That’s what it was—a sore back and shoulders—that roused me from sleep and sent me tooling the few blocks to the closest twenty-four-hour drug store at nearly two in the morning. Or maybe it was the Bow of Destiny, I don’t know.
Either way, I cringed over each bump and around every corner until, by the time I parked Bluebell as close to the entrance as possible, my neck was so rigid I could barely look around. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t notice the classic black Corvette parked three spaces to my right.
Dismounting, I hobbled inside through a whoosh of artificial heat that contrasted so starkly with the cold night air I realized just how close we were to the time when I'd have to park my scooter for the winter. It seemed like only yesterday air conditioning had been the default setting. My life moved so quickly from one worrisome problem to the next lately, the passage of time had become somewhat arbitrary.
Even the rainbow rows of a thousand shades of nail polish couldn’t distract me, and I beelined it for the first aid aisle after catching a glimpse of my mussed hair in one of those miniature funhouse mirrors next to the $5.99 sunglasses. Under normal circumstances, the sight of myself in such a state would have induced a mild panic attack followed by a minor glamour spell to spare the unsuspecting from the hideous sight of me, but I doubted the poor SOB working the night shift would even bat an eyelash at my appearance.
Whoever decided to place the sexual wellness section next to products designed to relieve aches and pains was either a genius or possessed a twisted sense of humor. I barely registered the canoodling couple browsing the display until the man spoke out loud and my heart dropped into the soles of my shoes.
I’d love to say I kept my cool and slowly turned around to unobtrusively glance at him, but when you’re 99.9 percent sure you just heard your boyfriend say something scandalous to another woman, reason goes out the window along with poise and concern for whether you look like a crazy person or not.
“Kin?” My voice trembled so hard I loathed myself.
“Lexi. Hi.” He had the good sense to at least look uncomfortable. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? You’re supposed to be in Chicago for another two days.” I slid my eyes over to his companion and nearly vomited.
Blond, perfectly blown out hair with golden highlights flowed around her lovely face, the tips resting on a bosom that practically burst out of the thin V-necked tee that skimmed the top of her navel. A sparkling pink belly button ring winked at me, and I resisted the urge to grab it and tug. Hard. Apparently, she hadn’t read the memo that winter was coming, and it was now sweater weather.
Kin made no move to introduce me, and the woman’s eyes flicked between us before she made up her mind and held one dainty, manicured hand toward me in greeting.
“I’m Rachel. Nice to meet you. Are you a friend of Kin’s?”
I glared at her fingers with enough contempt to shrivel a grape into a raisin and shoved my hands into the pockets of my coffee-stained hoodie.
“No, I guess not.” My world fell to pieces that littered the nondescript tiles, and no one noticed but me.
Shrugging, she smiled hesitantly up at Kin, who had the nerve to place his hand on the small of her back.
“I was going to call you.” Kin’s eyes were devoid of emotion, and upon the realization of that fact, I began to feel the insistent swell of magic from somewhere deep inside me. Not the kind that turns frogs into princes, either, or even the other way around. This was dark, wicked magic and had I allowed myself to hang around long enough to decide which one of the offending parties to target first, we might have had a ground-zero situation on our hands.
“Don’t bother.” I retorted, mustering up as much composure as I possibly could, turned on my heel and stalked back down the aisle. Adrenaline burned through the pain in my legs, and I broke into a run that had me out the door and straddling Bluebell before the tears began to flow.
And just like that, it was done. My heart was broken, and the man I’d imagined a future with was wrapped around a bleached-blond bimbo who could have been classified as my polar opposite.
There’s not enough chocolate in the world to cure the kind of heartbreak that comes from being disconnected from your soul mate—and I knew Kin was mine. Magically fated, and until this minute, I’d never have doubted our destiny together.
He knew it too—or at least he had, once upon a time. Or six weeks ago. It suddenly seemed more like six years since we’d discussed moving in together and beginning our life. Bile bubbled up to replace the flavor of magic on my tongue, and I was barely able to stop the scooter before puking my guts out behind a bush at the end of my street.
Sweat glistening on my forehead and a foul taste in my mouth, I drove the rest of the way with a numb resignation that covered up a seething mass of desperate pain. How can you die inside and keep on living? That was the question of the night.
I STUMBLED back into the house expecting to slither up to my room and cry myself to sleep but instead walked into another Balefire family tradition: the midnight snack. Or, in this case, the 2:15 AM snack. Had it really only taken a total of twenty minutes for my love life to implode? Or had I been ignoring the signs that Kin and I weren’t fated for each other after all?
Seven pairs of eyes widened as I spilled into the kitchen and began the process of melting down. Gran and Mag, still wearing their traveling cloaks, were knee deep into a half-gallon of butter pecan ice cream. The one tiny part of my brain not shrieking in pain wondered where they’d been at this time of night.
Salem crunched into a turkey and salmon sandwich (yuck), and all of the godmothers had slices of steaming pepperoni pizza in their hands.
“We thought you were upstairs sleeping. What’s happened?” Gran asked, abandoning her spoon to wrap a protective arm around my waist. Terra rushed over to help me into a chair and brushed a stray lock of hair behind my ear in a gesture so filled with motherly love it pushed me over the edge.
“It’s Kin,” I blubbered, followed by a slew of unintelligible gobbledygook pouring out of my mouth. Thankfully, everyone in the room save for Salem spoke hot mess.
“What did that Mackintosh Clark do now?” He asked, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. I don’t think he’d ever forgiven Kin for needing a minute to absorb the fact that I’m a witch and causing me a night of tearful sobs when we'd first begun dating. Or for kicking him out of his favorite kitty bed, the polka-dotted beanbag in my room while we were doing other things than sleeping. Somehow knowing the cat also had manlike qualities gave Kin a case of the squicks.
“He’s bought himself a one-way ticket to Hades, that’s what he’s done.” Vaeta, who had the loosest lips in the bunch, shot back. “I know a nice, dingy nexus we can plop him into.” Of all the faeries, you might expect the fiery Soleil to be the most ruthless when it came to exacting revenge against an enemy, but airy faerie Vaeta had a mile-wide ornery streak. And Kin had just made the top of her list.
If I hadn’t been so full of my own despair, it would have made me smile to know the newest member of the godmother staff cared enough to want to protect me. Was I wicked for contemplating the offer? Or was I just the same as any of the other scorned women who’d been exacting their revenge for centuries? Hurt beyond repair and searching desperately for peace.
“That’s too easy,” Terra spoke through gritted teeth. “I’ll blast him to the nether regions of the Faelands if you’d prefer never to see him again.”
“Now, ladies, there are a million places we could send the boy; but that won’t teach him a lesson. I know a good shrinking spell that’ll shrivel his chances of pleasing another woman for the rest of his life. That’s justice.” Mag’s eyes sparkled at the thought.
Everyone, even Gran, offered suggestions, each one worse than the last, for what sort of punishment to exact upon the man for hurting me. By the time we were done he’d been maimed and cursed a hundred different ways, and I hadn’t been able to hold back a grin at the
thought of him actually sporting a butt for a head.
“You all know we can’t do any of those things, right?” I had to say it, or who knows in what state Kin might wake up tomorrow morning. A case of pus-secreting warts would certainly let him know he messed with the wrong family of witches, but I knew it wouldn’t truly make me feel any better about the situation and the resulting backhand slap for using that kind of magic wouldn’t be worth the price. Probably.
Ask Tommy Walker, who slapped me across the face in ninth grade, how it felt to be on the receiving end of one of the godmothers’ whammies. Though, to be fair, he probably had no clue I had anything to do with him walking around looking like a Garbage Pail Kid for three days. Tommy had only been fifteen; I couldn’t fathom what they were capable of inflicting on a grown man.
“Of course, dear.” Gran answered for the group, “But imagining his demise is part of the healing process. And if you two work things out, we’ll never speak of this conversation again.”
“I don’t think we’re going to work it out, Gran. He’s seeing someone else. And he’s probably thrilled not to have to deal with my brand of crazy anymore.”
Her response included a shrug and a shifty eye, “It never seemed like he minded before.”
Kin never had seemed to care that I was different, save for his initial reaction the night I’d revealed I was a witch. I hadn’t known my father’s identity at the time, nor had I ever even heard the term Fate Weaver. Kin had weathered each storm right along with me—sometimes afraid I’d be harmed during one of my misadventures, but always supportive.
He’d embraced the fact that I was raised by four faeries, and didn’t so much as bat an eyelash when he found out my grandmother was frozen in stone across the street from my house. Heck, the man had dealt with Salem sneaking back into the room and finding his often skyclad form sleeping at the foot of our bed with more understanding than he probably should have.
Perhaps he’d used up all his patience, and the break from our relationship felt like a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like I was going to get the answers to any of my questions; Kin hadn’t even bothered to tell me he was breaking up with me.
Red fury began to flare in the pit of my stomach, rising up to burn away the head and muscle aches, and tinging my cheeks a deep shade of crimson. It must have looked like my head was about to explode because Pyewacket’s eyes widened to the size of saucers and she exchanged a concerned look with my familiar.
“Let it out, Lexi. Or you’ll have bigger problems on your hands. You’ve scarce learned to control your power, and I’ve seen what a broken heart can do to a regular witch.” Salem wagged a nagging finger in my face. “You remember what I told you about my previous charges, don’t you? At least one of them was a woman scorned, and it didn’t turn out well.”
“You never said how she blew herself up! Maybe that should have been part of my briefing packet. Oh, wait, I never got one. Just a reaming for not having Awakened sooner and a metaphorical slap on the wrist.” I knew he’d had bad luck with the witches before me, and was reluctant to elaborate on the specifics. Salem was currently living out his ninth and final life; after me, he wouldn’t come back to serve another witch and loved to remind me that his length of time on this planet was inextricably linked with my own.
“There you go, that’s much better.” Leave it to Salem to poke a pin in the bubble of my wicked magic. If I hadn’t been completely overwhelmed, I would have thanked him.
After that, the room began to feel much smaller than it ever had before, and I extracted myself with as little fanfare as possible and retreated to my rooms on the second floor.
Everywhere I looked there were reminders of Kin: our smiling faces pressed together in the framed photos on my dresser; his sweatshirt slung over my vanity chair; the memories of us snuggled together in my bed watching Netflix on Saturday afternoons. All painful, gut-wrenching blows to my heart and my ego.
I’d never shared as much of myself with anyone as I had with Kin, and I could feel myself toppling on the edge of self-destruction. I could either sit around wondering what was wrong with me, and be the kind of sad woman who pins all of her self-worth on a man, or I could look at the situation objectively.
Regardless of his reasons, Kin owed me more than an offhand breakup—in public, with his new girlfriend watching, no less—and it wasn’t my fault he didn’t man up and approach the situation with sensitivity and respect.
Well, fine. If that’s how he wanted to play it, I’d make it even easier for him. No way was I going to do the walk of shame over to his place and let him watch me pack my things. If it was a clean break he wanted, that’s what he was going to get.
I cast a net around my devastated heart, ignored its frantic struggles, and shoved that mess as far down into my emotional footlocker as it would go. Slamming the lid felt a lot like closing a coffin.
Chapter Five
BEING REPEATEDLY POKED in the arm by someone trying to draw your attention is annoying enough, but when it happens in your head, it’s beyond the pale. The Bow of Destiny lives inside me. Sort of, anyway, it’s complicated. Half the time I’m thrilled to be the carrier of my father’s weapon, the other half, I’m convinced it’s some sort of parasite.
If there were any rhythm to the pattern for when I’d be called to its use, I’d yet to pick up on one. Who tells the bow when to make a match? I’d really like to know because I have a few questions. Like if I’m in the middle of lathering my hair, could it maybe wait a minute? Could I see the schedule ahead of time? I could plan things better with a little advance notice. I’d missed so many meals in the two months since becoming the bow’s official wielder, I’d had to start carrying a bag full of snacks and energy drinks.
And then there was the mounting transportation problem. Scooting around on Bluebell, my new, but still vintage Vespa, in the winter? Ineffective and dangerous. Not all of my headaches are directly related to bow song blasting at odd times.
On the morning after Kin devastated me, I welcomed the distraction and followed the Bow’s call without grumbling overly much. Maybe burying myself in Fate Weaver work would also bury the pain under a mountain of good deeds and that would be enough to keep me from falling apart.
Yeah, I was deluded. Cut me a break; sometimes you do what you have to in order to deal.
Besides, using Kin as an excuse was just that: an excuse. The whole truth was the need to ply my trade was as strong as the need to breathe and would not go ignored. Somewhere there was a couple in need, and I was the woman meant to help them.
That I was wearing polka-dotted pajama pants, winter boots, a ratty sweatshirt under a fur-lined hoodie and hadn’t combed my hair went unnoticed by me, though not by people on the street. My feet seemed to know the way, and I fell into a daze as they carried me forward.
Or maybe into a Fate Weaver dream state.
It’s entirely possible to feel both inconsequential and grandly important at the same time. Not healthy, mind you, but possible. No domino in a standing row is any more important than another until one falls and the whole dynamic changes. I needed to be the catalyst for fate or the hand that chooses which domino to tip and when to create the proper pattern.
If that sounded arrogant, I didn’t mean I thought I was in charge of the world or anything. Just for my little role in the grand design.
Love carries both darkness and light in equal measure—anyone who has ever been dumped would agree—which makes the human heart a critical pivot point in the balance between those two concepts. Turn the world toward hate, and we’ll destroy ourselves as history has shown time and again. Humans weren’t meant to live only in the light, either. Just as we need the light of day, we must have the restful dormancy that comes in the dark of night.
Some little part of me, the bit that wasn’t caught up in contemplating the dual nature of the universe, hooted and jeered that I was no different from anyone else or Kin would still be in my life. I wante
d to punch that part of me in the throat.
All inner conversation stopped when the bow twanged a warning note, and I blinked back to full awareness of my surroundings. More than full awareness, if I’m being technical. Lexi Balefire, romance Jedi, sensed a disturbance in the force.
Hate snaked its tendrils around the couple arguing in front of the window of the bakery where my friend Mona worked, and I felt like an alien as I stood there and watched. I didn’t need to hear the content to know the words formed bitter and pointed missiles intended to wound. My inner Fate Weaver could see them as plain as day.
She could also see the light inside her intended targets. To her, it looked like a bird fluttering against the cage of darkness closing in around it, and she knew she must act before it was too late.
I don’t remember calling the bow carrier, she was just there, arrow fitted to string, arm cocked and taking aim almost before she was fully released from my skin.
Yes. Yes. Do it. I mimicked her motions without thinking what that might look like to passersby. At that point, I barely remembered I had a body, much less any concern for what it was doing. All that existed was the need to fix this. The compulsion took me over. Dragged me under until the arrow sliced the hissing darkness, pierced hearts, and laid the matter to rest.
Anger rolled over me from the outside in. Someone out there was well and truly pissed off. Without taking time to think about it, I cast the leather-clad Goddess in the direction of the blackest emotion I’d ever felt turned my way. Pink-tipped hair flying, she tossed a surprised glance over her shoulder and surrendered her will to mine. It only lasted a matter of seconds before she was back, shaking her head to indicate failure, and then we were one again.
The fight over, I watched the happy couple light up the area around them with joy as they strolled into the bakery. Love spreads love. If you don't believe another word of my story, believe that.
Spell Hath No Fury Page 4