“Why?”
“Well, darling that’s what we’re here to find out, isn’t it?” she replied slapping her hands on her hips and staring pointedly at me. “Can you poof us there?”
“I don’t think so. Even though I’ve been, I can’t really remember where it is.”
“Hmmm… doesn’t surprise me,” Baba said with a nod. “Marge is quite skilled—well, more crazy than skilled—but skilled nonetheless.”
Crap. This was a problem. Muted magic was incapacitating. Lesson? Maybe we did rely on magic too much. Marge might have a point. There had to be a way to find the damn cookie house. We could always fly around, but that could be as futile as walking. However…
“Can you conjure up some carbs?” I asked, getting excited.
“While I understand that you’re pregnant, Zelda,” Baba Yaga said, holding on to her patience with difficulty, “we really don’t have time for a meal. I’d guess that Marge the douche nozzle is already aware of our presence. I believe finding the miserable old cow is more important than you stuffing your face.”
“It’s not for me to eat,” I assured her. Although I figured I could throw back a few calories along with my half-assed plan. “It’s for the carb-eating fairies.”
“Once again?” Baba queried, confused.
“Carb. Eating. Fairies. It’s how I found the house the first time,” I told her. “They’re these bizarre colorful little things that eat carbs. I think they speak French so I didn’t understand a word they said, but the tiny weirdos led me to the cookie house.”
She stared at me doubtfully—probably still thinking I was simply hungry and playing her for something sweet. I was—kind of, but it was the only idea I could come up with at the moment.
“Do you have a better plan?” I snapped.
“Surprisingly, no.” Baba paced a large circle and then shrugged. “What do you like? Chocolate? Cookies? Cake? Candy?”
“Yes, yes, yes, and yes,” I replied with a shudder of delight. Of course I could conjure it all up myself, but that would go against everything I’d promised Lucky and Charm. It was murky, but if someone else conjured it, I told myself taking a taste would be okay.
“Such a devious little witch,” she said with a delighted laugh. “I’m well aware of your pledge to yourself about healthy eating. I’d suggest you only have a nibble of what I’m about to create.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, can you read my mind?” I demanded a little freaked out. This was certainly unwelcome news. It was bad enough that Mac could sometimes hear my thoughts, but Baba Yaga? Not working for me.
“No, sadly I can’t,” she pouted. “That would be such a neat trick if I could. Save me years of time with interrogating wayward witches, but no. I had a little conversation with Lucky and Charm—they told me. Oh, and P.S. — those are awful names.”
I was stunned to silence. She’d spoken to my babies? How in the Goddess’s name did she speak to my babies without me knowing?
“They adore you and can’t wait to pop into the world. Which by the way will be far sooner than you think,” she replied with a mischievous little smile.
“They like me?” I whispered, touching my stomach and trying not to cry.
I failed.
“They love you,” she corrected me, wiping a tear from my cheek. “They’re good with Hildegard and Charles for middle names, but prefer Carol and Fabio for first names.”
My stomach jumped in protest and I closed my eyes and giggled. Lucky and Charm were calling bullshit on Carol. I believed her on the middle names, but the first names? Not so much.
“Interesting,” I said with a smirk and then I paused. “Wait. What exactly did you mean by giving birth sooner than I thought?”
“Look down,” she insisted with a delighted laugh.
I did.
Oh. My. Goddess.
My stomach had grown in the short time we’d been wandering the berry patch. If I had to call it, I’d say I looked about six months along—or maybe more. Shit. I had no plans to squat in a field and birth my puppies.
“Did you do this?” I demanded, almost hysterical. “Is this your idea of a joke?”
“I did nothing of the sort,” Baba huffed. “I believe it’s the magic in the berry patch. I have no experience birthing babies, so I propose we get a move on, my dear.”
“What about puppies?” I countered, still unconvinced Lucky and Charm were going to arrive in human form.
“No, Zelda. No experience in bringing puppies into the world either,” she replied with a grin. “Let’s bust a move and deal with the swamp-ass old biddy from hell.”
With that lovely description, Baba Yaga waved her hands and created a pregnant witch’s Nirvana—enough cookies, cakes, pies and candy to rot the teeth right out of your head. I clenched my hands at my sides and willed myself not to dive bomb the feast. It would be a clusterfuck if there were nothing left for the carb-eating fairies.
“How do we call the fairies?” she inquired, popping a cookie in her mouth.
“Do you speak French?” I asked, biting into a heavenly strawberry cupcake with butter cream icing.
“Languages are not my strongest skill,” Baba admitted. “I know merde and s’il vous plaît.”
“What does that mean?”
“Merde means shit and s’il vous plait means please.”
“So you know how to politely ask them to take a crap?” I choked out with a laugh.
“It would appear so,” Baba replied, grinning. “Not sure how helpful that’s going to be.”
“Stand back,” I warned as I prepared myself. “I’ll get the little flying freaks here.”
Pinching off a piece of the light as air crust from a peach pie before I cast my spell, I almost forgot my name it was so delicious.
“Focus,” Baba Yobossypants admonished. “Time is ticking and your belly is growing.”
She was correct.
Shit.
“Goddess on high we’re a little bit lost,
We need your assistance to avoid a steep cost.
Please send the freaky flying fuckers to aid our quest,
To restore the blessed harmony—we shall try out best.”
Waving my hands in a circular motion, I waited for the Goddess to hear me.
Nothing happened.
Shit again.
“Freaky flying fuckers?” Baba Yaga questioned wryly. “That’s the best you can do?”
“Look,” I snapped at her. “I’m finding my mojo here. A little profanity seems to be a successful recipe for me, so can it.”
And then the Goddess heard me. She heard me loud and clear—a little too loud and clear.
“Duck,” I screeched as at least a hundred hungry carb-eating fairies descended on the buffet that Baba Yaga had conjured up. Every color of the rainbow was represented and then some, and the amount of flying glitter made me sneeze. I was sad to see they devoured all of the strawberry cupcakes and the pies disappeared in about three seconds flat. But they were here. That was all that mattered.
I hoped.
“Um… s’il vous plaît … cookie house?” I shouted above the din of the eating frenzy.
I held a cookie up and drew a house in the air with my fingers. They ignored me.
“Coooo kieeee Hoooo uuuusssse,” I repeated as a few observed me strangely.
“What in the ever loving hell?” Baba Yaga growled as she swatted at the aggressive little nightmares. “These deranged, eating things are going to help us?”
“Yes,” I shouted as I pocketed a few chocolate chip cookies.
This was a clusterhump. How in the hell was I supposed to communicate with French- speaking carb eaters? Screw it. I knew what it was like to be obsessed with carbs and I knew how to get the attention of the mini flying bastards.
Not. A. Problem.
“Goddess on High, hear my call,
These flying shits have no manners at all.
Please trap all the goodies beneath magic cages,
No more for them until we are on the same, um… page—es.”
“Seriously?” Baba shouted as she picked out a few fairies that had gotten trapped in her highly sprayed hair.
“It worked, didn’t it,” I yelled back as all the fairies froze in confusion and stared at the imprisoned treats.
“What now, brainiac?” Baba groused as she tried to repair her disastrous doo.
“Um… Fairies,” I said using my outdoor brook no bullshit voice. “I no speaka Frencha, see voo play. Coooo kieeee Hooousssse? You take-a me there?”
I definitely had their attention, but they looked wildly perplexed.
“Don’t you know any more French than merde and s’il vous plaît?” I asked Baba.
“Nope, but now you’ve gone and done it,” she replied with wide eyes as she backed away from the impending shit show—pun intended.
“Noooooooooooo!” I squeaked as one hundred little fairies whipped down their pants and prepared to take a dump. “NOOOOO merde, s’il vous plaît s’il vous plaît s’il vous plaît!!!”
“Draw a picture,” Baba suggested, quickly handing me a marker and notebook she’d conveniently whipped up out of thin air.
“Good thinking,” I said so relieved I wouldn’t have to witness a massive fairy dump I almost cried.
I quickly drew a cookie house and a little old witch with a candy cane. I gave the witch bushy brows and for good measure I gave her a mustache and beard. The fairies floated around my head and watched intently. The aah’s of recognition and the excited chattering made me exhale an enormous sigh of relief.
Like a school of colorful, insane fish they pointed the way and began to fly north.
“Did you bring your broom?” Baba joked as she took flight after the speedy fairies.
“Nope, don’t need one,” I replied with a giggle as I ran and launched myself into the air. “That shit’s for fairy tales. This is real life.”
One problem solved.
So many more to go.
Chapter Fourteen
“Should we just walk up and knock?” Baba whispered as we hid in the bushes about three hundred feet from Marge’s house.
The fairies had disappeared as soon as they had accomplished their mission. I was pretty sure they’d flown back to the buffet Baba had created to see if the cakes and cookies had been released from prison.
Baba’s voice was unsteady and it made me queasy. Baba Yaga was never unsure of herself, and if she was, she typically hid it a hell of a lot better than she was doing today.
“What happened between you and Marge?” I asked her.
Going in blind was careless and stupid. I was going to be a mother for the Goddess’s sake. My days of winging it were quickly coming to an end. Plus I needed to get back because Mac wanted a Ho Ho… not to mention I was getting more pregnant by the second. Carol was going to come clean or we were gonna hang out in the bushes all day and watch me give birth.
“It was her fault,” she hissed. “It was awful and horrid and simply unforgivable.”
“What was?” I asked.
Baba’s brow wrinkled and she pressed her temples. Four times she started to speak and four times she stopped.
“No way,” I muttered looking at her with narrow eyed surprise. “You have no clue why you hate Marge.”
“It was hundreds of years ago,” Baba Yaga sputtered indignantly. Little sparks flew from her fingertips and I was terrified she was going to set her lacquered hair on fire. “I can’t be expected to remember everything. I mean, my Goddess, you try running the show for as many centuries as I have and see how much you remember, Little Missy.”
“No thank you,” I shot back, further convinced that the job of Baba Yaga wasn’t for me.
“You have no choice. Neither did I,” she said. “However, it comes with wonderful perks and having everyone kiss your ass and fear the ground you walk on is fun. Come on now… you know you’d like that.”
“Is there a clothing allowance?” I asked.
“Of course there is. Look at me. Have you ever seen me in the same outfit twice?”
“Um… thankfully no,” I muttered.
We needed a plan and we needed it now. It was shallow and ridiculous to be concerned about a clothing allowance for a job I didn’t want. Shallow and ridiculous was the old me—well mostly. However, I was more alarmed that there was a clothing allowance considering what Baba Yotasteless wore on a regular basis.
I peeked out from behind the bush as I ran potential plans through my brain and screamed bloody murder.
“If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake,” Marge said, terrifying the living hoohoo out of me.
She stood there with compressed lips and a very unhappy expression on her wrinkly old face. Her bushy eyebrows were waggling a mile a minute and her fingers sparked ominously. Not good.
Of course my scream scared the living hell out of Baba Yaga, who hopped up and accidentally—I think—blew Marge’s cookie house to smithereens. Marge then retaliated by wiggling her nose and dressing Carol in a frock from the Puritan era.
If I wasn’t terrified that I might not live through the next few minutes, I would have cackled at the appalled expression on Baba Yaga’s face as she examined the starched black sack she was now wearing.
Then it got really ugly.
With a wave of her hand, Carol zapped Marge bald. “I do not wear unflattering clothing, you smelly toad eater.”
Not pleased, Marge gave Carol a huge hairy mole on the tip of her nose. “You’re not welcome here, you brazen hooker from the underworld.”
“Charlatan,” Carol hissed.
“Wand user,” Marge shouted.
“Take that back, you potion sniffer.”
“You take that back, Wicked Witch of the Worst,” Marge grunted, quite pleased with her insult.
I dove for cover and watched the debauchery unfold. They went at each other for a good ten minutes before they were both exhausted and very strange looking.
“Are you two idiots done?” I inquired.
“Not even close,” Carol hissed as she waved her hands and gave Marge ears the size of an elephant.
Marge grabbed her head and shrieked at her new supersized aural units. Clearly not one to let something like receiving Dumbo ears go unpunished, she wiggled her fingers and increased the size of Baba’s dainty feet to at least a size twenty-five. It was all kinds of wrong and I could see no end in sight. They were fairly unrecognizable now—ten more minutes and the nut bags would be horrifying.
However, it wasn’t until I had what I could only guess was a gnarly and painful contraction that I was done. Playtime was over. I was clearly getting ready to blow out some puppies and I wanted to go home.
“Enough,” I shouted, flinging my hands up and hanging both of the powerful witches in the air. “You two are behaving like possessed toddlers and I’m in labor for some fucked-up reason. We need to get this show on the road because I’m not squatting next to a demolished cookie house to give birth.”
“Is she right in the head?” Marge asked Carol.
“No more than you or me,” Carol answered.
I ignored the slights and went on.
“Marge, can you tell me what the problem is between you and Carol?”
Marge hung in the air like a pissed off marionette with monstrous ears and no hair. She just stared and gave me the evil eye.
“I thought so. Neither one of you knows why you hate each other. Right?”
Radio silence.
“Fine,” I snapped. I wiggled my nose and undid all the damage they’d inflicted on each other. However, I dressed Carol a little more tastefully than she had been. I stayed with the eighties theme, but it was more Pat Benatar than Madonna. However, Marge was a shocker.
Gone was the little old lady and in her place was a gorgeous woman who looked disturbingly like Carol, but dressed a whole lot better. What the hey-hey? I stood in silence and gaped.
“What in the Goddess’s name
are you staring at, girlie?” Marge demanded.
“You,” I choked out. “You’re not old—you’re beautiful.”
“Wrong,” Carol trilled. “She’s at least a hundred years older than I am and I’m prettier. She’s positively ancient.”
“Pot, kettle, black,” Marge sniped back. “And I’m only ninety-three years older, you snot nosed little magic abuser.”
“Stop it,” I shouted as I doubled forward with another contraction. “You two are worse than children. I’ve had about all I’m gonna put up with.”
“Goddess on high, grant me this wish,
These witches are shitty, acting quite shrewish.
Take their power and hold it until they behave,
When they can be proper fucking witches, this spell you may waive.”
A frigid breeze laced with a glittering silver mist blew through the berry patch and rendered the most powerful witch in existence—and possibly the second most powerful witch—magicless.
“Can she do that?” Marge hissed. “That spell was an abomination. Who ever heard of cursing to the Goddess?”
“The times they are a-changing,” Carol said, also none too pleased to be without magic.
“She’s that powerful?” Marge demanded angrily. “How is one so young who possesses dark magic so formidable?”
Baba Yaga fidgeted in the air for a few moments while I watched her brain working. With an enormous put upon sigh, she shrugged and shot Marge an unpleasant glare. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business, cow patty, since no one has seen or heard from you in centuries, but Zelda is my replacement.”
“What?” Marge shrieked. “You have a replacement? Why don’t I have a replacement?”
“Hang on here a minute,” I cut in. “I’ve agreed to absolutely nothing. I’m a Shifter Wanker. I heal dumb asses.”
“Yet you offered to heal me,” Marge said sharply, giving me an eyeball that made me very happy she was presently without magic.
“If the shoe fits,” Carol chimed in with an evil little giggle.
“Both of you are coming with me. We’re going to sit down and work this shit out. And Marge, you have some explaining to do.”
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