by Liliana Hart
She’d called his offices, lodged in a warehouse where he was the cofounder of a software company, and no one, not even his receptionist, would tell her anything.
Instantly, the insecure mess she was, she’d jumped to the conclusion everything Ben had told her that night before leaving was a lie and he was just avoiding her.
After two buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken drumsticks and a Frosty from Wendy’s, totally super-high on sugar and grease, she and Zelda had concocted a plan. A plan to show Benjamin Yagamawitz—the name he went under to keep his true Yaga identity a secret—what was what.
No one bed and shed Winnie Foster without hearing about it.
Winnie had gone to his warehouse, where she was sure he was hiding like the coward he was, only to run into Baba Yaga—who was not only surprised Ben was dating her, but also made her disapproval crystal clear.
And during their angry exchange, Winnie had blown up the warehouse.
She hadn’t exactly meant to blow up the entire warehouse. Only Baba Yaga’s stupid eighties collection.
But her rage had a life of its own, and she’d lost complete control of it.
And it was the last straw with the Council. She’d been before the Council before, and this time, like so many before, she was sure she could worm her way out of it. She’d smile, maybe give them her coy, misguided gaze with her big blue eyes, and everything would be fine.
But Baba Yaga, Benny’s aunt, had nixed that notion in the bud. Nobody messed with her nephew and her pile of ugly leg warmers and MC Hammer pants. Turned out, it wasn’t so fine.
“Thinking about Ben?”
Icabod startled her, dragging her from her thoughts. “I thought I told you to shut it the entire trip?”
“You don’t mean that,” he condescended.
“But I do mean that.”
“But aren’t you curious about why I’m here—now—after all these years in an attic at your father’s?”
Fair enough. Sure, she was curious. Creeped out but curious. “Fine. I’ll bite. Why are you suddenly here?”
“Not a fucking clue.”
“Good answer. Now can it.”
“But don’t you want to know how I know about Ben?”
Another fair question. “Last time I’m biting. How do you know about Ben?”
“I heard your father talk about him after you called to tell him you were in love. The insulation in your father’s house is shit. I can hear everything. He’s dating, you know. That nice Mrs. Lingenfelter down the road. She brings him pineapple upside-down cake—among other things.”
The suggestion in Icabod’s voice made her shudder. “Stop,” she gritted out. “No more.” Though she was happy to hear her dad was finally getting out, she didn’t want to hear about his love life.
“One more thing?”
“One more, then you zip it until we get to Texas.”
“Could you push my head back up on my shoulders? The view from here sucks. I’ve seen nothing for the last hundred miles but crushed Schlitz Malt Liquor cans and a package of beef jerky that’s turning green.”
Winnie used her fingertips to prop Icabod’s head up and went back to her driving, occasionally looking in the rearview mirror to watch the Pacer eat up the blacktop mile by mile.
“Hey, I know. Wanna sing ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall?”
“You’re a Cabbage Patch doll, what do you know about beer?” It was just this shy of indecent to hear this innocent doll from her childhood swear and talk about beer.
“Yeah,” he groused. “But I’m an old Cabbage Patch doll. I’ve been around the block.”
“You’ve been in an attic, not on a block.”
“In an attic in a house you lived in. You took me around the block, sister.”
Winnie winced. Her teenage years had been rough for all parties concerned. Mostly her dad, who, while he’d cried genuine tears when she’d left for college, had probably breathed a sigh of unbelievable relief when she’d moved out. He’d borne the brunt of her shenanigans for years. He deserved a break.
Choosing to ignore reliving her past through a Cabbage Patch doll, she reached for the sack of purchases she’d made at a convenience store.
Popping open a bag of pork rinds, she held it under Icabod’s nose. “Pork rind?”
“Jesus, that’s shitty.”
“Why?”
Icabod grumbled low, “I’m a damn plastic doll. I can’t eat, and you know it.”
Winnie eased back into the seat and pushed the pedal to the floor, trying to lose herself in the rhythm of the road beneath her.
“You can’t treat me like this, Pooh Bear. I won’t allow you to steal my last shred of dignity.”
Winnie reached over and flicked Icabod’s head back over to the left with two fingers. “Consider it stolen.”
She arrived in Paris just after noon the following day, exhausted, in need of a shower, still in her orange jumpsuit.
As she pulled into a parking lot, her gaze traveled upward to Paris, Texas’, version of the Eiffel Tower. Topped with a red cowboy hat, it glowered down at her, mocking her in the stream of hot sunlight pushing through the windshield.
She was thankful the tower was deserted—no one to see her shame or her crazy talking doll. Her eyes went self-consciously to her prison clothing and her hair, greasy and clinging to her forehead with perspiration.
She needed bangs.
Right. Because that would make her look more presentable, rather than like some nutbag who’d managed to break free of the loony bin and steal a car.
“So we’re here, I presume?”
“Thank the goddesses.”
“Yeehaw!” Icabod exclaimed dryly, his head still sagging to the left.
“Yep. Me, my wrapped pink Pacer, and my creepy talking Cabbage Patch doll in Paris, Texas. Isn’t it romantic?”
“Why do you insist on calling me creepy? I’m hardly creepy. I’m a harmless doll who was tragically maimed in an act of catastrophic rage. So who’s the creepy one here?”
But Winnie wasn’t listening to him. She had a task to perform before Halloween, and she was damn well going to do it. Where to go from here?
Yanking on the door, she tried to push it open. She needed air, and space to think. But the door wouldn’t budge. Without thinking, she snapped her fingers, smiling at the sound of the door’s screech of metal as it opened.
Then she cringed and waited for a thunderbolt of lightning or frogs to rain down on her head because she’d used her magic to prevent breaking another nail. Sliding out of the car, Winnie waited, letting the oppressive heat of the day wash over her.
When silence prevailed, she stood beside the open door, facing Icabod, and stretched her arms upward, bending forward at the waist to ease the ache in her lower back.
“Turn around, Weenie,” Icabod mocked in a French accent.
She lifted her head from her bent position. “Look, I’ve been mostly decent, but if you don’t want to lose one of your stumpy, stuffing-filled arms, shut up, okay? It’s been a long trip.”
“Okay, but can I just say one more thing? It’s very important.”
Winnie rasped a sigh. “One more thing then no more things. Got it?”
“Got it. Okay, so because you’re mean and petty, and you tipped my head back over to the left, I have a certain vantage point, if you will. Meaning, I can see things you can’t.”
She let her head fall back down between her shoulder blades, utterly fed up. “Make that point, Ic.”
“Look between your legs.”
Winnie frowned but she looked anyway—and found a pair of muscled calves, sprinkled with dark hair.
“It’s a man, right? A man staring at my ass covered in this ugly orange jumpsuit.”
“Uh-huh. It’s definitely a man,” Icabod confirmed.
Her internal antennae went up. “You say ‘a man’ like you know him.”
“This is only supposition on my part, but from where I’m sitting, he lo
oks a lot like the description you gave your father on the phone once. Kind of Manu Bennett with maybe just a hair of Charlie Hunnam thrown in for good measure. Super hot, by the way. Nice going.”
A cold chill of dread swept over her even though the temperature felt like a hundred degrees. How could that be? “No,” she growled. Nononono.
“I know what you’re thinking at this exact moment, Pooh Bear. So let me clear this up for you. Yesyesyesyes!” Icabod singsonged.
Winnie grimaced as the blood rushed to her cheeks. She rose to a standing position and stared off into the flat distance of the landscape for only a moment before she turned around to face the music.
“If it isn’t the Unabomber. Right here in Paris, Texas,” a gravelly, sinfully whiskey-dipped voice said.
Nice. If it isn’t the only man I’ve ever loved who ditched me after making my eyeballs roll back in my head, not once, but four separate times in one night.
Winnie straightened her shoulders, running a hand over her hair to smooth it, desperately trying to figure out what road to take with him.
The “Hey, it’s been a long time. Good to see you again. You meant nothing more than a disposable wet wipe to me” shtick?
Or the ever-popular “Fuck you and your magic hands” angry, bitter, dumped cliché shtick.
“Unabomber. Hah!” Icabod snorted from inside the car.
“Shut up!” she hissed from the side of her mouth.
Ben tucked his tanned forearms over his broad chest and scowled at her beneath the burning sun, his beautiful eyes hidden by his dark sunglasses.
He’d obviously been running, rivulets of perspiration ran down the side of his tanned face, and his wife-beater shirt, accentuating all of his amazing muscles, clung to his pecs.
She sucked in a shaky breath and waited for him to skewer her.
“Two minutes into seeing each other again after all this time and you’re already telling me to shut up, Winnie? You could make a guy believe you weren’t glad to see him.”
Winnie wet her lips, keeping her fingers in a tight ball on either side of her body, her inclination to zap him the hell to Mars and back strong. It was either that or knock him down and have her dirty girl way with him. Because even though he was a dog, he was a hot dog.
“What are you doing in Paris, Texas?” he demanded, his jaw tight and unyielding.
“Just got out of prison. But you knew that, right? Doesn’t Baba Ghanoush keep you abreast, no pun intended, of all the women you’ve dated?” Then dumped after you ravished them completely, ruining them forever for any other man.
He smiled then. Delicious. Dimpled. Swoony. Nipple-hardening “Haven’t heard from Aunt Yaga in quite some time. I imagine she was busy keeping tabs on you.”
That was it. She was just going to cut to the chase. “So is this some kind of joke? Why are you here, Ben?” Why now? Just why?
He rolled his tongue along the inside of his cheek and pulled the earplugs from his ears, letting them dangle to his chest. “Because I live here, Winnie.”
“In Paris?” she croaked.
“Yep.”
As she processed that information, that stunning, life-altering revelation, Icabod’s demonic cackle rang in her ears.
Chapter Four
Winnie sputtered her way into the middle of town, the Pacer clearly as unhappy as she was about this ugly heat.
“Lawd, chile, it’s hotter than Satan’s fiery breath here. I feel like we’re two feet from the sun,” Icabod complained in full Southern accent.
“If you tell me you can feel this heat, I’ll set you on fire just to test the theory.”
“Nah. I can’t really feel it, but your face is butt-ugly red, and you have some scary sweat stains under your armpits. I was just getting into the spirit of things by helping you express yourself so you wouldn’t be tempted to take out a tall building.”
Tired, frustrated, freaked-out after seeing Ben and still finding him attractive, unsure where to go next, she scooped Icabod up. Sitting right there in the middle of Paris, she flopped his sagging head back up on his shoulders and planted him on the steering wheel in front of her, giving him a good shake. “Shut. Up. Not another word or I’m dumping you at Goodwill.”
“Pooh bear?”
“What?” she almost screamed.
“People are staring at you.”
Her head shot up as a mother and two children walked past the Pacer, eyes wide with fear before they broke into a run.
“I look like I’m absolutely out of my mind.”
“Said the woman who’s talking to a Cabbage Patch doll in her douche-decorated Pacer.”
She sat him back in the passenger seat with quick hands and rested her head on the steering wheel to hide her shame. She deserved this.
That’s what she’d keep telling herself. This was her punishment for reacting instead of interacting or some such crazy psychobabble she’d been fed by Baba Yaga and her cronies in group.
Listen before you react. She was trying to do that right now, when what she really wanted to do was set this town ablaze and conjure up an air conditioner with twelve horsepower engine.
She took a couple of calming breaths before she rammed her shoulder into the door of the car, successfully knocking it open, and falling out. Winnie stumbled before righting herself, the angry glare of the sun hitting her right between the eyes.
Rooting around in her jumpsuit’s pocket, she fished the letter out from Baba Yaga, hoping against hope there was more information to tell her what to do next.
Nothing.
The sun beat down on the top of her head like a hammer while she leaned back against the car and closed her eyes. She hadn’t slept in hours and the three Red Bulls she’d guzzled had long since worn off.
Okay. Think, Winnie. You’re not an idiot. What would Baba Yaga do to really punish you…really make you hate the term of your parole…make you sweat?
Crap. She had nothing. Sighing, she looked out over the flat landscape, missing the lush greenery and cool breezes of Massachusetts.
And that’s when she saw it.
A banner with stars and balloons drawn on it in all the colors of the rainbow—just down the road apiece that read “Welcome Miss Winnie!”
In the infamous words of Bill Engvall, Winnie Foster, Here’s your sign.
“Don’t move from this seat, Icabod.” Winnie waved a finger under his nose, taking pity on him and popping his head back on his shoulders.
“You’re just full of the hah-hah today, aren’t you?”
“Okay, so I’m going in to investigate why there’s a banner with my name on it hanging outside what looks like a preschool. I’ll be back. You want me to leave the window cracked?”
“This is payback, right?”
She grinned at Icabod. “Right. See you later.”
Unmindful of her orange jumpsuit, the state of her hair, or even that she smelled like a steam room full of overworked hookers, Winnie made her way across the charming cobblestone path, past the lush green lawn flanking either side of the cute schoolhouse and up to the cheerful red front door of Miss Marjorie’s Preschool for the Magically Inclined.
She briefly wondered if everyone in Paris was a witch before the door flew open and she was greeted by a doughy-faced woman who stood maybe five-foot-two to her own five-eight. “You’re Winnie Foster, right?”
She smiled down at the woman who smelled of warm cookies and wore a blue gingham sleeveless shirt. “I am. You are?”
She crossed her arms over her ample chest and glowered at Winnie, her pageboy haircut bouncing just beneath her double chin. “Your fucking parole officer. Where the hell have you been?” She grabbed Winnie’s arm and pulled her inside the foyer of the school, where it was as silent as a monastery.
But cooler. Thankfully, much, much cooler.
Pointing to a bench meant for three-year-olds, she began, “Sit. Listen. I hate repeating myself.”
Winnie nodded dutifully and squished into the b
ench, crossing her legs to remain stable. Her Kotex-pad slipper, now almost shredded, hung from her foot in lopsided fashion.
“I’m your PO. You report to me once a week until this train wreck is over—which is on Halloween when I’ll go to the Council with your evaluation. This is where you’re going to serve your time on parole. You’re to be here every morning at eight sharp, and you don’t leave until every last one of these whiny, sniveling, out-of-control, self-entitled beasts has gone home with their parent and or guardian. You show up, shut up, and don’t give me a hard time.
“And no magic for anything other than selfless purposes. None. If I even sense a tiny tremor of a vibration indicating you’re using magic for something as shallow as you are—like a dress or those seven-hundred-dollar Max Midnight jeans you’re so fond of—you’re meat. Clear?”
Ow. No Max Midnight jeans? Baba Yaga was definitely going for scared straight here. So now the question was, what was her job at Miss Marjorie’s Preschool for the Magically Inclined? “Clear but with a question. Um, make that two.”
Her PO lifted her chin and jammed her hands in the pockets of her denim culottes with embroidered butterflies on the thighs. “Make it fast.”
Make friends with the person in charge. Her father used to say that all the time. It had worked well for her in witch prison, mostly. Why not continue the thread of pleasantry? “What’s your name? It might be nice to have a frame of reference when addressing you.”
“PO.”
“Are those your initials?”
Her penciled-in eyebrow rose. “Is that your second question?”
Winnie furrowed her brow. “No, but—”
“It’s just PO to you. Or Bitch In Charge. I like that. Next?”
“What exactly is my job here amongst all the sniveling, whining, self-entitled, out-of-control beasts?” She closed her eyes and prayed hard it was janitor or file clerk, or anything that didn’t have to do with crayons.
When she popped them back open, PO aka BIC was staring at her. “Teacher’s aide.”
Oh, Jesus and a box of Crayolas.
“You mean like help the teacher with the children? Hands-on stuff?” she squeaked.
“I’d think the job was self-explanatory just by the title. Besides shallow, are you a slow learner, too? I need to know so Miss Marjorie is aware and can make the proper adjustments.”
