Page 4 of Warlocks Don't Win
I gave him a sweet smile that went with my lemon and pink stripes. “How interesting. I didn’t know that newt claw powder was good for anything other than scent neutralizing. Did they have a big stink to clean up?”
He shrugged. “They didn’t say.”
I leaned closer. “What else did they buy out?” I compelled him just a tad to forget about customer privacy. He’d eaten my sausage rolls, so it wasn’t difficult.
“Queen Dill, paperwort, and belladonna. It’s an odd combination, particularly when combined with the newt.”
“I’ll take two bottles of the neutralizer,” I said absently while my brain compiled those ingredients in a dozen ways, coming to the conclusion that someone was up to very no good. Either they were crafting a compulsion spell with an aftertaste of forgetting, or they were breaking down dead bodies, getting rid of evidence. Probably both. That particular potion and spell combo was inone of the most popular grimoires you could pick up at a run of the mill mystics shop.
This is why it was important, if you were an evil magic user, to have your own private supply of ingredients that couldn’t be monitored by an outside source. Like me. No one did big bad magic in my city, and that was for one very simple reason: I’d end up being blamed for it, particularly now that the Beast of Betrayal knew where I lived. And he’d set me up with the Pet from Purgatory.
When the apothecary got the potions in a bag and handed it over, I covered his hand with mine, doing a quick sweep of his thoughts, pulling out the description of the customer who had bought out all of his newt claw powder. Small, female, with a mousy air of fear. Ah. Parody, who was continually oppressed by her wicked witch of a mother. Father unknown. House in the suburbs.
All of that was in a flash before his thoughts turned to me, thoughts that weren’t any of my business, even if he was thinking that my weirdness grew on you. Thanks, Scandium. I could say the same about your mustache, only it grows on you, not me. Heh.
“Thanks. I’ll see you later,” I said, pushing through the witches who nodded at me.
“See you at the circle on Thursday,” one of the guys called.
I nodded back, and then I was pulling out my phone and trying to figure out the bus schedule that would take me out to the ‘burbs.
After forty-five minutes of switching buses, I got to walk a mile and a half through a maze of soulless mega houses with humidity that sucked the life out of me. At least I’d started the day not having any pride of appearance, so when I was a limp dishrag of dismal hue, my pride was intact. Or it hadn’t ever recovered from the loser’s treachery. It was dumb and immatureto call someone a loser when he had his own tv show, basically ran all the witches and warlocks on this continent, as well as being personally the most swoony poster-fodder in existence. Yep. Loser.
When I got to the house, I squinted at it, searching for any aural vestiges of violence or other negative vibes. The whole thing was a negative vibe. There was this overarching feeling of exhaustion mixed with frustrated violence. Yep. That matched Parody.
I took a deep breath and then walked up the front sidewalk, noticing the sad lack of organic life in the dull, immaculate lawn. There was a flicker of a curtain in the window so they had alarm wards set up on the perimeter. I fixed my most polite smile on my face and wished I’d brought some sausage rolls. I wanted to munch on something in the face of so much depression, oppression, bringing me back to my own awesome childhood.
Our house had been much larger, older, with its own spirit of creepy dread. But at least it hadn’t been depressed. Deranged, yes. Oppressive, of course. But not depressed. We must be grateful for the lessons that turned me into a capable heir of the great Sage dynasty. We must smile in the face of fear and torture.
I let my smile fade and knocked on the door. It took a few seconds for it to open, but not as long as I’d expected. Parody stared out at me while the scent of potions and fresh death curled around her. I was too late. She’d already done her worst and looked more alive than she had in years, brown eyes bright and shining, brown hair lustrous instead of limp. She’d drawn in the life force of her mother then.
“Hey, Par, I got a flat tire a few blocks away and remembered that you lived out here, you know, because I’ve dropped you off a few times from the circle when you weren’t feeling well. You look fine now. Just…” I trailed off when I glanced down and happened to see the bloody handprint on her wrist.
She looked down, saw what I saw, and then the psycho witch switch flipped, and she was summoning all the evil energy she’d absorbed from her mother to do a death spell or something else ridiculous from that generic grimoire she really shouldn’t have used.
I kicked her knee out, hard with my pointy floral boot, sending her into the wall and throwing off her casting.
“The thing is,” I said, following her inside and closing the door behind me. “That these feelings of rage and vengeance will only eat you up inside if you don’t find something productive to do with them.”
She snarled at me. “You don’t know what it’s like.” Then she tried to cast another spell, like she didn’t learn from the last time.
I punched her in the face, perfect fist, exactly how Winston the Warlock had shown me so many years ago. Thinking about him made me hit her harder than I needed to. She went down, but came up, clawing.
Which meant that she was in touching distance. Touching when I was the heir of the great Sage Dynasty.
She’d devoured her mother’s soul and murdered her, so taking her magic wouldn’t take out the killer in her. Too bad. I stole her life and energy, but not her magic, leaving her limp in my hands until I dragged her to the living room and put her in a purple recliner.
I winced as I touched my cheek. She’d scratched me more than I’d like. I peered into my reflection in the elaborately framed mirror over the mantel to check the marks. A slight haze in the area behind my left shoulder had me swinging around, grabbing the poker as I moved.
“Show yourself,” I commanded. Yes, obey the decree of the lemon-pantsed poker wielder.
After a moment’s pause, the air shimmered and I was left staring into the face of the most diabolically evil, twisted, disgusting, vile, horrible monster in the entire world. And there was a dead body in the house, like he’d just been waiting to pin another murder on me. Winston the Warlock was going to send me to jail again.
Chapter
Three
Ithrew the poker at him and ran.
