Convicted Witch: Jagged Grove Book 1

Title Page

Copyright Page

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

“W
hat did you do?”

I’m trying hard not to scream into the phone, because screaming while standing on the streets of Raleigh, North Carolina will get a person thrown in jail - or at least cause heads to turn. Instead, I take a deep breath and fight the urge to flip off the guy in a suit who looks up from his Starbucks cup and stares at me. It’s not his fault.

“Bilda - I mean, Mom? Tell me.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

She’s whining. It’s a gorgeous and sunny fall day, my finals are in a week, and tonight is my one year anniversary dinner with Clay, the sexiest soon-to-be lawyer on the planet. Now, my mother is whining like a five-year-old wanting ice cream. I do not need this.

I am pretty used to it, however.

I put my hand on top of my head to keep it from exploding and use every ounce of my strength to control my voice. “You did something. You always do something. Just tell me why you’re in custody this time, and I’ll come help.” I used to be careful about not hurting my mother’s feelings, but my mother is a witch, and this is the sixteenth time in two years that her spells have gotten her into trouble. Someone needs to stop her, and that someone is probably me. I love her dearly, but she’s going to get somebody killed one of these days.

I could hear people talking in the background, and imagined my mother standing beside some gray metal desk in the tiny police precinct over in Harte. She sighs, a melodramatic sound that lets me know how much she hates my tone. Well...tough. Finally she answers, “I tried to turn Miranda into a crow.”

“You what?” I actually pull the phone away from my ear and stare at it for a second. Then I tried to imagine an elderly crow. Miranda is my mother Bilda’s sixty-four year old next door neighbor, and she’s one of the sweetest people on the planet. 

“A crow. But she asked me to - she said she wanted to fly.”

Miranda is also suffering from the early stages of dementia, but that doesn’t stop her from being a nice lady. “Is she OK?”

“She’s fine, now, because I made it a temporary spell.”

Uh-oh. The wind is picking up, and I use my free hand to tuck my long chestnut-colored hair behind my ear. “How temporary?”

“An hour. I timed it and everything. I told her,
Come down when I wave my arm, Miranda
. She promised she would, but then she didn’t.” Bilda heaves another sigh into my ear.

“She fell.”

“She fell. Not far,” she hurries to add. “Just a few feet, but the timing was bad. Her son Jimmy, he was driving us. He walked in right as she landed. Jimmy is mean. He yelled at me.”

Bilda sounds like she is about to start crying again. “Jimmy isn’t mean, he’s worried about his mother. Why did they arrest you if she just...fell?”

“I tried to catch her, but it probably looked like I pushed her.” Her voice is defiant. She will never learn.

“OK. I’ve got to go home and change, but I’ll be there as soon as I can. Or something.”

“Hurry - this place is scary.”

“You’ve been there before, Mother,” I remind her, and then immediately feel bad about saying it. She always means well, but sometimes her spells just don’t work out as well as she thinks. Sort of like her only daughter.

When I assure her that I’ll take care of it and finally get her off the phone, I immediately call my Aunt Louise. She is my mother’s sister, and is also her other next door neighbor.

She answers on the third ring. “I already heard. Miranda’s son is throwing a fit on her front lawn right now.”

“Can you get into the stash and go bail her out? I’ll pay you back.” The stash is Aunt Louise’s money, actually. She does tarot and palm readings for people in the little gazebo out back. Only she always tells the truth, and more than once I’ve seen people storm away in tears.

“No, honey. I’d love to help, but I...” pause for dramatic effect. “Have a date.”

My Aunt Louise is the world’s oldest man-eater. She has a white t-shirt that says
Cougar
in bright red letters. She thinks it’s sexy.
I
think she doesn’t know what cougar actually means. When you’re seventy-one, you’re more decrepit housecat than cougar.

Or maybe not. Something keeps them coming back for more, and it’s not her cooking.

“You always have a date.” She does. It’s embarrassing, mostly because she has a habit of bringing home twenty-year-old guys. I don’t know where she finds them, and I don’t want to know. “Can’t you blow it off to help Bilda?”

“No! If I start down that road, I’ll be blowing off dates all the time.”

She has a point.

I try one more time. “But she’s your only sister.”

“Thank the world. She’s also your only mother, so you win. Bye!”

I hear a click and then nothing.

I drop my phone into my bag and see that the guy from Starbucks is still staring, so I turn and head for my car in the school lot two blocks away. It seems that everyone is out today, crowding the sidewalks and chattering like chickens. I desperately want to be alone because I’m the world’s most determined introvert, but now the two-hour bath I’d planned before my dinner with Clay was off the table, thanks to Mom.

It’s OK. I’ll go home, change out of the suit I am wearing for mock trials today - which I nailed for an A+ - and then bail her out. Then I’ll get back in time for dinner with my sexy fiancée Clay, who loves me and never makes me bail him out of jail.

Home is a single-bedroom apartment over Glow, one of the most popular nightclubs in Raleigh. It’s not a dump, and it doesn’t smell. It has a cute little balcony, an actual separate bedroom, and a dishwasher. My friends think I must be rich, but in reality I just happen to be friends with the building owner, Darrell. He cut me a deal because I decorated his club with a few flicks of my wrist and a couple of ancient words. That kind of magic I’ll do, because it’s easy and nobody gets hurt.

Most importantly, the apartment is far enough away from Harte that my mother can’t just drop in unannounced and work a spell that ends up accidentally burning the place down. I’ll happily put up with music thumping until three a.m. for that kind of peace.

I walk in and throw my keys on the little table beside the door. Then I pull off my jacket, kick off my shoes, and just stand there for a minute, sad, because I really, really want that bubble bath.

I rub my eyes, walk blindly through to the living room to go check on Bumper, my familiar, who is probably sleeping the day away because he’s an owl and owls are nocturnal. But when I open them again I freeze mid-step, one foot in the air behind me, because there is a man sitting on my sofa.

He’s a huge man, too. Not fat huge, but muscular huge. He’s good-looking, with the black hair and the olive skin of a classic Italian male. Sexy brown eyes framed with long, soft-looking lashes. My eyes travel to his broad chest, because his black shirt is unbuttoned and showing a tight white t-shirt that highlights it. That leads me to noticing the gun strapped to one hard, tantalizing thigh.

My mouth is open. I can’t seem to close it. I put my raised foot down, though, because I’m about to fall over.

“Hello,” he says amiably.

I can’t move, and my brain is racing to figure out just who in the hell he might be - a burglar? Repairman? Really brave Jehovah’s Witness? Nope - he looks too menacing, even with a smile. And how did he get in here, anyway?

I realize suddenly that this has to have something to do with my mother, because huge men with guns don’t just show up in my life like this. Terror grips me. “The mob. You’re the mob, and my mother has done something very bad this time. She probably didn’t mean to, you know. She just gets a little carried away. I mean, if you could just give her a chance. Don’t kill her, I mean.”

I’m babbling and I can’t seem to stop. “This is about more than Miranda’s son, isn’t it? Unless Miranda’s son is in the mob.”

It occurs to me that I’ve never actually met Miranda’s son. I peer at the man. “Are you Miranda’s son? Because it was an accident, and I promise I’ll have her committed by the end of the week, if I can just get through finals first without losing my mind. Please don’t kill her. Or me. Mostly me, because I really don’t see her all that often and have no real control over what she does, you know?”

Throwing my mother under the bus is easier than I thought.

My breath is coming in gasps by the time I notice that he isn’t answering me. My mouth is still open, too, because I’m not sure if I need to scream for help. I close it and swallow hard, then I just stare at him because I know that a man will kill to protect his own mother.

The amused grin now growing on his face cements my fear. Only mobsters would break into a woman’s apartment, scare her to death, and then smile a slow sexy smile right before he blows her brains out.

I stare at that smile and briefly think about begging, but that means getting down on my knees and while I wouldn’t mind doing that under different circumstances because...reasons, I don’t think it’s a good idea to grovel. No - I will die with dignity.

My chin comes up, decision made.

H
e’s still staring and still grinning as I prepare to die by silently confessing my sins to whatever deities might be interested. I’ve never really chosen a specific god, or whatever, and now I think that might be a bit of a mistake on my part. I also say goodbye to Clay, the man I love. No - I do. I didn’t mean that earlier remark, it’s just that this much sexy wrapped in a single package makes my brain seize up. I wouldn’t cheat on Clay.

“Relax.” He says it casually, but I’m wound so tight that the simple word makes me scream and duck. Then it filters through all my internal panic and I stand up straight again and smooth my short linen skirt. So much for dignity.

“I am not here to hurt you, I promise.”

Mobsters always say that. “Then why are you here?”

“Because of your mother.”

“I knew it. She has somehow pissed off the Mafia and now we all pay the price for her insanity.” I sink into a chair. “Just shoot me and get it over with.”

He leans forward. “I’m not a part of the Mafia, although your assumption interests me-.” A knock at the door interrupts him, and hope springs in my heart once again.

“Excuse me,” I say. Maybe it’s the cops. Maybe Clay is coming to my rescue. I run through to the front door and open it.

A tiny, round-faced redhead stares up at me, grinning.

“Hey, Tawny.” I open the door wider to let her in, but then pause, because don’t mobsters kill the witnesses, too? Am I going to contribute to my best friend’s death?

“Trinket! I heard you fussing over here and thought I’d come check.”

My eyes go wide and I lean in to whisper, “You need to run for your life. Go get help. The mob is here, and he’s about to kill me because my mother did something. Please, Tawny, just -.”

“Ahem.” We both spin to see Muscle Man standing close behind us. I swallow hard, because I’ve probably just signed Tawny’s death warrant. “I’m sorry, Tawn,” I say to her.

“About what?” She grins up at me - she’s at least a half foot shorter than my own five-six. “The cutie? We’ve already met.”

Then she looks over at him and wiggles a little wave with her fingers. “Hi again, Angelo.” He smiles at her.

“Tawny let me in,” Angelo explains. I glare at her. She shrugs.

“He’s hot.”

This is true. Still. “I’m taking away your key privileges.”

“’K.” She’s still leaning around me, looking at Angelo.

I give her my meanest look and then turn back to Angelo, or whoever he is. “What do you want? I mean, if you really aren’t the mob.” I’m still not sure about this, no matter what he says.

“Well, you were half right - I’m here about your mother.” He looks back and forth from me to Tawny with questions in his eyes.

“It’s fine. She can stay.” At this point I figure he would have shot me just to shut me up.

“I know all about Trinket’s mother. She’s nuts,” Tawny supplies, nodding her head so that her bright red curls bounce everywhere. That’s when I notice that something is wrong with her face. “Are your freckles...redder?” I ask.