Page 7 of January Blues
“I asked for you to shake him up. Get him scared. Depressed. January blues, remember? Not for you to bypass that and seduce him. That’s the backup plan.”
“But–”
“No. I want him to hurt first.”
Dead. On my ancestors’ graves, I swore it. I was going to enjoy killing Austin. I’d examine why later.
Office work was boring as fuck. Austin was in a good mood, though I didn’t understand why.
So far, I’d managed to distract Cody so badly that he’d spilled coffee on himself in a meeting. It should have made him look clumsy and incompetent, but the client leaped to help Cody and they bonded over accidents they had and left friends at the end of the meeting. Austin must have missed the flirting between them, because he seemed to think that was a win.
I’d also broken the copier, but made it look like Cody had. He’d returned to the conference room with black finger marks down his coffee stained shirt, looking far too endearing for words. He’d laughed it off and charmed a colleague into fixing it for him.
When the files had gotten mixed up, he barely looked flustered. He hadn’t needed them to finish his presentation with flair. It was perfectly apparent that he knew what he was talking about. Rather than making him look bad, he was coming across as approachable and knowledgeable.
Austin finally clued in during the debrief, where Ms. Hunt, the CEO, praised Cody with huge smiles and affectionate pats to his hand. They appeared to have a friendly relationship. Cody was good at his job, making mine much harder. The man was like teflon. Everything bounced off him.
Despite his rough night, the bad day before, Cody looked refreshed, happy, and raring to get to work. Nothing was too much for him. He took every challenge and tackled it with gusto. Frankly, it was annoying.
It didn’t help that my link to Austin had Cody acting cautiously. I had a plan for making him warm to me. It wouldn’t be too difficult to drop a few comments about my other boss to my target, thus getting him on side. My problem was that time wasn’t on my side.
In a matter of weeks, I had to ruin an innocent man’s life and then somehow live with the guilt.
January 7th
Cody
Thisyearwascursedalready! What had I done to anger the goddess so? She was usually benevolent to her witches. Especially those that celebrated each solstice like I did.
Our goddess was one of many forms. To the shifters, she was The Luna. To the humans, Mother Earth. I wasn’t sure what the elves and fae called her. I just knew they had a deity much like us. To the witches, she was the three-faced goddess; we invoked them as the maiden, the mother, and the crone.
This year they were really testing my faith. Between all the drama with my apartment and all the accidents at work, I was wondering if I was cursed. Not only that, but I kept seeing things out of the corner of my eye. It felt like I was losing my mind. I could barely sleep, even now that I was home and back in my bed.
It had me thinking that maybe it was time to check with the coven. I’d been putting off asking for help, not wanting to appear weak to them, though I knew they could tell if I had a curse better than I could. I had virtually zero power of my own. In fact, I suspected that Poppy, the current High Witch, only had me in the coven still out of guilt. Basil had forgotten I’d existed when he’d been the High Witch before his disgrace.
If I asked her, Poppy would say that I belonged because I was family, and I was. Poppy was my cousin on my mom’s side. Our mothers were half sisters. Poppy was also Basil’s cousin on her father’s side of the family. In the coven, we were all related in some way, or at least it felt like that. It didn’t make me feel any better about my place with them. Often I just pasted a smile on my face and faked it. Everyone bought my sunny persona, and I went with it. Fake it ‘till you make it, right? I’d been faking it my whole life.
I’ll check in with Poppy, I thought to myself as I lay in my bed. As it had all week, my mind flashed back to Quill. That man was something. I couldn’t quite get a grasp on him. Our eyes would continually meet if we were in the same room, and he had me all distracted like no one ever had. It was a stupid crush, and I’d get over it. I wasn’t risking my promotion for a man. No matter how pretty his eyes were. Plus, he had this alpha vibe, like the shifters, and he would not be up for what I was into.
It had been a hell of a week and it was a relief to just be home with no plans for the day. I planned just to stay home, get caught up on some chores and then maybe visit the coven to see if something had spelled me somehow. While my magic was poor, I thought for sure that I’d be able to detect a curse. Then again, maybe not.
I yawned. My eyes were heavy, sleep pulling at me. I resisted, not wanting to fall into yet another nightmare. Perhaps someone from the coven would have a sleep remedy, or a dreamcatcher, so I could get a decent night’s rest. I made myself get out of bed and shuffled off to the shower, grateful for my landlord quickly fixing the problem with the furnace.
My eyes caught on the flowers Damon had bought me. He’d been goddess-sent over the last few days. He’d dropped my repaired car off at the hotel and had dinner with me that second night I’d been there. All throughout, I’d worked to hide the unease that had followed me from my dreams. Damon had asked me if I was okay as we sipped cocktails in the hotel bar. Something had held me back from sharing my thoughts. I hadn’t wanted to be a burden. He’d already done so much for me just seeing to my car and apartment.
Our friendship was too new to be tested with all the things happening to me. Like with the coven, I worked hard to only give Damon the happy side of me. That had slipped a little over our dinner and drinks, but I couldn’t help being distracted by my thoughts. I also got the feeling that mentioning my tiny crush on Quill would be a mistake. It was obvious how Damon felt about me. He certainly didn’t hide it. I just wished I could return those feelings. We just weren’t compatible.
So maybe we’d tried to hook up a couple of days after we’d met. I’d still been reeling from someone hiring a hitman to kill me. I knew I was lucky that Damon was a principled assassin and always checked out his hits. Finding no reason to harm me had Damon canceling the contract with his employer, who he still couldn’t or wouldn’t name, and he put out a warning to those in the network that I was off-limits.
We’d gotten drunk a couple of nights after he decided to stick around. Damon had made the first move, and we’d made out for a bit. There were sloppy blow jobs and then, just as things were progressing, we’d hit a speed bump. We both had different ideas of who would be in control.
I still smiled when I thought about it. Damon had laughed it off, but often, when he looked at me intensely for too long, I wondered if he still harbored a crush. It couldn’t go anywhere and it made me feel bad. I loved Damon. He was the best friend that I’d ever had. No matter his disguise, I always knew him by the way he carried himself, how he spoke to me.
Perfectly heated water sluiced over me. I sighed, just enjoying the sensation. For a long time, I just stood there trying to readjust. To find my balance. Bring the sunny side of myself out. It was time to use what dregs of magic I had to coat myself in a ward. To push away the negativity and bad luck that had plagued me this week. It was a blip. I wouldn’t change my outlook.
When everything had gone down with my parents and they had left Northarbor for the more powerful coven that my father had come from, I’d suffered. Strangely, it had been January when it had happened, too. We’d celebrated the holidays and my eighteenth birthday on the solstice, then they had packed up, making it clear I wasn’t welcome. I’d slid into a heavy depression, though no one except my therapist knew that. Everyone in the coven had thought I had a case of the “January blues” as Poppy’s mom, Rose, had called them. She had made excuses for her half sister and I’d caught the pitying looks of the coven when they seemed to think I wasn’t looking, but it had been more than just seasonal blues. In the end, I’d ended up medicated while I worked through my abandonment with the lovely therapist I’d been seeing.
For a few weeks, I’d tried begging my family to let me join them. Then for them to return. Mom had brushed my requests off, saying they were happy and were done with Northarbor. There was “nothing left for them” there, she had said. Before they had gone, they had purchased an apartment and left me some money from my trust fund. It was enough to pay for college, and I’d gone, determined to not let my life fall apart, despite what they had done to me. I’d graduated near the top of my class in high school and in the college I’d attended to study business. Northarbor was my home. I felt it in my soul that it was where I was supposed to be. As soon as I’d found a job, I’d sold the apartment and leased something I could afford on my salary. The money had sat untouched until I’d needed the wards to feel safe.
