The Witch's Wrath: Witches of Abaddon's Gate Book 1 Read online

  I picked up the bottle and gasped. Wolfsbane was toxic to anybody except for werewolves. Even with that population, it could make them deathly sick if I used too much, and the amount that I had just added was enough to kill a whole pack. I couldn't imagine how I'd made that mistake, because I always kept my toxic ingredients away from my mundane ones.

  Most of them, such as wolfsbane and belladonna, have uses that could be helpful rather than harmful, but you have to be extremely careful with the amount. I grumbled as I pulled the kettle off the fire, dumped the ingredients, then set it aside so that it could cool enough for me to clean it out. Luckily, I had extra kettles, so I went to the closet and pulled one out. I shook my head as I hung the new one on the tripod hook over the fire.

  I glanced at her, grateful and more than a little embarrassed. "It's a good thing one of us is paying attention."

  My heart was still racing a little bit as I added the new ingredients to the fresh kettle. One slip-up like that could not only end my business, it could kill someone. I pressed my lips together to repress a smile. Several people popped to mind that I wouldn't mind offing hypothetically, but killing them in real life was probably a bad idea.

  Calamity narrowed her eyes at me. "I know what you were just thinking, and you can't kill Katrina. Or Mrs. Longbottom. Or that weird clown guy who hits on you while he’s buying makeup remover."

  I laughed despite the seriousness of the situation. "Katrina's one of the ones that has not made my list, thank you very much. After all, I can't beat her if I kill her. The clown guy, however ..." I rubbed my chin in mock thought.

  Calamity laughed. "If Katrina turned up dead from a potion, I doubt anybody would believe that you weren’t involved somehow. Clown guy, on the other hand, wouldn’t draw attention at all. He’s weird enough that the list of suspects would probably be long.”

  "You’re right about Katrina, and it would be just my luck to go to jail before I had a chance to compete against her fair and square."

  “I don’t think there’s anything in the rules that would let incarceration stop you from having somebody else enter your potion,” she said, smiling. “But it would put a hard crimp in my lifestyle. Who’d cook for me?”

  “Yeah, that’s definitely the first reason I don’t want to go to jail—I’d miss being your servant.” I added the last ingredient, then stirred clockwise while I let my magic flow down my arms and through the wooden paddle into the creamy concoction.

  After it was going, I managed to get the new energy potion together without a hitch, double-checking each ingredient before I added it to the pot on my stove. Once it was together and infused with my magic, I cleaned up my mess and checked my watch. I still had five minutes of my break left, but there was no reason to take it. I did, however, put my shoes back on. Though it was perfectly normal to see barefoot shop owners since many of us derived our power from the earth, I didn’t like to because it killed my back and feet. Plus, it was kind of gross.

  While I laced up my sneakers, my mind drifted back to the wolfsbane. The council required anybody who grew, bought, or sold anything that contained it to have a special permit. They always tracked all witches who grew or possessed Class A herbs, and legally, anybody who sold products that contained them had to have a license.

  Just like anywhere else, that didn’t mean people didn’t grow or sell them illegally, but I preferred to keep my business above board. It kept me out of trouble and gave my shop credibility. It wasn't easy to get on that list. Losing my place—and therefore my ability to buy those hard-to-get herbs—would cost me valuable business, assuming I didn’t commit the much bigger moral and legal offense of killing somebody.

  Before I went back out front, I piled enough wood underneath the kettle to keep it going for a few hours, then I whispered a spell that would keep it from burning. The energy drink was easy. It was mostly just B vitamins with a couple special herbs added on top. What made it work so effectively was the magic that I added as I stirred. Since that potion didn't require the hearth, I could put it on the stovetop and brew them both at the same time.

  Just as I was wiping my hands and cleaning the spillover off of the stove, the bell above my front door chimed. I took a breath, pasted on my public smile, and pushed through the swinging door into the shop. Rather than tourists needing sunscreen or little old ladies looking for anti-aging serums, I was surprised to find my cousin, Michael, and Rocky, his wolf familiar, heading my direction. My public smile turned to a genuine one.

  "Hey, cousin! Long time, no see. How have you been?" Michael was one of my favorite cousins, right behind his sister Destiny. She worked at a local beach resort for paranormals called the Enchanted Coast, and though we lived close together, I hadn't seen her much in the last few months. "And how’s Destiny? I haven’t seen her in forever.”

  I hadn't paid much attention to his expression before I asked my question, but now I peered closer at him. His face was pinched and pale, and the lines around his brown eyes seemed a mile deeper than they normally did. He raked a hand through his chestnut hair and paced in front of my counter.

  I forgot all about the niceties as I rushed forward to get a better look. "Holy cow! You look terrible!" What was even more worrisome was that I had the bell over my door spelled to cause just a little boost of calming happiness, so I could only imagine how stressed he’d have been without it.

  Michael worked with the Paranormal Criminal Bureau of Investigations, or PCBI for short. His job was often stressful, but he usually took it in stride. For him to look as anxious as he did, something serious must be going on.

  "Probably not as terrible as I feel." He continued to pace but didn't offer anything else.

  "Are you going to tell me what's wrong or just wear a path in my floor? You’re starting to scare me." I hustled around the counter and placed my hand on his arm to stop him in his tracks. All the terrible things that could be happening flashed through my mind: maybe something had to happen to Destiny or to my sister Cori, or to one of our parents. "Is everybody okay? Did something happen at the resort or in Castle’s Bluff?"

  He shook his head and pulled in a deep breath, then blew it out slowly. "No, everybody's fine. Well, everybody that you're thinking about. We've had a murder, and I need your help."

  Chapter 2

  Calamity scampered around the counter and jumped up on a chair. "Not to be callous, but murders happen every day. Why would you need our help with this one? It's not like where any sort of investigators."

  "True," he said, rubbing a hand over his face. The anxiety rolling off of him was palpable. "But this isn't your typical murder. It didn't happen in the bad end of town, and it wasn't something dumb like two gargoyles fighting over a poker game. This was a woman murdered in her shop.” He huffed out a frustrated breath. “We had a hard time even identifying her because even though she's only twenty-three, she looked like she was eighty-three."

  Michael pulled out his phone. “I have some crime-scene pics, but I have to warn you that they’re a little disturbing. I think they’re relevant, but I understand if you don’t want to see them.”

  That surprised me. He usually went above and beyond to protect me from the darker side of life, so if he wanted me to look at something as gruesome as that, he must have had a whopper of a reason. I pulled in a deep breath and released it slowly, then nodded. I supposed he’d get around to explaining why, exactly, I needed to see them.

  He was right—the pics were disturbing, but only because the woman who was supposed to be young looked like a crone, and I knew she was dead. Her wrinkled face was relaxed, and she’d fallen on her side with her crepey, liver-spotted hand beside her face.

  I snapped my gaze to him, shocked. “You’re sure this is the right woman? It’s not possible that somebody else was murdered in her place?”

  Michael shook his head. “I’m sure. See the necklace she’s wearing?”

  I looked closer. Sure enough, a charm of a dragon with a ruby eye rested agains
t the slope of one breast, attached to a delicate silver chain. “Yeah. What about it?”

  “I gave that to Amelia. No way she’d have let somebody else wear it.”

  I thought about the whole scenario for a minute. Though the details were strange, it still wasn't like Michael to come to me for help. As Calamity had said, we were in the potions business, not the murder business. "So what makes you think I'm your girl on this one?"

  He sighed. "Because I believe there’s more to it than the powers-that-be do. I suspect there was a potion involved and that we’re dealing with a mortal rather than something else. Even if it’s what they think, that’s in your wheelhouse more than it is mine."

  "Even so,” I said, taking a seat on my stool, “don’t you have witches on the council that could help? I'm sure they have much more experience with this than I would."

  He opened his mouth to say something but snapped it shut. I narrowed my eyes at him. I'd known him long enough to know that he was holding back. It didn't make any sense for him to come to me when he had a whole slew of trained witches on the council at his disposal. Not only that, he was uber protective of me—sometimes annoyingly so—and went out of his way to keep the darker side of the city away from me. Outside of the generic details, I wasn’t even sure what all his job entailed because he wouldn’t talk about it.

  "I’m still not getting why you’re coming to me. You’ve never asked for my help before, and there have been all sorts of murders in the Gate. What aren't you telling me?"

  His brown eyes shifted to the right and he avoided making contact with mine. "Remember Kira?"

  Kira was a fallen angel I'd met several months before. For centuries, her family had been tasked with guarding Abaddon’s Gate, which was the entrance to the Valley of Lost Souls. Most people thought that was a myth, but I’d recently found out that it wasn’t. The worst of the worst magical creatures were sent there both as punishment for their crimes and to keep society safe.

  Her mother, Calista, however, had a taste for bad boys and had fallen for a man who’d been sentenced to the Valley. Rather than do what any other normal person would have done and find somebody on this side, she’d opted to spring him from his fate. The only problem was that when she’d opened up Abaddon's gate, her boyfriend wasn’t the only one who’d escaped.

  Nobody knew for sure exactly what had happened, but Calista had knocked the guards out and fled without resealing the gate. Since her mother had gone missing, Kira'd been tasked with hunting down all of them even though she had no idea how many had escaped or even what she was chasing half the time. I couldn’t imagine anybody in my family hanging me out to dry like that.

  I shrugged. "Sure, I remember her. But I still don't see what that has to do with me."

  "We’re not sure if it has anything to do with her yet, which is why we want a potions witch to take a look. No need to call her in until we’re sure."

  Finally, we were getting somewhere, but he still wasn’t giving me all the info. I’d grown up with him; he couldn’t fool me. “Okay, so as soon as you tell me the rest of the story, maybe we can move on.”

  He huffed out an impatient breath. "Fine. They don't know that I've come to you. They’re convinced it’s one of Kira’s escapees, so they’ve already alerted her, but I’m not so sure. This doesn't seem like a lost soul, but rather somebody trying to use it to cover up the murder."

  I furrowed my brow. "But I make potions that help people, not ones that could do harm, at least not as long as they’re used for what they’re intended for. Nothing I make would cause what happened to this girl. For that matter, I don’t know anybody who’d make that sort of potion. It’s a death sentence if you’re busted and morally reprehensible even if you’re not."

  He stopped pacing and locked gazes with me. The pleading in his eyes was a little confusing; I couldn’t shake the feeling that this killing had struck a little close to home for him.

  "I realize all that,” he said, “but you're an ace when it comes to identifying potions. You know better than anybody else what goes in a potion, and you’ve deconstructed potions for Shelby. I found a strange substance at the scene, and I'd like for you to take a look at it." Shelby was another long story, but the short version was that she was a member of a secret organization that hunted monsters, too.

  He reached into the inside pocket of his duster and pulled out a plastic baggie that contained a small bottle. He handed it to me. “This is what I found lying on a path behind her shop, and I suspect it's what killed her. I don't want to go to the council with it until I know for sure, especially considering they’ve already called in Kira. She’s overloaded the way it is, though, so a wild goose chase would be a waste of precious time she could be using to get her wings back."

  The stick that they used to browbeat Kira into cleaning up her mom’s mess had been taking away her full-sized wings. That had been a huge blow for her because they were a status symbol. In essence, they’d barred her from the royal court and took away her access to most of the rights of her station, and the only way she could get them back was to do as they said.

  I took the bag from him and held it up to the light. A greenish-purple luminescent liquid swirled inside of it, almost as if it had a life of its own. I furrowed my brow. “This looks more like a love potion or a summoning potion than it does a poison. Usually, toxic potions are a darker gray or green. Not always, though."

  “Maybe it isn’t a poison,” Calamity said from where she was perched on the counter. “Remember, she was aged. There are a lot of potions that could have caused that, and not all of them are toxic.”

  She was right, so I sighed. As much as I didn’t want to get involved with anything to do with the council, Michael was family and rarely asked anything of me. Besides that, I was curious. "I'll take a look for you, but it won't be until later unless the shop stays slow. I have a couple of appointments later, but nothing until then."

  I hated to admit it, but now that he'd explained the situation and shown me the bottle, I wanted to take it apart and figure it out. Potions of any sort weren’t just my craft, they were my passion as well, and I was interested in what made them tick. And he was right, I was top-notch when it came to figuring out the ingredients.

  Being raised with brothers and so many cousins, you learn pretty quickly to either recognize potions they claimed to be Kool-Aid or risk being turned into a frog, a beach chair, or suffering from a raging case of warts for the next week. If those sound oddly specific, it’s because I’d experienced each of them. Since I was the youngest, I’d tended to be the one at the end of a lot of their pranks, but they hadn't counted on me being the earth witch in the bunch. Once I’d come into my magic, they’d developed a healthy fear of me. Considering I could not only figure out what they'd done but could one-up them and make it ten times worse, they stopped messing with me, at least like that.

  Michael huffed out an impatient breath, and Rocky put his head against his leg in an attempt to soothe him. "I don't really have ‘til this evening. I need to know what this is soon so I can figure out what happened to her. It appears to be a one-off murder at this point, but I don't want to take any chances. I knew this girl, and she was special. I don’t want this to happen to anybody else, either."

  Ah, so now we were finally getting to it. "When you say special, what do you mean? Were you involved with her, or did she have some sort of special powers?"

  His shoulders slumped and he collapsed onto a stool, his nervous energy spent. "A little bit of both, I suppose. I've been working with Amelia for the last several months, and we got close."

  "Working with her on what?" Calamity asked.

  I thought Michael was going to dig in his heels and not tell us, but Rocky nudged him with his nose. Michael scowled down at his familiar and sighed. "She's a water which, and we don't have one of those on board. We've had some problems with sea nymphs and the like, and that was what she was going to be working with."

  I rolled my eyes. Nymph
s of all sorts were known to be a pain even in the best of times, and if Michael was involved, it wasn’t a best-case scenario. There'd been a lot of turmoil on the seas lately, and I knew the PCBI had been investigating a ring of thieves who had been stealing from boaters.

  "But I thought you said she owned a shop?"

  He nodded. "She does. She owns a magical shell shop on the beach, but she was looking to get into law enforcement. The shop is her family business, and though she tried to settle in and follow family tradition, it just wasn't her thing."

  My typical rule was to avoid anything that had to do with the witch's council, which was the organization that oversaw the PCBI, but the expression on Michael's face gave me pause. He’d had a rough time growing up and had lost his best friend to murder because they’d gotten into some shady business. That had been a life-altering event and was what had driven him into law enforcement to begin with.

  Though he’d dated a few girls on and off, none of the relationships had ever been serious. We were beginning to think he was never going to find The One, mostly because he worked all the time and usually didn't even take time off to go visit family during the holidays. That's just the way he was. His work was his life, and he usually enjoyed it, but that didn't mean we didn't want to see him settled and happy. It was going to take a special kind of woman to capture his heart, and I hoped this wasn’t a setback.

  "You really cared about her, didn't you?"

  He gave a sharp nod. "I did. She was an awesome person. She was caring and smart and knew how to have fun, but she was also serious when she needed to be. The fact that somebody snuffed her light out so young isn't just a tragedy for me, it's a tragedy for the world."

  Wow. Heavy words from somebody who usually kept his heart closed. He’d lost his best friend and now lightning had struck again. It made my heart cry for him. Despite my misgivings, I was gonna have to help him.

  "I'll help, but only on the condition that you leave me out of the formal stuff. I don't want anything to do with the council, so whatever we do is behind the scenes."