Page 36 of Warlocks Don't Win
“Do you think it was Tabitha, taking advantage of my mother’s death to grab as much power as possible?” I asked, trying not to feel the death personally. At the time, the idea of Tabitha being strong enough to control the coven was absurd. No one would have expected it, but there she was, manipulating the coven like she was born to it.
“What happened to the investigation?” Winston asked. “Let me guess. The case was closed without any further fuss, certainly without naming your murderer.” His voice was a low rumble, and his hand ran down my back in an entirely unnecessary way, so a ripple of shivers followed his touch. And I was sitting on his lap. In public.
“Winston, if you don’t put me on my own seat, I’m going to turn you into a toad.” Enough was enough, and I couldn’t take any more. I was going to bite him, or kiss him. Flimsy glamours weren’t gonna cover the end of this story.
He raised a brow, looking down at my mouth. “Would you kiss me as a toad? Because if so, I’d say please do. Other than the fact that transfiguration into that particular animal is next to impossible.”
Jessica snorted. “Tell that to Evan.”
I flinched. “Don’t you dare.” My memories of the first football player I’d ever seduced into becoming my stalker were not happy ones.
“What?” Winston raised a brow, looking into my eyes that time. “You’ve managed to transfigure someone into a toad?”
“At eighteen,” she said, the traitor.
I glowered at her. “If you don’t stop talking, I’m going to turn you into a toad.”
She rolled her eyes. “We’re all toads. And then what?”
Nightmare. That’s what. I turned my scowl on Winston. “Put me down.”
He hesitated, looking at me with sharp curiosity. He slowly shifted, until I was in my own seat between him and Jessica and he was back in his. It felt so hard and cold and alone. That’s how pride always felt. Gloriously alone.
It was miraculously quiet for the rest of the trip. I spent it thinking about toads, Evan, and how idiotic I’d been. I was a senior in high school, and I wanted to experiment with my true magic, the succubus line my mother didn’t hide very well. Or at all. She made it look easy: seduce a ne’er do well, charge full of magic, and bury his bones in the cemetery. Evan was a ne’er do well if ever there was one. Wealthy, handsome, but still targeted girls who didn’t want him, because everyone was supposed to want the golden boy.
It was too easy to seduce him, to drain the life out of him, but I couldn’t kill him. Instead, I wiped his memories and sent him on his way. He was a horrible person who had definitely deserved to die, but I couldn’t do it.
After that, his obsession built over time, starting with long stares from the distance, moving to notes in my locker, and then him trying to force himself on me. That’s when I turned him into a toad and ran away to stay in Apple City with someof my friends. I’d met Winston and was firmly against sucking life and magic out of anyone ever again. Winston was wealthy, handsome, but also things Evan couldn’t begin to comprehend. I had a hard time understanding justice, mercy, charity, and forgiveness, but I’d tried. I read books on morality in the library. Such exciting new ideas. I couldn’t be my mother, so I’d be something else instead.
Winston made goodness look easy. Being with him was the easiest thing of all.
And then the toad found me all the way in Apple City. In my bed. Waking up to a toad trying to have its way with me was quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen to me. Including jail. Jail was far, far better. No toads got through those thick walls.
And he could talk. Such a nasty mouth on that toad. I managed to paralyze him and wrap him up, then took him back home for my mother to deal with. She’d taken him by his muddy green, squeaky foot and said, “These things happen.”
It was like with the rats all over again. She never got angry at me for doing something magically stupid. Or personally stupid. Or anything at all. Until the last time. She’d been so angry, tried to kill me. I still wasn’t over that.
“Why did you turn someone into a frog?” Winston murmured, not looking precisely at me when we finally pulled into the station.
“It never happened,” I said, shifting to make sure my legs still had feeling in them.
Jessica sniffed. “You should have just killed him. Then you never would have run away to Apple City, met Winston, and began the decline of your happiness.”
“You ran away to Apple City to get away from him?” Winston asked as he stretched his legs out, wincing, also not looking at me.
I never wanted him to know how wicked I was, but then he found me caught directly after my mother’s murder. I wanted to be as good as he was, but we all knew otherwise. I shrugged. “I didn’t think he’d follow me all that way as a toad. I should have crossed a large body of water.”
“He followed you before that?”
I shrank down in the seat, but seriously, I was a convicted murder. “Sure. I tried to suck the life and magic out of him and ended up with a stalker. That’s why you don’t do things halfway. You have to commit to villainy and follow it through, or you’re setting yourself up for failure.”
“That’s the only explanation for your new look,” Jessica said, standing up. “Absolute and utter failure.”
Winston grabbed my hand, his large fingers locking around me. He stared at our hands wrapped together for a moment and then with a flash of heat, the pain in my shoulder dissolved, leaving me slightly numb instead.
I yanked my hand out of his and pushed him into the aisle. “Save your strength for the way door. Also, don’t touch me.”
He smiled slightly and stood, blocking the aisle so I could go in front of him. “I always wondered how you ended up in Apple City. Now I know.”
