Whiskey Storm (Whiskey Witches Midnight Rising Book 1)

by F. J. Blooding

  26

  Anyone who says it’s easy to walk away from their kids to go to work or save the world is a shamer. It took everything Paige had to keep on walking. Out of the castle, out of the bedroom, out of the house, and then to drive. Down the driveway. Down the road.

  Back to her house.

  But this was the best thing for her kids. Not for herself but for them.

  Once home, she walked into a quiet house and her heart opened like a dam. She made it to her empty bedroom and sobbed like a broken thing, missing Dexx, missing her kids, missing her freakin’ sister who lived in the same freakin’ house but who was so busy—they both were—that they never really got to really see one another.

  When was the last time they’d all just hung out?

  Too long.

  She came to the end of her tears and took a shower, recovering in the hot water, letting it take more than dirt and smell, allowing her sorrow to slide down the drain as well.

  When she was done, she tested her shift. She felt mostly back to normal, so she chose the shape of an owl and flew to town, stopping to see Leslie. The shop was full and busy with patrons—more than was comfortable, actually—and Leslie looked pleasantly frazzled. Like this was the thing she enjoyed.

  But when she looked up and saw Paige, her smile disappeared. “What happened?”

  Paige shook her head and gave her sister a smile. “Nothing. I’m just stopping by to say hi.”

  Leslie knew better than that and her expression said so, but she didn’t press the matter. “No twins.”

  “They’re in the library.”

  Leslie frowned as she thought that one through and then nodded and tipped her head to the side. “I hadn’t thought of that. That’s probably a good way of… yeah.”

  Paige gestured to the store. “What are we using for currency?”

  “Barter.” Leslie shrugged. “When we don’t have money…”

  “But how are you going to get supplies?”

  Leslie huffed a chuckle. “I’m going to go back to just making stuff. And by ‘going back,’ what I mean is doing things I’ve never done before.”

  Right? Alma might have known how to create soap from things she could make or provide herself, but Leslie had been raised by the internet. Why make or forage when she could get it with two-day free shipping?

  “I have some wax coming in from the bee guy. There are eight of them here, by the way. And I’m getting some herbs from one of the plant people in town. There are a bunch of them. I’m getting blossoms from one of the orchards. I’m even getting rocks from one of the rock guys.”

  Paige hadn’t realized any of those things were… things. “Sounds like this was the best thing—” She literally couldn’t come up with a better word? No. “—to happen to our little town.”

  “Well, the special interests of people came out and became useful, that’s for sure. We’ve also got a couple of sewing people, knitters, and crocheters, and we’ve got a few people who know how to make yarn. Spinners. They spin. And we’ve got someone who has sheep and some kind of ox thing that’s super hairy. And we’ve had a request to get llamas or alpacas. I don’t know what the difference between the two are, but there’s a request to get some. And we have a supplier.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m working with Phoebe on that one. Nice girl. Real sweetie.” Leslie’s drawl was soft and gentle. She was really in her element and having fun.

  “Right? I was a little skeptical at first.” It felt good to just be normal for a minute and forget.

  “I don’t think we’ll have much of an issue letting her in.” Leslie bobbed her head from side-to-side and made a circling motion with her finger to encompass the Whiskey clan? Paige was going to assume that, anyway.

  “Or the brothers.” Technically, they were Leslie’s too, but in a step-step kind of way. They were Paige’s father’s other kids. When people were worried about breeding, sometimes the family tree looked like a jungle. Oh, what would judgy people think of them?

  Judgy things. That’s what.

  “Riiiiight.” Leslie drew the word out. “Love you?”

  “Love you back.” Paige gave her sister a hug.

  Leslie held on a little longer. “I’m real sorry, baby sister.”

  “Yeah,” Paige said around the tears she’d thought she’d left in the shower and melted into her sister for a moment, accepting the nonverbal support they both knew she needed.

  “You gonna be okay?” Leslie asked in Paige’s ear.

  Paige nodded, swallowing the tears back. Where the hell was Dexx? And was he okay? Were the twins going to be fine without her? Was Bobby okay? Were these side-affects going to do him or Kammy any damage? “Always.”

  They parted ways and it was time to get to work.

  Paige wasn’t certain what was going on next, but Willow found her.

  “I’ve coordinated the supply run. Here’s the list of people who have volunteered for each.”

  Paige looked at the list as they walked down the middle of Main. She recognized a lot of the names. “And it’s a normal supply run?”

  “Yes. According to Chuck, there’s minimal risk.”

  Said like a project manager. “Okay. When are they thinking of going?”

  Willow gave her the rest of the details on that and a few other things. She got filled in again about the electricity. Things really did seem to be good there, though there were still a few loop holes they had to jump through, but Willow knew some contract law and a few contract lawyers and had called in a favor.

  The mechanics at the garage were working on enhancing the cars so they wouldn’t need gasoline since they weren’t certain they could get any of that. Willow had been unable to trade for gas so far and she said it didn’t look promising. She just didn’t have the right contacts.

  Which was okay. They’d survive.

  They made it to the corner Paige needed to turn to head to Red Star when Willow stopped her. “Chuck has information he wants to share with you.”

  That sounded serious.

  Willow pursed her full lips and licked them with a frown. “I know you want to do something, but…” She paused, running her bottom teeth along her top as she thought. “Do what’s right, not just what feels right.”

  “And what do you think that is?”

  Willow sucked in her lips for a moment and shrugged. “You know, this we can manage. You do something…” Her lips worked as if forming words she shouldn’t speak. She met Paige’s gaze, her eyes filled with worry.

  Paige nodded at her, silently telling her it was okay to voice her opinion.

  Willow gave a oh-well-it’s-not-like-I’m-getting-paid-anyway look. “He’s found one of the prisons and they’re planning to invade it.”

  That sounded like something Paige would want to do.

  “But if you guys do that, then all of this? All that I’m doing? It’s done. We’ll be at war and I…” Willow quirked her lips and shrugged deeply. “I don’t know I can save us through that.”

  Paige took in a deep breath and looked away, chewing on Willow’s opinion. It was sound council. “So, Chuck’s, huh?”

  Willow nodded, her expression softening slightly. “Mayor’s office. You’ll at least think about it?”

  “Yeah,” Paige said with a sigh. “Keep up the good work.”

  Paige walked into a town leadership meeting. She knew most everyone there, though there were a few new faces. Danny Miller and another young man who was introduced as a dryad, Harrison Walker. He didn’t go by Harry.

  Which… you know, was good information. He was really adamant about it.

  The dryads had found one location where paranormals were being held, but their chances weren’t good, and not everyone fully understood it. They’d watched a little too much TV.

  “It’s a prison,” Paige said to the group. “This isn’t like TV, where the inmates can just pop off the covers of their lights or bust into the plumbing of their toilets or sinks so
they could make a witty escape. It’s designed to keep people in, which also means it’s designed to keep people out. This won’t be easy, and if you get locked in, we might not be able to get you back out.”

  Chuck narrowed his pale blue eyes. “So, you believe we should sit this out?”

  She really wished Willow hadn’t sounded so damn realistic. “We just need to come up with more contingency plans because there are more ways this can go wrong than right.”

  Their plan relied heavily on the Blackman witches and Paige being able to do magick.

  Which would go badly if they had magick suppressors like they’d had at the White House.

  Right now, the plan was for Paige to go for the door controls and see if she could assist there, but she had no way of knowing the layout of this particular detention facility.

  It was a prison, not a country club.

  So, with all their plans and secondary plans in place, it was up to her if they were going in or not.

  They’d put it to a vote, and it was split almost down the middle, with the winning side to go.

  Going to the elven city was one thing. Standing up to an invading force in Kansas was one thing. But this?

  They’d be the invaders. This would be a declaration of war and was a decision that couldn’t be taken lightly.

  As everyone talked amongst themselves, Paige tossed it around inside her head.

  Chuck met her gaze from across the table, not offering judgement, just giving her support.

  The president had authorized the invasion of cities. She’d allowed troops to storm homes and take families from their beds. She’d allowed agents to shoot children as they fled to safety.

  The declaration of war had already been issued.

  Finally, she nodded.

  Chuck rapped his knuckles on the table and started issuing commands.

  Those who weren’t in favor weren’t a hundred percent against it. They simply weren’t comfortable with the consequences of these actions, and that was something Paige understood all too well.

  With the plan in place, it was time to gather the troops, which really just meant that everyone went and said their good-byes.

  Paige didn’t.

  Her people were either mired in the trenches of helping everyone or were goddess knew where because she didn’t.

  Chuck found her standing at the balcony of the mayor’s office. It wasn’t much of a balcony and probably wasn’t designed for a person to stand on it. It was tiny, not even wide enough for a chair. She didn’t understand it and didn’t know why a door opened to it.

  But she also didn’t have anything else to do, and it was her one and only quiet moment for… well, since two days after the twins were born, when she and Dexx had been quietly napping on the couch.

  She wasn’t thinking, wasn’t worrying, wasn’t dreaming, or worrying, or anything else. She just let her mind… go.

  Chuck stood silently beside her.

  Which, of course, made her brain jump into high gear because maybe she was supposed to be thinking something at that moment. Like all the alternative plans for when things went wrong because things were going to go wrong. They were breaking into a prison.

  Were they insane?

  “You won’t always have the answers.”

  She had a feeling he was trying to tell her things would be okay, that she wouldn’t completely fuck this up as a leader. That statement did absolutely nothing for her.

  “Trust in your instincts and in your people. As an alpha, you are only as strong as your pack.”

  Which was strange to hear because everyone seemed to have this opinion that alphas were only as strong as their dickish personality presented them to be. “Well, then, I’d say we’re pretty strong.” But strong enough?

  She had to hope so. After all, they had … she forgot how many actual people, but there were people in the plural who liked bees, plants, and rocks. And those were the odd ones. They also had amazingly discovered a way to bring power to a community that had been shut off from it. They had people who could and would get the news out when it was being suppressed. There were people able to take care of the kids while others fought and died. There were cooks and healers.

  Really smart and talented people.

  And some pretty powerful fighters. Yeah, they had those. And some incredibly powerful witches.

  So, yeah. Hopefully, they were strong enough.

  “This could be the tipping point.”

  Of what? Paige didn’t know much about war. She’d never read Sun Tzu, never even really wanted to. She might have to, though. She didn’t want to be the weakest link in their line of defense, and ignorance was not a strength, no matter what anyone chose to believe.

  But she did know they were nowhere close to a tipping point. Things were just going to get worse from here on out.

  What was her point? What was she looking for? When would she know they were getting close to a tipping point?

  When she saw how far the president was willing to go.

  Like with a child throwing a tantrum, Paige knew she had to push back. And when the toddler—the president of the frelling United States—pushed back, she’d have to push harder and harder and harder until she discovered where the president would stop. Where were her lines in the sand?

  Only then would they have a definition to this war.

  But more than that, she had to see how far her pack—all these paranormals who followed her—would go. What were their lines? How far would be too far for them?

  Because that would define this war as well.

  How far was Paige willing to go? Looking at Merry Eastwood and how Paige had been so upset and angry at her for freely walking the streets after murdering people for magick, and now Paige was okay with just working with her to the point she was actually growing a little respect for the woman? She had to question herself. She was changing. Her morals were bending. Too far?

  They would find out soon enough. It wouldn’t just be Paige who would know. Everyone who followed her would as well, and that terrified her.

  What was she thinking?

  “All true leaders worry.”

  Well, that one was helpful at least. “You don’t show it.”

  “That does not mean I don’t.”

  Those quiet words settled Paige’s nerves a little. “Do you ever get scared?”

  He nodded quietly and clasped his hands behind his back.

  People were gathering in the street below them. It was time.

  “Do you remember when your family came to us?”

  She remembered Chuck’s “welcome wagon” all too well. Dexx’d been driving. She’d been napping for the first time in, well, a while, and he’d lost control of his shift, only to be overrun by shifters. “Yeah.”

  “I was scared then.”

  She and Dexx had been two terrible unknowns at the time, new to the world of shapeshifters. Dexx was this powerful saber-toothed cat and no one knew what to make of Paige. “We were a danger you couldn’t know.”

  “No.” Chuck turned to her, his blue eyes hopeful, his lips pinched and frank. “I was scared of the world you two would open for us. I was scared of the change you would bring. Good or bad, the time of change is always the hardest, getting people to see the potential of how great or how bad a thing could become. Change is always met with fear and ferocity.”

  She’d been so naïve then. She almost wished she could go back. At least then, she had people she could look up to, people she could bring her problems to when they became too big.

  “We will be okay.” He gripped her shoulders firmly, giving her an alpha push. “And we will weather this.”

  This time, however, his alpha push wasn’t as her high alpha. It was simply the push of a fellow alpha. She swallowed. “But will we weather it well?”

  “No matter what you do today or tomorrow, no matter how you fail or succeed, those who survive will find a way to do so as well as they can.”

  “In jails?”


  “If they must.”

  It wasn’t great information, but it was helpful, staring into his blue eyes as they leveled the world of worry into a large and mostly flat playing field. People were survivors. At the end of the day, she could fall on that. “Thank you.”

  He nodded and released her, disappearing back into the mayor’s office.

  Paige took in one more deep breath and held it for a moment, surveying the town.

  As a leader, she’d kinda failed to protect this town once.

  But the people of this town had proven they were capable of surviving.

  She went downstairs and into the street, locating her Blackman witch—Bonnie. Well, there were several, but Bonnie was the one who was leading the other Blackmans this time. “Let’s see what we can do.”

  Bonnie didn’t wait for further instructions. She opened a door, and Paige stepped through.

  To just outside the walls of the prison.

  There was nowhere to hide, and it was dusk, so, Paige threw up her hands and called on a small duststorm to hide them as that was really the only thing around—dust, pale dirt, and low shrubs. Great place for a prison.

  The rest of the people came through and the door closed.

  Paige had been able to pull up one picture of the place. Only one, from a high angle.

  Three main cell blocks surrounded a central hub, but which ones contained paranormals?

  She visually scanned to see if she could locate dampening fields.

  None that she could immediately see.

  It was time. “Can you get us into that cell block?”

  Bonnie nodded.

  Paige knew that, once inside, there wasn’t going to be a place to hide. They’d appear right in the middle of the room—if they were lucky—and would be immediately exposed.

  But that would tell her whether she was able to use her magick or not.

  Bonnie opened the door, and she stepped through.

  Into the “common room” of a large cell block. She powered up her witch hands.

  And they answered. She stepped back through, and the door closed, everyone looking at her expectantly.

  “I have magick.”

  That was all they needed. Doors opened up all around her.

  The fight was on.