Twelve Shades of Midnight:

by Liliana Hart

Cellblock D was designated for witches who abused their magic as easily as they changed their underwear. Witches like her and Zelda.

  It wasn’t hardcore like Cellblock X. That was a nightmare of mastermind witch criminals who didn’t just whip up a stack of money to spend at Neiman Marcus like she and Zelda were known to do—but real freaks who’d put the A in apocalyptic Armageddon.

  From the outside, the hotel was glamoured to look like a charming bed-and-breakfast, complete with climbing ivy and flowers growing out of every conceivable nook and cranny. Inside it was barren, cold and ugly, and guarded heavily with magic, keeping all mortals at bay.

  At the moment, it was just the two of them in Cellblock D. Just Winnie and Zelda and the humor-free staff of older-than-dirt witches and warlocks guarding them.

  Zelda made a face, running a hand through her gorgeous red curls. “So, for the sake of our parole, let’s hope Baba Lamadingdong remembers our good behavior. Like the time you taught Big Sue Moses how to make eye shadow out of baby oil and cigarette ashes. Or when I selflessly gave Chi-Chi Gonzalez my extra Kotex pads so she could make some slippers for those Sasquatch-like feet of hers.”

  Winnie smiled at her despite her worry about their sentencing. They’d tried. “We made the best out of our stay, didn’t we?”

  Zelda twirled a long curl of hair around her finger as though she wasn’t worried, but her next question was riddled with concern. “Do you think we’ll get parole today?”

  Winnie avoided the question—one she’d been avoiding since they found out they were next up on the chopping block. She didn’t even want to consider not getting out of this hell today.

  Instead, she pulled her bangs forward again, and murmured, “Look at my hair. It’s touching my nose, Zelda. My nose. I can’t be seen like this if we get out. I’ll just do a little.”

  Zelda rolled her eyes. “Winnifred, you’ve never done anything a little. Remember the last time you cut your bangs?”

  Winnie winced and mumbled into her collarbone. Okay. Sometimes when she was angry, things happened. “That was years ago. They rebuilt the building, and no one was hurt.”

  “Fine,” she snapped. “Cut your bangs, but don’t come crying to me when you look like the dude from Dumb and Dumber.”

  It was her nerves. She knew it was her nerves, but she couldn’t help herself. “You know what?” Winnie shouted, brandishing the shears under Zelda’s nose. “We’re in jail because of you! I wouldn’t have had to teach that beast Big Sue anything if not for you. And we’d have Kotex pads for days because guess what? We wouldn’t be in jail having to share anything if not for you!”

  Zelda planted her hands on her hips. “Um, no. We’re in here because of you.”

  Winnie’s mouth fell open. “No. It was definitely you.”

  “You.”

  “Nope, you.”

  “Oh, my goddess!” Zelda yelled. “I didn’t sleep with Baba Yaga’s precious nephew. That was you!”

  Oh the guilt. And the heartache. But she wasn’t going to tell Zelda how much it still hurt to think about Baba’s nephew Ben.

  She’d call her an idiot. And she’d be right.

  So she shot Zelda a coy look and batted her eyelashes to hide the hurt. “First of all, we didn’t sleep. We did plenty of things, but shuteye never came into play. And it was amazing. Probably the most amazing sex I’ve ever had. Second of all, how the hell was I supposed to know he was Baba’s nephew?”

  Zelda’s eyes went wide with disbelief. “Um, well, let me see…did the fact that the man’s name was Benny Yaga not ring any fucking bells?”

  “He prefers Ben and he used Yagamawitz—not Yaga,” Winnie defended, though he didn’t deserve defending.

  But she still wasn’t sure if Ben not changing his last name to avoid the notoriety attached to the name Baba Yaga, the most powerful witch in the world, would have stopped her from falling for him.

  Zelda nodded, her fiery hair falling around her shoulders. “And with good reason. Who’d willingly admit that throwback-to-the-eighties of a beast was related to them?”

  Baba Yaga loved anything that had to do with the eighties—loved it so much, she piped in Take on Me through the prison speakers as their wakeup call every morning at six sharp.

  But Winnie wasn’t the only one responsible for getting them locked up, and she was happy to remind Zelda. “Well, you ran over your familiar. On purpose,” she accused, combing her bangs forward again in preparation for blast off.

  “I did not run over that mangy bastard cat on purpose. The little assmonkey stepped under my wheel.”

  Winnie let one eyebrow lift in that way she did when she was making a point. In the way she knew would make Zelda crazy. “Three times?” she inquired politely, batting her eyelashes again.

  Zelda clamped her lips shut for a moment then conceded, “Fine. We’re both here because we screwed up. But I still think nine months was harsh for killing a revolting cat and screwing an idiot.”

  Winnie’s gaze became distant and thoughtful. The way it always did when that night with Ben Yaga was mentioned. “He wasn’t an idiot…but I agree. We’re both guilty,” she replied as she went for the first snip.

  Zelda held her breath and blew it out when Winnie put the scissors down and changed her mind with a shrug of her shoulders. “I really need a mirror.”

  “In an hour you’ll have one, unless we do something stupid,” Zelda soothed.

  Without warning, the magic level in the B&B changed drastically—the stench of centuries-old magic drifted to Winnie’s nose. She grabbed Zelda’s arm, her eyes wide.

  “Do you smell it?” Zelda whispered, her eyes alert.

  Winnie wrinkled her nose, looking around their cell. “I do.”

  “Old lady crouch.”

  “Old lady what?” Winnie bit down on her lip. Hard. “If you make me laugh, I will smite your sorry ass when we get out of here. What the hell is old lady crouch?”

  Zelda’s grin threatened to split her face. Her fear of incarceration was clearly outweighed by her need to make Winnie laugh.

  They needed to laugh again. Like they used to before they were subjected to soap-on-a-rope and thicker-than-cement bland oatmeal for breakfast.

  “You know, the smell when you go to the bathroom at the country club…powdery old lady crouch.”

  “Oh my hell, Zelda.” She giggled and punched Zelda in the arm. “Now I’ll never get that shit out of my head.”

  “Only a lobotomy can erase that one,” she said proudly, knowing full well it would take at the very least a lobotomy to rid her of the visual.

  “Well, well, well,” a nasally voice cooed from beyond the bars of their cell. “If it isn’t the problem children.”

  Enter one of their jailors. The one and only Baba Yaga.

  She had to be at least three hundred if she was a day, but witches aged slowly—so she really only looked thirty-five-ish. The more powerful you were, the slower you aged.

  And Baba was powerful, beautiful even with a wart on her nose, and had appalling taste in clothes.

  She was dressed right out of the movie Flash Dance, complete with the ripped sweatshirt, leggings, and headband. It was all Winnie could do not to clang a cup against the bars and demand to see the Fashion Police.

  Baba was surrounded by the rest of her spooky posse, an angry bunch clearly not happy to be in attendance.

  “Baba Yaga,” Winnie said respectfully.

  “Your Crouchness,” Zelda muttered and received a quick elbow to the gut from Winnie.

  Baba Yaga leaned against the cell bars, her torn-at-the-shoulder sweatshirt dipping over her creamy skin. “Zelda and Winnifred, you have served your time.”

  Yay!

  “Although, upon your release, you will both have a task to complete with limited magic.”

  Boo.

  Winnie gasped and Zelda paled. WTF? They’d done their time. Tasks? Limited magic? What did that mean?

  Winnie held up a finger. Hold that thou
ght right there. “But…um, Miss Yaga. That’s not exactly fair. “We paid our dues. I did give Chi-Chi Gonzalez all of my Kotex pads.”

  “Quiet!” Baba Yaga hissed, waving a freshly painted nail at them in admonishment. “You two are on probation, and during that probation, you will be strictly forbidden from seeing each other until you have completed your tasks.”

  “Tasks?” Winnie muttered, girding herself.

  Baba Yaga nodded. “Tasks. Selfless tasks. And before you two get all uppity with that ‘I can’t believe you’re being so harsh’ drivel, keep in mind, this is a light sentence. Most of the Council wanted you two imbeciles stripped of your magic permanently.”

  Permanently? What the what? Okay sure, they were selfish witches, and there’d been a mishap or two along the way, especially the one involving Baba Who-Hahs nephew Ben.

  But she’d cleaned it up. All of it—every last drop. No one had been hurt.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Winnie said, staring up into Baba Yaga’s flashing eyes.

  “Oh, I can help with that,” Baba Yaga offered kindly. “You, Zelda—how many pairs of Jimmy Choo shoes do you own?”

  Winnie watched Zelda mentally count in her head. “Um…three?”

  Winnie winced. Total lie. Bald-faced.

  Baba-Yaga frowned, her eyes flashing with anger. “Seventy-five and you paid for none of them! Not to mention your wardrobe and cars and the embarrassingly expensive vacations you’ve taken for free.” Her eyes narrowed dangerously.

  Now probably wouldn’t be the time to tell her Zelda actually had eighty pairs…

  “And you, Winnifred. You’ve used your magic to destroy a man’s livelihood, my nephew’s livelihood, never mind my collection of leg warmers, and have incurred millions in damages from your temper tantrums. You’ve obliterated six buildings to date. Can you not see how I had to fight for you both?” she demanded, her beautiful eyes fiery.

  “Well, when you put it that way…” Winnie mumbled.

  “There is no other way to put it,” she snapped as her mystical lynch mob nodded like the bobble-headed dorks they were. “Zelda, you’ve used your magic for self-serving purposes, and Winnifred, you have a temper that, when combined with your magic, could be deadly. We are White Witches, ladies. We use magic to heal and to make Mother Earth a better place. Not to walk the runway and take down cities.”

  “So what do we have to do?” Winnie asked, a tremble in her tone.

  Baba Yaga winked. “There are two envelopes with your tasks in them. You will not share the contents with each other. If you do, you will render yourselves powerless. Forever. You have till midnight on All Hallows Eve to complete your assignments and then you will come under review again with the Council.”

  “And if we’re unable to fulfill our task?” Winnie asked, wanting to get all the facts up front.

  “You will become mortal.”

  Holy. Shit.

  On that alarming and potentially life-ending note, Baba Yaga and her freaky-deaky entourage disappeared in a cloud of old-lady-crouch smoke.

  “Well, that’s fucking craptastic,” Zelda said as she warily sniffed her envelope—one that appeared out of thin air and landed right between her fingertips.

  Winnie nodded. “You took the words out of my mouth.” She stared down at the thin envelope then set it on the cot, almost afraid to touch it.

  “Can you even believe this shit, Winnie?”

  No. She couldn’t believe it. “So that’s it? We just do whatever the contents of the envelopes tell us to do, but we can’t do it together? Jesus, Z. Okay, so we’re a little self-absorbed, but I don’t just use my magic for selfish reasons. I’ve used it to heal. Remember when you got that paper cut at Office Max? I totally healed it because it was bleeding all over your cute sundress.”

  “I get the feeling that’s not the kind of healing magic Baba Yasshole means,” Zelda answered.

  “You know what? Screw Baba Ghanoush!” Winnie yelped, grabbing the envelope and waving it in the air.

  Zelda sighed, putting her hand on Winnie’s arm to prevent her from doing any damage to their ridiculous task. “Yomamma. It’s Baba Yomamma, Winnie, and seriously. What choice do we have at this point but to do what she says? You don’t want to stay in here, do you? We only have so many Kotex pads between us. So let’s yank up our big girl drawers and get this over with. Deal?”

  Winnie made a face, but she nodded. “Baba Wah-Wha said we couldn’t share the contents of our envelopes. But I know us, and we won’t be able to keep our traps shut if we open these envelopes together…”

  Zelda sucked in her cheeks. “Yeah. She must want this to hurt, because we always share everything.”

  “Well, we can’t share this or we’ll be sharing immortality.”

  Zelda shuddered beneath her orange jumpsuit, fingering her envelope. “Fuck that. Okay, so now what?” she asked.

  Winnie squared her shoulders. “We suck it up, Z. If we can survive teaching Big Sue how to apply makeup and scaling those calluses on her feet with a fork we snuck out of the kitchen, we can survive anything.”

  Zelda grinned, as beautiful as always. “So we walk outta here on three?”

  Winnie hesitated, but only a moment. She hated leaving Zelda. Hated that they weren’t going to go the distance to the end of this nightmare together.

  But losing their immortality? She knew Z almost as well as she knew herself, and she knew losing their magic would be like losing a vital organ.

  Maybe two.

  Magic was who they were and jail really was as bad as Orange is the New Black made it seem.

  So Winnie smiled back at her and held up a fist for her to bump. “Yep.”

  Zelda bumped it and they both took a deep breath before she counted out, “Then one, two, three…”

  The doors of their cell popped open the moment they approached them, clanging and creaking.

  Winnie gave Zelda one last smile before she made a left, heading down the winding concrete path leading out of their cellblock, dimly lit with only torches.

  And Zelda hung a right until she was nothing more than a curvy dot.

  Chapter Two

  Winnie reread the note inside the envelope again, squinting in the dim light of the prison’s hallway to make sure she didn’t screw this up.

  A driver awaits you in the parking lot. Light a fire under your ass or you’ll miss your ride.

  Baba Yaga

  Not Baba Ghanoush

  XOXO

  Winnie’s feet began to move without thought. If there was nothing she wanted less, it was to stay in witch prison and make more Kotex slippers for Chi-Chi Gonzalez.

  Rounding the corner of the last corridor, she hobbled along, cursing the fact that her own feminine-product slippers were sticky side down, impeding her progress.

  She tore ass around the corner, sliding like she was A-Rod skidding into home base, hopping on one foot and almost falling head first into the door to the parking lot.

  Pushing it open with a shove, she spilled out into the lot, taking her first gulp of freedom. Winnie inhaled long, her breath rasping as she rested the heels of her hands on her knees and her chest screamed a fiery revolt.

  A horn blared before the words to I’ll Make Love To You by Boyz II Men sang in her ears.

  Winnie’s head snapped up just as Chi-Chi Gonzalez rolled up next to her in a rusty, orange Datsun pickup with the passenger-side window down.

  She waved, a wide grin on her cherry-red lips. “Hurry the hell up, Winnie. I have to be back before dusk or I’m gonna lose dessert for a week. And you know what Baba Yaga’s like—she’ll snatch that pudding from my tray faster than you can say The Breakfast Club just to torture me.”

  She couldn’t hide her surprise as she gaped at her fellow inmate. Why did Chi-Chi get special privileges? Winnie had never even been allowed to leave the damn prison yard, and she hadn’t done anything as bad as Chi-Chi. And she wasn’t just leaving the suffocating prison cells, she was drivi
ng.

  Sure. She’d taken a building or two down in her struggle to manage her anger. But she hadn’t turned the polar ice caps into a seaside resort, complete with wave pool and grass huts. Taking out Benjamin Yaga’s warehouse hardly compared to a global-warming event.

  “You’re my driver?”

  Chi-Chi nodded, glancing at herself in the rearview mirror and checking her lipstick. “Surprise.”

  Winnie’s eyes narrowed and her temperature rose. Despite the chilly air, her cheeks began to warm and her fingers tingled. “Did you get paroled too?”

  Chi-Chi smacked her lips and made a face. “Aw, hell no, Winnie. I have another three years. Baba Yaga’ll never let me forget the stinkin’ wave pool. Every stupid therapy session is about the wave pool. You’d think I whipped up a volcano and dropped virgins into it, for Jesus sake.”

  “You do realize what the polar ice caps do, don’t you?”

  Chi-Chi rolled her eyes. “Are you kidding me? I could build a polar ice cap for all the shit I know about them after Baba Yaga got her hands on me. I know all about how what I did made the Earth too hot and believe me, I know all about the complaints. I get it, Wikipedia.”

  “Complaints? Chi-Chi, you nearly killed everyone in California, it got so hot. The ice caps keep the Earth cool—”

  “I get it, Winnie!” she yelped, hitting the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. “Save the sermon, Miss Blow Up A Building. You’ve got no room to talk.”

  Leaning into the window, she rolled her eyes at Chi-Chi. “It was just one stupid building, and not a soul was in it. How was I supposed to know Ben housed Baba Yaga’s stash of eighties paraphernalia in his warehouse?” she lied.

  Winnie rolled her shoulders and forced herself to remember the technique Baba Yaga had taught her to calm her angry impulses. But it was damn hard where Ben was concerned.

  Because it still hurt. And it had endured nine long months in magic jail, festering, reminding her of just what a fool she’d been.

  “Hey, Firestarter, are we comparing the magnitude of our magical misdeeds here? Sort of like my wand is bigger than yours? Or are we hittin’ the damn open road?”