by Rachel Shane
“Break the contract with a counter-potion.” Delilah sprinkled a ring of salt around her client’s chair, the particles sifting through her fingers in a way that felt more like home than her actual home did. It had taken Delilah days of deconstructing the legal jargon to figure out a spell that would break the magical contract binding Lindsey to the man in the photo via a love potion she drank a few weeks ago. Lindsey came to Delilah desperate to break the spell but also reluctant to end it thanks to, well, being imprisoned by her false love for Creepo Supreme.
“Good.” Lindsey let out a relieved breath. She hugged the frame close to her chest. “Wait! No! I don’t want to break it.”
Delilah’s jaw clenched. “That’s the love potion talking.” She had seen it all before: the possession, the infatuation, the hesitation. This spell in particular had a strong hold on Lindsey. The diamond on her finger sparkled in the glow of a candle. She’d been engaged to someone else before she met Double Chin. Now she was engaged to him.
Getting engaged against your free will set feminism back about, oh, five hundred years.
Delilah dumped rosewater into the pot along with myrrh resin and black mustard seed. Even though she’d been practicing now for years, it still felt odd to be finalizing contracts with something other than a signature. When she went to law school to become a divorce lawyer, this wasn’t exactly what she had in mind when it came to breaking people up. But in her third year, a class appeared on her schedule she hadn’t signed up for called Bindings and Entanglements. The registrar’s office couldn’t help her drop the class—literally. Every time they removed it, it came back with a vengeance, appearing bolder and in larger font on her printed schedule. Delilah’s friends thought it was a practical joke. But she sensed something deeper, a compulsion that begged her to attend. So she showed up the first day and found once she entered the room, she couldn’t leave. She was bound to it.
And so began her first test of the class: breaking the magical binding spell keeping the students in the classroom.
It turned out Delilah was a natural witch and the professors noticed her powers—and law skills. Using a combination of legal jargon and a spell written in ancient Latin she found in the classroom library, Delilah was the first to break the magical loophole. She could have left right there and never come back.
Instead, she found her calling.
Now, Delilah ran a divorce firm by day for those not magically inclined and a magical firm…also by day. Some clients she freed by helping them get rid of their pond scum exes, keeping their house and kids in the process. And others she freed simply by giving them back the freedom stolen from them thanks to a spell or a curse.
“I changed my mind.” Lindsey leaped to her feet, shuffling toward the salt ring at a speed worthy of marathon runners. She lifted her foot to step over the circle—and slammed into an invisible barrier that knocked her backward. She stumbled until she fell back into the chair and wrapped her arms around her chest, picture frame secured against her heart. “I—I love him.” Tears streamed down her face, smearing her mascara.
Delilah’s stomach twisted as she dropped burnt ashes from palm leaves into the pot. This happened a lot. Sometimes the clients would be dragged in by concerned relatives horrified by their behavior. Sometimes clients horrified by their own behavior would come to her during a rare moment of clarity. The stronger the spell, the stronger the opposition she faced. Delilah found it best to continue to brew the potion and then offer it to the client, letting it be their choice whether they drank it or not.
So Delilah continued working. She plucked more herbs from her stash and ignored Lindsey’s desperate pleas to stop. Even if they made her wince.
Even if they made her want to wrap her arms around her client and squeeze the pain away.
But she had to do this the hard way. Or, well, the hard way with a little soft coaxing.
She knelt in front of Lindsey. “I’m going to need this now, okay? I’ll give it right back.” Delilah offered Lindsey her most sympathetic smile as she pried the frame from Lindsey’s hands. Lindsey whimpered and desperately clawed at it, but Delilah scrambled away at a fast clip. Power surged through her fingers, and her eyes fluttered closed for a moment to savor the sensation as she wrapped the man’s face with black ribbon. “I bind thee away from Lindsey Marbury.” Delilah repeated that line as she worked each loop of ribbon around the frame until the entire image was obscured. “Harm no more. Balance restore. I hereby cast out this charm.” She repeated the chant several times while visualizing the man departing from Lindsey’s life without so much as a goodbye.
Energy crackled within Delilah, soaring with a whoosh through every atom in her body. The rush felt exhilarating, a pure euphoria that made her gasp. Power drained out of her pores and seeped into the ribbon until Delilah collapsed to the ground, panting. The amazing high gave way to the lowest of lows, and her temples pounded with the loss of magic.
This must be how drug addicts felt during withdrawal. Or sex addicts.
Lindsey rocked back and forth as tears streamed down her face. Delilah may have blocked Ugly Chin from Lindsey, but Lindsey was still lovesick for him until Delilah could break the second half of the spell.
With shaky arms, Delilah pushed herself to her feet, wobbling in her stilettos. The counter-potion bubbled, releasing the sweet scent of berry laced with sage into the air. Delilah’s mouth moved over the incantation she’d lifted from one of her Law Spell books. “Per provision nine A in amendment twenty four, this spell acts as the termination to any legal binding contract.” She tipped the bubbling liquid into a highball glass and presented it to Lindsey. “Take a sip. That’s all you need.” The potion would eat away at the effects of the love spell while the words Delilah spoke would dissolve the hold Asshat had on Lindsey.
Lindsey clutched the glass in shaking palms and slowly lifted it to her lips. Her body jerked and she twisted her head in revulsion like a little kid refusing mashed peas. She fought against it, the glass rattling, until finally her willpower won out against the magical power. Just as she tilted the glass to her lips—
The front door to Delilah’s office flew open. Lindsey’s fingers spread open and the high ball fell to the floor. Glass shattered, shards and rose-scented liquid shooting across the hardwood floor. In a whoosh, the lights popped on, the candles snuffed out, and the potion gurgling on the hot pot evaporated into thin air. The hot pot itself now held a teakettle instead of a cauldron, which whistled in announcement. Even the salt ring seeped into an ornate swirl pattern etched into the floor.
Delilah bolted to her full height, her shoulders squared in defense. The threat raised the hair on her arms. The instant shift back to reality was a defense spell put in place like an alarm that activated whenever someone non-magical entered. She cursed under her breath—and not the magical kind. She hated when her client sessions were interrupted.
A strange man stood in the doorway, breathing hard as if even entering the room proved difficult to him. Sweat beaded down his forehead, and he glanced up at her with urgent, pleading eyes.
A grimace tightened Delilah’s lips. Not this again. Men were always barging into her office needing quick fixes to their long-lasting problems. Though rarely men this sexy. This better be worth interrupting a client.
Lindsey opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out thanks to the protection spell. Her voice was silenced to prevent her from revealing the truth to the stranger.
“Sorry, sorry!” Delilah’s assistant, Avery, rushed in behind the stranger, smoothing down her low-cut top. Her outfit was barely passable at the casinos nearby, let alone a law office, and Delilah cringed. Avery refused to wear anything decent so Delilah always converted Avery’s revealing outfit into a chic suit with a flick of her palm. But the glamor had vanished and so did Avery’s suit along with it. “He just burst in. I couldn’t stop him.”
The man winced, squeezing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth. “It’s an emergency,” he choked
out.
Sure it was. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Are you in desperate need of…a divorce?” She tilted her head at him, taking in the jeans slung low on his hips. The tight fitting t-shirt that showed off his abs. The sunlight that streamed through the window highlighted the chiseled cheekbones carving his gorgeous face. Dark hair fell into his eyes and he pushed it back with slender dirt-caked fingers before gripping the doorjamb as if it was the only thing keeping him in place. “Nah,” she corrected herself. “You look like you need an annulment.”
He shook his head and flung up his hand. “I’m not married.”
True enough, no ring encircled his finger and there were no telltale tan lines.
She nodded to herself at her correct guess. If he wasn’t magically inclined and wasn’t in need of legal aide, then Delilah couldn’t do anything for him.
Lindsey let out a whimper that made Delilah’s jaw clamp tight. “In that case, I’m afraid I can’t—”
“Please.” The stranger’s face crunched in strain. “It’s a matter of life or death.” Every word seemed to be a struggle to leave his lips, as though he had to dislodge them one by one.
“Then this is a matter for the police, not a divorce lawyer.” Delilah picked up the receiver from her desk phone, ready to call 911.
The guy lifted up his shirt in lieu of argument, revealing rock hard abs…and dirt stains caked onto his muscles. A large scrape sliced across his stomach, the gash still bleeding. “I tried to bury myself alive last night. Against my will. I—I think I’m cursed.”
So he was in the right place after all.
Other titles by Rachel Shane
Young Adult
Alice in Wonderland High
Kasey Screws Up The World
Rhythym & Clues
New Adult
Cunning Linguist, A Campus Crushes Prequel Novella (Fallon's Story)
Premature Evacuation, Campus Crushes, Book 1 (Mackenzie's story)
Master Probation, Campus Crushes, Book 2 (Bianca's story)
A Bone to Pick, Campus Crushes, Book 3 (Erin's Story)
Adult
Gravebound, Magical Entanglements vol 1 (exclusively available in the Under Your Spell anthology)
Cursebound, Magical Entanglements vol 2
Flamebound, Magical Entanglements vol 3
Non-Fiction
Generating Story Ideas: Tips and Techniques For Hatching Ideas From Scratch
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to my wonderful agent, Jim McCarthy, who plucked me out of the slush and helped make my dreams come true.
This book would not exist with the continual support of Chandler Baker, Diana Urban, and Naticia Hutichins, the Binders full of Romance Writers, and the Hot and Haunted anthology authors. You all save me on a daily basis. Thanks especially to Naticia for your copy editing help. Lunch on me!
Thanks to Story Sisters, Binders, KBoards, Absolute Write, Twitter, and all the other writerly online hangouts where I found great friends and great advice.
And of course I can’t forget my loving family, for your continual support. But most importantly I’d like to thank my husband Josh and my daughter Quinn for being my rocks.
Lastly, thank YOU for taking the time to read this book. I hope you enjoyed it!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rachel Shane studied Creative Writing at Syracuse University and now works as a digital Project Manager in New York City. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, young daughter, and a basement full of books.
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www.rachelshane.com