Nice Witches Don't Swear Page 2

  Just enough light leaked out of the diner window to illuminate a sign hanging over the door of the neighboring building: LIBRARY. Of course. Some how, some way, the Assjacket Public Library had come to hold one or more magical books. And those materials were calling to me through the storm.

  I was a librarian. And I was a witch. I had no choice but to answer the astral summons.

  I was about to step into the rain when I heard it: A snuffling roar, like some massive predator had just been released from a zoo.

  No, I realized, as a flash of lightning illuminated the street. Not a massive predator. Dozens of them. Squat and fat and low to the ground, rough black fur set off by a broad shimmering stripe down every spine. For one fleeting second, I thought I was being attacked by skunks.

  But the creatures storming down Main Street were larger than any skunks. Larger, and faster, and armed with infinitely sharper teeth and claws. The creatures storming down Main Street were snarling, screaming honey badgers. And even without a treehouse in sight, they looked like they wanted to eat witch for dinner.

  Chapter 2

  Honey badgers. Large carnivorous predators native to Africa, Asia, and India. Basically, weasels on steroids, with skin loose enough to let them twist around and bite anything crazy enough to sink teeth into their backsides. (What? I was a librarian. When I got flooded with Internet memes on a boring afternoon at the Peabridge, I took a break to do some research.)

  There was no way a horde (flock? herd?) of honey badgers was raiding Main Street of Assjacket, West Virginia.

  Honey badgers were raiding Main Street of Assjacket, West Virginia.

  And as they rolled down Main Street, they somehow managed to extinguish the thunderstorm. One minute, rain was pelting every surface. The next, the storm was swept away, rolling out to the horizon.

  Maybe it was the stench that chased away the Imbolc monsoon. Stink rolled in front of the animals like the winds on the edge of an all new tempest. The musk was strong enough to make my eyes water. It coated the back of my throat and made me start to gag.

  I should have run inside the diner. I should have leaped back under the awning, pushed my way through the rattle-trap door, grabbed Melissa, and run for the bathroom, praying for a lock on the door strong enough to keep us safe.

  But even as my feet started to shift, my brain shouted a refusal. I couldn’t lead the honey badgers into that crowd. I couldn’t put all those innocent people at risk—especially not the adorable little boy who had been hanging, literally, from Wanda’s apron strings. The little boy and the crowd of happy patrons and my very best friend, too.

  The Town Car, then. It was my only hope.

  Even as I formed the thought, I realized the car was too far away. I might manage to get my fingers on the door handle, but the gnashing, growling, screaming ocean of honey badgers would rip my back to shreds before I could escape.

  That left magic.

  I didn’t have any crystals on me—I hadn’t thought I’d need them, traveling to a production of one of William Shakespeare’s lesser plays.

  A horde (flock? herd? It still didn’t matter, not now…) of ravening predators wasn’t going to be stopped by any herbal barrier, even if I could scare up anything green and growing in the dismal streets of Assjacket.

  That left a spell.

  But I wasn’t exactly the world’s expert on spellcraft. Sure, I’d organized all the spellbooks in my cottage basement. I’d awakened a familiar. Cast a love spell. But I wasn’t up to speed on chanting rhymes to banish snarling carnivores.

  Maybe there was something else I could use… I’d lit candles before, without benefit of matches. Maybe I could transform some of the trash lining the street into a blockade.

  Enough thinking. The first honey badgers, the leaders of the pack (pack! That’s what they were! A pack of honey badgers!) were four storefronts away.

  I brushed my fingertips against my forehead, offering up the power of my thoughts. I touched my lips, offering the power of my voice. I settled my palm over my violently pounding heart. “Dark shies—” I started, rushing the first two words of the spell.

  Before I could get to the second line, I was surrounded by fire. But this wasn’t the controlled yellow wick I’d hoped to conjure. This was great sweeps of emerald green and blood red—as if someone’s leftover Christmas ornaments had suddenly turned into lightning bolts.

  The closest honey badger popped. It exploded, like a watermelon smashed beneath a sledgehammer in some gag stage act. The front bumper of Gran’s car was coated with badger goo.

  As if that sight wasn’t bizarre enough, I was suddenly shouldered out of the way by a giant wolf. Baring his teeth and snarling like a chainsaw, the gigantic animal thrust his body between me and the nearest honey badgers. His neck was as thick as my waist, and the fur along his spine stood at attention. His tail stretched behind him as he slinked forward, and I thought if I’d been a honey badger, I would have run for the nearest tree.

  A few of the invading stink-weasels obviously thought the same. A pair scrambled up a lamppost. A singleton clawed its way up the stone columns in front of the First Assjacket Savings and Loan.

  Climbing only made the honey badgers clearer targets for lightning bolts. A streak of crimson took out the one on the bank. The marble was suddenly smeared with viscous remains.

  The two scaling the streetlamp were popped by twin emerald flashes. The animals sounded like bubble wrap as they exploded. I had a vague sense of more noxious, charred body parts, but I was mostly blinded by the lightning’s afterglow.

  Another snarl. Another zap. A bellow, loud and long, and I was bowled over by the combination reek of wet dog and singed fur, sharp enough to override the funk of honey badger.

  “Sorry, babe!” shouted a woman, her voice loud above the storm.

  For answer, the wolf growled, like an earthquake shifting beneath Mt. Everest. I blinked hard, trying to clear my vision.

  I could see the main pack of honey badgers getting closer now. They were running in formation, a white-streaked arrowhead. The tip of the arrow—one massive beast with teeth as long as my hand—popped into soggy Christmas confetti. Another honey badger immediately took its place, opening its mouth to howl.

  Honey badger halitosis threatened to topple me. That, or the fact that the wolf had caught the sleeve of my coat in his massive jaws. He was flexing his neck, pulling me, dragging me away from Gran’s car. I ripped my sleeve free, loosing half the hem in the process.

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  Three more honey badgers gone. But the animals were abreast of Gran’s car now. The vehicle’s massive engine compartment shielded the predators from incendiary lightning bolts. Impossibly, the stench was even thicker now; every panted breath threatened to bowl me over.

  “Come on, you dumbasses! Get over here!”

  The wolf rammed his shoulder into my hip. I gave up pretending I had any clue what was happening, but I knew when I was being herded. I scrambled toward the woman, who was stringing together curse words in more colorful combinations than I’d ever heard in my life.

  “Duck, you douchenozzles!” she shouted as the wolf and I approached the door. I doubled over, barely avoiding a ruby-and-emerald fireball that sizzled above the rain-slicked street. The wolf emphasized the woman’s command, shoving his nose in a place it had no business going, and I tumbled over the threshold.

  “Bar the door with lock and key,

  That is what I ask of she,

  Goddess great, goddess good,

  Don’t turn us into badgers food.”

  A tremendous blast of magic rocketed against the door. I was blind again. Deaf, too. My feet slipped out from under me, and I sat down hard.

  Frantic, desperate, I reached into the echoing depths of my brain. “Neko!” I thought. “I need you!”

  There was another surge of power, but this one was a familiar flash of darkness. Months ago, I’d given up trying to explain what that meant, how anything could “f
lash” and be “dark” all at the same time. All I knew was that I’d successfully worked my own spell, bolstered by the offering of my thought, voice, and heart, before I discovered I couldn’t do anything to save myself from ravening badgers.

  A warm body crouched next to mine. A familiar arm slipped around my shoulders as a chiding voice clucked disapproval. “Really?” my familiar said. “How many times have I told you that rainwater will destroy all the hard work of your conditioner, Jane?”

  Neko. My familiar. And if he was berating me about my choice of hair care products, then he must believe we weren’t in any true danger.

  I took a shuddering breath, inhaling for a count of five. I held it for five more seconds. I exhaled for another five ticks, and when I opened my eyes I could see.

  Neko wore an immaculate tuxedo, a perfect bow tie at his throat, the starched pleats of his shirt disappearing into a brilliant crimson cummerbund. The satin stripe down his trousers gleamed in the shadowy darkness, complementing the glowing pearl studs in perfect alignment on his chest.

  “Where were you?” I asked, because I didn’t want to think about anything else.

  “About to sit down to dinner at the Food and Friends gala.”

  Of course. The charity was one of Neko’s favorites. He’d told me he was attending. That was one of his perks, after all, going to places without me, his controlling witch. His freedom was a side effect of my having awakened him on the night of a full moon.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured.

  “You’ll just have to make a donation when you’re back home,” Neko said slyly. “A sizable one.”

  He’d hold me to his fundraising goals; I had no doubt about that. But my familiar’s attention was no longer riveted to his formal dinner. Instead, he was looking around, taking in every element of the room around us.

  We stood in front of the circulation desk of a classic small-town library. I could make out the miniature tables and chairs of the children’s section to my right. An adult reading room sprawled to my left. And at the very back, in a glassed-in space safe and secure from the street, was a collection of leather-bound books, the type of local-history treasures that a community might keep under lock and key.

  I shivered.

  That room was the source of the tingle I’d felt just before the honey badgers attacked. Out on the street, it had felt like static electricity, making my my hair stand on end. In here, twenty yards away, the energy buffeted against me in waves, like a full-body pedicure chair set on overdrive.

  I shot a look at Neko, to see if he felt the same thing I did. He gave the faintest nod possible; I might not have noticed, if his bow tie hadn’t rustled. Before I could say anything, though, he jutted his chin toward the man and woman standing beside the circulation desk.

  My brain must have been fried by the last bolt of energy that had taken care of the honey badgers. That was my only excuse for not paying immediate attention to the couple who were studying me with shrewd eyes.

  The woman was tall and thin, with a magnificent mane of red hair. She wore a Max Midnight miniskirt that looked like every stitch had been tailored just for her, and a Saint Laurent blouse that must have cost more than a month of my pay at the Peabridge. Her long legs looked like she’d stolen them from a gazelle, an effect heightened by her Louboutin stilettos.

  I could practically hear Neko chiding me for my road-trip jeans and nondescript sweater. Especially because the jeans sported a stray smear of chocolate from the Lust After Dark I’d devoured in the car.

  I glanced at the man beside the fashion plate. He looked like he’d just stepped off the cover of a romance novel—one of the dirty ones. For one thing, he wasn’t wearing a shirt. For another, he was fastening the top button of his well-worn jeans, drawing attention to a shadowy streak of hair in a place I knew I shouldn’t be studying. He had dark hair on top of his head too, and even in the dim light I could tell his eyes were blue. Dark blue. Tropical ocean paradise blue.

  Neko cleared his throat.

  That’s right. I was the guest here. Every rule of magical etiquette I knew said I was the one who had to step forward, had to introduce myself. I held out my hand to the woman in the designer clothes and said, “I’m Jane.”

  No last name. Because every rule of magical etiquette also said it was dangerous to give away any information not completely, totally, absolutely necessary to reveal.

  “Zelda,” she said. She shook my hand, but I got the feeling she was a little out of practice with that social nicety. She nodded toward the man. “And the werewolf here is Mac.”

  Werewolf. Right. That explained the whole shirtless thing. But where had he gotten those jeans?

  Safer question: “What are honey badgers doing in Assjacket, West Virginia?”

  Zelda grimaced. “Were. What were honey badgers doing in Assjacket. Because there aren’t any honey badgers out there anymore. Just some leftover nuts-and-guts jelly.”

  She certainly had a way with words. “Fine,” I said. “What were the honey badgers doing out there?”

  “We’ve had a feud going for a while now,” Zelda said. “Territorial dispute, you know? It’s been a thing since I became the Shifter Wanker here. Earlier than that, actually. Since Mac became the Shifter King.”

  Shifter Wanker? Shifter King? I had no idea what she was talking about. But if she was on the side of getting rid of those blood-thirsty carnivores, I’d manage to accept just about anything she had to say.

  “What brings you to Assjacket?” Mac asked. The question was casual enough, but I heard an edge beneath his words.

  I spent three hours in a car, eating pastry and drinking Diet Coke, and I needed a restroom so bad my eyes were turning yellow. I was so not going to say that. Instead, I cleared my throat and said, “My best friend and I are on a road trip. In fact, I should get back to the diner and make sure—”

  “Everything’s fine at the diner,” Mac said, so confident that I had to believe him. But there was…something beneath his tone. A sharp edge I couldn’t ignore as he demanded, “What made you decide to eat there?”

  “It was the only place around?” I hated that my nerves turned my answer into a question.

  “What Mac’s saying,” Zelda interrupted before the…Shifter King could carve out another question, “is most humans steer clear of Assjacket. They see a run-down mess of a town, and they can’t wait to leave.” She glanced over at Neko, who was watching our entire exchange with eagle eyes. “But we all know you two aren’t exactly human, right?”

  I swallowed hard. “Right?” Damn. That was another question. I firmed up my voice, because I couldn’t afford to make any more mistakes. “I’m a witch,” I said. “And Neko is my familiar.”

  Zelda cast a more appraising eye at Neko. “You’re a genius!” she said. “There’s no way he can lick his sack in that get-up!”

  “Excuse me?” I asked, feeling like I was about ten steps behind. Neko only arched an eyebrow, as if he were considering some new costuming trick.

  Zelda said, “I’ve got three familiars—Fat Bastard, Boba Fett, and Jango Fett. And the next day I keep them from French-kissing their balls will be the first day.”

  I tried to figure out how to answer that, but Neko was ready with a quick reply. “That’s because they can,” he said, his voice grave.

  I shook my head. I had to get this conversation back to reality. “Let me get this straight.” I looked at Zelda. “You’re a witch. And he’s a werewolf. So all those people in the diner…”

  “They’re shifters too,” Zelda said. “Wanda and Bo are raccoons. Did you meet Bo? He’s such an adorable little boy.”

  I nodded.

  “And DeeDee is a deer.”

  Okay. I could see that.

  I’d left my best friend in a diner she wasn’t supposed to be able to see, eating food prepared by a raccoon, served up by a deer. And I was chatting about it right now, with a witch who had a mouth like a sewer and her werewolf boy-toy. I swallowed h
ard. “I’ve got to get back there,” I said.

  But Neko whined as I said the words. He whined, and he shifted his weight, jutting one tuxedo-clad elbow toward the glass room at the back of the library. He felt the magical thrum that I’d felt. He knew there was something on those shelves, something strong enough to reach past all the craziness Zelda and Mac had just presented.

  It didn’t matter. I had to protect Melissa. “Neko,” I said, making my voice as hard as a diamond.

  His eyes begged, but he came to stand by my side. Nevertheless, he let himself respond: “Jane.” His tone tugged at my heart, because he wanted that book every bit as much as I did.

  Before I could reprimand him, we were showered in a cloud of rainbow glitter.

  I closed my eyes automatically. When I opened them, I found myself facing a new magical couple. The woman had two feet of blond hair pulled into a ponytail at the top of her head. She wore torn black tights and a silver leotard, fitted out with a metal bra that looked like it could put my eyes out. I felt like I’d been catapulted back in time thirty years at least. The Madonna look-alike’s companion was a huge man, with hair as red as Zelda’s.

  Zelda clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth in obvious exasperation. “It’s about time you two assmonkeys showed up!”

  The other woman poked out her metal chest and leered. “We were just playing a game of—”

  “TMI!” Zelda shouted, and I had to agree. From tousled hair, smeared lipstick, and the big guy’s half-zipped trousers, it was perfectly clear what sort of game those two had been playing.

  “There’s no reason for you to be so sensitive about a little slap and tickle. Especially when you and Mac were getting your own nookie among the bookies not ten minutes ago.”

  “Carol—”

  “Zelda—” the 1980s refugee said, in the exact same tone.

  “Is that a Tom Ford?” the red-haired man exclaimed, rushing over to finger Neko’s tailored sleeve.

  “Charmed,” my familiar said, submitting to the attention.

  They were all crazy. But Neko was batting his eyelashes at the giant. Carol and Zelda were shrieking at each other like parrots in a cage. Mac was finally paying proper attention to that top button on his jeans.