Brimstone and Broomsticks: Accidental Witches Book 1

by Dunbar, Debra

  “Got a break in the wards.” Bronwyn smoothed an auburn lock back from her forehead, tucking it into the elastic of her stubby ponytail and leaving a dark smudge on her tanned skin in the process. She was a welder, a part-time farrier, and was the only one of us who’d eagerly embraced her magical abilities. She’d made the enchanted device Lucien was wearing around his leg. She’d made the amulet I wore around my neck. And for some reason, she was the barometer for the wards that surrounded our town.

  “How bad?” I shoved another spoonful of ice cream in my mouth, dreading that I’d need to put my shoes on again and go out. I was half a pint away from pajamas and Netflix, damn it.

  “Bad enough that you need to slam that ice cream and come with me.”

  Crap. I ate faster. “Tree come down again? Kids messing around? Freeman’s dog digging for rabbits?” None of those typical issues warranted an immediate fix though. They usually just weakened the wards in one spot, not caused an actual break. Weakening meant humans leaving town might vaguely remember mermaids frolicking in the lake. A break meant we would need to hunt down anyone passing through town and slap a forgetfulness spell on them.

  Ugh, I hated doing forgetfulness spells. I hated doing any spells. Well, that one had been fun, but I wasn’t convinced the temporary glee had been worth the last two months of anger management meetings.

  “No.” Bronwyn frowned. “I’m not sure what it is. I didn’t want to go look at it without you along.”

  I got up and slapped the lid back on the ice cream. There was no sense in asking Bronwyn “why me”. I knew “why me”. I might not want to perform my magic, but lack of use didn’t negate the fact that I was the most powerful of the seven of us. And I was the eldest. And magic grew as a witch matured. And I was the only sister whose magic was of a broad-based type. They all had specialty areas. I was the generalist of the family. So no matter what happened, I was the one best suited to take care of the situation.

  There was no escaping my heritage. Well, I guess there was if I left town like Babylon, but I didn’t want to leave town. I liked it here with all the people I knew, all the supernatural beings who called this place home. I liked my house. I liked Sunday family dinners. And to be honest, there was this part of me that felt responsible for the residents here, no matter how much I tried to deny it.

  So I crammed the half-eaten ice cream back into the fridge, tossed my spoon in the sink, wedged my poor feet back into my shoes, and followed Bronwyn out the door and to her truck.

  We’d barely backed out of the driveway before Bronwyn started in on me.

  “Sooo…, who’s the incredibly hot dude stashed at Hollister’s wearing one of my ankle bracelets?”

  Gossip spread like wildfire in Accident, but Bronwyn was the introvert of our family and often complained she was the last to know everything.

  “Newbie. Maybe a newbie. He got into a fight with Clinton Dickskin and Clinton’s pressing assault charges.” I kicked aside an empty energy drink can and a crumpled fast-food bag. Damn, Bronwyn really needed to clean this truck.

  She burst out laughing and the sound drew a smile from me. I loved her laugh. Sadly, I didn’t seem to hear it much lately.

  “Oh, poor butthurt Clinton! Someone actually got the best of him in a fight for once. A newb my ass. So this guy is what, a grizzly shifter? An ogre? Half-dragon? No way he’s a newb.” Bronwyn shook her head. “If so, then I’m guessing he took a shotgun to Clinton. Or possibly a rocket launcher.”

  I chuckled. “He says he’s the son of Satan, so a demon. I thought he was just a crazy newb. I haven’t seen him do anything particularly demonic. Not that I’ve ever met a demon.”

  “Well he’d have to be Chuck Norris to be a newb and get the best of a Dickskin in a fight. Sure he’s not telling the truth? Maybe he’s a half-demon or something.”

  “There are no half demons, just full ones,” I reminded her. “If they impregnate a human, the baby is a demon or a human, not a half something.” So Grandma had always said, anyway. There were books on these things, journals written by our ancestor witches and passed down through the family. We’d read them as children, slowly deciphering the swirly cursive writing and faded letters. After Mom left, I’d boxed them all up and stuffed them into the attic, determined never to set eyes on them again.

  “Sounds like he did something demonic if he beat up Clinton Dickskin enough to get charged with assault,” Bronwyn commented.

  I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I talked to Marcus and he’s going to talk to Clinton and drop the charges come morning. I’ll pull the anklet and have a taxi pick him up by lunch time.”

  Bronwyn nearly ran off the road. “You saw Marcus? Did you guys get naked? Should I be looking for a wedding registry in the near future?”

  I shot her a sideways glare. “I did not get naked, although Marcus did answer the door dripping wet from a shower and wearing only a tiny little towel around his loins. No screwing. No getting back together. Just business, then I got out of there so he could go get ready to prowl and hook up with whatever ‘ho he managed to score for the evening.”

  Ugh. Bitter much? Not that Bronwyn noticed. My sister was eyeing the road ahead with a lewd smirk on her face.

  “Man, the idea of Marcus’s loins… Damn, Cassie. You’re killing me. I might need to pull over here. Wet, glistening, almost-naked Marcus….”

  “I know.” No sense in denying it. “But he’s a total sleaze. Don’t make my mistake and jump in bed with the gorgeous hot guy who fills your head with promises of love and adoration.”

  “Are you kidding? Promises of love and adoration? Gorgeous hot guy? Sign me up, girl! Maybe not Marcus, but I’d be happy to have some man use me, even if just for one night.”

  I winced. None of us were short women, but Bronwyn was a hair over six feet, and had always been heavily muscled for a woman. You’d think in a town full of powerful supernaturals, men would love an Amazon who could rock a forge and welding torch, but Bronwyn’s stature combined with her blunt, tomboyish nature and loner personality meant men were more willing to sling back a few shots with her than head for the bedroom. I’m pretty sure she was still a virgin. The only one who’d expressed any sort of interest physically in my sister was Alberta. Bronwyn had thanked her and told her that as she was a “sausage and eggs” girl, she’d need to decline.

  Sausage and eggs. Bronwyn was freaking hysterical with her odd dry humor. She didn’t have my anger management issues. She didn’t have Ophelia’s depression or Adrienne’s wild side. She was just as quirky and fun as the rest of us. Why couldn’t some man see that in her and fall in love? Why couldn’t Bronwyn ever seem to find a happy ever after?

  Not that I could find a happy ever after either. Maybe we Perkins witches were cursed that way.

  I reached out to squeeze her arm, thinking that the hard muscles under her shirt rivaled Marcus’. “You’ll eventually find someone, Wynnie.”

  She snorted. “I have. He’s called ‘The Vibrator In My Bedside Table’. Now back to the subject at hand, there’s trouble brewing with the werewolves in case you didn’t notice. We need to decide what we’re going to do about it.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “First, that was not the subject at hand. We’d been discussing a half-naked Marcus and whether Lucien was a demon, not werewolves and their squabbles. Secondly, even if there is something going on with the werewolves, I’m not going to do anything about it. Not my problem. We have a sheriff.”

  “We’re the witches, Cassie. This is our town. And you’re the eldest. You can’t dump everything off on Sheriff Oakes. The poor guy is up to his leaves in stuff as it is. The residents did a great job holding things together after Grandma died and Mom bailed, but it’s not fair to ask them to continue to run this town on their own. Temperance Perkins made a promise when she set the first wards. It’s our duty to keep that promise.”

  “No, it’s not,” I snapped. “I’m here. I didn’t move away like Babylon. I stayed and I help maintain
the wards. That’s as much duty as I owe this town. I was left to raise six little girls at the age of thirteen. I’m done cleaning up other people’s messes. I’m not responsible for anyone or anything besides myself. It’s bad enough that the law firm gives me every case in Accident. It’s bad enough that I have to run out at sunset on a Friday night, abandoning a perfectly good pint of ice cream to reset the wards that some idiot broke.”

  “And yet you continue to have the whole family, cousins and all, over every Sunday for dinner, just like Grandma always did,” Bronwyn reminded me. “You live in the old family house in town, when no one would have blamed you for selling it and leaving. Cass, I’m grateful for all you’ve done. If it hadn’t been for you, we would have been divvied up between foster homes across the state when Mom left. You took charge. You cast that awe-inspiring spell that convinced a family court judge to emancipate you at thirteen and let you be guardian to six younger sisters. I was eleven. I remember that ritual. Holy shit girl, I still get chills when I remember the power you pulled to do that.”

  I’ll admit I had a smug sort of satisfaction when I thought of it. I’d been desperate and angry. More than angry. Full on rage, is what I’d felt when I’d realized Mom had left and the future we were facing as wards of the court. I’d poured every bit of rage into that ritual, kept our little family together, and at the age of thirteen, suddenly became an adult responsible for six children. And I hadn’t come up for air until Babylon had turned eighteen six years ago.

  “The town didn’t expect you to do more than raise us all those years,” Bronwyn continued. “But once Babylon turned eighteen, they were expecting something more from you than fixing the wards and occasionally defending a goblin or selkie in court.”

  “Well, they were expecting wrong.” I set my jaw, determined not to let my sister guilt me on this. She was the closest to me in age. We’d shared a bedroom growing up. Of all my sisters, Bronwyn was the one whose opinion of me mattered the most. The faint disappointment in her voice was killing me, but I wasn’t about to let her know that.

  “Full moon starts tomorrow night,” she told me. “Dallas Dickskin has challengers to his status as pack alpha. There’s going to be trouble this weekend.”

  “Dallas Dickskin has had challengers to his pack every full moon the last six years,” I replied. “As long as they don’t interfere with Sunday’s family dinner, they can do whatever the hell they want up on that mountain.”

  “Ophelia says this moon is going to be bad. She says this time it’s more than two werewolves brawling in the moonlight for control of the pack. She said what happens this weekend is going to be huge. It’s going to change the town forever. And you’re in the middle of it.”

  A chill ran over my skin, and my heart stuttered. Ophelia and Sylvie were twins, so similar in appearance that even our grandmother had struggled to tell them apart. But where Sylvie had the gift of granting luck—both good and bad—Ophelia’s power was divination. It was all she had. The woman was a skilled paramedic, but when it came to magic, divination was it. Go figure that with the name of Cassandra, I couldn’t divine my way out of a paperbag, where my sister rocked that skill. Sadly, her premonitions were often so vague that they were useless, but this one was eerily specific. And disturbing.

  “Change the town how?” I scowled. “Like maybe the Dickskins kill themselves completely off? Or kill all the werewolves off and we no longer have to deal with their problems? Because that’s the kind of change I’d like to see.”

  “The werewolves aren’t all horrible,” Bronwyn chided. “And neither are the Dickskins. A few bad apples, you know.”

  She was right. And I too worried that the change Ophelia had prophesized wasn’t going to be a beneficial one for the town. Or for me. Why was I in the middle of it all? Did it have something to do with this mess between Clinton and Lucien?

  Whatever it was, that was happening tomorrow night, where right now Bronwyn was parking off the side of a dirt lane, her headlights pointed toward a huge deadfall.

  “Here?” Duh. Bronwyn knew her stuff. We’d reset the wards around this deadfall five years ago when a storm had brought down a bunch of trees. It was easier to move the wards then try to get an emergency backhoe out here to clean everything off. Hopping out of the truck, I surveyed the area, assuming the trees had shifted and dented the flow of energy.

  But Bronwyn had said a break.

  I walked over to the deadfall and stood on my tip-toes. It was definitely disturbed, like something large or heavy had climbed over it. If they’d knocked a bunch of branches down on the other side, it might have broken the line of sight of the wards. They were set up so a quick temporary disruption in the flow of energy wouldn’t set off any alarms—so people traveling to another town, or deer roaming the forest wouldn’t disturb them. Actually, the magic should have gone through trees or stones. A break? That usually meant magic. As in two incompatible magics shorting each other out.

  Standing here wouldn’t tell me anything. One of us was going to have to climb over this shit and check the ward. And it wasn’t going to be me.

  I looked down at my shoes. And at my navy pantsuit that I hadn’t changed out of when I’d gotten home. “I’m not exactly dressed for scrambling over a deadfall,” I told Bronwyn. “I’ve got my work clothing on.”

  “So have I.”

  I bit back a smile. “Your work clothing is Carhartt overalls or pants and Red Wing steel-toe shoes. Mine is a silk-poly blend pantsuit.”

  My sister threw up her hands. “Fine. But if my overalls get dirty, I’m sending you the dry cleaning bill.”

  Bronwyn grumbled under her breath and climbed her way up and over the deadfall, her work boots slipping and sliding on the wet bark.

  “Got it!”

  I heard her mutter an incantation, felt the electric prickle of magic, then heard the crack and snap of branches as she made her way back up and over. By the time she appeared on my side of the deadfall, Bronwyn had a healthy coating of mud on her pants and shirt as well as a few leafy twigs snagged in her hair. She also had something clutched in one hand covered by what appeared to be an old-fashioned handkerchief.

  “Seriously?” I gestured at the handkerchief. “Your initials embroidered on that thing? Lace around the edges?”

  “You try fumbling for a Kleenex when you’re sweating next to a forge.” She opened the handkerchief and showed me what she’d found on the other side of the deadfall.

  It was a coin. It looked a lot like a beat-up, old Chuck E. Cheese token.

  I swore. “I left him at the hotel. How the hell did he get out here, and how the hell did he get on the other side of the ward with an anklet on?”

  Bronwyn bristled. “Are you saying my enchantment failed? Because them’s fighting words, Cass.”

  My sister took her magic seriously. I put up my hands in a placating gesture. “No, I’m just wondering if there’s some magic that might have trumped yours, something powerful enough to negate what you put on the anklet as well as punch a hole in the wards.”

  She wrinkled her nose in thought. “It’s a specialized kind of magic tailored so it’s not affected by any supernatural being’s gifts. I had to tweak it five years ago because Aaron found out the fae were able to remove it. There’s only one loophole I couldn’t close off. But if that had happened, there wouldn’t have been any damage to the wards at all.”

  I shot my sister a narrowed glance. “What loophole?”

  “The wards are like a fence, not a dome. In the seventeenth century, having them extend six feet was plenty high enough. The goal wasn’t to keep supernaturals in or out, it was to keep us a secret from humans. They wouldn’t know about the wards, and were hardly likely to climb a nearby tree and zip-line their way to the other side over the top of them.”

  I understood what she was saying. “Why don’t we dome the town then? Eventually some human is going to zip-line out, or hang-glide, or fly over the town in a hot air balloon and see a bunch of pix
ies getting drunk at Magoo’s aviary.”

  She laughed. “If they can see pixies from a hot air balloon, they’ve got some serious binoculars. Trust me, I’ve thought about it. Doming all of Accident and the surrounding area would take a whole lot more power than the seven of us combined would have. We just have to hope the odds of that happening are slim to none.”

  “I doubt Lucien can fly.” I eyed the coin. “Unless maybe there were two here? Lucien flies over the ward, so his anklet doesn’t keep him in, and someone else breaks through?”

  “Like they were chasing him?” Bronwyn arched an eyebrow.

  “Like Clinton Dickskin chasing him?” I added. “Maybe Marcus caught up with the werewolf in some happy hour bar and told him he was dropping the charges. Clinton decides to take the law into his own hands and punish Lucien. Lucien sprouts wings to get away and Clinton chases him out of town and through the wards.”

  “First, Clinton can run back and forth across the wards all day and they’re not gonna break. Second, we’ve gone from ‘this guy’s not the son of Satan, he’s a newb’ to ‘he’s got wings’.” My sister shook her head. “If he’s a demon, he’s not going to be running, or flying, away from a vengeful werewolf. Heck, even if he’s not, a newb with enough mojo to beat the crap out of Clinton Dickskin is hardly going to flee from a fight with him.”

  She was right. Lucien would stay and beat the crap out of the werewolf. If Clinton had come after him, I would have gotten a text from county lockup telling me to come back and pick up my client once again.

  “Let’s look at this as two separate incidents and see if they meet in the middle,” I told Bronwyn. “One, what could possibly cause this sort of break in the wards? Either intentional or as an unanticipated side effect?”

  My sister looked over toward the deadfall. “Intentionally? Magic. Another witch, although we’re the only witches in town and I don’t see any of us having a reason to break the wards. Besides the seven of us could temporarily bring them down, then put them back up again if needed. There would be no reason to blow a big freaking hole through them.”