The Rhinestone Witches Omnibus: Books 1-3

by Addison Creek

  “I’m so glad one of us is interested in that,” said Jackie dryly. Jackie of all of us did not like potions or mock potion experiments. Kelly viewed all of it is a philosophical exercise. I wasn’t sure what I viewed it as. I just knew I couldn’t stand Hannah Carlisle.

  “How do we get over there?” I asked.

  We were standing at the edge of the field beyond which was the famous toxic swamp, reportedly filled with all sorts of nastiness that Hannah wanted us to get up close and personal with. You could hear the buzzing and see the bright yellow bubbles and muck. It was, to say the least, an uninviting prospect. And now we had to figure out what to do about it.

  Apparently.

  Beyond the swamp was the forest. Between us and the swamp there was no path. If we just plunged along toward it, the high grass would probably scrape against our arms, and that would be the least unpleasant thing that might happen.

  “I think I have a spellcasting for it. I’ll go first,” Kelly offered.

  The other three of us formed a line behind her as she put her five fingers together, twisted, and flipped. When she opened her fingers the field parted for her and a path snaked away from us, only once deviating from the straight line to go around a boulder. The sun was now high overhead and I was getting hot. With the tall grass all around us, though, I was very glad I had worn jeans. Kelly was much better at crackle than I was.

  Even in the field and on a cleared path there were plenty of bugs; I didn’t want to think what it would be like in the swamp itself. I also heard the crushing of dried grass as we walked along. Mice were scattering ahead of us, and I kept checking my feet to make sure nothing was scurrying across my boots.

  I tried to ignore it, but I felt increasingly squeamish. I was not the sort of girl who liked to go traipsing through muck. Luckily, Kelly’s spell worked very well, and our path was entirely clear.

  After we had walked for a few minutes, Kelly came to a stop and said, “It looks like the swamp starts gradually. Here, come take a look.”

  I would have thought we were still twenty feet away from the swamp proper, but Kelly was right. The ground in front of her was wet and mucky and almost black.

  “Is that a frog?” Jackie demanded, pointing to a sort of lump on the ground. All I could see were two large eyes and a strange shape in the mud.

  “I don’t want to know what that is,” said Lowe.

  As we looked around, we saw more and more little creatures. There were insects everywhere, including very large flies with purple wings. As we moved in toward the true swamp, I saw varieties of sludge the color of neon. Hannah hadn’t been wrong, about this at least. There were definitely very strong potions here. The combination of sounds from bugs, frogs, and little animals moving around on the ground made a loud backdrop to our conversation.

  “We should turn back right now. This is gross,” said Jackie. “I can’t believe Hannah assigned us to clean this up. What was she thinking?”

  “Maybe she thought there was some potion that would work. I’m sure she didn’t mean for us to actually go into the swamp,” said Lowe.

  “You haven’t spent as much time with her as we have,” I said. “I’m sure she meant nothing more surely than that she wanted us to go into the swamp.” I was staring into the murky depths, where the very ground had started to bubble. The thick soup belched into the air, along with all manner of smoke and steam bubbling up from under the surface.

  This was in fact a toxic waste dump.

  “We can’t go on without real boots,” said Kelly. “Past this point the ground isn’t steady.”

  We all looked at our feet. “Do you have a spell for that?” I asked Kelly.

  Making boots appear was more like small magic. Kelly quickly did the wrist motion and muttered something about waterproof. The next instant my shoes were gone, replaced by knee-high black rain boots. I wiggled my toes inside them and grinned at Kelly. “Nicely done. Thanks.”

  She nodded and smiled at me in return. “Let’s go. Everybody be careful. Don’t get stuck in the stuff. It looks like it would suck us up if we let it.”

  Slowly Kelly started forward, each step she took accompanied by a loud squelching noise. First her foot would sink into the muck, then she work at pulling it out. The trouble was, the muck did not want to let us go. Our progress slowed drastically.

  My legs started to shake as we kept moving. I felt the thrill of the chase, but also the sweat trickling beneath my armpits. Flies were starting to buzz annoyingly around my head. I swatted at them, to no avail.

  Swamps sucked.

  “What next?” Jackie asked, sounding almost desperate. She was not an outdoors kind of girl. “We don’t have all day!”

  Just then something shifted underneath my feet. There was already glop and muck everywhere, but this was different. At first I thought it was nothing more than more mud or sludge sliding around, but an instant later there was a much bigger shift of the ground beneath me, and I realized we were in serious trouble.

  A huge sea creature, or I should say swamp creature, blasted out of the green and black muck. Swinging in the air in front of us, it looked like a giant slug. The four of us went staggering backwards, slopping the disgusting stuff all over ourselves as we fled.

  And screamed.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Run!” I yelled.

  The base of the slug was still invisible under the ground, so there was no way to tell exactly how large it was. The part that was visible stretched about ten feet into the air. The thing took my breath away. It had a mouth but no eyes, and the mouth was open and screaming. More mud and brown water were spewing everywhere, disgustingly, and I even felt some land on my face.

  “We can’t run! You don’t run in a swamp!” Jackie yelled. “Besides, that thing is in charge of this swamp! We’ll never get away in time!”

  “Doesn’t he want us to leave?” Lowe was desperately cowering next to my shoulder, trying to hide her face. Suddenly the day was ten degrees hotter.

  “He probably wants us to pay him his due! We should have brought him insects to eat as a way to buy safe passage,” said Kelly.

  “Now she tells us,” said Jackie.

  The swamp creature swung low as if taking a swipe at us. We fell to our knees to avoid being slugged—pun intended—in the head.

  The next instant the creature was upright again, having grown at least two feet in height in the meantime.

  “We have to do something!” I cried.

  “He’s big! You can perform a spellcasting!” Kelly cried. She was right. This was no small magic.

  “What if I anger him?” I yelled back.

  Another strange scream split the air.

  “Been there, done that,” Lowe cried. “Just do something!”

  I might have thought I’d fail at the proper hand motion of spellcasting under such desperate conditions. To the contrary, I did it perfectly. My fingers came together and my wrist twisted in a beautiful motion. The next instant I opened my hand and locked my eyes on the mouth of the creature. A beautiful crackle blast split from my hand. As if the air had been let out of a balloon, it shot forward and knocked the creature backwards.

  The creature swayed and nearly fell, then came upright again. Even worse, he could move much faster through the swamp than we could. He slithered with surprising speed.

  I quickly did the wrist motion again. All my friends were behind me now, trying to back away.

  I let another blast of air go. This one felt a lot bigger than the last, so much so that I staggered backward into Jackie, who was forced to catch me. This time the giant creature slammed backwards to the ground in one shocking motion.

  Underneath us a wave of sludge hit our shins and nearly covered our knees. Luckily it just missed getting inside my boots.

  “Nicely done!” Kelly cried, breathless with terror.

  The sun was high overhead and I had to squint to see the creature. That was no comfort, because he was upright again in an
instant. What I was doing was barely slowing him down.

  He came on, this time moving more slowly and methodically. As he gained ground, I noticed a movement behind his giant, oddly shaped body. Lizards were coming toward him, not just a couple, or even five or six. There were at least fifty large blue lizards converging on the back of the giant creature.

  “Um, Jackie, are those lizards dangerous ones?” I asked.

  I could feel more than see Jackie peering around my arm.

  “Those are caterpillar butterfly lizards,” she explained, sounding remarkably calm underneath the circumstances. “They live here too, but they don’t like anything that isn’t like themselves.”

  “So they have a problem with us?” I asked.

  “Yes, but they have an even bigger problem with that swamp thing. They know we’re witches.” Jackie was gasping now as more lizards kept coming. The swamp creature had yet to notice that they were there.

  I spellcast once more. This time when the lizard was knocked back, the lizards pounced.

  We stopped our retreat and watched in amazement as the lizards drove the creature back into the ground.

  “Is he going to die?” Lowe whispered.

  “No, definitely not. They’re just going to force him away. For now,” said Kelly. “They aren’t big enough to kill something that huge,” she added.

  As we watched, the creature slowly disappeared into the ground. The lizards became more frantic the closer they got to winning. Just as the creature was about to disappear, one last wave of lizards pounced.

  With a huge squelch the creature sank beneath the surface of the swamp. A massive wave of goop slammed into all of us.

  We were now covered in filth.

  We also hadn’t made any progress on Hannah’s assignment.

  “Just what is going on here?” Quinn’s angry voice penetrated my ears. I glanced around and saw the sheriff standing in the distance in the clean part of the field. He looked furious.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  We friends spun around and watched Quinn striding toward us, a collective squelching underneath our feet as we did so. His eyes were storming and his jaw was set, but he had to move very slowly because of his bum leg.

  “We’re in big trouble,” whispered Lowe.

  “That sheriff is attractive,” murmured Jackie in appreciation.

  “At least he didn’t catch us snooping,” I whispered back, choosing to ignore Jackie. No use in agreeing with the obvious.

  In this case there was only Hannah to blame for our being out here. Luckily she was a larger than life figure, and she was enough.

  Even as we hurried in Quinn’s direction, I wished there was a way not to. We were covered in the most disgusting smell imaginable. I really didn’t want Quinn to see me like this.

  When we converged, we were all still in the field. Quinn stopped short and braced his hands on his hips. He was wearing the black sheriff’s uniform and he looked very handsome in it.

  “Tell me what you’re doing out here,” he growled. His eyes scanned the area behind us again, prompting us to turn around to see what he was focusing on.

  It turned out that there were still at least a hundred lizards dancing and partying. Apparently we had found the swamp fraternity that hung out in these here parts, and they were delighted with themselves. There was still a faint gurgling and rumbling under our feet, but the noise was growing more distant by the moment,

  All four of us started speaking at once. Kelly tried to say that we weren’t doing anything wrong. Jackie referenced the Young Witches gathering. I brought up Hannah’s orders. Lowe said something about us not getting into trouble.

  Quinn finally held up his hand. “One at a time, please!”

  I took a deep breath when he pointed to me. “You tell me what’s going on.”

  “We went to the first Young Witches gathering of the year this morning. Hannah has appointed herself to be in charge. Well, really it was her mother, but it amounts to the same thing. She’s in charge, and she gave out assignments to all the young witches who came to the meeting. Unsurprisingly, we got the worst one.”

  “How could you be so foolish as to go into the swamp! Do you not see those lizards? That’s so dangerous!” Quinn was fuming.

  “What you talking about?” I asked.

  “There are signs up saying that this area is dangerous. This is where the lizards are,” he cried. He was nearly frantic with worry. The rest of us exchanged glances, then started to climb away from the swamp.

  “We didn’t see any lizards when we got here,” said Jackie.

  “I do believe you’re referring to a different kind of lizard. The swamp lizard is not the deadly kind. What do lizards have to do with anything anyway?” Kelly asked.

  Quinn was still glaring at me. “There is no way anyone should be going into this swamp, and especially not a young witch. I’m going to have a word with this Hannah and tell her exactly what she’s done wrong here,” he added.

  I flinched. That sounded about as safe as parachuting over a lava field. “I’m sure she was just trying to help the town be cleaner and safer,” I said.

  Why I was defending Hannah, I had no idea. Possibly it was because an angry Quinn was not a phenomenon that I wanted to wish on my worst enemy. And yet . . .

  Quinn rolled his eyes. “Very well. I’m still going too speak with her, and I’m glad that none of you were injured on this foolish mission. You were very lucky.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. What do lizards have to do with anything?” Kelly wanted to know.

  Quinn and I exchanged looks. “It’s police business,” Quinn said eventually. “It’s what I’m doing out here to begin with. Now, I’ll escort all of you home.”

  “Oh, no you won’t,” said Jackie, already wiggling away. “There’s no way you can escort me anywhere. The press would have a field day with my mother if you did that. I’ll just go home, get cleaned up, and get back to the office. Thanks anyway,” she said.

  “Same here. I’ll be fine. I smell so bad, I’m sure I’ll be safe until I get home,” said Kelly with a tired grin.

  We had slowly started making our way back to the road. In the distance we could see the trolley coming.

  “Think they’ll let us on?” Jackie wondered.

  “The skunks ride the trolley from time to time. Why shouldn’t we?” Kelly wanted to know. With that she waved goodbye, and she and Jackie made their way to the platform to wait.

  “I’m already here, so I’m definitely going to walk you two home,” said Quinn, visibly bracing for an argument. When neither Lowe nor I objected, he gave one sharp, pleased nod, clasped his hands behind his back, and started walking toward Misdirect Lane and our house. We fell into step beside him.

  Lowe, who had loved the swamp almost as much as she loved the lab, started plying him with questions about lizards and about his presence there. He tried to dodge most of them, but he was eventually forced to explain that he’d come out to see if the deadly lizards in question were around. He had also been wondering if smugglers were using the swamp for nefarious purposes, so he was keeping an eye on that as well. Unfortunately, all he found were three young witches and Lowe, causing trouble.

  Lowe threw her head back and laughed at that. We were almost home by then, and I hadn’t said a word. I was lost in thought, unable to let go of the idea that Quinn was surely going to keep trying to explain to me how he could possibly have a wife.

  But he wasn’t.

  So I thought maybe he no longer cared that I was mad at him for not telling me. Or maybe he no longer thought I had a right to know anything beyond what was public knowledge.

  My heart started to ache. Usually when I got angry or sad, my tendency was to become sullen. If he didn’t want to talk to me, I didn’t want to talk to him either . . . except that I really did.

  “Here we are,” said Quinn as we came to a stop outside of our house. There was no sign of Lisa or Lucky, but the war raged in the gar
den as usual.

  “Thanks for walking us home,” said Lowe. She glanced at me and then at the house. “The faster I shower the less likely it is that I’ll smell for weeks, so I’d better get going. I’m sure I’ll see you soon.” With one last glance at Quinn she turned on her heel and headed for the house.

  Quinn called out a goodbye to Lowe, then stood silently, waiting for what I didn’t know. I silently cursed my cousin for leaving me alone with him; the situation was in danger of turning into a moment of truth. He looked at me and I saw his lips twitch, but before I could even formulate something to say I felt a movement on my forehead.

  My mind rushed to form an image of a huge bug crawling around on my face, and without thinking about it I reached up and slapped my hand to my forehead. But there was no bug; all I felt was something wet and gloppy. The crawling sensation had just been some sludge dripping along my skin.

  I felt ridiculous. Not only that, but my quick arm notion had managed to splatter some of the glop from my arm onto Quinn’s shirt.

  I looked up in horror, first at his chest and then at his face.

  For one horrible moment neither of us said anything. Then he swallowed hard.

  “I feel as though you and I need a chance to talk. I would prefer to talk to you at an actual planned moment, and not . . .” He trailed off.

  “Now?” I supplied.

  He nodded, looking relieved that I’d said it and he didn’t have to.

  “Okay,” I said. But was he suggesting a date? It didn’t sound like. a date. It sounded more like a formal meeting with lawyers or negotiators. Not that I really knew how lawyers talked.

  “Would you do me the honor of having dinner with me tomorrow night?” he asked.

  Slowly I lowered my hand from my forehead and nodded, suddenly unable to speak.