by M. L. Briers
~
When my eyes caught sight of Anna and Tracy coming down the street towards me in a rush of excitement, I knew my damn day was complete. Maybe that should be completely ruined. I wanted to bury my hand in the nearest sandbank and I didn’t care if my backside was up in the damn air for everyone to kick on the way by.
I knew if the sisters were that excited then they had mischief in mind. And they say witches are meddlesome and trouble… I guess all that I can say is that they hadn’t met these two little faeries yet.
“Did you hear?” Tracy started off and I felt the urge to go postal…
“She must have.” Anna told her sister, like I wasn’t even there.
“Must have.” I agreed hoping to end the conversation and keep walking. Sadly that was never the case.
“Someone broke into Marmaduke’s house and stole something from right under his nose, last night.” Tracy informed me, as if I gave a damn.
“Like literally from under his nose.” Anna added and I nodded my understanding as she seemed to think I hadn’t gotten it the first time around. Marmaduke was our resident Warlock, a very old, and very benign one to say the least.
“Well, I’m sure the local police have got it covered.” It annoyed me that people seemed to look to me to be some kind of police enforcement officer for the supernatural element of the town. I wasn’t. I kept the peace… sometimes.
“Oh no.” Tracy shook her head and Anna followed suit. They could have been Siamese twins sometimes the way they mimicked each other’s movements.
“No, no, no. Marmaduke doesn’t want any humans involved.” Anna offered and I felt a heavy lump in my chest. I was supposed to be writing my not-a-book. I was supposed to be gathering food for my not-a-hibernation for a week or so until the shifters calmed down. I was not supposed to be…
“He wants you.” Tracy pointed one of her tiny index fingers at me and I swallowed down my need to groan, curse, and generally curl up into a ball on the pavement and rock back and forth in my misery.
“Only you will do.” Anna offered and my eyes almost rolled back in my head.
“I’ll… get around to seeing him…” I offered. It was the best that I could do. I had some mushrooms to kill and that felt like a good idea right about now.
“It’s an emergency, apparently.” Tracy offered.
When isn’t it? I wanted to ask. Every little thing around this town seemed to be of the uttermost importance to somebody. When was it my turn?
“Very, very, important.” Anna followed up, and I added these two to my very own postal list of people to kill.
“Wonderful. Well, I’d better get to it then.” I didn’t move off and neither did they. I sighed inside, turned on my heels and started off down the street towards Marmaduke’s house. It was the only way that I was going to get rid of the sisters and get some peace. I knew it, they knew, and fate knew it. So here I was, doing another good deed for the day.
~
Marmaduke’s house was one of the nicest and oldest in the cove. It dated back to a time of pirates and blackhearts, and it had even housed the occasional smuggler and scuttler that would lure ships onto the rocks to steal their cargo. Although, some still reckon to this day that it was a Siren’s song that called those ships in towards the shore. Whatever it was, some people got very rich, and the bottom of the ocean found many a sailor’s end… or something like that.
The trouble with Marmaduke was he was getting old. That wasn’t a bad thing as such. He’d lived a long and impressive life, and yet it was his senior moment’s that had become something of a pain in the backside, and if he’d lost something from under his very nose as the sisters had put it, well I was betting it was another of those moments.
“Ah, my favourite witch…” Marmaduke gave me a knowing smile and the old man with the wizard whiskers that reached down his chest still had a twinkle in his eye for the ladies.
“Hey, Marmaduke…” That was as far as I got.
“Come on in and close the door. We have blackhearts abound.” His sense of dramatic flair just added more to his persona.
I kind of sighed inside, knowing I wouldn’t get away with the doorstep visit today and followed him inside the dimly lit hallway and closed the door behind me. It sort of felt like closing the door to a tomb some days, and this was one of those times. I needed a holiday…
“So, I saw Anna and Tracy…” I offered and he raised his hand in the air as he carried on walking away. For an old man he was still quite nimble.
“Ah, my favourite faeries. Very good, very good.” He was rambling and I felt as if the clock on my life was ticking down.
“They said you’d misplaced something?” I gave the old man an out. He stopped in mid stride and turned towards me with the gravest look on his face that I had ever seen.
“Oh no, no, no, no. That’s not right. Not misplaced, no. Someone stole it, right from under this very nose.” He pointed his index finger at his nose and I wanted to ask if he had another one lying around somewhere, but I didn’t want to confuse him further.
“And you wanted to see me, because?” I asked politely.
“Because my dear witch. I need you to get it back or all hell might just break loose around this cove.” Again with the dramatics. I was kind of surprised that he didn’t point to the heavens and stomp his foot on the floor in a Saturday Night Fever stance…
“Good to know.” I tried for sincerity, but come on, Marmaduke was rapidly declining into senility and I wasn’t overjoyed at being around for the grand finale. I kind of liked the old man. “So what is it?”
“A stick.” He offered as he leaned in on a whisper towards me. I wanted to groan, talk about an anti-climax to his rhetoric, but I held it at bay.
“A… stick.” I repeated to show him that I’d got it.
“More of a large wand.” He looked off into space, or over at the far wall in any case.
“A wand.” I repeated again, wishing that I was blasting those damn mushrooms now more than ever.
“A wand that can be mistaken for a stick.” He tried again and I felt my life clock speed up considerably. I could practically see my future scrambling away from me, running for the hills.
“Got it. Well, I’ll keep my eyes out for a wand masquerading as a stick.” Shouldn’t come across too many of those in the field where the mushrooms grow under the cover of a hundred trees.
“Ah, you’re humouring me.” Marmaduke hooked his finger and beckoned me to follow him.
Tick-tick-tick… my life clocks ticking away. With a longing glance at the front door; I followed him into the downstairs study-come-library-come-messy as hell room, where nothing had a place and there wasn’t really a place for anything else to squeeze into. No wonder he’d lost his damn stick!
“Perhaps you should think of hiring someone to help you catalogue and file all of these…” I started, but Marmaduke wasn’t listening. He was standing in front of a large built-in bookcase eyeing the ledgers and numerous Book of Shadows that he’d collected over the years. A witch’s paradise. How I would love to get my hands on some of those…
“Ah, here it is…” He reached up and snatched down a hefty sized tome.
Wonderful. Tick-tick-tick. I had mushrooms to kill. When he dropped it onto the desk and the loud thud seemed to echo off into the distant halls I couldn’t help but jump in place.
Then he started thumbing through the pages I was too lost in the artistry of the drawings to worry about mushrooms, my not-a-book or even my life clock ticking away. It was beautiful, even simplistic in places, but still it reached out and touched a part of me that appreciated its magical realm. When he started to thumb a little faster I felt the irk gene rise within me. I could get lost in those pages…
“Oh, don’t look too closely my dear.” Marmaduke warned in his normal dramatic tone and I snapped my eyes up to his. “A witch can get lost in these pages…” He warned me and I went to say I was just thinking the same thing when he groun
d out the last word. “Literally.”
“Dramatic much, Marmaduke?” I chuckled, but the hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention and the rest of my body followed suit, and I knew that the old man wasn’t lying.
“Take my word for it. Only a Warlock can look and not be trapped.” He offered as he slammed the cover down against the desk with a thud and my heart followed suit. Damn, the old man could be dangerous to someone’s health, namely mine.
“Then how am I going to…?” He cut me off by lifting his hand and drawing a mystical veil over the pages.
“A little magic is worth a thousand words.” His eyes met mine and they shone with amusement. “And a thousand years stuck inside those pages.” He had to add that warning.
My heart jolted again. Did I really want to look upon his damn book? Too right I did, my nose was longer than that wooden boy who told too many lies.
“I guess I’m glad to say that you’re on my side.” I saw his eyes light up once more with amusement.
“Here it is. This is the wand that you are searching for.” He stabbed a finger at the page and the little man that was depicted holding the big stick. I had to narrow my eyes on the drawing of the man… was that a…? He was wearing green… but not just any green; it was a certain shade of moss green that…
“Yes, that’s a Goblin.” Marmaduke might have read my mind or maybe he just came out with it, but still it was unnerving.
“Goblin.” I groaned and closed my eyes slightly. We were back to full circle with the damn mushrooms and the goblins. I didn’t much care for goblins, they kind of weirded my out a little, but who was I to judge?
“I don’t much care for the little buggers myself, but needs must.” Marmaduke slammed the book closed and I wanted to tear it back open and have another nose inside those pages. Crafty little thing, sucking me in like that.
“So the stick… wand…” I corrected myself. “Belong..ed to the goblins?” I asked with a little wince. I didn’t want to come right out and say that Marmaduke shouldn’t really have had the thing… but it was pinging around my mind. He grunted.
“Not quite.” Marmaduke turned and replaced the book. “The goblins stole it from the sirens back in the old days when this place was…”
“Siren’s?” Here we go… I was back to wanting to bury my head in the sand of the cove and I knew just the place to do it.
“Yes. The wand belonged to them and it still contains the remnants of their song.” He said it as a warning and believe me I got the gist. The siren’s song was a powerful thing and I for one didn’t want to hear it singing out anytime soon. Who needed a damn tanker beached in the cove, or even another tourist ship for that matter?
“Wonderful.” I didn’t believe a word of it, but still.
“You need to find the wand before the goblins can use it to unleash the sirens song.” He turned back and gave me the gravest of looks again.
“And you think our goblins have it?” I was still trying to get my head around that damn book and now he wanted me to grasp that the goblins wanted to crash a liner? Tick-tick-tick…
“My dear witch. The song when unleashed will raise the sirens and bring them back to the cove, and with them would rise every ship that they took to the watery grave, and so the dead sailors would walk the land again…” Marmaduke was in his dramatic element.
“And we have enough tourists messing up the place. Got it.” I couldn’t help myself. Yes, I believed in magic because I possessed it, but the siren’s song and ships rising from the deep, not to mention waterlogged sailors… Geez.
“Joss, you will see things come to pass if you don’t look with your heart and your mind.” He informed me in that cryptic way that all the old wise ones came with a mandate to embrace. Tick-tick-tick.
“I’ll do that. And I’ll look for the stick… wand.” Damn it! “I’m off to goblin wood right now anyway.” I offered trying to sound as sincere as possible.
“Coincidence? I think not.” Marmaduke offered back and I nodded thoughtfully, or considerately, well, I nodded in agreement anyway. Marmaduke seemed to accept my damn nod however it had turned out.
“Let me see you out.” He offered with his gentlemanly cap on. At least it wasn’t his senile one and he didn’t lose the front door as I escaped his house and the madness that today was bringing my way. I was really going to enjoy killing those damn mushrooms.
~
“Don’t take another step.” The growled out warning came from behind me and made me jump in place. I didn’t recognise the damn voice, but I’d already added this sucker to my postal list of people to kill. Right then and there as my heart tried to exit my ribcage; he had jumped to the top of the list.
“How about two steps?” I shot back sarcastically.
Never tell a witch what to do or they will surely do the damn opposite. Not always advisable when standing in a minefield, but I wasn’t in one, I was in a public wood… So I did it. I took two long steps, one forward and one to the side, before I turned to look at the jerk that had scared a year off my damn life. Tick-tick-bloody-tick.
Well now, what do we have here? I felt my wards buzz from the closeness of the supernatural, but what kind of supernatural was he. He certainly wasn’t a vampire, the voice was all wrong.
Those dark chocolate eyes were too soulful to be a lion or a tiger shifter, and from the build of him he wasn’t a bear. But he did have broad shoulders and a muscled chest that said touch me, lick me, and if that wasn’t wrong in so many ways then I didn’t even want to consider what was. I did not get involved with the supernatural… well, you know what I mean?
“I told you not to move…” He growled out each and every word and I had it nailed. Wolf. The super sexy guy with the soulful eyes and bad attitude was of course a damn wolf shifter. Oh joy, another one.
“So you did. Perhaps you would have got a different response if you’d asked nicely.” I folded my arms across my ample chest and pushed my breasts out. Why? Because I could, and because it usually threw a guy off… This one was no different, his eyes dropped down to my girls and he took a good look… Sucker!
CHAPTER THREE
“I don’t ask nicely.” The wolfman offered his words as if they meant something to me. They didn’t. I didn’t want anything from him and it seemed to me to be the other way around.
“Hence your problem with getting people to do things.” I gave him that smile. It was the smile that said screw you, but with an innocent twist to it. He growled back at me and I was sure my girls felt that growl in spades. They did tighten a little…
“The only people who don’t do what I tell them are witches and faeries, and that’s because you people…” That was it. I wasn’t going to let him get away with any slight against my kin folk.
“Us people?” I picked him right up on it.
He narrowed those soulful eyes on me and my girls tightened a little more. I don’t normally go for anything with fangs and fur, but this guy was a little hard to resist. I think it had something to do with those damn sexy eyes.
“Yes. The Fae.” He growled again and I was so pissed off at him I wanted to use my thumbs to push my hardened nipples back to soft, because a jerk like this didn’t deserve that kind of response my girls.
“Why don’t you take your slurs and your prejudices and go shove them where the sun don’t shine?” I’d do it for him if I had my trusty besom with me. Jerk of the first order.
“I have a job to do and right now you are my prime suspect.” He growled at me again, and I can tell you that I wanted to take that broom that I didn’t have and shove it right up his backside with a hey-ok-enjoy or words to that effect.
“Oh I am, am I?” I folded my arms across my chest again but this time I didn’t push my girls outwards. He didn’t deserve another look. But I did feel the urge to draw on my magic and give him a what-for.
“You are the only one who is standing in the field of illegal mushrooms.” He growled again and I must admit that he
had me there. Not the growl, that was a good one, but the accusation. I was kind of standing in the mushroom field…
“Who the hell are you?” I demanded he come clean. I wasn’t just going to stand there and be accused of anything by some…
“I work for the department of supernatural and existential affairs.” He growled at me one more time and I felt as if my head was going to explode on my neck just from wanting to enact my damn postal list right there and then at Mr-Goody-Two-Shoes.
“Oh good, because after the day I’ve had I have to tell you that I’m having an existential crisis of my own. Tell me, does a place called leave-me-the-fuck-alone really exist?” The look that he gave me was priceless. I could have dropped down to the grass, folded up on myself, and literally peed’ my panties right there and then.
“Who the hell are you, woman?” He looked at me with a lot of disbelief as he screwed up his face and considered just how insane I was at that point in time.
“Just a witch.” I offered back. I wasn’t about to give some guy I’d never met before my name. Well, gee, I might as well have signed over my very soul to the devil. Doh!
“And you use a lot of mushrooms?” He asked that question a little more sympathetically… What the…? He thinks I’ve been licking mushrooms does he? Well…
“No, I prefer toads, not stools, just the plain slimy kind that belch a lot.” I held back on the sarcastic tone, but I did drop my eyes to the floor as if I was ashamed to admit it.
“Eww.”
“Oh for the love of everything spiritual. You have the wrong end of the bloody stick.” I ground out as I rolled my eyes and wished I had my hands on that wand-stick thing of Marmaduke’s so I could beat some sense into this guy. Please… me lick a damn toad, that’s about as likely as this guy getting a brain and some manners.
“Perhaps you should see a counsellor.”
“Perhaps you should if you think I lick damn toads.” I snapped back.