Page 7 of Warlocks Don't Win
“Nnyumbins, loosr.”
“No, it’s none of my business unless it involves breaking my grandmother’s curse.”
I swallowed and said, “About that, why are you still here? I can handle driving northeast to the old monster and ending the curse by myself.”
“You’ve been playing with untalented witches for years. Back home, everyone has been playing the diabolical games that come with the Salem territory. They’re not allied with my coalition any more than your coven, but you know how they are. Any one of them would have been happy to murder your mother. I wouldn’t think any of them would be capable of it, but someone was and did.”
“Yeah, you’re talking to her, but I didn’t curse your grandmother.”
He raised a brow and then moved my suitcases around somehow making them all flatter and less likely to fall out of the back. “They could be entirely unrelated. But the curse does originate from Sage House.”
I sniffed. “You’re still not making an argument for us driving together. You should take your private jet, broom, or whatever.”
“Or we could drive together and come up with a game plan on the way.”
“Game plan? Like you’re a football player or something?” I wrinkled my nose at him. Jessica and I had done spells on them to see who could get control of them the fastest. I won that game, along with a stalker. It was a stupid game.
“I have played football. Also soccer. Also rugby. I’m a sporty guy.”
I glanced at the breadth of his shoulders and sniffed dismissively. Warlocks were supposed to be strong, of the woods, and capable of physical pursuits like chopping firewood and tilling a garden bed, but not group sports.
“You’re a disappointment to warlocks everywhere.”
“Particularly the one right here.” He shot me a meaningful look that I pointedly ignored.
“If you flirt with me, I’m throwing you out of my truck.”
“I’m not flirting.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
My truck didn’t like having a large, nice-smelling warlock in it. He smelled like fresh cedar wood shavings and a hint of something sweet, nectar with a touch of lilac or jasmine, but not enough that I could really pin down what it was. Aggravating is what it was. And his hands were so large, tan, capable, like he should have an enormous axe handle he could wrap them around.
“So, the plan…” I started after I’d made my way out of downtown and was pulling onto the highway that went over the golden wall and the river, east.
“You’ll have to rejoin the Salem coven, take control of it, and end the reign of terror.”
I shot him a look. “I don’t have to do anything. And there’s no way in heaven or Salem that I’m rejoining that nest of vipers. You should just get together a townspeople mob and burn them out.”
“That does sound civilized.”
I gave him a slight smile. “Then I could build a house on the ashes, like great, great, great, great, great, great-grandmother Sage did on the old Salem burning site.”
“So civilized. If you don’t join the coven, how will you uncover the originator of the curse?”
“I’m not. I’m going to break the curse from my house, if it really was set there, and then go back home.”
His shoulders stiffened, not that I was paying attention to his shoulders. “It’s your home, a place of great power, but you’re just going to run away again? And what’s going to stop someone from putting a curse on you next?”
I shot him a frown. “It’s not my home, just a house I inherited but can’t sell. In other words, a burden. You think that going back permanently is something I’m willing to do? For what purpose? How could that possibly benefit me?”
He grunted instead of arguing. Interesting. He could persuade practically anyone to do almost anything. But he wasn’t trying with me. Probably was waiting for my defenses to lower. But why would he want me to go back home, a township away from his own center of power in Bosty? Not that he didn’t have another base on the other side of the country, but this was his heritage. Where his grandmother still lived, waning, even when she wasn’t cursed.
I frowned as my hands tightened the hold on the old, cracked, white, vinyl-covered steering wheel. I’d lived for her letters for five, very long years. And now she was cursed? “Explain more about the curse. How is she holding up? When did she notice it? How long has it been in effect?”
“Moridia fleur.”
I flinched. That curse was hard to notice at first because it started feeding the victim energy into an exterior show of health and vitality, which strength once lapsed would reveal the extent of the damage that had been quietly done by the curse.
