Page 9 of Witch Please
“Oh shit!” Jack repeated proudly what Sissily said earlier with the exact intonation. If I wasn’t so afraid that the three of us were about to die, I would’ve laughed.
CHAPTER5
My room was a poor excuse of a shelter from a pissed off Alex, but it had to do in a pinch. Sissily slammed the door shut and pressed her back to it as if that would stop him from coming after his son who was giggling in my arms. At least the kid had fun if nothing else. Hysterical laughter bubbled up my throat, but I swallowed it down.
“We need to get out of here before they get past Blackman.” Dropping Jack on top of my bed with a bounce and an excited squeal from him, I rushed to the dresser so I could grab the few daggers I had stashed in my underwear drawer. Very inventive I know but it worked obviously since no one had found them so far. They were where I left them, and I sheathed each at the small of my back. Hecate help me! I hoped I never had to use them against anyone in the pack. They risked their lives to keep me safe and it was my fault this was happening to them with the damn spirits.
“I want my mommy.” Jack pouted at me when I turned to check on him.
“You stay right here, and I’ll go get Amber, okay?” forcing a smile I glared at Sissily in case she decided to correct me in my lie. Her cocked eyebrow said, ‘And if I do call you out what are you going to do about it?’ but she wisely stayed out of it.
“I’m going to come, too, Hazel.” The boy started wiggling in his attempt to jump off the high mattress and my heartrate picked up pace.
“No!” even I flinched at my tone. “It’s not safe out there, Jack.” It took everything in me to keep my voice soft when all I wanted to do was scream. “You stay here, and your mom will come before you know it. But we must go find her first.”
“No, I want to go, too.” He started arguing and I was about to yell at the poor kid.
“You know what?” Sissily finally broke her vow of silence and took one step away from the door, one hand stretched out toward the boy. “You are staying right here.” A rope of fire erupted from her fingertips, and it formed a circle around Jack an inch above the covers on my bed. “Let’s go. woman.”
“You kidding me?” outraged I gaped at her while Jack started shrieking louder than the Mazzikin demons outside. “We can’t pin this on Blackman, so you better have a good reason for it. What in Hecate’s name possessed you?”
“He can’t leave the room like this, and we need him safe.” My friend waved me off nonchalantly as if this was what we did to people on a daily basis. “We have to do something to fix the spell we cast, and we can’t stay here with everyone out of their mind. If we take him with us, the pack will follow. So…”
She had a very good point, and I clamped my mouth shut with all the complaints I had sitting on the tip of my tongue. “Alex might be pissed off now, but he will thank us later when he comes to his senses, you are right.” I agreed begrudgingly with her.
It was almost thirty minutes or more since we attempted the exorcism but neither did the demons vanish; nor did they calm down enough to stop screaming. We were not shifters but even we were ready to jump out of our skins from the noise which was building like pressure behind my eyeballs.
“I need to either find Leviathan or we need to go drop in on Destin. That bloodsucker better start singing about who we need to confront so we can put an end to this nonsense.” That was as far as I would go to agree with her on the we need to go plan. Something inside me screamed that I should stay in my room and not step toe out the door.
No toes would be touching the floor outside if they were covered though.
One look at my shoes however told me I needed to change them. I love a chunky heel as much as any woman with a style, but they are useless around vamps if we did end up in the lair of the master vampire. My stiletto boots on the other hand were as sexy as they were deadly. Destin wouldn’t know what hit him if we did end up seeing him when he got ready to have his breakfast.
“We will have better luck visiting a vampire nest during the daytime.” Sissily rolled her eyes when she saw me switching shoes.
I ignored her.
“Okay fine, we will go and see where Levi is hiding these days…” the door burst open so hard it swung hard into the opposite wall with a crash.
Thankfully, I had enough control not to release the dagger pinched between my fingers when I whirled to see who forced their way into my room.
Shirtless, River ducked and rolled all over my floor like some communist gymnast from Mother Russia, dressed in nothing but speedos with his blonde locks tussled from the wind. Don’t ask me how I knew how those gymnasts looked like. I have TikTok like all the humans and watched dumb shit while stuck in my room, so I can keep my head attached to my shoulders.
Sissily, unlike me, was trigger happy though, so while I stopped myself from making Blackman an anthill or a pile of ash, she threw fire at him and almost turned him into a roasted pigeon wearing a diaper. His fast reflexes were his only saving grace. Even I could admit that it would’ve been a shame to mar his perfect looks.
On a closer inspection after he twisted away from the fireball and popped up off the floor like Jack in a box, I realized he was not actually wearing speedos. Those were his pants shredded all the way to his hips by sharp teeth. By the looks of it, wolves might’ve tried to gnaw on his legs, and they ended up with mouthful of fabric instead. The only cloth left was just enough to cover his rounded buttocks and his groin. It was so absurd, a laugh burst out of me that not even my hand covering my mouth could stop.
“It’s hilarious, I know.” Blondie deadpanned unimpressed by my ability to find humor in the situation.
“Oops.” Sissily gasped, a horrified expression twisting her features. “Sorry, River.”
“Don’t mention it.” He waved off her concern. “We don’t have much time; we have to go.”
“Go where?” Although that was our plan too, I sounded suspicious of his actions when the question popped out of my mouth. Sissily looked as if she was going to make a comment about it, but she changed her mind immediately and pressed her mouth in a firm line that whitened her skin at the corner of her lips.
Smart woman.
“Anywhere but here.” River combed his hair with his fingers more out of agitation than the need he had to fix the mad scientist vibe he had going on. It was written clearly in the tense set of his jaw and the narrowing of his eyes.
