by M. L. Briers
Amber handed the older woman her change and the bag of goodies, and she’d even thrown in a little surprise. A candle that she’d spelled that should light on command if Mrs B put enough effort into it – it never hurt to throw a dog a bone, especially when that dog was trying extra hard. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Mrs Beaton replied and headed for the door. “Marilyn,” she said, acknowledging her kindness when Marilyn pulled open the door for her.
“Estelle,” Marilyn returned the smile and closed the door behind her.
“So, what’s going on?” Amber asked, eyeing her mother with suspicion. “This look…” she said motioning up and down at her mother’s new clothes, and Marilyn caught her breath, she worried she was dressing too young for her age. “Looks good.”
“And she needs to look good with all the men in her life…”
“Men?” Amber’s interest piqued.
Marilyn grimaced. “Not men,” she said, shaking her head. “Honey, I just wanted to give you a heads up, your father’s in town…”
“How to ruin a day with four words,” Amber said, bristling.
“And we have a ghost!” Claudia announced, throwing the proverbial dead cat on the table to distract Amber from the other bad news.
“Ghost?” Amber asked, and then it hit her. “Dad’s dead?” She was shocked, and she didn’t have time to process how she felt about that before her mother jumped in.
“Oh no,” she said, offering Claudia a glare.
“You don’t get off that easy,” Claudia said. “My ghost to bear – Marsh Weathers.”
“The golfing guy?” Amber was confused.
“Just showed up in my bedroom – like poomfff – magic, but not as fun, and greyer than I remember him.” Claudia looked a little distracted as she thought about it.
Amber turned her attention back to her mother. “She’s not joking?”
“Unfortunately not,” Marilyn said. “We’ll need some supplies.”
“And a lucky Tiger’s eye,” Claudia said, palming the stone to see how it vibrated within her palm. “Oh, this is a good one – lots of juice.”
“So we have an unwanted ghost to get rid of and an unwanted father,” Amber said. “Got it!”
Marilyn looked at Claudia and Claudia shrugged. “Sounds like a plan if you don’t want to do that whole love triangle thing…”
“Love triangle?” Amber asked, and Marilyn groaned.
“Don’t ask,” she begged, so Amber turned to look at Claudia, who was only too happy to share.
“Well, your father spilt with his…” She waved an absent hand in the air.
“Cheerleader – Barbie doll?” Amber bit out.
“Exactly,” Claudia said, smirking. “And Neal has practically taken up residence as the garden gnome.”
“The vampire and the ex?” Amber said. “I can’t believe I’m rooting for the vampire.”
“Tell me about it,” Claudia said.
“There will be no rooting for anybody” Marilyn protested. “I’m having a men-on-pause.”
“Menopause, I have some herbs for that,” Amber said absently, her mind still on her father showing up out of the blue like that.
“Not menopause,” Marilyn corrected her. “Although, I have that too – I think I feel a hot flash coming on right now,” she grumbled.
“Men-on-pause,” Claudia said as Marilyn fanned herself. “Remember, your mother has decided to take a break from men?”
“I repeat grandma Lou’s words; when wasn’t she on a break?” Amber asked. “Unless I missed something – oooo, what’d I miss?”
“Ugh”!” Marilyn groaned. “Can we just get to the herbs?”
“For the menopause?” Amber asked, confused.
“Yes,” Marilyn said. “No! For the ghost,” she corrected herself.
Claudia lifted a hand to her mouth. “You might want to throw a little rose water in the bag for attracting a love interest. Not that she seems to need the help, but when she finally chooses … Ouch!”
Marilyn lifted her two-fingered pretend gun to her lips and blew. “Go ahead, it’s armed and ready to go again,” she warned her friend.
“I said nothing,” Claudia protested, holding her hands up to her chest in surrender.
~
Talk about your silver fox, or in this case, wolf. Claudia would have known him anywhere; Josh was the carbon copy of his father, but Cain was undoubtedly the original. She had to wonder if Marilyn’s hot flashes were catching; they did say women in the same house tended to synchronise their once a month chocolate consumption – could the body clock do the same with other feminine things?
Claudia resisted the urge to fan herself as Cain turned his gaze from across the street and onto her, and boy, did he have the sexiest eyes she had ever seen. Shame he was taken, although they hadn’t seen Mrs Wolf yet.
Claudia liked his whole persona; the faded jeans, fitted tee, the way the battered leather jacket clung to his broad shoulders, and the shoulder-length hair – sex-on-a-stick, and he had the whole bad boy biker look down. It was fortunate there was a Mrs Wolf because she wouldn’t have minded going a few rounds with that bad boy if he’d been single.
“Witch,” Cain said as he drew closer.
Claudia was sure she heard a growl in his tone. “Now, what did I ever do to you?” she asked, confusing him.
“Huh?” Cain stopped and stared at her.
Claudia liked it when she had a man on the back foot; it appealed to her need to be in control. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you manners?”
“She taught me that witches were best avoided, but they do make a tasty snack,” Cain replied. He eyed her up and down and liked what he saw. She’d probably look better in a figure-hugging pair of jeans and a tee than a floaty skirt, but that was just his personal preference.
Claudia hadn’t expected that, but she wasn’t sure what she’d expected either. She couldn’t help but smile, and she didn’t try to hide it. “I can understand your fear; witches are scary, and we do like to kick wolf butt,” she said with a mocking grin, and kept walking.
Just as she drew level with him, she heard the rumble of a growl. “You keep telling yourself that, sweetheart, but anytime you want to go one on one, you let me know,” he said.
Claudia turned a wicked smile on him. “I wouldn’t want to hurt you – yet,” she whispered.
Cain felt the full blast of her presence – the smile, the way her eyes sparkled with amusement and mischief, and the challenge in her words. It was powerful stuff, and it made his wolf sit up and pay attention.
He watched her go, and it was a great view. The sway of her hips in that skirt made him a little hot under the collar. But he didn’t trust a witch as far as he could throw one – except his new daughter-in-law.
But this witch certainly wasn’t off-limits, and he wouldn’t have minded taking that wildcat to his bed for some fun, except, she was a witch, and they were bat-shit crazy – except for his new daughter-in-law.
Then he remembered the guy across the street, and he reluctantly shifted his attention, but all he found were humans. Cain didn’t like it – a shifter in town, it was a little too coincidental.
He cursed the idea, but he needed to speak to the vampire, something wasn’t right.
CHAPTER SEVEN
~
Marilyn tipped her head to one side and watched Claudia with interest as she walked towards her. If she wasn’t mistaken, the sway of Claudia’s hips since she stopped to talk to the shifter had gone from swing to clear-the-shelves, and she couldn’t help but smile.
Marilyn moved the sunglasses down her nose and peered over the top. “See something you like?” she asked with a knowing grin.
“Did you see the added extras on that guy? His boobs were bigger than mine,” she replied.
“Was that bigger before the surgery or after?” Marilyn asked.
Claudia turned when she reached Marilyn’s side and rested her backside against the car
door, watching him go. “I didn’t have surgery to make them bigger; I had surgery to…”
“Glue them in place?”
Claudia lifted her hand and shielded her eyes from the low sun. “I saw him first,” she said. “He’s in my drool bank.”
“You can have him and a drool bank? Yuck,” Marilyn said, shooing her away from the car door.
“Besides, you already have two men on the go, and speaking of which, here comes loser number one,” Claudia said as Jake crossed the street and headed in their direction.
“Get in the car,” Marilyn said, eager to be gone.
“Should you really be in charge of a potential killing machine around your ex at this time?” Claudia asked, and Marilyn made a split-second decision and tossed the keys in the air, and Claudia caught them.
“You’re right, you drive,” she said and scooted around the back of the vehicle to the passenger door.
“Why don’t we just see what he really wants?” Claudia said, leaning her arm against the roof of the car, and Marilyn made a whining sound from the other side.
“Marilyn!” Jake said, getting closer by the second as his long legs ate up the distance between them.
Marilyn panicked and pulled on her magic, she imagined an invisible step in the road in front of her, put it there, and right on schedule, Jake tripped over it. With his arms waving erratically like he was trying to fly, he went four or five very ungraceful steps before his body finally gave up trying to keep him upright, and he fell onto his hands and knees.
For no apparent reason, he jolted forward and face-planted the pavement.
Claudia shot her a grin. “Fills you with all warm fuzzy little bunny rabbits frolicking in a meadow type feelings, doesn’t it?” she said and wrinkled her nose with a mischievous smile.
“I did the trip, you did the splat,” Marilyn said, and Claudia shrugged.
“I can’t let you have all the fun, now can I?” Claudia said; yanking open the driver’s door and grinning like a very wicked witch.
Marilyn couldn’t help but chuckle as she pulled open her door and slipped into the seat beside her friend. “Go on, admit it, sometimes it’s good to be bad,” Claudia said.
Marilyn just turned a serene smile on her friend. Claudia started the engine and Mel, and Kim’s Respectable blasted from the speakers and that grin widened.
By the time Claudia hit the gas, the women were singing along at the top of their voices.
~
Cain heard them coming before he turned his gaze on the car as it sped by. Two insane witches bouncing in their seats and singing at the top of their voices made him wonder if this really was the town for him. But his son was there, mated to the witch’s daughter, and he wasn’t ready to walk away just yet.
First, he needed to make sure that the vampire, Roland, had bought his story about the warlock being dead. If Roland suspected he was lying and sent someone to hunt Scott down, then it was a sure-fire bet that his son would get involved – how could he not when he was mated to Scott’s sister?
If Roland and his henchmen were coming to town, then he wanted to be there to fight beside his boy. That’s what kin was for; to have your back no matter what the personal cost, and he’d die to protect his own.
Besides, from what he could tell, those witches were crazy, and his gaze lingered on the woman driving for too long for him not to mentally kick himself and drag his gaze away. She might have looked like fire and ice all wrapped up in a sexy-as-hell package of long legs and sensual curves, but the hellfire a witch could unleash wasn’t worth a night of heaven with her body wrapped around his – was it?
The iron grip of the hand that wrapped around his bicep and yanked him into the alleyway where the sun refused to shine made his wolf rise to just beneath the surface. He could feel the fur prickling his skin, ready to push through, hear the roar of the beast within protest the scent of a vampire in the air, and he steeled himself for what he was about to encounter.
Luckily for both of them, it was not Roland who had come to seek his revenge, but Neal. “I assume that even though your mind was on the witches, you clocked the shifter across the street?” the vampire said in hushed tones so they couldn’t be overheard.
Cain wrenched his arm from the vampire’s grip and tried to calm the roar of the beast within him. “That is a good way for you and me to come to deathblows.”
Neal could hear the overlying rumble of a growl as the shifter spoke and could only imagine his wolf doing a song and dance at having a vampire in its proximity. “Drama queen,” Neal replied, dismissing the shifter’s warning to his face, but mentally taking it onboard.
Cain grumbled a growl as he rolled his eyes at the vampire’s attitude. “You might be the top of the food chain, but I’m still in with a fighting chance…”
“Maybe if you managed to rip my arms off,” Neal tossed back and made a show of considering it. “But, probably not even then. Now, can we stop posturing and get back to the shifter?”
Cain grunted with annoyance. “I saw him,” he replied and said no more.
“Good answer.” Neal’s sarcastic tone did nothing to endear him to Cain or his beast. “Did you recognise him?”
“Do all vampires know each other by sight?”
Neal had to give him a point for that one. “Fine. Then I’ll kill him…”
“Wait,” Cain growled at the thought of a shifter’s life being ended for no damn good reason. “You don’t know he’s working for Roland.”
“And I don’t know he’s not…”
“That’s not a reason…”
“I don’t need a reason,” Neal said, and disappeared in the blink of an eye, leaving Cain standing alone wishing things were different.
In the grand scheme of things the vampire probably had the right idea – kill first and don’t bother asking the questions. It was the surest way to keep everyone safe. Still, it did irk him that the man could be so callously murdered without cause.
There was another problem. If the shifter was working for Roland and had followed the same trail that he’d followed to lead him to Scott and Clearview – what was to say that Roland wouldn’t just send another, and another, or come himself the next time?
They needed to be smarter than leaving a trail of bodies along the roadside.
~
“I’ve got it!” Lottie announced.
The sudden exclamation stopped Marilyn and Claudia in their tracks as they entered through the front door, and the elder met them in the hallway of Marilyn’s house. Lottie greeted them with a pleased as punch look on her face and the fire of mischief dancing in her eyes. Before Marilyn could raise a question as to what ‘it’ was, Claudia leant in from behind her and whispered in her ear. “I don’t think I want it, but you go right ahead.”
Marilyn snickered. It always felt as if they were teenagers, back in school when they were together, but then she caught sight of herself in the mirror that hung over the console table and was hit by the apparent realisation that her school days were long behind her. “The spell?” Marilyn asked Lottie, and the elder nodded enthusiastically.
“Although sometimes I do wonder why I bother,” Lottie said, raising her eyebrows at Claudia and offering her a withering look.
“Don’t give me that look, you are not Louann,” Claudia scolded the elder.
“Ooo,” Marilyn said, and forced a shiver. “I got chills just thinking about there being two of my mother.”
Lottie huffed. “Don’t be mean…”
“But it keeps men keen,” Claudia put in and snapped on a bright teasing smile.
“Only in your world,” Lottie informed her. “Otherwise Louann wouldn’t have gone through husbands like they were a good bottle of wine.”
“I heard that!” Louann yelled from the kitchen, and the three witches snickered in unison.
“You’re in trouble,” Claudia said with a teasing grin.
Lottie snorted a chuckle of her own. “I’ll live; she hasn’t
got any other friends and would be lost in boredom without me.”
“But wouldn’t life be quieter?” Louann called.
“Not deaf when she wants to eavesdrop from the other room,” Lottie said, rolling her eyes.
“I’d kill for a coffee,” Claudia said and eyed the kitchen with a wince.
“Coward,” Marilyn said, knowing that Claudia didn’t want both barrels of her mother’s wrath if the elder was stinging from the playful teasing.
Claudia tapped her temple. “Smart.”
“Scott!” Marilyn whispered-called as he walked out of the living room; acknowledging them with just a look, and headed for the stairs, but he kept walking.
Claudia drew on her magic and sent a little buzz of it in his direction. When Marilyn noted the magic in the air and the way Scott skipped a step and ground to a halt, she turned curious eyes on her friend. “Headphones,” Claudia said, motioning to her ears.
Scott grabbed the wire of the headphones and yanked the buds from his ears, and he turned a curious look on the three witches. “This is what I need to do to not overhear your – talking,” he said, his cheeks growing red. “What?”
Marilyn pouted for just a moment. “I need you to go into the kitchen and use your abilities to check on the temperature of your grandmother’s mood before you come back out here and tell us if it’s safe to…”
“Seriously?” Scott asked. “What have you done to her now?”
“Claudia might have upset her,” Marilyn said with a small shrug.
Scott huffed once more and shook his head at their antics. He’d had the happy misfortune to be born the only male in a houseful of witches, and boy, there were times when he’d wished he’d had a brother – this was one of those times.
Claudia noted his lack of enthusiasm for the idea. “Or I could tell you some sex stories of when I was…”
“I’ll do it,” he said and didn’t bother to wait for another word as he headed into the kitchen. Hearing about the sex-capades of his aunt wasn’t his idea of fun, hence the earphones.