Under Her Spell

by Bridget Essex

  Under Her Spell

  by Bridget Essex

  Synopsis:

  What if love was magic?

  Isabella Fox is a very mediocre witch. Run out of the last few towns for spells gone wrong, she's ready to settle down but can't quite find a place to call home. Fortunately, there's one town where her mediocrity might not actually be a problem... The charming little town of Benevolence, high in the peaks of Glimmer Mountain, a storybook little village that looks picturesque and practically perfect in every way...

  But there's more to Benevolence than meets the eye. The town itself is full of magic...and secrets, and not all are welcome. Outcast shapeshifter, Emily, lives alone in the mountains. She is a mystery to Isabella, until they happen upon each other by chance in the snowy wood, like magic. Love begins to grow between the two women, despite the chill of the winter and the possibility that all might not be right in Benevolence...

  Set in Bridget Essex's beloved fantastical world featured in A KNIGHT TO REMEMBER, UNDER HER SPELL is a charming, stand alone adventure about a mediocre witch, a gorgeous shapeshifter, and a magical love story that will warm your heart.

  "Under Her Spell"

  © Bridget Essex 2017

  Rose and Star Press

  Second Edition

  First edition © Bridget Essex 2011

  All rights reserved

  Please note: This book was previously published as THE BENEVOLENCE TALES by Elora Bishop (One Solstice Night, One Imbolc Gloaming and One Ostara Sunrise). This was when Bridget Essex thought she'd separate her paranormal and fantasy writing by creating a pen name for her fantasy romance. It was unpublished, edited further and is now being published again under Bridget's actual name.

  No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Rose and Star Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews. Please note that piracy of copyrighted materials is illegal and directly harms the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication:

  For my wife, now and for always.

  And for Ruby and Marian:

  Two of the best and dearest friends

  we could ever be blessed with.

  I adore you both. Thank you for being.

  CONTENTS

  Part One: Winter

  Part Two: Deep Winter

  Part Three: Spring

  Part One: Winter

  Isabella Fox was not prepared to be set on fire. As was common among witches, “being burned at a stake until dead” was her least favorite way to spend an afternoon, and it was such a lovely afternoon. Isabella took up her broom and her satchel, her best hat and her tabby cat, Alice, and crept out of her rented cottage with what she hoped was maximum silence.

  The mob, very thankfully, never noticed her leave.

  “You’ve really got to stop screwing up,” said her cat, Alice, without any tact whatsoever, when Isabella finally set her down on the forest floor after their fleeing. The witch bristled at this, hefting the broom up and over her shoulder.

  “I didn’t screw up,” she retorted, straightening her skirts and unrumpling her hat. She poked a finger to the very end of it, making the pointy bit stick up. A witch is close to nothing without her hat. “Why,” she murmured, casting her eyes to the heavens, “was I cursed with a talking Familiar!”

  “Because I’m the closest thing you’ve got to a conscience,” said the tabby cat dryly. “Let's go over this one more time, shall we? When someone comes to you for a love spell, what are you supposed to say? It’s in the witch’s manual, for the stars’ sakes, Isabella! 'And thou shalt not commit a love spell for another or thyself, on pain of Bad Things Happening.'“

  “It is in the revised edition of the manual,” said Isabella through gritted teeth, “and it wouldn’t have gone wrong if—”

  “That’s what you always say,” replied the little cat pertly. “But it always seems to go wrong, doesn't it?”

  They walked along through the woods in silence side by side, the tabby cat's paws falling hushed upon the fallen leaves, Isabella's heeled boots crunching the leaves beside her. It really was a lovely afternoon, but Isabella was too lost in thought to notice the late autumn sunshine falling through the trees, how clear and cool the woods was at this hour, or the scent of oncoming snow in the air.

  Isabella was a witch for hire. She’d graduated from the Magicmaker's Academy two years prior without a single letter of recommendation and somewhere near the last in her class. Now, she wasn’t a terrible witch by any stretch, but she was highly mediocre. She excelled at mediocrity, actually, and those were the types of witches who peddled out their services: the not-so-good ones.

  That this was the third time in as many months that she’d been run out of a town was going to push her toward the very tail end of mediocrity. She was dangerously close to bad.

  She tried. She really did. But being a hired magicmaker for a town was no easy task. There were endless bones to mend and potions to brew and blessings to perform, and there was just an unending list of things to do, really, and she was a daydreamer, had always been. She’d look out the window, watch the falling leaves, think about pretty girls and forget she was stirring a potion to make the town dogs stop barking. And then, of course, because the potion hadn’t been stirred enough, it caused the dogs to turn into cats, and that wasn’t so bad, really...

  Isabella sighed, shifted her broomstick to her other shoulder. No, the dogs-to-cats thing had actually been kind of funny. That wasn’t what had made the villagers start talking about a witch burning... The last straw was a love potion gone terribly, terribly wrong.

  Alice interrupted Isabella’s glum thoughts. “Hate to break it to you, darling,” she said, sitting down on a patch of overly green moss, “but have you decided where we’re fleeing to yet?”

  Isabella had not. But she wasn’t about to tell her prim little cat that fact. Her mind whirled, and it only took a heartbeat to know where she had to go.

  “The Hag Bar,” she said in a breath. Alice sighed but did not protest. A witch has to do what a witch has to do, after all—especially one who just so narrowly avoided being set on fire.

  ---

  The Hag Bar was located in the most out-of-the-way swamp in the world. And that was its best selling point. Only broom-flying witches could get to it, so it made sense that it had evolved, over the last few centuries, into the primary witch hangout. That, and only witches could appreciate the Hag Bar's copious amounts of black-and-purple sparkly décor.

  It was poorly named. Witches hadn’t been considered “hags” for at least a couple hundred years, and when Isabella crossed the bar’s threshold that evening, she did not see a single “hag” (by the strict book definition, an elderly woman) in the place. Actually, it was filled with younger witches, one she even recognized from her graduating class at the Academy, all nursing various mugs of tea in plump, plush chairs in front of the roaring fire.

  After the events of the afternoon, Isabella had no desire to be close to any sort of fire at the moment, so she took a booth close to the bar, dropping off her broom and hat under the table before she circled back to the pin board by the door.

  If you wanted to hire a magicmaker, you advertised where magicmakers gathered. The board at the Hag Bar was where any self-respecting village put up an advertisement if they had an opening for a village witch. Isabella’s heart sank even lower as her eyes roamed over the tattered pieces of paper. Most bore the terrible red ink from the “POSITION FILLED” stamp t
he barkeeper kept behind the counter. The only one that didn’t bear the stamp was for the town that Isabella had been run out of two months prior.

  Probably they'd not forgotten what had happened to their sheep.

  “Broomsticks and figs,” she muttered, rubbing Alice’s head absentmindedly. The cat was perched on her shoulder, purring loudly in her ear in an attempt to bring her witch up and out of her gloomy mood. So far, it wasn't working.

  Isabella turned to drag her feet glumly all the way way back to her booth, but Alice’s little paw stayed her, the cat patting her shoulder.

  “Hey, what’s under that listing for Nanoot Village? That piece of paper with the pretty writing on it?” the cat murmured into the witch’s ear.

  Isabella blinked and turned back to the board. She moved aside some papers and dug under the summons with cold fingers. She touched more paper.

  There, beneath the POSITION FILLED-stamped advertisement for a witch in Nanoot, was a crinkled summons, penned delicately on a piece of parchment paper. Isabella tore it off the wall and brought it closer, into the dim light. Some of the words were a little smudged from being so near to the bar (witches were very liberal with their cups after a bit of tea consumption), but there was absolutely no POSITION FILLED stamp on it whatsoever.

  It was a job opening. For a witch. In the town of Benevolence.

  Isabella turned on her heel and marched up to the bar. ”Excuse me, Margaret!” she said, waving the paper at the barkeep, a stout little woman who wore five different types of plaid and never stopped smiling. ”Is this real? Why hasn’t the position been filled?”

  Margaret took the piece of paper from her, adjusted her plaid-colored spectacles and read it over. Her smile actually faltered, something Isabella had been certain to be impossible. “Well, my dear...the position hasn't been filled because it’s for the town of Benevolence,” she told the witch, eyebrow raised as she handed the paper back. “You kids these days, you want happening towns. Benevolence is in the middle of nowhere, on Glimmer Mountain...”

  The tingle began in Isabella’s toes and drifted up to the top of her head in the matter of a heartbeat. A town in the middle of nowhere. More than likely, they hadn’t heard of her! She could have a fresh start! Maybe, this time, she wouldn’t screw things up!

  “I’d like the job, please,” she said, hands shaking as she pushed the piece of paper back over the counter.

  Margaret kept her eyebrow raised but took the POSITION FILLED stamp out from under the counter.

  “Are you...sure?” she asked, looking the eager young witch up and down. “There’s nothing to do. You’ll probably be bored out of your skull. They only want one spell a year; they don’t need a magicmaker for anything else.”

  Isabella thought that surely she must be dreaming. One spell? Surely even she could not screw up one spell.

  “Oh, yes,” she whispered rapturously, holding Alice so tight against her breast that the cat squeaked in protest.

  The stamp practically sparkled as it came slamming down on the crinkled piece of paper, and Margaret went off to send word to Benevolence.

  Isabella knew that her luck must finally be changing.

  ---

  The next morning, Isabella landed her broom on the outskirts of the tiniest town she had ever seen.

  Benevolence.

  The little town lay under a thick mantle of snow, the quaint cottages peeking out of the white like sugar cookies beneath a heavy layer of icing. There were a few lights winking out from behind diamond paned windows...the whole thing managed to be exceedingly picturesque.

  Isabella's boots crunched in newly fallen snow, and as she took up her broom, she drew her red shawl closer about her, squinting. Up on the mountain of course, they were no longer waiting for the first snowfall, had probably been covered in the white blanket for a moon at least. It was only a moon or so until the Winter Solstice, but an uncommonly warm autumn had kept the snow at bay for most of the other villages, a fact that had made Isabella a little wistful.

  She loved winter, loved the warmth of a snug little cottage, the taste of snow, the way it shone in the morning sunshine. Solstice was her favorite day of the year, and her heart ached and yearned for the possibility that—maybe, just maybe this year—she’d actually have a home to spend it in.

  As if reading her thoughts, Alice leaned against her head from her usual perch on the witch’s shoulder. “Don’t screw this up,” the cat muttered to Isabella. Familiar words. Wise words to live by.

  It was too early for any normal mortal to be awake (Isabella wanted desperately to make a good impression), so she readied herself to sit on random doorsteps for a few hours. But perhaps the townsfolk in Benevolence weren’t quite normal. There were many people in the streets, moving from shop to shop, carrying baskets and small packages, some dragging little sleds loaded with all manner of colorful boxes and cloth bags behind them. As she stood at the entrance to the village, the little lane of brightly painted houses and shops with their chimneys curled with smoke and their diamond pane windows glittering, Isabella felt something she had not let herself feel in a very long time:

  Longing.

  “Don’t screw this up, don’t screw this up...” she muttered under her breath, keeping one hand on Alice’s back as the cat crouched, having just spotted a dangle of ribbons dancing brightly in the window of a small toy shop. Both cat and witch stared through the window, their noses almost pressed to the glass. There were dolls and little animals and books and wooden toys, and all of these treasures were mounded and piled up around the crowning glory...a small pine tree in a great ceramic pot covered in sparkling strands of silver.

  The tree shone—literally shone—magic emanating from its bark to play along the needles and gleam out through the window to touch Isabella’s heart. What sort of people used magic to light up a Solstice tree? Isabella pet Alice absentmindedly, earning a little purr. Only magical people, those ones that the magic came to as easily as breathing, used it so casually.

  So why in this good world did they need a witch?

  “Miss Isabella? Is that you?” a voice called. The witch turned and was confronted by a panting woman who clutched her hat to her head, running up to skid to a stop before her. She was covered in all manner of shawls and sweaters and skirts, so many layers of cloth that it was a bit difficult for her to put her arms down by her sides. Through the wreath of scarves and hoods, her so-blue-they-were-almost-white eyes twinkled. “I’m Miss Polly Cat,” she said, extending a multi-gloved hand. “So sorry I’m late! Got held up. Lovely to meet you!”

  After the enthusiastic handshake, Miss Cat turned and began to stride briskly through the town. Isabella trotted to catch up.

  “Welcome to Benevolence!” declared Miss Cat, throwing back her arms to encompass the whole little town. “It’s been forever since we’ve had a magicmaker, and we’re just so thrilled. Really, you have no idea how thrilled we are,” the woman practically purred, taking Isabella’s arm and threading it through her own. Alice leapt off the witch’s shoulder, indignant at the intrusion, as the woman steered Isabella down the street.

  “This is the baker’s, Mr. Ox, and this is the dried goods store, owned by a Mrs. Goose, and this is the bookshop, run by Miss Peacock, and this is...”

  Isabella tried to keep up not only with Miss Cat’s steps but the litany of names. As the shops gave way to cottages, Miss Cat paused, and Isabella hurriedly tried to ask her question. “At the Hag Bar, I was told I only needed to perform one spell a year,” said Isabella, with a forced chuckle. “That couldn’t possibly be true…could it?”

  But Miss Cat was nodding. “Yes, true.” And then she laughed, casting a sidelong glance. “Why, Isabella—why would we have need for daily magic?”

  Isabella shrugged, confused. “I mean, doesn’t everyone need a village witch for healing and some such?”

  “Not Changers,” said Miss Cat with an eyebrow raised. Isabella stared at her for a long moment before she opened h
er mouth and shut it, realization sweeping through her and leaving a feeling of vast stupidity behind.

  Miss Cat, Mr. Ox, Mrs. Goose…of course.

  “You’re shapeshifters,” breathed Isabella, trying to keep the wonder out of her voice. Any seasoned witch knew many shapeshifters—Changers—throughout her life, but Isabella was far from seasoned, had actually never met a Changer and had only read about them in some of her classes and her great book. Here and now, she did her absolute best not to be speechless. An entire town of Changers?

  Miss Cat hid her smile beneath her hand. “So, you can see we’d need very little, magically speaking,” she said, eyes twinkling. “But we do need that one spell a year—the most important spell.”

  “But just one a year,” said Isabella, brows furrowed. She wanted to make absolutely certain. It seemed far, far, far too good to be true. “You don’t need bones set? You don’t need any potions or—”

  “Not a one,” said Miss Cat blithely, spreading her arms wide to the morning sunshine. “We have all we need! The last village witch ran the sewing circle and did a children’s story hour once a week, but you don’t have to do those things. I hope you have hobbies, Isabella. I’m afraid you might get frightfully bored otherwise.”

  “Don't worry. I’ll...find some,” said Isabella, a bit weakly.

  Miss Cat took her arm again and led her down one of the side streets. “The witch’s cottage is right on the edge of the forest, of course,” she said, voice prim. “It has all of the latest fashions for the sophisticated witch. Perhaps you can do a home study course in potions or some such to keep yourself occupied…”

  Isabella clenched her jaw to keep in the truth: she could think of nothing lovelier than days filled with quiet comforts, in which she would be responsible for no one’s broken arm...or heart. She was descended from a very long line of witches, and magic came quite naturally (if imperfectly) to her, but the real world of a magicmaker was never as textbook as classroom situations had led her to believe.