Warlock: Book 4 - Special AMA Two Chapter Preview

Chapter

Zap!

“Ow! Fuck!”

I wasn’t sure which was more enjoyable to watch — Morgan bending over in her tight jeans to grab us a pair of new batteries for our game controllers, or Morgan grabbing at the seat of her tight jeans after my arc of mana zapped her in the ass, making her shields swirl and disintegrate.

The witch spun around and glared at me from under a few stray wisps of her short, bleached-blonde hair, the dark roots extending a couple inches to give the message: Yes, I dye my hair, but I really don’t care about it that much.

We were in Mel’s living room, with no plans to go anywhere until Morgan mastered keeping her shields up in the face of surprises — like getting zapped in the ass — so she was wearing just a t-shirt without the armor of her leather jacket; and her boots were by the door, which let me see she was wearing a pair of Sam’s socks — fuzzy and pink — which sort of opposed the tough-girl image she preferred to give off.

“Damn it, Ashe!”

I shrugged.

I’d given up on reminding her that my name was Blackwood now, after the coven I’d founded as a descendant of Melaina Seraphina Blackwood — the oldest, probably most powerful witch in the world, who was currently in the kitchen cooking me dinner.

Well, she was cooking dinner for everyone, but sometimes I liked to underscore the absurdity of me, a nineteen-year old guy who’d never heard about witches a year ago being the Family Head of the line Mel founded over twenty-five hundred years ago.

“You need to learn to keep your shields up,” I told Morgan.

“No shit? But could you stop targeting my ass?”

I didn’t explain that I was only targeting what my eyes were naturally drawn to — Morgan had figured that out days ago — but now that she was facing me, my eyes were drawn to an entirely different target.

Morgan’s hands covered her breasts and her eyes narrowed more.

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

“What’s up?” Sam, the diminutive redhead and first witch I’d bound to my coven came into the living room, took in the scene, and immediately came to the conclusion she preferred rather than one with any grounding in reality. “Did you finally grab her boobs?”

“I did not grab her boobs.”

Sam sighed and plopped down next to me on the couch. My arm instinctively went around her shoulders and pressed her against me.

“You should just grab her boobs and get it over with.”

“If he grabs my boobs he will be over with,” Morgan growled.

“It’s fun,” Sam said, “you’ll like it. Probably help you manage your shields better, too.”

“I am not getting groped to improve my magic.”

“And I’m pretty sure magic doesn’t work that way,” I added.

Sam rolled her eyes.

“The boob-grab is just the start,” Sam explained. “It’s the edge of a slippery-slope. Once you guys get over the boob-grab, you’ll just naturally slide on in to other things — and once Morgan’s marked into the coven, the bond will help support her shields.”

“Nobody’s just sliding into anything,” Morgan said, then muttering as she turned back to the TV console to get the batteries she’d dropped, “No matter how slippery I get.”

Morgan started to return to the couch, then stared at the floor in front of it for a moment.

Her shields were back in place, but the clock had restarted — twenty-four hours of continuous shielding here at Mel’s, with the rest of us trying to break them, and she’d be able to go outside again. It was a pretty basic bit of magic and most of the witches were able to get their shields working within a few hours of coming into their power, but those were witches who’d grown up around magic and understood the concepts — Morgan and I had grown up in the least magical place on Earth.

Mundane foster care.

I’d only known magic existed for a year, Morgan for less, and it took some getting used to.

Morgan was still glaring at the floor.

“Morgan?” I asked, wondering if she’d gone off into some magic trance.

Instead of answering, she pulled a shiny, metal cylinder from her pocket and pointed it at the floor in front of the couch.

“What —”

I had a brief glimpse of a red dot appearing on the floor before it was covered in a ball of black and white fur as Felicity darted from underneath the couch to attack the dot of light.

“Hah!” Morgan said, slipping the laser pointer back into her pocket. “Nice try.”

Uncalled for, Felicity said in our minds, sitting calmly now, as though she hadn’t just demonstrated how three-hundred years as a cat had affected her behavior.

“Don’t give me that,” Morgan said. “You were totally going to claw my ankles to shit when I sat down.”

Felicity started grooming herself, ignoring Morgan.

“Hey,” Sam said, leaning forward to peer at the cat-witch. “Be careful with your claws —”

“Thanks,” Morgan said.

“— she’s wearing my socks. No blood or snags.”

Morgan sighed and sat down on my other side.

My arm automatically went around her and she tensed.

When you’ve spent the last few months as warlock to three gorgeous witches, all of whom want as much body contact as possible, putting an arm around any soft, warm body next to you becomes an autonomous response.

“Sorry.”

“No,” Morgan said, grabbing my hand as I tried to take it from her shoulder. She held it in place and snuggled closer to me. “I like it — it’s just … weird.”

Morgan and I were in a weird place.

Technically, we were engaged — at least that’s what Morgan insisted on calling it.

I’d just been trying to convince her she wasn’t alone or abandoned when I’d told her she was going to join my coven — that had been to drive off the spirit of the Morrigan, an ancient war-goddess one of the Fae was trying to bring back by offering Morgan up as a fresh earthly-vessel — but Morgan had taken it as a serious proposal.

Which it was, because ever since we’d discovered Morgan was a witch, there’d been no doubt whose coven she was going to join.

But, even though Morgan had figured out she was in love with me years ago, and I’d figured out I was in love with her a few months ago (I’m reputed to be slow on some things), we were still adjusting to the idea that we’d actually be acting on those feelings.

It wasn’t even like we’d never touched before — for years in foster care we’d been inseparable — it was just different now, and things we’d done for years felt … weird.

“Seriously,” Sam said, “if you two would just —”

“I’m not fucking him before we’ve even had a real date!”

I kind of agreed with Morgan.

Being bound to my coven would mean sex — and, while I’d accepted and become enthusiastic about that with Morgan, it still felt a little weird to just jump to that stage. She’d made it clear she wanted some courtship first, and I didn’t blame her — she’d only come into her power as a witch when she turned eighteen the week before and we hadn’t even been able to leave the house as she learned how to maintain her shields.

“I don’t blame you,” Priscilla said, entering the room and sitting in one of the chairs that flanked the couch. Her long, chestnut hair was tied back in a pony tail and she was wearing a baggy, oversized sweatshirt with the collar cut to show a lot of bare shoulder. “He gives great date.”

Priscilla and I were dating while she decided whether or not she wanted to join the coven — well, she’d pretty much decided, but was dragging out the dates because I’d promised all my witches they’d get the same number. It was more of a game, really, because I certainly wasn’t going to limit myself to some number of one-on-one dates with my girls, but Priscilla and the others were having fun with it.

And fun tormenting me, because she knew from the other girls just how much I liked to get my hands under baggy sweatshirts — or pajama shorts — and feel all the curves being hinted at.

I was tempted to go start repayment on the number of kisses Priscilla said I owed her, but my arms were already full of girls.

“I’ve accepted that my life is weird now, I just want some things about this to be normal,” Morgan said. “A few dates, a first kiss, a real proposal —” She gave me a stern look. “No soul-sucking Fae goddesses, no psychotic murder cults, no political deals, no sneaky go-aheads from my grandmother — no matter who the fuck that turns out to be — and no using Noah as a beard. Just normal.”

“Hey!” Sam protested. “I was way out there for years before Noah boinked me, so he was not a beard … he was an escape from my psycho-domineering mother that happened to work out unexpectedly well in other ways.”

I stayed quiet, because the rest of it was pretty much how I’d acquired my current witches.

“Whatever,” Morgan said. “I just want a little romance and a lot normal.”

“Good luck,” Sam said. “This coven’s normal is really fucking weird to begin with.”

“Dinner’s ready, dears,” the most powerful witch in the world called from the kitchen.

*

During the school year, the big dinners at Mel’s had come on Sundays when we were in the city for the weekend — now they were every day, and I was on board with that.

Mel was a fantastic cook and tonight’s meal was a rack of lamb with some kind of red wine sauce that had me salivating before I’d even made it to the dining table.

I took my place at the head of the table, which still felt weird, and the rest of the girls took their own places — Sam to my right, as First Witch, then Cassandra to my left. Rachel next to Sam, with Priscilla and Morgan on the other side and Mel, with Felicity, next to Rachel.

It was a sort of hierarchy by order of joining the coven, with the non-coven members at the end.

I supposed Priscilla and Morgan would adjust their seating based on which of them I bound first, but I wondered where Mel and Felicity would wind up once I’d filled the full coven. Mel’s table sat fourteen — a full coven and a warlock — but neither Mel nor Felicity were candidates — initiatae, as the witches called them — for my coven.

Maybe Felicity was — I was picking up signals that hinted that way, but wasn’t entirely sure that’s what she wanted yet. She had some issues, having spent the years since being “questioned” in the Salem witch trials almost entirely in either the form of a cat or a cat-girl — the latter because she needed opposable thumbs to play video games.

I had my doubts as to whether marking Felicity into my coven would even be possible, though, because of how powerful she was. The coven marking was a contest of wills between the witch and the warlock, and how was a baby-warlock like me supposed to overpower the will of a witch who’d had three hundred years to hone her power?

Mel, on the other hand, was over two thousand years old and gorgeous. Her olive skin and long, black hair only made her piercing blue eyes even more striking.  She was classically beautiful and looked like a Greek statute — which made sense, since she’d probably either modeled for a few or at least been the inspiration during her time as a priestess in the Temple of Artemis and even after.

We were also related — though, being thirty or so generations apart, the genetic relation was about what I’d have with anyone from Hellenistic Greece.

“Stop looking at my tits, pervert.”

I jumped, but things like that weren’t typically directed at me — if anything, my girls gave me shit for not spending enough time admiring their bodies.

The “pervert” cued me in that Cassandra was addressing Sam.

“Then don’t point them at me,” Sam said. “They’re like double-barrels, primed and ready.”

Cassandra huffed, but didn’t argue. There wasn’t much she could say when her nipples were poking at the fabric of her t-shirt like a pair of wine corks.

The pale, white-blonde witch was thirteen weeks pregnant with our son and her breasts were bearing the brunt of it so far. They’d swollen noticeably — which was impressive, given their original size — and her normally pale-pink areolae had darkened so that they’d be clearly visible through her thin t-shirt even if her nipples hadn’t doubled in size.

Mel started the platter of lamb chops around the table and I took two, passing it on to Cassandra.

“It’s not like I can hide them,” the pale witch complained. “All my bras squeeze them too hard, and I can’t use body-magic to stop it because they need to do this so I’ll be able to feed the starving little monster.”

Cassandra looked at the four ribs left on the platter, then hopefully at Mel.

“There’s another rack here and two more in the oven, dear,” Mel assured her, starting a second platter around the table while Cassandra smiled gratefully and moved the remaining four chops to her plate.

“Greedy little creature,” she muttered, then looked back at Mel. “Do we have any —”

“Buffalo sauce,” Mel said with a sigh, passing a squeeze bottle of orange liquid. “Extra butter.”

“I’m sorry,” Cassandra said before slathering her lamb in Buffalo sauce. “I love your lamb, it’s just —”

“Little warlocks want what little warlocks want,” Mel agreed with another sigh, then went back to cutting lamb into cat-bite-sized pieces for Felicity.

I didn’t think it was fair that they all look at me like that — it wasn’t as though I’d told the kid to want hot sauce on everything. I thought it was a little weird, too.

At least it solved the issue of Sam staring at Cassandra’s boobs, because nobody wanted to watch too closely when Cassandra ate these days.

A good thing, too, because I wasn’t sure how much more of that Rachel could  take. The dark-haired witch next to Sam had been alternating between glaring at Sam and glancing down, a little forlornly, at her own breasts.

I was going to have to do something about the pair’s feelings for each other — they’d been awkward around each other ever since I’d bound Rachel and both of them were worried about messing up their relationship by adding anything to it, so I’d be giving things a pretty big nudge soon.

Months of private fantasies of my own had absolutely nothing to do with that. It was all for the girls. I promise.

That would have to wait until after Morgan mastered her shields, though, because we’d all agreed it wasn’t fair for any of us to go out and have fun while Morgan was stuck inside.

It shouldn’t be too much longer, I thought — I’d had to use nearly the full strength Mel was letting us use to test Morgan’s shields earlier, so she was definitely getting better.

Chapter

I sipped a glass of forty-year tawny port I’d brought up from Mel’s wine cellar with the wine for dinner while the girls made clinky-scrapy sounds with their spoons to get the last of their desserts.

Mel had made pears poached in the same wine she’d used for the lamb sauce — at least Cassandra hadn’t added Buffalo to hers.

As the plates were finally pushed back, Cassandra sighed.

“I don’t suppose —”

“Let her have it,” Sam muttered. “She’ll just sneak downstairs in the middle of the night and eat it standing in front of the refrigerator.”

Cassandra didn’t even bother to deny it — she just grinned as Mel handed over the dish with the remaining pear halves.

“Don’t wait for me,” she said, setting the dish in front of her and picking up her spoon.

I cleared my throat.

“Okay,” I said. “What have we found out about the Fieldings? Rachel?”

During the school year, we’d started a habit of talking out coven plans and issues after Sunday dinner at Mel’s, and hadn’t changed that now that those dinners were every night. We had a lot of stuff going on.

There were a lot of important things on that list, like finding out who Morgan’s family was, since she’d been stolen by the Fae as a baby, and finding my mother, who I’d only recently found out was still alive, before my psychotic, serial killer cousin found her.

Those were longer-term things, though, and my main goal for the summer was to find some way to convince the Fielding Family to allow Hannah and Brittany to join us.

Rachel pursed her lips, not a good sign.

“I’ve read through the Principium twice —”

“Six times,” Sam muttered.

“Those were skims,” Rachel corrected. “And all the Council and coven minutes I could find that mentioned previous Lost Ones — it’s been a long time, though, so a lot of records are missing.”

I nodded my understanding.

We’d become an official witch Family due to my being the last of Mel’s line and her being unable to have more children. That qualified me as a Lost One — the last of a line lost to the Goddess during the Black Death and now found. There was an ancient geas associated with that, demanding that all witches assist us in reestablishing the line.

“Anyway, there are a lot of things we could get if we needed them, including asking for witches to fill out the coven, but the thing is, we don’t need them.”

I raised an eyebrow. I definitely needed Hannah and Brittany, if only so the ache in my jaw every time I thought of not having them would go away.

Blackwood warlocks have control issues.

“Without Hannah and Brittany, we have eight open sedes in the coven,” I said. “How does that not count?”

I counted on my fingers: Sam, Cassandra, and Rachel, with Priscilla and Morgan, was five. A coven was thirteen. Thirteen minus five was —

“Six,” Sam muttered.

“He’s taking us for granted,” Priscilla whispered to Morgan, who nodded, glaring at me.

I sighed.

“I’m not taking you two for granted,” I told Priscilla and Morgan. “I’m just trying to get the numbers right.” I turned to Sam. “And I know you’re counting on a couple gigantic Swedes coming out of our trip, but there aren’t any guarantees any of them will even like us once we meet.”

Several girls snorted derision at me.

Sam glanced down the table. “That’s not who I was — never mind.”

“Mwumass ‘eral,” Cassandra muttered around a pear half.

“Rachel?” I prompted.

“That’s the problem, though,” Rachel said. “We already have, like, fifty possible initiatae for those seats —”

“Seventy-four,” Sam corrected.

“What? You’re supposed to be narrowing the list down,” I protested.

Sam had started the list way back before we were even a recognized Family, getting applications from all over North America and Europe from witches who were willing to break with their own Families for the chance at a coven.

“That was before we became a recognized Family and I told Sara Morgan-Gould to have her mother call me. I thought she’d just use that as an excuse to stop trying to seduce you in the sauna, but her mom actually did.” Sam shrugged. “Apparently word got around.”

I groaned. “And now we have twenty more? Can’t you just say no?”

“These are official Family requests — either because they want a tie to us or they think their girl has a chance of marking you.”

“Mwumass ‘itches,” Cassandra muttered.

“So we have to at least meet with the new ones — otherwise we’ll piss off even more Families.”

I sighed. Sam’s and Cassandra’s mothers already hated me for binding the girls without their permission — despite both of them having instructed their daughters to try and get me. At least we’d made an arrangement with Rachel’s grandmother so the Winthrops didn’t have to pretend to be mad at us anymore.

“See the problem?” Rachel asked. “With so many witches offering, we can’t really say we need Hannah and Brittany, so the Fieldings aren’t denying anything to reestablishing the Blackwood line by refusing. It was one thing when it was just Sam’s secret witches, but now everybody’s involved.”

“I don’t have any secret witches,” Sam said. “The list is fully available to all of you.”

Rachel stared and Sam flushed.

“Fine,” she muttered. “I may have kept some pictures sent by rejected applicants.”

“Let’s get rid of those,” I said, while Rachel’s eyes narrowed.

“But —”

“There are plenty of boobs on the internet. Delete.”

“Fine,” Sam huffed.

“On top of all our options now,” Rachel said, “the Fieldings haven’t even refused — they just won’t talk to us.”

Sam nodded confirmation. “Call number ninety-six, unreturned as of this morning.”

I sighed — maybe we should tone that down before we got dragged before the Witch Council for stalking.

“Cassandra? Anything on the trade front?”

I’d set Cassandra to examining past exchanges of witches between Families. It happened fairly often as the Families managed their covens to avoid consanguinity.

“There’s not really a standard,” Cassandra said after washing her pear down with the rest of her wine.

It was still unnerving to see someone drink that much while pregnant, but the witches all assured me it wasn’t an issue. I was still unclear whether that was because Cassandra could use the body-magic she’d used to make her breasts larger and her ears pointed to keep the alcohol from the baby, or because she wanted the little warlock to come out fully prepared for witch celebrations.

“Past trades are all over the place,” Cassandra said. “Some trades were witch-for-witch, some are two-for-one, some add cash or property — all different.”

Rachel nodded. “It’s like spellstick trades — each team’s trying to improve, so they value the players differently and each try to come out ahead for what they need. We need to figure out what we have that the Fieldings might want.”

“It won’t be one of our kids,” I said. “The deal with the Winthrops is right on the edge of what I’m willing to do, and I certainly don’t trust the Fieldings that much.”

Cassandra nodded. “And both Hannah and Brittany are pretty valuable to the Fieldings. They use Precog and Hindsight a lot in their business, and the last Precog trade in the records was to the Fieldings, and it was three-for-one with a huge credit for the Fieldings’ services. They really want more Precogs.”

The Fielding Family did investigative and security work in both the witch and mundane worlds, making the ability to see the future and recreate past events pretty core to their business model.

“None of which matters if they won’t even talk to us,” I said, frowning.

“Sorry,” Sam said.

“It’s not your fault — Mel? Anything on the favor front?”

Mel shook her head as well. “While I’m owed a number of debts, it seems the Fieldings are as well. Everyone I’ve spoken to is more likely to owe them something than be owed.”

I sighed, frustrated. It seemed like every avenue ended in a dead-end.

“I think you’re missing something,” Morgan said.

“What’s that?”

“Well, Cassandra said she hadn’t seen any futures where they wound up with us, right?”

Nobody answered, because we were all very confused.

“What are you talking about?” Cassandra asked.

“Cassandra’s visions.”

“I don’t have any visions!”

Morgan frowned. “Why would you have visions, Elsa? You’ve got the whole ice-thing going on.”

I might not have Precog, but I had a sudden, dawning realization of what horror was about to unfold.

“Do … do you mean Brittany?” I asked.

Morgan waved a hand. “Whatever — the one who sees the future. Cassandra.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Cassandra yelled.

“Chill, Elsa.”

I groaned, but everyone else was suppressing grins.

About the time I bound Rachel, Morgan had started complaining that there were far too many girls hanging off me to remember names, so she assigned nicknames.

Cassandra got Elsa — which was a lot better than some of the other options Morgan had thrown out — because of … well, white-blonde hair, pale skin, surprisingly good at Ice magic, despite Fire being the affinity she got from her Malice resonant.

I swear there were wisps of steam coming from the tips of Cassandra’s delicately pointed ears.

“So, ah, what about Cassandra’s visions?” Sam asked, now making no attempt whatsoever to hide her grin and completely ignoring Cassandra’s glare.

“I hate you all,” the pregnant witch muttered, pulling the dish of pears fully in front of her and attacking the poaching liquid with her spoon.

Morgan nodded, as though fully satisfied with her work, and went on.

“She didn’t see any future where they joined us, but —”

“Mrowr!”

“None that didn’t involve wholesale slaughter,” Morgan amended.

Felicity’s centuries in cat-form had given the witch a rather direct preference for dealing with obstacles.

“How does that help?”

“She also said she doesn’t see futures with Noah in them. Ever.”

I nodded. “Yeah?”

Morgan looked at me like I was an idiot. “Yeah. That means the solution isn’t going to be the stupid witch-rules — no offense, Lotte.”

Rachel waved it away.

At least she didn’t have a problem with Morgan’s nickname for her. Sam didn’t have an issue with Hexual Deviant, either, taking a bit of pride in it.

“It’s not going to be in the trade histories, either, or even favors — sorry, Mel.”

Not even Morgan was confident enough to give Mel a nickname.

“So what is it?” I asked.

“You,” Morgan said. She looked around at the others. “If we want Cassandra and Memorex, we need to let Noah be Noah.”