Page 49 of Head Witch in Charge (The Sherwood Witches #2)

LeLe…

This should be the absolute best day of my fucking life.

One, I’m coming out on the right side of a pixie challenge, which almost no witch ever does.

Two, I’m officially single again without my family ever finding out I married a Svensen—the one thing I want more than anything.

Three, the heir of my family’s nemesis house is about to be turned into a tree.

That’s about as close to the ultimate happiness trifecta as a witch can hope to get.

And yet?

And yet, I’ve never felt more miserable in my life.

My body aches with a million discomforts—the stabbing pinch making the arch of my foot cramp to the uptick in acid sloshing around in my belly to the bitter taste of six-day-old burnt coffee coating my tongue.

Everything feels too full to the point of bursting except for my chest. That’s weirdly empty, like completely scooped out so there’s nothing left but this cavernous open space.

It’s the same story between my ears because all I can do is stand by with white fuzz buzzing in my brain so I only catch about every third word as Erik uses his last phone call to bring his dad up to speed with most of what has happened.

Why? I have no fucking clue any more than I understand why it feels like the world is about to end when everything is finally how it is supposed to be.

Erik reaches out and takes my hand, sending a soft tease of awareness skittering along my skin and bringing me back to the here and now.

“The Sherwood twit is going to be turned into a tree?” The Svensen patriarch lets out a roar of happy laughter that I would have been able to hear even if he weren’t on speakerphone.

“That means no Sherwood heir, which decimates their family magic, which leaves a power vacuum. And as everyone knows, Witchingdom abhors a vacuum, so I guess we Svensens will just have to step forward and pick up the slack. The Council will think they’re running things, but they’ll be wrong, thanks to the fact that I’ll be the one with The Liber Umbrarum. ”

Wait, what?

I jolt back, confusion running smack-dab into me. How does Erik’s dad have it so wrong? Confusion swamping me, I open up my mouth to clear up the misunderstanding, but Erik shakes his head at me.

“This is perfect for us,” his dad goes on.

“I couldn’t have planned it any better myself.

And to think I ever thought an elf had swapped you out for another child.

You are most definitely my boy. You have no idea what a relief it is to know that I don’t have to go with Plan B—not that you need to know what that was—and that our family’s magic will be safe with you, that our legacy and standing will continue for generations to come.

Come home, son, and bring the spell book.

Now that we don’t have to worry about the Sherwoods, Witchingdom is mine. ”

My gut clenches and I run everything back in my head since I got into Bessie. Has the whole thing been a con, like Vegas?

I can’t breathe. My mind goes blank. The world starts to dim a little at the edges as panic grabs ahold of me and squeezes me like a dog with a squeaky toy.

Then Erik looks over at me and smiles. It’s not a smirk of can-you-believe-this-guy or a mocking grin, it’s a real true expression, as if no matter what else is going on with the world, when he looks at me none of it matters.

And in that instant all the anxiety and fear melts into a kind of certainty I can’t explain, I just know it. Erik Svensen loves me, and I love him.

“I never said LeLe was the one becoming a tree,” Erik says as he sets his phone down next to the golden apple resting on a flat-topped boulder. “I’m not coming home.”

“What in the fates are you yammering about?” his dad yells, his tone filled with unbridled bitterness.

“You best remember that you’re still just the heir.

You do what I say. You jump when I order it.

You speak the words I put in your mouth.

You don’t belong to you. You’re mine, do you hear me, boy? ”

I’m about to start yelling in Erik’s defense when I smell the warm comfort of freshly brewed coffee in the air. He winks at me and gives my hand a quick squeeze as if to say that his dad isn’t worth the oxygen I’d use up hollering at him.

“We’ve got this,” he whispers so only I can hear. “Trust me. Just do your thing. Let’s cook.”

I have no idea what exactly we’ve got besides an asshole Svensen patriarch on the phone, Erik on the verge of becoming a tree unless we find a loophole, and the Council on our ass if we ever make it out of this forest, but I do trust him.

Closing my eyes, I let out a deep exhale until there’s no oxygen left and I hold it there for a moment, calling that deep Sherwood magic.

It bursts forward, sweet and sugary the way only a donut straight out of the oven can smell.

Our magic intertwines around us, the power of the combined force making it take an airy form, like steam that glimmers in the sunlight.

Even when the entire Sherwood family gathers in the kitchen to create a spell together, the power stays invisible, and the shock of seeing my magic, his magic, our magic like this nearly snaps my concentration.

Erik shoots me a quick wink and mouths “trust me” before nodding his chin at his hand on top of the golden apple.

It’s gone from dull gold to glowing bright with an orange, almost lava-looking texture.

Our magic may not be in top form in these woods, but with the golden apple, he has the power to complete almost any spell.

And our magic together with the apple? Nothing can stop us.

He lifts his hand and our magic flickers in the sunlight before becoming invisible. Then he puts his hand back down on the once-again dull gold apple. It takes a second, but the glow returns, as does our magic in visual form, swirling around us as it gathers strength.

“I hear you. I’ve always heard you,” Erik says, his voice deadly cold.

“Every plot, every scheme, every plan to make sure you ended up on top—no matter who had to be sacrificed to make it happen, I’ve been right there hearing it all.

But you haven’t been listening. If you had, you’d know what was coming next—the end of the line. ”

“Are you trying to bullshit a bullshitter, son? Because it’s not gonna work,” his dad says, each word getting louder and more strident.

“I’m here today. I’ll be here tomorrow. I’ll be here when the Council catches up to you thanks to me tipping them off to your location yet again.

The end of the line? It’s only the beginning for me. ”

“There you go, thinking it’s only about you, but it’s not, it never was.” His hold on my hand tightens as he mouths “now” at me. “It was supposed to be about the family. It was supposed to be about taking care of the people you love.”

I cover his hand lying on the apple just as he finishes, closing the loop.

Power surges through me, a hot blast of magic in its purest form. The air around us sparks with electricity and it feels like the earth stopped rotating but Erik and I continue to circle again and again and again, whirling through it all together as one, as if we’d always been and always would be.

Then it’s gone, like the snap of a light switch being turned off.

I fall against Erik, unable to stand on my jelly legs, and he wraps both arms around me and holds me tight.

He brushes a kiss across the top of my head, and I swear he says “Thank you, love,” but too quietly for me to know for sure.

My skin tingles with the aftermath, I assume, but there’s something more that I can’t put a name to.

It’s just there, an ember waiting to be turned into a bonfire.

“A good family patriarch—a good witch—would know all of that,” Erik says, his voice tired from the obvious effort of being a conduit for that much magic. “But I know better than most that you aren’t that kind of witch. Of course, it doesn’t really matter now you’re not a patriarch anymore.”

“You’ve lost your damn senses,” his dad says, but there’s a new, unsure shake to his voice. “I am the Svensen patriarch. I control the family magic.”

“Not after that power exchange ceremony,” Erik says.

His dad scoffs. “You’re full of shit.”

“So call Cy and Sigrid. I know they’re hiding from you, but you could summon them,” Erik says as if he’s talking about something as banal as the weather rather than a move for control so ingenious it will have all of Witchingdom talking for generations.

“As the holder of the family magic, it’s your power to wield and their undeniable duty to respond. ”

“I am the head of this family,” his dad says, his voice wobbling. “I won’t do party tricks for you.”

“Because you can’t.” Erik drops another kiss to the top of my head and pulls me tight against him. “The family power isn’t yours anymore.”

There’s silence from the phone as his dad must be calling up the Svensen magic and getting nothing but his own meager personal supply. I relax back against Erik, trying to get everything into a sensible order in my head. He’s always been a solid wall of muscle, but this is different, this is—

No! Not yet!

Desperation sucks all the air out of my lungs, and I try to turn around, to see for myself what’s happening, but Erik tightens his grip around me so I can’t.

“And I suppose you think you’re witch enough to be the family patriarch I never could be.”

Erik lets out a harsh laugh. “A half-dead slug stuck on the sidewalk after a big rain would be a better patriarch than I would, but no, I don’t hold the family magic—LeLe does.”

His dad’s voice explodes out of the phone, yelling and screaming obscenities at a volume I didn’t think could be achieved by a witch, but Erik doesn’t say anything to cut off the diatribe. He just reaches over and taps the end call button.

“But that’s not possible, right?” I ask as I finally manage to turn around in his arms to face him. “How did you—”

The words die on my tongue as I take in the changes already happening. His hair is growing and thickening like branches reaching upward toward the sun, his skin darkening into the dark brown of an oak, and the fine lines in his face turning into deep, bark-like grooves.

He tucks a hair behind my ear, the tip of his finger hard and rough, while he looks at me as if he’s memorizing my face because it’s the last time he’ll ever see it.

“When you have access to a golden apple while in the pixie forest where the rules of witch magic don’t apply, you can do just about anything. ”

“You could have saved yourself.”

“Saving myself is what I’ve been doing my whole life.” His lips curl in a small smile and he stiffly leans down and kisses me with an intensity that makes my heart ache. “Figured I’d try something new.”

“So what’s the plan for you?” Using the back of my hand, I wipe away the tears starting to fall, unable to tap into the iciness I’ve depended on for years. “How do we get you out of this?”

“We can’t,” he says, his voice deeper than before. “I gave my word, and honestly, I kind of like not breaking it.” He takes me by the hips and puts space between us. The few inches feel like miles. “Maybe Svensens aren’t naturally all bad.”

Racking my brain, I run through every spell I’ve ever memorized, every magical theory I’ve ever heard, and every lecture on enchantments I’ve ever sat through looking for something—anything—that I can do to stop this and come up with exactly nothing.

Stupid. I am being stupid. There has to be a way.

I just need to find it. I have to find it.

“But you said there’s always a loophole,” I say, my voice breaking. “There’s always a way out.”

“Every rule needs an exception, and this is it.” He takes a few steps back so he’s in line with the other trees.

As soon as he does, gnarled roots shoot from his feet, diving down into the ground and locking him in place.

“Take the golden apple to the pixie queen, get The Liber Umbrarum, and get out of this forest. I just took care of my father. It’s up to you to be Witchingdom’s hero. I love you, Le—”

Before he can get my nickname out, the transformation comes to completion, sealing his lips closed so it looks like someone carved Erik’s face into an oak tree, and I collapse in a heap on the ground in his shade.

“You better go,” Addison says, not unkindly as she looks into the distance. “The wolves are at the door.”

That’s when I hear the motorcycle.