Detective Witch (Devil's Witch Book 2)

I poke the pink mushy icing on the side of my plate. I had already finished eating most of my slice of vanilla cake. We didn’t exactly have a birthday cake, but since we came to this bar for my birthday, we did find they had cakes on the menu. They put a blue candle on my piece and Stella, Colin and Crystal sang me happy birthday. I didn’t really want to celebrate it at my house since we’re all still a little rattled from the events of the last twenty-four hours. I really can’t say for certain if I feel thirty years old, but I feel older, so I guess that’s evidence enough.

Stella and Colin went back to the house after I opened up my present because it was pretty late by then and we were already at the bar for over three hours. It was mostly makeup and new clothes. Stella got me a fuzzy sweater with a black kitten on the front too and I think was my favorite out of the rest of the clothes. Crystal made me a calming elixir to help me go to sleep easier at night which I’m sure will come in handy. I’ve never made one before, but she left me the directions on the jar so I can make my own when it’s used up.

Crystal only left about a couple minutes ago and the only reason I didn’t go with them is because I wanted to finish the rest of my drink. I know I’m attempting to drink away my anxieties, but it’s my birthday so I don’t really care.

I look up from my half empty glass of beer sweeping the room and seeing a muddle of yellow and red auras. There’s a lot of humans here tonight, but also quite a few vamps. I guess it makes sense more of them come at this hour when the coven usually isn’t hanging around the bar.

I shrug my shoulders at that thought and almost drop my drink on the floor in the process. Joanna grabs my glass to steady my shaky hold on my drink. Joanna is still working here, and I remember talking with her a little at the Halloween party here a while back. She’s been watching me and counting my drinks. I know Stella told her to keep an eye on me, but am I really such a lost cause to need watching over by another adult?

“Uh huh, you sit right back down. You’re drunk honey and I am not going on a wild goose chase when midnight hits and my shift ends. Stella asked me to take you home tonight, so you just sit tight. You have five minutes to go.” She says and I grumble while sitting back down.

Joanna doesn’t know about my situation with the coven and how much I need this day to last as long as possible. I want to get up and move around, but she’s making me stay put.

I smile wide when someone calls her back into the kitchen and she hurries off to help them with something. My stomach starts burning and my eyes sharpen as I drunkenly get up from my barstool. My limbs feel wobbly as I stumble through the crowd and I repeatedly get scolded for bumping into people as I not so gracefully making my way toward the back of the room.

My leg collides into the sharp edge of a low table, “Ow...”

I clutch my leg, then topple over onto the grimy, dirty floor onto my hands and knees with my rear end facing the ceiling. Hands grip my hips and I gasp as air rushes by me. I’m pulled against someone’s chest and lean against them as they walk me back over to the bar.

We keep walking though and are greeted by the chilly winter air stepping outside. My feet clumsily follow their stride as I’m pulled along with them down onto the sidewalk. I force myself to concentrate and look up at my annoying captor who snatched me away from my fun back in the bar.

I drunkenly pull against them with an annoyed huff, “Let m-me go you...v-vampire supremacist! Get a-away from me.”

“That isn’t very nice to say.”

We stop walking and I shiver against the cold when they release me. It’s only now I notice my cheeks are damp with fresh tears pouring down my face and stinging my skin against the cold wind out here.

I whimper, “I t-told you to stay away from me...”

___________________________________

-Patty’s Point of View-

The house is the last one on the street. Its faded yellow chipped paint a rather unsightly color in this time of the evening. This new ward they made is quite something. I’m glad I took part in its remaking. It’s paying off right now by allowing me to enter the house without creating a disturbance to the witches asleep inside.

I pull open the white screen door with a whisper, ”Patentibus.”

The black wooden door unlocks and opens at my commanded spell.

The aroma of chocolate surrounds me as I take notice of the rather messy living space. Gold, pink and black balloons hover over the black marble countertop of the kitchen island. A few other balloons have strayed over into the living room where one gold one rests on the coffee table deflated. Surrounding it are several bottles of half empty alcoholic beverages. Some are spilled over the table and onto the floor leaving a pungent smell blending in with the scent of the cake.

On the kitchen table, the tempting morsel sits right below the hanging light. It is a three-layer cake and I pluck a chunk of the chocolate icing off to have a taste of it myself. A fly takes flight off of it seeing my hand move down again for another taste of the cake. After seeing the fly, I swipe the icing off on my black cloak with disgust.

The McCaster girl rolls off the couch in her sleep and I scoff at her drunken burping noises she makes while unaware of my presence. Oh my William, you should be taking better care of your younger sister. A shame Darren didn’t take care of her like my William will soon take care of me. My husband looked so much like his father, but after he passed away, I knew to keep my distance from the McCasters. After all, I had dated Cathy’s husband long before she came along.

The son will do just fine and I have him around my finger now. It is true I was doing things I shouldn’t have been, but I wanted the money and knew my own people wouldn’t care. The humans were another matter. I was murdered anyway. William must have been possessed by someone else’s magic to do such a horrid thing to me. My own people understood my predicament, so they willingly gave me a second chance. I owe it to them to resume my position once more.

All I must do is snuff out the little witch’s light upstairs to ensure my future.

William refuses to see that the only way for our town to survive is without her in it. She’s like a disease and no amount of convincing will change his mind about her. It’s a shame really, but someone has to do this. I’m still not sure exactly how I’ll frame her death, but I’ll come up with something.

I make my way up the steps and go into the room straight ahead -- hers.

My heart beats with ambition as I turn her doorknob and let the bedroom door drift open. Inside, she sleeps alive and well. The pinnacle of my hate all snug safe and sound. If only she knew.

I close the door.

Once concealed in the room alone with her, I walk closer to her bed. I won’t make a quick kill when she’s the reason I had my life stolen from me. She must know herself she had this coming. She’s brought all the vampires here, the filthy subhumans they are. They walk the streets with us as equals and even boast their power to order my kind around.

They are merely demon spawns.

Tomorrow, I’ll make them leave too.

The demonic Parway witch stirs in her sleep. Her pale pile of silky tendrils strewn about her shoulders. Her breathing is heavy and slow. Sweat trickles down her forehead, but her face remains at peace. Even if she wakes up, she won’t know it’s me. My new identity guarantees that. Some of my most loyal members not only brought me back from the dead, but helped me reform my own concealment after all.

So long as I am not injured my identity will be hidden.

Valerie tucks her face beneath her covers and rolls over onto her side facing me. She must be clutching a stuffed animal or something. How childish and pathetic. She should be dead right now if not stripped of all this sickening protection my people have wrongfully given her. A blank black picture frame sits on her nightstand and I smile seeing it pictureless, just like her future.

I want to see her eyes open in terror before I rid the earth of her for good. With a smirk, I snag her covers away and cover my mouth with my other hand seeing the ominous sight. A gigantic lithe black serpent shifts around her stomach. She holds onto its thick body in her sleep and I make a grunt of disgust seeing something else too with my keen and practiced sight.

No wonder it is wrapped around her like a cocoon. The creature is of the devil and must sense what she carries within her. Dark red eyes greet my own from under the tendrils of her white hair that form the nest it rests beneath. How foolish and fitting of her to adopt such a disgusting pest into this home.

I will find the one responsible for this heinous act. No sane person could have done it. They must have been possessed or bewitched. This room reeks of the devil and his finest pet sleeps alongside the woman I had thought my coven would have killed by now!

She is nothing, but a corpse at this point anyway. I’ll get rid of the creature too and kill three birds with one stone and be done with it.

_______________________________________

Something warm and silky compresses around my thigh and moves beneath my neck at the same time.

“Meh...” I mumble sleepily.

My eyes fly open when I remember who took me home last night and that the thing in my bed is not a what, but a who. I was the pathetic one who asked Nick to stay and watch the house in my drunken state, but I didn’t think he would stay in here with me especially after our fight days ago.

“Marcella?” I squeak seeing the headmistress standing next to my bed.

The only reason I woke up is because of Nick purposefully pulling my leg tighter. Something tells me Marcella didn’t plan on waking me up herself. Even though she doesn’t know about my familiar I still feel ashamed having her see us. Although she is headmistress, Marcella shouldn’t be snooping about the house.

What is she doing here anyway?!

“What are you doing here?” I whisper while watching Nick speedily uncoil from around me and drop to the floor below my bed.

“My darling, don’t you know it to be the witching hour? You know-” Marcella begins to say, but suddenly Nick darts out at her.

His giant jaw viciously bites down on her left ankle and it’d be a miracle if he didn’t snap the bone beneath. She screams and I sit up in bed seeing something ‘Marcella’ didn’t want me to see. A head of long dark orange hair and her sudden menacing six-foot tall frame. Those unforgiving eyes haven’t changed since they welcomed me out of my grave.

“Get this filthy pest off me!” Patty shrieks in agony, but her voice still sounds like Marcella.

No matter how hard she tries to fight off Nick it proves useless. His body is too heavy and made of entire muscle. While he latches onto her ankle, the other half of his body is still on top of my bed with me. I can’t say I’d mind if he swallowed her whole and some sick part of me wishes he would so I wouldn’t have to worry about waking up to the insane witch trying to kill me in my sleep ever again.

I’m pretty sure that would count as cannibalism though and I shudder wondering if he would do it anyway if I willed him to as my familiar. Patricia’s appearance flickers out of sight to be replaced by her disguise that she’s been parading around town and pretending to be -- Marcella Baneford.

Her pained expression turns into a slow smile as she sees the horror on my face. With a grunt, she tries to shake Nick off her again, but he doesn’t let go. I don’t know why her magic isn’t hurting him either, but it may have to do with our conjoinment. Well, maybe it is hurting him, but he still has the strength to fight it as I can see her blue magic trying to pry his jaw open to release her ankle.

Suddenly, a bright oval light appears beneath her feet. She’s being summoned? No wonder. I’m sure more than one of her coven members helped revive her and were hoping to have me rid of tonight. Just who would be bold enough to break coven law with the high council of supernatural affairs in town?

What if the high council was behind this?

“You won’t get away this,” I spit at her with resent.

“I already have. You seem to forget I have the law on my side and always will! No one cares about you. You have nothing to live for, but our destruction! I won’t be stopping until I send you to hell. I am right to do so because if I were not, I would have been sent there myself. Your parents indeed are in the other realm. I made sure they knew what you had become and once I did, they wanted nothing to do with you. They want you to burn too!” She cackles while fading away into the light of her portal.

The door to my room opens just as she leaves and Stella runs into my room in her bathrobe and bunny slippers. Nick slithers over to the window and coils up watching her with a low hiss.

Her voice shakes, “Please tell me I’m dreaming and didn’t hear the voice of my mother.”

“I wish it was a dream. Luckily, Nick woke me up before she could attack me in my sleep,” I gulp, “...she’s pretending to be Marcella.”

“Do you think the entire coven was part of this?” Her voice wavers.

“I don’t know.”

I always did have a weird feeling about Marcella, but I never knew she was actually Patricia. It makes me feel nauseous knowing she’s been fooling Will and the rest of the coven. My grip on my covers tightens though when I consider all of them may have known this all along. I can only imagine how Stella must feel after our discovery.

It’s safe to say at least a few coven members broke their own laws tonight, but if the high council was part of this there will be no one left to fight for my case. I feel like my worst fears have come true all because their hatred never truly did die along with Patty. I knew it never did though, but there was hope in me it would die out eventually. Now that she’s alive again, there will be more witches confident enough to break into the house and try to hurt my friends and I.

I just really hope Will didn’t know anything about this, but I can’t be sure of anything now. All I know is the coven clearly wants war with this little stunt of theirs and they’re about to get it. I’m tired of being targeted and it’s about time they get a taste of their own medicine. I can only hope what Patty said about my parents was a lie, but I can’t think about that right now. I have to focus on the now.

“We have to call the high council,” Stella says firmly.

“What if they’re in on it?”

“We can’t just sit here while my mother is plotting to kill you! We at least need to tell William and I know you don’t want to talk to him, but he needs to know.” She explains and then crosses her arms with a sour look, “We need to know if he knows and then expose her.” She tells me quickly.

Stella’s right, but I just have this awful feeling growing within me. What if it is my destiny to fulfill the legend and I really am acting like the devil wants me to? Besides, if we can’t get the coven to believe us about Patty there’s really only one other source we can turn to -- the vampires. More specifically, Nick. Who I’m fairly certain is only out for the best interest of his own people and wouldn’t mind if the coven disappeared forever with me included. That’s how the legend goes at least to my knowledge, once the devil’s used me to open the portal I’ll be discarded and killed off with the rest of the witches in our community.

The devil cursed Nick too and he’s being awfully quiet right now. Well, at least he admitted to me his feelings toward the coven and tonight saved my life. It’s not the first time he’s saved me either. Even if he is a follower of the devil, he has gone out of his way to protect me. He wouldn’t be able to secretly run a cult in this town without the coven knowing anyway. So, if he just believes in, or wants the legend to come true, can I really blame him after everything that’s happened?

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to ask for his help because I kind of feel like he already is on my side. I’m just too afraid to admit it because deep down I’m worried he could be just like his father or a follower of the devil or worse -- maybe even both.

I don’t remember everything the devil told me the last time, and only time, I remember talking to him. What I do remember though are the last words he said to me.

Do not worry, my followers will protect you from those...who do not understand. His words echo in my head like a broken record as I watch Nick silently slither underneath the space below my bed and out of sight.

End of Book 2

Read more in Book 3 Watch of the Wicked!