Page 133 of Castings & Curses

IGNITING THE WITCH

A WILDE WITCHES PREQUEL

ERIN RICHARDS

CHAPTER1

The backof Sage’s neck prickled as she stumbled through the covenstead woods. Her slippery ankle boots skid on the dew-covered path, and she slowed down before she face-planted herself. Dim and misty pre-dawn light shrouded the forest, giving nothing away, but she could feel the eyes of something watching her. Low landscape lights and her phone flashlight guided her toward the house, and she couldn’t walk fast enough to reach it.

Owls hooting in the towering evergreens abruptly stopped. In response, her owl familiars churned over her skin beneath her blouse. The ink of their tattoo forms tickled her already prickling flesh. More than the hushed forest owls gave her familiars the heebie-jeebies. An ethereal purple glow filtered through the trees and muted the stars overhead, creating an eerie environment that didn’t help.

Powerful magic hit her senses. Elemental fire and air. Out of place on the off-limits walkway, but not threatening. Yet. Her familiars caught wind of the crackling magic and tiny flying embers. They swooshed over her skin, preparing to launch off her in protection mode. Sage halted on the path she’d traveled since she’d learned to walk. Wood smoke filtered through the early summer air. The faint brackish scent of the Pacific Ocean also tinged the air, destined to drive the smoke away.

“Gwyneira,” she berated her main familiar, trying to halt their roaming over her already sensitive chest. Fat chance. Their apprehensive roving continued driving her nuts. She didn’t need crazy on top of her thundering headache. One too many tequila shots on the first night of the California covens’ Summer Solstice festival. Thank the goddess, she’d only sexed it up with one warlock, though eight had vied for her attention. More than one would’ve ruined her for the day, for sure.

The warlock she’d chosen to spend the night with had fallen asleep the minute he came inside her, and she’d slipped from his tent without waking him. Joshua’s single-minded focus did nothing for her in the arousal department. Maybe the reason he was an unattached warlock. Damn, she needed a good lay with a man who knew how to please a woman. Maybe she’d have better luck tonight.

And her brain had a mind of its own when she needed to concentrate on the magic surrounding her.Focus, Sage!

The foreign magic didn’t hurt or impede her, but it raised red flags. A hollow, sparking fireball rolled off her fingers and danced on her open right palm. She used her left hand to draw a ring of witch-air to splinter the magic surrounding her. The unknown fire magic scattered into embers and reformed, also killing the landscape lights.

“Crap on a cracker.” Sage flashed her phone light around her to illuminate the nearby trees and pea gravel path. “Who’s there?” She spun in a circle, drilling her sight into the gray dawn, made darker by the woods. “Show yourself. Now,” she demanded. After all, she owned the land. She ruled the California region and the coven members who’d arrived on the covenstead yesterday. By tomorrow, she’d become the youngest High Priestess of the entire western witchworld, following in her deceased mother’s footsteps. A position held by a Wilde witch for over a century. Threats to her were a witch-style jail sentence!

Ire trekked up her spine in a cold ripple. “Either reveal yourself or take a hike off my land. You’re no longer welcome at the solstice gathering.”

The unknown witch-fire sizzled around her fireball, hovering over her palm. She sniffed the foreign fire to discern the source. No dice in the familiarity department. It touched her hand for a second before her witch-water doused and iced the burn.

Freaking Zelda Helwig. The bane of my coven’s existence.“Zelda. I know it’s you. What do you want? If you’re trying to scare me, you’re shit out of luck. Don’t forget who you’re screwing with. We’ve crawled this road before. Didn’t end well for the Helwigs.” The High Priestess of the Scotts Valley coven held a distinct edge to her witch-fire, and her fire always shifted to teal blue when it touched skin. Zelda knew how to disguise her magic, the reason Sage let it touch her, despite the burn to her hand. Zelda also possessed a rare double element with witch-air, and both elements dangled in the air. Silence greeted her.

“You’re on report to the Council. See you on the flipside,Zelda.” Sage slogged down the path toward the house, increasing her pace, the sky lightening to a paler gray through the treetops. Passing by several dead landscape lights, she tripped in a rut and collapsed on her butt.

“Goddess, save me.” She massaged her rear, rubbed her aching head. Hangover cotton stuffed her mouth. She’d kill for a toothbrush and a bottle of aspirin. And a long, hot shower.

Her familiars stopped moving, their tattoo bodies quivering in awareness on her skin. Crashes through the bushes to her right stilled her movements. Her familiars scurried up to Sage’s shoulder and launched off her. They shifted into their natural form, and threads of glowing magic dangled from their talons.

Ignoring the literal pain in her ass, Sage vaulted up to her feet. Fireballs formed on both palms. A low-throated snarling joined the rustling in the brush. Too dark and too hungover to find her way home by walking backward to watch her back, Sage stood her ground. The shuffling moved from her left to her right, then crashed through the underbrush toward her. She tossed fireballs toward the sounds, and the balls hit the drought-stricken forest floor. Flames flared up, and she sprinkled witch-water to douse the fire before she ignited the entire mountainside. Gwyneira flew in a circle to encapsulate whatever threatened her in threads of witch-air. No such luck. The invisible animals escaped her familiar’s magic. Growling and snarling arose to her other side, then behind her, circling her, but not approaching. Near enough to drive more chills up her spine.

Peering into the dim forest, she let her eyes adjust to search for any signs of wildlife or other life. The Wilde property was crawling with people in tents and cabins for the solstice festival. The presence of the witches and their entourages should’ve driven all the natural wildlife farther into the depths of the mountains. Which meant these little shits were no ordinary animals.

“Your ass is grass now,” Sage yelled and tossed three more fireballs, chased them with a sprinkle of witch-water. No need to add forest fire to the overflowing Blame-it-on-Sage card.

“Who’s there?” She strengthened her wobbly voice to hide her fear. “I swear to the goddess, if you don’t call off your familiars, I’m gonna golocoon you. And you don’t want to experience my kind of crazy.” Was it a witch or a warlock she’d shunned last night? Plenty of enemies or naysayers had a bull’s-eye on Sage’s forehead, jealous of her position, her power, her standing in the witchworld at only twenty-four years old.Well, hell, it’s not like I offed my mother just to steal her crown.

A growling and snarling animal approached, soon joined by several more, glamoured by an invisibility spell. The air wavered and the forest floor debris ruffled. They snarled and snapped as if they wanted to eat her alive. Sage spun her left fingers in the air, invoking a protection bubble of witch-air. Hard to tell if they were foxes or bobcats, or something equally frightening. Not like she knew the sounds the forest animals or all the familiars in the world made.

She wracked her hungover brain to recall Zelda’s familiar. A bobcat? Gray fox? Both remained prevalent in the hills of the Helwig covenstead in Scotts Valley up the highway, which shared the same mountain range as the Wilde coven.

“Sage Wilde,” a hoarse, unrecognizable voice floated out on a gust of wind. Definitely female.

“What do you want?” she demanded, safe in her warded bubble. The beasts on the ground held their positions, which meant they definitely were familiars. A real animal could infiltrate a protection circle. Not so much a familiar.

“You don’t deserve the High Priestess role of California, let alone the entire western region.”

“Stop the world so I can jump off.” Sage tipped her head back to face the pinkening sky. Same old, same old. “Why? Because every horny warlock under the sun wants me? Or ’cause I can drink myself to oblivion and live to tell about it? Because I’m wild, loose, inexperienced, andyoung.” Sarcasm dripped from her tone. She’d heard the ridiculous litany of complaints from a myriad of sources since her mother and father wound up dead at the bottom of a canyon in the Lake Tahoe Mountains. A drunk driver had forced their car to careen over a cliff last year. Big freaking deal if she wanted to enjoy her twenties before real life took a spin at her.

A flaming arrow pierced her protective bubble, missing her right shoulder by a skosh. A real flaming arrow, not magical. Rubbing her shoulder, she ducked to the ground, scrambled off the path into a thicket of bushes amid a cedar grove. Shit just got real. She lugged her protection circle with her, and the gaggle of snarling invisible animals followed, keeping their three-foot distance. Once they fenced her in again, their tails swished dead leaves, twigs, and evergreen needles on the forest floor, which eclipsed the taut silence.

Sage eased her cell phone out of the back pocket of her skin-tight denim skirt and tapped her nine-one-one.

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