Nice Witches Don't Swear Read online

  Mac gave her legs an admiring glance as he helped her off the bed. “Nice,” he said in an appreciative voice.

  “Not bad for short notice,” Zelda said. She sashayed as she led us all out of the bedroom, taking up her position outside the next door. She didn’t seem to realize she was dressed like a teenage boy’s dream date. A kinky teenage boy. Who had a thing for fairytale breakers-and-enterers.

  Another countdown from Mac. Another quick twist of the doorknob. Another fast attack on an empty bedroom.

  This time, Mac landed on top of Zelda, neatly positioned between her spread legs. “Mmm,” he said, burying his nose in her hair.

  “This bed is too soft,” Zelda said.

  I looked at Neko. He shrugged, like he was used to seeing fairytales turned into X-rated storylines all the time. Which, come to think of it, he probably did, at some of those parties he attended.

  Carol grunted in annoyance. When Zelda didn’t respond, the Baba Yaga started humming something. It took me a moment to recognize the tune as “Chain Gang.” Carol wasn’t exactly Sam Cooke, but she managed to get her point across. Zelda wriggled out from under Mac.

  “That leaves the master bedroom,” she said.

  “Indeed,” Mac agreed, all too willing to help her smooth her apron over her little blue dress.

  Zelda led the way to the end of the hall. This time, she held up fingers for the count down. One. Two. On “Three,” Mac kicked the door in. Zelda and I surged forward together, but we drew up short on the threshold of the bedroom.

  For a heartbeat, I couldn’t tell what I was looking at. A creature loomed two feet in front of Mac, as long as the shifter was tall. It was covered with dark brown fur. Its head tapered into a broad flat snout, rounded like the bill of a duck. It had four short limbs with thick webs between its fingers and toes. Its wrists were decked out with deadly looking spurs, sharp spines that dripped with some viscous fluid.

  Neko reared back in a futile attempt to force me into the safety of the hallway. I clutched the Goldthwaite as if it were a drowning child.

  “What is it?” I shouted, trying to peer past my familiar.

  “A platypus,” Neko moaned.

  Stunned, I gaped at the hissing creature.

  Chapter 4

  Correction.

  Creatures.

  The creatures, plural, attacked. Before I could say anything, do anything, offer up even the most basic of spells, the room was filled with…platypi. Platypodes. Platypuses. Whatever the official plural noun was, there had to be three dozen of the things in there.

  They poured from under the bed. They boiled out of the closet. They rolled through the narrow bathroom door, waving their bills back and forth like distracting light-sabers as they slashed with their poisonous claws.

  I blinked, and Mac had transformed into his wolf form. Snarling, baring his own claws, he surged into the roiling swirl of platypuses. Within seconds, the coppery smell of blood was mixed into the dank odor of the enemy beasts.

  A loud pop sounded behind me, in the hallway, and I whirled to see who was launching a new attack. The newcomer was a woman—tall, with blond hair and perfect bangs and a face that looked like she was a movie star. She was thin and lithe, like she’d never even heard of chocolate cake, but she was so, um, well-endowed that I wondered how she balanced on her sky-high heels. In fact, her baby blue cashmere sweater seemed like it might unravel from the slightest touch.

  “It’s about time, Susie-Q,” Zelda said, stepping back and planting her hands on her hips.

  “Sassy,” the woman corrected, and I got the sense that these women had waltzed through their name games thousands of times in the past.

  “Back to wearing my sweaters again?” Zelda asked.

  “You gave me this one. Remember?” The other witch preened.

  Because Sassy was a witch. I could sense her power, even as she bantered with Zelda. It rippled just beneath the surface of her skin, raw magic, ready to be harnessed in any type of spell.

  Which was a good thing, because Mac seemed to be on the losing end of the battle inside the bedroom. “Um, ladies?” I asked, nodding toward the platypus herd. Flock. Paddle. Whatever a group of platypuses was called. “Shouldn’t we be concentrating on those things?”

  “Not a bad idea,” Carol agreed. Fabio nodded enthusiastically.

  As if they heard my concern, the platypuses chose that moment to surge forward. Three slipped past me out the door, carving a biting, thrashing channel between the Assjacket witches and the bedroom. One broad tail swiped against my side, and I yelped as I nearly lost my balance.

  Neko’s hands were firm as he snatched me to safety, automatically steadying the Goldthwaite volume so it didn’t slip into the slime on the carpeted floor. There wasn’t room for us to retreat, though, not with the giant platypuses blocking the hallway behind us. Instead, Neko pulled me into a corner of the bedroom, beside a massive oak armoire. From this vantage point, I could see Mac slashing into the pack. I could hear the clash of his teeth as he savaged the animals and the squeal as he caught one on its slobbering duck bill.

  “This won’t be safe for long,” I said to Neko. “We’ve got to get back to the hallway.”

  He nodded, eyes narrowed, as he measured our chances. We needed to wait for a break in the action, for a moment when the platypuses were too occupied with defending themselves from Mac to bother with a witch, her familiar, and a single leather-bound book.

  Fat chance, though. There were too many platypuses. Mac was tormenting half a dozen of them. Another twenty were fighting for the doorway, hellbent on getting out of the bedroom and into the house. Into the town, for all I knew. I couldn’t see what Zelda and Sassy were doing out there.

  Even as I craned my neck, two of the largest animals turned toward Neko and me. With their piggy little eyes, they seemed to hunt by sense of smell, instead of by sight. They swept their bills back and forth, stretching out their stubby paws as if they were sleep-walking toward the armoire.

  Neko grabbed the oaken door and swung it in front of us. The motion boxed us into a corner, but it provided a decent shield.

  Provided a decent shield, that was, until Zelda’s shriek echoed off the ceiling. “Not the Jimmy Choos!”

  Hidden behind the armoire door, I heard a terrible sound, a snuffling that mixed with a snarl before sharp teeth crunched through something that sounded like two-thousand-dollar boots.

  “Star light, star bright,

  First ass I zap tonight.

  Goddess spare my favorite shoes

  Smite the beast that eats my Choos”

  There was a flash of lightning, bright enough and close enough that I thought the armoire door had to be a goner. The bolt of energy was immediately followed by a shriek and the stench of burned fur.

  “Pop it like a zit!” That was Sassy, I was pretty sure, shouting over the chaos.

  “Not while it has my boot in its mouth!” Yep. That had to be Zelda.

  “Now!” Sassy commanded. “Before it’s too late!”

  Another bolt of lightning, this one tinged with silver. There was no platypus shriek this time, only a sickening, wet pop, like a vat of spaghetti sauce on a super-low flame. The reek of incinerated fur merged with something far more…visceral.

  “Barbra Yentl!” That was Zelda’s anguished cry. “Those were my best Jimmy Choos!”

  “Fabio will get you another pair.” Carol’s voice was matter-of-fact. “You weren’t going anywhere in those, anyway. Not after what that thing did to the heel.”

  I couldn’t believe they were talking about shoes. Not with Mac still growling across the room. Not with the sick slither of dozens of nightmare monotremes, all driven mad by the fiery disappearance of one of their number.

  A body hit the armoire door, hard. I tried to bite back my shriek, but surprise got the better of me. Neko clapped a hand over my mouth, but I could hear more platypuses join in the battle. One, two, three at least, all taking turns pummeling the oak
door.

  “Neko?” I whispered, not at all certain what I could do to save us. I glanced at the book, still clutched tight in my arms. If only Goldthwaite had something important to say about destroying insane beasts sucked in from some hidden dimension.

  “I’ve got you covered,” Neko said, with all the calm, steady devotion any witch could ask of her familiar. I handed him the heavy book that had gotten us into this mess in the first place. He tucked it into the corner behind him, planting his feet as if that would be enough to keep it safe.

  I took a deep breath, feeling my lungs expand, letting the oxygen suffuse my blood. I exhaled deeply, concentrating on the core of my magic, on the energy that thrummed just below my sternum. Another breath, and my power rose. A third, and my fingertips were singing.

  I needed a spell, sanctified words, something composed by prior generations of witches. In the past four months, I’d read through dozens of grimoires. I’d studied hand-written volumes, early incunabula printed in the Middle Ages. I’d memorized scores of incantations.

  None of them dealt with murderous platypuses. I was sure of that. But I had read something…

  Just a few weeks ago. I’d been curled up on one of the hunter green couches in my living room, with a quilt pulled close beneath my chin. I’d been sipping a cup of pear oolong tea and trying to ignore the first spitting snowstorm of the winter. I’d been reading…

  On the Bynding and Banishment of Magickal Creatures.

  I could see it now. The pages were fine rag paper, printed on an early press with movable type. The book was bound with forest-green Moroccan leather. Its cover was embossed with three cabochon-cut emeralds, each a perfect, glowing stone. The title was picked out on the spine in ornate letters, the delicate lines carved out of gold leaf.

  Inside, the black ink was stark on each creamy page. The chapter headings were written in burgundy ink, hand-lettered, with illustrated initial caps. The Chimera. I could see it now—the body of a lion with a goat’s head emerging from its back, all surrounded by a thrashing tail that ended in a cobra’s head.

  The platypuses that filled the bedroom weren’t classical chimeras. But like the mythological creature in my book, the monotremes looked like they’d been cobbled together, borrowing from this animal and that, pieced from remnants in some mad craftsman’s workshop.

  My spell wouldn’t be perfect, but it would have to do. For the third time that night, I touched my forehead, offering up my thoughts. I hastily brushed my throat and settled my hand over my heart. And then I began to chant from memory:

  “Beast of mystery, from the night time

  Come into the light I bring

  Show your head, your body melded,

  Answer to this song I sing.

  As I call you, yield your power,

  Offer up your strength to me.

  Disappear into the ether,

  Banished now, I do bid thee.”

  Raw magic rippled down my arms. I stiffened my wrists, the better to channel the tremendous energy within me. I stretched my fingers toward the bedroom, ready to focus on the nearest platypus, ready to exile the beast forever. One stubby paw reached around the armoire door. Venom glinted from its iridescent claw.

  I released the full force of my banishing spell.

  The platypus winked out of existence. One moment, he was venom and teeth and single-minded ferocious doom. The next, he was reduced to a single plume of jet-black smoke that curled toward the ceiling above the armoire. The stench of sulfur filled the air.

  “Ew!” said Sassy from the doorway. “Who farted?”

  Before anyone could answer, the snarling from the far side of the bedroom rose in pitch. Mac’s growl mixed with the high-pitched squeals of the platypuses. Peeking around the door, I saw that the creatures’ venomous spikes now glowed blue-violet. If they got past Zelda and Sassy to hit the streets of Assjacket, there was no telling how many innocent people would suffer. There was at least one diner full of victims—including a sweet raccoon boy, a shy waitress, and my very best friend in the world—who would all be mowed down by the ravenous beasts.

  It wasn’t enough to take out the platypuses one by one. We needed to act faster. We had to build a barrier between the attacking animals and the outside world—a protective circle like the one every responsible witch used when working serious magic.

  In a perfect world, my warder would be here, sword in hand, as I called upon the four quarters to set an arcane sphere.

  This wasn’t a perfect world.

  I extended my astral senses, struggling to find my magical balance. All protective domes started in the eastern quadrant; I’d learned that much in the past few months of study. There. Zelda and Sassy, standing just outside the bedroom, were due east. That told me where to start my sphere.

  I heard a distinct crunching sound, bones caught between Mac’s werewolf teeth, and a platypus squeal rocketed into dog-whistle territory. The panicked cry seemed to incite the remaining animals; they rumbled like a marching army rolling over a rocky landscape.

  I thrust my hands into the air, shoving the protective armoire door closed. My wrists stiffened as my fingers traced a perimeter across the hardwood floor. “Blessings of the East upon us,” I intoned. “Guardians of Air, bring us perfect love and perfect trust.”

  A yellow glow rose from the floorboards, like sunshine flooding the bedroom. My heart beat faster as I leaned into Neko, drawing on the peculiar magical bond between us to augment my working, to form the glow into a substantial wall.

  It was hard to find our familiar balance. My powers shifted and slipped, rebelling against being used in this strange way, in this strange place. But Neko was far more experienced than I. He caught hold of my magic, and he extended it. Like a mirrored hallway reflecting the light of a single candle, he grew my spell, nurturing it into something strong enough, steady enough to start containing the platypuses.

  More power. More energy. We needed everything I had within me, if we were going to protect the innocents of Assjacket. I caught my lower lip between my teeth and concentrated on extending the protective barrier. Magic took time, of course. Time and focus and mastery of ancient spells.

  Zap!

  A blinding flash of lightning rebounded off my partial magical barrier. I staggered back to the bedroom wall, tripping over the Goldthwaite book Neko had stashed in the corner.

  “What the hell?” Zelda shouted.

  Shaking my head to clear my ringing ears, I realized that Zelda’s voice had been raised in a chant at the same time I’d summoned the Guardians of Air. Now I could tell that she’d been shouting out her own spell, louder than mine, firing like the staccato of a Gatling gun as I’d struggled to raise a perfect magical wall.

  “That’s enough, you freaking mud-beasts

  Get away from all that’s mine

  Answer to the Goddess right now

  Take this as a magic sign.”

  There’d been more, spells from Sassy and Carol too. They’d all launched their magical attacks at the exact same time I’d set my own. Their workings had bounced off my protective spell, rebounding directly into my body.

  And the effect was cumulative.

  I was falling through clear molasses. I was slipping farther and farther away from the platypus-filled room, from the gingerbread house, from Assjacket, West Virginia. I tried to open my mouth, to explain what had happened, to say that something had gone very, very wrong, but I couldn’t remember any words.

  My feet disappeared.

  My fingers disappeared.

  My throat disappeared.

  I floated in a sea of nothing. Not black. Not white. Not any color I’d ever seen before. I was vaguely aware that dissolving should hurt, that my nerves should be shrieking in protest. But it was so much easier to float in a place where nerves did not exist. Where spells did not exist. Where… words… did… not…

  “Jane!”

  I tossed my head, trying to turn against the wind that buffeted me.
>
  “Dammit, Jane, listen to me!”

  I hummed, hoping the tuneless little sound would drive away the thunder.

  “Sweet Hecate, what did they do to you?”

  I knew that voice. It was solid. Dependable. Like a rope strung across a gaping chasm.

  I grabbed onto the words and repeated them as best I could. “Sweet Hecate…”

  Speaking out loud lit a fire inside my body. Because I did have a body—one that jangled and throbbed and roared with pain. My eyes, my throat, my fingers, my feet—every cubic inch of me was suddenly incandescent with pain.

  “Help her sit up, Neko.”

  Strong arms closed around me, pulling me into an upright position. My familiar’s chest was pressed close against my spine. The back of my head lolled against his shoulder.

  “We need her back, Neko. Now.”

  A surge of candlelight—my own magic, reflected back at me—flared inside my mind, and I opened my eyes.

  My warder, David Montrose, stood between me and the rest of the bedroom. Staring at his broad back, I could see that he wore a plaid flannel shirt and broken-in blue jeans. And he carried a sword.

  David’s weapon was clearly more than ceremonial. His feet were planted in a wide stance. The muscles in his forearms flexed as he eyed the scene before him—dozens of enraged platypuses, a heavily panting wolf, three astonished witches in the doorway, and an equally surprised warlock.

  The first platypus surged forward, and David swung his blade. The animal was cut in half, gore immediately soaking into the filthy carpet. Even in death, its front paws continued to open and close, dripping venom from its spikes.

  That corpse was enough to buy us a moment of respite. As David pulled his sword back for another sweeping blow, the other platypuses turned their attention toward easier prey. Mac suddenly found himself in a circle of shuffling beasts, twelve of them gathering close, swiping at his massive shoulders, at his flanks, at his haunches.

  “Oh, hell no!” Zelda shouted. And then her voice rose in yet another spell: