The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  Soon the sheriff was satisfied, and the two of them sat in his office in the back.

  “So,” Browne opened, “Mr. Lockson. Tell me what our girl’s been up to, or whatever it is you supposedly know about her.”

  Marcus gave a deep nod. “Yes. She’s been stirring up trouble all over the area, but I’m sure you already know that. Word has spread among the Were community. You probably guessed that I’m one myself. An elder from a few towns over.”

  The sheriff’s eyes were almost vacant as he nodded in an impatient way. “I saw your address, yeah. And that doesn’t surprise me. We know what goes on in this valley. Go on.”

  Marcus did.

  He explained in a grave but calm manner that he’d heard about the strange goings-on lately, and about young Ms. Nordin’s involvement in them. As with Gunney, he conveyed that he was concerned about her, and about her role in the larger Were community. And, of course, that he just wanted to help.

  Watching him, the sheriff’s fingers danced over the phone on his desk as he contemplated calling Bailey. Her house, anyway; she might not be home, but anything he told her father or brothers would work its way on to her.

  But first, he decided to hear the stranger out.

  “Clearly,” Marcus went on, “she did this town, and this whole part of the mountains, a favor by rescuing those girls. But she’s attracted the kind of attention you probably don’t want. And I think she’s been repressing her abilities all these years. She never could change, according to what people say, but there’s nothing to say it’s impossible. I’ve heard of Weres who were late bloomers; couldn’t shift until they were twenty-five, even thirty.”

  By now, the sheriff had folded his hands together on the desk and was leaning forward, listening intently to the man’s deep voice. It was at once imposing and yet oddly soothing.

  “I think I can help her,” Marcus concluded. “Mentor her. I don’t want her to get hurt or struggle with things too much, the way other Weres did in the past when they didn’t have someone to show them the way. But I realize this is a close-knit community, so I’d rather introduce myself to the town first. Have people get to know me a little. That way, the people she knows and trusts can relay my message.”

  He paused and gave a small shrug. “It’s up to her. I don’t want to pressure her into anything, but if she thinks she might need my help, I’m here.”

  The sheriff leaned back then, and Marcus grasped that he’d succeeded. Mostly. Browne was a shrewd man, but the stranger had dispelled the worst of his suspicions and at least seeded the idea that he wasn’t sleazy or malevolent.

  He knew that Bailey would get the message—from Gunney, from Browne, or from both.

  “Okay,” the sheriff commented. “I will certainly let her know. I take it you’ll be staying somewhere in town? Or in touch if we need you to hop on over? You don’t live too awful far away.”

  Marcus smiled and nodded. “I’ll be around.”

  * * *

  Bailey was pretty sure the spell was working, since she could feel that odd yet familiar tingling in the air around her. She wondered if that was normal—if everyone felt that way when witchcraft was being performed, or if it had been a sign of her latent abilities all along.

  Roland, on his knees on the ground, had gone into a near-trance and was gently rocking back and forth as he chanted a sequence of words so softly that Bailey couldn’t hope to make them out, even with her sharp hearing. His hand was spread out over the two maps, and it began to tremble.

  Then a translucent sheen, soft and emerald-hued, appeared over the surfaces of both of the unfolded sheets of paper. It was faint at first but grew in intensity as it coalesced.

  The wizard’s rocking increased in rapidity. Bailey wanted to ask him what would happen next, but she bit her tongue and kept silent. Concentration was key, he’d said. Even a magician of his power and experience might well screw it up if something distracted him.

  The green light thickened slowly, no longer spread over the entire state of Washington, but pooling in little bubbles around the Seattle metropolitan area. The light was brighter now, more vivid. It formed tiny specks, almost like green stars in the sky, in and around the city, spread out seemingly at random throughout the municipality.

  There was, however, a noticeable concentration of them in one area.

  Roland opened his eyes. “Got it,” he wheezed. “It worked. Take note of that,” he pointed to the bright mass of little lights, “and of everything else, too. Were there any lights forming in other areas?”

  Already the glow was fading.

  “Not really,” Bailey reported. “A few pinpricks of it all over the state, but most of them were around Seattle. In that one neighborhood on the edge of town especially—this one right here.”

  She tapped the surface. The light pulsed under her fingertip, almost as if she’d struck a shallow film of water, and her hand tingled.

  Roland rolled back into a sitting position and studied the map intently, making mental notes of what he saw before the green glow faded from sight altogether.

  Bailey looked at him. “What does it mean? I think I get the idea, but again, you’re the real wizard. I’m still a noob.”

  To her surprise, he tittered with almost childish amusement. “That makes two of us. Might as well confess that I just made that spell up. But it seems to have worked, right?”

  She cocked an eyebrow and folded her arms over her chest. “Made it up? How’s that work? I thought you people had traditions for stuff like this going back a thousand years or however long.”

  “Depends.” He shrugged. “This one is similar to others that do have long traditions behind them, yeah. But I’ve never cast one quite like it, and I improvised the details. But based on other stuff I have done and the general theory behind it, which is perfectly sound as far as magical logic goes, there was no reason to think it would fail.”

  She was getting annoyed, and she scowled at him as he stood up.

  “You succeeded,” she pointed out, “at making a couple of maps light up like Christmas, yeah. But are they telling us what we want to know?”

  “Eh,” he replied, “probably. Based on stuff I’ve read on books and the Internet, and my own theories on magical crafting, it should be pointing out the locations of all known werewolf women within the state. I used parts of a female werewolf,” he flourished his hand toward her, “and focused my concentration, will, and power on those elements specifically, so the spell should reveal living beings who have those two characteristics: being a lycanthrope, and belonging to the fairer sex.”

  Bailey snorted. “’Fairer sex.’ What a stupid term. But yeah, I get it, and like I said before, I trust you, even if sometimes I think you’re the insane one. Shit, you read it on the Internet? Really? For all we know, you might have cast a spell that insulted the sexual preferences of a bunch of kids playing first-person shooters.”

  Roland made a pouty face. “I like to think I’m more rigorous than that.”

  Chapter Ten

  The werewolf and the wizard climbed back into the Trans Am. Bailey noticed some guy in a NASCAR cap gazing with longing, almost a hunger, at the car. She wasn’t sure whether to thank him for the implied compliment or tell him to piss off, so she just ignored him until he wandered off.

  Roland pulled the door shut, buckled himself in, and spread the map of Seattle out on the dashboard.

  “Here,” he reported. “I’m circling the area where we saw that abnormal concentration of lights. Would be nice if we could stick the map to the surface so it doesn’t fall off, but that might not be good for the car.”

  “Correct.” Bailey nodded. “Please just hold onto it while you give me directions.”

  Pulling out his phone to enter their route on a mapping app, Roland quipped, “Gosh, I’m glad you have such confidence in my abilities.”

  “Like I said,” she retorted, “I trust you.”

  She turned the key and guided the vehicle through
the parking lot before merging back onto the road and bearing northeast toward Seattle.

  The asphalt blurred beneath their wheels, and the sunlight filtered down through scattered clouds. It was a pretty nice day—almost too pretty for what they might be charging into…again.

  Roland puffed air from his nostrils as he examined his phone. “Looks like the area we’re going to be checking out is another goddamn warehouse district. Makes sense. I guess that would be the place to look for captured women.”

  Bailey nodded. “No shit.”

  Roland made a theatrical gesture of exaggerated nonchalance. “At least we’re in agreement about where to go. That simplifies matters. I’ll assume you can get us back toward Seattle. We’ll go from there.”

  The Were grunted her agreement and pressed harder on the gas.

  They didn’t talk to each other for some minutes, enjoying their few moments of relaxation in the boonies between Olympia and Tacoma. They knew there were plenty of other things to discuss when they felt up to it.

  Bailey kinda did want to talk about it, though. She was relieved when Roland opened his mouth again.

  “Regarding your finger-sparks last night,” he opened. “Some people, even with fairly high concentrations of arcane ability, can’t do that on their first try.”

  She squinted and passed a slow-ass lumber truck. “Is that so?”

  “It is so. In fact,” extrapolated Roland, stroking his chin and gazing vaguely out the passenger’s side window, “you might have far more potential than either of us realize at the moment. There’s no way to determine how much magical aptitude you were endowed with. I mean, that frickin’ testing device went haywire when we put your blood through it.”

  The girl kept her mouth shut for a few moments while she ruminated on what he’d said. She certainly didn’t feel like a powerful, super-talented witch. Thus far, she hadn’t been able to do much of anything.

  She told him as much, and added, “Maybe the reason the test screwed up is that it wasn’t made to measure werewolves. You didn’t think so, but do you know for sure? Maybe our magic doesn’t work quite the same way yours does.”

  He shrugged in a theatrical way as if he were apologizing for not having all the answers. “You could be on to something there. I know a lot of stuff, but I sure as hell don’t know everything. No one does.”

  Bailey frowned, feeling as if they were no closer to answers than they’d been before they’d left Greenhearth. “Ain’t that the truth?” she muttered.

  Rolland seemed to have suddenly gained some new insight, though, and he spoke again.

  “If by some chance you do have enough arcane potential to accomplish things, it’s only a matter of time ‘til that catches someone’s attention. And when that happens? Shit, we might see a reversal of our current situation.”

  She cast him a quick, sharp glance. “What do you mean by that?”

  “You,” he clarified, “might end up being the one who’s hunted and chased because of your specialness. At least then I’d have some company.”

  Bailey squirmed, almost bristling with conflicting emotions. Her first instinct was to snap at him, pointing out that she was already being chased—first by the Weres in her hometown who wanted her ass, and now by the crime ring that wanted her dead.

  But then she realized he had a point. Her having witch potential threw everything for a loop. It made the situation even more complex than it already was.

  “Think about it,” Roland continued. “Here we are, having dealt with all these people coming after me because of my unusually high potential as a male witch, wizard, whatever. Now, we could be looking at another case of…basically the same thing, only, uh, in reverse. You are equally rare, a female shapeshifter whose ability to change into wolf form does not conform to the usual ways, and you have the potential to use sorcery. People are going to want you for your abilities one way or another, or kill you for being a Werewitch. One of those.”

  She felt, for a couple of minutes, as though she’d turned to stone. Roland seemed content to let her stew, but she didn’t think he ought to get out of this that easily. Especially not when he was the one who’d brought up the whole subject.

  “God fucking dammit,” she snapped, her shouted curse breaking the silence to pieces. “This is the last thing I need right now. Another shitty-ass thing that makes me different from other Weres and attracts a bunch of goddamn unwanted attention. Oh, and maybe getting me killed.”

  Roland looked at her before slowly turning his head back to the windshield. “Fair enough.”

  “Like,” Bailey grated, “if I was normal to begin with, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. But I’m already known as a fucking weirdo. Everyone back home is gonna say, ‘Oh, of course, something like this would happen to Bailey.’ You know? Just another reason to put me in a special category no one else is in.”

  The wizard had fallen quiet again, waiting to see if she had more to share. She did.

  “Come to think of it,” she continued, the words almost spilling out of her before she could stop to consider how much she ought to say, “I think I was always, I dunno, trying to deny the Were part of my heritage and get away from that part of who I am. I always had my family there for me, and they and the pack were always important to me, but I’ve spent so much time hanging around Gunney and humans in general. I was trying to, I guess, fit in with humans and do human things because I took it for granted that I’d never fit in with other werewolves.”

  Her hands trembled even as they gripped the steering wheel, admitting to this. Her sense of being different—marked off and separate—wasn’t only because she couldn’t change shape. There was more to it than that.

  “And once I started down that path—trying to be a human because Weres thought I was basically no better than a human when humans all thought of me as a Were—it’s like now I’m afraid I can’t go back. That they won’t take me back. That even though I’m a full werewolf now, they’ll just think of me as that bitch who didn’t want anything to do with her own kind. And now here I am running away from my community where most people never leave home, driving with you all over the Pacific Northwest.”

  She drew a deep breath through clenched teeth, then added, “And that’s even before we get into the whole magic business. Shit, they used to burn us at the stake for that back in the bad old days. Goddamn!”

  Roland had listened to all she’d said with his usual patient focus and lack of obvious judgment, simply taking in her words and thinking them over. He didn’t speak right away.

  Bailey gave him a few seconds to process her impromptu monologue. She tried not to get impatient and resolved not to apologize for blurting out so many of her emotional vulnerabilities in such a stupid and awkward way.

  “First,” Roland said, breaking the brief impasse, “I can’t picture the people in your town burning you at the stake. I’m pretty sure we can cross that possibility off the list. Especially since—and this is also my second point—we rescued those captured girls. The whole valley thinks you’re a hero now, don’t they? Pretty sure that counts for something.”

  She blushed, feeling a bit foolish for having somehow forgotten that little tidbit. “Yeah, true.”

  “And like you said,” he went on, “you still have your family. I can tell your brothers would pretty much lay down their lives for you. Still, though, every culture has its own unique quirks and intricacies that no outsider can ever fully understand. I’m not a werewolf, so I can’t know how werewolves think and act. It sounds like you’re not one hundred percent confident about how they’ll think or act, either.”

  She glowered at the road ahead. They were back in Tacoma, not too far from the suburbs of Seattle. “Yeah.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  The wizard gave a small smile—small, but warm and genuine. He reached out and placed his hand on her shoulder.

  “If all else fails,” he stated, his voice soft but oddly resolute, “I’ll still take you, Wer
ewitch or no.”

  Keeping her left hand on the steering wheel and her eyes on the road, she raised her right hand and placed it atop his, holding it there and feeling its heat.

  * * *

  The warehouse district in the northeast outskirts of the City of Goodwill was much like the one they’d been in not long ago in the City of Roses. The one major difference was that this one was inland in a semi-wooded area rather than being right on top of the waterfront.

  Bailey parked in a nearby empty lot where foliage mostly blocked the car from sight and glanced around. No one was present, but the place somehow seemed closer to civilization than the Portland waterfront had. The presence of trees also meant they would have more cover while skulking around.

  “Okay,” Roland said, his voice tinged with ragged exasperation, “there are, like, a lot of warehouses here, aren’t there? And the spell didn’t give us specifics. It just kind of brought us to the right part of the neighborhood. Tell me again why we can’t bring the cops in? Oh, yeah, pack business.”

  She grasped the problem immediately. There had only been one line of maybe eight structures back in Portland. Here, there were at least twice that many, and they were arranged in two rows, maybe more. Searching them all would take longer, and it would be harder to do without being seen.

  As she unbuckled, her only reply was, “Let’s get to it then and quit yakking.”

  As they climbed out of the car and locked it, the wizard folded up the map of Seattle and put it in his pocket. Bailey wondered why he was bringing it since it wasn’t zoomed-in enough to help them with something as specific as individual warehouses.

  They crossed the street. Bailey glanced back at the Trans Am.

  Ye gods, she thought, please protect and have mercy on this, the most glorious car in Oregon, and probably in Washington as well.

  The pair moved, hunched low to the ground, toward a half-wall that separated the mass of warehouses from the street and a small grassy sward. There were no obvious signs that anyone or anything was here besides the buildings.