A Barrel of Whiskey - (An Urban Fantasy Whiskey Witches Novel)

by S. M. Blooding

  “Pack?” Alma tipped her head to the side and sighed. “It makes sense now. This is why we don’t mix witches and shifters.”

  Fuck Alma and her ill-timed superstitions. “Let’s just try it first and see if it works. If it doesn’t, we can move to Plan B.”

  “And what, pray tell, is that?”

  Paige winced, grabbing the dish of earth, setting it on the table as the house shook again, this time deeper. A crack etched across the ceiling.

  Alma stared at it with her white eyes. “You best hurry, girl.” She grabbed the bowl of water and the candle and set them in the middle of the table.

  Leslie grabbed a few sticks, some witch hazel, and a bottle for air.

  Mandy stepped up to the table, dragging Tyler behind her. “What do you need us to do?”

  “We’ll show you,” Paige said. At least, she hoped so. “Leah!”

  Dexx pushed the girl inside the room, the sawed off shotgun in his other hand. “Got silver for the other guns. Salt pelt for this one. Where do you want us?”

  “You are not giving my husband a gun,” Leslie said sharply.

  “Did you want to die today?” Paige asked briskly. “Check the perimeter. How many of those things are out there and what are they doing? They’re gonna find a way through.”

  Dexx nodded once and disappeared, leaving Leah in the doorway.

  “Lee, I need you in here. You’re either helping, or you’re not. Either way is fine, but I need you in here.”

  “I’m scared.”

  A shot went off inside the house.

  “What the hell was that?” Paige shouted.

  “Goddamned ghost!” Dexx shouted back.

  Paige flattened her lips at Leah. “Stop shooting at the ghosts. They’re not after us. They’re here because someone called them. Now, just go!”

  Leslie frowned. “I don’t feel them. They couldn’t have gotten through the threshold anyway. Grandma made sure of it.”

  “Ghosts? Sure. These are spirits.” Paige took in a deep breath, closing her eyes. “Lee called them from across the Gate.”

  Leslie’s eyes widened. “Oh, dear.”

  “Don’t escalate.”

  Leslie took in a deep breath and visibly shut down her emotions. “What am I doing?”

  “Calling water. Mandy, fire. Tyler, air.”

  “What about me?” Leah asked, her voice small.

  “Call the spirit of the tree, if you can.”

  The spirit of the tree was the hardest, but it grouped all the elements together, bound them, made them easier to manage.

  “Pea,” Leslie muttered. “You gave her the hardest one.”

  “It’s also the safest. She’s new to this. Unless, Rachel let you practice magick?”

  “No,” Leah said. “What am I doing?”

  “Just talking to the tree branches there.” It was difficult to pull on Earth while trying to instruct. “The tree touches all the elements; air, water, earth, the fire of the sun. Focus on that. Grandma.”

  “I’ll take over,” Alma grumbled as she shuffled toward Leah’s side.

  “Thanks.”

  Paige reached with her mind into the earth. Cawli followed with a tendril wisp of curiosity. All Mother, Paige whispered. We need you. Will you join us?

  The earth rumbled, ethereal arms stretching like a cat waking from a nap. A blanket of love and nurturing warmth enveloped Paige’s consciousness.

  The candle lit with flame.

  The green glass bottle filled with steam as if someone expelled a breath into it.

  The water in the blue bowl bubbled.

  “Into the branches,” Paige said.

  Alma stood beside Leah, her hands on the girl’s.

  Leah’s brown eyes were wide, her lips curling upward.

  The branches jumped as if they were coming alive.

  Paige guided the earth toward the branches, crumbles of dirt trailing from the bowl in the middle the of table to the sticks.

  Fire leapt from the candle wick to the wood, catching them on fire.

  Water danced across the table, calming the fire’s effects on the dry bark.

  Air drifted over in a wisp of smoke, feeding the flame.

  “Now.” Paige raised her face to the ceiling. “Do as I do.” She brought the power of the elements through her, feeding her will, and pushed her green and smoky silver aura toward the flagging energy encapsulating the house.

  “They broke in!” Dexx yelled. His gun rang three times at the back door.

  Paige’s green and silver aura touched the teal energy. Initially, the ward pulsed, rejecting the addition of power. “Grandma!”

  Alma sighed and teal energy shot from the woman’s fingers, joining with Paige’s. The wards pulsed, then calmed, and became a combination of the three colors.

  Interesting.

  Paige didn’t have time for Cawli. She grabbed the wards and brought them as close to the house as she could. Then she changed the structure of the ward, making it less liquid, more electric.

  “Whatever that was,” Tru shouted at the front door. “Keep doing that. They definitely didn’t like that.”

  “Les,” Paige barked.

  Leslie took in a breath, then sent her sapphire blue aura in a rising waterfall to touch the top. It cascaded down, filling in any holes that Paige’s electricity and Alma’s plasma had left open. It melted into the ward, giving the odd color a deeper hue.

  “Me next,” Mandy whispered.

  “Carefully,” Leslie cautioned.

  Mandy’s flaming orange aura shot up like a series of fireworks and exploded across the dome, lighting it up from the inside. Heat poured down around the Whiskeys.

  “I said carefully,” Leslie said.

  “I was.” Mandy giggled embarrassed. “I thought.” She wiggled her fingers, then flicked them. Her orange blended in with the blue and the teal and the silver and the green. It looked like autumn.

  “Me?” Tyler asked.

  “Without breaking my glass,” Alma growled.

  He gave her a cheeky grin, then opened his mouth and sang.

  Platinum energy bounced around the room, the house, the wards, pinging off the dome, adding an almost metallic strength to the wards.

  “Whoa,” Alma said.

  Paige smiled, all doubt erased. “Yeah.”

  Kamden reached up with his little baby arm and waved it around. A few bits of light fizzed and then went out around his fist.

  Leslie chuckled. “It’s okay, Kammy. You don’t have to do anything right now.”

  Leah raised her hands and an inky black smoke rose from them, blanking out the light from the window, the candle, Mandy’s aura. Leah’s eyes widened in horror.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Paige said, extending her witch hands. They were the same inky black. “See? They’re nothing to be afraid of. This is a part of you. You make it good, or you make it bad. It’s just energy.”

  Nodding uncertainly, Leah raised her hands above her head and pushed.

  The black smoke touched the wards.

  The wards disappeared.

  Paige stared in horror, but didn’t breathe a word.

  They blinked back into place, undulating as if they were a living, breathing beast.

  Leah’s eyes and mouth were wide as she watched it.

  Paige looked at Alma.

  Alma looked at Paige, her shoulder jerking up in a tight shrug.

  Leslie gave a small laugh.

  Tyler grinned. “Wicked.”

  Mandy nodded, biting her smiling lip. “Awesome.”

  Paige blinked. She grabbed hold of the ward. It weighed a lot more than it had originally. She didn’t even know magick had a weight. But this definitely did. She tried pushing it away from the structure of the house.

  It didn’t budge.

  “Whoa.” Tru stepped into the doorway, his eyes glued to the window beside the door. “Whatever you did, those damned dogs are slamming themselves against the house and we can’t feel a
thing.”

  “Well, that’s somethin’,” Alma said.

  Paige bowed her back, bent her knees, set Bobby on the table to brace both hands on the table.

  Mandy licked her lips and mimicked Paige’s stance. “What are we doing?”

  Nothing at the moment. Good grief! “Moving the ward out.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Tyler’s face exploded with a wild grin as he clambered onto the table.

  Leah winced, then screwed up her face in concentration, gripping the table’s edge until her fingertips turned white.

  Leslie rolled her eyes and looked as though she were preparing for a squat.

  Alma shook her head and raised one gnarled finger.

  “On three,” Paige grunted. The damned wards were heavy. “One. Two. Three!”

  They all strained and pushed, using their wills with the support of their bodies, even though their bodies were no help at all.

  Tru jumped with a whoop. “You’re pushing them across the yard!”

  “They better not be tearing up my garden,” Alma grunted, her shoulder bowed.

  “They’re to the sidewalk,” Tru said.

  At least they had a ground guide. Paige had lost sight of the perimeter. She could still see the dome high overhead. She could tell it cleared the highest gable of the roof, but that was about it. She turned off her witch sight and straightened. “Ground your elements.”

  “Huh?” Leah asked.

  Alma patted the girl’s hand and muttered in her ear.

  The sticks stopped dancing. The water fell to the table. The dirt stopped moving. The trapped breath escaped the bottle. The candle went out.

  The Whiskeys stood, staring at one another.

  Paige formed a fist and punched it tiredly in the air across her body. “Go, us! Whew!”

  The heaven hounds left once they realized they couldn’t find an easy way past the Whiskey wards. Which was a good thing because Paige wasn’t sure any of them had it in them to continue the fight.

  No. She took that back. The kids had more than enough energy to fight off the hounds three times over.

  Mandy grabbed Leah’s hand and they disappeared.

  Tyler couldn’t stop bouncing.

  Kamden started crying.

  Bobby, however, yawned as if bored.

  Becky smiled tightly through a sigh, clutching the handles of her purse. “This is the reason I’m sure we made the right choice.”

  “Not to disagree with you or anything,” Paige said with a groan of exhaustion, “but if we’re notorious enough that you found us, how do you think others won’t follow?”

  “You’re not notorious.” Becky shook her head with a frown. “The angels barely know about you and only through Rachel.”

  And Xael, the Heavenly demon-summoner herder, the purveyor of doom. He was the angel responsible for keeping the Whiskey demon summoner in line. He was an asshole. “Then, how did you find us? And what made you think this was a good idea?”

  “Um.” Becky drew herself up. “Roxxie might have mentioned your name.”

  “Roxxie?” Paige had almost forgotten about the little angel. She’d arrived in Louisiana with Xael, but had been a lot less of a douchebag. Paige had actually found herself liking the angel with the pink pigtails. Seriously. She couldn’t force herself to hate an angel with pink pigtails.

  “Hey, Paige,” Leah said. “Are—”

  Paige cut her off. “I’m Mom to you.”

  Leah nodded, her expression open as if to say she’d meant to say “mom,” only it was habit to call her Paige.

  Which was a very mature non-verbal, Paige had to admit.

  “Hey, Mom,” Leah said in the exact same tone, “are all angels evil?”

  Oh. Paige had to nip that one in the bud. Quick. “Look at Becky. Does she seem evil to you?”

  Leah shook her head. “But the ones Grandma calls aren’t nice.”

  Yeah, well, Rachel didn’t seem to keep light company. “You know what, Becky? Ask Roxxie if she’ll stop by.”

  “The wards?”

  “Right.” Paige touched Becky’s chest bone and met the angel’s gaze with her shifter eyes. The angel’s body was less solid than everyone else’s and her aura nearly blinded Paige with its bright white light. “Should I key the wards to allow you to pass, will you swear on your life force that you will not betray us?”

  Becky settled her shoulders and flared her wings behind her, shooting off swords of light that pinged against the dome high overhead. “I swear it on my Grace.”

  Paige looked up at the wards, the structure of the house disappearing. She watched as Becky’s light flared against the dome and ricocheted until the light went out. Paige didn’t want to give the wards Becky’s light. “Show me your Grace.”

  Taking in a deep breath, Becky snapped her wings. Icy blue light slithered from between her feathers like ribbons of glittery snakes, rising and coiling around the angel.

  Paige licked her lips. “By your Grace and your sworn word, you have permission to cross our wards.”

  Becky bowed her head.

  Alma stepped up, her white eyes glowing in the shifter sight. “But you don’t have open access to cross my thresholds.” She glared up at Paige with those glowing eyes. “And the thresholds are still mine.”

  “Technically, I believe they’re Leslie’s.” Paige raised her eyebrows and nodded at the angel. “But what she said.” She released her oozy witch hands laced with Cawli’s silvery spirit and pressed a single blue ribbon of Becky’s Grace into the ward near the front sidewalk entrance. “You will always have to walk up the sidewalk. You can take no other path to our home.”

  “Understood.”

  The ward crackled with electricity, but the pitch of the snap changed the longer Paige pressed the ribbon to it. Eventually, there were mere sizzles and the faint outline of a pale blue doorway just tall enough for Becky to enter, and just wide enough for her wings to fit while folded.

  Paige switched off her shifter vision and smiled at Becky. “Thank you for everything. I’ll keep Bobby safe.”

  “I do apologize for the inconvenience.”

  “I just hope Rachel buys our story. If she does any digging—”

  “She’s not a detective, Pea,” Alma grumbled, glaring up at Paige with a confused and thoughtful expression. “She’s not going to investigate you.”

  “She might not, but she has Michael on her side.”

  Becky nodded. “And he most certainly will investigate. Okay. What other things do I need to lay down to pass his initial review?”

  “Well-baby doctor visits?” Paige started ticking the list off. “Insurance claims per visit, the bills and when they were paid. That shows up on the credit report which is the first thing to do when investigating anyone. Um, credit card purchases. We just now bought all of Bobby’s things. They should have been purchased months ago. Also, there should be a crib for him in my apartment. If I’d been pregnant, I would have thought of that.”

  “Not everyone does,” Alma said.

  “Shut up,” Leslie grumbled.

  Paige smiled. “Also, the plane ride to Louisiana. Leslie and I would have had to have been pregnant at the same time and if Les couldn’t have gotten on a plane to get to Louisiana, then I couldn’t have either.”

  “I have a plan for that one,” Becky said.

  Paige hoped it was something good because that was a big red flag. “I do have the birth certificate.”

  Becky nodded. “Dexx has been named as the father.”

  “We should probably check to see if we were actually able to conceive at the right time.”

  “I will check.”

  “Didn’t Dexx already say it was possible?” Alma asked.

  “He pulled shit out of his ass and flung it at Rachel who was flailing at being stonewalled.” Paige glanced down at Bobby’s little face and sighed. “Trust me. She’s not giving up. She’s going to dig. She’s going to figure out the truth if we don’t do
something to prevent it.”

  “Don’t worry.” Becky put her hand on Bobby’s bundled body. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “There are also eye-witness events. No one saw me pregnant. No one mentioned it.”

  “I’ve already started with memory plants. I started at the station. I should be able to get to everyone except for Sven.”

  “And, hopefully, she never runs into that demon.”

  “Exactly. It’s highly unlikely.”

  Paige conceded with her eyebrows.

  “Thank you, Paige.”

  She narrowed her eyes at the angel. “For what?”

  “You’re endangering the lives of your family for one small child who could affect the world greatly in times to come.”

  “Yeah, well, what kind of person would I be to let a baby die?” A practical one? Well, she wasn’t that. Apparently.

  “Well, thank you again.”

  “Be careful leaving. I don’t want to tip off the opposing forces of what you are. And bring Roxxie by.”

  “We’ll call first.” Becky gestured over her shoulder as she turned to the door. “The wards.”

  “Exactly. Be careful.”

  “I will.” She left.

  A cop car pulled up at about that time.

  “Dexx,” Paige called. “Cops. You called them. You deal with them.”

  “Yeah,” he shouted from the kitchen. “Be right there.”

  Paige closed the door behind her.

  Alma stood in the workroom door at the foot of the stairs, one hand on her hip, her wrinkled face twisted and disgruntled. “What was that?”

  “What was what, Grandma?”

  “The wards?”

  “A thought. I just had a thought and, guess what? It worked. Beautifully. So, yay, us!”

  “Who controls the wards now?”

  “Um.” Paige did, probably. “We’ll work on that. Okay? So, yeah. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Alma turned back into the work room.

  “Grandma, please don’t be—”

  Alma turned, her hand raised, her expression relaxed at least a little. “You’re outgrowing me, Pea. I need to be happy about that. I need to be pleased that I’ve taught you how to take care o’ yourself and your family. And I am. It just feels, well, a little disjointed is all. I need to find my new place.”