The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  “Well.” Kurt exhaled. “That was interesting, wasn’t it? Makes me wonder when Odin and Baldur are going to show up. Bailey, what the fuck? We knew you would do it when you were ready.”

  Jacob snorted. “Trust Bailey to do it at the most dramatic time.”

  For a moment, they all stood, unspeaking, staring blankly into the woods as the shadows of late afternoon grew longer.

  Roland broke the silence. “How about we go back inside and have dinner? Not to impose, but a cup of coffee might be nice, too.”

  Russell grunted. “Good idea. Bailey’s gonna need to eat after that.” He shook his head. “After all these years. Wait ‘til Dad hears!”

  They filed back into the house, some sense of normalcy returning now that they were away from the place a deity had manifested, and where Bailey had done the impossible.

  The girl excused herself as soon as she passed through the door. “I’m gonna, uh, get dressed. I’ll be right back.”

  Her cheeks blazed as she hurried off to the side and up the creaking wooden staircase, suddenly wondering if Roland might be able to look up her makeshift blanket-dress. She was pretty sure the angle of the staircase would prevent that.

  Besides, glancing down, she saw him rounding the corner toward the living room. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  Once safely in her room, she put on a fresh bra and panties, followed by a red sweater, white socks, and a new pair of blue jeans. She remembered that the pants she’d been wearing had been ripped where that wolf had scratched her outside of Salem anyway. No great loss.

  Then she checked herself in the mirror. Her hair wasn’t too badly messed up.

  “What the hell?” she mumbled. “Since when do I care what my hair looks like? I mean, I wouldn’t want it to look terrible or anything, but…ugh. Stupid.”

  She ran her fingers through it quickly to sort out the worst of the disarray, then trotted back downstairs to rejoin the boys.

  Even dressed again, there was another thing that she wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about—her sudden blossoming into a full and proper werewolf.

  The four young men were seated in the same places they’d been before Freyja had interrupted them.

  “Bailey,” said Jacob, “we’re trying to think about what to do next.” He shrugged in an odd way as if he wasn’t sure what to say. “I mean, well, we have our orders. From a goddess. I still can’t believe that, or that you finally shifted.”

  Kurt chortled. “You were, like, the first one to believe she was a goddess if I’m not mistaken. And I always knew Bailey would shift when she was ready.”

  “Whatever,” Jacob growled, waving a hand and glaring. “Point is, we need to figure out how to keep Roland safe. Again. No offense, buddy, you seem like a nice guy and all, but I’ll be damned if you’re not just about as good at getting into trouble as Bailey is.”

  “Thanks,” Roland commented.

  Bailey nodded. “Yeah, that seems to be the long and short of it. Weren’t we supposed to finally start dinner, though? I’m hungry.”

  Everyone fell silent, surreptitiously looking around as if locked into a Mexican standoff.

  Russell sighed and heaved himself up. “I’m not much of a conversationalist anyway,” he pointed out, and his heavy steps moved toward the kitchen.

  Once the satisfying sounds of their new fridge being opened and pots and pans clanking became audible, they relaxed and began their informal conference.

  “Okay,” Jacob began, “last time, getting Roland out of town seemed to work pretty well. Mostly. I mean, neither of you are dead, and he didn’t end up as those witches’ sex slave, right?”

  “Touché,” Roland acknowledged. “Although they did find us. Shit, they showed up in Portland only a couple of hours after we did. It worked out in the end, but it wasn’t a raging success as far as keeping me hidden from them went.”

  Jacob frowned and rubbed his chin.

  Kurt piped up. “Wait a minute, though. That was when you were trying to get away from witches. They tracked you with magic, right? Something about an enchanted coin or some shit like that?”

  “The coin,” Roland clarified, “was me. I enchanted it to warn me when they were getting close. But yeah, they are using a few basic but effective spells to hunt me down. I can’t block a braided spell like they are using.”

  “Okay,” the youngest brother went on, “but now you’re trying to get away from Weres too. That’s different. We don’t have magic unless you count the usual stuff, like improved hearing and being able to shapeshift.”

  Bailey squirmed. They all seemed to sense her discomfort—and she knew they’d have to return to the subject soon—but for now, Roland kept the discussion moving in the same direction.

  “Good point,” he said. “Those pricks earlier today found us seemingly out of nowhere in Salem, but that’s probably because we were driving and walking all over town. It might have been that someone saw us earlier and reported on our position to the guys driving the car. Something mundane like that.”

  “So,” Bailey concluded, “getting you somewhere that isn’t crawling with city-wolves might do the trick for that, but that leaves the problem of those bitches following you. Otherwise, we could just stay here, now that everyone’s on the lookout for the kidnappers.”

  The wizard nodded. “It just might.”

  Jacob leaped back in. “Well, that’s a start. Still, though, there’s a lot of mysterious shit going on here. Roland, do you know anything about this? About her? I mean, do you guys—witches and wizards—pray to her, or what? Has she ever manifested like that before? Anything?”

  “Uh,” Roland replied slowly, “that’s kind of a lot of questions at once, but they’re all related. Basically, the answer to all of them is no. I’ve certainly heard of Freyja, and sometimes we invoke her at festivals, but honestly, that entire episode in the backyard shocked the living hell out of me.”

  Bailey crossed her arms. “Mr. Seattle, no one thinks you’re trying to hide anything, but I still think you know more about what’s going on than you’ve let on to us. Start talking, boy.”

  He sighed and leaned against the back cushion, rubbing his eyes. “Kinda. I haven’t been withholding anything I thought was important. Mostly just, you know, the minutiae of how magic works. Like with Bailey and her mechanic stuff. I don’t know all that much about car repairs, so if she were to start monologuing about all the intricacies, I’d just get lost. It’s the same way with wizard stuff. Technical bullshit, you know?”

  “I see,” Jacob remarked.

  Bailey echoed her brother, then added, “Fair enough, yeah, but sometimes it’s the technical bullshit that comes back to bite you in the ass. I think you need to start parsing through all this stuff in your head. Figuring out what we need to know and what you need to focus on, as per Miss Freyja.”

  Kurt raised a hand. “Missus. Per the mythology, she’s married to the god Óðr.”

  “Thanks, Kurt,” Bailey replied in a flat tone.

  Roland ignored that bit. “You’re right, and I’ll think it over. If we’re considering having me leave town again anyway, it might not be a bad idea to do some research.”

  The Nordins all raised their eyebrows.

  Roland leaned forward again to explain. “You see, among witch-folk, it’s traditionally been common to leave stashes of obscure books and magical equipment in certain safe locations. These days, mostly in vaults in major libraries within cities they consider relatively friendly to the practice of witchcraft. A stash like that might be helpful to us right now.” He didn’t want to explain the arcane web to them right now or reveal its presence.

  Bailey looked at him. “As in, it could explain why a Norse goddess wants us all to help you all of a sudden?”

  “Quite possibly.” He shrugged, then grimaced, pausing before he spoke again. “Also, pardon me if this is an awkward subject, but we might be able to learn more about why Bailey is now able to shapeshift.”

  Sh
e drew her knees up to her chest at that, feeling singled out and strangely vulnerable. “It…well, let’s just say that came as a shock too. Hell, I don’t know. I’m already wondering if I always had the ability and was just doing something wrong, or did something change that caused it?” She frowned.

  Roland looked at her in that way she appreciated so much, focused, but not judgmental. He was simply paying close attention to her.

  “It’s hard to say with supernatural abilities sometimes,” he observed. “I still don’t know all of what I can do.”

  Jacob cracked his neck. “Freyja seems pretty interested in you both. Maybe she thinks there’s a connection. So, I, uh, second the motion to have you check out one of those libraries. Where’s the nearest good one?”

  Roland sighed. “Seattle.”

  “Seattle?” Bailey and Kurt exclaimed in unison.

  Before her brother could speak, Bailey held up a hand and did the talking.

  “Roland,” she began, “all the people who want to lasso your ass and put you in a cage are from Seattle, aren’t they? Could you even walk around the damn corner without someone spotting you and getting over-curious as to where the hell you’ve been?”

  He shrugged. “We made it almost out of Salem before those Weres caught us, so I suppose anything’s possible. And before you ask about other options, there might be a comparable one in Portland, but I’m not sure. If there is, I can’t vouch for its quality. I know that the Seattle stash is considered to be top-notch. I’ve seen it a couple of times, though, of course, I haven’t read everything they had.”

  Bailey kicked halfheartedly at the air. “You know of any other cities that have top-notch ones?”

  “Sure,” Roland quipped, frowning. “San Francisco being the next closest one. After that, New Orleans, Minneapolis, and New York. Oh, and Toronto. And London, of course. England, not London, Ontario.”

  Jacob groaned. “Well, let’s start by crossing London off the list.”

  “Hey!” Kurt responded, smirking, “Jacob’s smarter than he looks, after all!”

  Bailey threw a pillow at his face. “Yeah, right, cross off London. And the rest. Seattle it is. Maybe Portland or San Francisco as a Plan B. And I’m coming with.”

  Roland thought it over for a second, then agreed. “Deal.”

  Jacob and Kurt looked worried.

  “Bailey,” said the former, “you just got back, and you’ve been in two fights today. We were kinda looking forward to having you around. Home and safe.”

  Russell’s voice rumbled from the kitchen, “At least stay the night. You can leave in the morning.”

  “Yeah,” Jacob agreed. “We could do with your company for the night. And if you head out early, you’ll miss Dad. He’d want to see you, yeah, but you probably don’t want to explain everything to him, so it’ll all work out.”

  Bailey and Roland exchanged glances.

  “Okay,” the girl agreed. “I’ll say ‘deal’ to that.”

  Kurt had turned his attention in the direction of his brother’s voice. “Hey, how the hell long does it take to make mac ‘n cheese and mix it with leftover chili, anyway?”

  Russell shot back, “As long as it takes for you to shut up.”

  Chapter Four

  Jacob brought his car to a stop. “Be careful. Call us when you get to Seattle or if you need anything else,” he told them.

  Bailey and Roland climbed out.

  “We will,” the young woman assured her brother. She gave him a quick hug through the window, then he drove off, leaving them a few hundred feet from Gunney’s shop.

  Roland had brought a paper cup filled with his second dose of the morning’s coffee, and he sipped it. “You know,” he quipped, “it’s pretty early still. I doubt the old man will have the truck fixed by now, and I don’t even know anything about motor vehicle repair.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Bailey grumbled. “Can it. We just need it to be drivable. It doesn’t have to look nice. That can wait ‘til we’re back.”

  The wizard shrugged. “You’re the expert. Also, didn’t he say he wanted you to work today?”

  The girl frowned. Roland was right, and while she didn’t like the thought of leaving Gunney in the lurch while she ran off on another bizarre adventure, she didn’t expect they’d be gone for more than two days. She’d make it up to him when she returned.

  The grizzled proprietor did not come out to greet them. They realized why immediately—it was a busy day. All the shop’s bays were loaded with vehicles, including the one farthest from easy sight of the street. That was where, she saw now, the Beamer was in the process of being stripped into oblivion.

  They approached the bays rather than bothering to go into the office.

  “Hey,” Bailey shouted over the general commotion of machinery, “where the hell’s Gunney? He owes me a truck.”

  “Yeah,” Kevin’s voice shouted back from somewhere deep in the pit, “and you owe us a striptease for morale purposes if you’re not on the clock.”

  Roland tapped his lips. “Could he see you from down there? Come to think of it, I’ve never seen Kevin. For all I know, he’s a tape recording you guys planted down in that basement or whatever it is.”

  “I heard that,” Kevin’s voice snapped.

  Bailey snorted. “Shut up, Kevin. And I’ll be back on the clock soon enough, at which point I’ll strip the skin off your ass and use it for a fan belt. Then you can spend a couple weeks sitting on an ice pack at home watching Star Wars, Episode Thirty-Seven or some shit.”

  “Awesome,” he replied.

  Gunney appeared from behind the second vehicle, a Ford Explorer that was sitting in the bay but not yet lifted.

  “There you are,” he said. “I got two pieces of news. The first concerns your truck, and the second concerns your shift for today. And why’d you bring him?” He gestured to Roland. “Educational purposes? I get the impression he don’t know much about cars.”

  Roland smiled. “Correct.”

  Bailey took a deep breath. “Tell me about the truck first,” she replied, “and then we’ll talk about the shift.”

  The older man removed his baseball cap to air out his sweating scalp, and his shaggy hair spilled over his face. “Most of the news is bad. That’s why I figured it should come first, and the rest second.”

  The girl frowned. “Let’s hear it, then.”

  He took them out back, where the Tundra was parked close to the rear of the bays, indicating it was next in the rotation. They must have already lifted and examined it and then drove it aside, which was a bad sign.

  “Okay,” Gunney began, his demeanor growing detached, almost clinical, “I’ll start with the bottom line, which is that this thing still needs a whole bunch of repairs and shouldn’t be driven. If you’d taken the time to inspect it, you would’ve reached the same conclusion.”

  Bailey shut her eyes. “Fuck.”

  “Right,” the man agreed. “Now, the details. You need an alignment. The control arms are damaged enough to be potentially dangerous if you get banged around. The body damage is bad enough that I don’t know how the hell you didn’t emphasize it to me more when you left the thing here. Driving that thing around, you might get pulled over. Maybe not by the sheriff, but one of his dipshit deputies, possibly, or state troopers if you’re planning on leaving town anytime soon.”

  Bailey realized Gunney suspected she was going to do just that. He was no fool, and Roland’s presence had changed everything.

  “And,” he finished up, “you’re going to have steering issues, probably worsening over time if we don’t fix the whole damn thing now. And of course, the BMW is being stripped as we speak—your idea, not mine—so you’re temporarily without wheels.”

  Roland made a sour face. “Even out here,” he suggested, “we can probably call an Uber.”

  “Why?” Gunney asked, turning toward him. “You planning on leaving?”

  Bailey took the man by the arm. “Gunney, yeah, I’m rea
l sorry. I know you could use extra help right now, but we got to leave town again. There’s trouble. And don’t try and blame it all on Roland. It’s more to do with…well, everything lately. We need to get to Seattle ASAP.”

  He looked into her eyes, his expression grim but not harsh or unforgiving. “So be it,” he murmured. “How long will you be gone?”

  “About two days. One overnight should do it. As soon as we find some way of getting farther than the edge of goddamn town.” She grimaced, looking vaguely into the distance and thinking.

  Gunney waved a hand flippantly. “Dumbass girl. When have I ever not had your back? I technically had three pieces of news. Follow me.”

  Bailey’s heart leaped. Their plan might work out after all. Gunney started marching toward the small junkyard adjacent to the rear lot of the shop.

  She paused and turned to Roland. “Stay here so I can talk over the, y’know, technical details. And keep an eye on the bays there to make sure Kevin doesn’t emerge from the pit. Wouldn’t want him to step into the sunlight and burst into flames.”

  The wizard nodded. “I think I can handle that.”

  Bailey jogged toward her mentor, who hadn’t slowed to wait for her, and soon they were alone.

  She’d only been in the junkyard a handful of times over the years, though she knew the gist of things. Here Gunney collected old cars and car parts. Random people, not to mention employees of insurance companies, would bring them in from time to time. Others were just towed off the street and left to rot.

  But there always ended up being a few diamonds in the rough. Her heart beat faster when she saw what he’d been hiding back here.

  “Now,” the crusty mechanic began, his voice taking on a grand air, “on the off-chance that you don’t know what this is…”

  She knew, but she kept her mouth shut since he obviously wanted to savor the announcement.

  “This is a ’79 Pontiac Trans Am, painted exactly like the one from Smokey and the Bandit.”