I was definitely stronger than I’d ever imagined I was. If someone had laid out the challenges that would be before me back when I lived in Salem, I wouldn’t have left my apartment ever again.
A year ago, I hadn’t known what I was made of. I’d never been tested the way I had been this past year. That was the one beauty about tests: pass or fail, at least you knew what kind of raw material you were dealing with. I’d kept surviving, sometimes in spite of myself. If this ragtag crew in front of me thought they could take me down, they’d find out as well.
The lean kid with the slender shoulders began waving his hands, and not in a hocus-pocus kind of way. This was white-flag behavior. Maybe that ridiculously high tone was legit?
“Oh, no! That’s not it at all! We aren’t looking to fight you,” Lanky said.
“No, definitely not,” a short little redhead added, peeking her head out from behind him.
“Spells, then? I really don’t see that working out for you, to be honest. Not to judge, but none of you appear to be very strong.” When I first got to Xest, what seemed like an eternity ago, I hadn’t known what magic was. Back then, everyone seemed mystical and awe-inspiring. Now? I could pretty much pick out the minor threats from the little annoyances. It might’ve been the way they held themselves or it was this weird sixth sense I got. Either way, I’d come to rely heavily upon my first gut reaction.
“No! Not that either. Actually, we were hoping you’d sign something for us?” He reached into his back pocket and held out a book. Black Unicorns and Other Unexpected Anomalies That Shape Our World.
Was I an Unexpected Anomaly? I’d been called a lot of things, good and bad, but that was a new one.
There was a very loud sigh behind me. “All that buildup and for nothing,” Bibbi grumbled.
A few of the witches and warlocks glanced her way with confused expressions.
“Yeah, sure.” I held out my hand for the book, and four more appeared.
The grumbles behind me grew louder.
3
Mertie’s hoofs sounded through the office on her way to the back room.
Zab tossed his book on the table as Oscar dumped his tea in the sink. Bertha and Musso took a seat at the table. Even Dusty, the rare and elusive dust bunny, became visible.
Mertie walked into the back room with a tray of cocoas that she placed down on the table.
“I’m not sure how I got stuck doing all the bitch work around here, but here’s your damn cocoas.”
No one blinked an eye at her salty tone. Who would’ve ever imagined she’d still be here, and would be a better fit than Gillian? In fact, Mertie was such a good fit that she’d even started taking on some freelance jobs, doing especially well with anything causing misery.
She’d moved in when things started going downhill in Xest and never left. I didn’t blame her, either. The broker building was about the best place to live in Xest. It was the oddest place I never could’ve imagined. Close to the center of town but far enough away that the street traffic wasn’t that bad. The interior was where it got really interesting. It was a weird blend of an old English library and a witches’ lair, buried in a bunch of antiquities you’d find in some archeologist’s office. And one could never forget to mention Helen’s machinery, which took up over an entire wall with gears and wheels and rivets, always humming, whirling, and whistling.
The fireplace in the back room was big enough to stand in, which was good, since Xest was cold enough to freeze you alive. The only thing the building didn’t have was good cocoa, but luckily, we still had Mertie.
“Mertie, you have to go because you’re the only one Gillian will let in the Sweet Shop,” Zab said, handing out the cocoas.
“And why is that? I live here, same as you all do. Why am I not cut off?” Mertie took a seat and kicked her hoofs up onto the chair next to her.
“Don’t take it personally. She assumes you hate us. If you told her you liked us, I’m sure you’d get cut off as well.” I grabbed my cocoa, and a puff of dust exploded by my feet. “I didn’t forget you.” I turned back to the table, knowing we’d be living in the dust bowl if there wasn’t cocoa for Dusty. He had a two-a-day habit.
Mertie huffed. “As if she’d ever believe I like you people.” She reached down, scooping up Dusty.
“That’s unfortunately why you’ll have to continue getting the cocoas,” I said, watching as she let Dusty drink from her cocoa.
Bibbi was sitting silently at the table, not offering a comment.
Zab placed a cocoa in front of her, and we all watched. She hadn’t taken a sip of the stuff in months on some sort of principle. It was nicer to say that than that she hated Gillian too much to drink her cocoa. But the way she’d been staring when the cocoas arrived lately, we were all waiting for her to crack. It was going to happen soon. You could practically hear her saliva glands firing as the aroma filled the room.
Bibbi reached for the cocoa, and we all froze. Then she placed it away from her, and we all sighed. Today would not be the day Bibbi cracked.
“Mertie, I appreciate you picking it up for me, but I find Gillian’s cocoa has a bitter taste I’m not drawn to.”
Musso groaned as he drank his. Bertha, who’d been on the end of many of Gillian’s jibes, smirked quietly in the corner.
Mertie tapped the cocoa cup with a long black fingernail attached to blood-red skin. “As much as I appreciate your ability to hold on to hate, which is really quite impressive, and this is coming from someone with vast experience in the field, you do realize you’re an idiot, right? That this is just cocoa and not some sort of master war you’re waging? That Gillian doesn’t give a shit or know if you’re drinking it?”
Bibbi raised her chin. “Just the same, I’ll pass. I find it to be inferior.”
Bertha actually let out a small giggle.
Hawk walked in, the light of the fireplace harshening the angles of his face in a way that shouldn’t have made him more alluring but did anyway. A glint of steel that had nothing to do with the color flickered in his deep-set eyes. Had he always been this hard, or did I see him clearer now from a wider vantage point? Strange how your perceptions were colored by the life you’d lived. It felt like I’d seen everything in muted shades of grey. Now I saw every color of the rainbow and some I didn’t know existed.
No matter how hard and cold he seemed, I’d felt the heat that raged underneath that exterior, and it was scorching. As hardened as I’d become myself, his heat was the one thing that could melt me on the spot. I wasn’t sure if that was an asset or a hindrance, but it definitely felt like my soft underbelly was showing, and it made me want to growl as much as roll over.
I lifted my head, glancing in his direction as I nodded. His gaze met mine, a frisson running between us that felt like it lit the room with a charge. I sipped a little slower, my taste for cocoa shifting into something much more carnal.
I didn’t fixate on the way he moved across the room, or the woodsy, fresh scent that made me feel like I was part feral deep down inside. Or the tingle of awareness that spread across my skin and down my spine as his gaze remained on me, even as I shifted my focus elsewhere.
Oscar tipped his head in his direction. “Any word?”
I didn’t have to ask what he was referring to. Hawk had been checking with his sources on a regular basis about my angel and demon problem.
The room went quiet, as everyone in the room was aware of the situation. It tended to have a sobering effect on most.
“Tippi, you’re quite calm about everything, you know, considering you have an angel and a devil, not on each shoulder per se, but standing behind you, aiming their little arrows and pitchforks.” Oscar let out a half laugh, enjoying his description of my situation. He was never one to let an opportunity for amusement go to waste.
It didn’t bother me in the least. I’d take a laugh wherever I could get it, especially from someone who’d proven themselves loyal.
Hawk shot Oscar a glance that
said he didn’t find it overly amusing as he grabbed a seat at the table, a chair buffer between us. When he looked my way, the few feet meant nothing. I would’ve needed a few football fields to chill the heat in his eyes.
“I don’t see what you people are fretting about. There’s an obvious answer to all of this, Dread, the imbalance, the demon and the angel.” Mertie waved her hand in the air as if it were all so obvious to her.
“Which is?” I asked, wondering what brilliance she’d figured out that the rest of us were too stupid to see.
“Take down Lou, trap him in the hill somehow, and that’ll offset the imbalance of Dread. Xazier likes you for some unknown reason, so he won’t put up much of a fuss. All good.” She sipped her cocoa as if that were the end of it.
“Even if it were that simple, I still have too much magic. That’s one of their issues,” I reminded her.
“I bet if you take care of Lou, Xazier will be more willing to negotiate,” Mertie said with a smirk.
She was right. Xazier would be. And even if she was wrong, it wasn’t a bad idea. Although I might’ve been alone in thinking that. The rest of the room listened without comment, except Hawk, who was now making his distaste known with a glare in her direction.
I didn’t care if Hawk hated the idea and everyone else thought it was stupid. I was open to giving anything a try.
“If one were to give this a go, any idea on how to get Lou in the hill?” I asked.
“I can’t be the idea girl, the logistics, the executor of said plan, and the one that has to get the cocoa several times a day. You people have to do some of the work too, you know.” Mertie huffed, and a small puff of smoke came out of her nose as she crossed her hooves. She stopped suddenly, looking at her left hoof. “Oh, well, that’s great. Now I chipped a hoof. I just painted them and they’re ruined.” She got up and stormed out of the room, stomping and complaining the whole time.
“It doesn’t matter who wants to kill her. Tippi can live through anything. She’s tough,” Bibbi said.
Oh no. Oooooh no. How could I have forgotten?
“You should’ve seen her luring a group into the alley so she could kick their teeth in without an audience,” Bibbi continued.
Hawk looked over at Bibbi. “Really? That sounds like an interesting day,” he said.
By the avid attention around the table, it was clear there would be no one saving me with an interruption. Bibbi was better than Zab was with a secret, but only if you made sure to instruct her that it was a secret. That was what I got for being distracted by cocoa. There were no freebies in life. That cocoa was going to cost me an earful later.
How many times had Hawk said in the last few weeks to keep my guard up? That anything could be a setup? I’d lost count, as I’d gone deaf to all the warnings after a while, but the count was way up there, all the way up with goodies like “make sure you floss” and “wash your hands after you go to the bathroom.”
Hawk’s attention appeared to be solely on Bibbi as she told the tale with great fanfare, and, of course, embellishing where needed to make it more entertaining. This would lead to one of the things I’d been avoiding the most in the last few weeks, and that wasn’t a demon or an angel or a fight. I could do all three of those things standing on my head while simultaneously playing the bongos. What I couldn’t handle was the man sitting a couple of chairs over who was going to want to discuss things with me.
He was my kryptonite, the one thing left that could slay me emotionally and mentally, and I hadn’t quite figured out how to defend myself against him yet.
Although I had some time, as Bibbi laid out all the sordid details of my bravado, knowing I’d single-handedly be paying a fee for the entertainment after the show was over.
4
I’d dodged a bullet. Right after dinner, Oscar pulled Hawk away to some unknown location before he could start questioning me directly. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to catch some shrapnel, though.
Bertha and Musso made their way over to me. When they came as a duo, it wasn’t usually that pleasant. Then again, it wasn’t altogether bothersome, either. They’d say their piece. I’d act remorseful because I felt too bad ignoring them, and then they’d move on, feeling like they’d put the situation to rights or, at the very least, done their best.
Musso cleared his throat, taking the lead this time. “Tippi, you’re taking an awful lot of risks.”
I’d noticed that they tended to alternate who was the heavy. They might be keeping track, or maybe they had a natural balance in their relationship.
Another weird thing I’d noticed was that I was “kid” when Musso was solo but “Tippi” when he and Bertha felt like I needed a talking to. If they thought using my given name was going to fix me, there really was no hope. Still, I couldn’t have them going to sleep thinking that they hadn’t done their part in saving me.
I sat a little straighter and nodded. “I know you two are upset and concerned by my actions, but Bibbi made it sound a lot worse than it was. I wasn’t in any danger. I knew that group was only looking to talk. They’d been smiling and laughing. I played it up because Bibbi gets a kick out of a little drama.”
Musso hummed. I could tell by the slight twitch of his mouth that he wasn’t buying my story, but he was staying quiet, waiting for Bertha’s verdict. Bertha was fidgeting with a bracelet she always wore. It had been a gift from Musso decades back, and it was better than a mood ring.
“If you say that’s how it happened, all right,” Bertha said, not looking sold either. “But I’ll have your promise to be careful in the future.”
“I’ll do whatever is needed.” I smiled, letting them fill in the blanks however they needed.
“Okay then. We’ll see you in the morning.” Bertha and Musso left, looking content with themselves.
Bibbi came and dropped onto the couch beside me. Zab took the seat opposite.
“Really?” Bibbi said. “You know your voice carried out into the office, right? I needed drama?”
Zab was laughing so hard that his eyes were tearing.
Bibbi threw her knotted-up knitting at Zab. She’d been working on it for months, and it had only gotten worse. It was unlikely the toss had done any more damage to it.
“If you hadn’t told everyone, I wouldn’t have had to use you. You know you have to throw them a sacrifice or they never stop.”
“You didn’t tell me not to. It was a very entertaining story, so of course I’d repeat it. How was I to know?” Bibbi asked before pulling out the latest gossip rag she’d gotten imported from Rest.
A client had left one in the office and she’d been hooked ever since, striking deals to get a steady supply.
“Holy smokes. Did you see this?” She pointed to a picture of an actor I’d never been a huge fan of but who was widely popular back in Rest.
“They’re saying he had an affair with someone who was housekeeping,” she said. “Can you imagine? How is that even possible? They’re so small. He must have killed it.”
Zab started laughing again. I gave him an elbow as I explained, “The cleaning crews there aren’t tiny fairies. They’re other humans.”
She went silent, her mouth forming an O before she nodded. “That makes a lot more sense.”
“Why do you like those?” I asked.
“I don’t know exactly, but I can’t seem to stop reading them. They suck me in.”
The back door opened and Hawk and Oscar walked in, heading over to where we were sitting. That meant it was time for me to go to bed.
I got up to make tea to take with me, not paying attention to the rest of the room, and when I turned around, Hawk and I were the only ones left.
His eyes were focused on me. I swallowed hard, feeling like something small and furry with an urge to dash across a field. In the space of a few minutes, I’d gone from the badass, ready to take on both heaven and hell and an alley full of witches, to a creature of prey who might have a heart attack if the lights didn’t
move away.
Something hadn’t just changed with him—it had changed between us, and I couldn’t quite say what that thing was, except it was different. Very different.
Bibbi had sworn he’d declared for me, and now I was beginning to wonder what exactly that entailed. I felt a little like I’d been entered into another contract but no one noticed I hadn’t signed on the dotted line.
At each turn, it seemed he was making his interest clear. The clearer it became, the more unsure I grew.
Living in Xest was akin to developing sea legs. It had taken me a long while to feel like the ground was steady beneath my feet when a rogue wave would hit and knock me on my ass again.
I pushed away the feeling of being prey as I finished brewing my tea, trying to pretend I didn’t feel his stare, his intensity filling the room until it stole the air from my chest. Being near him was like standing next to a live current, the sizzle of electricity coursing all around, impossible to ignore. The closer he got, the higher the voltage.
His steps sounded behind me, and then his hands landed on either side of the counter, his front brushing my back as his arms caged me in. His woodsy scent and heat worked together to melt every cell in my body to instant mush as a thrill shot straight to my heart, throwing its beat from a fast fluttering to the thundering hooves of a racehorse.
He dipped his head down, his jaw brushing the side of my cheek. The ever-present shadow that clung to his jaw grazed my flesh as he spoke close enough to my ear for his breath to send a shiver through me.
“I know you think you’re invincible, but you need to show a smidge of caution. You never know if you’re walking into a trap.”
I spun, putting a little space in between us with my movement.
“I had it under control.” Weird things had been happening around me lately, things I didn’t like to think about, or talk about, or even believe. But I wasn’t the girl I used to be. I could handle things better now, even if that meant hurting someone.
Witch of All Witches: Tales of Xest #4 Page 2