Page 22 of Warlocks Don't Win
I’d be dead if he hadn’t taken it for me.
I shook my head and straightened, clambering up to the back so I could haul the rest of him on. He wasn’t dying today. Or ever if I was the one meant to be killed. How dare he step in the way of that blast so that I couldn’t feel good about rubbing my incarceration in his face? Selfish. That’s what he was.
I scowled down at his face. “Don’t you dare die, Winston! Not unless I’m the one who killed you.” I slammed the gate and jogged to the driver’s side as fast as my aching body would go.
I clearly needed to do weight training. Lots of it. Also more magic training. I’d been lazy the last few years, letting my upbringing of neurotic capability fade into apathetic indifference.
Not anymore. No one got to try and kill me if Winston was going to be playing idiotic hero. It was the television show. It had made him start to think that he really was a ‘good guy’ who would sacrifice himself for the damsel in distress. And that was me. Look at my green and purple striped hair. I’m a true victim of life. Someone save me from clashing!
Also crashing, because as soon as I entered the intersection, I was almost t-boned by a semi. Dude! Why was a semi driving through the middle of Salem? I sat there, heart-pounding, gripping the steering wheel while I waited for the silver gas truck to go through. Headed towards the gas station. He probably wasn’t intentionally there for the sole purpose of trying to kill me. Although I couldn’t be sure.
I stepped on the gas as soon as it was out of the way, peeling around the corner, and headed towards the edge of town, and Sage House.
The gates opened for me without a screech, and the door also opened as soon as I neared the porch. I backed up so far over the porch that I could probably slide him into the foyer once I put down the tailgate.
No sooner had I put down the back when the butler came and grabbed Winston’s legs. He would have hit his head and gotten an extra concussion if I hadn’t lunged and caught his upper body awkwardly.
“Smells like a death curse,” the butler said conversationally.
I hissed at him. “Don’t speak an unbearable truth like that.”
He raised a white brow. “Unbearable? One would think that you weren’t the one killing him.”
“One would. What do you know about animating a golem?”
He raised both brows. “Not much. My magic is more ordinary, numbers and managing money well. Where do you want to take him?” he asked as we crossed the foyer.
I looked up the stairs. The best place would be in the room at the center of the house, which used to be my mother’s bedroom. But we hadn’t made it there yet on the tour, so who knows how lethal it was? Winston didn’t need more lethal in his life. Also, it was at the top of the stairs.
The butler saw where I was looking and started taking his feet that way. Which meant I was left carrying his heavy bones after him. Seriously needed to do weight training after this. Once I recovered. Which would be never. Had the stairs ever been so long?
Hm. I squinted at those stairs.
“Stop it.” I layered threats to the command so the house would know I was serious. This was not the time to play.
The stairs abruptly ended, so the butler stumbled out on the upper hall, pulling me after him. Somehow I didn’t drop Winston, just kept on, towards the bedroom with the large oak door that was closed.
“Open the door,” I ordered. If the house was in good shape, it would have taken Winston out of the truck, through the floors and up to this bed, undressing him as he went so he was ready for my mother’s spells by the time she’d climbed the stairs. Of course, I wasn’t my mother, and I wasn’t going to be doing spells on Winston that made the house, and her, stronger. He wouldn’t end up another pile of bones buried in the backyard.
The door opened slowly, with a loud creak that sent a wave of goosebumps crawling down my spine. We carried him through the cobwebbed bedroom towards the massive four poster beddraped in heavy black silk velvet. Nothing caught dust like silk velvet. Also spiders. The butler dropped one of his legs to part the curtains while I continued forward, practically throwing him on the bed. Good enough.
I sneezed from the enormous cloud of dust that rose with the impact of his body on the mattress. He sank down until he was entirely surrounded by the down.
“Perfect,” I said then sneezed again. Annoying but inevitable. I hurried to the cabinet on the side that had all of her regularly used potions and ingredients. Everything was past full potency, but thanks to the doors, wasn’t dusty.
“What would you have me do, Mistress?” the butler droned.
“Go clean the kitchen and put on some hot water. Thank you.” I flashed him a polite smile.
He flinched and left me to it. Ah. My mother always smiled instead of threatened. It was her most charming trait. I’d forgotten how to rule with a firm grasp on another’s soul.
The first step in stopping the death spell, was to give it another target to kill. Which meant I needed something alive.
“Tolly! Please bring me a nice, live rodent of some kind,” I said as loudly as possible, then continued my prepping, crushing the dried worms and bees to powder. Either my familiar would hear and come, or I’d do a summoning and get one of the creatures out of the riddled walls. The worst was when you did a summoning and they all came. And then started biting your feet and climbing all over you until your mother came to end the summoning and shooed them all away. That was the first time I’d stolen my mother’s grimoire and took it into the basement. Good times.
Whatever happened to my mother’s grimoire? Sometimes they claimed the next heir of the house, and sometimes they disintegrated to dust. Sometimes they just disappeared, comingto light years later in the library or some forgotten corner of the vegetable cellar.
That didn’t matter. I knew this spell as well as I knew beauty spells. I’d helped my mother with ending death curses twice. Once on someone I didn’t know, and once on the butler.
