Page 5 of Happily Ever Witch
“I need to speak with --like-- your boss or something. This is all abigmisunderstanding. We can work it out, if you find me somebody in authority.”
Dismissing her request, they went back to discussing her like she wasn’t in the room. …The cramped, gray room, which looked exactly like all the other interrogation rooms she’d been dragged into over the course of her villainous career. And there had been a hell of a lot of them. Esmeralda got arrested with depressing regularity.
There were Good folk and Bad folk in the world. The Good folk held the power and the Bad folk took the blame. That’s the way it had always been. Witches and trolls and all the other Baddies had been persecuted for as long as anyone could remember.
Ez was accused of crimes all the time, just because she was a witch. If she was actually guilty of half the atrocities she was suspected of committing, she would have been thrilled. Sadly, her Badness was mostly just on paper. It wasn’t for lack oftrying. She really, really wanted to be wicked. Magic just always seemed to go wrong for her.
She sighed in irritation.
If it would’ve helped any, Esmeralda could’ve explained to the guards that Queen Alice’s log-ification was an accident. She had indeed been aiming to turn the yappy blonde into afrog, but her magic had misfired. It had been doing that a lot recently. Even more than usual.
Transforming Alice into an amphibian instead of a wooden lump wouldn’t have gotten her off the hook in a court of law, but at least it would’ve made sense. Alogwas just plain silly. Hopefully, no one else heard about it or she’d be the laughingstock of the Cauldron Society.
Which she kind of was anyway.
Esmeralda had been born with level six magical powers. That was the highest level possible. People born with level six powers were always respected and feared. Except for Ez. She was basically unknown, aside from the occasional catastrophic screw up. No matter how hard she tried, her magic was undefined. Unpredictable. Uncontrollable.
She always had to work twice as hard as the other wicked witches to accomplish even the most basic villainy. And lately her magic seemed to be failing her altogether. The worst issues had started right around the time she’d escaped prison and they seemed to be even worse here in Dumpsterland. She’d been trying to come up with a transporting spell for hours and all she got was a headache.
Still, Esmeralda didn’t like dwelling on her failures. Better to focus on something constructive. Like all the ways she would fix her crappy life.
1: Go home, hug her friends, and never travel more than two miles from the Enchanted Forest, again. 2: Figure out the glitch in her ginger-mutant spell, because their frosted fangs were still too runny. 3: Think of a perfect name for the new “X-ray-ing your fingertips while you wear it” nail polish she’d created for her online cosmetics shop. 4: Get the damn light turned off.
Only one of those items was doable at the moment.
“Do we have to have this lamp in my face?” Esmeralda held up a palm to shield her eyes from the high-intensity, detective-film spotlight they had trained on her. “What’s the point of it? You took my fingerprints, my blood, and my mug shot… and I always look lousy in mug shots. I’ve been a great sport, but enough is enough. This whole thing is getting seriously old.”
The light stayed on.
“Are you listening to me?” She looked towards the mirrored window on the wall to the left. Somebody on the other side was watching her. She could tell. “I know you’re there. You’re the one in charge, right?” She’d tried a hundred different ways to convince him to talk to her and now she was scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas. “Come in here and face me, you fucking coward, because I’m done talking to underlings.”
“Underlings?” One of the playing cards yelped in indignation.
“You’ll pay for your insolence, witch.” The other guy snapped at the same time.
Esmeralda ignored their inanity, her eyes on the window. She wished she could see whoever was behind the mirror, but all she saw was her own reflection. Hell, that was okay, too.Esmeralda had atinybit of justified vanity. Green skin, crimson eyes, killer body… A girl could do a lot worse.
“Well?” She prompted, absently smoothing back her mass of black curls in the mirror. She looked mostly great, but her hair was all poufy and tangled. Dunderland was just too damn muggy and witches didn’t do well with moisture. Direct contact with water melted them and --almost as terrible-- high humidity created frizz.
Luckily, the fancy tiara she’d liberated from Alice helped to mitigate the messy style. Sparklies made everything better. She touched the crown and arched a brow at the dickhead behind the mirror.
Nothing.
That pissed her off. This whole damn situation pissed her off, but being ignored was infuriating. She didn’t do well with being ignored. Esmeralda had always been the annoying kid who threw paper airplanes until the teacher paid attention.
Her eyes narrowed at the faceless man. “You still don’t want to talk to me? Then I guess I’ve got nothing to lose, do I? I’ll just lean back in this uncomfortable chair and deal with my hurt feelings by singing. Loudly.” She kicked her favorite boots up to rest on the table, settling in for the duration. “And FYI, I have aterriblevoice and I only like country songs. You know the kind Pecos Bill sings, with long-lost True Loves and cheating exes. I hope you’re a fan.”
Evidently, he thought she was bluffing, because he still didn’t answer.
Have it your way, asshole.
Two off-key verses, filled with wrong lyrics and lovelorn cowboys showed him that witches didn’t bluff. No one could be more annoying than Esmeralda, when she really put her mind to it. Being a bitch was always more fun than being reasonable.
She was just getting into her bellowed karaoke set, when the door to the interrogation room slammed open. The damn light in her eyes meant she couldn’t see the newcomer’s face, but she sure as hell saw that he was massive.
And a walrus.
A fucking walrus?Really?God, why did she always meet up with the weirdoes?
