The Old Witcheroo (25 page)

I was going to focus on a life well lived from today forward.

On that note, setting my coffee on the counter, I decided I needed a little me time. “Well, boys, seeing as we have the day free now, my schedule at the shop is cleared, the weather is amazing, and I have this cute sundress on, I think I’m going to go into Seattle anyway and shop ’til I drop.” I smoothed my hand down over the ruffled skirt of the dress and smiled.

“Do make sure you avoid those thrift shops, would you, Dove? You can surely afford the real thing.”

I rolled my eyes and planted a hand on my hip. “How many times do I have to tell you it’s the hunt and the kill, Win? I’m not going to spend thousands of dollars on a silly dress by some overpriced designer when I can find it for twenty bucks at—”

The doorbell rang, interrupting my ongoing rant about my joy in a good thrift-store find, the loud gong reverberating in the kitchen.

“Oh, yay. Someone’s at the door. I hope it’s someone who wants to rough me up. It’s been almost a week since I had my nose smashed in or I’ve fallen on the pavement and scratched nearly every available inch of skin I own,” I joked, as I made my way to the door with Win and Arkady’s laughter in my ear.

I’d had an intercom installed just this past Monday, and I was going to use it from now on. I pressed the button on the wall and asked, “Who is it?”

“Hardy Clemmons, Miss Cartwright. Got a certified letter for ya.”

Phew. The mailman. I popped open the door and greeted him with a smile. Invigorated by the gentle, cooler breeze. “Hi, Hardy! How are you?”

He held up a letter and smiled. “Fine, just fine. Glad that heat’s passed.” Pointing to the orange card he held, he said, “Just need ya to sign here and we’re good to go.”

I scrawled my name and took the letter. “Thanks, Hardy. See you around!”

Closing the door as I waved, I noted the sender’s name. Davis Monroe, the lawyer who’d drawn up Win’s will.

“Well, I hope that’s confirmation on my fingerprints,” Win drawled.

Making my way back out to the kitchen, I asked, “You want me to open it and leave you alone to read it?”

“Don’t be a numpty, Dove. What’s mine is yours. I have no wish to hide anything from you. Open away.”

I slipped my finger under the flap of the envelope and ripped it open, pulling out the letter and shaking the creases out.

As I read the letter from Davis, my stomach somersaulted. I bit the inside of my cheek. Oh, gravy…

“Well, what does it bloody say, Dove?”

“Stuff,” I answered vaguely.

Not good stuff. Or maybe just stuff Win didn’t know about…or that he’d even
want
to know about…

He sighed in exasperation. “What
stuff
, Stephania?”

“You sure you want to know?”

“Stevie! Tell me what it says!” he balked.

“Okay, hold on to your stiff British upper lip. It says that you, Crispin Alistair Winterbottom, are in fact related to Fakebottom.”

“Well, how is that even remotely possible? Has that doddering old codger Davis finally gone off his rocker?” he spat in very obvious disgust.

I winced; there really was no delicate way to put this. So I was just going to tell him what I’d read. “Um, according to this letter, you’re adopted—and Fakebottom, whose real name is Balthazar Darvil, is your twin.”

(Now, now, don’t hate me! Please? On that note, I do hope you’ll come back and join Stevie, Win, Bel, Whiskey, and Arkady, too, and find out what the heck is going on with Win’s alleged twin and his suspicious birthright for yet another adventure in
The Witch Who Stole Christmas
—coming in November 2016!)

A Paris, Texas Romance, Book 1

Dakota Cassidy

“
I
’m warning you, Winnifred Foster. If you say or do anything today that sends our asses back to the pokey, I’ll zap you bald and give you a cold sore that makes you look like you have three lips,” her best friend Zelda groused as she futilely tried to snatch a pair of scissors from Winnie’s hand to prevent her from giving herself bangs.

Winnie hopped on the sagging mattress of her cot, looking down at her partner in crimes of abusive witch magic and current cellmate in witch jail with an accusatory glance.

She held the scissors up in the air. “I’m sorry,
me
? As in
moi
? If I say anything? Er, wasn’t it
you
who told Baba Blah-Blah she was wearing the wrong color leg warmers for that wart on her nose? Or was I just imagining things?”

Zelda swiped for the scissors again. “It’s Baba Yaga
,”
she corrected, reminding Winnie she’d purposely twisted their jailor’s name out of spite, and it was one of the reasons they were in magic jail to begin with. “You’d better get that right at Council so we appear respectful.”

“Call her whatever you like, Z, but
you
insulted her, not me. I love you, and while I totally agreed with your fashion assessment, and she did look hideous, I bet pointing out Baba DooDah’s flaws aren’t going to win us favor at Council today. She’s an elephant, my friend. She remembers everything.”

She hopped back off the cot when Zelda stopped trying to make a grab for the scissors. She was worried. They were up for review for parole today and she didn’t want anything screwing that up. She wanted out of this rank-smelling cell with its gray concrete walls and equally gray sheets.

She wanted to go to parties and laugh and drink champagne like they used to.

Drown herself in luxury and forget Ben…

Their cell was barren of any modern conveniences, especially those they could perform magic with—like mirrors. Locked up in Salem, Massachusetts, like serial killers in an old hotel built in the early 1900s that had been converted to a jail for witches.

Cellblock D was designated for witches who abused their magic as easily as they changed their underwear. Witches like her and Zelda.

It wasn’t hardcore like Cellblock X. That was a nightmare of mastermind witch criminals who didn’t just whip up a stack of money to spend at Neiman Marcus like she and Zelda were known to do—but real freaks who’d put the A in apocalyptic Armageddon.

From the outside, the hotel was glamoured to look like a charming bed-and-breakfast, complete with climbing ivy and flowers growing out of every conceivable nook and cranny. Inside it was barren, cold and ugly, and guarded heavily with magic, keeping all mortals at bay.

At the moment, it was just the two of them in Cellblock D. Just Winnie and Zelda and the humor-free staff of older-than-dirt witches and warlocks guarding them.

Zelda made a face, running a hand through her gorgeous red curls. “So, for the sake of our parole, let’s hope Baba Lamadingdong remembers our good behavior. Like the time you taught Big Sue Moses how to make eye shadow out of baby oil and cigarette ashes. Or when I selflessly gave Chi-Chi Gonzalez my extra Kotex pads so she could make some slippers for those Sasquatch-like feet of hers.”

Winnie smiled at her despite her worry about their sentencing. They’d tried. “We made the best out of our stay, didn’t we?”

Zelda twirled a long curl of hair around her finger as though she wasn’t worried, but her next question was riddled with concern. “Do you think we’ll get parole today?”

Winnie avoided the question—one she’d been avoiding since they found out they were next up on the chopping block. She didn’t even want to consider not getting out of this hell today.

Instead, she pulled her bangs forward again, and murmured, “Look at my hair. It’s touching my nose, Zelda. My
nose
. I can’t be seen like this if we get out. I’ll just do a little.”

Zelda rolled her eyes. “Winnifred, you’ve never done anything a little. Remember the last time you cut your bangs?”

Winnie winced and mumbled into her collarbone. Okay. Sometimes when she was angry, things happened. “That was years ago. They rebuilt the building, and no one was hurt.”

“Fine,” she snapped. “Cut your bangs, but don’t come crying to me when you look like the dude from
Dumb and Dumber
.”

It was her nerves. She knew it was her nerves, but she couldn’t help herself. “You know what?” Winnie shouted, brandishing the shears under Zelda’s nose. “We’re in jail because of you! I wouldn’t have had to teach that beast Big Sue anything if not for you. And we’d have Kotex pads for days because guess what? We wouldn’t be in jail having to share anything if not for you!”

Zelda planted her hands on her hips. “Um, no. We’re in here because of
you
.”

Winnie’s mouth fell open. “No. It was definitely you.”

“You.”

“Nope, you.”

“Oh, my goddess!” Zelda yelled. “I didn’t sleep with Baba Yaga’s precious nephew. That was you!”

Oh the guilt. And the heartache. But she wasn’t going to tell Zelda how much it still hurt to think about Baba’s nephew Ben.

She’d call her an idiot. And she’d be right.

So she shot Zelda a coy look and batted her eyelashes to hide the hurt. “First of all, we didn’t sleep. We did plenty of things, but shuteye never came into play. And it was amazing. Probably the most amazing sex I’ve ever had. Second of all, how the hell was I supposed to know he was Baba’s nephew?”

Zelda’s eyes went wide with disbelief. “Um, well, let me see…did the fact that the man’s name was Benny Yaga not ring any fucking bells?”

“He prefers Ben and he used Yagamawitz—not Yaga,” Winnie defended, though he didn’t deserve defending.

But she still wasn’t sure if Ben
not
changing his last name to avoid the notoriety attached to the name Baba Yaga, the most powerful witch in the world, would have stopped her from falling for him.

Zelda nodded, her fiery hair falling around her shoulders. “And with good reason. Who’d willingly admit that throwback-to-the-eighties of a beast was related to them?”

Baba Yaga loved anything that had to do with the eighties—loved it so much, she piped in
Take on Me
through the prison speakers as their wakeup call every morning at six sharp.

But Winnie wasn’t the only one responsible for getting them locked up, and she was happy to remind Zelda. “Well, you ran over your familiar. On purpose,” she accused, combing her bangs forward again in preparation for blast off.

“I did not run over that mangy bastard cat on purpose. The little assmonkey stepped under my wheel.”

Winnie let one eyebrow lift in that way she did when she was making a point. In the way she knew would make Zelda crazy. “Three times?” she inquired politely, batting her eyelashes again.

Zelda clamped her lips shut for a moment then conceded, “Fine. We’re both here because we screwed up. But I still think nine months was harsh for killing a revolting cat and screwing an idiot.”

Winnie’s gaze became distant and thoughtful. The way it always did when that night with Ben Yaga was mentioned. “He wasn’t an idiot…but I agree. We’re both guilty,” she replied as she went for the first snip.

Zelda held her breath and blew it out when Winnie put the scissors down and changed her mind with a shrug of her shoulders. “I really need a mirror.”

“In an hour you’ll have one, unless we do something stupid,” Zelda soothed.

Without warning, the magic level in the B&B changed drastically—the stench of centuries-old magic drifted to Winnie’s nose. She grabbed Zelda’s arm, her eyes wide.

“Do you smell it?” Zelda whispered, her eyes alert.

Winnie wrinkled her nose, looking around their cell. “I do.”

“Old lady crouch.”

“Old lady
what
?” Winnie bit down on her lip. Hard. “If you make me laugh, I will smite your sorry ass when we get out of here. What the hell is old lady crouch?”

Zelda’s grin threatened to split her face. Her fear of incarceration was clearly outweighed by her need to make Winnie laugh.

They needed to laugh again. Like they used to before they were subjected to soap-on-a-rope and thicker-than-cement bland oatmeal for breakfast.

“You know, the smell when you go to the bathroom at the country club…powdery old lady crouch.”

“Oh my hell, Zelda.” She giggled and punched Zelda in the arm. “Now I’ll never get that shit out of my head.”

“Only a lobotomy can erase that one,” she said proudly, knowing full well it would take at the very least a lobotomy to rid her of the visual.

“Well, well, well,” a nasally voice cooed from beyond the bars of their cell. “If it isn’t the problem children.”

Enter one of their jailors. The one and only Baba Yaga.

She had to be at least three hundred if she was a day, but witches aged slowly—so she really only looked thirty-five-ish. The more powerful you were, the slower you aged.

And Baba was powerful, beautiful even with a wart on her nose, and had appalling taste in clothes.

She was dressed right out of the movie
Flash Dance
, complete with the ripped sweatshirt, leggings, and headband. It was all Winnie could do not to clang a cup against the bars and demand to see the Fashion Police.