Magic and Mayhem: Witchin Impossible 2: Rogue Coven (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Witchin' Impossible Mysteries)

by Renee George

  “Your grandmother was Lilianna Grace. Her husband was a cougar shifter, Maxwell Mason.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Lilianna Grace? She’s one of the founding coven members. Are you trying to say that Lily has witch blood in her?”

  “I’m not trying to say it, dear,” said someone who, in those tight jeans, had no room to judge. “I think I’m being perfectly clear with my words.”

  “But she died. She was one of the four who didn’t survive the power spell.”

  “Yes, they were foolish to think they could harness the energy of a portal,” Baba Yaga said.

  Without thinking, I placed myself between the queen bee and Lily. “You can’t believe that Lily has anything to do with the summoning.”

  “Of course not.” Now she was getting irritated with me. Not good.

  “Uhm, sorry.” I stayed between her and Lily, though.

  “Lily’s ancestor had a hereditary condition that made everyone she talked with tell the truth. It was so intertwined with her aura she didn’t even have to cast a spell to make it work. I saw it in Lily’s aura when Zelda was healing her wounds. When the magical boost happened here, I could feel it all the way in Assjacket, West Virginia. I wondered if it would be enough to trigger a latent talent in our Lily.”

  Our Lily? She was my Lily, not Baba Yaga’s.

  “How do I get rid of it?” Lily asked.

  “Once it’s triggered, there’s no off switch.” She gave Lily a sad smile. “If it’s any consolation, it should lessen if we can fix this gaping hole to hell.”

  My brave friend stepped around me and faced Carol. “What do you need me to do?”

  ****

  BABA YAGA had her lackeys line up all the descendants of the original coven. Like a drill sergeant with her platoon, she walked up and down the line casting intimidating glares at each and every one of the thirty-one witches and warlocks.

  I recognized several of them, including Mercy Langston, Jenny Weaver, Lena Ansel, her daughter Becksy, my officers Alice Michaels and John Parker, Romy Quinn, and Pierce Roberts. I prayed like crazy that Pierce Roberts was involved. I wanted to see the smug look leave his face when he got his comeuppance from our queen.

  Lily stood next to Baba Yaga, and as they walked down the line a third time, she asked each one of them, “Did you take part in the summoning ritual?”

  One by one, they angrily denied their involvement, until Romy Quinn. She broke down the moment Lily asked, and confessed to being a part of a small coven. A rogue coven. The next one to confess was Jenny Weaver, the muffin lady. When Lily got to Robert Pierce, I had my fingers and toes crossed. Alas, he was innocent. At least of this crime. He was still guilty of being an asshole.

  Lily was given several more denials before she got to the last two people in line, my officers. Alice Michaels said, “No, I had nothing to do with it,” as I expected. But when she asked John Parker, his face turned almost purple as he fought to hold his tongue.

  “John?” He was a good cop. Why would he participate in a coven? “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m so tired of losing,” he said. His anger made his words sharp and loud.

  “We didn’t mean to call up the hellmouth,” Romy said. “It was a goof. We were just trying to get the edge on the Shifters.”

  I blinked. “You did this to win the prank war?”

  “Every goddessdamn year,” Parker said. “They cheat. It’s the only way they can keep winning. We’re not allowed to use magic, but even when they aren’t animal form, they are physically stronger than we are. We just wanted a…boost.”

  Baba Yaga’s security team sent the innocent witches and warlocks home with a promise of explanations. She also made sure each and every one of them knew that any magic use until the ban was lifted would result in jail time.

  I stepped up to John Parker, fury boiling my blood. “And what of Agatha Milan?”

  Jenny Weaver sobbed, and Romy Quinn opened her mouth to speak, but John Parker told her to “Shut it!”

  “Why did you kill Agatha?” Lily asked John.

  “She…she wanted to tell the coalition what we’d done. We’d lose everything if she snitched.”

  “The legs, that was you, not the Shifters, right? You were sending a warning to Agatha and blaming it on the weres in town,” Ford said through clenched teeth.

  Tizzy’s tail swished across my neck, reminding me she was there. “All this for a stupid trophy? You all have to be the dumbest-ass witches I’ve ever seen. And believe me, I’ve seen a whole hell of a lot.”

  “How do we fix this?” I asked Baba Yaga.

  “We push them in the hellmouth. It closes over them. Problem solved.”

  Romy and Jenny sobbed loudly now. John looked like his head would explode.

  “I kid,” said Baba Yaga. “The portal to Hell would only feed off their stupidity.

  Unexpectedly, Parker raised his fist and cried out, “Macht, die, komm zu mir sein. Power to be, come to me!”

  The air around blasted out in all directions like a sonic wave knocking everyone to the ground and shaking the street until every part of me rattled. I rolled onto my back and pushed myself up. Because the earlier explosion at Romy’s had hurt my ribs, the effort caused a pinching pain in my lungs when I inhaled.

  I scanned the area.

  Ford was helping Lily to her feet. Baba Yaga was floating in a protective bubble. Three of her men were brushing debris from their clothes. No one was trying to catch the bad guy. I looked around for John. Where he’d been standing there was a big greasy red stain on the ground.

  One less witch to worry about. I stared at Jenny and Romy who had huddled together for safety. Ford grabbed them by the backs of their shirts and hauled them to their feet.

  Tizzy poked her head up from out of my large jacket pocket. “Holy shit, Haze!” she cried.

  “What in the hell was that?” I said.

  “That idiot tried to pull off the power spell by himself,” Baba Yaga said. She set her bubble down on the ground.

  At the same time, four dark shadows, the ones I’d seen in the vision crawled out of the tarry hellmouth.

  “He did it,” Jenny Weaver cried out. She looked afraid, not triumphant. “He called the stricken ones.”

  “How do we put them back?”

  Romy crab crawled backwards and said, “I don’t know. We…I… I didn’t think it would actually work.”

  The obsidian creatures stalked toward us like slow moving zombies. “We could probably run away. Will stabbing them in the head work?”

  “It will take powerful magic to put them back in the ground,” Baba Yaga said.

  “But we can’t use magic here, or we’ll feed the freaking door to the devil,” Tizzy protested. “You already said, first rule of hellmouth. Don’t feed the hellmouth.”

  “I’m pulling my power from West Virginia. If we join together, we might be able to stop the ghosts from completely entering this realm.”

  I looked at the gruesome ghouls, who, like slugs, were leaving a trail of slime behind them as they shambled toward us. Theirs faces contorted unnaturally, and I tried to suppress the horror rising in my gut. “They look pretty complete now.”

  “But they’re not,” she said with an irritation reserved for school marms and witch queens.

  “What happens if your magic leaks into Paradise Falls?”

  “Then you all will die.”

  “Uhm…”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be fine. I’ve survived worse.”

  “Oh, that’s exactly what I was worried about.”

  “Hurry!” Baba said. “We need to join now.”

  I grabbed Baba Yaga’s hand, Lily came over and took her other. My father, Tanya, Jenny, Romy, and the Yaga’s security team all joined hands on the other side. Tizzy hugged my neck, and Ford, who had no magic except his love for me, took my hand.

  “There’s nothing here.

  Not anymore.

  Go back
to sleep.

  Go back you four.”

  I gave Baba Yaga an incredulous look.

  “Chant!” she demanded.

  We all repeated the ridiculous spell:

  “There’s nothing here.

  Not anymore.

  Go back to sleep.

  Go back you four.”

  Over and over we said the words. The wind began to whip around us like a mini-cyclone, so fast and strong I could barely stay on my feet. Ford moved behind me and held me up. The wails coming from the abominations were akin to banshee screams. I kept chanting. We all kept chanting.

  It wasn’t working. They just kept coming toward us.

  “We need a power focus,” Baba Yaga shouted. “Something to channel the magic through. It’s too scattered because of the hellmouth.”

  Romy was crying, “This is all my fault. My fault.” Her cat jumped down and started walking toward the gory used-to-be witches.

  “No,” Tizzy said. She leaped off my shoulder, her arms spread wide as she glided past the cat.

  “Tisiphone!” I yelled.

  But Baba Yaga said the magic words once again:

  “There’s nothing here.

  Not anymore.

  Go back to sleep.

  Go back you four.”

  Power smooshed us in the line together as white light shot out of Baba Yaga’s eyes, nose and mouth moving straight into my flying familiar and raining sunshine over the conjured spirits. They melted to the asphalt under the intense rays of magic.

  In less than a blink, everything went dark and silent.

  The horror I’d been holding back bubbled up in my like a cauldron full of pitch. I screamed, “Tizzy!”

  She was lying in the street where the ghosts had disappeared. Unmoving. Goddess help me, she wasn’t moving.

  “Tiz!” I scrabbled toward her. Lily and Ford were kneeling next to me as, carefully, I picked her up. I gasped. Her little body was so light. So vulnerable. I’d never seen her look so helpless. I cradled her gently against me. “Tiz.” I shook her chest with my fingertip. “Tisiphone.” Tears clouded my vision. “Lily, she’s not breathing.”

  Lily, who’d studied medicine, if only informally, her entire adult life, took Tiz from me. She began chest compressions and blowing over her nose and mouth. Chaos exploded around us, but I couldn’t care what was happening outside of Lily performing squirrel CPR. Instead, I prayed hard for the Goddess to bring her back. Ford held me as I rocked back and forth, my prayers getting more frantic with each second.

  After a few minutes, Lily looked up at me, her face full of grief. “It’s not working.”

  “Put her down,” a sharp voice said. I brushed at my eyes. Loopyhead the cat was circling Lily’s feet. “Put her down,” she said again. “I know how to help her.” If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was worried. Frantic even.

  Lily looked at me. A question in her expression.

  Baba Yaga said, “Let her try. Familiars have a different kind of magic. If anyone can save your Tisiphone, it will be Lupitia.”

  The fat cat sniffed around Tizzy after Lily placed her on the ground. My heart felt like a MAC truck had backed over it a dozen times. “Do something already,” I told the terrible tabby.

  Without a word of warning, Luchiapet pounced on top of my squirrel and, if she hadn’t already stopped breathing, would have smothered her.

  “What are you doing, you psychopathic bitch?”

  Lily grabbed my arm and kept me from turning the Persian cat into a Persian rug.

  The cat from hell glowed neon green. Seconds later, we heard a squeak and wheeze. My heart pounded so hard I’d thought it would break a few more ribs as I dropped to my knees. Luputa casually removed herself from Tizzy. The squirrel blinked up at me, her eyes reflecting a myriad of emotions.

  “Haze,” she said. I pulled her into my arms. “What happened?”

  “You died,” I cried. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”

  “Can I…” she said in a weak whisper.

  “Can you what? You want some water? Some food? An increase in your allowance? Anything,” I told her, unbelievably grateful to have her back. “You can have anything you want.”

  “I want…” She hacked and coughed. My lungs squeezed with guilt. “I want…” she said again.

  “Tell me.” I stroked my fingertip across her fuzzy cheek.

  “I want a smoke machine, and eyeballs and guts, and cobwebs, and a coffin with a skeleton, oh, and a chainsaw. Minus the chain, of course.”

  My blood pressure ratcheted up several notches.

  “You did say she could have anything,” Lily said.

  “Et tu, Lily?” I sighed. Heavily. “Fine. But you let me break it to Ford.”

  “Woo hooo!” Tizzy whipped around and fist pumped the air. “I win.”

  “You’re awfully spry for being dead a few minutes ago.”

  “It’s not the first time I died. I’m sure it won’t be the last.” She put a clenched paw on her hip. “I make old look good.”

  I knew I wasn’t her first witch, but we never talked about her past, so sometimes I forgot she was hundreds, maybe even a thousand years old.

  “You make cute look sinister.”

  “There’s no denying it.” She smiled, her cheeks puffing out. “I am adorable.”

  “Yes,” I agreed then chuckled. “You really are.” Our magic had gotten rid of the ghosts, but the hellmouth was still prominently featured in the middle of the intersection. “So,” I said to Baba Yaga. “How do we get rid of the big, black, pit of doom?”

  “Maybe we could gate it off and charge admission,” Tizzy said

  “It won’t come to that,” our fearless fashion disaster said. “You were on the right track with the magic ban. Starve the hellmouth until after the blood moon, and it will close itself.”

  “So, we just ignore the gates to Hell in the middle of our town and just go about business as usual?”

  “Pretty much,” she said. She gave her men a whistle and circled her finger. “Round them up, boys. There are cells in Salem with their names on it.”

  Jenny didn’t have her familiar with her, but Romy Quinn was hugging her foul cat so hard its eyes were bulging.

  “Can Lupitia stay with us until Romy gets out of jail?” asked Tizzy.

  “For goddess sake, why?”

  “I love her,” Tizzy said.

  “No,” I gasped. Not Ludoodiehead, anyone but her! Had that been the reason she’d thrown herself into the middle of danger. For love? “Romy could be gone for a hundred years, Tizzy. That’s a long time to commit?”

  “Do you think so?” Ford asked.

  “Uhm, I only meant…” I pulled Tizzy off my shoulder so I could look her in the eye. “When did this happen?”

  Lupitachip jumped down from Romy’s arms to the ground and answered for Tizzy. “We’ve been courting for two months now.” She stared up at me and blinked her green eyes. “I love her too.”

  “Goddess help me.” I looked at Ford.

  “Who are we to stand in the path of true love,” the werebear said with just the barest hint of an amused smile.

  “Har-har,” I said. He was supposed to have my back.

  “It seems you have things under control here, Hazel,” Baba Yaga said. “I’ll be off now.” Her men had already popped out with the prisoners, and I wondered if their transportation magic was feeding our evil hole. “I’ve shielded my magic from here,” Baba Yaga said. I hated it when she read my mind. “It is actually originating in West Virginia, so it’s not affecting the hellmouth.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Call me if you have any problems.”

  “I will.” But not if there were any other options available first, like dropping a nuclear warhead on the town and wiping it out.

  Lily, Ford, Dad, Tanya, Tizzy, and Lupid loaded up in the vehicles as the sun began to rise on the day.

  Baba Yaga asked me to hang back for a moment, and when it wa
s just the two of us, she handed me a piece of paper.

  There was a name written on it with an address for a town in Missouri. “What’s this?”

  “Don’t tell Lily where you got the information. But I think it might be time for her to start a new life. A real life. Somewhere away from Paradise Falls.”

  And with those parting words, she sparkled out.

  The past twenty-four hours had made me feel a little like Jack Bauer, and I was in serious need of a commercial break. I stared at the bubbly black entrance to Satan’s palace and felt the weariness of responsibility weigh me down.

  Ford honked the truck horn, and the pit farted at me all at the same time. I looked up at the sky. “Thank you, Goddess.” As I walked to the truck, I gazed fondly at my family as they impatiently waited for me. “Thank you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  IT WAS THE DAY before Halloween, and the hole on Main Street was about the size of a beach ball. The witches and warlocks in town had gone on a strict magic diet, and as Baba Yaga predicted, the hellmouth was closing on its own.

  Ford’s house hadn’t fared nearly as well. Tizzy, Lily, and Loopydupie had turned the house into Dante’s nine circles of Hell. The irony that our town had almost been a part of the first circle did not escape me. Ford’s family to join our haunted house, including his little brother, and they were all coming over for a dinner party. A sort of pre-Haunted House celebration. I still didn’t understand the distance between Ford and his baby bro, but it could have just been the age gap. Teenagers have many different perspectives than adults with full-time jobs and mortgages.

  Anita Baylor, Ford’s mom, was dressed in a witch costume, classic black pointy hat and black dress. She looked adorable. “Welcome, Nita.” I took the whipped cream salad dessert from her. It had pistachio pudding, crushed pineapple, and pecans in it, and was one of my favorite dishes. Lincoln stood out front, his letter jacket buttoned up tight. He wore a pair of jeans that he rolled at the cuff. As he stood there, he reminded me so much of Ford at that age.

  Ford was stringing up skeleton lights at the fence when a familiar honking startled him. A clown with big floppy pink shoes, a giant bow tie, and a fuzzy pink wig ran up to him, squeezed a bulb in its hand and water shot from the bow tie into Ford’s face. The clown honked again and began running away.