The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  “No shit,” Ron concurred.

  Bailey slid off the stool. “That’s it. I changed my mind.” Her voice was louder. “I do wanna dance. March that way, my friends. I dance rough, though.”

  Roland cleared his throat and whispered, “Remember, this isn’t Sheriff Browne’s turf, so go easy on them.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she muttered. “Hold my beer.”

  He accepted the bottle as she and the three men strode over to the open floor. Noticing that it was half-drained, he raised a hand.

  “Bartender!” he called. “Another beer for my girlfriend. She’s gonna need a cold one in a couple of minutes.”

  Note from Renée

  September 14, 2020

  You made it! Here we are at the end of book 5. Thank you so much for reading this far.

  I haven’t written Author Notes for a while, so let me first express my heartfelt wishes that you and yours have made it through 2020 so far unscathed, or only minorly scathed (is that a word?). This the most amazing year I have ever experienced. I hope never to go through anything like it again!

  I saw a memo on Facebook nominating a photo of a baseball field near San Francisco with orange skies from the fires in Northern California and cardboard figures in the stands. They said, “I’d like to nominate this photo of cardboard figures watching baseball in a dystopian hellscape for photo of the year.” That about sums it up.

  I’m lucky, no fires where I am in Oregon. California and much of the West are burning. It’s summer, and not much rain this year. ‘Nuff said about that.

  Things have been quiet here. Empress Josephine has slimmed down over past few months, due to the number of walkies we have gone on. Storm is doing catlike things, but nothing to report on. I still love my red Jeep. Restaurants open and close day by day, so I have been eating at home and not venturing out much since it’s not worth driving to town if I can’t get my fish tacos with any degree of regularity. Renée is not a happy camper. Hope your favorite foods are treating you better where you live.

  I always thank my advance reader team, but I also want to thank the proofreader team, the ones who read my stories after they are edited. They catch the oopses and point out any last-minute dichotomies, and as such, they helped make this book (and every book) its best. Couldn’t do it without you, folks! Thanks for having my back.

  I hope you enjoyed Bailey’s and Boland’s further adventures. They will be back. And if you get a moment, drop me a review, please. Those are the lifeblood of any writer. We appreciate you!

  Until next time,

  Renée

  God Ender

  Were Witch Book 6

  Chapter One

  Bailey leaned against a wall beside the bar. Her three younger brothers had taken up the stools. She probably could have squeezed in next to them, but these days, even when relaxing with a beer, it was wise to keep an eye on things. From her current position, she could watch anyone who wandered into the Bristling Elk.

  “So,” asked Jacob, who was eldest of the three, though still younger than Bailey, “you gonna tell us how Boise was? We still haven’t heard the whole story. I mean, now that the secret’s out that you and Roland are ‘together,’ a lot of it is probably romantic shit we don’t need to hear, but at least it’d be nice to know what the scenery’s like and that kind of thing.”

  Before the girl could respond, Kurt, the youngest of them, piped up with, “If by ‘romantic’ you mean ‘X-rated,’ then yeah, sounds right.”

  Jacob and Russell, the middle brother, took turns swatting Kurt on the back of the head while Bailey glared at him. She ignored Kurt’s remark. Instead, she answered Jacob’s original question.

  “It was okay. Nice, really. Obviously a lot bigger than Greenhearth, but not as big as Portland or Seattle. It’s like a decent-sized city that seems halfway acceptable to someone from a small town, if that makes sense. And it’s surrounded by all these rolling brown hills that loom between the buildings. Not as impressive as the Cascades, but...different. I liked it. So did Roland.”

  Russell shifted on the stool. At six foot seven, he was so large that he could barely position himself on it comfortably. “Heard you got into some trouble in Bend.” He clenched and unclenched his massive hands.

  Tomi, the usual waitress in the afternoon and evening, strolled by. She spent most of her time in the diner wing, whereas the bar was located front-and-center with its attached dance floor off to the left. Keeping an eye on the bar patrons was also part of her duties, though.

  “Well,” she interjected, “if Russell was there, I’m sure there was no trouble at all unless he started it.” As she said this, she ran a hand briefly along the huge young lycanthrope’s shoulder and flashed him a mischievous smile.

  He grunted. “I wasn’t. Needed to stay here and protect the town.”

  Tomi laughed. “Must have done something right, since it’s been peaceful again. For now.” She batted her eyes and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Bailey watched the scene with a cool eye. She was used to Tomi and the other waitresses and other women in general flirting with her brothers, particularly Russell and Jacob. Tomi was a good ten years Russell’s senior, but she felt it was their choice whether to respond to all the swooning and insinuations.

  It occurred to her, though, that women might find them even more attractive these days thanks to their connection to her. She’d become a celebrity.

  “About Bend,” Bailey said. “Yeah, minor scuffle at a nice little redneck bar outside town. Buncha goddamn Californians have moved to that place lately, which made the good old boys especially hostile to out-of-towners, I guess. I managed to fix them up without getting us sent to jail.”

  Jacob raised his beer in a toast. “Best of both worlds.”

  The front doors opened just then, and in strode a quartet of people who were themselves out-of-towners in Greenhearth, Oregon. Bailey was getting used to visits from werewolves from all over the Pacific Northwest, but the four newcomers were not Weres.

  Three of them were women and one was a man, all in their early twenties, comparable ages to her brothers. They were dressed head to toe in black and had an odd assortment of piercings and dyed hair. It was some kind of punk or goth fashion thing, although Bailey paid too little attention to subcultures to judge the specifics.

  They didn’t look friendly, either.

  “Hey,” opened the apparent leader, a wiry girl in a corset with a blue streak in her black hair, “we’re looking for Bailey Nordin. Are you her? Or is she here somewhere? We heard she hangs around this place.”

  The three brothers turned around, slowly and unison.

  Bailey smiled with frosty politeness. “That’s me. How can I help you ladies and gentleman?”

  Blue Streak folded her arms in front of her and tapped at one forearm with her azure-enameled nails. “We saw that scrying broadcast. Both of them. It’s weird how after the Venatori sent out the first one—you know, exposing you—your supposed boyfriend then sent out that other one contradicting it. Where is he, anyway?”

  Mimicking the girl’s gesture, Bailey straightened up from the wall and made eye contact with the newcomers. “He’s resting. He almost died helping us drive the Venatori out of this town, and then I tired him right out when we took a little vacation together. Why, did you want to interview him for a podcast or something?”

  By now, Bailey had surmised that her visitors were witches. They weren’t agents of the Venatori, at least. The fanatical European cult would have either shot first and asked questions later, or perhaps would have tried to ingratiate themselves first and then stabbed her in the back.

  No, the childish standoffishness and pseudo-aggression of the quartet suggested they were nothing more than dumbasses looking for trouble. And they’d probably find it.

  “Hmm,” Blue Streak pretended to consider, tilting her head and turning her eyes toward the ceiling, “I dunno, we’ll have to think about it. I mean, it would be interesting to see how
the all-powerful werewitch from this dumpy little hick town managed to defeat one of the strongest witch-forces in recent memory. Are you sure the Venatori didn’t just decide you weren’t worth the trouble?”

  Bailey glowered. “Pretty sure.”

  Jacob asked, “You got this, Bailey? We’re here if you need us.”

  “Oh, yeah,” the werewitch replied, stretching and setting her beer down on the bar’s surface. “I’m fine. Think I can handle one little interview.”

  “Good,” the leader of the newcomers interjected. “Since the other thing we’re wondering is if you and the Venatori are working together. Their recruiters keep popping up everywhere in Salem. Portland, too, from what I hear. How do we know they’re not paying you to scare us into their arms?”

  Bailey gestured toward the dance floor with her chin. “Let me show you.”

  She led the way to the square wooden space, empty of revelers at this hour, while the bartender shot a wary eye at her. He probably didn’t want the cops showing up at his establishment yet again. Bad for business.

  Bailey didn’t think that a police presence would be necessary, though.

  She turned to her new friends. “Don’t wreck the place. We already had a brawl a month or so back, not to mention the roof took some fire damage a couple of weeks ago.”

  Blue Streak, glaring with a skeptical sneer, responded by rearing back and tossing a blazing fireball at Bailey’s face. Since the girl had telegraphed her attack in advance, the werewitch was able to easily block it, snuffing out the flames with a shimmering disc-shaped arcane shield.

  As the leader hurled her crude blast, two of her minions came at Bailey’s flanks. The lone male among them reached her first, swinging his arms toward her face, augmenting his speed through magic.

  Bailey left her shield hanging in midair to finish extinguishing the fireball and provide an obstruction to further attacks. Then she flash-stepped backward so the young man overshot his swipe and palm-punched him in the side of the face. It didn’t take much force since Weres are stronger than humans or witches, even in human form.

  “Ugh!” the guy cried out, his head reeling aside, and he stumbled back, dizzy and with a bleeding lip.

  Then the other witch, an overweight girl of maybe eighteen or nineteen, tried to tackle Bailey. The werewitch kicked her straight and hard in the solar plexus, halting her charge and making her double over in breathless nausea.

  Blue Streak and the other girl with her were collaborating on a spell they probably thought would be clever or impressive. Bailey just hit them both with a wave of telekinetic force with a little sonic disturbance thrown in, so both were blasted off their feet to land on the wood floor with heads ringing.

  Then the werewitch magically grabbed the two casters who’d rushed her, threw them into a heap besides their companions, and summoned a sheet of freezing rain to descend on all four.

  “Shit!” Blue Streak cursed. “That’s fucking cold! And you’re ruining my makeup!”

  “Whoops,” Bailey said in a flat voice. “You wanna keep fighting? I didn’t break a sweat yet, so I’m good if you’re still feeling feisty.”

  The quartet all got to their feet as the frigid water stopped falling, wiping their clothes off and checking themselves for injury. It was clear that they didn’t want to continue their “interview,” but the leader refused to surrender.

  By now, three local pack-alphas, including Will Waldsbach of the South Cliffs, had drifted into the front drinking area from the dining wing and were looking toward the dance floor. They were alert, with shoulders and legs spread in wide fighting stances. Not alarmed but ready.

  Will took in the scene at a glance. “You need any help getting rid of them, Bailey?”

  The girl waved a hand. “These kids got loose from detention, I’d guess. Show ‘em the door, please and thank you.”

  The four witches groaned and muttered a few half-assed protests as the alphas grabbed them by their drenched collars, hoisted them up, and escorted them out the front entrance and into the parking lot, giving each a good shove toward the road. The casters wisely kept walking and did not look back.

  Bailey nodded to her alphas. “Thanks, guys. You can all go back and finish eating. Think I’m gonna finish my beer.”

  They chuckled and returned to the diner. The werewitch strolled back to the bar, where Jacob handed her the cold bottle she’d left behind.

  The bartender-slash-proprietor gave her an appreciative nod, a subtle smile on his heavy face. “Clean up that water, will ya?”

  “Oh, right,” Bailey agreed. She turned and snapped her fingers, heating a patch of air where the freezing rain had fallen so that it evaporated, leaving the dance floor nice and dry.

  Jacob sipped his beer and looked at his sister. “You’ve grown up, you know?” he quipped. “Not too long ago, you would’ve just beat them all to a pulp until the sheriff’s deputies showed up for their protection. These days, you’ve got enough self-control to do the minimum necessary to get rid of them and shut ‘em up.”

  With all the heroic shit she’d done lately, it was becoming commonplace for people to praise her, but she tried to stay appreciative and not let it go to her head.

  “Thank you, Jacob, and I mean that. I’m working on it. The more I think about it, the stupider I was until pretty damn recently. Four or five months ago might as well have been half a lifetime, with everything that’s changed.”

  Kurt laughed. “I know, right? To think, there was once a fabled time when our town didn’t keep having to stop crazed-ass witches from burning everything down.”

  Russell added his two cents. “At least you’re free of the marriage obligation.”

  Bailey nodded and sipped her beer, looking blithe and a tad sarcastic and saying nothing. For all the terrible things that had happened, Russell had reminded her of one of the good occurrences. Come her twenty-fifth birthday, which was almost upon her, she’d be free. The traditional requirement that a female werewolf be wed to an eligible male was waived in the case of shamans.

  The door opened behind them. Sensing a subdued aura of magic, Bailey momentarily wondered if the stupid out-of-towners had returned, but she dismissed the notion at once.

  It was Roland. He looked healthier than he had even a week ago. He recovered from injury faster than normal humans seemed to, but he’d been on the brink of death during their last battle, so it had taken time for him to get back to one hundred percent.

  He greeted them with his customary air of relaxed confidence. “Hi. Did you have visitors recently? There’s a slight…disturbance in the air, you might say.”

  Kurt chimed in first. “Yeah, some edgy kid-witches from Salem tried to start shit because they ran out of enough energy drinks to keep playing Vampire: The Masquerade or whatever. Bailey persuaded them to get lost without the sheriff needing to show up.”

  Bailey nodded.

  Striding to her side, Roland put an arm around her waist. “She’s getting better at that, isn’t she? Did anyone order her a second beer yet?”

  She planted a quick kiss on his lips. “Nah. One’s enough for now. It’s only, what, two in the afternoon. In fact, I could use some lunch. What about you, Seattle Boy?”

  “Sounds great,” the wizard agreed. He looked at her brothers. “Gentlemen?”

  Jacob waved a hand. “Spend some quality time with each other. We’ll wait and have dinner instead.”

  “Fair enough.” Roland tugged gently on his girlfriend’s shirt, and the two of them rounded the corner into the diner wing.

  The three alphas and their lieutenants noticed the pair at once and gave them polite nods of acknowledgment, which Bailey returned. She picked out a small table in the rear interior corner, putting them as far away as possible from anyone who might want to bother them.

  Tomi, on her next round, noticed that they’d come in to eat and approached to take their order.

  Bailey did not bother looking at the menu. “The usual,” she said, m
eaning a steak sandwich. “And coffee for us both.”

  Roland squinted. “You serve breakfast food all day, right? Good. I’ll have the vegetable and cheese omelet.”

  “No problem.” Tomi took the menus away and strode off to send their food order to the kitchen.

  Once they were alone, Bailey extended her foot under the table and placed it atop Roland’s. “Y’know, we oughta take vacations more often,” she observed.

  He smiled. “I’ll agree to that. Sadly, we’re a bit busy these days, but this too shall pass. Then I say we take an even longer road trip to Florida or Maine or something. Or Alaska. Wherever you’d like to go.”

  She tapped her lips with her fork. “I’ll think it over.”

  They talked of other things, enjoying each other’s casual company until their meals arrived. Tomi set the steaming platters in front of them and promised to refill their coffee directly. Once she had, they ate in comfortable silence.

  “So,” Roland began after a moment, prodding his omelet with a fork to release steam and heat from its interior, “while I’ve had all this downtime lately, I’ve been tuning in to the witchy gossip sphere. Paying attention to the chatter that comes down the grapevine, that sort of thing.”

  Bailey hoisted her sandwich and took a bite. “Oh? Anything juicy?”

  “Of course.” He picked up his knife and carved off a chunk of egg, forking it into his mouth and chewing with relish. “After the infamous mass-scrying broadcasts from a couple weeks ago, there was, you might say, a general reevaluation of the entire situation. Especially regarding the subject of you.”

  “Figures,” Bailey remarked. “I’m getting kinda tired of being the center of everyone’s attention. Anonymity has its advantages.”

  “Well,” Roland went on, “mostly it’s positive attention, or at least neutral. You came out looking pretty good to the world at large, including the world of wizardry and witchcraft. The Venatori, by contrast, made asses of themselves. Oh, sure, there are a handful of people out there who assume they were telling the pure and honest truth, and that we were the ones who faked the second broadcast as damage control. But for the most part, I’d say the gamble worked out.”