As quickly as she’d gone in, she came out.
“Are you okay, Zach?” she asked in a strangled whisper that made me feel like crying. “Would you like me to go back in and take the nightmares away?”
“No,” Zach said firmly and with little emotion. “I own my past. I will keep it no matter how ugly.”
“As you wish,” she said as she stepped away from Zach. “You guys were really cute babies. Zach is your twin. Both your mother and Henrietta were there when the spell was cast. But neither of you saw it. You were napping. I could feel the presence of both women and I could feel Zach’s chemistry change… but that’s all.”
“You saw us together?” I whispered, not trying to hold back my anger or my tears any longer.
Sassy nodded and then pressed her face into Jeeves chest.
“What else did you see?” I asked.
“I don’t want my memories shared,” Zach ground out. “Ever.”
“I won’t. I promise,” Sassy said.
“But what about us—us together? Did you see any more of us as babies together?” I pressed. “How long were we with each other?”
Sassy turned to me. She was pale and her eyes were watery. “A day. You were only together a day… and then she sold him.”
“Motherfucker,” I shouted as I turned and blew a crater in the forest floor as big as an SUV.
The trees bent forward and their branches reached out to comfort me. I heard Willow gasp in surprise, but I didn’t have time to explain that I was buddies with all the trees in the world. I was still coming to terms with that one myself.
Wrapping my hand around a low hanging branch, I let the magic calm me. “I have to go pay someone a visit. Alone.”
“Not alone. I’m coming with you,” Zach corrected me.
“Dude, this is not a reunion of any kind,” I hissed at him. “I’m just gonna lay this shit out so you can understand. Our mother freakin’ sold you. She’s beyond despicable and you’ve been through enough. This is mine. I won’t let her near you ever in this lifetime—she doesn’t deserve you. You feel me? Judith, or whatever the hell she’s going by now, is not what you might have daydreamed she was your whole life. She tried to kill me for my magic—she’s incapable of love and it took me almost thirty years and some frightening fucking therapy with a porno-loving rabbit Shifter to realize I was lovable.” I took a breath. “Actually, it started with the musical version of Mommie Dearest. That was the impetus—but that’s a story for another day.”
A small and perplexed smile pulled at Zach’s lips. “Did you actually just say the musical version of Mommie Dearest?”
“Yep. I did,” I replied, realizing how insane I sounded. I wanted my brother to like me, not think I was batshit crazy. But if the shoe fit…
“Mommie Dearest is a musical?” Zach asked, still trying to digest the alarming news.
“Yes. Sadly, yes,” I told him with a small giggle. “It sucked.”
“Not so fast, dude. I was Christina and I was amazeballs,” Sassy chimed in, back to her old self.
“She was,” I agreed with an eye roll. “It was directed by our father, Fabio.”
“Stop, Zelda,” Zach growled. “I have no mother or father. It’s hard enough to accept you, but I’m going to try.”
“Fabio didn’t know about me,” I said quickly as Zach began to glow. “If he didn’t know about me, then he didn’t know about you either.”
Zach sighed. I caught a brief hint of desperate longing in his green eyes that were so like mine, but it was gone just as quickly as it came.
“No, Zelda,” he said flatly. “I’ll accept that I have you, but no more. However, if the spell can’t be broken, I need your promise that you will leave me here and never come back.”
“Fine,” I lied through my teeth.
“Witch’s Honor,” Zach said, obviously seeing right through me.
What to do…
If I made a silent deal with the Goddess and she was aware I was lying, I wondered if she would zap my ass clean off my body for breaking the sacred Witch’s Honor. Honestly, I didn’t care. While my ass was outstanding, my brother meant more to me.
Oh. My. Hell. What was happening? Was I so nice that I was going to live with no ass? Yes. Yes, I was.
“Witch’s Honor,” I said, putting one hand behind me and crossing my fingers.
Zach nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t sure if he believed me. Whatever. Now that I found him, he was mine and I was keeping him—forever.
“Jeeves and I will go back to Lexington. I want to help relocate the Shifters that are still here,” Mac said, kissing the top of my head.
“How many are left?” I asked, hugging him tight.
“Only five,” he replied with an expression of disgust. “I’m going to send them to Assjacket. They need to feel safe.”
“I love you,” I told him, not wanting to let him go.
“Love you more, little witch,” he replied with a smile that made my heart feel light.
“I’ll go with Jeeves and Mac unless you need me,” Sassy said, laying her head on my shoulder and then kissing my cheek. “I can poof the Shifters to Assjacket if they’re ready to go.”
“Go with Mac and Jeeves. The next part of the journey is mine… and Zach’s. Just give Baba Yaga and Fabio a heads up if you’re gonna send unfamiliar Shifters to town,” I told her. “And make sure Bob the beaver isn’t on the welcoming committee. If they think everyone has a fucking unibrow, they might not want to stay.”
“Good plan,” Sassy said with a thumbs up.
Turning my attention to a very quiet Zorro and Willow, I smiled. “We’re kind of freaky,” I acknowledged.
“Umm… I’d have to disagree, gurlfriend,” Zorro said with a wide grin. “I’d have to say you’re all kinds of awesome.”
“I second that,” Willow added.
I was very cognizant that Willow wanted to go to Zach, but his body language didn’t welcome it. Instead, she stood next to Zorro and held his hand.
“We’ll stay close by and monitor if Henrietta wakes,” Zorro said.
Zach swore under his breath and a sharp angry wind whipped through the woods. “You will stay away from her if she wakes. Do you both understand me?”
Willow and Zorro nodded.
“Wait. How will we reach you if we need you or you need us?” I asked Zorro and Willow as the stick wand in my pocket began to vibrate. WTH? Yanking it out of my pocket, I stared at the sparkling twig.
“Use that,” Willow said with a small giggle. “I will come when called and I can send you a message through it too.”
“You’re sure you’re not a fucking tree?” I asked, looking at the gorgeous woman askance.
“Not a fucking tree,” she said.
“You wouldn’t lie to me?”
“Nope,” she said with another giggle. “I wood…ent.”
The trees in the forest shook with what I could only guess was laughter at Willow’s corny tree joke. Clearly, Willow had tree buddies too.
“Dawn will come in a few hours and I have to be back,” Zach said, pulling my attention away from the need to play fifty questions with Willow. She might not be a tree, but I was on the right track.
“You ready?” I asked my brother.
“I was born ready,” he replied with a smirk, using a line I always used.
Standing here staring at my brother was both perfect and terrifying. Perfect because we’d finally found each other. Terrifying… because I wasn’t sure how long it would last.
Chapter Thirteen
“She’s in there?” Zach asked, eyeing the building only two hundred away feet from where we were standing.
His body language was tense and his complexion was pale. This had to be surreal for him. It was bizarre to me, but I couldn’t begin to imagine what my brother was thinking. He was about to meet the woman who had given birth to him and then sold him.
I would have been okay with never seeing my mother again, but
this wasn’t about me. It was about saving my brother, which, in turn, was about me I suppose. The bond was already there. I could feel Zach inside of my heart.
“Yep. She’s in there,” I said, experiencing the same sick feeling in my stomach I’d felt most of my life when dealing with my mother.
I’d thought I’d left any emotion for the woman behind, but the trembling of my hands proved differently. Shit.
“Who are the short, angry looking warlocks guarding the door?” Zach whispered.
We were hidden behind a large oak tree across the street from the place that still gave me the chills. Touching the bark of the tree calmed me and I smiled. I laid my cheek against it and sighed. The wand that my tree minions had given me warmed up in my pocket.
“Warren and Herm,” I whispered. “They’re part of Baba Yaga’s spooky posse of weird ass, bobble-headed warlock minions. And just so you know, they’re not real fond of me.”
Zach chuckled. “You wanna explain why?”
“Nope.”
“Roger that,” he replied and then tried again. “You sure? It might be good to know if I have to save your ass.”
This was not going to make my brother like me much, but he should know the extent of Warren and Herm’s dislike. I’d earned it, but so had they. “Suffice it to say they didn’t like having vaginas.”
Zach shook his head and tried not to laugh. He failed. It hadn’t been one of my finer moments, but then again I’d had many of those.
“Remind me to stay on your good side,” Zach muttered, still shaking his head in disbelief.
“Look, the ugly turd knockers called Sassy stupid and worthless in front of a lot of people. It made her cry and then blow up my new car. Sassy might be an idiot, but she’s my idiot, and I loved that car. Her self-esteem isn’t great to start with and she certainly doesn’t need assholes who come up to her knee making her feel horrible about herself. No one is allowed to smack talk my imbecile BFF.”
Zach stared at me with an expression I couldn’t decipher. Shit. He probably didn’t like me either… or he thought I was nuts. Actually, I was nuts. But I still wanted him to like me and even love me eventually.
“When was this?” he asked with the tiniest hint of a smile on his full lips.
“Last week,” I replied and scrunched my nose.
“So no chance they might have forgotten about it?” Zach inquired, now grinning.
“Umm… I’m gonna go with a no on that one,” I told him, grinning back.
We’d poofed to Salem, Massachusetts. The pokey for witches was housed in a hotel from the early 1900s. It had converted to a magical prison about a hundred years ago.
From the outside, the decrepit building was glamoured to look like a charming bed and breakfast, complete with climbing ivy and flowers growing out of every conceivable nook and cranny. Inside it was cold and ugly with barren brick walls covered with Goddess knew what kind of slime. It was heavily warded with magic, keeping all mortals and responsible magic-makers away. It was run by a humor-free staff of witches and warlocks… all older than dirt.
Just looking at it brought back the memories of my old home away from home—cell block D. It was the wing designated for witches who abused their magic as easily as they changed their underwear. My guess was that my mother wasn’t in cell block D. Nope. She wasn’t even a witch anymore.
“Before we enter what I assume will be hell,” Zach said, running his hands through his hair. “Can you explain how the woman who bore us used to be a witch and is now a human?”
“Umm… sure,” I told him, trying to figure out how to truncate the very long and involved horror story. “Judith was in cahoots with vicious honey badgers who were fucking with the magical balance and trying to unseat the Baba Yaga and take over the Universe. She tried to kill me and take my power. But first she had our Aunt Hildy murdered. Of course, the fucking honey badgers turned on our sorry excuse of a mother and stole Aunt Hildy’s magic for themselves. Soooo, long story short, I punched my fist into the honey badger’s chest and took back our Aunt Hildy’s magic. Then when dear old mom tried to off my ass, I punched my fist into her chest and took her magic. The suck ass part of that is that she had dark magic inside her… and now I do too.”
Zach looked a little green as he listened. “So you like to punch your fist into people’s chests?”
“Fuck no. It was gross,” I said with a gag. “I didn’t have the heart to kill her even though she’d done her best to kill me, so I did the next best thing I could do. I made her human.”
“I would have killed her,” Zach said flatly.
I was silent for a long moment. Was that why he’d wanted to come with me? Was he going to kill Judith? As much as the thought satisfied some very dark part inside of me, it wasn’t going to happen on my watch.
“Living as a human is more of a punishment than death for a witch,” I told Zach, watching for his reaction.
“I’d have to disagree,” he shot back. “Living as a warlock sold to a human is a punishment worse than death.”
I had nothing to say to that. I was going to have no part of this, but after seeing inside Zach’s thoughts, I couldn’t blame him for wanting to end our mother.
“It won’t make you feel good,” I said softly. “I had the chance to do it and I couldn’t. A stupid ass part of me was still hoping she would love me.”
“Love is a myth,” Zach said. “It doesn’t exist.”
I wanted to whack him in the head. I already loved him and I’d known him only a day. Since I was pretty sure he’d whack me back with a zap of magic if I nailed him, I shoved my hands into the pockets of my awesome dress. My brother had no reason to believe in love… or did he?
“Zorro loves you,” I said.
“He’s indebted to me for saving his life.”
“I call bullshit, brother.”
“You can call whatever you want, sister,” Zach said with a shrug.
“Willow loves you,” I pointed out carefully as the stick in my pocket warmed again. Willow had to be a freakin’ tree… or a tree something. “And you’re a dumbass for not seeing that.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” he said in a harsh tone. Zach closed his eyes and his lips compressed into a straight line. “Willow is foolish. I’m not worthy of such feelings from any living thing.”
His absolute conviction of his worthlessness and self-hatred made my heart ache. Zach was my new mission. And I didn’t need him to start off what I hoped would be his new life by killing our egg donor.
“Listen to me,” I said, getting up in his face. “We need our shitty excuse of a mother to tell us how to reverse the spell. She has to be kind of alive to do that. You feel me?”
“What exactly do you mean by kind of?”
“Misspeak on my part,” I said with an eye roll. “Don’t kill her.”
“Is that an order?” Zach inquired as his eyes narrowed dangerously. “Will you punch me in the chest and remove my magic if I disobey?”
“Okay, that’s really fucking gross,” I snapped, giving him a glare that usually made people run for cover. He didn’t. “I’m not taking anything from you. Enough has already been taken from both of us. I’m just telling you—and I know I’m right because of the shit loads of therapy I’ve had with a rabbit who likes porn—that killing her won’t make you happy or solve anything.”
Zach raised a brow and stared at me. It truly was like looking in a mirror except he was a dude. I wasn’t sure if the raised brow was in judgment that I went to a therapist who liked smutty movies and magazines or if it was because he had no clue that he’d feel bad about offing our mother.
“Look, it might feel great in the moment to end her, but in the long run it will suck.” I tried reasoning with him. I considered offering him candy since it worked with my kids, but thought better of it.
“You don’t know me, Zelda. I’m not a good person,” he said darkly.
“And neither am I, so we’re a perfect fit.
”
“No,” he said, putting his hand on my cheek and smiling sadly. “You’re good and pretend not to be.”
Zach nailed me, but I could also nail him. No one as awful as he thought he was would have taken a near dead goat Shifter under his protection and continued to care for him.
“You’re full of shit,” I informed him. “You’re me a few years ago. I’m gonna fix your sorry ass or die trying.”
“My ass is fantastic. It doesn’t need fixing,” he said with a small lopsided grin. “And if we don’t reverse the spell, we will never see each other again after today.”
“Then I suggest we reverse the fucking spell, douchebag.”
“Nothing would make me happier, dorkass,” he replied. “Are you ready?”
“Nope, but that hasn’t stopped me yet,” I said grabbing his hand in mine. “Let’s do this shit.”
Chapter Fourteen
“If you don’t have an appointment or aren’t here to be incarcerated you can’t enter,” Warren said, his beady little eyes dancing with psychotic delight.
It was obvious the bastard was happy to deny me. However, he wasn’t going to be happy shortly. I did notice that both he and Herm had stepped behind large cement planters to hide their privates.
“Assface,” I said sweetly as he squinted at me and tried to figure out if he’d heard me correctly. “I’m going in and so is my brother.”
“No,” Herm said with a scowl. “You are not.”
I sighed dramatically. “Okay, then we’ll just hang out with you buttbags until I can get Baba Yoharshpunishment up here and tattle on you for not letting the future Baba Yaga in.”
“You wish,” Herm hissed. “Carol isn’t retiring any time soon. And you aren’t fit to shine my shoes, witch.”
“I sure as hell hope not,” I told him. “My magic is still seriously iffy—hence the hoohas you two were sporting last week. Lemme practice on you. Cool?” I inquired as I waved my hand and gave Herm a pink Mohawk, much to his horror.
“Stop that,” Herm snapped. “You will not like my retaliation. I can destroy you. And I will do so with pleasure.”
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