The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

To Spall’s surprise, his partner grabbed the device with his right hand and pressed the button on the side until the screen went dark.

  “What,” Spall hissed, “do you think you’re doing?”

  Townsend assumed an innocent expression. “I don’t see a metric fuck-ton. Now I see no magic.”

  Spall slumped and rolled his head back, gazing toward the heavens. “For heaven’s sake, Townsend. Just because you turned the screen off doesn’t mean it isn’t still there. That Bailey girl is probably burning down half the town and two-thirds of the forest as we speak.”

  “Nonsense,” Townsend shot back. “Look at this dark, empty, peaceful road right here. We’re not far from Greenhearth now, and I don’t see a damn thing. Nothing happening that most people can perceive or would care about, which is our exact mission statement: ensure that no one knows anything weird happened. Because if weird things happen, there is paperwork.”

  Spall said nothing. He didn’t compliment his partner for his brilliant thinking, but he didn’t turn the screen back on, either.

  * * *

  “Good,” Marcus said, jumping to the top of a tree to avoid the blast of electrified ore Bailey threw at him. “You got the metal out of the earth without having to strip-mine the hillside and charged it without having to summon a lightning bolt.”

  Bailey figured she ought to get used to combining elements instead of relying on lightning all the time.

  Roland, meanwhile, was using one hand to weave a latticework of magical shield material around Marcus’s position. It was almost like a net, but without the obvious pyrotechnics of a simple dome. With the other hand, he unleashed a thin and concentrated but powerful stream of water.

  The shaman, from his perch in the tree, held up one hand as if casually deflecting a wadded-up piece of paper, and Roland’s aquatic attack dispersed against his palm as if it were nothing.

  “Yes!” Marcus complimented him. “Excellent technique.” He then glanced around and made a curt slicing motion with his hand. An entire section of the lattice of pale green energy collapsed and the shaman jumped through it, momentarily disappearing into another part of the forest.

  Roland and Bailey exchanged glances.

  “He’s good,” the werewitch observed.

  Roland looked irritated. “Smarmy, though. Is he being sincere with his compliments, or is this whole thing just an excuse for him to show off?”

  Bailey used her Were senses to determine where Marcus had bounded off to. “I don’t think so. He probably can’t help being as powerful as he is, and legit wants us to know we’re making progress.”

  The wizard bit off whatever he was about to say and followed Bailey as she dashed between the trees.

  They found Marcus standing near the crest of a ridge, between two huge pines. He said nothing and stared at them, waiting.

  “Okay,” Bailey whispered to her partner, “let’s see if we can, I don’t know, hit him from all sides at once with everything we can think of, but without making too much of a mess.”

  “Easier said than done,” Roland opined, but then his hands shot out, and a veritable storm of energies and materials swirled around the tall shaman.

  Bailey joined in, hurling a blast of lightning. She at first feared it was too large and powerful, but she quickly got it under control and split it into four arcing bolts that encircled Marcus, crackling even as Roland’s sphere of elemental chaos tightened around him.

  “Good,” the shaman remarked again, his voice barely audible under the noise of the spells about to obliterate him. “Better than I was expecting.”

  He shrugged and the magical storm exploded outwards, dissipating as it went, escaping the control of the pair below him.

  “Shit!” Roland cursed as gravel, icy water, and flaming bits of sulfur and pitch rained down around him.

  Bailey threw up her hands as what felt like a severe static shock locked her muscles, causing her to collapse in pain even though it was gone the instant it had started. Marcus had turned her lightning back on her in a weakened form.

  The shaman jumped off the ridge and slowly floated down toward them.

  “In all fairness,” he began as his feet touched the earth, “I did tell you to use minimal power. If you had pulled out all the stops, I would have had to work harder to defend myself. We wrought minimal damage to the forest here…” he paused to gesture toward a small burning patch of weeds, extinguishing the flames with a thought, “and you demonstrated fine control. Bailey, your improvement was especially noticeable. Against an average or sub-par magician, you would have easily been victorious.”

  Roland brushed himself off. “I was already good against average casters,” he pointed out, “but thanks.”

  Bailey, however, was overwhelmed with joy and satisfaction. Suddenly, the idea of mastering her powers no longer seemed impossible.

  The shaman cleared his throat. “However, there is more work to be done. Bailey, again, you improved, but you weren’t perfect. That final lightning bolt was excessive, and you barely salvaged it into something controllable at the last second.”

  She tried not to wince. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Sorry.”

  “No need to be sorry,” Marcus told her, the tone of his gravelly voice neutral, “but there is a need to understand and grow past the mistake. Let’s break for the night. Go home, and say goodnight to your brothers for me if they’re still awake. Get some rest. Tomorrow will be even more trying than today has been.”

  Bailey felt like today had been more than trying enough.

  “Remember,” Marcus proclaimed, louder and more solemnly, “you have improved, but there’s more to be done. If we cannot get you where you need to be in short order, you will be killed by the mishandling of your own magic, by the witches who hate and fear you, or, it must be said, by the power of the Other. I would not send you there if I didn’t think you could handle it, but there are always dangers. You must learn to overcome them. It is literally do or die.”

  Neither the werewitch nor the wizard knew how to respond to that, and the shaman laid a hand on each’s shoulder. Then he leaped off into the trees, vanishing amidst the forest’s shadows.

  Roland turned to Bailey and in a low voice offered, “That almost sounds like ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t,’ doesn’t it?” Noticing the look on her face, he frowned sheepishly. “Sorry. I’m not in a good mood, I guess, and his ominous crap isn’t helping.”

  “It’s okay,” she murmured, although she really wished he hadn’t said that. “I’ll forgive you some other time.”

  Chapter Six

  When Bailey and Roland returned to the Nordin house, everyone was asleep. Roland had been spending his nights out in the pole barn, with a space heater when necessary, and they shared a quick hug beside the house and said their goodnights before he headed out back.

  For her part, Bailey crept into the house on soft, careful feet. She didn’t want to wake her brothers and then feel obliged to explain to them everything that had happened. She was just too tired. In the morning, they’d see her truck out front and the door to her room shut, so they’d know she was home safe.

  She succeeded until she reached the staircase. The damn thing always creaked, no matter how stealthy she tried to be. As a little girl, her parents walking up and down it as they got ready for work used to wake her up.

  A mattress crinkled in the room closest to the stairs. Then a voice came through the wall. “Bailey?” Jacob asked, his voice ragged and slurred with sleep. “That you?”

  “Yes,” she responded. “I’m fine. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  He let out a heavy, sighing groan. “Okay. We were worried.” The mattress rustled again, and his faint snores were back by the time Bailey reached her room.

  She was not looking forward to having to discuss all that had transpired. Her brothers were continuously wracked with concern for her already, and it seemed like things had grown more and more complex and dangerous as time had gone on.


  For now, she forced herself not to dwell on any of it. Both mind and body were near exhaustion, and within moments of her head sinking into her pillow, she was asleep.

  * * *

  She was glad it had been Russell’s turn to make the coffee this morning since he always made it strong enough to kill a mid-sized domestic animal. That much caffeine, delivered via something that tasted almost like motor oil, was exactly what she needed after last night.

  Kurt, meanwhile, was talking an awful lot despite having his mouth full of pancakes most of the time.

  “So,” he began again, chewing madly, “this ‘Other’ place is like, made of the leftover magic juices that leaked into a crack between worlds? Some shit like that?”

  Roland raised a mug of coffee in something like a salute. “That’s the gist of it, yeah. You guys had a Norse goddess in your backyard recently, so I can’t imagine a parallel dimension is all that hard to believe.”

  Kurt gave a vigorous nod. “Touché. You two always find the best quaint little places to go on your romantic vacations, don’t you?”

  As he said this, Jacob’s hand shot out and pulled his plate away, so his fork ended up hitting the tablecloth.

  “Aw!” he lamented.

  Jacob burst out laughing, and everyone else followed suit.

  Once they got themselves back under control, Jacob had a few more questions. Roland seemed happy enough to answer them, even despite his own seemingly mixed feelings toward Marcus and the man’s training philosophy.

  “So,” Jacob started, “this godawful place is supposed to help you master your magic powers and stuff more quickly than if you trained on, uh, Earth, right? And according to our pal Marcus, this is necessary because it’s too dangerous to delay?”

  Adding more syrup to the remains on his plate, Roland said, “Yup, that’s what he said. I’m not as certain about it, although I’ll concede that there’s stuff we learned in there that would never have occurred to me otherwise. I just wish he was more…I don’t know, systematic about it instead of just throwing us in there with vague Jedi platitudes about how ‘you will know when the time comes’ and expecting us to figure it all out by ourselves.”

  Bailey listened to her partner’s opinion with mixed feelings. Clearly, Roland didn’t trust Marcus as much as she did. In her view, anything he had to put them through to get the job done was ultimately justified, even if she disliked it. But on some level, she appreciated that Roland was worried about her.

  She decided to shift the focus of the conversation. “I’ve made a lot of progress,” she stated. “I mean, I’m sure there’s more to go—I don’t even know how much—but I can control my magic a lot better than I could even a week ago.”

  Her brothers nodded. “Good,” Jacob commented, speaking for them all.

  Roland pointed his fork sideways toward the girl without looking at her. “It’s true—she’s advanced by leaps and bounds. Marcus’s methods might be better suited to her since he made more progress with her than I did.”

  Kurt cleared his throat. “Well, she and Marcus are the same, uh, species or whatever. Pretty sure that makes a difference.”

  “Probably,” the wizard acknowledged.

  Jacob seemed distracted. “Didn’t you say something about how these powers could be dangerous to the person who has them if they’re not careful?”

  “Yeah,” Bailey replied. “The more you can do, the more ways there are to screw yourself over. That’s part of why we need Marcus. He’s helped us a lot.”

  Roland gestured vaguely with his fork. “That, and our friends in black suits—well, more of a dark gray or green, really—telling us to shape up or ship out. Those guys are not fun to deal with, so I really hope we don’t have the pleasure of their company again.”

  Kurt pursed his lips. “Uh, on the plus side, wouldn’t they, like, step in to restrain those witches if they show up? Hell, they admitted Bailey wasn’t the one starting all the shit lately.”

  “Yes.” Roland sighed. “But it’s better if it never comes to that.”

  Jacob stared at the table. “It’s going to come to something,” he muttered.

  Bailey looked at him, and he looked up. His face was getting that awkward grimace, the look he got when he had “serious business” to discuss and really didn’t want to, but felt like he had to.

  “Bailey,” he began, his voice a register lower than usual, “you have been attracting a lot of trouble lately. Mainly toward yourself.”

  She stabbed at the last fork’s worth of thick, spongy pancakes, dabbing them in the remaining pool of syrup and melted butter near the edge of her plate. “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.” Her tone was dark, even if her words were flippant.

  To everyone’s surprise, Russell was the one who replied to her. “The details,” he intoned. “You know what Jacob just said is true, but you don’t know the specifics. And sometimes that’s the shit that kills you.”

  Her muscles tightened as she looked up at her towering middle brother. At the end of his statement, he’d used a generic “you.” He was making a general statement, a platitude; he hadn’t meant to imply that someone was out to kill Bailey.

  Probably.

  “Yeah,” Kurt chimed in, “there’s been some, you know, developments. Not that any of them are surprising. I mean, this is Greenhearth, for fuck’s sake. When was the last time anything happened here that was a surprise? Not counting the stuff precipitated by you two, I mean.” He waved a hand at Roland and his sister.

  Jacob looked at his youngest sibling. “Well, Kurt, I’d say most people were pretty damn surprised when Dan Oberlin turned out to be kidnapping local girls. Everyone knew he was an asshole, but not that much of an asshole.”

  Kurt shrugged. “Okay, yeah. Fair enough.”

  Sighing, Bailey caught their eyes. “Stop bickering and tell me what these developments are, then.”

  Roland patted her hand in thanks. He’d gotten pretty familiar with her brothers by now, but he still relied on her to yell at them when they needed yelling at. For him to do it would have been presumptuous toward his hosts.

  To no one’s surprise, Jacob took the lead in answering the girl’s question.

  “People are uneasy being around you,” he stated. “Weres, especially. I mean, ones who used to think you were just fine. They didn’t mind back when all you did was get into fights and act like you didn’t want to get married. They just figured it was none of their business. Now some of them are starting to act like you’re a menace to society, even if they’re glad you saved those girls.”

  Bailey fumed, staring straight ahead at nothing in particular. Her brother didn’t name names, nor did she ask him to. Instead, he continued, “And that’s just the people who were okay with you. You want to imagine what’s been going on with the people who already thought you were an asshole?”

  She pushed her plate away from her. “I don’t need to imagine. I already got a damn good idea,” she grumbled.

  Nonetheless, Jacob enlightened her.

  “They’re painting targets on your back with their eyes, Bailey. Probably rocking themselves to sleep thinking about how they’d hit that target. Of course, right now, most of them are too chickenshit to do anything, but they’re thinking about it. Talking about it when they think we can’t hear them. Stuff like that.”

  Roland cut in, “That sounds about right. I don’t claim to know this town, but people aren’t that different no matter where you go. I dealt with a lot of that kind of crap back in Seattle after word got out that I was different. Sometimes it’s dangerous, but usually it’s just annoying. You guys know these people, so I’d say the most important thing is which one you think it is—dangerous, or annoying.”

  Bailey snorted. “Some of both. That’d be my guess, knowing the dipshits around here.”

  Silence reigned in for a few moments, until Kurt, predictably, broke it. “I mean, those guys were already annoying, so it’s not like much has changed on that front. The
ones who are more likely to be dangerous are usually the stupidest ones anyway, right?”

  Chuckles went around the table.

  “I guess,” Bailey conceded. “Some of the real morons seem to have…other people behind them, though. You know, sponsors. People who point their dumb asses in the right direction.”

  Jacob and Russell clenched their hands, and the former added his two cents.

  “That’s what worries me.” He turned his head to Bailey, holding her gaze. “I’ve been hearing second- and third-hand gossip that some of these shitheads think, with all your power and prestige and attention now, you’re going to make a play to become a pack alpha. Overthrow the old farts and start your own pack, instead of marrying one of them like they all thought would happen. That’s setting some of them on their heels. The Weres around here are getting pretty goddamn antsy.”

  Bailey’s jaw clenched. She wanted to growl.

  “Well, maybe,” she snapped louder and more sharply than she’d meant to, “it’s time for other Weres to just fuckin’ deal with it. They’ve gotten awful cozy hunkering down in these mountains over the years. They’ve stayed away from the outside world, thinking that everything will always be the way they’re used to. Things change, and I’m not gonna bend over backward just to accommodate their ignorant, paranoid bullshit.”

  The only one who looked mildly surprised by the outburst was Roland, and even in his case, it wore off quickly. Her brothers smiled gently.

  “Bailey,” said Jacob, “that’s what we figured you’d say. And mostly—mostly—we’re with you on that. You know we always have your back. We care about you. Don’t want anything bad to happen.”

  She let out a long sigh. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Thanks.” She took a sip of coffee. “So, Dad went back to waste more time with that Frederson idiot and his lazy-ass wife?”

  Kurt snorted. “Yep. Those two would be living in the ruins of their house right now if he didn’t keep checking in on them. Like, they’d have a ratty old bathrobe strung between two protruding pieces of wood and use that as their roof and then complain it was leaking.”