by M. L. Briers
“I grew up, you should try it sometime,” Marilyn said, frowning.
“Who you gonna call?” Amber sang from behind her.
“Ghostbusters!” Claudia said and then snapped off the CD player.
Marilyn grumbled to herself, but inside, she was laughing. She just didn’t want to encourage Claudia in her antics because over the years she’d found that only made her more emboldened to go a step too far.
Cain took a slow walk towards Claudia’s car and yanked open the back door, reaching in for the chain as Claudia twisted in the seat and emerged, long legs first, and gave him a dose of the stink-eye when she caught his gaze travelling up her body.
“Looks like someone has been pulling your chain,” Marilyn said and snorted at her own funny.
Claudia shot her a glare, and if looks could kill, she’d be dead on the doorstep. “Not even close to be being funny,” she said, and it sounded more like a warning to Marilyn.
Marilyn knew that meant she was on the right track. “I thought it was funny, girls?” She turned a look on Amber and Sandy, and the witches were snickering, but they were doing it behind their hands.
“It was…” Sandy stopped talking when the nudge from Amber’s elbow grazed her ribs.
“Never get involved between those two,” Amber cautioned her. “They’ll drive you nuts.”
“I hear that,” Cain said, tossing the back door of Claudia’s car shut a little harder than he needed to. He got the Claudia style glare that he was getting used to, and Marilyn couldn’t help but grin.
“Car trouble, man trouble, witch trouble,” she said and snorted a chuckle. “And it’s not even midnight.” She noted looking at her imaginary watch.
“That’s not a man, he’s a monster,” Claudia grumbled, but he caught her words, and he liked them about as much as his wolf did.
Claudia didn’t notice the glare that he offered her as she stalked to the steps and jogged up them, pushing by Marilyn to get inside and away from the shifter before she was tempted to do something mean to him for payback and with a little magic behind it just to remind him that he was dealing with a witch.
That would probably go down like a nun at a frat party, and with him being part of Amber’s family; it was hard to tell whose side people would come down on. She was all for letting him know how she felt about his meanness with her car, but she was going to put family unity above all else and be the bigger person.
Although, when push came to shoving that shifter off a cliff, she was sure that Lottie and Louann would be on her side. Still, she was determined that for now, she wasn’t going to be that person, and he could go whistle if he thought he was getting to her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
~
Lottie shrugged. “The most powerful witch here is Amber,” she said, and all eyes turned to the young witch.
Amber swallowed down hard. “Me?”
Claudia leant in towards Marilyn. “I’ll bet you didn’t see that coming,” she whispered.
Marilyn snorted a chuckle. “Of course, I did. She could witch before she could walk.”
Amber shook her head. She wasn’t entirely sure about being the most powerful witch, after all, there were two elders in the not-a-coven-coven, and her mother and Claudia were both powerful witches. “I don’t feel like the most powerful witch here,” she said and eyed the rest of them.
Lottie offered her a teasing smile. “Well, that’s because you are in the company of some very accomplished and strong women, who just so happen to be witches.”
“I’m not accomplished,” Sandy said, lifting her hand and looking sceptical. “Or a strong woman.”
“Nonsense,” Louann said. “All women are strong, but some of them just don’t realise it. Without women, there would be no men, no mankind, no human race, and no heart and soul to the world – remember that.”
“Exactly,” Lottie said. “No matter what men tell you, this is a woman’s world, and don’t you forget it.”
Sandy nodded. “Ok,” she agreed, but her voice cracked, and she sounded more like a mouse than one of her fellow warrior women.
“And another thing,” Lottie said. “Amber’s magic is the strongest here, at the moment, but you’ve got untapped potential, you’re just coming to the craft later in life than most.”
That perked Sandy up, and she shot a smile at Amber. “I have potential,” she said, sounding excited.
Amber chuckled, along with her, her excitement was catching. “I know; I felt it in you the first day we met.”
“So, Amber will lead the spell work, and we’ll back her up,” Lottie informed them.
To the untrained eye, the six witches sitting in the family room would look like some kind of a book club, but those women were going to perform a spell that would decide Neal’s fate, and that was something special.
Marilyn shot a look across the room, down the hallway, and into the other room where Neal sat chained to one of her best dining room chairs, and she found the man staring back at her. They’d bound him with chains and magic by a reasonably simple binding spell mixed with a sprinkle of another spell that weighed him down. If that man could stand up on his own, it would be a miracle, but still, Cain sat in the room with him – just in case.
Marilyn needed to remember that the man looking back at her was not Neal, it was the golfing guy, and she hated the fact that she didn’t know if Neal was still able to hear and see what was going on around him. If he could, then he might just have reoccurring nightmares about her mother standing over him and snapping his neck every ten or fifteen minutes, and although that couldn’t be helped, it wasn’t helpful either.
“Marilyn!” Louann snapped, and she heard the bones in her neck snap into place when she spun to offer her mother an absent stare, and it reminded her of the sound Neal’s neck made when she’d done her worst, and she shivered at the thought.
“Somebody zoned out there,” Claudia said and leant forward on the sofa to look around Marilyn at Neal. Marilyn felt her cheeks warm, caught her breath in her throat and waited for the punchline with a skip to her heart. “Rough day?” Claudia added and sat back.
Marilyn shot her a curious look. It had been an open goal, and her friend hadn’t taken the shot, she wondered why, even while she was grateful for it. “Tired.”
“Well, get untired,” Louann scolded her. “We have a spell to craft, and if it doesn’t go well,” Louann stopped and considered her words. “You know what that means.”
Marilyn did indeed. It meant they would have a choice to make concerning Neal. They couldn’t let him go as he was, possessed by a ghost that could use his physical body for any amount of nefarious reasons, they could intern him in a coffin and leave him to desiccate and hope the ghost would get bored and leave too, if that was possible, or they could do what would probably be the most humane thing for Neal, and end him.
Marilyn didn’t like those options. Yes, he was a pain in the backside and a current thorn in her side, but he was still her friend.
When Claudia nudged her, she jolted back to the reality of her mother glaring at her. “I’m good, I’m perky,” she lied.
“Perky?” Claudia said and stifled a chuckle. “Sounds positively teen movie-ish.”
“Do not start with me,” Marilyn grumbled. “I have a lot on my mind right now and not a lot of mind to fit it in.”
“I’m sure we’ll fix your – friend,” Sandy said, a little too innocently for Marilyn’s liking. It had been the way she’d paused before calling Neal her friend – but then she was probably overthinking it.
“Thank you, Sandy, I’m sure we will,” Marilyn replied.
“And if we don’t, we can always try frying the ghost out of the ghoul,” Louann said, fighting to get out of her chair.
Marilyn had the urge to whip the damn rug from under her mother’s feet and put her backside right back in that chair again, but she resisted that urge because no matter how much better it might make her feel – it wasn’t going
to help Neal with his little ghost problem.
“Let’s get to it,” Lottie said.
They needed to set the stage, magicians used props and so did witches’, but a witch’s props actually had meaning and weren’t designed to distract an audience. There would be no audience but one, Cain, for the spell they would perform on Neal, and that was how real magic should be, done behind closed doors.
“You all right?” Claudia whispered to Marilyn as the others started to leave the room.
Marilyn shrugged. “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be fine?”
“Because that’s two fines and a shrug,” Claudia said. She knew her friend better than she knew herself, and Marilyn was anything but fine.
“Let’s just get to the spell and see what happens,” Marilyn whispered because she didn’t want Neal to overhear her – if he even could.
“I’m sure we’ll fix your – friend,” Claudia said, mimicking Sandy’s words with what she hoped was a comforting smile. Then she felt the sting of Marilyn’s magic as the witch zapped her. “What? Too soon or just too darn subtle?”
“Oh, you can bite me,” Marilyn said, turning on her heels and stalking away.
“You don’t keep a pet vampire and bark yourself,” Claudia called after her, but all she got was a backward middle finger for her trouble, but still, she had achieved her goal of putting a little fire back in Marilyn’s spirit, and none of this stood a chance of working without it.
~
Cain watched the witch everywhere she went. In truth, she was his kind of a woman, everything a man could ask for, except for the witch part. It wasn’t that he didn’t like his new daughter, Amber, fate had chosen well for his son in the mate department, but there was no escaping the fact that she was still a witch.
Witches were devious and meddlesome, and he suspected Claudia was no different. Even with everything that was going on, life seemed to be a series of jokes for her, and he couldn’t understand how anyone didn’t take life more seriously. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a sense of humour, he did, but gallows humour wasn’t his thing, and she seemed to have a lot of that.
Cain was worried the moment he’d heard about the vampire having been possessed by a ghost. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d find when he turned up at the witches’ lair, but once the elder witch had stopped breaking Neal’s neck and they’d managed to get him chained to the chair with magic and metal bonds; he’d got a bird’s eye view of what was going on, and he didn’t like it.
There was a strange shifter in town which led him to believe that the vampire Roland might be on Scott’s trail, and he’d prefer it if Neal was back his normal self again. If all hell broke loose, he’d prefer it if the vampire was there to back him up, and not some insane ghost loitering in the man’s body who would be more inclined to take a bite out of Claudia than help defend his new family.
Now he was silently watching as the witches prepared to do their thing and try to force the ghost from the ghoul. He didn’t much like the idea of being anywhere near their magic or the damn ghost, should they succeed in forcing him out, but he didn’t want to leave them unprotected from the vampire should he escape the bonds that bound him.
It was the proverbial hard place and a rock, and he was wedged in tightly for the duration with little hope of escape. The vampire might have kept in place by magic and chains, but Cain considered himself bound by loyalty and honour.
When Amber walked by carrying a large ornate jar; he showed some interest. “What’s that?”
“Think of it as a canopic jar for the body and soul of the golfing guy,” she said.
Cain looked lost. “Huh?”
Claudia sailed by and called back over her left shoulder. “Ghostbusters ghost trap.”
Cain’s eyebrows tried to reach his hairline, and he looked impressed. “Cool,” he said, and Amber chuckled.
“The eighties must have been good times,” she teased and followed in Claudia’s path.
“Who didn’t love the eighties?” he muttered to himself with a slow to boil smile.
“About a billion people on the planet,” Lottie said, strolling by with an old book in her hands, and she winked at him.
Cain wasn’t sure how to take that wink. Especially after the way she’d danced with his father at the bar. He really hoped that she was in full control of her faculties, and wasn’t coming on to him. That would be – awkward.
When Claudia made a return run, he stepped in front of her to get her attention. “Hey, umm,” he wasn’t sure what he wanted, but he knew it involved escaping the witches’ lair.
Claudia waited and waited and finally gave up hoping he’d follow those words up with something a little more substantial. “Spit it out, Scooby-Don’t, I have things to get done.”
Cain’s beast was getting antsy again, and he didn’t much like the nickname either, but he had bigger problems to deal with than the wolf’s pride. Playing with his beast’s pride wasn’t something to be taken lightly, and the wolf did seem to want to push to the surface when that witch was around.
It was a tempting idea to consider if he should just let his beast burst free from within him and see what happened when she was faced with his wolf, and when she waved a hand in front of his face, snapped her fingers, and glared like that – it was very tempting indeed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
~
“Spit it out, Scooby-Don’t,” Claudia said as she tapped the toes of her shoes against the hardwood floor.
“How long until you do whatever you do when you do it?” Cain asked, and noted the slow rise of her left eyebrow as it formed the perfect arch.
“Magic can’t be rushed,” she said.
“Yeah, I get that, but…”
“When you rush into something blindly then things go wrong…”
“I can see your point, but…”
“So, take a load off and cool your heels.”
The chair behind Cain moved by magic, and the edge of the seat hit him in the back of the knees. He nearly fell back onto it but managed to save himself just at the last moment. “Cute,” he growled, resisting the urge to take a step towards her and give her a really big piece of his mind.
“We aim to please,” Claudia said, her tone dripping with sarcasm.
Cain could feel the sandpaper effect on his nerves and knew it was all down to her. She’d rubbed him up the wrong way from the moment he’d met her, and now she was doing it all over again. “About that timing thing…?”
“We wouldn’t want to fry the vampire’s brain, now would we?” She said it as though he were a five-year-old toddler that needed to learn some patience, and Cain could feel that sandpaper turn into a grinder if she wasn’t careful she’d have more to deal with than a vampire, she’d be facing his wolf.
“Not until I know if he tracked down the shifter…”
“Shifter?” Claudia’s interest piqued.
“There’s a new shifter in town, and…”
“That’s not good,” she replied and frowned as she asked herself if that was a coincidence too far. “Not one of yours then?”
“No, and no,” Cain replied, folding his arms over his broad chest and eyeing her down his nose.
“So, Scott’s…?”
“Living at the vampire’s house,” Marilyn said, catching part of the conversation on her way back to the kitchen.
Claudia turned in place and gave her friend a curious look. “Why am I the last to know?” she asked and hooked a thumb over her shoulder at Cain. “Even Scooby-Don’t knows?”
“Can you not?” Cain growled.
Claudia turned to stare up at him. “Not what?”
“Do the whole dog joke thing, it’s getting old,” he replied.
“Aren’t we all,” Marilyn said, disappearing into the kitchen.
Claudia rolled her eyes at Marilyn’s Eeyore impression. “Sure, I can stop with the whole dog thing,” she informed Cain. “But then where would I get my source of amusement?”
Cain took a slow, deep breath into his lungs and watched her as she watched his chest expand. Then she snapped a look back up at his eyes like she’d just remembered he was there. “I don’t like you,” he informed her.
“Ah, now see,” Claudia said; a twinkle of amusement in her eyes. “You’ve gone and rushed to judgement before you even know me.” She started to back away from him, but there was a wicked smile on her face that jolted something deep within him. “Your loss,” she added and turned on her heels to follow Marilyn into the kitchen.
“I think I’ll get over it,” Cain bit out.
“Careful there, Scoob, your sense of humour is showing,” Claudia called from inside the room, and he grunted in return. He had a feeling that the witch was going to drive him nuts.
~
“We’re ready to start,” Louann informed Cain as she caught him straining his neck to try to see into the room where the vampire was chained. When she followed his gaze; it didn’t appear to be the vampire that he was staring at.
Cain jolted in place at the sudden appearance of the elder beside him. He’d thought all the witches were inside the room, and he had to wonder if the woman had used magic to go unnoticed.
Cain felt the need to fill the silence in the air between them, he’d been caught unaware staring at Claudia, and he hoped the elder hadn’t noticed. “Aren’t you all supposed to be dressed in robes and capes with hoods, and – stuff?” he asked.
“That’ll be your little secret,” she said and strolled off.
Cain wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but he guessed it was the elder’s way of making him feel more of a fool than he already did.
When the lights in the house snapped off, he jolted to attention letting his eyes adjust to the dark, and when the sudden burst of some many candles firing to life hit him right in the eyes, he grumbled a growl at the pinpricks of pain and blinked a few times to get used to it.