Battle of the Hexes: A Paranormal Academy Series (A Witch Among Warlocks Book 4)

by Lidiya Foxglove

  Orson looked at us wearily, like he thought we were idiots, and then he started speaking spell words himself, in a musical language that sounded like Gaelic, or maybe a related faery tongue. The guards clearly thought he was the one casting the spell and grabbed him.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Your magic should be drained by now!”

  “C’mon,” I barely whispered to Daisy, trying to tug her away. Orson spoke spell words more dramatically as I opened the door, but Daisy dug in her heels. She pointed her wand at one of the wards and the pattern shifted.

  I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder, running her down the hall all the way to the staircase while she struggled.

  “Hey, hey!” she said, when I put her down. “We’re just going to leave him there to be tortured and die?”

  “Right now? Yes. We have to. Let’s tell the others about it and maybe we can figure out a plan, but these people aren’t messing around. They did something to me already.”

  “Something?”

  “Yes. I’ve never felt such excruciating pain in my life.”

  “What did they do?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “It has something to do with that stuff you and Coopman were saying about control and spells, huh? They cursed your dick, didn’t they?” She started laughing.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “It’s a little funny. But they’re fixing it, right, because of Charlotte’s plan? Come on, it’s not like the hell they’re putting that man through.”

  “I’m an incubus, I can’t live without my dick!” Then I had to laugh a little. “All right, fine. Laugh. But you know yourself, they are willing to do terrible things to keep power. They drugged you and made you do terrible things yourself.”

  She hugged herself. “Yeah, Alec, I know. That’s why I hate to leave him there like that. We can’t trust anyone to be decent.”

  We headed back but I immediately settled in with my sketchpad and drew Orson, as well as I could remember. When I was still a warlock, before the purification stole that power from me, I could have tried to capture his likeness, and used my artistic magic to lend him strength and healing from afar, the same way they captured him by stealing his hair first to weaken him. But now I had lost that part of me. He was still an interesting subject. My pencil made rough lines of muscle and I realized Daisy was watching.

  “Ya know, I might agree to that whole deal with the faeries if I could get one like him,” she said. “He wasn’t cold. That’s my type, personally, I’ve had enough of spoiled warlocks waving wands around.”

  I wouldn’t get too attached.

  That was what my brain wanted to say. A warning. There was a very real possibility that we were going to lose this and Orson would be a fatality. On the other hand, shit, that was grim. I was usually an optimist.

  “Well, perhaps you could send the faery queen a message and let her know.”

  “Good idea. Maybe she would get off her ass and save him.” Daisy grabbed a sketchbook from my desk and stole a piece of paper to write on.

  “You’re tired of spoiled warlocks, huh?” I muttered.

  “Hmm?”

  “Never mind.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Charlotte

  That evening the conversation with Daisy went from “What!? Poor Orson!” to “You want to marry him?”

  “Well, I don’t actually know him, but I also don’t like anyone I do know. And it would solve your problems, right? Plus, he has a cute faery way of talking. And a man like that who works with his hands… Hell, he’s a lord and a butler? I bet he knows how to treat a girl like a queen. Not a bad body either. Shave and a shower, and I’d hit that. Nah, I’d let him hit me. Actually, maybe the shave isn’t even necessary.”

  “Hmm. Hot butler…kind of Scottish accent…faery…” My head made a little Venn diagram. Outlander + Black Butler + Fae romance… “I guess it’s probably not the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

  “Girl, all my ideas are awesome,” Daisy said dismissively. “The faery queen wants girls who are willing to go marry faeries. So I need to get this letter to her.”

  “You do realize you’re going to have to go live in Wyrd,” I said.

  She crossed her arms. “I just don’t want a hot faery to die. And all my life options are bad right now, so whatever, I don’t care. I just want to get it done.”

  “Does Orson want to marry you?” Harris said. “You might be the death of him.” She threw a hand at him as it block him out.

  “I’m really not sure about the faery queen’s bargain, Daisy. We’d lose you to them. It’s very serious. They don’t even seem to like humans. Even if Orson was okay as faeries go, we don’t know anything about his family or home, and I don’t know if we could ever protect you or bring you back.”

  She sobered a little. “I’m just afraid that maybe the queen could save him but she won’t. He’s there alone and no one’s helping him. Like maybe he isn’t important, and maybe I could help. I don’t know. I couldn’t sleep last night.”

  “The faery queen wanted thirteen brides,” I said. “It seems to be the magic number. So even if you’re sure about this, I still need to find twelve more people.”

  “Ohmigod, this is the perfect place to recruit. Look how sad everyone is. You tell these girls they could escape the Haven and marry a hot faery and you won’t have trouble filling slots.”

  “Hey, Daisy, did you watch Outlander on your TV binge? I think you should.”

  “What is that?”

  “Oh, it’s our evening is what it is.”

  Well, I needed a job to keep me busy around here. Life at the Haven was pretty mind-numbing. Weeks passed, each one the same. It was obvious that there was a dark side, kept out of sight. A literal dark side, behind the guards, where people were tortured and maybe killed, and I guess my main goal was to not go there, except for the voice in my head that whispered, Where is Ina?

  On our side, it was like being at a hotel. An old hotel, that had never been renovated, but still. We had a pool, and exercise machines, and a lounge and library, and the dining hall, and even a smoking room, being the old Victorian building that it was.

  Actually, I think it pretty much had all the amenities of the Titanic, and maybe there was a metaphor to be drawn from that.

  Also, much like being on a doomed ocean liner, we were cut off from our loved ones. Sometimes we heard the guards mustering outside to block some vehicle from entering and turn them away. Everyone in the Haven would discuss what sort of car it was and figure out whose family member it had been.

  “Oh, that’s definitely my Dad’s Benz” or “A Jeep? Yeah, that’s the town car” as many witch towns were very small and just had one car to share. It was a part of life here that once in a while, your family might show up to attempt to see you. Maybe drop off a care package.

  One day it was a black Ford truck, described as “new” but “grubby”.

  “Who drives that?” one girl asked, and I swear that people I barely knew turned to look at me. Word traveled fast about who was who in a place like this.

  By now, I knew that witches and warlocks considered every car from the last 20 years to be ‘new’, as if a grubby black Ford truck wasn’t enough of a tip-off.

  Dad.

  Dad was trying to get to me and they turned him away. I was totally cut off from my family. We all were. The telephones at the Haven were guarded and could only be used with permission—permission we were told we hadn’t ‘earned’ yet. The unsympathetic woman at the main desk told me I could write my family letters, and they could write letters in return, but she warned me that the staff would open all letters.

  “Miss Byrne,” she said, “please don’t forget why you’re here. You have had communications with darker elements of the magical world and we have to make sure you are not continuing these communications.”

  “I just want to talk to my parents…” I swallowed back tears, knowi
ng she didn’t care. She’d heard it all before.

  I was trying to be strong, and I thought I was holding up pretty well, but as the days went by, some mornings I was queasy from stress.

  I wrote a letter to the faery queen and dared to use some magic to send it to her up one of the old chimneys, telling her Orson was in trouble and Daisy was willing to help him. A reply appeared under my pillow the very next day.

  I, Queen Morgana, consent to the betrothal of Daisy Pendleton and Lord Orson of the House of Clover—if you can find twelve more witches to bring to me, and if you can free Orson. As long as he is encased in iron, we the faery folk are unable to save him.

  “Okay, Daisy, this is happening.” I told her about the letter. “I hope you were serious about it.”

  “Sure I am.” She rubbed her neck, looking thoughtful. “I mean…my goal all these years was to get revenge for my parents and we already accomplished that, so there isn’t much left for me here.”

  “At least we have a goal now,” Montague said.

  “A goal?”

  “We can find twelve more single ladies who want a faery of their own,” he said. “It shouldn’t be too hard. Who would want to stay here?”

  “I agree, I’m just not sure how to do this. A lot of these people are werewolves and stuff.”

  “What did the queen actually say about the bargain?” Harris asked. “She said you had to find her witches, right? What did she say beyond that?”

  “Just witches…that’s it.”

  “Everyone here is still a witch. Just because they’re half-something else doesn’t mean they aren’t a witch.”

  “She did say I could name their number.”

  “Well, in that case, pick anyone you want,” Montague said. “A faeries’ word is always the truth.”

  “It’s not that easy!” I said. “Most people don’t want to marry a dude they’ve never met and if I get caught recruiting for Wyrd by the staff…”

  “Charlotte, you need to get acquainted with a handy thing called a forgetting spell,” Harris said. “You ask the girls if they want to escape this place by marrying a faery, and if they say no, you make them forget you asked.”

  “I can just make people forget things?”

  “Be careful,” Alec said. “Those spells don’t work very well if the information is important. Just try to bring it up casually first and back up as soon as you run into trouble.”

  “Oh, but make sure to pretend you were talking about something else,” Harris said. “Wizards aren’t stupid. If you’re just standing there staring at them when they’re feeling dazed, they’ll know you fucked with them, but if you keep talking they’ll think they just had a momentary space out. But I know if there’s one thing you’re good at, Chosen One, it’s talking about nothing.”

  At least I had a goal now. I had to scout out girls who might want to marry a faery, although it wasn’t the easiest conversational topic to drop casually. My pool of candidates was…limited.

  “Faeries…,” said a vampire girl who had been here for ten years, but still looked seventeen. “I don’t know. I need blood. I think I’d rather just stay here because I know I’ll get treatment.”

  “Treatment?” I said. “It’s just blood.”

  “They help me control my urges,” she said, shaking her head and slinking off. “Sorry.”

  The werewolf girl I approached next seemed offended by the very suggestion of faeries. She always looked sad so I thought she might want to get out of here. Instead, she turned snippy. “I have a duty to my parents, God, and my fiancee Christopher Sutton to get well. I have no business with faeries. They’re no friend of werewolves, anyway. Faeries are elegant.”

  “The faeries just want witches,” I said. “You’re a witch.”

  “You don’t even know who Christopher Sutton is, do you?” she said, apparently irritated that I didn’t react.

  “I definitely do not.”

  “He’d skin you, wolf girl,” she said.

  “You’re a wolf girl too!” I said.

  “But I am serious about mastering myself,” she said. “You’re a wolf bitch. I heard you’re dating all three of those boys you’re always hanging out with.”

  Okay, I definitely made her forget we ever talked.

  So Alec and I tried to talk to a succubus. What imprisoned succubus would turn down a hot faery husband?

  Apparently Rosemary from room 521, who took a lot of smoking breaks, so she was easy to find out on the balcony.

  “I could never be satisfied with just one faery,” she said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Oh—I didn’t realize you were hooking up with people here,” I said. “I always see you kind of off by yourself.”

  “Yes,” she said tightly. “Because I’m learning to be satisfied with no one. That’s what I want. I need you to stay back.” She pointed at Alec and shooed him with an elegant hand of red nails.

  “So what kind of pain are they putting you through?” Alec demanded. “They don’t like that you get off the normal way, so they get off torturing you, you know that?”

  Mellow Alec was…a little less mellow lately.

  “I need this healing,” she said. “My father was an incubus but I will cleanse the family line. If you think this is only pain and torture, you will never shake yourself free. They are trying to help us.” As she walked by, she bit her lip. Then, quickly, she stroked his cock with her hand. As if, no matter what she said, she couldn’t resist the raw power of a succubus and incubus arguing.

  Still, fuck this situation where everyone thought Alec was Daisy’s fiance so they could flirt with him right in my face.

  “Hey!” I cried, taking the collar of her blouse in my hand. “Forget the words that I have spoken, may these thoughts inside your mind be broken.” Then I quickly had to start talking about something else. “So…get ahold of yourself!” I said. “Don’t touch Daisy’s fiancee!”

  “No. I’m—I’m sorry.” She drew her hand back quickly and tapped her hand with her wand. She had tattoos on her skin like Alec’s and they glowed bright red. She hissed with pain.

  “Hey, Rosemary…don’t hurt yourself,” Alec said. “It’s all right. We all have lapses.”

  “No!” she shrieked. “Stay away from me! I have to be purified! I know that you’ve been—you all—my therapist said I need to stay away from all of you. You’re the reason they won’t purify me the real way, because you turned.” She was trembling, her tattoos still on fire. She looked like she had caused herself some serious pain.

  “This purification thing is wrong!” Alec said. “I couldn’t help but turn because they were going to take away everything that makes me myself.”

  “I don’t want what makes me a demon.”

  With tears flowing from her eyes, she ran away.

  “Well, that went well,” I said, frowning at Alec.

  “I’m sorry, but this place is really fucked up.”

  “That isn’t breaking news at this point,” I said. “Who is Christopher Sutton?”

  “No idea. I don’t pay attention to the wizard society pages.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “About that?” I raised my eyebrows at his hard-on.

  “I meant, about tempting trouble by trying to talk to her. I mean…you know I can’t help this, Charlotte. That’s why I’m still me, and not her.”

  “Oh, I’m glad.” Since we were alone on this balcony, which overlooked nothing but trees, I took a moment to kiss him. “So that healing ointment Mr. Coopman gave you is starting to work? You ready to join us tonight? I miss the Incubuster 3000.”

  Along with all the shitty stuff we’d been dealing with, apparently the spell cast on Alec was not easy to break. Mr. Coopman gave him some herbal ointment but he had mumbled something about how he couldn’t really break the original spell.

  “I don’t care if it works,” he said. “I’m getting tired of waiting. I need you.”

  “Okay…” I ran a hand over hi
s erection. He was wearing pretty thin dress pants so if I put a little pressure I could get a delicious suggestion of the texture, the eager throb, the thick head, the—

  “Hsst…,” he said.

  I drew back. “Alec! You’re still in pain.”

  “But I’m going insane.” He started tearing open the buttons of my shirt right there on the balcony. He somehow got my bra off like, I swear, almost with his mind. “I haven’t even been able to jerk off. I never realized how much I’ll go crazy without…something.” He took my breasts in both hands and started biting them.

  “Oww…,” I said, but it didn’t come out like much of a protest.

  “I’m going to fuck you against this wall,” he said. “Fast…and hard.”

  “You can’t,” I said. It took a lot of restraint to be sensible around Alec, so this was a proud moment for me.

  “No one’s watching.”

  “No—it’s—I don’t have birth control,” I hissed. “And I’m sorry, but I can’t take you in the ass. This isn’t dream you and we don’t even have lube. i suppose…I could try to pleasure you with my mouth…but that’s slower. And…well, actually, I’m not sure if I can get on my knees here because it’s like, concrete.”

  His breath came quick, agonized. I could see the silent curse in his eyes, which glowed a blazing red. “We’re going to the bedroom,” he said. “To ‘study’.”

  He grabbed my hand and practically hauled me all the way to the bedroom, hardly paying attention to anyone we passed.

  “Alec…,” I tried a few times.

  It was like he didn’t even hear me. His grip was iron around my wrist.

  As soon as we got to my room, he shut the door behind us and immediately he tore off his clothes in the nick of time before he went full demon on me. There he was, all corded muscle, wings and tail, and in his vivid red eyes, a hungry beast who hardly seemed to see his beloved Charlotte, but just a raw need.

  “Alec…it’s okay…”

  He grabbed my wrists in one huge hand and shoved me onto the bed on my back, opening my mouth with his thumb on my tongue before he replaced it with his cock.