YOU ONLY SPELL TWICE
Undercover Witch Series: Book Two
Paige Howland
Autumn Moon Books, LLC
Copyright © 2019 by Paige Howland
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage or retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover art by: Natasha Snow
Proofread by: Red Adept Editing, LLC
Formatted by: Michelle Lynn
www.paigehowland.com
Contents
Summary
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Thank you!
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Summary
Rune witch Ainsley Winters has had a long week. She's ready for a break from magic and some well-deserved R & R. Too bad the two men in her life have other ideas …
An ancient grimoire containing some of the world's most dangerous spells is loose in the criminal underworld, and it's up to Ainsley and CIA operative Connor Ryerson to find it. At least they have some help from a certain werewolf, a pint-sized golem, and a hellhound, much to Ryerson's chagrin.
But when loyalties are tested, Ainsley learns the hard way that with spies, things are rarely what they seem. And completing their mission just might have deadly consequences for Ainsley, her friends, and the world.
You Only Spell Twice is book 2 in the Undercover Witch urban fantasy series. It picks up immediately where book 1 left off.
1
The werewolf crouched on my window ledge, afternoon sunlight glinting off his blond hair. It was a three-story drop from my bedroom window to the street below, so I wasn’t really clear on where he meant to go. And there was no time to ask him, as the hard rap of knuckles against my front door grew louder and more insistent.
“You should get that,” Alec Marcusi, the werewolf in question, said.
He was right. The CIA isn’t known for their patience.
I considered him some more.
See, here’s the thing. Alec had a habit of disappearing on me, and I had questions for him. Ten minutes ago, they were questions like how had he become a werewolf? And why couldn’t I tell my brother—Alec’s best friend—that he was alive? And just what exactly had he done to get himself bumped to the top of the CIA’s most wanted list?
Now, after he’d broken into my apartment to ask for my help in finding, using, and then destroying a magical Grimoire the CIA was also after, I had new questions. Like what was so special about this spell book? And was he crazy?
Knock knock knock.
On the other hand, if the CIA found Alec in my apartment, I wasn’t sure who it would end worse for: Alec or the CIA. Or me. Probably me.
That settled it.
“Stay,” I said to the werewolf.
He grinned, which wasn’t an answer. I tossed him one last worried look before I closed the bedroom door, hurried into the living room, and opened the front door to find Special Agent Connor Ryerson of the CIA’s Magical Protection Division standing in the hall outside my apartment, fist poised to knock. Or punch something. It was always hard to tell with him.
He looked annoyed, but I was beginning to understand that was his default expression. At least around me. Then his eyes met mine and something shifted in them. Almost like he was happy to see me.
Weird.
Weirder still, I was happy to see him too. Happier than a girl hiding a fugitive werewolf in her bedroom should be to see a love-cursed spy at her door, anyway. It wasn’t just that Ryerson was handsome, although that didn’t hurt. Tall, muscular, with close-cropped dark hair and piercing green eyes that made my pulse race. The pulse-racing thing was new. I was still deciding how I felt about it.
When Ryerson and I first met nearly a week ago, we didn’t exactly hit it off. But then we’d been thrown together on a secret mission to stop a dark mage from completing a spell that threatened national security, and somewhere between dodging bullets and spells and the occasional rune bomb, he’d grown on me.
“I’m in,” I said to the question he hadn’t yet asked. The one I remembered a second later I wasn’t supposed to know about yet.
He blinked, a myriad of emotions passing through his expression until he settled on another familiar one: suspicion. “You’re in what?”
I didn’t know how to tell him I knew he was here to recruit me for a new mission without admitting that Alec had told me—and thereby admit I’d spoken to Alec in the hours since I’d left Ryerson at CIA headquarters—so I said, “Um, for whatever you want to do. Ice cream? Maybe a movie?”
His suspicion shifted to surprise, and I realized I’d accidentally asked him out.
Crap in a cauldron.
Ryerson glanced past me into the apartment. I’m short, so this wasn’t hard. “Where’s the guy who was just here?”
Um. “What guy?”
Ryerson is pretty good at sniffing out a lie, so it was the worst thing I could have said. But what was I supposed to say? That Alexander Marcusi, rogue spy, Ryerson’s former partner, and one of the most wanted men in the world was playing gargoyle on my windowsill?
Ryerson stepped around me and headed for the bedroom.
“Oh, that guy? He left. He was my …” Um.
“Boyfriend?” Ryerson supplied. His voice had gone flat.
That was way better than cable guy or serial killer, the only explanations my panicked brain had come up with to explain a guy in my bedroom. Maybe Mom was right. I did need to date more.
“Yes. My boyfriend. His name is, um, Thad. Thad Thermopolis.”
Stop talking.
I clamped my mouth shut before any more weirdness could escape. Ryerson was looking at me oddly. Hoping to distract him, I said, “How did you know there was someone else here?”
Being a spy and all, I half-expected him to say infrared heat sensors or that my apartment was bugged, and was only slightly disappointed when he said, “I saw the shadow from the street.”
He looked ready to say something else, but another knock sounded at the door. His gaze shifted to the door and he tucked his hand inside his jacket, where I knew he kept his gun.
I rolled my eyes at him. Spies.
Then I peered through the peephole and swore.
“Who is it?” Ryerson said.
“Zoe,” I whispered.
“Okay.” He dropped his hand, clearly not seeing the problem. “She’s your best friend, right? Are you going to let her in?”
“We see you at Java Hut, remember?” I said about the café inside CIA headquarters where Zoe an
d I both worked. “She knows you’re CIA. She’ll want to know why you’re here.”
“Tell her we’re friends.”
I snorted. “She’d never believe that.”
He looked offended. “Why not?”
I shook my head. Even if I had time to explain that Zoe had been crushing hard on Ryerson for the last six months, I didn’t want to. Partly because she’d kill me and partly for selfish reasons I didn’t want to think about right now.
“Just, um, hide.”
He blinked at me. “You can’t be serious.”
“Please?”
I expected an argument, so I was surprised when he simply said, “Fine,” and headed down the small hallway. I frowned after him. He had given in way too easily. What was he up t—
“No!” I practically flew down the hall and threw myself between him and the bedroom door. If he wasn’t convinced before that I was hiding someone in my bedroom, he was now. His eyes narrowed, but I didn’t give him the chance to argue as I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the bathroom.
And then froze when I remembered that touching Ryerson was a very, very bad idea. One that had nothing to do with the zing of electricity that shot up my arm at his touch.
Okay, maybe it had a teensy bit to do with that.
See, Ryerson was love-cursed, courtesy of his psycho ex-girlfriend. The curse had latched onto his soul and slowly ate away at him, at his sanity. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the magic had decided I was a threat and tried to kill me every time we touched. Just yesterday I’d found the counter-curse and sent it to Andersen, the CIA’s staff mage. But a lot had happened since then, and I had no idea if he’d had time to un-curse Ryerson yet.
I dropped Ryerson’s hand as if I’d been burned and jumped away.
Ryerson grinned. It was such a rare sight that I almost didn’t recognize it.
“The curse is lifted,” he said. “Andersen said I have you to thank for that.”
I grinned back and, without thinking, threw my arms around him. Surprised, he caught me and pulled me close, and for a blissful moment I let myself revel in the way his strong hands felt at my back and the warm breath against my neck.
Knock knock knock.
I pulled away reluctantly and pointed at the bathroom door.
“You’re being ridiculous,” he said.
“I think you mean adorably paranoid,” I said as I shoved him into the bathroom and closed the door on his protest. I really hoped I wouldn’t need to hide Zoe; I was all out of rooms.
“Ainsley!” Zoe called through the front door, sounding exasperated. “Open up!”
I hurried to the living room and let her in.
“What took you so long?” She breezed past me into the apartment. Even when she didn’t mean to, Zoe made an entrance. That’s just what happens when you’re five-ten with perfect bone structure, flawless honey-brown skin, and sleek dark hair that would make a Kardashian jealous, a stark contrast to my own frizzy white-blond mop and five-foot-three frame.
“I was, um, taking a nap.”
She arched one dark, perfectly sculpted brow. “At five p.m.?”
People asked a lot of questions today.
“I fell asleep watching TV. What’s up?”
“I need you to cover my shift tomorrow. And maybe the rest of the week.” She bit her lip, eyes bright with excitement. “I put in my notice an hour ago.”
I blinked at her. “You’re quitting Java Hut? Why?”
She began to pace, like she was so full of nervous energy that it wouldn’t allow her to stay still for long. “Because the CIA called me this afternoon. They want me to report for training tomorrow. Can you believe it?”
Actually, I could believe it. Zoe had applied to the CIA last week, before they recruited me. It was her dream to become an operative. Mine was to open my own coffee shop. It felt a little surreal that of the two of us, her dream was so much closer to becoming a reality.
“That’s awesome, sweetie.” I flicked a glance at the bathroom door. “But maybe we shouldn’t talk about this right now.”
“What? Do you get what this means? I’m going to be a spy!”
Mentally, I groaned. I was pretty sure CIA recruits weren’t supposed to tell people they were going to be spies. Even their best friends. She had already told me she’d applied, of course, but the CIA hadn’t been hiding in my bathroom, overhearing every word of that conversation.
I steered her toward the door. “I’m really happy for you, and of course I’ll cover your shifts. It’s just …” My gaze flicked down the short hall.
She caught it and her eyes widened. “Ainsley Matilda Winters, do you have a guy here?”
Um.
She slapped my arm and grinned. “Napping, my ass. Wait, you don’t think he heard any of that, do you?”
Oh, I was sure they both did. Werewolves have exceptional hearing, and the spy in my bathroom was only a few steps away.
“Nope,” I said brightly.
“Good. Okay, I have to go pack. Wish me luck!”
I hugged her tight and opened the door. “Be safe, okay?”
“Always. Oh, and turn your phone back on. I tried calling you like twenty times before I came over here.” She gave a pointed look at my closed bedroom door and waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “I guess now I know why you turned it off.”
If only.
In reality, the CIA had confiscated my phone after this morning’s debrief. Checking it for, well, I didn’t actually know. I made a mental note to ask Ryerson.
Zoe left, passing my landlord Mr. Wong in the hall outside my apartment. She waved to him, but his arms were full of Chinese food, and Mr. Wong rarely smiled. Still, he liked Zoe so he offered her a solemn nod.
A door closed behind me and I turned, expecting to see Ryerson step out of the bathroom, and then tensed when he stepped out of my bedroom instead. But he wasn’t yelling or bloody and nobody had been thrown through a wall, which meant Alec was already gone.
Again.
I covered my disappointment by scowling at Ryerson, who looked unfazed as he stepped up next to me.
Mr. Wong, a seventy-ish man with thinning gray hair and a stubborn streak that rivaled Ryerson’s, stopped at my open door and regarded Ryerson with narrowed eyes.
“This is Mr. Wong,” I said to Ryerson. “He owns the Chinese restaurant downstairs, along with the rest of the building. Mr. Wong, this is Ry—I mean, Connor. He’s my, er, friend.”
Mr. Wong looked unimpressed. Ryerson looked like he couldn’t care less. We were off to a great start.
I let them stare each other down for another couple of seconds, but then my stomach rumbled so I took the food from Mr. Wong and headed for the coffee table, leaving them to it.
They exchanged a few words in low, murmured voices that I was too far away to overhear, and then Ryerson closed the door. He eyed my recliner dubiously—an ancient, patchy La-Z-Boy that was super comfortable but not so great for sitting upright in—and then joined me on the couch.
“He doesn’t like you,” I said.
“I noticed that,” Ryerson said drily.
“Mr. Wong is an excellent judge of character.”
Ryerson grunted and reached for the ginger chicken.
“What did he say to you?”
“I tried to pay him for the food, but he wouldn’t take it. Says you have him on retainer,” he said, like he expected me to correct the mistake.
I shrugged.
“Seriously?” Ryerson looked appalled.
“Mr. Wong is an excellent cook,” I said defensively. “I negotiated food into the rent, so he brings me dinner when he knows I’m home.”
It had been one of my better life choices. Speaking of those.
“About what Zoe said … I don’t suppose we can just pretend you didn’t hear any of that?”
Ryerson didn’t just look like a CIA recruitment poster come to life, he behaved that way too. Everything by the book. The last thing I wanted was
for him to report that Zoe had a big mouth and get her kicked out of the CIA before she’d even started. After all, she’d trusted me with that secret. I squashed the pang of guilt that I hadn’t done the same and resolved to tell her the first chance I got. Now that she was a spy too, it wouldn’t be against the rules, right? Just in case it was, I decided not to ask.
Ryerson was still staring at me. Eventually, he sighed and rubbed his face. “Fine. But tell her to stop advertising it. And you and I need to talk.”
I sighed in relief and gathered a pile of lo mein onto my fork. “Deal. So let’s talk.”
“Not here.”
Right. Secret spy stuff. No doubt he planned to wait until we were locked away in some highly secure CIA conference room before he gave me the details, but patience wasn’t really my strong suit.
I set down my fork and reached for my magic. I’d already expended a lot of magical energy over the last twenty-four hours, and it took longer than usual to nudge it awake. I was already looking at one hex of a magic hangover tomorrow, so one more little spell wouldn’t make much difference.
At least, that’s what I told myself as magic warmed my hands, sparking feebly around my fingertips. I drew a rune in the air, spoke the invocation, and pushed magic into it. The symbol pulsed blue, and then a breeze swept over us as the magic expanded to encompass the couch.
Ryerson had set down his food and was eyeing me warily. Most humans can’t see magic itself—only the results of certain spells—but Ryerson wore magic-viewing contacts, courtesy of the CIA’s genius staff mage.
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