Magical Mayhem: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (Witches of Gales Haven Book 2)

by Lucia Ashta

  Maguire stared at his wife, who glared back at him, her hostility undisguised.

  “Don’t you dare, Maguire. I will never forgive you.”

  Finally, he sighed. “Thank you, Bessie, and the rest of the council members too. I appreciate the offer. But this is something I need to resolve on my own. It’s been a long time coming.”

  If I were Maguire, I would have taken Nan up on her offer in two seconds flat. But then, I wasn’t Maguire.

  “If you’re sure,” Nan eventually said, “then that’s your choice. But know that if some ill should befall Delise and she were to, say, die, you would be welcome to come back here.”

  Delise drew in a theatrical gasp, bringing a hand to her chest in feigned affront. I was starting to think the woman wasn’t capable of real emotion. “Are you telling my husband to kill his wife? Me?”

  “No. I’m saying what goes around comes around, and you might just find yourself on the butt end of some fearsome karma.”

  “Hmph,” Delise grunted.

  Nan ignored her, continuing to speak to Maguire. “Now, if you were to come back once Delise isn’t in the picture, we wouldn’t be able to automatically allow you to rejoin our community. You’ve made a lot of bad decisions over the years, even if I assume all of them were thanks to Delise. But we’d at least give you a chance, and we’d decide based on your actions alone for once and not hers.”

  Nan took in the rest of the council members, their expressions equally regretful, before facing him again. “We really are sorry for how it’s turning out. But we can’t chance allowing you to stay in Gales Haven when she controls you. We wish it weren’t so, but let’s be real, it is. So long as that’s in any way the case, you aren’t welcome here.”

  Maguire nodded in defeat, but didn’t protest.

  Then Tessa stood, looking out at the sea of faces. “If there’s nothing more…”

  “Of course there’s more,” Delise interrupted. “You can’t do this. I was only trying to help. I did what I did to help the town when y’all were too dense to figure out you needed me.”

  Tessa sighed, but when Stella opened her mouth, no doubt to give Delise another piece of her mind, she stilled her with an upraised hand.

  “Delise Contonn,” Tessa said, “your sentencing is complete. We the council feel we have a clear picture of who you are and what your true intentions are. Even if what you’re saying is truthful to your mind, and you genuinely believe you were trying to help, you can’t be trusted. You endangered the security of the town without a single thought to the consequences of your actions. We have no guarantee you won’t do it again.”

  “Especially not with your current attitude,” Stella bit in, unable to help herself.

  “Right,” Tessa said.

  “Just be glad we aren’t stringing you up by your toes,” Irma said. “That’s what I voted to do.”

  “And I seconded it,” Stella added, though I doubted either of the women really meant it.

  But then, taking into account the fierce tilt of their eyes and mouths, it was hard to tell. Having been around Nan much of my life, I understood how seriously the council took its responsibility to keep the townspeople safe. It was their number one priority. Since Delise had proven herself a threat to general well-being, I wasn’t surprised they were throwing her out.

  Tessa looked down the line at her fellow council members, ending at Nan, who nodded. Tessa glanced at Noreen Bradley, who sat in her usual seat at a table off to the side of the dais, guiding her enchanted quill to transcribe every word that was said for the official record.

  Tessa continued, addressing her eager audience. “We’ll be allowing Delise and Maguire to gather their things, but they’ll be escorted out of town this very night. Whosoever of you possess attack magic of any useful sort in this situation, please meet me up here immediately after the assembly is adjourned. We’d like to call on you to help me in overseeing their packing and leaving in case Delise gets any ambitious ideas.”

  “You got it!” a man yelled out from somewhere in the crowd.

  Delise’s mouth twitched at the corner, and I wondered if she might indeed be plotting some kind of, what?—escape made no sense. It was more likely she’d attempt some sort of final eff-you gesture. I hoped they didn’t let her anywhere near the barrier spell. But of course she’d need to cross through it in order to exit the town.

  It took me a while to realize Delise was laughing. Dark and menacing, the sound gave me the heebie-jeebies. I’d never liked the woman; it wasn’t like there was much to like. But I’d never seen this side of her.

  “How are you going to keep me out?” she asked the council. “The spell allows in anyone with magic. And you know I have more than most of you. Whenever I want to get back in, I will.”

  I tensed.

  “Then we’ll just have to adjust the spell to keep you out,” Stella said, finally taking her seat again and crossing her arms over her chest.

  “What, you’ll adjust the spell like you did before, with Marla, the least powerful witch ever of all the Gawamas, bumbling around at the helm? Or do you forget that y’all barely managed to do it in the first place, and then once you did, I slipped my magic in there and no one even realized it? How would you even know if I came in again, or if I adjusted the magic to my suiting?”

  Delise was oversimplifying things, and entirely leaving out the fact that I had noticed she was trying to modify the barrier spell. But I didn’t have the chance to defend myself.

  Nan lashed out like a barbed whip. “You talk trash about my granddaughter again and I’ll yank out your tongue, wrap it around your head, and tie it up into a nice pretty bow that will match your hideous poncho thingy.”

  I was ninety-nine percent sure Nan would never do something like that.

  Quade shot me a look, brows raised. I shrugged, grimacing. My grandmother kicked ass; his mom sucked. I didn’t want to rub it in.

  “Marla is a thousand times the woman you are,” Nan went on. “And that’s not just ‘cause she’s a Gawama, you hear. It’s ‘cause she’s not afraid to own up to her mistakes on her way to becoming the best her. She’s not afraid to care for others and to put herself out there in the process of helping Haveners, even if it means making a fool of herself, chasing after a nekked leprechaun draped in Spanx. She’s our new detective, and she had a doozy of a first case.”

  My cheeks heated, but I had no idea if it was due to Nan’s kind words, or due to the fact that everyone now knew I was the town’s new detective and had spent the day chasing around Spanx and mischievous magical creatures. Nan could have instead mentioned how I’d solved a kidnapping—kind of—but nope. I got the Spanx and leprechaun. At least she hadn’t mentioned him wagging around his privates in the sugar store.

  “She even had to see the leprechaun’s dangly bits, and she handled it like a champ.”

  Wincing, I felt my cheeks ramp up the temperature.

  “Can you imagine that?” Nan continued in a loud, clear voice that carried all the way to the back, when all I wanted was for her to stop at this point. “Having to see a buck nekked little leprechaun’s twig and berries? His sausage and meatballs? He got burned when Bab yanked him out of her sugar store, so he was probably waving his bits all around, trying to cool them.”

  “That he was,” Bab yelled from the audience. “I ran into the back of my kitchen with Marla ‘cause she told me he was there. Mind you, if not I might not’ve realized for a while, and he was headfirst in my sugar, bare butt mooning us like it was the middle of the damn night. I had to spend all afternoon scrubbing my kitchen to make sure it was clean again after him. But Marla solved the case and fixed what Delise did to the barrier, that’s what Marla did. She saved the town.”

  Well, that wasn’t exactly true, but I didn’t have the chance to protest before the crowd began hooting and hollering their appreciation and even some congratulations.

  Damn. Nan was doing a mighty fine job of sticking me with the role of detec
tive. I didn’t want it! Talking with snarky animals who were half insane was bad enough. Now I was going to have to don a Sherlock Holmes cap? Hair like mine didn’t do hats.

  “This is ridiculous,” Delise called out, flapping her arms like wings under her poncho a few times, circling to face the audience of her peers. “Marla couldn’t find her own ample ass with her own two hands! She ran away from town with her tail tucked between her legs because she was the runt of the family. She barely has any magic. She couldn’t even make a marriage work. My son was always too good for her.”

  Whatever else Delise had been about to say about me, I wouldn’t find out. Several things happened at once while I stood there in shock, unable to believe my eyes.

  Quade stomped over to his mother while my ninety-six-year-old nan rounded the table at mind-defying speeds and leapt down the foot or so that separated the dais from the floor of the main assembly hall. She landed on wobbly legs and almost crumpled, but my aunts were there to catch her.

  As one, Nan, Aunt Jowelle, Aunt Luanne, and Aunt Shawna rounded on Delise.

  “Quade,” Nan growled, and he froze as he faced off with his mother.

  Without turning around to look at them, he answered. “What?”

  “I’ve always liked you. You always have my Marla girl’s back even though this wretched woman is your mother. But this is for the Gawamas to handle.”

  Quade didn’t move. The man who was gentle enough to coax plants to do his bidding shot molten anger at his mother—on my behalf.

  My heart beat in my throat as I snapped back into myself, absorbing the fact that there was about to be a throwdown in my defense. I pushed off from the wall I’d been leaning against, planning to talk everyone down.

  “Come on, Quade,” Aunt Luanne said. “No one talks about our girl like that and gets away with it. Step back.”

  With evident regret, Quade did, but he hovered around the Gawama women as if planning to interfere once they did … whatever they were going to do. My aunts and grandmother looked ready to claw Delise’s eyes out, but my aunts were in their mid-to-late sixties, and Nan was nearing a hundred for sweet pickle’s sake. Not one of them was a violent woman. Sure, they told you what they thought whether you asked them to or not, even if it was inappropriate and out of place, but they’d never brawled—as far as I knew.

  My mouth open, ready to tell them all I didn’t care what Delise said about me—even though I did at least a little—that’s when Delise announced, loud enough for the whole hall to hear: “Marla Gawama is a stupid heifer. I don’t see why you mind what I say about her. She’s—”

  Delise’s eyes widened and she finally shut up.

  I heard Noreen’s enchanted pen scratch out the last of Delise’s words into her large record of all town meetings. That was the one second of silence before the storm hit.

  Aunt Shawna launched herself at Delise, knocking the woman flat onto her back with a sharp smack against the hardwood floor. The people sitting in the front pew, next to the spots my aunts had vacated, scrambled out of the way, as did Maguire, while Delise’s mouth opened and closed, struggling for breath. When she finally did draw in breath, she wheezed through having the air knocked out of her lungs. Flat as a board, her feet stuck out from under Aunt Shawna like Delise was the Wicked Witch of the West. All she was missing were the striped socks and pointy shoes.

  Aunt Shawna straddled Delise while Aunt Luanne tensed beside them like a beast about to attack.

  “Take back what you said about Marla,” Aunt Shawna ordered.

  “No,” Delise said. “Get off me, you cow.”

  Aunt Luanne crouched down next to them as Nan and Aunt Jowelle circled, looking for a way to help. Quade did the same, only I suspected he didn’t intend to help in the same way my family did. He was probably looking to wrench the crazy women away from the crazy woman he was related to.

  “Take it back,” Aunt Luanne said, running her fingers obnoxiously across Delise’s face.

  Delise slapped Aunt Luanne’s hands away. “No! You’re about to throw me out. I’m not taking anything back.”

  Darnell Adams, Irma Lamont, Tessa Smate, and Stella Egerton descended the dais to surround us. I caught sight of people in the crowd flinging themselves from their seats and shuffling up the rapidly filling aisle to get a good view of the fight.

  “You’re not good enough to even speak Marla’s name,” Aunt Shawna said, though the statement was totally ridiculous. I wasn’t some god or something. I was a divorcée with bad hair, a whole list of regrets I was trying not to have, and a doughnut addiction evidenced in my thighs.

  “That’s—” Delise started, but then Aunt Luanne all but put a finger up her nose. Delise whacked at my aunt’s hand like it was a yellowjacket wasp ready to sting her.

  “I think this has gone far enough,” Darnell Adams said, adjusting his already straight bow tie despite the ludicrous show unfolding in front of him. “Is it the time of month for all of you when you go crazier than usual?”

  With deadly slowness, Aunt Shawna swiveled atop her perch across Delise’s waist to stare at Darnell. “Tell me you didn’t just say what I think you said.”

  He tsked, frowning. “What kind of example are you setting for the youth in the assembly? Should they tackle a person just because they say something they don’t like?”

  “If that person is putting down someone they love, and the person won’t shut the hell up,” Aunt Luanne said, “even when they’re warned to shut their trap, then hell yeah.”

  “That’s immature,” Darnell said, and then trailed off as Aunt Jowelle marched right up to him and lined herself up so she was staring straight into his eyes.

  He cleared his throat, nervously adjusted his bow tie again, satin violet and green polka dots that day, and backed up half a step.

  Go Aunt Jowelle. Where had all her rules about appropriate behavior gone? She was just as fierce in my defense as her sisters and mother.

  But before the Gawamas could get going again, Tessa drew up to them.

  “Punish her by banishing her from Gales Haven,” she said. “That’s the worst kind of punishment for someone with magic who doesn’t know anything but what it’s like to live in this town.”

  Aunt Shawna deliberated, trading a look with Aunt Luanne. “Fine,” Shawna said before jumping off of Delise with the limberness of youth. Her regimen of multiple orgasms on the regular was obviously working to preserve her flexibility.

  Before I could stop myself, and even though shit was dire, I glanced at Quade. His brow low and furrowed, he still looked gorgeous. His strength was apparent everywhere his muscles strained against his shirt and his jeans. The man was built, and what was even better, he was kind and gentle. He was more a man than Devin could ever dream of being. Seemed like it was time to begin my own multi-orgasmic workout regimen…

  Nan snapped me out of my irrelevant thoughts. “Then close the assembly, Tessa. Let’s throw her out on her butt now.”

  “You got it.” Tessa climbed the step back onto the dais, spread her arms, and announced, “Show’s over, everyone.” Then she faced Noreen, who hadn’t moved since chaos reigned, not one to abandon her post. “This assembly is now over. The council’s verdict sentencing Delise and Maguire Contonn to banishment from the community of Gales Haven is final. This assembly is adjourned.”

  As voices rose and as many moved to exit as to go in the opposite direction to get a better view of Delise sprawled out on her ass, Tessa shouted, “Remember, anyone who can help guard the Contonns until we throw them out, please come up here.”

  People milled around me in all directions, making my head swim as the din grew louder and my family continued to voice its outrage.

  Sinking to sit on the lip of the dais, I thought, At least Clyde and Macy weren’t here to see this. They didn’t need to witness their great-aunts and great-grandmother standing around glaring at Delise and cracking their knuckles like they were mobsters preparing for a beatdown.

 
And then I heard Clyde and Macy calling for me through the crowd.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Clyde, Macy, and Harlow had arrived just in time to see both their families behaving like rabid baboons. Though I was secretly touched by Nan’s and my aunts’ defense of me, I didn’t want my kids to think brawling was the answer to solving their problems. Macy’s eyes brimmed with excitement as she recounted what Nan and her great-aunts had done. Clyde was the only one to have the grace to appear embarrassed, blushing intensely every time Macy again mentioned how Aunt Shawna leapt into the air and took Delise “right the hell down.” Macy would smack her fist into her open palm for effect.

  Each time Macy told the story, Aunt Shawna leapt higher and more gracefully. Already Macy was making her out to be a flipping gazelle, and the day was still young. Full-on hero worship was in effect for Aunt Luanne too—in fact, for all of my family who’d spoken their mind or gotten up in people’s faces to defend my virtue. Macy had a girl crush on the Gawama women. I thought it was kind of cute that she admired the band of wild, redheaded women, of which I was most definitely a part.

  Harlow, however, hadn’t said much. When I finally asked her if she was all right, she shrugged and said it sucked to be Delise’s granddaughter.

  Yeah, it did. I thought it sucked to be Delise’s anything, and set out to find the woman’s disowned son when Clyde stopped me in my tracks.

  “Where’s Maguire?” he asked.

  I whirled around looking for the man where I’d last seen him, next to his wife, then jumping out of the way to avoid my nutter family.

  But Maguire’s balding scalp was nowhere to be spotted, at least not among the mob that surrounded us. The crowd had thinned some, but most weren’t eager to abandon the source of enough gossip to last through sparse times. Already I could picture the stories. Just as Macy’s, they would stretch and exaggerate until the Gawama women were superheroes. Actually, Nan would probably get a kick out of it, so maybe it wasn’t all bad.