“How about the guys?” Witch magic was passed down through the female line. Only daughters had magic. But in spite of that, some of our male cousins did have some special skills that bordered on a very light sort of magical ability.
“None of them have anywhere near the power to do this,” Bronwyn asserted. “And we’re the only witches in town.”
“What if another non-Perkins witch from outside the town broke the ward?” Temperance wasn’t the only witch to escape burning in the seventeenth century, and I did know a few that had come over from Europe in recent times.
“It’s possible, but why?”
I held up my hand. “Let’s explore that later. Right now we have the possibility that one of us did this or a witch from the outside did.”
“It’s not us. I would have recognized the energy.” Bronwyn scowled. “I’m not going to definitively rule out another witch, but this magic feels different. I mean, another family of witches might not have the same magical feel as ours, but I get the impression whoever did this isn’t human. I could be wrong, though.”
Bronwyn was seldom wrong. “Okay, so what supernatural beings have magic?”
She shrugged. “Fae, obviously. Elves, fairies, pixies, nymphs—although they don’t like to roam more than a hundred yards from any body of water. Maybe one of the pixies? I could see this as a prank gone wrong.”
I nodded. Poor Sheriff Oakes spent more time running around after pixies then he probably wanted. I felt a wee bit guilty at the thought. The guy really was overworked. It’s a wonder he didn’t quit. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy job trying to maintain some sort of law and order in a town full of supernatural beings.
That should have been my job. Well, helping him should have been my job. But damn it, why should the circumstances of my birth, something completely out of my control, pigeonhole me into a lifetime of work? For once in my damned life, I wanted to be in control of my destiny instead of doing what everyone expected me to do, instead of picking up the pieces my careless mother had abandoned. I’d already raised the children she’d left. I’d done enough of her job.
Yes, it was all about my mother. A therapist would have had a field day with me.
“Fae or an outside witch. Either an accident or for some reason.”
“Let’s think about possible reasons,” Bronwyn said. “The wards are powerful but limited in scope. Either someone wanted to let a newb out of town with his or her memories intact, or someone wanted to have the supes inside the town limits at full power.”
I nodded. The wards dampened the power of those who lived inside, to keep the peace. But there was one issue with that theory. “The effect would have been temporary. Full power for what? An hour at most until we got here to fix the ward?”
“Sounds unlikely,” Bronwyn agreed. “It’s probably pixies goofing off and accidently blowing a hole in the wards.”
“Or someone wanted Lucien to leave with his anklet on and his memory intact.”
I reached forward and took the coin from Bronwyn’s handkerchief-covered hand. She gasped, then stared at me open-mouthed.
“Damn it, Cassie! Don’t just go grabbing magical items! That thing is cursed. I’ve got no idea what it is, but I’m glad you’re not a smoking pile of ash right now.”
I blinked at her in surprise, running my finger around the edge of the coin. “Cursed? I don’t feel one bit of magic from this thing. Are you sure?”
Of course she was sure. Bronwyn was rarely wrong.
“It’s dulled now that the ward is back up and it’s on the inside, but yes it’s magical. And no, it’s not the sort of magic that could blow a hole in the wards in case you were wondering.”
I had been. Actually, I’d been wondering something else. “The wards cover a huge span. It’s too much of a coincidence for this to be in the exact spot where a break was. I’m beginning to think a fairy or a pixie helped Lucien escape and he dropped the coin.” Something heavy settled in my chest at the thought. Why had he left? He hadn’t seemed all that eager to get out of town at the anger management meeting? Hadn’t he trusted me to keep him out of jail?
I thought he’d been sticking around more because of me than that anklet. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was just someone to flirt with until he could get the hell out of Accident and back to whatever life he had on the outside. Yes, we Perkins women were definitely cursed when it came to matters of the heart.
“Sheriff is going to be pissed,” Bronwyn told me.
“No one is going to care. Marcus said he was dropping the charges. The only issue is we’re out an enchanted anklet and there’s a newb running around with stories of trolls and cyclops and witches and werewolves.”
Bronwyn’s lips twitched. “A newb who tells everyone he’s the son of Satan. I’m not too worried everyone is going to believe him. And if the guy really is a demon, then he’s hardly going to go tattling on us.”
I flipped the coin in the air, catching it in my palm. “And what about this? It’s not just some kid’s game token from an amusement park according to you. Cursed?”
“Maybe it was cursed to make him think he was a demon, to make him crazy.” She grinned at me. “And it doesn’t work on you because you’re already crazy.”
I pocketed the coin and swatted at her. “Brat. Come on. It’s Friday night just shy of a full moon and I have half a pint of ice cream waiting for me at home.”
Chapter 10
Cassandra
We were just turning on Main Street when I saw a figure walking down the street—a figure that not only made my heart skip a beat but caused the coin in my pocket to warm to a level that gave me concerns as to the flammability of my silk-poly blend pants. I hoped the damned things didn’t catch on fire. Wouldn’t that be ironic?
“Pull over! Pull over!” I told Bronwyn. She shot me a perplexed look, then did as I demanded, barely bringing the truck to stop before I was out of it and jogging down the shoulder.
“Hey!” I panted in front of Lucien, not sure what exactly to accuse him of. Seeing the coin and the broken wards, I’d been convinced he’d paid some fairy to get him out of town. Him walking down the street was the last thing I’d expected to see.
“Hey yourself.” He grinned. “You here to offer me a ride back to the hotel? Because I won’t say ‘no’ to that. Actually, I won’t say ‘no’ to pretty much anything you’d like to propose.”
Good grief, had the almost full moon driven everyone in town sex crazy?
“Why are you here? Where did you go? You were supposed to stay in the hotel.” I still hadn’t quite caught my breath or my thoughts, and this sexy guy in front of me wasn’t making it any easier to think clearly. Maybe I was affected by the moon as well. I heard the slam of a truck door and realized that Bronwyn was making her way over to us, at a much slower pace than I’d done.
Lucien glanced over my shoulder, then back to me, pulling up the hem of his pants to show me the anklet. “This says I can’t leave town. Nobody said anything about having to stay in the hotel. What’s the use of getting out of jail with a monitoring device if I have to stay locked in a hotel room?”
“Where were you?” I demanded.
He folded his arms across his chest, shooting another quick glance over my shoulder before giving me what he probably thought was a panty-melting smile.
Okay, it was panty melting. And speaking of melting, that coin in my pocket was about ready to burn a hole through the fabric.
“Alberta and John asked me to join them for a happy hour drink.” He leaned toward me. “Jealous? Because I would have rather been with you.”
“Jealous?” I sputtered. “Of a troll and a cyclops? Please!”
“Hey, is this the hot hellboy?” Bronwyn stepped up beside me and stuck out her hand. “I’m her sister. Bronwyn.”
“Lucien. Is she always this grumpy?”
“Yes.”
“Traitor,” I told Bronwyn before turning back to the demon. “So drinks with Alberta and John w
here? When did you leave, and did you go anywhere else?”
He regarded me with raised brows. “Lawyers. It’s all questions with them. Although I’d thought since you were my lawyer, you wouldn’t be quite so antagonistic.”
“She’s antagonistic to everyone,” Bronwyn told him. “Don’t take it personal.”
I eyed him. He was disheveled, as if he’d rolled through a parking lot and a few bushes, but he wasn’t quite as mud-covered as Bronwyn was. But then again, if someone had flown him over top of the wards, he wouldn’t have had to scramble over a muddy, thorny deadfall.
But then why was he here and not halfway to Boston? Or hell? Or wherever home was? For some reason he’d left town and decided to come back while the wards were down, and had taken a less mud-filled path back than over the deadfall.
Had he forgotten something and needed to return? I felt the coin in my pocket and scowled. It wasn’t longing for me that had brought him back to town, it was a missing coin—a coin to call his infernal Uber driver.
“I need to know your exact whereabouts from when we left the meeting until right now.”
“Yes sir,” he teased. “I went to some watering hole with Alberta and John for a drink. Not the place I was at last night. This was at the other end of town. Red’s or something like that.”
“Red Brick Tavern,” I told him. “How did you pay for a drink when you have no money?”
He wiggled his eyebrows. “Demons don’t need money, well unless they’re trying to post bail it seems. But I didn’t need to stiff the tavern. Alberta paid.”
He had a thing for trolls? Alberta did have a sort of earthy appeal to some supernatural beings, especially those who were strong enough not to break in her embrace. Maybe demons enjoyed a night under the bridge with a troll. But he’d not seemed interested that way in Alberta at the meeting. No, he’d seemed interested in me. And besides, I knew that Alberta wasn’t a quickie kind of woman. If someone joined her under the bridge, they were there until dawn.
“So you had a drink. Then what?” I urged him to continue.
That smirk never left his face. “Then we had a few more. Then I got into a brawl. Then I had a few more drinks. They kicked me out and since the manager had one of those sticks, I decided not to raise a fuss about it. I started heading back to the hotel.”
“And Alberta back to her bridge,” I finished, trying to figure out if he was telling the truth or not.
Lucien shrugged. “I guess. She left after the fight along with the others.”
“Wait, what others? And who were you fighting?”
Still smirking. “I’m a demon, remember? The brawls were with two guys. Not that I’m averse to fighting with a woman, you know. Just so happens mostly men want to throw a punch. Or make me want to throw a punch.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “Two men? Who?”
“I didn’t check their ID or ask their names,” he drawled. “First guy said something I didn’t appreciate. He ran off after the first punch. Bartender didn’t want to let me back in, but Alberta sweet-talked him into letting me stay and got me another drink.”
Two fights and a whole lot of booze. That didn’t sound like it left much time for him to bribe a fairy into flying him out of town, but fairies could move quick if they were motivated, even carrying a muscled man…or demon. “And the second guy?”
He shuffled his feet and looked down. Was he…embarrassed? A demon was embarrassed?
“Clinton Dickskin,” he muttered.
“Who?” I couldn’t keep the incredulous tone out of my voice. Bronwyn snickered.
Yes, definitely embarrassed. Lucien shot me a sheepish grin. “It was like something in one of those western movies. Alberta and some woman with Dickskin hustled us both outside. We got into it in the parking lot. I knocked him out, then I went back in for another drink.”
I blew a breath out my mouth and ran a hand over my hair. “Damn it, Lucien. I talked to the prosecutor. He was going to talk to Clinton in the morning and have the charges dropped. And now I hear you were fighting with him again and knocked him out? Why couldn’t you just stay in the damned hotel for the night?”
“Because that’s no fun. How does this law stuff work here in Accident? If I press charges first, does that help? He threw the first punch.”
“You knocked him out!” I was actually kind of impressed. Other than some rumpled clothes, Lucien looked fine. No additional bruises or black eyes. He’d fought with a werewolf that was known for not losing in a fistfight, won, and looked as if he’d hardly broken a sweat.
Yeah, this guy was far more sexy than a player panther shifter.
And Lucien seemed to realize that. “Just for a few seconds. He was getting to his feet before I was halfway across the parking lot,” He took a step closer. “He deserved it. Punishment. Justice. We’re not that different, Cassandra Perkins.”
“Except I’m a defense attorney, remember? I’m on the other side of the justice equation.”
Bronwyn snorted. “Does that make you an angel, Cassie? That would be a first.”
“Two sides of the same coin,” Lucien continued. “Angels are about reward. You’re not about reward, are you Cassandra?”
Ooo, there was something in his deep voice that made me want to be allll about reward. Punishment? Yeah, no. That wasn’t really my thing. Sylvie had all those books where men tie their women up and do hot sexy-time stuff. Sounded good between the covers of a book. Not so appealing between the covers of a bed, in my opinion.
“I’m about winning. I’m about giving my client a fair shake under the parameters of our legal system. I only play one role in justice. I’m not in charge of delivering it as a social concept beyond that. Knowing I did my best for my client? That’s my reward. That and a paycheck.” I shot him a steely glare. “But that has nothing to do with you getting into a fight with two more people, when I’m trying to get you off the hook for last night and get you out of town. Why’d you come back, anyway? You were free and clear. We’ve got no way to track you down, whether you go to hell or not.”
He frowned, seeming to be genuinely confused. “What are you talking about?”
“You left town. Paid some fairy to break the wards or fly you over. And I know why you came back too.”
Flames leapt deep in his eyes. “If all I had to do to leave this town was fly over your magical wards, then I wouldn’t need a fairy to do it.”
He stepped back and I heard the sound of ripping fabric. Bronwyn gasped. I was too in shock to do anything but stare. Before me stood Lucien with a tattered shirt, huge black leathery wings extending from his back.
“I don’t need a damned fairy to fly anywhere,” he snarled.
“I see that.” Bronwyn circled around him. “Nice, bro. Diggin the wings there. Horns? Tail? Because I’m thinking you might be hiding the whole package.”
He was a demon. He was really a demon. I’d begun to suspect he was some sort of supernatural being, and even taken to calling him a demon, but now, with these black wings right in my face, it all hit home.
He was a demon. From hell. In my town.
Lucien stared at me. “You don’t want to see my true form. I’m sorry I showed you my wings. I just…”
“You just got angry,” Bronwyn finished for him. “Hell, you and Cassie are a match made in heaven. Did you know she set her ex’s pants on fire in the middle of the courtroom? Hey, can you do fire as well? Without a spell, I suppose. I mean, it’s probably a natural God-given talent. Or Satan-given talent. Sorry.”
He continued to stare at me. “I can’t do fire inside the town wards. I tried. Evidently I can manifest my wings, though. Cassie?”
“Why wouldn’t I want to see your true form?” I asked him, feeling myself drawn in by the fire in his eyes.
He grimaced. “It’s big. And black.”
Bronwyn snorted. “That’s what she said.”
“Wynnie,” I warned.
“I’m not as sexy to humans in my demo
n form,” he finished.
I took a breath. “Lucien, I live in a town with minotaur, trolls, cyclops, a medusa… Do you know why Alberta chose to live here in Accident? Trolls have glamour. She could live under any bridge and assume a beautiful form when she wanted to get laid, but here she can be herself. Here no one bats an eye about her appearance. Here someone would fall in love with her as she is—inside and out.”
I waited. The wings vanished, leaving me looking at a gorgeous, muscular man with a tattered shirt, one that looked human.
I sighed. Oh well. Wasn’t like I’d bared my soul to him either. “So you didn’t leave town? Or try to leave town?”
He shook his head. “No. I drank. I fought. I went in and drank some more. Then I started walking back to town and my hotel.”
“Then why was this on the other side of the break in the wards?” I pulled the coin out of my pocket and tossed it to him. It flipped end over end, brass glinting in the moonlight.
He caught it midair and looked down at it in his palm.
“Where did you find this?”
“Where you dropped it.” I hesitated a moment. “Unless yours is still in your pocket and there’s another demon in town who happened to have lost his Uber coin.”
He scowled down at the token, then reached in his pocket. “Mine’s gone. It must have fell out during one of the fights. That’s never happened before. Of course, this whole town has been full of things that have never happened to me before.”
“We didn’t find it outside the tavern,” Bronwyn told him. “So you wanna tell us what you were doing on out on Beaverton Road, half a mile past the turnoff for Meadowland Lane?”
He blinked at her. “I don’t even know where that is. What exactly are you both accusing me of? I went to a bar with a cyclops and a troll, had a few drinks, got in a few fights, and eventually started walking back to town. If I dropped the coin, it probably was during one of the fights. So if you didn’t find it in the parking lot of the tavern, then obviously someone picked it up only to drop it somewhere else later.”
Brimstone and Broomsticks: Accidental Witches Book 1 Page 9