Bewitched: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (Betwixt & Between Book 2)

by Darynda Jones

  The wolves attacked. They jumped from all sides, their growls and snarls the stuff of nightmares. Thomas screamed as they tore at his flesh. Roane stood back and watched. Not a single wolf bit me. In fact, one knocked me to the ground and stood over me as her packmates ripped the man to shreds.

  Then, with another snap of his jaw, they stopped and tore off into the night, including the one guarding me. But he stayed. I lay on the ground and watched as he walked forward, his movements slow. Full of purpose.

  He gazed at me, his olive eyes shimmering, before he bent his head and licked my neck. He whimpered and nudged my jaw with his nose. I reached up and drew my hand back, realizing I was bleeding worse than I thought.

  Naturally.

  I collapsed onto the grass and looked back at the chief. He was upside down. The uniform trained his gun on Roane. The chief lowered the man’s weapon for him and said in a low growl, “Don’t you dare.”

  The uniform raised his hands in surrender and went to check on Thomas, who lay sobbing, holding an arm they’d ravaged. The arm that tried to suffocate me.

  The bad arm.

  Then I felt it. More licking. Only this time, the sensation was familiar.

  I looked over and watched as Roane licked my curled fingers. His tongue molded to each digit, tickling them like when I was a kid. Then he moved to my thumb. My palm. Up to my wrist, bathing it in warmth. Luckily, it was the Percy-free wrist. Had it not been, I wasn’t sure how that would’ve ended.

  Putting a massive paw between my arm and ribcage, he bent to my neck again, his cold nose nudging me.

  I reached over with my other hand and buried my fingers in his thick fur. It was much softer than I imagined it would be.

  The next time he went for my ear, gently nipping the lobe before taking off and vanishing into the darkness.

  I sucked in a soft breath and grabbed my ear.

  “I’m going to assume you’re okay?” the chief said, standing over me.

  “I’m pretty good right now. Thanks, Chief.”

  He knelt beside me. “You’re soaking wet.”

  “I know. He’s so hot, though, even as a wolf.”

  He grinned, unfazed. “You probably saved that woman’s life. Possibly the girl’s too.”

  “Good. Hope Thomas had so much faith in Grandma, how could I let her down?”

  “I’ve called for a paramedic and a stretcher.”

  “What?” I asked, raising up and bringing half the leaves of the forest with me. Honestly, my poor hair. “I can walk, Chief. I swear.” I stood. It took a while, but I managed it.

  “Are you sure?” He took my arm. “’Cause you look a little wobbly.”

  “I think the mass of leaves on my back is throwing me off balance.”

  “Yeah, that’s it for sure.”

  Ten

  If each day is a gift, I’d like to know

  where I can return Monday.

  -Meme

  After a tearful goodbye and a thousand thank-yous from Hope and Clara, I felt good. And I wanted a shower. The chief had a uniform drive my car home while he drove me.

  “Thanks for believing me, Chief,” I said when we pulled up to Percy. “You didn’t even question it. You just came.”

  “Of course, I did. I am very aware of what you’re capable of, daffodil. I’m retiring soon, but I’ll make sure my replacement is just as aware. As long as Ruthie thinks it’ll be okay to bring him or her into the fold. It’s ultimately up to you, however.”

  “Retiring?” My world spun back into the orbit of uncertainty, like he’d just pulled the rug out from under me. “Why are you retiring?”

  “I’m too old for this shit.”

  “That’s silly.”

  “Nah, daffodil, I could’ve retired almost ten years ago. It’s time.”

  I knew he was a good twenty years Ruthie’s junior, which would place him in his early sixties, but damn, he looked good. I was beginning to wonder if Ruthie had an anti-aging spell because I wanted in.

  “Well, I’m going to wash my hair first, but then I really think we need to talk about this.”

  He laughed softly. “Promise.”

  I jumped out of his cruiser and waved to Parris, who’d seen us pull up and come out onto her porch, her busy body getting the better of her.

  My clothes were muddy and wet and ice cold. Not a good feeling. After running into the house, I started for the stairs and a hot shower. Before I reached the first step, however, a light from the kitchen caught my attention. A glow.

  Was it on fire?

  I ran toward the back of the house only to find the entire kitchen alight with a luminous yellow-orange glow. I searched for the source and found it sitting on the breakfast table where I’d left it.

  The other message.

  The glow was so bright it made the kitchen look as though it were on fire.

  What in the world could make a fear of male pattern baldness so urgent? A little girl trapped in a house with a sadistic, controlling asshole, I could understand. But a man worried about his receding hairline? Still, it was obviously important.

  I almost grabbed it with my unprotected fingers but pulled back at the last second. The last time I tried that, the message burned my fingers. I searched for the salad tongs first. I pulled the message out of the pile I’d left. It was the one from the balding man.

  I tried the number to one Leonard Quinn of Ipswich to no avail. Then again, it was a tad late.

  After biting my lower lip for a few seconds and weighing my options, I realized I had to change before I could even think about checking on the man. The sense of urgency I now felt had me flying up the stairs. Well, flying if I were a velociraptor. Slow and ungainly with more weight than my wings could feasibly lift off the ground.

  Breathless, and not in a good way, I tore off my clothes, wondering yet again if I should wake Annette to come with me. Doing this, helping people, had been her idea. To take all of those messages. To start a business. But it was now after three in the morning. I couldn’t do that to her.

  Come to find out, peeling off water-logged wet clothes was not as easy as one might imagine. Gazing longingly at the shower and the bottle of shampoo inside, I dried off, threw on the warmest sweater I could find, brushed most of the dirt and leaves out of my hair, and flew back down the stairs. This time I resembled a less flighty bird. Something along the lines of a penguin. Or possibly an ostrich during a mating dance.

  I slid to a stop at the front door, remembered I’d left my keys in the Popsicle jeans I’d just peeled off, did the velociraptor-ostrich dance again, then tried to open the door, my legs and lungs burning from all the danged stairs.

  Like the first time I’d tried to leave tonight, it wouldn’t budge.

  I stepped back to examine it. No vines were blocking it. It just flat wouldn’t budge. I tried again, pulling harder on the knob. Nothing. I checked the lock that I knew I hadn’t locked. I locked and unlocked it for good measure. Nope.

  Was Percy blocking it somehow? He was pretty much the house itself. Maybe he didn’t need the vines to block the door.

  I looked up. “Percy, the message is glowing. I feel an urgency, like this guy’s hairline is in serious trouble. I have to go check on him.” I pulled on the door again and sagged against it. “Percy, you are not helping.”

  The vine on my wrist tightened softly.

  I turned full circle. “What does that mean? Are you blocking the door?”

  The rosebuds on the bracelet opened up.

  “Okay, open for yes. Close for no. Will that work?”

  They opened farther. That was a yes.

  “Are you blocking the door?” I asked my wrist.

  Opening even more, the petals spread gracefully. Yes, again.

  “Wait, really? Why?”

  Nothing.

  Okay. Yes or/no questions. “Are you blocking the door because, I don’t know, you’re worried about me?”

  They opened more, the swirls in the middle rev
ealing the filament tucked inside.

  “Is this guy a jerk?” That I didn’t need tonight. Not with unwashed hair. I’d already dealt with a couple jerks while trying to help people.

  Nothing.

  “You don’t know. Then why?” I asked again. “You’re just being cautious.”

  Nothing.

  “I’m going to take your silence as a yes. Percy, I need to check on this guy. You have to let me out.”

  The tiny roses folded into themselves like ballerinas, closing once again to create the beautiful little buds that dotted the vine in a resounding no.

  Frustrated, I tried the door again, groaning through gritted teeth, then I stepped back. “You know what? Fine. I give up. I’ll just take a shower and go to bed then. But if something happens to Leonard Quinn, it’s on you, buddy.”

  I trudged up the stairs, sliding my jacket off as I went. I kept an iron grip on it as I entered my bathroom. As nonchalantly as I could, I hung it on a hook on the side of the shelves. The shelves that led to a super-secret, super-cool passageway. The passageway that Percy couldn’t enter.

  Roses blossomed in the corner where the wall met the ceiling.

  I started to pull up my sweater, then slammed the sweater back down over my decolletage offended. “Percy, I told you. Out of the bathroom.”

  The vines shrank back, and I tried not to let the astonishment I felt show on my face. He’d fallen fell for the oldest trick in the book. Or the second oldest. I couldn’t be certain.

  Before he caught on, I grabbed the hook—and the jacket off the hook— and pulled the shelves open. Jumping into the narrow passageway, I flung my jacket on the ground next to me before he caught on.

  Which he did pretty quickly, unfortunately. He tried to close the shelves, but it was too late, I was mostly through. In my haste, however, I fell. My foot was still inside the threshold when the shelves shot toward me. I gasped, thinking my ankle was a split second away from being crushed when they stopped suddenly, like they’d been frozen in time.

  They hadn’t.

  The shelves immediately opened again, and I wondered why until I saw a vine wrapped around my boot.

  Uh- oh.

  Percy jerked me toward the bathroom as I released a screech worthy of a barn owl.

  “Percival Goode!” I shouted as he slid me inside. He was like Jaws. Or the plant from Little Shop of Horrors. Or—gasp—Jason Voorhees!

  I anchored my other foot against the door frame and pushed. My resistance must have surprised him, because I got far enough out into the hall that parts of him shriveled and shrank back. He immediately let go, and I boomeranged into the passageway, hitting my head on the other wall.

  Grabbing it with both hands, I lay in a fetal position for a solid twenty-three seconds before shaking it off and struggling to my feet. I looked back at him. The threshold was sprinkled with black dust.

  I knelt down and picked some up. “Percy, I’m so sorry.”

  He’d withdrawn all the way back into my bedroom, and I didn’t dare peek around the doorframe to check on him. I lay my head against the wall at an angle where I could see much of the vines in there. They were okay. Only the part that was pulled across the threshold had withered and died.

  With a soft intake of breath, I checked my wrist. The bracelet was gone. I looked at the wood floor beneath my feet. Black ash dusted a small area. I must have flung it off me when it withered and died.

  Surely there was more than just salt at work there. What would do that? Magic was certainly a fickle thing. Like when it wouldn’t work on the bar covering Clara’s window.

  So many questions, so little time.

  Reaching for the jacket I’d flung inside the passageway, I put it on. Then I scooped up what ash I could with my hands, cupped it into my palm, and transferred it to my jacket pocket. For what, I didn’t know, but it broke my heart that I hurt Percy who’d protected me so fiercely. I apologized again.

  “I’m sorry, Percy,” I said, angling my head.

  Percy slid back into the bathroom.

  “Are you okay?”

  Roses blossomed, black and bloodred, dark and gruesome and beautiful.

  I rubbed my wrist. “I didn’t know that would happen. I’m sorry.”

  The vines curled languidly like a cat’s tail before he closed the shelves behind me.

  The only way out from the passageway that I knew of, without going through the house, of course, was through the cave. I became lost almost immediately and took any stairs I found that were going down. Thirty-seven thousand flights later, I emerged in the cavern. I heard water dripping to my left and water running to my right. I went right.

  The flashlight on my phone helped me navigate the rough floor, but not much. The cave had more water in it this time, clearly tethered to the tide. My boots soaked through, and instantly I was wet once again. Not in a good way. Not in a Roane way.

  I followed the water for seventeen miles or possibly a quarter of a mile. It was hard to tell. I came to an iron grate that had been pushed aside as though someone had recently entered it or exited it. The metal hinges had been cut through with something either very sharp or very hot. I ducked through a small opening and emerged through a grouping of vines and bushes into the middle of nowhere.

  I had no idea where I was, but I followed the GPS back to the house, my toes frozen. I didn’t want to call anyone. It was nearing four in the morning. The more I walked, the warmer I got. But I doubted my toes would ever forgive me. I took more turns than a Stephen King novel, ending up on Lafayette then Dodge then Normal. I was finally back at the house and, more importantly, my vintage mint green Volkswagen Beetle came into view.

  After fishing my keys out of my pocket with fingers that had lost all feeling about ten minutes into the walk, I tiptoed to the bug, then stopped to listen. When I heard nothing but the sound of my own wheezing, I inserted the key into the lock as slowly as I could, unsure of how far Percy’s domain reached, and turned.

  That was when I saw them. The vines. Coming at me en masse like a wall of black razor wire.

  I ran.

  He followed.

  “Percival Goode! You stop this right now! Oh, hi, Parris!” I waved.

  The human drama detector next door picked that moment to step onto her front porch.

  A part of me couldn’t help but be impressed. Did she ever sleep? Was she a racoon? An owl? A vampire? At this point, nothing would surprise me.

  “Hey, Defia—are you okay?” she asked, her hand freezing in midair.

  “Wonderful. Thanks.” I ran past her walkway, but I could still feel Percy nipping at my heels. “Percival, damn it!” How could he come this far? Wasn’t he bound to the house? Or, at the very least, our property line?

  I was just about to run past Parris’s driveway when a huge black truck pulled into it. I slammed into the side. It was not pretty.

  The window rolled down and a very angry wolfman by the name of Roane Wildes glared at me. “Really?” he asked. “You’re going out alone again?”

  I dusted myself off. “It’s late. I didn’t want to wake anyone.”

  “Anyone like me?”

  I heard heavy breathing behind me and turned to see five feet of fury hurrying up to us. She was wheezing, too. It made me feel better about my own inability to fill and empty my lungs while partaking in strenuous activity without making a whistling sound.

  “You were going to leave me again?” Nette asked.

  “It’s late,” I repeated. “And how do you know I left you in the first place?”

  “You mean when you almost got killed saving that little girl and her mom without me? Everyone knows!” She waved an arm to demonstrate the totality of it all. “Percy woke up the entire house.”

  My lips parted in surprise. “I’m so sorry.” How many times had I said that tonight? Then I looked behind her, but Percival was nowhere near me. He had indeed stopped at our property line. But I could’ve sworn—

  “I’m not mad about
him waking me up.” She poked me softly in the chest. “I’m mad that you didn’t. And that you almost got killed without me.”

  Oops. “Fine, next time I almost get myself killed, I promise to almost get you killed, as well.”

  “See?” She threw her hands into the air and shrugged. “That’s all I ask,” she said, bending at the waist, still gasping for air. Goddess, we were out of shape.

  I decided to turn the tables on her. “This is all your fault, anyway.”

  “How is this my fault?” she asked Parris’s sidewalk.

  “You took the messages. Now they’re, like, summoning me.”

  She bolted upright. “How?”

  “They’re all bright and summony. I don’t know.”

  “So.” She, crossed her arms over her heaving bosom. “You haven’t lost your powers after all.”

  “I can see glowy things. That’s not power. That’s most likely an aneurism waiting to happen.”

  Roane spoke up. “And you’re sneaking out at four in the morning because?”

  “I told you. The messages. One of them is glowing, and I think something is really wrong with male-pattern-baldness guy. I think he’s in trouble, and Percy wouldn’t let me out of the house!” I turned and yelled at Percy through clenched teeth before refocusing on the wolf. “So, I had to sneak out. Also, my hair.”

  “Really?” Annette asked, suddenly worried.

  “Yes. It was basically dragged through mud. I brushed it but—”

  “No, male-pattern-baldness guy,” she replied. “What happened to him?”

  “No clue. I think the real question here is, are you two going to help me or not?”

  “Get in,” Roane said, his deep voice causing a delicious heat to coil low in my abdomen.

  We went around and, after a quick wave to Parris who was still gawking at us, climbed in.

  I scooted next to him in the seat so Annette could sit beside me. “How many vehicles do you have?”

  “Just the one. This one is a shapeshifter like me.”