Witch Risen: A Paranormal Adventure (Bad Tom Series Book 2)

by Jill Nojack

  Witch Risen: A Paranormal Adventure

  Book Two in the Bad Tom Series

  Jill Nojack

  Indieheart Press

  KENT, OHIO

  Copyright © 2015 by Jill Nojack.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author at jill@jillnojack.com.

  Cover designed by Jill Nojack

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Witch Risen / Jill Nojack. -- 1st ed.

  11292015 v1

  The shift is brief. It always is. My long human body shrinks, warps, and folds into itself until the cat is revealed.

  I launch away as soon as Cat's feet hit the floor. I can't tell what that vile witch Eunice is doing behind me in the attic, but I bet her smirk still lingers on Cassie's hijacked lips. I bet she believes I'll welcome her back with a purr and a brush against her legs.

  This is my only shot to escape: when she gets up to speed, she'll throw some magic at the attic door to slam it, and I'll never escape her again. All I can do is hope she hasn't gotten a groove going with her stolen body yet.

  But she doesn't spell it shut: I'm down the stairs, I'm across the hall, I'm into the parlor, I'm across the sill, I'm shimmying down the tree trunk, I'm over the fence, and I'm tearing through the backyards of Giles toward Gilly's house with fear as my running companion.

  I need witches.

  Powerful witches.

  And I need them now.

  When I get there, the house is dark and the car isn't in the drive. Where do I go from here?

  Natalie. Yes. She was there when I needed help to gain the ability to control my shifting. But that's miles away.

  It doesn't matter: I have to keep going. It's Cassie who is really at stake. I can't fail her.

  I urge Cat on, and his shadow races ahead as we pass under the glow of a street lamp. Cat is fast, but he's going to be out of gas soon. I think about shifting to move faster on my long, human legs, but I reject the idea of running through town naked and barefoot almost as soon as it comes to me. Even the cops in a witch-ruled town like Giles might have a problem with that one. The thought of losing Cassie because I'm in jail for indecent exposure keeps me gliding forward on Cat's silent feet.

  Nat's house is brightly lit. I jump to the sill at an open window and wail in the tone Cat saves to make humans pay attention, the one that sounds eerily like a baby's cry, but it's drowned out by music and laughter. Wait…that's Gillian's laugh. I'd know that happy sound anywhere, even though it's slipped a few notes down the musical scale over the years. I glance toward the street—Gilly's car is parked there with Robert's behind it.

  Whatever they're doing, whoever is with them, I'm crashing the party. It doesn't matter who sees me shift from cat to man today: Cassie is in mortal danger. I use the last of Cat's flagging energy to tear through the screen with sharp claws and push my head, then my upper body, through. I shove as hard as I can, rending the hole wider for the rest of Cat's body as I go. I hit the floor and keep moving toward the sound of "Go Ask Alice" blasting from the stereo.

  They're sitting around a wooden card table in the front parlor. Natalie's wearing a green dealer's visor over her platinum hair, and her ever-present red vinyl handbag sits on the floor beside her. She's overdressed for a poker party at home in a flattering black pantsuit. She chomps on a huge cigar while she leans in to the card table and deals the cards. Gillian and Robert watch her hands closely. They'd have to. You can never really trust Nat with the small things. She's reliable with the big ones, though.

  I think my words, good Tom, and furry black limbs turn smooth and beige as they stretch and grow, forming from cat to man in the space of only heartbeats. Shifting always causes pain as limbs expand and joints crack and break until they reshape themselves into something new. I can't help but whimper, although I try to hold it in, and it ends up escaping in a high-pitched yelp before I'm fully formed.

  Gilly's head snaps toward me at the sound. I can see that I startled her as my vision adjusts from a cat's slits to a man's round irises. "Tom? What are you doing here?"

  Two more heads turn toward me. Robert exudes calm, his usual state. Nat is always hard to read.

  When my muscles release from the sharp pain of being stretched beyond capacity to lingering stiffness, and my body fully settles into its human shape, I snug my legs against my torso and wrap my arms around my knees to preserve as much dignity as I can. Like that's going to help when I've just landed in the middle of a senior citizen's living room in my birthday suit.

  "It's Cassie. Eunice has her." Once I say it, once I'm firing on all my human cylinders, it sounds so desperately real. Natalie's house is that steamy, old-lady warm, but I feel very, very cold.

  Nat gets up and heads toward the hallway, muttering as she goes. "Couldn't just be a fun little strip show. There always has to be drama." She sighs as she disappears around the corner.

  Gilly says, "Tom, we buried her. The whole bloody town showed up just to make sure she was really dead. What do you mean she has Cassie?"

  "She's taken her body. Eunice is wearing her."

  Nat reappears next to me with a frilly pink robe. She's baiting me, I'm sure, but I put it on without hesitation to cover myself and take the fourth chair at the table. I don't have time for her games. I'd cover myself with a lampshade if that's what she handed me.

  I don't miss a beat as I continue. "Cassie picked up an old clay box and read the words on it…and then Eunice just…took her." As I talk, I pick up a stack of cards and snap the ones on the top of the deck against the ones on the bottom until Gillian puts her hand across mine and gently takes them away. "She shifted me after making sure I knew it was her, and I ran. All I could think was that I needed help to undo whatever she'd done to Cassie, so I left Cassie to her, and I ran." It really, truly hits me then. I drop my head into my hands, overcome by what I'd done. "Goddess, help her. I abandoned her."

  "It can't be her. No, it can't be," Robert insists. I look up to meet his eyes, and he's unruffled and impeccably dressed despite a string of empties marching along the edge of the table by his right hand.

  "It. Was. Eunice." There's more anger in my voice than I mean to put there. "Now, please tell me that one of you potent witches knows how to get Cassie back."

  ***

  Natalie takes charge. It always surprises me when she moves into the leadership role. I should expect it; she's been the coven's high priestess since Eunice died, but her steadiness when at the helm is completely at odds with her eccentric old lady act.

  She hands me a hot cup of fragrant mint tea in a stoneware mug. "Tell it to us from the beginning, Tom. Don't leave anything out. We need to hear every detail." Her slightly blood-shot brown eyes project command.

  In this case, I'll let her lead me. I'm too scattered to begin developing a plan. Telling it as it happened may trigger something that lets me start to figure it out.

  Two witches and a warlock hang on my every word as I begin.

  "We'd just decid
ed tonight to reopen Cat's Magical Shoppe tomorrow after we…well, we've been together for the past few days as more than roommates." Heads nod. Gilly smiles.

  "I hadn't taken Cat out to hunt for a while, and he needed it so that I don't start pouncing at birds in public. I went out to Corey Woods to hunt, and when I came back, I couldn't find her. I heard a noise in the attic and found her up there, shuffling Eunice's things around. She said it was about time she got around to it. Everything seemed fine."

  I stop to think, and Nat says, "Good. Stay focused as it gets more difficult. How did it go wrong?"

  I squeeze my eyes shut, trying not to lose myself to the image of the blue-gray smoke that wasn't smoke. "She'd just put down a brooch after I stopped her from putting it on. I said one of you guys should check it out to make sure Eunice hadn't left any booby traps. And Cass agreed with me. But then she picked up this box…" I stop and take deep breaths to loosen the tight band of pain across my chest. They aren't sobs, though. Never sobs.

  Natalie urges me on. "Describe the box, Tom. Picture it and give us the most accurate description you can."

  I continue, forcing myself to observe the memory instead of live in it, teasing out the details of the box. "It was about six inches long and four wide. Made of clay, painted. But the paint was faded, old looking. On the lid, there were three of the Egyptian symbols Eunice taught me: life, death, and rebirth. It may have been sealed around the seam with wax. It looked waxy, at least. A little shiny where the lid and the box met."

  Natalie nods her head. "Good. I'll need you to help me draw a picture of that later. For now, keep going."

  I do as she says. It's helping me get clearer on what happened, and I'm going to need that. "I didn't feel right about it, and I wanted her to put it down. I'd been standing on the top stair, and just as I stepped up to the landing, she read the words from the lid. She shouldn't have known the translations. I'm sure Eunice never taught her hieroglyphs like she'd taught me. So when she read them so clearly in English, it was off, wrong. And I knew, I just knew…"

  My chest constricts again, but I continue. "And suddenly she changed, she held herself like her grandmother did—moved like her." I take a long, deep breath. "And when she spoke, she had that crisp Eunice way of speaking. You know what I mean? How Eunice exaggerated her accent to sound more Bostonian, more upper class?"

  Natalie rolls her eyes. "Yes, we know. What did she say to you?"

  "She asked me if I'd been making time with Cassie. She didn't seem to know for sure that Cassie and I were together. She sounded curious instead of the way she'd make an accusation. And then she used my shift words, and…"

  I'm trapped in silence by my memory of the moment when the kind, loving young woman who helped me become a man again is suddenly inhabited by the hag I'd thought I'd escaped forever, turning me into an animal again, a slave, not at man.

  I bring my fists to my forehead and close my eyes tight. I'll never be able to shove that moment from my brain. "Damn her! Damn her to hell!" I raise my eyes back to Nat's. "I didn't stick around after that. I got Cat moving as soon as his body would obey. Because I knew if I waited too long, I'd never leave that house as a man again."

  I feel Gillan's hand on mine, reassuring me. "You did right, Tom. You couldn't have helped by staying and being trapped."

  I don't feel reassured. I feel like I've abandoned my girlfriend to a terrible fate.

  I look at the three of them. "Have any of you ever heard of magic like this?"

  Gillian and Natalie shake their heads right away. Robert looks thoughtful for a moment, and then says, "Whatever she is, she isn't a skinwalker. They died out. There hasn't been any record of them in hundreds of years. Even if some survived, they can only move from body to body. They don't sit in a box and wait for a host. That's a good thing—they were nasty creatures. This sounds more like an old-fashioned possession. But as far as we know, Eunice wasn't a demon. I mean, we grew up together. She was a controlled but otherwise very normal girl."

  Gillian's hand flinches away as I raise mine to bring it down hard on the table. The poker chips jump like fish in a pond. "If anyone could be called a demon, Eunice could! But don't tell me what it isn't. Tell me what it is. Tell me how I can save Cass."

  The others don't react. Robert's still unruffled, Natalie's look is still curious. She asks, "Done now?"

  I nod, reluctant, as I reel my temper in.

  "Good boy." She pats my hand. "Robert, do you have anything in that library of yours that might help?"

  "I have some older volumes on demonology, including some I picked up the last time I was in Europe and haven't had time to catalog yet. The usual arcane topics. They'd certainly discuss possession. But I don't know if there's anything there that will help. And a couple of them are in French."

  "I read French," Gillian says. "I could get stuck in to those if the rest of you work on the others."

  They're so civilized and scholarly. So calm. "Books? I don't need books. I need magic, I need fire, I need lightning. I need an enchanted tire iron to pry her out of there and get Cassie back."

  Natalie gives me a withering look. "You said you were done."

  She pauses, looking at me pointedly before she continues. "Nothing is going to get resolved tonight. It's too late in the evening, and it's too dangerous to try anything before we know what we're up against. And, my boy, this trio is old, and I'd hazard a guess, just a little drunk. I say we meet at Robert's tomorrow morning to start on those books."

  "No, we should get moving. Do you expect me to just sit and wait?"

  "Yes. Because Nat's right," Gillian says. "And you need to keep your head down so Eunice doesn't find out you're not dependent on anyone else to control your shifting now. If you go dashing about in anger, you'll slip up, and she'll find out fast enough. Let her think nothing has changed for you and Cat."

  "You're right. I know you're right. If she doesn't know what happened after she died, that's one trick I've still got up my furry black sleeve." I take a deep breath through gritted teeth. Eunice won't control me again. "Gilly, can I stay with you? I've got nowhere to go."

  "Not a good idea. If Eunice figures out you can control your form, I'd be the first person she thinks of. You'd be better off with someone else. Robert?"

  Robert nods. "You can stay at the house. Plenty of room. Kevin and I still haven't mended our fences, so you won't be in danger of his finding you there." He's talking about his son who Cassie and I ratted out for using magic to peep into women's windows.

  No one really has to say it, but they all know there was something more. In fact, I'm sure he murdered Eunice even though I'd never be able to prove it. But if he did, she allowed it. It's clear now she knew she wasn't going to stay dead.

  I don't respond right away as I roll Robert's offer around in my head. I've never trusted him, and I've never liked him because of our unfortunate romantic rivalry for Eunice all those years ago, but he's turned out to be a stand-up guy, throwing his support behind Cassie against his own son. He even made it impossible for Kevin to handle spelled objects, including creating the potions he was so fond of, to assure that he can't use magic to hurt or manipulate people anymore.

  When I don't respond right away, Natalie does a Mae West thing with her shoulder and says, "I'd be happy to loan you a room. Maybe I could even get that strip show, eh?"

  I turn immediately to Robert. "Thanks, Robert. I appreciate it. Do you have a ground floor room so Cat can get in and out easily?"

  "Absolutely. I have the perfect one."

  I shift and hop into Gilly's bag as Cat, then she follows Robert out to his car, where I disembark and crawl under the front seat for the ride. I take no chances. Eunice isn't going to know a thing about me until the day—and it's coming soon—that I tear her out of the body she had no right to take and send her back to hell.

  ***

  Robert settles me in to a large room on the first floor. Big windows. I crack one of them open, and the night noises w
aft in.

  My mind races, and it doesn't want anything to do with the demands of my exhausted body. The open window beckons into the night. I start moving even as I shift, my appendages truncating, compacting smaller and smaller.

  It's an easy leap to the sill. And then a short hop down to run swift and free down the drive and into the dimly lit streets of Robert's toney neighborhood, heading downtown.

  Across the street from Cat's Magical Shoppe there's a bakery, and next to it, an alley. I blend in to the dark.

  I watch as a shadow crosses the lace curtains on the second floor of the old Victorian that houses the shop and living quarters above it, and then the lights go out.

  There isn't much to see.

  There isn't much to do.

  There's too damn much to feel.

  I'm glad that cats can't cry. I would drown here in this alley. But even as I sit and stare at the darkened window, a plan is beginning to take shape.

  A poet once said that hope is the thing with feathers. If you buy that, then you'll believe it when I tell you that hope will hang around your feet being chummy, cooing, and waiting for bread crumbs. Just don't ever drop your guard.

  Because hope, I've discovered, is also the thing with a sharp beak. Just when you're cruising comfortably close to the thing you most desire, hope will zoom right in and peck your eyes out.

  Cat would normally be awake and alert long before anything gets close enough to land a peck, but he doesn't jolt to consciousness until the pigeon's beak hooks an ear and reels it in. Eunice must have a hand in this, must be sending me a message. The pain is fierce. By the time I spring to my feet with a long hisssssss, forcing cat's hackles and tail straight up, the bird is already winging away.

  It lands on the bench across the street in front of the magic shop and struts along its length, peering here and there with its head rocking side to side in that irritating pigeon way. Probably looking for another victim in the dawn's new light.