Page 1 of The Forty-Year-Old Virgin Witch

One

Aggie

"Fucknuggets.”

The pub was crowded—far too crowded for a Tuesday night. I rarely left my cottage as it was, but I’d been running low on my favorite beer, and it was one of the few things I couldn’t make or grow for myself. That meant going out in public. With people.

“Aggie! Over here!”

Davie waved at me from behind the bar, and I glared at the mass of humanity that separated us. I gripped my empty jug in one hand and gritted my teeth like I was about to enter battle. I couldn’t even use my magick to clear my way through the crowd—too many witnesses.

A man tried to enter the pub behind me, so I was forced away from the door and deeper into the swell of sweaty and drunk bodies. These men had to have come from neighboring towns … there certainly weren’t this many men under sixty in this village. That had been one of its best attributes when I’d been choosing a place to live.

I recoiled at the smell of unwashed bodies as I found myself hustled amongmore men than I had seen in the last twenty years combined. Happy 40th to me.

The crowd roared at the tellies that hung all around them, screaming incoherently as something happened that was beyond my care or comprehension. An elbow knocked into my back, and I fell forward.

My jug slipped from my fingers and shattered on the floor.

I saw Davie wince from the corner of my eye, and the fragile control I’d had on my sanity shattered just as thoroughly as my jug.

“EVERYONE GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!”

My vision went red, and my face flushed with heat. The crowd immediately gave way for me as if I had used a spell, a few even apologizing and picking up the broken shards of glass. The men closest to me fought to retrieve the sharp edges, uncaring if they cut themselves as they alternated staring at me and the glass on the floor. I flushed in embarrassment, not exactly dressed to kill in my sandals, long skirt, and pullover sweater. I wasn’t used to the attention.

And some of them were very good looking.

Davie rushed over, fussing as he handed a broom to one of the men stubbornly keeping at it.

“I’ll wait out back,” I said over my shoulder, and Davie shot me an exasperated look.

Trying not to panic, I shoved my way through the rest of the throng and exploded out the back door into the alley behind the building. I flexed my hands in frustration, my magick straining to be let free to defend me the way it wanted to. It pulsed painfully against my veins, but I squashed it back down. It was a lot easier to do so now after suppressing it for twenty years, but sometimes it came back with a roaring vengeance. Especially when I was frightened.

“That was quite a scene.”

I didn’t think, just reacted. My body whirled and my fist flew out, striking the man hard in the jaw. His eyes went wide in shock, but his face didn’t move. Rather, my hand crunched as it met the side of his jaw. I screamed in pain and went down, curling my body around my fist. He was harder than a concrete wall!

Concern lit his eyes as I tried not to cry in agony. No one saw me cry.

“Sorry about that, but you shouldn’t hit strangers. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I glared at him but couldn’t manage much more than a tortured glare through the pain. It was hard to gauge his age, though he certainly was younger than most people in the village, the drunken heathens in the pub excluded.

Dark hair fell over his eyes, which were mostly shaded by the darkness. He was taller than me, but then again, so was 80 percent of the male population. His clothes were tailored, and certainly not cut from the same cloth as the blue-collared, brawling men who usually made up the pub’s clientele. Who wore a suit to a pub?

He held out a hand with long, tapered fingers, stepping into the moonlight to reveal bright blue eyes set above an aristocratic face with pronounced cheekbones and full, tapered lips. He was the kind of man who certainly didn’t belong here, let alone with me.

I tried not to sneer at the gold signet ring on his right hand, his cologne tingling against my nose. Why did my hand hurt so much?

“Piss off.”

Being nasty usually worked in my favor. It chased most men away, though I usually earned a snide ‘bitch’ comment for my troubles. It never bothered me because they were right. I was a bitch and had been for the past two decades. It was what kept me safe.

“Do you normally punch first and ask questions later?”The man asked.

I scrambled to my feet, trying to keep my throbbing hand from moving too much. The pain indicated that something was at least fractured, and I didn’t know if I had enough power to heal it. If I had access to my full powers, it wouldn’t be a problem. My mother’s sneering face pushed its way into my thoughts, and I shoved her away.

Pushing past Mr. Handsome, I stalked down the alley between the pub and the next building. My beer would have to wait until another day.

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