses, Bazel rushed to me, enveloping my body in his arms and dipping me to the floor. Pressing his warm lips to mine, he kissed me with every fiber of his magical being. At first, it felt wrong—like I was kissing my brother, but then I could feel the magical spell radiate through his body and begin to course through mine. Like a shot of whiskey, it was shocking to my system at first, but turned into something warm and relaxing.
As his tongue swept through my mouth, I heard someone call my name as if from a distant dream. Deliverance
“Deliverance!”
“Mmph?” I mumbled, trying to release my lips from the kiss. “What was that?” I asked, pushing myself from Bazel, backing away and across the room in shock.
“What the hell?” Barnabas shouted. “Bazel, you’re under a spell. You don’t love Deliverance. She’s in love with me.”
A grin crept across Bazel’s face and I knew in my soul this was going to be a fight. I sighed, we did not have time for this nonsense.
Bazel circled the room like a caged animal. “Are we dueling for a lover, brother?”
“Don’t you dare shift in my bakery, Bazel. Don’t you do it.”
“If that’s the way it’s gotta be, little brother,” Barnabas countered.
“I’m serious. The first one who shifts into a bobcat in the middle of my cupcakes is going to have to deal with me.”
Barnabas turned his neck from side to side, audibly cracking it and readying himself for a take down. “Get your ass outside, Bazel. I’ve put up with you and your conniving ways for longer than I’ve cared to. If this is my chance to kick your sorry ass, I’m not opposed to taking it.”
“You’re so full of shit, Barnabas. I’ve always been the stronger twin and you know it. You’ve forced me to come on this charade of a second life with you because you just had to be with Deliverance—but guess what? I’m the one who should be with her. Not! You!” Bazel’s eyes changed from steely gray to red and spittle fell from his lips. I turned to find Barnabas in a similar state.
“This is my final warning to both of you,” I said calmly. “I will crate both of your furry arses if you can’t calm down.”
Growls erupted from both of them as they circled each other while I stood in the middle getting dizzy.
“She’s mine!” Bazel growled.
Barnabas stood upright, his clothes now ripping at the seams as he began to shift.
“That’s it. I’m calling bullshit on the both of you,” I said with calm reserve.
With a twirl of my finger, each of them were caged on opposite sides of the bakery. Testosterone fueled howls of anger filled the store while I calmly placed my hands on my hips, waiting for it to stop.
“Don’t make me tape your mouths shut, because you know I will.”
Each of them charged at the bars of the cage like a wild animal and I took a seat at one of the tables, conjuring myself a cupcake from the bakery display. “We can do this all day fellas, but we really don’t have all day. If you want your life back, Bazel—and if you want me back Barnabas, we’re going to have to work together.”
“Break the love spell!” Barnabas shouted. He was angry with his brother, but now he was also pissed at me for locking him up.
“She can’t.”
Everyone stopped their moaning for only a moment as Felix climbed the leg of my table to steal a bite from my cake. “The spell will only be broken if Hale is dead,” he said, licking his tiny hands still covered in icing.
“What?” I shrieked. “That wasn’t part of the Kamasutra love muffin spell.”
“Eh.” Felix shrugged his shoulders. “I changed it up a little. We needed some insurance that the first part of your mother’s spell could be broken. I wasn’t taking any chances with your life.”
“So you took a chance with mine?” Barnabas shouted, now returning to his human form while Bazel had shifted completely, and even worse, was now sporting a full bobcat hard on.
“You know you just keep giving me reasons to eat you,” Barnabas hissed.
“Oh my God, Bazel. Put that thing away,” I begged, holding my hand in front of my eyes.
“Oh my God, Bazel,” Felix mimicked. “Don’t put that away. I’m impressed, fine sir. No wonder you love his brother, Dee. Is everything identical with these two? Dayum. Cock-a-saurus Rex anyone?”
“Felix, stop it,” I snapped, now beyond annoyed with all three of them. “I need to reverse the spell on Bazel.”
Felix shook his head no.
“Deliverance honey,” Barnabas cooed. “Let me out of this cage, sweetie.”
I tossed a glare his way. “Only if you can be a good boy and play nice.”
He nodded and with a twirl of my finger, his cage dissipated just as quickly as it had captured him.
“What about me, sweetie?” Bazel’s voice rumbled low and inviting and I remembered the days when Barnabas would shift, cuddling my naked body against his warm fur. The sound took me off guard, taking me to a place I’d only dreamt of in two hundred years.
“My darling, Deliverance,” Barnabas said breaking the trance his brother’s voice had over me.
“Yes?”
“Perhaps it’s best if we keep my brother—confined, so to speak, while we figure out how to kill Hale.”
I watched Bazel pace back and forth in the cage—agile, strong, beautiful. It was nearly hypnotic to watch.
“Did you kiss him?” Felix poked me, breaking my concentration.
“What?”
“It’s a simple question, did you kiss Bazel?”
“I mean…he kissed me.”
“Did you—you know—feel anything?” Felix asked.
“I don’t know, why?”
“That spell is so powerful. It can rub off. I’m just making sure you’re not feeling, you know, anything strange.”
I shook it off and looked back to Barnabas, holding my hand out to him for him to take. “The only thing I’m concerned with is how to rid all of our lives of Hale. Now,” I said twirling my finger as the spell book appeared in front of us. “I’ve been looking through here and I just don’t know what to choose.”
“It needs to be lethal, Deliverance,” Barnabas said.
“Lethal,” Felix parroted.
“Well,” I sighed, paging through the book. “There’s the Spanish Donkey.”
Felix winced. “Ouch. It would cut him in half for sure, but knowing he’s an immortal mortal, we have to finish the job and not have some man running around the world, held together by duct tape, if you know what I mean.”
“And I do,” I replied.
“That sort of rules out the draw and quarter spell, or the iron maiden.”
“Nothing with torture,” Barnabas added. “We just want him dead.”
“Oh a little torture wouldn’t be too terribly awful, would it?” I asked with a wicked smile.
Felix rolled his eyes at me. “Stick to the plan, Deliverance.”
“Well surprise, surprise,” Barnabas mumbled. “For the first time we agree on something, rat.”
SEVEN
THE NEW DAY shone through my window, the dust particles playing in the air. I pinched myself. Lying next to me was was the love of my life. Barnabas, naked and spooning my body tightly into his own, breathed heavily against my shoulder and for the first time in centuries, I felt safe. I felt loved. I felt whole.
Today would be the alpha and the omega for me. It was beginning of a new life and the end of another. I knew it coul
d somehow not end as I’d pictured it in my mind, but at the same time I could only project what I wanted. If I strayed too far from my intentions, my spell would be doomed. Casting spells was just as much about believing in the outcome as it was in the spell itself—my mother had taught me that.
I’d gone to bed thinking about our plan to kill Hale. We all agreed it was risky—very risky—but it was the only surefire way to rid him from the universe and banish him to the underbelly of the cosmos forever.
I exhaled and felt the man I loved more than life itself stir next to me.
“Are you awake?” he whispered into my neck with a delicate kiss.
“Yes.”
Taking me by the shoulders, he rolled me over to meet his gaze. I’d missed his warm hands, and now here he was right in my bed next to me.
“I need to tell you something, Deliverance.”
I pushed the gray streak from my face, nestling my head against his pillow. “I’m listening.”
“No matter what happens today, you need to know something.”
My stomach clenched. If he was going to confess something I didn’t want to know, I didn’t think I could handle it. “Wait,” I said, placing a single finger across his lips. “Is this something that you need to get off your chest because you can’t live without me knowing?”
He nodded.
“But is it for my own good? Or to ease your conscience?”
“Both.”
“Fine, but be careful with your words. Like my mother’s spell, words can do immeasurable damage. Okay?”
Barnabas rolled to his side, resting his head in his hand. “Do you remember the day we met?” he asked, brushing my cheek with the back of his fingers.
I nodded. “Of course. Back then I was more worried about losing you to a British soldier or a bloodthirsty Vamp hunt than being taken away and relocated in a storm.”
He let out a small laugh. “I was just worried about losing you.”
“I’m glad we found each other again.”
“She said you’d eventually make your way here. All I needed to do was believe it. So I’ve been here, waiting for you for over a hundred years.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “I hope I was worth the wait.”
“With every fiber and hair of my body and soul I can tell you, you were. That’s why I want to give you this.”
Sitting up in bed, Barnabas reached across me to the nightstand, bringing back with him a simple linen sack tied with a leather cord.
“I’ve carried this in my coat pocket for two hundred years, always keeping it close to my heart.”
“Maybe you should’ve kept it closer to your loins.” Nervous, I took the opportunity to make a joke in the midst of his seriousness.
“This isn’t how I pictured this, Deliverance. But I’m not going into today’s battle with Hale unless you know this.”
I sat up, bringing the sheet under my arms to cover my chest. “I’m sorry. I’m listening.”
“Deliverance Parker. Daughter of Mary Ayer and Nathan Parker, I have long struggled with the most respectful passion that has ever filled the heart of a Shifter. Now that fate has brought us together once more, I can no longer keep my longing to myself. Contained herein,” he said clutching the bag in his grip. “Is the future I hope to build with my one and only love—my one and only mate. Be mine for eternity, Deliverance. I will love you until a’ the seas gang dry.”
A single tear rolled down my cheek as Barnabas opened the simple fabric bag, dropping a golden ring into his palm.
“I had this made for you long ago. I’ve carried it near my heart, until I could place it on your finger.”
The Georgian ring was a heart shaped, rose cut diamond mounted in a silver setting with a crown of three additional rose cut diamonds. Barnabas slid the ring on my left ring finger and began to recite our poem.
“As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, so deep in love am I. And I will love thee still my dear, till a’ the seas gang dry.”
“Barnabas,” I gasped. I gazed into the steely gray eyes of the man I’d loved across time and space—a man I knew to be the mate of my soul. Even though he no longer looked like himself, I recognized him to be everything that was missing in my existence, in my life. He was my other half.
“Be my mate? Travel eternity with me forevermore?”
I nodded. “Until a’ the seas gang dry.”
* * *
WE STOOD IN the middle of the bakery staring at one another. Me, Barnabas, Felix, all of us ready for battle.
Bazel, still unable to control his urges, paced inside the force I’d whipped up. Breaking into fits of rage when anyone other than me spoke to him, I actually hoped that Hale would show earlier instead of later. As much as I didn’t care for Bazel, it wasn’t his fault the cupcake he ate was enchanted.
“Are we prepared?” Barnabas asked, looking directly at Felix.
“Yes, hot shot. We’re prepared. I’m prepared, she’s prepared. Even he’s ready,” Felix said pointing across the room to Bazel, who responded by momentarily stopping his cat pace to stare down my small but mighty familiar.
“Ha,” Barnabas snorted. “Looks like I’m not the only one who wants to eat you for lunch.”
“Enough,” I said, looking to the clock on the wall. “He could be here any moment. I’m going to move Bazel to the kitchen to keep him out of sight. Even though Reverend Hale is fully aware of who we are and what we’re capable of, I don’t want him to know how outnumbered he is.”
“His special treat is ready,” Felix said, nodding to the one Death By Chocolate cupcake on the counter.
“Then there’s only one thing left to do.”
We looked each other in the eye and I stepped away from the group twirling not only my finger, but my entire body in a circle. When the rainbow of sparkling power finally dissipated, I stared at myself in the mirror over the counter and could hardly believe my eyes. I’d cloaked myself in the very skin of my dead mother—down to the long black dress with a high collar. It was exactly what she wore the night Hale hanged her on Gallows Hill.
“Shut my mouth and call in the undertaker. I think I just died,” Felix said, stepping back in astonishment.
I found myself welling up as I stared at the face of my mother in the mirror. Touching my cheek, it still felt like me on the inside, but the outside was all Mary Ayer Parker. I turned to Barnabas. “Well?”
“I never met your mother, but I see you in her.”
“Yeah,” scoffed Felix. “Like literally in her.”
“Deliverance, tell your rat I’m going to eat him when this is all over.”
“Shifter, please,” Felix said. “You keep saying that, but truth be told, I’d gladly put myself in your mouth. I don’t think it’s what you’ve dreamed up in your head, but it’s definitely what I’ve dreamed up in mine.”
“Okay, okay. I can only contain one magical being and kill another while masquerading as a third for so long. Now I love you both, but get along or get out. You’re no good to me if we can’t work as a team.”
“Fine,” they said in unison.
Walking to the window, I stared at the sun and knew it was four-thirty in the afternoon. A few white clouds dotted the blue sky and I sent my intentions out into the atmosphere for help today. If I could control the weather that I created with my emotions, I would be putting it to the greatest test of my lifetime.
I scanned the street looking for him. A couple of patrons waved and Sassy, the witch with the voracious appetite for sex, acted as if she was making her way to the store for more cupcakes when I turned over the Open sign and shouted, “Sorry! Closing early today. Come back in the morning.”
“Any sign of him?” Felix asked.
I looked up and down the street, finally doing a double take when I saw him hobbling along, two short steps and one long one with his cane. Immediately I felt the rage inside me brew. It was different this time. It was stronger. I didn’t know if it was because I wore the skin
of my mother or if three hundred years of emotions were about to bubble to the surface. All I knew was that I’d never felt more powerful.
I stepped away from the window and stared into the eyes of the soul I loved. “This is it.”
He nodded.
“I’d better get dressed,” Felix said, shifting into naked Ken.
“Good grief, man. Put on some clothes,” Barnabas muttered.
“You’re terribly butch, you know that?”
I twirled my finger, dressing Felix in the same clothes as yesterday and walked behind the counter and into the kitchen with Barnabas. It was about to get real—really fast.
I swallowed hard and listened to the thunder rumble outside. I knew he was in the building.
“Hello again,” Hale sputtered. “I’m here to see—”
Felix stepped back, intentionally acting as if he didn’t want to be coughed on. “I know who you’re here to see.”
“Is she…”
“She is,” Felix said, cutting him off. “Here. Take this cupcake and sit right here. I’ll bring you a cup of coffee and she’ll be right out to greet you.”
Hale raised his eyebrows and licked his lips as he sat at the pink table. I knew he would go for the cake—I’d baked an attraction and craving spell into it. He might be immortal, but he was still mortal and that meant I could tap into a weakness.
I waited until he’d peeled back the paper to lick the icing and taken a big bite before opening the swinging door to greet him.
“We meet again, John Hale.”
The horror showed in his face as he gasped, choking on the cupcake and the death by chocolate incantation I’d conjured into the batter.
“It is I, Mary Parker. The Witch you hanged on Gallows Hill.”
“You’re dead,” he wheezed, clutching at his throat.
“Dead is a relative thing, Reverend. You of all people should know that.”
