Page 5 of Warlocks Don’t Win (Singsong City #9)

He grunted and followed me out of the house.

He didn’t point out how many middle names I had, the great Sage heir.

He was above arguing over something stupid.

I wasn’t. I wasn’t above getting a kick out of watching him get swarmed, either.

Except that a tiny flicker I’d long since buried disliked other people tormenting my warlock.

I sank in my seat and closed my eyes. I didn’t have a warlock any more than I had a familiar. They both stank.

It took me three hours once we got back to my shop to destench the place and pack.

“I still can’t believe you don’t have a car,” I muttered as I shoved the last suitcase into the back of my truck. My hair issues made it imperative to have a revolving wardrobe of seriously weird clothes options, even if I intended to only be gone for a weekend.

“I ride a broom,” Winston said with a shrug before biting into a sausage roll.

I snatched it away from him and shoved the rest of it into my mouth before I considered the implications: his mouth being where my mouth was, an intimacy that I’d already experienced way too recently.

He gave me a mild smile while his caramel eyes glittered diabolically. “Are you allowed to consume your own spells?”

“Nnyumbins, loosr.”

“No, it’s none of my business unless it involves breaking my grandmother’s curse.”

I swallowed and said, “About that, why are you still here? I can handle driving northeast to the old monster and ending the curse by myself.”

“You’ve been playing with untalented witches for years.

Back home, everyone has been playing the diabolical games that come with the Salem territory.

They’re not allied with my coalition any more than your coven, but you know how they are.

Any one of them would have been happy to murder your mother.

I wouldn’t think any of them would be capable of it, but someone was and did. ”

“Yeah, you’re talking to her, but I didn’t curse your grandmother.”

He raised a brow and then moved my suitcases around somehow making them all flatter and less likely to fall out of the back. “They could be entirely unrelated. But the curse does originate from Sage House.”

I sniffed. “You’re still not making an argument for us driving together. You should take your private jet, broom, or whatever.”

“Or we could drive together and come up with a game plan on the way.”

“Game plan? Like you’re a football player or something?” I wrinkled my nose at him. Jessica and I had done spells on them to see who could get control of them the fastest. I won that game, along with a stalker. It was a stupid game.

“I have played football. Also soccer. Also rugby. I’m a sporty guy.”

I glanced at the breadth of his shoulders and sniffed dismissively. Warlocks were supposed to be strong, of the woods, and capable of physical pursuits like chopping firewood and tilling a garden bed, but not group sports.

“You’re a disappointment to warlocks everywhere.”

“Particularly the one right here.” He shot me a meaningful look that I pointedly ignored.

“If you flirt with me, I’m throwing you out of my truck.”

“I’m not flirting.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

My truck didn’t like having a large, nice-smelling warlock in it.

He smelled like fresh cedar wood shavings and a hint of something sweet, nectar with a touch of lilac or jasmine, but not enough that I could really pin down what it was.

Aggravating is what it was. And his hands were so large, tan, capable, like he should have an enormous axe handle he could wrap them around.

“So, the plan…” I started after I’d made my way out of downtown and was pulling onto the highway that went over the golden wall and the river, east.

“You’ll have to rejoin the Salem coven, take control of it, and end the reign of terror.”

I shot him a look. “I don’t have to do anything. And there’s no way in heaven or Salem that I’m rejoining that nest of vipers. You should just get together a townspeople mob and burn them out.”

“That does sound civilized.”

I gave him a slight smile. “Then I could build a house on the ashes, like great, great, great, great, great, great-grandmother Sage did on the old Salem burning site.”

“So civilized. If you don’t join the coven, how will you uncover the originator of the curse?”

“I’m not. I’m going to break the curse from my house, if it really was set there, and then go back home.”

His shoulders stiffened, not that I was paying attention to his shoulders. “It’s your home, a place of great power, but you’re just going to run away again? And what’s going to stop someone from putting a curse on you next?”

I shot him a frown. “It’s not my home, just a house I inherited but can’t sell. In other words, a burden. You think that going back permanently is something I’m willing to do? For what purpose? How could that possibly benefit me?”

He grunted instead of arguing. Interesting.

He could persuade practically anyone to do almost anything.

But he wasn’t trying with me. Probably was waiting for my defenses to lower.

But why would he want me to go back home, a township away from his own center of power in Bosty?

Not that he didn’t have another base on the other side of the country, but this was his heritage.

Where his grandmother still lived, waning, even when she wasn’t cursed.

I frowned as my hands tightened the hold on the old, cracked, white, vinyl-covered steering wheel. I’d lived for her letters for five, very long years. And now she was cursed? “Explain more about the curse. How is she holding up? When did she notice it? How long has it been in effect?”

“Moridia fleur.”

I flinched. That curse was hard to notice at first because it started feeding the victim energy into an exterior show of health and vitality, which strength once lapsed would reveal the extent of the damage that had been quietly done by the curse.

“You can’t stop it?”

The curse would already have fed on most of the victim’s strength, sucking them dry. Stopping it would still leave the victim weak, dying unless there was a way to reverse it. I didn’t know nearly as much about reversing curses as I did about creating them.

“No,” he said shortly. “I put safeguards in place, linking my life to hers, but it can only do so much. She’s barely hanging on.”

I started chewing on my bottom lip while I considered. “If the spell is based on my house, maybe I could do a reversal, feed the life of the curser into her, or draw strength from the house into her.”

“Moridia Fleur usually kills its victims outright if the original setup is altered.”

I wrinkled my nose. “You already researched it.”

“Extensively.”

“So I’m just here to allow you access to the house?”

“And get in with the local coven, which are the only ones with the ability to use your property, and find out who did it.”

“For justice? I’m not a fan of justice.”

“What happened to you wasn’t justice. It was error, blindness, and?—”

“We aren’t talking about the past,” I snapped, my stomach knotting while my hands strangled the wheel.

I wasn’t feeling so good. One, Winston the Warlock, my vile, despicable, ex-fiancé, was in my truck smelling addictive.

Two, I’d been avoiding my past, including my old coven for a lot of extremely good reasons.

I couldn’t think of a single coven member that wouldn’t make the world a better place when they left it.

He cleared his throat. “Right. Why would you want to find the person who murdered your mother and get vengeance on them?”

“I’m the convicted murderer. You should know as you’re the one who testified against me for the crime.” I shot him a hard smile. “If you don’t stop talking about it, I’m going to murder you next. This time, I won’t leave any evidence.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, death by sausage rolls. I’ve seen how you dominate your adversaries. I’ve been to your new coven.”

“Don’t pretend to know me,” I said, cold and icy and nauseous.

Seriously, he acted like things were just fine between us.

Also, I didn’t talk to warlocks for an extended period of time.

Or witches. Or anyone other than customers that looked like they might be an easy upsell.

I wasn’t interested in a tough upsell. Nope. Speaking of…

“If you want your warlock coat back, it’ll cost you,” I said.

“You didn’t burn it?”

I shot him a contemptuous look. “Whatever else you think you know about me, you should realize that at my core is a pecuniary businesswoman. I wouldn’t ever destroy something when I could sell it back to its owner for five times more than market value.”

He looked directly ahead, out the windshield and the tree-lined interstate in front of us.

The sky was overcast, gloomy, like I felt being around the monster.

“Then why didn’t you sell the ring? They returned it to me once you were released from prison.

The jewel alone was worth a fortune, but the magic spelling imbued in it made it priceless. ”

My whole body went stiff and cold. His engagement ring was gorgeous, heavy with spells and intentions that were all ashes to me now.

I’d loved that ring as an extension of the love I had for him.

When I’d gotten out of jail, they’d given me all the things I’d had on when I came in, including the ring.

I’d left it in the box when I dressed in my black sheath, matching my dark hair, contrasting to my pale skin.

I looked like my mother, except that she was always smiling. Not anymore.

Why did he bring up the ring? Why did he keep talking about the past? He was Winston the Warlock, international sensation, and national neutral magic coalition director. Not to mention how many witches would throw themselves at him when given the chance.

I’d seen his show once, enough to know that there was a particular female who had an on-again, off-again relationship with him.

I’d almost burned down the city when I’d seen him kiss her.

That was only a week after I got out of jail and had the weight of my magic combined with my mother’s released back to me.

Her magic wasn’t stable, or at least it hadn’t been at the time.

I’d spent a lot of effort anchoring that magic to the Singsong Coven, using them to stabilize all the psychotic I’d inherited with my mother’s death.

Still, my reaction had been valuable, teaching me that my feelings for him hadn’t diminished during my time in jail.

At any rate, he was a popular, handsome man who could have a good percentage of most females in witch circles or otherwise.

Why was he flirting with me? That’s what he was doing, wasn’t it?

Come to think of it, before, when I thought he was sincerely in love with me, he hadn’t flirted like this.

He’d wanted to know what I thought about things, wanted to read all the same books and do the same things so we could talk about them.

He hadn’t told me how he felt about me, he just made me feel special. Especially stupid.