Glinda gasped in horror. “Is that what you use poor Huskerella for? To clean shitholes for hairy munchkins?”
“Shifters,” I corrected her.
“That’s preposterous!” Glinda spun around and waved her hand up at the clear sky. “Wouldn’t it be far more lucrative to use her to paint threatening messages in the sky and hold some other town—one with money—hostage? Even your mousy magic is capable of that much,” she added snidely.
“Sounds like a good way to get a house dropped on your head.” I leaned against the threshold and folded my arms. “Anyway, you’ve confirmed the rumor. Here I am. Thanks for stopping by—”
“But I’ve traveled such a long way.” Glinda’s polished mouth drooped dramatically. “You could at least invite me in for a drink.”
Her slick hair looked entirely too tidy for her to have been riding the jet streams for very long. Either she’d diverted from death hexes and dealing with demons to study cosmetology charms, or she was lying her skintight pants off. I had a bad feeling she wasn’t fresh off the broom from Kansas. But the only way to find out for sure was to play nice.
“Sure. Why not?” I ground my teeth and forced another smile at her. “I think I have some orange juice in the refrigerator.”
“Oh, I’d love a screwdriver!”
I raised an eyebrow but refrained from pointing out how early it was. It was the witching hour somewhere. “Uh...yeah. That should pair nicely with some cookies.”
Glinda loosed an evil giggle and clapped her hands together as she followed me inside.
“HOW’S THE FAMILY?” I asked as I mixed my cousin an extra strong screwdriver. Maybe I couldn’t slip a truth spell into the concoction, but booze had its own magic when it came to loosening lips.
“Oh, you know.” Glinda rolled her eyes and plopped down at the breakfast nook table. “Aunt Evillene’s terrorizing some village or another, and our dads are turning Gran’s place upside down in their quest for her lost fortune.”
“Really?” I said, hoping the hitch in my voice sounded more intrigued than guilty. “No luck on that front, huh?”
“Nope.” Glinda took the screwdriver from me with an intense stare that lingered longer than I was comfortable with. I ignored it and turned my back on her to fetch a plate from the cupboard, quickly filling it with pawpaw-doodles from the cookie jar.
I didn’t think the trust fund Gran had left me was quite enough to count as a lost fortune, but if my family found out about it, I’d be hexed six ways from Sunday before I could wink up an explanation. Just inheriting Broomzilla had inspired an impromptu departure to avoid such a fate. In fact, I was surprised it had taken someone this long to track me down.
“So, what have you been up to?” I asked as I joined Glinda at the table, hoping my disinterest in Gran’s money sounded genuine.
“Just the usual,” Glinda said, twirling her fingers in the air. She paused and took a big gulp of her screwdriver. Her eyes watered, and for a moment I feared I’d gone overboard with the vodka, but then she fisted her hand and slugged it to her chest, releasing the mother of all belches. “Huskcycling the countryside, hunting down little dogs,” she continued.
I could think of a dog I wouldn’t mind her snatching out of Assjacket. Too bad Randal Thorpe wasn’t a teacup Doberman.
Glinda plucked up a cookie and gave it a sniff before devouring it. Then she chugged the rest of her screwdriver. She set the glass down hard on the table and smacked her lips.
“Let’s get right to it, shall we?” she said, crossing her lanky legs. “I know where you’re hiding, but I’m willing to keep my mouth shut in exchange for Gran’s broom.”
“I’m not hiding.” I laughed nervously through clenched teeth. “I just got bored of Kansas.”
There was no way I could tell her that Broomzilla had ushered me off against my will like some sort of ninja nanny, and that I was such a craptastic witch that I could do nothing about it.
“You were bored?” Glinda scoffed. “So you came to live it up in this one-horse town?”
“Actually, there are six horses in this town. Horse Shifters,” I clarified, though Glinda’s annoyed expression didn’t waver.
“You don’t deserve the broom,” she said. “It’s completely wasted in your possession. Sweeping dust and clearing cobwebs? Really, Margo? Gran might as well have given it to a human!”
Broomzilla tapped her handle lightly on the kitchen doorframe, as if to say she has a point.
“You stay out of this,” I barked at her and then turned back to Glinda. “Regardless, Gran willed the broom to me. I couldn’t give it to you even if I wanted to.”
“Are you sure about that, cousin?” Glinda laced her fingers over the cap of her folded knee and bobbed the toe of her boot. “Maybe there’s a spell in Ellie Hernández’s grimoire you could try.”
“Ewww. We are so not kissing cousins.” I suppressed a gag at the image her suggestion conjured. “Mama Ellie specialized in sex rituals. How do you even know about her grimoire?”
“Another rumor on the WitchWire,” Glinda answered casually.
I didn’t buy it for a second. Zelda was the only witch in Assjacket I’d shown the crusty, pornographic spell book to. I regretted it soon after, when Mac stopped by with an ice pack on his crotch and begged me to hide the book and never reveal it to his wife again.
“Such a shame.” Glinda examined her perfect black manicure and sighed. “My sister would tame a cyclone to know where you are—if only to drop a syphilis hex in the mail.”
“Please, Glinda.” I swallowed and pushed the plate of cookies toward her. “I’ve never done anything to hurt you.”
“You’ve never done anything to help me either,” she countered with a dark look.
I resisted pointing out that the door swung both ways, and she’d had the magic to fight back when we were kids. I had not. Late bloomer all the way around. Luckily, Gran had been around to undo whatever awful spells afflicted me. No such luck these days.
“I...I tried one of the rituals already, and it failed,” I confessed. “I failed. My magic is still garbage. Happy?”
“Liar!” Glinda snarled. “I know the ritual worked!”
“It didn’t.” I shook my head and pointed out the bay window. “The garden is still infested with ghosts.”
“Did the ritual call for the elimination of all ghosts?”
“Well, no. But—”
“Then it worked,” Glinda snapped. “So you can perform another one to sever your bond with Gran’s broom. That twitchy munchkin you dusted just before I arrived seems like a willing candidate.”
“Roger?” I gaped in horror and pulled the plate of cookies out of her reach. “I am not doing the nasty with him.”
“Well, who did you bump uglies with the first time?” Glinda asked.
I bit my tongue. She knew too much already—far more than she could have possibly gathered from the WitchWire—but I wouldn’t drag Dylan into the middle of my family drama. Not today, Dorothy!
“He was just some random hot guy passing through town,” I said. It sounded more like a lie than it actually was.
“Cousin.” Glinda’s eyes widened impishly. “How scandalous. What would Gran have thought?”
“What would she have thought about you blackmailing me for her broom?” I lifted my chin. “If I perform another ritual, I assure you, it will not be to give up my inheritance. It’ll be to glue your lips shut. Both sets.”
“You wouldn’t,” she hissed, but the tinge of fear in her eyes told me she wasn’t entirely sure just how potent Ellie’s grimoire was. Or how powerful my mojo had become since Gran’s funeral. I intended to keep it that way.
“Oh, I totally would.”
I winked, and the kitchen faucet turned on. I winked again, and Glinda’s empty glass floated to the sink where it washed itself before settling in the dish drainer. It was nothing spectacular, and I was sure she could do better, but the trick served its purpose—to distract G
linda’s attention away from Broomzilla.
The broom didn’t care for domestic chores I often tasked it with, but we’d forged a truce of sorts. And while my magic might have been crummy, Gran’s was not. Her will was a spell in itself, and her broom was charged with defending me from any and all threats.
Broomzilla slipped up behind Glinda and waited for my cue.
“This is your last chance, cousin,” Glinda warned. She opened the palm of one hand, and in it a ball of electric, green light crackled ominously. “Give me what I want, or I’ll make what Emmy would do to you look like child’s play.”
“You have no power here.” I flicked my hand at her, giving Broomzilla the signal. Her bristles whipped up and cracked Glinda in the back of the head, sending her sprawling from her chair and onto the floor. “Be gone!” I shouted.
Glinda’s magic crackled again, and I was sure Broomzilla was doomed for the wood pile, but then the back door flew open. Suddenly, the kitchen was full of bats. They chittered excitedly and smacked their wings in Glinda’s face, their boney claws ripping at her hair.
Glinda squealed and covered her head with both hands. “This isn’t over, Margo! I’ll get you, and your little broom, too!”
Then she tore out of the kitchen with the bats and Broomzilla hot on her trail. I heard the front door wrench open, and the squeak of bats tapered as they chased my cousin away.
“Well,” I mused. “That was unexpected.”
“I suppose this might be, too,” a deep voice replied.
I turned around to find Dylan Hernández standing buck-naked in middle of the kitchen. He’d slipped in behind the belfry bats. I guessed he’d probably led the campaign against my cousin, too. And my gawd, he was every inch as gorgeous as I remembered.
“Honey, I’m home,” he said with a crooked grin.
Chapter 3
DYLAN HELPED HIMSELF to a cookie from the plate on the table and moaned softly as he bit into it. “Just like Mama Gretta used to make,” he said. Several crumbs landed on his smooth chest. I wanted to lick them off, but now that he was here, it was probably time to take five on the cookie-fest.
Dylan was still naked, and, as a result, my brain was having a hard time making words. I tore my eyes away long enough to glance at the clock above the stove and silently cursed Zelda for not waiting until noon like she’d promised. Then I winked myself up a screwdriver and chugged it down even faster than Glinda had.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, dusting the crumbs from my yoga pants. “Didn’t Zelda tell you to wait a little longer? You know, just to be safe.”
“She did,” Dylan admitted, and then finished his cookie. “But I decided that I don’t care. If I only have a month left, I’d like to spend it here.”
“Oh.” I chewed my bottom lip. Of course he’d want to spend his final days in his childhood home. Why hadn’t I thought of that? “I’m sure Zelda wouldn’t mind if I stayed with her for a few weeks, until...until...”
Dylan crossed the kitchen and stopped a foot in front of me. It was all I could do to keep my eyes on his chest and not let them wander lower. I was so underserving of a peepshow. Didn’t he realize that?
“I’d like to spend it here with you,” he amended, drawing my attention up to his face. “Unless you’d rather I stay in the belfry?”
“No! No, of course not.” I swallowed and tried to laugh, but it came out as a whisper. My hands ached to touch him, but I was afraid to.
Zelda had it all wrong. It wasn’t my perfect memory of him I was trying to preserve. It was his memory of me. I wanted him to remember me as the witch who had worshipped his body in an attempt to save it—not some hopelessly depressed magical reject who had been stuffing herself silly with cookies and crying into her cauldron since he’d left.
Dylan took my shoulders in his hands and leaned in as if to kiss me. I wanted to let him, but it felt wrong. He deserved the truth.
“The house is still haunted,” I blurted before our lips could touch.
“What?” Dylan’s eyes blinked open. “But Zelda said Papa Mateo and Papa Diego have been gone for months.”
“Yes, but now there’s a small herd of ghosts haunting the garden. Did you ever have problems in the backyard before?”
“No.” His brow furrowed. “That’s new.”
I pulled away from him and went to the pantry where I’d stashed Mama Ellie’s grimoire in a box of candles and dried herbs on the top shelf after the trouble with Zelda and Mac. Hidden, but within arm’s reach.
It wasn’t as if I intended to use the book again. Like, ever. One botched sex ritual was enough for me—especially with the likes of Roger the Rabbit poking his twitchy nose over the privacy fence whenever he liked. But a witch was a witch was a witch.
I was as curious as a cat who still had all nine lives, and even if I had no intentions of test-driving Mama Ellie’s kinky hoodoo again, I couldn’t help but explore what a witch with more than a thimble full of magic could do.
“I’ve been through the spell book a hundred times, but I just don’t see how the ritual could have gone so wrong,” I said, grunting under the weight of the box. Dylan stepped in behind me to help, his body heat warming my backside.
“But it felt so right,” he whispered in my ear. “Didn’t it?”
I turned around to watch him set the box on the breakfast nook table and pressed a hand to my chest as I caught a glimpse of his perfectly rounded buns of steel. Then he faced me, offering a view of his fully charged wand.
Wizard, help me.
“Dylan,” I said breathlessly, unable to peel my gaze away. “You seem...really excited to be home.”
“You have no idea.” His eyes smoldered as he took my free hand and tugged me toward the table, lifting me up to sit on the edge. Then his mouth crushed against mine. My lips parted automatically, my tongue welcoming his as it traced the outline of our cookie-flavored kiss.
Dylan nudged himself between my thighs until I felt him hard against the thin fabric of my yoga pants. He hooked a hand under one of my knees and pulled my leg up to his waist. My fingers fisted in the lacey tablecloth as he pressed in closer, pushing my back to the tabletop, and the box of candles and herbs crashed to the floor.
My head mashed the plate of cookies, but I was too busy going out of my mind to care. One of Dylan’s calloused hands slipped up the front of my tank top and cupped my breast, drawing a guttural sound from my throat, and something fluttered low in my stomach.
How many times had I fantasized about his return? How many times had I envisioned him taking me, just like this, right here on the breakfast nook table?
“Dylan,” I gasped as his fingers hooked over the waistband of my yoga pants. “I haven’t shaved—”
He cut me off with another kiss and then dragged his mouth down the side of my neck. “I don’t care,” he said, his ragged breath hot against my collarbone.
“In seven months,” I added.
“I really don’t care,” he said again, and then stripped my pants and fuzzy slippers off in one swift motion. He pulled my legs back to his waist and thrust inside me.
We both cried out, and though pleasure was mostly to blame, the little old bitty banging on the bay window claimed a fair share of the excitement.
NOSY APPARITIONS HAD not been part of my reunion fantasy with Dylan. Obviously, they hadn’t played a part in Dylan’s fantasies either. His magic wand went limp at the ghost’s wrinkly scowl.
We scrambled off the table just as fast as we’d mounted it. I yanked my pants up while Dylan tied on Mama Gretta’s frilly apron, but before we made it out to the backyard, the spirit was gone.
“Did you recognize her?” Dylan asked, twisting every which way to see where the old gal might have gone. I ran my hands through my nest of sweaty curls and shook my head.
“No, but she makes number six,” I said. “They’re all super old—not just in age but the era they appear to be from. They mostly stick to the garden, and they keep menti
oning a Father Pepper.” I gave Dylan a quizzical look.
“That might be the name of the priest who ran this place back when it was a church.” He rubbed his chin and glanced around the garden. “I suppose this would have been a courtyard at the time. And there’s an old graveyard on the other side of that fence,” he added, pointing at the section that ran along the backside of the yard, just past the caved-in gazebo.
“You didn’t mention anything about a graveyard when I bought the place last fall.” I made a face at him and folded my arms.
“Well,” Dylan stammered, “it’s old. And no one really visited it much after the church was converted to a house. The only Shifters who have been buried there for the last hundred years are from my family. Mama Gretta said that she made Papa Mateo put up the fence after she sprained her ankle on a headstone sometime in the forties.”
“And what?” I threw my hands up in the air. “Now these crusty old ghosts want to find this priest to confess and get absolution? Or to register a complaint about the fence?”
“You don’t know what they want?” Dylan asked.
“Nooo.” My eyes welled at his surprise. “That would be too easy, wouldn’t it? But it’s not like I could help them anyway. I’m the little witch who couldn’t.” My voice rose an octave as the hysterics took hold. “Oh god, I totally screwed up the ritual. I just know it. And now you’re going to die, and it’s going to be all my fault, and everything is ruined!”
“Everything is not ruined.” Dylan pulled me into a tight hug and tried to shush my blubbering, but now that the floodgates were open, there was no stopping it. My tears stained the skimpy apron, and my hands groped his bare backside where the garment didn’t reach. It didn’t fix our problem, but it certainly didn’t hurt.
“I don’t know what to do,” I sobbed against his chest, wondering how I’d gotten through the past seven months without the feel of his skin against mine.
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