Two Witches and a Whiskey (The Guild Codex: Spellbound Book 3)

by Annette Marie

  “No, this is fine. I can drive now—it’s all quiet streets from here.”

  Leaving the keys in the ignition, I climbed out.

  “We might have to delete your contact info again,” he warned as he met me in front of the hood. “MagiPol has been known to surprise-inspect our phones.”

  “Right. Sure.”

  “We’ll let you know as soon as it’s safe. Hopefully, it won’t be long.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tori,” he sighed.

  Stepping closer, he pulled me into a hug. I buried my face in his shirt. Damn, the man smelled heavenly. Whatever soap or cologne he used was worth every penny.

  “This is only temporary, I promise.” His voice rumbled through his chest and into mine. Too soon for my liking, he released me. “I need to get going. Will you be okay?”

  “You bet,” I said brightly.

  He searched my face, and I rather doubted my optimistic tone had fooled him. Just in case it had, I held on to the smile as he slid into the car. The engine growled to life, and with a final wave through the window, he pulled away. I watched the taillights disappear around the corner.

  No matter what he said, what he promised, my heart believed that had been our last hug. Tonight had been the last silent joke I would share with Kai, exchanged with nothing more than a glance. Tonight had been my last kiss from Aaron, stolen across the bar top when no one had been looking.

  Sabrina’s tarot card flashed in my mind’s eye. The Fool, blindly stepping off a cliff. The warning, so clear but too late.

  Standing alone on the sidewalk, I stared at the spot where the car had vanished and wished this magical dream could have lasted longer.

  Chapter Three

  A wave of air conditioning rushed over me as I walked into the coffee shop. Getting in line, I watched the baristas with interest. Hmm, barista. Not a job I’d tried before, but I could learn. After three days of radio silence from the guys and the guild, I was contemplating desperate measures. Rent wouldn’t pay itself.

  With an iced latte and a cranberry muffin in hand, I chose a window seat. Absently watching the passersby on the sidewalk outside, I nibbled on my muffin and waited.

  The door jingled and a man walked in, his dark blue uniform and the gun holstered on his belt catching the eye of every patron. I waved and he gave a quick nod, then stepped into line. A minute later, he dropped into the seat beside me and unwrapped a thick slice of banana bread.

  I nudged him with an elbow. “At least say hello before you stuff your face.”

  “Hewwo foree,” he managed through a bulging mouthful. He swallowed hastily. It looked like a challenge. “Sorry. I haven’t had lunch yet.”

  “How’s the shift going?”

  When his shoulders sagged forward, concern sparked through me. Justin wasn’t a mere cop. He was my older brother, and anything that made him unhappy made me unhappy.

  “I didn’t get the promotion,” he muttered. “They chose someone else.”

  “Bastards,” I growled, slamming my latte down. “How could they pass you over? You graduated top of the academy, you work like a dog, you take every shift they give you no matter how shitty—”

  “Thanks, Tori,” he interrupted with a wan smile, knowing my rant would only gain momentum if he let me go on too long. “I’ll have to aim for the next one.”

  I shredded my muffin wrapper. “Why would they snub you like this? Do you know?”

  A grimace, almost hidden behind his short beard, contorted his mouth. “I think I was asking too many questions.”

  “Questions? About what?”

  “About … certain rules. Stuff I didn’t know about until after I joined the force.” He glanced around, suddenly tense. “I can’t actually talk about it. I signed an NDA.”

  A chill washed over me. Special rules. Something he wasn’t allowed to discuss. Oh.

  The mythic community kept well out of the public eye, but law enforcement was a big exception. The MPD had made … special arrangements for mythics. Their ID cards were marked with an MID number, and police weren’t allowed to arrest anyone who carried one. Instead, they had to take down the person’s information and submit it to the MPD.

  I’d wondered how much the average cop knew about mythics, but for some idiotic reason, I hadn’t clued in that my brother, as a police officer, would be in on the secret. How much did he know?

  Justin forced a smile. “Enough about me. How’s work going? Do you have a shift this evening?”

  I wanted to back the conversation up and quiz him on his knowledge of magic, but that would raise all sorts of alarm bells. Better to leave it for now.

  Then again, that meant talking about my work.

  “I’m on leave,” I said lightly. “They’re doing renos at the bar, so I get a mini vacation.”

  “Time off? Nice. I hope you’re getting holiday pay.”

  “Yep,” I lied guiltily.

  “What about … that guy?” Justin wrinkled his nose like he was asking about my digestive health. “Aaron?”

  “What about him?”

  “Aren’t you two dating?”

  My expression froze. I quickly smiled. “Sort of. Casually, I guess. Nothing serious.”

  The furrow in Justin’s brow reappeared. “You’ve mentioned dates with him over the past few weeks.”

  I nodded.

  He waited for a moment, then prompted, “So?”

  “So, what?”

  Huffing, he leaned back in his chair. “I know I don’t have ovaries and am therefore incapable of proper girl talk, but can’t you at least gush about his manliness or rave about your latest date or describe your future wedding or something?”

  “Is that what you think girls talk about?”

  “It’s a highly educated guess. Don’t you have anything to say about this guy?”

  “You don’t want to hear me gush—you want dirt so you can convince me to dump him. That’s what you always do.”

  “That’s what I usually do, since you usually date pricks who deserve to get dumped. This guy seems decent, but”—he arched his eyebrows pointedly—“if he’s stringing you along, that isn’t cool and you should think about whether—”

  I held up a hand. “Stop right there. Aaron isn’t stringing me along. We’re casual because we want to be casual, simple as that.” He opened his mouth and I hurried to ask, “How’s Sophie?”

  Justin’s mouth hung open, then slowly closed. He looked down at his coffee. “We broke up.”

  I almost dropped my latte. “What?”

  “She …” He cleared his throat. “She moved out two weeks ago.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Sympathy welled inside me. He and Sophie had been coming up on their one-year anniversary and as far as I’d known, they’d been deliriously happy. “What happened?”

  “She moved in shortly after you moved out. It was great for a bit, then …” He slumped. “I don’t know. Suddenly, nothing I did was right. She wanted everything a certain way and I tried to follow along, but …”

  I patted his shoulder, inwardly seething. Justin was easy to live with. To make him miserable, Sophie must have gone full control-freak harpy. If I saw her again, I would give her a facial in the nearest mud puddle.

  After consoling him for a few minutes, I changed the subject to sports and let him rattle on animatedly about rookie camp and draft picks until we finished our drinks and his break was over. I saw him to his squad car, gave him a goodbye hug, then headed home.

  Even on a Tuesday afternoon, Robson Street traffic was insane, and I dodged pedestrians until I could duck down a side road. Skirting the edge of Chinatown, I entered my neighborhood, the streets lined with small apartment buildings and a few bungalows, mature trees casting welcome shade over the sidewalk.

  The house I rented squatted on its slip of grass, looking tired but comfortable. I cut through the backyard and unlocked the outer door, then the inner door that led to the basement. As I swung it open,
a blast of raucous laughter echoed up the staircase.

  How many times had I told my roommate not to turn up the TV? My upstairs neighbors traveled most of the year, but I didn’t want anyone wondering why my television was on twenty-four hours a day.

  I trotted down the stairs, ditched my purse, and strode into the living room. “Twiggy! What have I told you about the volume?”

  Huge leaf-green eyes pried themselves off the screen and turned my way. The two-foot-tall faery thrust his lips out in a pout, then pointed the remote at the flat-screen TV. His large green head, adorned with crooked branches in place of hair, bobbed as he pressed the volume button exactly twice. The noise level scarcely changed.

  A flat-screen TV wasn’t in my meager budget, but Aaron had shown up one day with it tucked in his back seat. According to him, it was an extra one from his basement, but I’d still resisted the donation until I realized it was as much for him as for me. He wanted the option to watch TV when he was over here, which was a weekly occurrence—him and Kai and Ezra.

  Kai could cook when motivated, but that wasn’t often. Aaron’s skills were limited to following instructions on a box, while Ezra avoided kitchens at all costs. So, the guys showed up at my house most Sundays and Mondays—my days off—to mooch dinner.

  I teased them mercilessly about being helpless bachelors, but secretly, I loved it. First, I enjoyed cooking and always made too much food, and second, what woman wouldn’t want three hot, funny, mostly charming mages in her apartment as often as possible? If I didn’t work five evenings a week, I’d cook for them more.

  My gaze traveled to the worn sofa, facing the television with its back to the rest of the room. Another gift. The guys had, apparently, been planning to get a new sofa, so they’d given me theirs and replaced it with a reclining leather monstrosity.

  Ducking into my bedroom, I pulled on a loose tank top and yoga shorts. Another round of fake laughter echoed from the TV, and I shook my head. I had no idea whether Twiggy was enjoying the sitcom—he never reacted to the gags, just stared intently as though committing every scene to memory. I could only guess what the little monster was internalizing. I’d already banned horror movies and rom-coms. I’d thought the latter was safe, but then I came home one day to find a message. Spelled out on my bed. In rose petals.

  The word? BACON.

  After recovering from my shock, I’d informed Twiggy that, one, flower petals were a terrible form of communication, and two, if he wanted to make breakfast requests, he needed to tell me in person.

  Should a woodland faery be eating bacon? Who knew. Just one more way I’d corrupted him. The other faeries would never take him back now that he was addicted to meat.

  An hour later, I was perched on a stool at my breakfast bar, unenthusiastically scrolling through job listings. Though I hadn’t quite abandoned all hope that my job at the Crow and Hammer would survive the MPD investigation, no shifts meant no pay. It was time to put on my big-girl pants and look for employment.

  Chin propped on my palm, I scrolled past three bartender listings. Blah. No, no, and definitely no. I wouldn’t last an hour at an upscale steakhouse. “Hey assclown” wasn’t an acceptable way to address customers in places like that.

  Giving up on the job hunt, I wandered around my apartment, searching for something to do. Restless energy buzzed through me, but I couldn’t settle on an activity. As the clock ticked closer to four, my tension increased. Three times, I pulled my phone out and checked it to be sure I hadn’t missed a call.

  I came to a stop in the middle of my kitchen and stared at the microwave as the glowing green clock turned from 3:59 to 4:00. It was official: the first shift I’d missed since starting at the Crow and Hammer.

  Okay, not quite true. I’d missed two weeks of work while a notorious rogue held me captive, but I wasn’t counting that.

  I didn’t move, watching the time. 4:01. 4:02. When it flipped to 4:05, I opened a cupboard and pulled out a shot glass. I grabbed a bottle from the cupboard above the fridge, poured a shot, lifted it, and tossed it back. The whiskey burned all the way down to my stomach.

  I poured a second shot and downed that too, then smacked the glass on the counter. Enough moping. There was only one solution to this level of self-pitying restlessness.

  Twiggy ignored me as I strode past him to my bedroom. He ignored me as I popped out again in an even rattier tank top and shorts. He didn’t react when I dragged a bucket and rags out of the closet or when I pulled on yellow rubber gloves.

  The moment I cracked open the bottle of cleaning solution, his head jerked around.

  “Not again,” he hissed angrily. “Why do you wipe poisons on everything?”

  “It’s called cleaning, and if you don’t like it, you can leave.”

  He minced closer, his petite nose scrunching. “You cleaned last week. The floor reeked all night.”

  “I clean every week.”

  “Humans are stupid.” As I poured cleaner into the bucket, he backpedaled, his oversized feet smacking the floor. “Stupid human! Put it away!”

  “I’ve warned you about insulting me.”

  Snarling in another language, he disappeared.

  I squinted at the spot where he’d vanished—sometimes he just pretended to leave—then I shut off his TV show and put on my favorite playlist. After turning the music up until the beat thudded in my chest, I got to work.

  First I scrubbed every surface in my kitchen, stopping twice for another shot, then headed for the bathroom. Late afternoon morphed into evening, and I only checked the clock three times an hour.

  Dumping and refilling my bucket, I hauled it into the main room, hips swaying in time to the beat. After four shots of whiskey, I was feeling pretty good. Or was it five? I might have lost count. Jacking up the music another few notches, I sat cross-legged on the floor and wiped down the baseboards.

  “Na na na na,” I sang enthusiastically. Reaching for the baseboards behind the TV stand, I paused, my head cocked to listen. “Twiggy?” When no one answered my call, I shrugged. “Na na na na—”

  I stopped singing again, straining to hear over the music. Stripping off my gloves, I pulled out my phone but it showed no missed notifications. Was I losing it? Exasperated with myself, I marched to the kitchen. The whiskey bottle waited patiently, and I hummed as I poured a shot. Just one more.

  Lifting the glass in a salute to no one, I belted out the song’s chorus, then brought the glass to my lips, tipped my head back—and heard it clearly: knocking.

  I lowered my glass without drinking. The loud rapping sounded again. Bewildered and hopeful, I trotted across the room—and didn’t realize I was carrying my shot until it sloshed on my bare feet. Oops. At least I was already in cleaning mode.

  Zooming up the stairs, I opened the basement door and stepped into the vestibule, but my hand hesitated on the exterior door. Fuzzily, I considered whether this was a good idea. Maybe they guys were here. And they hadn’t called first because, uh … because the MPD had confiscated their phones! Yeah, that was it.

  Grinning, I swung the door open.

  Two people stood on the step, but they weren’t Aaron, Kai, or Ezra. They weren’t even men. So disappointing. I scrunched my nose as I looked them over from head to toe.

  “You,” I announced. “I don’t know you. Who are you?”

  The women stared at me. Their pretty blond hair hung in pretty waves around their pretty faces, and annoyance bubbled through me. Their flowery blouses and ankle-length skirts were so nice, and I was dressed in a stained tank top and yoga shorts with a hole in the crotch. Why did pants always rip in the crotch first? Stupid.

  “I’m Olivia,” the taller of the pair said, offering her hand. “This is my sister, Odette.”

  I squinted at her hand, her nails buffed and filed into perfect half-moons. “Those’re your names, not who you are.”

  “My apologies,” Olivia-or-Odette said. I’d already forgotten who was who. “I should have started with tha
t. We’re from the Stanley Coven and … well, we were hoping to speak with you, if possible?”

  “Stanley Coven,” I repeated slowly. “Coven. Ah, so you’re witches.” Of course. Covens had witches. That’s how that worked. See? I knew my mythic shit.

  She gave a hesitant nod, still holding her hand in the space between us, waiting for me to shake it. I peered at the shot glass I held, half empty after my race across the apartment. Shrugging, I tossed the whiskey back, then gestured grandly.

  “Come on in, witchy girls, and let’s hear what you’ve got to say.”

  Chapter Four

  “Want a drink?” I asked over my shoulder, leading the way down the stairs.

  “Thank you for the offer, but I’m afraid we don’t drink,” O-one said.

  “That’s no fun. Just sit down then, I guess.” I ditched my shot glass in the sink as they perched gingerly on my sofa. Pretty blouses, long skirts, timid mannerisms, and disinterested in alcohol. Suspicion dawned on me. “Hold on. You aren’t here to convert me to Wicca, are you?”

  O-two frowned delicately. “We aren’t Wiccan. Most witches aren’t.”

  Oops. “I knew that. It was a joke.”

  “Of course.” She forced a laugh. “How clever!”

  I might be a bit tipsy, but I wasn’t drunk enough to believe that for half a second. Dragging a stool away from the breakfast bar, I positioned it in front of the TV and sat facing them. Then I stood, turned the music down, and sat again.

  “So,” I prompted, “what brings a pair of witches to my house?”

  An uncomfortable prickle ran down my spine. Huh. Now that I thought about it, that was an important question—one I should have asked before letting them inside.

  Eyes narrowing, I looked them up and down. Meh, I could probably take ’em in a fight. I’d faced worse odds.

  O-one folded her hands together. “Odette and I came in the hope that you and your guild could assist us.”

  Ah, so that one was Odette. I committed it to memory. What was the other one’s name again?

  “I’m aware we aren’t following the usual procedures—”