by ERIN BEDFORD
Witch You Were Here
Erin Bedford
Witch You Were Here © 2018 Embrace the Fantasy Publishing, LLC
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also by Erin Bedford
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Thank You for Reading!
Also by Erin Bedford
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Also by Erin Bedford
The Underground Series
Chasing Rabbits
Chasing Cats
Chasing Princes
Chasing Shadows
Chasing Hearts
The Crimes of Alice
The Mary Wiles Chronicles
Marked by Hell
Bound by Hell
Deceived by Hell
Tempted by Hell
Starcrossed Dragons
Riding Lightning
Grinding Frost
Swallowing Fire
Pounding Earth
The Celestial War Chronicles
Song of Blood and Fire
The Crimson Fold
Until Midnight
Until Dawn
Until Sunset
Until Twilight
Curse of the Fairy Tales
Rapunzel Untamed
Rapunzel Unveiled
Her Angels
Heaven’s Embrace
Heaven’s A Beach
Heaven’s Most Wanted
Academy of Witches
Witching On A Star
As You Witch
Witch You Were Here
My Gingerbread Ever After
Granting Her Wish
Vampire CEO
Chapter 1
I peeked my head out of the curtains at the head of the grand staircase opening into my grandmother's ballroom. Magical instruments played a melodic tune as the ballroom swarmed with people. Everyone and their mothers had shown up for my coming out party. My grandmother really came through with the whole Mancaster prestige. Everyone who is anyone would come to a Mancaster party, no matter the scandal around the heir.
I wrung my hands in front of me, my hands hot and sweaty in my elbow length white gloves. They matched the atrocity of a dress my grandmother insisted was in style for these kinds of things. It was a long ballgown with so many ruffles that a swan must have died to make it. Thankfully, it was long enough to hide the fact that I had secretly swapped out my heels for tennis shoes. The thought of my grandmother finding out brought a secret little smile to my face.
"What's that face about?" Dale whispered in my ear, grabbing my hand and turning me in a spin.
I giggled and pressed my hand to the front of his suit. "Wouldn't you like to know?" I murmured, pressing up on my toes to press my lips to his in a chaste kiss.
"I know I would."
Pulling slightly away from Dale's mouth, I glanced over at Ian who looked just the right amount of debonair to go with his bad boy persona. Before I could say Bob's your uncle, I was whipped out of Dale's arms and into Ian's. He didn't bother with propriety but engulfed my mouth like he was dying of thirst, and I had the only elixir to quench it inside my mouth.
A throat cleared, and I pushed myself away from Ian with a more than heated grin. Aidan stood tall behind Ian, a warning look on his face. What he was warning me about, I didn't know, but it wasn't good for a seer to have any kind of expression that meant trouble.
"How could you do this to me, Max?" A low rumbling growl came with the outraged question. I spun around to find Paul dressed to the nines and a more than feral look on his face.
"What did I do?" My voice came out trembling and breathless, far less secure in myself than I had ever been before.
"I thought we meant something," Paul snarled, jerking his hand toward the others. "But here you are, not long after we made love, still spreading your legs for anyone who will have you."
Okay, now I was mad.
Before I could let out all my rage on Paul, the curtains that separated us from the ballroom and the hundreds of guests my grandmother invited opened. Silence, pure silence. I slowly turned around to see the whole room staring up at us. Then the laughing started. Fingers pointed at us, and people were covering their children's eyes, averting them away from us.
I looked around, trying to figure out what exactly it was they were laughing at but couldn't find it. Everyone's clothes were on. No one was in their underwear.
"Dear god, child." My grandmother appeared out of nowhere, grabbing me by the arm. "At least pretend you're a real witch and cover up that atrocious nose."
"Nose?"
"Don't listen to her." Dale wrapped an arm around my shoulders. "I think it's a great nose. Really brings out your eyes."
Not at all comforted by Dale's words, my eyes shot to the middle of my face. My nose had grown three inches and turned frog green with warts and all.
The scream I let out could wake the dead and, in this case, me. I shot up out of my bed quickly and right into someone else's head.
"Fuck!" my victim and I both cried out at once. I rubbed my forehead and blinked my eyes, forcing myself to wake up.
Pale yellow walls stared back at me. Trina's mess of a desk sat on the other side of the room as well as her unmade bed, and the bed I was laying in was most certainly my own. I was not my grandmother's ballroom which I also didn't even know if she had.
"You know, I always dreamed of making you scream out obscenities in bed, but I didn't dream it involved so much pain." Dale grimaced, pulling his glasses off his face to clean them with his shirt before putting them back on.
"Sorry," I winced, smoothing the covers around my hips. "Bad dream."
"Sounds like it." Dale chuckled, reached a hand out, and placed it on top of mine, rubbing his fingers along the top. "Want to tell me about it?"
"Not really." I squeezed his hands and then added, "Just tell me, does my nose look normal to you?" I wrinkled it and turned my head this way and that as Dale scrutinized my face like a good boyfriend would.
"Besides being a bit red, it looks perfectly cute as usual." He gave me a full toothy grin that, with his shaggy reddish-brown hair, made him look more mischievous than the boy next door. Add that to his intellect and those delicious abs hiding underneath his button-down shirt and pocket protectors, and you had a recipe for one stimulating guy.
"You're so sweet, I could eat you up."
I leaned forward, my hand sneaking into his hair to pull his lips down to mine. My tongue snaked out to wrap around his as I urged him to lay down with me. When he resisted, I frowned against his lips.
Pulling away from me, Dale chuckled darkly. "While I would love nothing more than to soothe away whatever has you stressed, I have to get to class. Finals, you know."
I groaned and collapsed onto the bed, pulling the covers up and over my head. "Don't remind me."
Laughing at my antics, I felt the bed shift signaling Dale's standing up. "I take it you're not ready?"
I pouted and slowly lowered the blanket. "I spent a week or so planning my booth for the fair and making my potion for class. Then I ended up in the infirmary for the weekend because I quite literally burnt myself out. Tell me when I had time to study for anything else?" I ran a hand through my blonde hair which no doubt looked like the worst case of bed head in the history of bed heads. I mean, the Bride of Frankenstein had better hair than me right now.
"Well, if you paid enough attention in class, you shouldn't need to study right?" Dale crossed his delicious biceps over each other and clucked his tongue at me. Who said you couldn't be smart and buff?
"Well, I don't know. I might need a study buddy." I batted my eyelashes at him, suddenly more interested in getting him back into the bed than whether I was prepared for taking tests.
Dale snorted and dropped his arms. Leaning over me but not falling for my charms, he pressed his lips to mine in a quick kiss. "How about you pass all your tests and I'll make you scream for real?"
Trailing my fingers along his jawline, I shivered. "And if I don't?"
Smirking, Dale crept a hand beneath my covers, placing it on the inside of my thigh. "I'll still make you scream, but you'll have to work for it a little."
His hand inched up the inside of my pajama shorts and traced the line of my panties before he withdrew it. Laughing at my pout, he kissed the top of my head and started for the door.
"Tease," I called after him which only made him laugh more. Collapsing back onto my bed, I closed my eyes briefly. I tried to think of other things than having Dale's long fingers touching my skin, his mischievous mouth kissing me, or what exactly he meant by making me scream.
Okay, that was not working. Think of something else.
School. My mom. My grandmother. Yes, that's it. I could already feel the hormones in my blood killing themselves off at the very thought of her.
It really was no surprise why I was having bad dreams. I was stressed beyond my limits. Not only because of the recent financial crisis that almost got me kicked out of school which I thankfully took care of but also because of my grandmother breathing down my neck. You'd think the only thing that was bogging me down was finals, but I could only wish finals lasted through the summer and kept me from my impending doom.
This time last year, I was planning my dorm room color scheme with my best friend, Callie. That was until my world turned upside down and I found out I was a witch. Of course, I couldn't just be any witch. I had to come from a long line of high-society Mancasters, and my mother was the black sheep in the family who dared to marry a human.
You'd think I would get a pass for not knowing who they were for the last 18 years but no. My grandmother, Mrs. Mancaster, expected me to be a right and proper witch, one of the high society and pinkie finger lifting variety. Well, I had to say too damn bad. I might have traded my soul to the she-devil, but if she thought I was going to roll over and let her run my life from now on, she had another thing coming.
Starting with the coming out party.
Jumping out of bed, I went through the motions of putting my clothes on, a pleated blue skirt and a white V-neck top, matched with the very tennis shoes I had secretly worn in my dream. After I was presentable, I worked on taming my rat nest of hair. Thankfully, my roommate and quickly becoming best friend, Trina had already left for the day. Her bad habit of waking at dawn to go for a run, something that would break our friendship if she ever asked me to come, allowed me to create my own morning routine.
Now, by routine, I meant that I usually hit snooze five times, jump out of bed because I was late, and then put on whatever clothes I had closest before high tailing it to class. However, today, I could take my time. Dale's wake-up call or rather my dream had put me at just shy of seven o'clock, and I still had until nine to get to class.
I didn't have to wonder how he got into my room. I'd given him a key recently, to all the guys actually, in light of my recent knockout. They took turns checking up on me to make sure I didn't fall into a coma I'd never wake up from. Almost like Snow White but without the evil queen with an apple. Well, maybe Sabrina would be the evil queen, but I sure as hell wouldn't ever eat anything she offered me.
I didn't bother grabbing my books because today was finals, and the only thing I would need was me and whatever was left of my working brain. I headed out of my dorm room and toward the cafeteria.
I pulled my phone out and started typing in ideas, entertaining myself on the way to lunch. Snow White and her four wizards. Hmm. Witchy White and her four wizards? Surely someone has made this story before? A quick internet search had me on an embarrassing porn site that I quickly closed, my face as red as a beet.
I stopped before the cafeteria, waving a hand at my face. I so was not going in there all worked up like this. When I trusted my face to cooperate, I entered the cafeteria.
Glancing around, I noticed I wasn't the only one getting an early start on the day. The line that I usually never got a chance to see but heard at lengths about from Trina and friends wasn't practically nonexistent, as the majority of the students had already gotten through and were already eating.
I grabbed a yogurt and a juice before paying the half-awake lady behind the counter. Turning back to the room, I searched for somewhere to sit. I didn't have to search long before I noticed an arm waving me down like an inflatable tube guy. Following the arm down to the person, I was surprised to see it was Monica waving at me.
Confused but not going to turn down an open seat, I headed toward her table. Sitting down, I gave Monica and Libby sitting beside her a hesitant smile. "What, no Sabrina today? Did they call her back to the mothership finally?"
Monica flipped her bouncy brown hair over her shoulder and laughed. Glancing over at Libby, she said, "She's funny, isn't she funny, Libby?"
Libby gave me a wide-eyed look, smiling politely, and then shook her head. "No, I don't get it."
"She means aliens," Monica tried to explain. "Sabrina is an alien who got called to her spaceship."
"Oh." Libby nodded her head like she had known all along before going back to the orange on her plate.
I wanted to like Libby for Trina's sake, but the girl was as smart as a box of rocks. I hoped all that Trina said about her was true and she was getting more out of the blonde than her big breasts. Though, in perspective, that was probably a good enough reason to date her too.
"So..." I clicked my teeth, dipping my spoon in and out of my yogurt cup. "What's going on?"
Monica beamed at me like I had just asked her if she wanted a cookie. "So, I heard a certain someone is having a coming out party."
My shoulders slumped. "Oh. Yeah." I waved a hand in the air. "You know, that's something my grandmother really wants to do."
"And you should!" Monica interrupted, reaching a hand over to touch my arm. "Having a coming out party shows you are trying to fit in with our world, not just biding your time to jump back in with the humans."
My brows furrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Monica's smile slipped, and the sympathetic one she gave me was not encouraging. "Well, some people, not me—"
"Or me." Libby piped in. I didn't even realize she had been listening.
"... have been saying that you're just looking to make it so that your human friends can come and go as they please. Not that I care, humans are just great and everything, but some folks think you care more about humans than you
r own people."
Monica glanced to Libby and then back to me, a bit of distress in her eyes. "Keeping your dad's last name and refusing to use your legacy? That's a downright insult to the magical community, don't you think, Libby?"
Libby bobbed her head. "So not cool."
"Oh, well." I pinched my lips into a smile. "While I appreciate your concern, I'm not just a witch but a human as well. I can't just ignore one side and focus completely on the other. I did give up Brown to go to this school, didn't I?"
If anything, the smile Monica gave me before ratcheted up a notch. "Oh, of course. I know what you mean. I just wanted to let you know in case anyone decides you're not Mancaster enough to come to your coming out party. I mean, wouldn't that just be the most embarrassing thing?" She placed a hand to her chest and laughed, bumping Libby's arm when she didn't join in right away.
"Well, thank you for the heads up," - I stood and picked up my still full yogurt and juice - "but I have finals to get ready for. I'll see you later."
"Bye," Libby called out followed by Monica's sardonic, "Talk to you later!"
It was no wonder I had bad dreams.
Chapter 2
I wished all my classes would have their finals on the same day. That way I could just get them all over with at once, rather than going to a few today and then sweating through the night over the others. Thankfully, one of the classes I had to face today was Etiquette of Magic, which had become one of my favorite classes.
"Unlike, your other classes, this semester’s final will be a debate." Professor Morison announced, and the entirety of the class groaned in unison. "I know, speaking to each other is the last thing you want to do, but Etiquette of Magic is exactly that. About how you represent yourself to others magically and organically."
When Professor Morison’s droning, robotic voice only earned him more huffs of annoyance, he continued as if he hadn't heard them. "Now, class, I want you to think of this not as something you have to do for a grade but as a test of what you might have to face in real life." A small smile came to my lips as I watched him effectively destroy any interest any of the female body had for him and put half the class to sleep.