Page 43 of Head Witch in Charge (The Sherwood Witches #2)
LeLe…
I’m white-knuckling the spell book and trying to remember to breathe while Erik drives us straight toward the curving line of delicate-looking white flowers in full bloom along the edge of the Killjoy Forest. I can’t see the pixies, but I can feel them—they’re like that eerie something that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up when you walk into a dark room.
They’re the reason why you feel an icy breeze on your neck when you cross through an empty room, the thing that makes your heartbeat hitch when you look down a dark alleyway, and the cause of free-floating anxiety that puts you on edge for no reason at all.
Okay, maybe some of that is a brownie or a duende or a tsukumogami, but if it is a pixie, you are in so much trouble—even more so if you’re on their territory.
Just like a witch’s powers increase when they’re gathered around a cauldron in their family kitchen, so do a pixie’s in the Killjoy Forest.
And they’re out there, lounging in the branches of the evergreen trees and eating copious amounts of peacock-flavored popcorn while waiting for us to fuck up and enter their territory.
“Watch out for the primroses!” I yell, trying to be heard over the sound of the motorcycles gaining ground on us.
He doesn’t hear me because he doesn’t turn Bessie’s steering wheel even a millimeter to avoid the clusters of small white blooms with the yellow centers.
The stubborn man is driving right at the pixies’ well defined and guarded border, obviously determined to play chicken with the witches and werewolves on our tail.
Really, it’s not the worst plan. All he has to do is make the turn away from the pixies’ primrose property line in time and before our pursuers get the chance to clock what’s right ahead of them.
It could work—and I can help. What good is being the heir to one of the most powerful families if I can’t use it to keep Bessie’s tires from touching the favorite flowers of Witchingdom’s big bad scaries (who happen to be really fucking small, but that’s not the point here).
Pushing the fear aside, I dig deep and call up my magic. “Nolite tangere primrose.”
That should give a little bumper of space between the tires and the petals.
“Oh, we’re not going to touch the flowers,” Erik says. “We’re going over them.”
For half a heartbeat of unease, I think he means Bessie is going to smush them under her tires.
But then the smell of fresh-brewed coffee mixes with my donut-scented magic, and the three-thousand-pound car rises up from the ground and flies over the row of primroses and straight into the one place in all of Witchingdom that no one goes.
And that’s when my unease turns into pure panic.
Bessie lands on the forest floor with a thunk hard enough to nearly jostle the spell book out of my grasp.
I have just enough time to secure my grip and then we’re speeding through the forest as the shocked cries of the trees we’re zipping past carry on the breeze.
Erik barely flinches from the impact or the scrape of wood on metal as the trees try to grab Bessie with their limbs.
He’s all cool-under-pressure calm while the adrenaline pumping through my veins has me as jumpy as a gnome out in public without a hat (which for a gnome is the equivalent of going out naked on Main Street at high noon during a parade where the whole town has turned out and it’s being live-streamed).
Seriously. I’m nothing but internal twitches and silent screams. And one out-loud yip when a tree snags a few strands of my hair and yanks them out.
“Are they following?” Erik asks, his tone easy, as if he just asked about the weather.
Pissed-off trees, bloodthirsty pixies, and moose that aren’t magical at all, just massive in both size and aggression ahead of us, and he’s worried about the folks behind us?
“What are you doing?” I holler, doing my best not to freak the fuck out when every instinct in my body is screaming at me to do exactly that. “We can’t be here.”
“LeLe, please.” He reaches over and squeezes my hand, the touch far more reassuring than it should be when the trees in front of us are winding up to hurl apples our way.
A bright red Gala apple whizzes over my head.
Another misses us by a country mile, landing with a hard thunk against another tree, which turns around and unloads its apple on the tree with the shitty aim.
Then in a matter of seconds there is a volley of apples being fired off so fast I can barely keep track of the flying fruit going every which way but directly at us.
“Are they following?” Erik asks again.
Sorta confident that I’m not about to be beaned by an apple, I whip around in my seat to look behind us just in time to see the lead werewolf, who is riding point, manage a hairpin turn to keep from crossing the pixies’ border.
The rest of his pack hit their brakes and send up a huge cloud of dust that almost blocks the nearby Council goons from sight.
“No, they’re smart enough not to run straight into pixie country and certain death,” I say, clutching The Liber Umbrarum tightly to my chest.
Erik grins at me as if he hasn’t just jumped us both out of the cauldron and into the bonfire. “Nothing in this world is certain, wife.”
“Yeah, it is—the fact that we’re not out of the woods yet.
” I groan at my own unintended pun as I duck down in time to avoid getting nailed by one of the trees’ airborne apples.
“They’ve stopped, but it won’t be for long.
The Liber Umbrarum is too valuable for them not to try to figure out a way around the pixies—at least for the Council witches. ”
“The werewolves too,” Erik says as Bessie’s tires hit a patch of slick moss.
Bessie careens to the right hard enough that the seat belt tightens painfully across my chest. Then Bessie jerks to the left as Erik turns the car, his jaw tightening along with his grip on the steering wheel as another patch of moss slides into our path.
Erik lets out a string of curses as he hits the brakes and tries to avoid hitting the slab of dark green as he floors it, but the moss scurries over at the last minute and we start to spin out of control.
Closing my eyes, I try to summon my magic even as my stomach lurches from the g-forces.
Maybe it’s because it feels like I’m about to hurl, or maybe it’s because the rumors are true and the pixies’ magic really does dull the abilities of every magical being who enters their forest, but instead of magic, I’ve got nothing but bile swishing around inside me.
Bessie runs over something hard, and the thunk makes my head jerk back.
The distinctive sound of a tire popping jars me out of my worthless attempt at spell casting.
Erik’s nonchalant expression has given way to a grim determination as he fights to control Bessie against the constant stream of obstacles popping up from the forest floor like frozen waffles from the toaster.
Of course, instead of delicious baked goodness, what’s coming up are four-foot-high rocks and moss and gnarled brambles with razor-sharp thorns.
They emerge in front of us in wave after wave as Erik and a hobbled Bessie swerve around them, pushing forward toward the sound of the river and the patch of blue sky in the distance that marks the end of the pixies’ territory.
If we can make it across, the sharp-toothed nightmare creatures can’t touch us. We’ll be in the clear. Hope, fuzzy and warm and fluttery, fills my chest, and I barely notice the bright red apples being thrown at us or the rocks suddenly jutting up from the ground.
“We’re gonna make it,” I say with a chuckle of amazement.
“Of course we are.” Erik jerks the steering wheel to the left just as a hunk of granite shoots up from the ground in front of us. “Never doubt me when it comes to taking care of you.”
Absolutely everyone in Witchingdom knows that statement is the last thing I should take at face value.
There’s not a witch, unicorn shifter, or M&M-craving gnome who wouldn’t doubt a Svensen.
And if the Svensen (who’s already lied his way into marrying you) says they’ll take care of you?
That just means they are going to screw you over so hard you won’t know up from down.
Everyone knows that.
Everyone.
Except me.
Bessie barrels toward that opening between the trees and the river’s edge.
I’m holding on to The Liber Umbrarum with a death grip as the ground erupts beneath us.
My heart is in my throat, blocking my gasp of shock as the car goes so fast that the forest is just a blur—except for Erik.
He’s solid. He’s real. He’s all I want or need.
Deep down in that part of me where lies hold no power and there are no places where the truth can hide, I can’t doubt Erik Svensen, and I believe he’ll always take care of me. And that’s not the worst of it.
I never should have gotten in his car.
I never should have agreed to this ridiculous road trip.
I never should have gone on that picnic with him.
I never should have slept with him.
I never should have told him my stories.
I never should have listened to his.
And I never, ever, ever should have fallen in love with my husband.
Because even if we make it out of these woods, I can’t pick my own happiness over my family’s—and Witchingdom’s—best shot at beating the Council.
Bessie crosses through the line of angry trees into the open grass along the river.
All we have to do is get across the fast-moving river and we’ll be out of range of the pixies’ magic and have a massive lead on the Council and the werewolves.
Erik guns the engine one last time as we hit the dirt embankment and then we’re airborne.
Landing safely and getting The Liber Umbrarum locked away in the secured facility should be all I’m focused on.
But I can’t stop wondering about all the what-ifs and why-nots with Erik—as if any of them could ever come true.
My future was never my choice. It was all planned out before I was born.
Go to the best schools, get top grades, excel at everything, become friends with the right people, develop connections, forge alliances, agree to the most politically advantageous marriage, strengthen the Sherwood position in Witchingdom, continue the family line, and, above all else, take care of my family by putting them first—always.
That’s what it means to be the heir.
The second Bessie’s tires touch down on the other side of that river, all of this will be another mile closer to being over—and I’m not ready for that.
Turns out, neither are the pixies.
We’re almost to the halfway point across the river when Bessie slams into an invisible shield of magic that compacts the front of her hood and sends us bouncing back toward the tree line.
“So close and yet so far,” says a high-pitched voice coming from the dark center of the forest. “Nighty night, naughty trespasser.”
And then everything goes dark.