Page 44 of Head Witch in Charge (The Sherwood Witches #2)

Erik…

There’s only darkness.

Well, that and a thumping pain in my head that makes me think the pixies have shrunk a German death metal band’s drummer and trapped him in my skull. From what I hear about how the tricksters work, it sounds like something they’d do.

The last thing I remember before everything went black was the oh-shit look on LeLe’s face the half second before Bessie’s front end slammed into the pixies’ security dome. I reach out for her, but the only thing I feel is the cold, slimy rock I’m propped up against.

The reality that LeLe is nowhere to be found punches me right in the nose, and I jolt upright, fighting past the gag-inducing pain to crack my eyelids open.

It doesn’t help much.

Wherever I am, it’s not as dark as the endless pits of Galadon, but it’s close, and it smells just as bad.

The stench of sulfur and sweaty socks makes my eyes water, and my stomach cramps from the kind of fear I haven’t felt in years.

Worse than a hobgoblin’s acidic spit, it burns my gut, and I’m upright on my feet in the next instant, sliding my hand along the damp stone walls as I move, trying to find her.

“LeLe,” I whisper-yell. “Where are you?”

The only response is a very deep, very growly giggle that turns into a wheeze, then a hiccup, and finally a flash of fire that lights up the whole place just long enough for me to see LeLe sitting on a boulder with a dragon’s scaly tail wrapped around her like a body scarf made out of iridescent purple scales.

Did I mention the tail is still attached to the dragon? The alive dragon?

I start to sprint toward her and then—poof—I’m back in the dark, but still moving toward her.

My foot lands in a puddle in just the wrong way, and the next thing I know the world goes tits up and I land with a hard thunk on my ass in a foul-smelling pool of slime—but there’s no time to hesitate or take stock of what in the fuck just slid over my leg.

“Stay calm, LeLe,” I say as I fail to follow my own advice and start to wind my magic up for a spell that will knock the dragon into the next dimension. Even with the pixies’ magic-dulling powers while in their domain. “I’ll get you out of there.”

Somehow.

Someway.

There’s always a loophole or an escape route somewhere, and when it comes to LeLe, I’m not giving up until I find it.

That’s when the giggling starts again—except it’s not just the rusty accordion sound coming from the dragon; LeLe is giggling too.

“Stop messing with him, Snookums,” LeLe says with a smile I can see even though I can’t. “Just light the candles already.”

There’s a deep inhale, and then a burst of flames lights up the ceiling of the cavernous space.

The fire ignites the thick wicks of the three-foot-tall candles of a massive candelabra hanging from the stone ceiling.

The bright light illuminates the cave, making the diamonds embedded in the stone walls glimmer and shine, but I only have eyes for my wife.

She looks way too relaxed for someone who has a dragon’s tail wrapped around her like a python—a dragon who’s wearing a gold name tag with “Snookums” written on it hanging from a massive leather collar.

“Erik,” she says, amusement teasing the corners of her full lips upward, “this is my friend.”

It is an obvious cry for help. How could it not be? Every witch knows from the time they spin their first spell that dragons lurk on the edges of Witchingdom, watching and waiting to eat any snack-sized witch foolish enough to venture into their territory.

With anyone else, I would have sent out a quick feeler spell, but I don’t need to with my wife.

I already know. She is as relaxed as she was on that pool deck in Vegas.

There isn’t even a flicker of worry crinkling up the corner of her blue or her green eye.

Nope, those are definitely smile lines. And is she gliding her hand over the dragon’s scales as if she’s petting him?

There’s no way. The woman is magic (literally and figuratively), but even she can’t tame a beast that flosses its teeth with witches’ bones.

“A friend with his tail holding you in place?” I ask as I inch forward, searching for any weakness to exploit as my gaze goes from the dragon’s tail to its huge nostrils to the teeth the size of the trees that were flinging apples at us only minutes—hours? days?—before.

“This?” LeLe rolls her eyes as she gets up and climbs over the dragon’s tail. “Snookums got scared.”

Unease crawls up my spine like a murderous band of ants wearing ice picks on their feet. “What scares a dragon?”

“The dark.” She puts her hand on the single pale yellow claw sticking out of the dragon’s foot.

“Poor thing gets scared and then he starts nervous sneezing and then he sneezes out the candles and then his ability to breathe fire gets all wonky and then he’s stuck in the dark.

” She pats the dragon’s toe claw and smiles up at him.

“It’s okay. A similar thing happens to one of my sister Tilda’s friends. You are not alone.”

The dragon—calling something so large, so toothy, and so able to breathe fire and turn us both into witch-shaped s’mores “Snookums” is too bizarre—starts purring.

Yes. Purring.

Right up until his neon green eyes land on me, and that soft, warm vibration becomes a low, growly rumble.

“Snookums, sit,” a high-pitched voice calls out.

The dragon does just that as a pixie with ice-blue hair hovers in the air at the mouth of the cave, her iridescent silver wings moving almost too fast to see.

“Good Snookums,” the pixie says before wriggling her nose half a second before a giant wheel of cheese poofs out of thin air and lands on the rock shaped like a giant dog bowl.

“You two,” she says, turning her attention back to LeLe and me after smiling indulgently at the dragon, “are coming with me. The queen wants to see you.”

I have no idea what’s coming next, but whatever it is, all I have to do is make sure LeLe makes it out of the woods.

· · ·

We fall (literally) out of thin air after the pixie poofs us out of the cave and into a cleared circle in the forest that serves as the pixie queen’s court throne room.

The pixie queen is not what I expected. Yeah, she’s a pixie with wings that catch the light like dew on the morning grass, and she has that whole sweet and innocent vibe until she smiles, revealing substantial, razor-sharp pointed teeth that could easily slice through bone.

Luckily, she’s busy gnashing her way through a bowl of arugula and ladybugs as she watches us approach.

I never said it was lucky for the ladybugs, but better them than us.

LeLe and I come to a stop at the base of the glittering diamond staircase that leads to the queen’s gilded throne.

Between that and the plethora of gold reflecting the sunlight, it’s hard to look straight at the queen without my eyes feeling like they’re about to be burned out of their sockets. I highly doubt that’s an accident.

The queen’s ladies-in-waiting flutter in the air behind her, clasping their cupped hands together over their hearts. The sound of their wings and the crunch of raw arugula and ladybug shells are the only sounds in the room as we wait for the queen to acknowledge us.

And wait.

And wait.

And wait some more.

In most cases, this is when I’d pour on the sincere-sounding charm. If that failed, I’d start dropping the dirt I had on whoever was between me and what I wanted.

When it comes to pixies, though, things work a little different.

Take talking, for instance. It is completely off the table because the pixies go really fucking hard for the “no speaking to the queen unless she speaks to you first” rule and enchanted our lips closed.

The only thing keeping me from really losing my shit is that the queen is sitting on The Liber Umbrarum like it’s some kind of throne pillow and I can see Bessie’s bright yellow fins through the trees in the distance.

As long as I have LeLe, the spell book, and Bessie, there has to be a way out of here.

I don’t know how I’ll find it, but I know I have to.

The queen pops the last ladybug from her bowl into her mouth and considers us as she crunches it into oblivion before finally speaking. “You’ve trespassed on pixie land and must prove you’re worthy.”

I try to respond, but my lips won’t move. My wife, however, doesn’t have the same problem.

LeLe lifts her chin and glares (or maybe squints because of the bright lights) at the queen. “Worthy of what?”

“Living,” the queen declares with a smile that shows off all her pointy teeth. “You’re lucky it’s the slow season for mischief, otherwise we’d just feed you to Snookums and have it done with, but as it is, we’re bored, so we’ve arranged a game to find out.”

I squeeze LeLe’s hand to warn her of the danger. Pixies love three things in life. One, stealing teeth from the tooth fairies. Two, singing sea shanties. And three, gambling on their games—not about which participants will win, but whether or not any of the participants will survive at all.

LeLe’s gaze slides over to me, and I may not be able to actually say anything out loud, but I don’t need to.

The way she’s clenching her jaw hard enough to crack a walnut shell and the way-too-calm-to-be-real look in her eyes says it all.

Yeah, there’s a little bit of I-told-you-not-to-go-into-the-forest in there too (it’s the slight lift of one nostril that gives it away), but she squeezes my hand back and I know we’re in it together.

That really shouldn’t settle in my chest, all warm and comforting, but it does.

I’m so beyond fucked, and it has nothing to do with the pixies.

It’s all about my wife and how there’s no way I can use her to get rid of my father like I’d planned. Somehow, someway, I have to find a loophole in my own tightly woven scheme.

But first, we have to survive the pixies.

LeLe straightens her shoulders and looks back over at the queen. “We absolutely adore games. Which ones will we be playing?”

“Before we get to that, you need to know the stakes,” the queen says. “Complete the three simple challenges and you’ll both go free. Fail and one of you will spend the next fifty years as my court jester while the other one does the same for our pixie cousins in Antarctica.”

There’s an excited tittering among the pixies, one of whom magics in a whiteboard.

It’s massive, dotted with gemstones, and already has the odds of our surviving for each of the three games.

Going by the rush of pixies toward the line of bookies that starts immediately, they think the fifty-to-one odds of us surviving the first game are a safe bet.

“That sounds delightful,” LeLe says, her tone just as icy and imperious as the queen’s. “Of course, when we win, we leave here with The Liber Umbrarum.”

That’s my wife, eye on the prize. Always.

The queen snorts dismissively. “I don’t think so.”

Unfazed, LeLe asks, “What if we raise the stakes?”

The bookie closest to the whiteboard stills, and the whirring of the pixies’ wings grows louder as they vibrate with excitement.

“Twenty-four hours,” LeLe says with a nonchalant shrug before giving my hand a reassuring squeeze, as if I could ever doubt she knows exactly what she is doing.

“That’s how long it will take to complete your challenges.

Once that’s done, you hand over Erik’s car, Bessie, and The Liber Umbrarum, then we’re free to go with your blessing—and if you renege”—she lifts her gaze so she’s looking right into the bright light surrounding the queen and she doesn’t even flinch—“you’ll feel the force of the entire Sherwood family in this forest. Believe me, you don’t want that. ”

A dead quiet fills the throne room as every pixie holds their breath watching the war of wills between their sovereign and the heir of one of Witchingdom’s most powerful families.

This is the kind of moment that they’ll be telling stories about for generations.

But I don’t give two shits about that right now; all I can think about is how fucking hot my wife is.

Unlike most witches, LeLe doesn’t throw her family power around to feed her ego or move her family up in society.

If she did, she would have done so a half dozen times on this road trip—starting with getting into Bessie with me in the first place.

It isn’t the use of power that is so hot, though; it’s the cool, calm, and collected competence on display that hits me harder than anything else.

The woman knows what she is doing and how exactly to get what she wants. That is hot as fuck.

I’ve never seen being an heir as anything but a burden before, an anvil hanging around my neck, but watching her, I realize for the first time in my life that it doesn’t have to be. All that family power, it can be used for good—even by a Svensen.

Sure, we are still most likely going to die, but we are going to do it like the heirs we are and could be.

“Your confidence is both impressive and foolhardy, but I accept your proposal,” the queen says, breaking the silence a second before the squeak of a dry-erase marker on the whiteboard fills the throne room as the bookie starts putting up the new odds.

“However, I do believe you’re going to regret it.

In a thousand years, only a few have ever brought me the magical stag who walks our woods, and a mere three have made it through cleaning Snookum’s cave without being eaten.

But no witch—and I do mean not a single one—has ever returned with a golden apple.

” The queen pauses to give LeLe an assessing look.

“I accept your terms, Sherwood witch, as you accept mine. This deal is bound in magic and cannot be altered.” She slides her gaze over to me. “There are no loopholes in this game.”

She’s wrong—she has to be wrong—because there are always cracks and crevices to exploit to slide through to freedom, and I’m going to use any means available to make sure LeLe is free after this.

The queen smiles as if she can read my thoughts and it sends a chill through the air, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.

“There’s a reason why you haven’t been able to speak, Svensen witch,” the queen says. “I’ll abide none of your tricks here.” She opens her right hand, revealing a mound of enchanted crystal dust in the center of her palm. “I’d wish you luck, but that would be a waste of a wish.”

Then she blows the powder toward us and—poof!—we’re gone into the black ether with only our wits and each other to do the impossible.