Page 15 of Warlocks Don’t Win (Singsong City #9)

“Tolly! Please bring me a nice, live rodent of some kind,” I said as loudly as possible, then continued my prepping, crushing the dried worms and bees to powder.

Either my familiar would hear and come, or I’d do a summoning and get one of the creatures out of the riddled walls.

The worst was when you did a summoning and they all came.

And then started biting your feet and climbing all over you until your mother came to end the summoning and shooed them all away.

That was the first time I’d stolen my mother’s grimoire and took it into the basement. Good times.

Whatever happened to my mother’s grimoire? Sometimes they claimed the next heir of the house, and sometimes they disintegrated to dust. Sometimes they just disappeared, coming to light years later in the library or some forgotten corner of the vegetable cellar.

That didn’t matter. I knew this spell as well as I knew beauty spells. I’d helped my mother with ending death curses twice. Once on someone I didn’t know, and once on the butler.

It would be fine.

Tolliver dropped the live rat into my mortar, and I almost crushed it.

“Thanks, Tolly,” I told her as I caught the squirming, brown rodent with large whiskers and gleaming eyes, by the tail. “Aren’t you a handsome fellow? You’ll do nicely.”

The rat bit me, taking a chunk of my hand along with it.

“A fair price for your life,” I said agreeably, before dropping it in a glass bowl and covering it with the iron lid. It scrabbled around, getting my blood on the glass while I finished prepping, letting my blood mingle with the spell.

“That’s not going to work.”

I flinched. That voice sounded an awful lot like my mother. I shouldn’t have thought about her, that just gave my psyche ammunition to use against me.

“Of course I’m your mother. Why else would I haunt you?”

I didn’t look over my shoulder where the voice was very clearly coming from.

“Ignoring isn’t bliss. It won’t work unless you have something that ties him to your command. He’s a Winston. He’s not going to easily align with your will.”

I cautiously glanced over my shoulder. A faint green outline of my mother was enough to make my stomach twist, particularly how her head was barely connected to her body.

I turned resolutely back to what I was doing. “Why are you here? I didn’t summon you.”

“That was Parsley. The butler. He summoned my spirit, but his intentions are boring. You’re trying to save the life of your sworn enemy. Much more interesting.”

I shuddered. Her spirit felt just like she’d felt in life, like a breath of humid, muggy, wet air. “Having sworn enemies takes too much energy. Go back to Parsley.”

She moved over to the bed until she was levitating above Winston, staring down at his waxy face.

“You don’t have much time. I loved a man once.

I gave up on love when it proved impractical.

I expected you to do the same, but you’re made out of different stuff.

I hate to think that you got it from your father.

In the inside pocket of his vest, you’ll find the key to unlocking his will.

” In a rush of green smoke, she vanished.

Fabulous. Exactly what I wanted, my mother’s spirit to haunt me. I was going to kill Parsley. Seriously, Parsley? The butler’s name was so traditional. Like Winston’s first name. The one my mother had scried for days to find.

Nettle. A name he’d never use in a million years. A name I’d never use in a billion years, on threat of death. Was I supposed to actually trust my mother’s murdered spirit to help me save Winston? Impossible. Then again, it wouldn’t hurt to check his pocket.

“Nice vest. Leather and silk fusion. Very nice,” I murmured as I ran my hand over the brown fabric covering his impressive muscles.

His skin was blurry from the wisps of death, sucking his life force out of him.

I hurriedly slipped my hand inside the fabric, over the thin linen of his button-down, noticing that his skin wasn’t warm beneath the fabric, although it was still very firm and nicely shaped.

I shook my head and focused on finding the lump in the vest instead of the lumps of his muscles.

I wasn’t doing this to get a grope in before he was buried.

There. That hard lump wasn’t normal. I found the slit for the pocket and pulled out the ring I’d worn to jail.

I stared at the glorious diamond, raw, powerful, infused with magic.

He’d given it to me as a promise. He’d love me forever.

And I’d love him. I was supposed to take his heart and soul and suck him dry, but instead, I’d fallen for him.

Could you blame me? I was young, stupid, and he was so different from all the witches and mages I’d ever known.

He cared about abstract things like justice, the greater good, and morality.

I’d fallen in love with him because he was the type of person who would testify against their fiancé when caught murdering their mother.

He was dying. His will was being sucked away, slowly but surely. He didn’t have a lot of time. The spell was so powerful. And it had been meant for me. I stared at that ring. Marriage. My mother meant that only marriage between our souls would be enough to pull him from the grave.

I took a large step away from Winston and shook my head. “No way. I’d rather die.” I winced. “But would I rather you die?” He looked less handsome than usual beneath the weight of the death spell. Even without a layer of skin, I’d probably find him an attractive skeleton.

I couldn’t let him die. Not now, not then.

That’s why I killed my mother, because her plan was to kill him once he was thoroughly bound to her through my marriage.

I mean, I killed her because when I confronted her with that truth, the one I’d overheard witches in my coven talking about in the local favorite tea shop, she’d flipped out and tried to kill me, and then…

It was all a blur, really. The only crystal clear moment was looking up to see Winston’s handsome face, relieved that he was alive, safe, unharmed by my mother’s evil machinations.

Come to think of it, pretty odd how that whole thing went down, Winston showing up when he did, my mother losing control when she was usually so level-headed, if psychotic, and those witches gossiping about her, like they didn’t fear for their lives where she was concerned.

They did. One hundred percent they feared for their lives.

She would rip them apart if they weren’t loyal to her, but they’d been publicly gossiping where I could hear.

Yeah. Pretty suspicious. And sad how easily we were all played against each other.

But more to the point, I wasn’t going to let Winston die.

I crammed the ring on my finger, chopped off the tip of the rat’s tail and stuck it together with blood and a spell, then rolled it over Winston’s significant digit. He would be so appalled when he saw his ring was a rat. And the rat would be known as stumpy, but he wouldn’t die this day. Probably.

I rubbed the mess of herbs over both our foreheads, then climbed on the bed, dust poofs with every step until I lowered onto his body, covering him as completely as I could.

I closed my eyes and twined our fingers together, stretched out as far as I could to cover all of him. He felt so good, even as a corpse he’d probably feel good. Not that he was going to die.

I spoke with as much strength and authority as possible.

“With this ring, I thee do wed. Bound by choice and proof I bled. I bind you, Nettle, to my soul. Once two halves, now two wholes. Clary Sage takes Nettle Winston…” A piercing agony shot up into my body, like enormous stakes from his soul to mine.

I screamed then repeated in a creaky voice, “Clary Sage takes Nettle Winston, past death and…” What rhymed with Winston?

I should have started with his name. Lots of things rhymed with Sage.

Rage, page, age, stage…Maybe I should start over and reverse it.

Oh, I know! “an oiled piston!” Good thing he was unconscious and wouldn’t hear me massacre this ceremony.

But who can think clearly when they’re being soul-bound in the most painful way with a mage who’s under a death spell?

Not me. Clearly. Or I wouldn’t be marrying someone against their will. Although he did have the ring in his pocket. That was weird. And he had kissed me. That reminded me. I had to kiss him.

It wouldn’t be fun. This would be a kiss to divide the death curse evenly between us and hope that together we could defeat it. It would be giving him my strength and energy when I was already strained. But it would also be kissing the only man I’d ever wanted. I’d do my best to enjoy it.

I took a deep breath and then pressed our foreheads together before sliding down and tilting enough that our lips met.

At first, it was the creepy sensation of trying to kiss a corpse. Then it was agony as the death spell hit, dragging me under along with him.