Which Witch is Wicked? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 2)

by Kerrigan Byrne

  Using the samples from Nicholas and Drustan—Julian had predictably refused to participate in anything so vulgar—among many other elements difficult for anyone but her to procure, she had done it, and done it well. Like it or not, there was no way any of Moira’s sisters would succeed in coming within a quarter mile of the compound where she and the old bitch Justine were being held, though she knew they would try.

  And now, using a couple tricks she had perfected millennia before it even occurred to the de Moray witches’ parents to hump bareback, she intended to uncover their plans for doing so.

  She stopped on the corner just outside the witches’ protective wards, purposefully standing in a shadow where only her vague outline could be seen. She wore a pair of cutoff jeans, a tank top that showed plenty of boob, and Moira’s own cheap rubber sandals. The last, she considered a significant sacrifice on her part.

  Now came the real fun. Using the voice she’d stolen from that backwater slut. Well, not so much stolen. It was more of a copy and paste kind of proposition.

  Moira had brought it on herself really. Had made one too many sly jabs at her, the Lord of fucking Darkness herself. Instead of bonding over their shared abilities and proclivities, Moira had insisted on insulting and contradicting her at every turn.

  Until Lucy broke Nick’s bedside lamp over her head. An impulsive move perhaps. Not ideal in terms of attempts at future bonding. But, extremely effective in shutting her up. As was what she had done next.

  With one hand pressed against the water witch’s blood-sticky temple in a gesture almost motherly, Lucy had uttered the words that would allow her to borrow Moira’s voice. She’d ended the rite by kissing the witch’s pillowed lips and drawing the breath from Moira’s own lungs. The water witch’s voice had felt like smoke and silk sliding down Lucy’s throat.

  She had pushed the hair away from Moira’s temple so it wouldn’t become clotted, slowly licking the water witch’s blood from her fingers.

  It had been there, she had tasted it.

  The self-loathing. The self-hatred. The shame. The deep, ravenous desire for acceptance. The gnawing fear of rejection.

  All hideously self-destructive. All perfectly useful.

  It was while she walked from the Horsemen’s compound toward the de Moray home that Lucy had considered how best to use this information, and now, she had a pretty good idea.

  Shrouded in shadow, Lucy clicked from her own voice over to Moira’s, an action that reminded her of depressing the tab of one of those multiple colored pens yuppies had been so fond of in the 80’s. Now blue, now black, now red, now Satan, now a water witch.

  “Cheeto,” she whispered on the wind. “Momma’s home. Come on, baby. Come see momma.”

  Lucy pinpointed the exact second when the tiny pig heard his witch’s summons. A burst of eager porcine energy reached out to her, and she could almost hear his little hooves pawing against the front door of the house across the street.

  “All right, for fuck’s sake. Hold your fucking wad,” she heard a voice say, muffled through the wooden door. Aerin. Vicious dislike flared within Lucy. How she wanted to punish the air witch, the one who had tasted her Julian.

  It would have to wait.

  The door cracked open, and a blur of pink shot through, scarcely heeding the warning called after him.

  “Stay in the yard, okay? The last thing we need is someone flattening you into a breakfast patty before we can figure out how to get Moira back.”

  Once the door closed, Cheeto nosed his way through a crack in the fence and sped across the street, only to pull up short when his small hooves clicked to a stop at Lucy’s feet.

  “Gotcha!” She seized the warm body, which started to squirm the instant Lucy’s hands made contact with his skin. She tried to speak to him in low, soothing tones, but the fucking walking pork chop knew. He knew she wasn’t Moira and his anger at being duped vibrated through all three-and-a-half pounds of pork clasped between her glassy nails. “Ugh. Let’s get this over with then.”

  She grimaced at the feeling of his wet snout against her palm, but wanted to hold his maw closed lest any ill-timed squeals alerted the sisters prematurely.

  “Hold still little piggy. This won’t hurt me a bit,” she whispered close to his velvety ear. And just as she’d slid into Sunny’s tattooed and pierced body, so she slid into the body of this tiny pig, Moira’s familiar, who could come and go from the de Moray house as he pleased.

  Space between the cells of her immortal matter shrank, sinking into and below the skin, the subcutaneous layer of fat. Her body fusing itself with the pig’s until there remained nothing visible of Lucy.

  Only after the process was complete did the memory of being cast into a herd of swine return to her. That hadn’t worked out so well.

  This would be different. She could feel it already. For one, Lucy found the intelligence of Moira’s familiar encouraging. He lacked the wild self-will that had driven those stupid beasts off a cliff and into the sea below, where they had drowned, and she had evaporated to reassemble herself elsewhere.

  But there was something else she hadn’t counted on.

  Resistance. This fucking piglet was actually resisting her presence in his body. Only when she caused him pain equivalent to a cattle prod to one of his plump pink ham cheeks did the pig yelp and scamper across the street and back toward the house, where she intended to listen most carefully to every word spoken inside.

  Lucy pawed the front door with a hoof, deliberately fighting for control. Cheeto’s heart expressed a longing to curl up on the porch swing, where he could watch for his real momma, though he hadn’t thought this in so many words. The pig’s desires registered as a lower frequency hum, deeper even than emotions she’d felt run through some humans.

  “In or out? Out or in? What’s it going to be, bacon bit? Because if you come inside, you’re staying this time.” Aerin de Moray’s Louboutin patent leather pumps appeared at roughly eye level in the opened doorway, and for a brief moment, Lucy considered seeing if Cheeto had anything in his abominable intestines to squirt at them as she passed. But then, she would likely wind up booted back into the yard, which served her purposes not at all.

  She scampered in and toward the kitchen, where she heard female voices escalating in tension.

  The cat dozing lazily in the corner chair startled to all fours the second she caught Cheeto’s scent, her back arched, tail puffed like a bottlebrush, a low, deep growl issuing from her throat. A paw swiped at Cheeto’s snout, lightning-quick, and Lucy felt the stinging pain of the scratch.

  “Jinx!” the earth witch scolded, scooping up her familiar. “What in the Goddess’s name has gotten into you?”

  Luckily, Lucy didn’t have to figure out how to feign porcine terror. Cheeto did that all on his own—quaking from curly tail to snout, hurt and surprise registering in his mind. He thought the cat a friend of sorts, didn’t understand why Jinx would want to hurt him.

  You’re welcome, Hamlet, Lucy thought. It’s better you learn now. Cats have no friends. Just enemies who haven’t yet outlived their usefulness.

  Tierra took the cat out of the room, leaving only the air and fire witch at the table. Lucy sensed their familiars were elsewhere, though they likely didn’t understand the cause as well as she did. The budding darkness in them would be as easy for their familiars to sense as it was for Lucy, and they would continue to distance themselves until the transformation was complete.

  Which Lucy dearly hoped would be soon.

  She took the opportunity to examine them both at length. After all, the water witch’s soul might be the most convenient, but it was it the most desirable?

  Aerin, all well-composed graceful angles in her tailored black suit, her hair twisted into an elegant chignon at the base of her neck, silver eyes staring into some middle distance where Lucy guessed Julian might be riding Archimedes through an endless moonlit pasture. Lucy’s gaze lingered on the air witch’s mouth, an exact replica of th
e one she had pressed her lips to hours earlier, only Aerin’s were slicked with lipstick the shade of a good chianti at sunset. Those lips had tasted her Julian. Had drunk the dark passion of his tortured soul on more than one occasion. She’d be damned—okay, more damned—if she would settle for another woman’s memories of the experience she wanted for herself.

  No. Aerin de Moray’s cold-hearted soul wouldn’t do.

  Cheeto twitched, uncomfortable with the hate radiating from his own body in searing waves. Lucy turned her attention to Claire before she gave herself away.

  The fire witch—whose fashion sense most closely resembled her own—wore skin-tight riding leathers and a tank top, her burgundy hair spilling loose around her shoulders, amber eyes pulling lambent golden hues from the lighter she flicked open and closed repeatedly. Her soul blazed forth in unparalleled fiery loveliness, but fire and heat were both in plentiful supply in Hell.

  This soul was definitely too hot.

  “Are you planning on stopping that anytime soon, or do I need to take it away and get you a more suitable toy?” The irritation in Aerin’s voice was palpable. The kind of tension begging for even the tiniest incentive to be unleashed.

  Claire flicked the lighter opened and closed once again. “It’s a free country, last time I checked.”

  “Yeah, but it’s my lighter, and it’s Gucci.” Aerin snatched it from her sister’s hand and slid it into her blazer pocket. “You want something to flick, go buy a Bic.”

  “Did part of your broomstick get lodged up your ass?” Claire asked, folding her arms across her chest. “You’ve been a grade-A bitch ever since you decided to play with your zombie puppets.”

  “You mean the zombies that rebuilt our shed and attacked the Horsemen after I kept them from gnawing on our souls? Would those be the puppets you’re referring to?” Aerin challenged, her eyes flashing almost white.

  “Yep. Those puppets.” Claire leaned back in her chair, parking her motorcycle boots on the table in front of Aerin’s coffee.

  Coffee showing no signs of poisoning from the brimstone Lucy had snuck into the de Moray house with Gwen’s assistance. Had they found it, then? Lucy’s already foul mood took a sharp right toward murderous.

  “If I remember correctly,” Aerin bit back, “you were the one who threw up the wall of fire so I could cast the spell. I’m pretty sure you are the only one of us to date who has used magic against one of her sisters.”

  “It’s not the spell I’m objecting to,” Claire said. Orange sparks wheeled deep within the tawny depths of the fire witch’s eyes. “It’s that superior attitude you’ve had ever since.”

  “If anyone deserves to have a superior attitude, it would be me.” Tierra swept into the room, the edge of her skirt brushing the floor, wrists jangling with bracelets and beads as she balanced an array of glass bottles against her growing bosom. Below this, her gently swelling belly pressed against a loose-fitting lacy top in eye-frying green.

  Tierra de Moray’s soul had entirely too much fiber and not nearly enough mischief for Lucy’s liking.

  And yet, the attendant shame of Lucy’s recent loss to the spawn created by Death and this witch stung far worse than the scratch on the pig’s snout.

  Defeated by a fetus.

  Lucy was in the process of attempting to use Cheeto’s limited tongue articulation to utter a curse toward that belly when Tierra bent down and scooped Cheeto up with one hand under the pig’s rounded haunches. “Come here, you. I’ll mix up a batch of my figwort and lavender balm, and your little snout will be good as new.” Tierra deposited the pig on the counter, allowing Lucy a better vantage to the witches at the table.

  Aerin had turned toward Tierra, her shoulders stiff within her suit coat. “And why would you be more deserving of a superior attitude?”

  “Um, hello?” Tierra answered, stooping to dig through another shelf packed with bottles of dried herbs and tinctures. “The wand? The crown?”

  Lucy felt the teasing tone in Tierra’s declaration. Her sisters did not.

  “Oh, here we go,” Aerin said. “She comes back from having a joy-fuck with Death riding the Stag Express, an animal that was probably disease-ridden, by the way, and she thinks she’s fucking Queen of the Forest and Winner of Magic. Now her baby daddy is in Hell, which I’m pretty sure is about a bazillion times worse than being in prison.” She paused to take a sip of her coffee, which Lucy suddenly wished more than anything she had been able to poison. “Talk to me when you have more money than God and have made a tableful of hardboiled Russian businessmen weep their apologies and send you a fruit basket.”

  “For the Goddess’s sake, Aerin. I was teasing. Trying to lighten the mood. There is no way we’re going to figure out how to get Moira and Aunt Justine back if we keep pecking at each other like this.”

  The kitchen fell silent save for the clinking of glass bottles and the rustling of dried herbs. “Here we are. Honeysuckle, buckthorn oil, goldenseal, brimst—ohmyhell! There’s brimstone in my calendula!” The earth witch gagged as she stumbled backward, falling against the counter behind her for support.

  Claire’s boots hit the wood floor as she scraped back from the table. “Jesus. I thought you’d found all of it!”

  “I thought I had, too.” Sweat bloomed on Tierra’s brow and she lurched toward the sink and heaved vibrant Exorcist-quality green vomit down the drain. “Get it…beyond the wards.”

  “I got this.” The laid-back male tone was a direct contrast to the tense feminine voices peppering the kitchen with panic.

  Blond-haired, blue-eyed Tommy ambled over to the cabinet and palmed the offending bottle, pausing briefly to cast a suspicious glance at Cheeto before shuffling out the front door.

  “See?” Claire asked in a defensive pitch. “Undead or no, I bet you’re glad he’s still around.”

  Tierra rinsed her mouth with tap water and flipped on the disposal, tossing in a few nearby lemon wedges for good measure. “We’ll need to do another cleansing spell to rid the house of the toxic resonance.”

  “We will. Don’t worry.” Aerin hovered behind Tierra, her perfectly manicured hand looking like an indecisive bird. Wanting to land on her sister’s shoulder, the small of her back, but ultimately falling dead at her side.

  Lucy drank in the delicious waves of negativity, growing stronger with every breath. While her attention lapsed, Cheeto made a beeline for compost scraps someone had scraped onto a single plate on the nearby cutting board. He was already snout-deep in a mix of baked potato skin, some kind of fermented cabbage, and a slimy tofu-pudding skin when Lucy jolted him hard enough to send him somersaulting tail over hooves backward onto the stove, where he knocked a—thankfully cold—teakettle onto the floor.

  “What in the several fucks was that all about?” Aerin asked. “It’s like he had a mini-pig seizure or something.”

  “Probably shock from the snout wound,” Claire proposed.

  “Could one of you put him on the dining room table? I just need a minute.”

  Behind Tierra’s back, Claire and Aerin played a quick round of Rock, Paper, Scissors, with Claire producing a rock to Aerin’s scissors.

  Aerin slipped on a pair of yellow dishwashing gloves, muttering a string of curses that made Lucy hate her slightly less before approaching the kitchen island to lift Cheeto and transport him to the table.

  “Don’t squeeze him too hard,” Claire warned. “Remember what happened after the tofu wraps.”

  “What about the tofu wraps?” Tierra asked, a dark eyebrow rising in suspicion.

  “Nothing,” Aerin insisted too quickly. “Just that he got into your geraniums that day you made them for lunch, and I’m pretty sure they made him gassy enough to melt a new hole in the ozone layer.”

  And a good liar. Lucy hadn’t been kidding when she’d informed Julian Roarke that his little air witch was indeed the most like her of any of the de Moray sisters.

  Tierra rinsed a rag in cool water and twisted out the excess before
applying it to the back of her neck. A thick lock of her hair had fallen loose from the proliferation of flowered clips and combs she used to hold it in a loose bun at the crown of her head. She ignored this as she sliced off a thin nub of ginger root and stuck it under her tongue.

  Thus reinforced, Tierra spent the next several minutes grinding a poultice in an old-fashioned mortar and pestle, the muscles working beneath her golden-tanned skin. This was a woman unafraid of laboring with her hands, and one who clearly enjoyed being in the out of doors.

  “You about done with your magic salad dressing?” Aerin called. “I’m pretty sure Moira’s mini-hog is eye-balling me over here.”

  Lucy quickly turned her gaze elsewhere, snuffling at the used linen napkins. Because…food smells, right? That’s something a pig would do. She paused, snout-deep in napkins when an alarming rumble rolled through the pig’s intestines.

  Don’t even think about it, she ordered the pig in no uncertain terms. You will not do that with me in your body.

  “Also, I think he’s actually listening to you,” Claire pointed out. “I swear he understood what you said just now.”

  The front door opened, and a pale, long-limbed Tommy made his way back into the kitchen, bending to plant a kiss on Claire’s head. She reached up and gently touched the hand he placed over her heart. “Call me if you need anything else, babe,” he said.

  Again, he looked at Cheeto. Just a split second, but eye contact and recognition crackled between them. His wavy blond head shook as he ascended the back stairs, as if he were having an argument with himself.

  “Here we are,” Tierra announced, whisking to the table with her mortar and pestle.

  Lucy/Cheeto trotted over to her dutifully, even sitting still despite the roiling protest within the animal’s gut as the earth witch lovingly applied green paste to the pig’s snout with her fingers.

  “Trouble is,” Claire asked, “what’s going to keep him from licking it off?”

  Aerin, seated next to Tierra, sniffed in the pig’s direction. “The fact that it smells like ass.”