Page 113 of Which Witch Is Wicked?
Claire’s boots hit the wood floor as she scraped back from the table. “Jesus.I thought you’d found all of it!”
“I thought I had, too.” Sweat bloomed on Tierra’s brow and she lurched toward the sink and heaved vibrantExorcist-quality green vomit down the drain. “Get it…beyond the wards.”
“I got this.” The laid-back male tone was a direct contrast to the tense feminine voices peppering the kitchen with panic.
Blond-haired, blue-eyed Tommy ambled over to the cabinet and palmed the offending bottle, pausing briefly to cast a suspicious glance at Cheeto before shuffling out the front door.
“See?” Claire asked in a defensive pitch. “Undead or no, I bet you’re glad he’s still around.”
Tierra rinsed her mouth with tap water and flipped on the disposal, tossing in a few nearby lemon wedges for good measure. “We’ll need to do another cleansing spell to rid the house of the toxic resonance.”
“We will. Don’t worry.” Aerin hovered behind Tierra, her perfectly manicured hand looking like an indecisive bird. Wanting to land on her sister’s shoulder, the small of her back, but ultimately falling dead at her side.
Lucy drank in the delicious waves of negativity, growing stronger with every breath. While her attention lapsed, Cheeto made a beeline for compost scraps someone had scraped onto a single plate on the nearby cutting board. He was already snout-deep in a mix of baked potato skin, some kind of fermented cabbage, and a slimy tofu-pudding skin when Lucy jolted him hard enough to send him somersaulting tail over hooves backward onto the stove, where he knocked a—thankfully cold— teakettle onto the floor.
“What in the several fucks was that all about?” Aerin asked. “It’s like he had a mini-pig seizure or something.”
“Probably shock from the snout wound,” Claire proposed.
“Could one of you put him on the dining room table? I just need a minute.”
Behind Tierra’s back, Claire and Aerin played a quick round of Rock, Paper, Scissors, with Claire producing a rock to Aerin’s scissors.
Aerin slipped on a pair of yellow dishwashing gloves, muttering a string of curses that made Lucy hate her slightly less before approaching the kitchen island to lift Cheeto and transport him to the table.
“Don’t squeeze him too hard,” Claire warned. “Remember what happened after the tofu wraps.”
“What about the tofu wraps?” Tierra asked, a dark eyebrow rising in suspicion.
“Nothing,” Aerin insisted too quickly. “Just that he got into your geraniums that day you made them for lunch, and I’m pretty sure they made him gassy enough to melt a new hole in the ozone layer.”
And a good liar.Lucy hadn’t been kidding when she’d informed Julian Roarke that his little air witch was indeed the most like her of any of the de Moray sisters.
Tierra rinsed a rag in cool water and twisted out the excess before applying it to the back of her neck. A thick lock of her hair had fallen loose from the proliferation of flowered clips and combs she used to hold it in a loose bun at the crown of her head. She ignored this as she sliced off a thin nub of ginger root and stuck it under her tongue.
Thus reinforced, Tierra spent the next several minutes grinding a poultice in an old-fashioned mortar and pestle, the muscles working beneath her golden-tanned skin. This was a woman unafraid of laboring with her hands, and one who clearly enjoyed being in the out of doors.
“You about done with your magic salad dressing?” Aerin called. “I’m pretty sure Moira’s mini-hog is eye-balling me over here.”
Lucy quickly turned her gaze elsewhere, snuffling at the used linen napkins. Because…food smells, right? That’s something a pig would do. She paused, snout-deep in napkins when an alarming rumble rolled through the pig’s intestines.
Don’t even think about it, she ordered the pig in no uncertain terms.You will not dothatwith me in your body.
“Also, I think he’s actuallylisteningto you,” Claire pointed out. “I swear he understood what you said just now.”
The front door opened, and a pale, long-limbed Tommy made his way back into the kitchen, bending to plant a kiss on Claire’s head. She reached up and gently touched the hand he placed over her heart. “Call me if you need anything else, babe,” he said.
Again, he looked at Cheeto. Just a split second, but eye contact and recognition crackled between them. His wavy blond head shook as he ascended the back stairs, as if he were having an argument with himself.
“Here we are,” Tierra announced, whisking to the table with her mortar and pestle.
Lucy/Cheeto trotted over to her dutifully, even sitting still despite the roiling protest within the animal’s gut as the earth witch lovingly applied green paste to the pig’s snout with her fingers.
“Trouble is,” Claire asked, “what’s going to keep him from licking it off?”
Aerin, seated next to Tierra, sniffed in the pig’s direction. “The fact that it smells like ass.”
“He’s a pig,” Claire said. “You’ve seen the shit he’ll eat.”
