Page 51 of Head Witch in Charge (The Sherwood Witches #2)
“You need more than that, but before you get to the begging portion of the show, I want my apple.” She flicks a bit of pixie dust into the air and the apple flies out of my hands over to her while The Liber Umbrarum appears out of thin air, to float in the middle of the clearing.
Now that gets Darius’s attention. He lets out a low, growly sound that’s more wolfish than human.
“Don’t even think about it,” the queen snaps before hard-tapping one of her attendants on the shoulder.
The lady’s maid winces and pulls a set of keys out of a small canvas bag and tosses them to me.
“Pity about the man, but he does make a fine oak tree. Your car is at the river’s edge.
I strongly recommend you take The Liber Umbrarum, go to the car now, and never return. ”
I can’t do it. I can’t go without Erik. But even with the Svensen family magic merged with my own, I can’t summon enough power to activate any of the spells in The Liber Umbrarum while in the forest. The book is as useless as holding nothing but a high card in your hand during the most important poker game of your life.
Poker.
I whip my head around to look at the queen and her cadre of royal attendants.
The pixie at the whiteboard is already putting up the odds for when the next golden apple will appear.
That’s when it hits me. I’ve been training my whole life for this moment.
All the lectures about the political factions in Witchingdom, the numerous lessons about negotiation tactics, each and every one of the gossip items and secret backstories of the various family heads and political leaders have all led to this moment.
I am the Sherwood heir, and because of that I know exactly what to do next.
The queen glares at me and pauses in fanning herself. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
Play this cool, Sherwood. Play. It. Cool.
Not letting even a hint of the desperation swirling around inside me show on my face, I shrug a shoulder as if bored. “No reason.”
“Of course there is a reason.” She snaps her fan closed and points it at me and snarls an order to her attendants.
“Take me closer to her.” The pixies bearing her throne grimace, but they don’t say a word as they fly her to just beyond my reach.
“Tell me why you’ve got the same look on your face as a troll with an unsolvable riddle right this moment or I’ll find a way to make you regret it. ”
Nope. Not yet. That would make it too easy for her, and she wants to feel like she won; that’s what matters to the queen.
So I stay silent.
I let the quiet grow.
Desperation eats away at me, gnawing on the tethers keeping me from going into full freak-out mode, but I fight against it to draw the stillness out until the forest itself seems too hushed to have ever made a noise.
The queen sits back in her throne with a weary sigh that sounds as fake as a gnome’s height on his driver’s license. “Burn the tree.”
Sheer terror rips through me like a nuclear blast of pure fear, obliterating any heir training I’ve ever had about keeping a cool head during negotiations.
“No!” I yell. “Please. Wait!”
The queen’s lips curl into a tight smile of true satisfaction. “I thought so.”
“I’m staring,” I say, the shake in my voice one hundred percent real, “because I need a favor.”
The queen lets out a long and over-the-top sigh. “I’ve given out too many of those recently—the latest being to make your challenges actually achievable. Your mother drives a hard bargain—but I’ll get the better of her during our next poker game.”
And there it is, my way to bring this deal home.
“What if I could help you with that?”
“Why would you?” the queen asks as she leans forward in her throne, fully engaged and curious.
So, right where I want her.
Holding tight to the control I learned from watching my mother even though I want to run around and scream with triumph, I keep my tone deferential and my volume low. “So you’ll reverse the transformation and free Erik.”
Right on cue, Asher lets out a groan that shakes the leaves hanging from his branches. “She can’t do that,” Asher grumbles. “It’s against the rules. He agreed of his own free will. It’s not her place to make changes to that.”
“My place?” the queen screeches, her voice like an ice pick to the ear. “This is my forest.”
“So you can do it?” I ask as if I don’t already know the answer.
“Never doubt me, witch,” the queen snarls, turning her ire back to focus on me. “However, do you really think you’re in a position to make requests of me?”
My hands are trembling with nerves with Erik’s life riding on what happens next, so I clasp them together in front of me and send up a quick plea to the fates that I’ll be able to safely land this magic carpet.
“Yes, because there’s something you want that only I can give you.” When she just lifts an eyebrow in question, I continue. “My mother’s poker tells.”
I barely get the words out before a quill and piece of parchment appear out of thin air in front of me.
“Write them down,” the queen says, “and we have an unbreakable deal.”
As I do, the wind begins to whirl around us, sending up leaves, dirt, and twigs into the air like a smoke screen.
I can only just see the parchment well enough to write down my mother’s tendency to wrinkle her nose when she bluffs and scratch her chin when she’s underselling her hand.
The queen begins to chant in pixyish, her voice going from high-pitched and nasally, almost squeaky, to a low bass boom.
I can’t tell what she’s saying, exactly, but it is the same phrase over and over and over again.
A shower of pixie dust wipes out the airborne debris, and the forest looks exactly as it did before, with Erik’s face still staring back at me from the bark of his oak.
The forest floor starts to shake, and a deep chasm appears, the line of broken earth moving like a runaway train straight for Erik’s tree.
A scream rips from my throat half a heartbeat before the ground opens up and swallows Erik’s tree whole.
When the last of the pixie dust settles, the only sound in the forest is the roar of Darius’s motorcycle as he races away, the top of The Liber Umbrarum that wavers in the light like a mirage sticking out of his saddlebag as the scent of fresh-brewed coffee lingers in the air.
The queen sucks her teeth and makes a tsk-tsk sound. “That was your fault for not securing The Liber Umbrarum immediately. Don’t even think of blaming me for it.”
Like I give two shits about the spell book right now. All I care about is my husband.
Looking around like he’ll just appear like The Liber Umbrarum, it takes everything I have not to break completely as the weight of how I failed Erik pushes down on me. “Where is he?”
“Where you left him. My fates, do I have to do everything?” The queen flicks her fan open and begins waving it back and forth in front of her face. “I swear I have dust in every possible nook and cranny. Take me to the royal baths immediately.”
There’s another crack of thunder as she leaves, but I barely hear it over the sound of blood rushing in my ears as I sprint toward the huge hole in the ground where Erik’s tree was.
Heart pounding in my chest, I run right up to the edge.
I don’t know what I’m expecting to find, but fear has my lungs in a death grip and I’m about to pass out from the lack of oxygen when I look down into the dark depths and see Erik—my Erik—his face smudged with dirt and more than a few twigs sticking out of his hair, looking up at me.
The look of love on his face breaks the vise, and I suck in a deep breath filled with all the hope for the future I never thought I wanted. I really am the luckiest woman in Witchingdom.
“You found a loophole,” he says.
“I learned from the best,” I say, and scramble down to him, the dirt giving way beneath my feet as I half fall, half run and throw my arms around him. “Welcome back, husband.”
He pulls me close and dips his head down, stopping when his lips are only an inch from mine. “I love the sound of that.”
And then he’s kissing me or I’m kissing him, it doesn’t matter. He’s kissing me like he’s going to be the man I wake up with every morning for the rest of my life, and I’ve never been more excited for someone else’s morning breath in my entire life.
Effie clears her throat with all the subtlety of a sentient house intent on matchmaking and hollers, “Hello down below.”
Reluctant to stop but knowing I’ll be able to continue later, I look up at my sister.
She looks from me to Erik and back again. “You two good here? Because I need to go chase after that duplicitous jerk Darius before he sells The Liber Umbrarum to the highest bidder.”
“You need help?” Erik and I ask at the same time. Once an heir, always an heir, I guess.
“Believe me, I can take care of one little werewolf on my own,” she says with a grin that always means trouble—the kind she is more than capable of handling on her own.
“We’re good,” I tell her, my attention already going back to the man I love.
“Now we are,” Erik says, and kisses me again.