Page 3 of Warlocks Don’t Win (Singsong City #9)

Chapter

Two

T hree months later, my war with Tolliver the Terrible had escalated.

I came back from my coven meeting to find the raw, burning scent of skunk in the wedding dress section. I had five worthless traps, two empty cages, and life with the most diabolical monster known to man.

I knew Tolliver’s game. He’d decided to make me his familiar.

It wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t lonely just because I was alone.

Alone was safe. Not alone stank like skunk and Winston the Warlock.

Also Portalia who dared lecture me about my lack of participation in the demon defense while eating three of my sausage rolls.

I mean, their entire purpose was to enspell the eater into submission to my will, so I shouldn’t resent her for putting herself in my power, but she didn’t know that’s what they did, and it was just so rude.

She’d clearly never had an evil mother who explained social niceties to you in the most compelling ways.

Not that my sausage rolls weren’t incredibly compelling.

At any rate, it would take hours to neutralize the skunk scent. Over the past few months, he’d snuck in and sprayed every quarter of my shop, but always avoided the traps. That’s not quite accurate. He’s sprayed specifically where the traps were without letting them get a hair of his tail.

To neutralize the stench, I’d need to go shopping for some special ingredients that they didn’t sell at the drug store, which meant taking the bus.

I could drive, but I didn’t like linking my clothing sales persona with the witch one.

Not that I did anything much with either one, but it was always best to fly under the radar.

I hated radars. And flying. Also the bus. But most of all, skunks.

The bus ride was tolerable. Only one person tried to talk to me, something about the new fairy garden in Undercity.

He smelled of werewolf, which was a no for me.

Not that there were any yesses. I’d never date anyone whose taste ran to stripes, particularly mixed with my current lemon printed pants.

It showed a lack of decency and, well, taste.

Someone in the relationship had to have taste, and it wasn’t me.

Why did I have to look like this? Lemon yellow evoked a feeling of happiness, friendly acceptance of the world, while the pink was so soft and nice.

It gave people the idea that I wanted to greet the world with a smile.

Maybe decades ago the idea had some appeal, but my upbringing was much closer to greeting the world with a curse than a smile.

Not that you couldn’t smile and curse at the same time.

My evil mother had been the most cheerful person I knew.

I quickly erased my smile so the wolf friend wouldn’t take it personally. I wasn’t fast enough. He kept talking, carrying the conversation all agonizing twenty blocks until I finally got off, hurriedly telling him goodbye and spelling him to stay where he was.

The apothecary was busier than usual, with several members of the Singsong City witch circle standing near the grimoire display, arguing about aphrodisia pollen vs. bee stinger venom for the most fast-acting love spell.

“Both,” I said, passing through them on my way to the counter.

Scandium gave me a smile from under his miraculous mustache. It swooped up on either side of his mouth like a silver hang glider. “What can I do for you this morning, Clary? I got a potion in recently, a scent neutralizer from a special supplier.”

I shook my head. Like I’d ever trust anyone else to prepare my anti-skunk elixirs. “I’ll just take five ounces of powdered newt claw, four cups of willow bark and…”

He shook his head. “We’ve recently sold all our newt claw powder. But like I said, I have a potion by a master that should do what you need without all the tedium of preparing your own.”

I held very still while I considered, not about whether to buy the prepared potion instead of raw ingredients, but the fact that someone else had bought out his entire stock of newt claws. That was unusual and spoke of big spells, the kinds that I didn’t allow to happen in my city.

I gave him a sweet smile that went with my lemon and pink stripes. “How interesting. I didn’t know that newt claw powder was good for anything other than scent neutralizing. Did they have a big stink to clean up?”

He shrugged. “They didn’t say.”

I leaned closer. “What else did they buy out?” I compelled him just a tad to forget about customer privacy. He’d eaten my sausage rolls, so it wasn’t difficult.

“Queen Dill, paperwort, and belladonna. It’s an odd combination, particularly when combined with the newt.”

“I’ll take two bottles of the neutralizer,” I said absently while my brain compiled those ingredients in a dozen ways, coming to the conclusion that someone was up to very no good.

Either they were crafting a compulsion spell with an aftertaste of forgetting, or they were breaking down dead bodies, getting rid of evidence.

Probably both. That particular potion and spell combo was in one of the most popular grimoires you could pick up at a run of the mill mystics shop.

This is why it was important, if you were an evil magic user, to have your own private supply of ingredients that couldn’t be monitored by an outside source.

Like me. No one did big bad magic in my city, and that was for one very simple reason: I’d end up being blamed for it, particularly now that the Beast of Betrayal knew where I lived.

And he’d set me up with the Pet from Purgatory.

When the apothecary got the potions in a bag and handed it over, I covered his hand with mine, doing a quick sweep of his thoughts, pulling out the description of the customer who had bought out all of his newt claw powder.

Small, female, with a mousy air of fear.

Ah. Parody, who was continually oppressed by her wicked witch of a mother. Father unknown. House in the suburbs.

All of that was in a flash before his thoughts turned to me, thoughts that weren’t any of my business, even if he was thinking that my weirdness grew on you. Thanks, Scandium. I could say the same about your mustache, only it grows on you, not me. Heh.

“Thanks. I’ll see you later,” I said, pushing through the witches who nodded at me.

“See you at the circle on Thursday,” one of the guys called.

I nodded back, and then I was pulling out my phone and trying to figure out the bus schedule that would take me out to the ‘burbs.

After forty-five minutes of switching buses, I got to walk a mile and a half through a maze of soulless mega houses with humidity that sucked the life out of me.

At least I’d started the day not having any pride of appearance, so when I was a limp dishrag of dismal hue, my pride was intact.

Or it hadn’t ever recovered from the loser’s treachery.

It was dumb and immature to call someone a loser when he had his own tv show, basically ran all the witches and warlocks on this continent, as well as being personally the most swoony poster-fodder in existence. Yep. Loser.

When I got to the house, I squinted at it, searching for any aural vestiges of violence or other negative vibes. The whole thing was a negative vibe. There was this overarching feeling of exhaustion mixed with frustrated violence. Yep. That matched Parody.

I took a deep breath and then walked up the front sidewalk, noticing the sad lack of organic life in the dull, immaculate lawn.

There was a flicker of a curtain in the window so they had alarm wards set up on the perimeter.

I fixed my most polite smile on my face and wished I’d brought some sausage rolls.

I wanted to munch on something in the face of so much depression, oppression, bringing me back to my own awesome childhood.

Our house had been much larger, older, with its own spirit of creepy dread.

But at least it hadn’t been depressed. Deranged, yes.

Oppressive, of course. But not depressed.

We must be grateful for the lessons that turned me into a capable heir of the great Sage dynasty.

We must smile in the face of fear and torture.

I let my smile fade and knocked on the door.

It took a few seconds for it to open, but not as long as I’d expected.

Parody stared out at me while the scent of potions and fresh death curled around her.

I was too late. She’d already done her worst and looked more alive than she had in years, brown eyes bright and shining, brown hair lustrous instead of limp.

She’d drawn in the life force of her mother then.

“Hey, Par, I got a flat tire a few blocks away and remembered that you lived out here, you know, because I’ve dropped you off a few times from the circle when you weren’t feeling well. You look fine now. Just…” I trailed off when I glanced down and happened to see the bloody handprint on her wrist.

She looked down, saw what I saw, and then the psycho witch switch flipped, and she was summoning all the evil energy she’d absorbed from her mother to do a death spell or something else ridiculous from that generic grimoire she really shouldn’t have used.

I kicked her knee out, hard with my pointy floral boot, sending her into the wall and throwing off her casting.

“The thing is,” I said, following her inside and closing the door behind me. “That these feelings of rage and vengeance will only eat you up inside if you don’t find something productive to do with them.”

She snarled at me. “You don’t know what it’s like.” Then she tried to cast another spell, like she didn’t learn from the last time.

I punched her in the face, perfect fist, exactly how Winston the Warlock had shown me so many years ago. Thinking about him made me hit her harder than I needed to. She went down, but came up, clawing.

Which meant that she was in touching distance. Touching when I was the heir of the great Sage Dynasty.

She’d devoured her mother’s soul and murdered her, so taking her magic wouldn’t take out the killer in her. Too bad. I stole her life and energy, but not her magic, leaving her limp in my hands until I dragged her to the living room and put her in a purple recliner.

I winced as I touched my cheek. She’d scratched me more than I’d like. I peered into my reflection in the elaborately framed mirror over the mantel to check the marks. A slight haze in the area behind my left shoulder had me swinging around, grabbing the poker as I moved.

“Show yourself,” I commanded. Yes, obey the decree of the lemon-pantsed poker wielder.

After a moment’s pause, the air shimmered and I was left staring into the face of the most diabolically evil, twisted, disgusting, vile, horrible monster in the entire world.

And there was a dead body in the house, like he’d just been waiting to pin another murder on me.

Winston the Warlock was going to send me to jail again.