Chapter Eighteen-Evie
“Someone is at your door. They’ve been knocking for ten minutes now, and I have a headache from your cheap vodka.”
The voice was gravelly, nasal, and full of shade. I blinked awake to find Ivan standing on my nightstand, arms crossed over his hairy little chest, his fur puffed out like a pissed-off cat.
“OW!” he screeched when I zapped his butt with a flick of my fingers. A soft pulse of aqua-blue magic lit up the room as my Domovyk familiar flew off the furniture with an indignant yelp.
“That’s abuse! I will be reporting this to the Morrigan!”
“Tell her to get in line,” I mumbled, groaning as I rolled over. “And you better make an appointment first.”
I grinned as he stomped from the room, muttering curses in ancient Slavic, probably about my taste in booze.
He wasn’t wrong about the vodka—it had been cheap—but what did he expect?
I was a small-town mayor with a supernatural community to wrangle and a very, very satisfying lover to recover from.
Speaking of that.
Mmm. Jaxson.
Even half-asleep, my body tingled with leftover magic and delicious soreness in all the right places. I’d been having the most amazing dream—something about Jaxson feeding me zabaglione while naked, the custard warm and creamy on his fingers as he—what the?
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!
“UGH. For Gaia’s sake,” I groaned, dragging myself upright and stumbling to the window.
I peeked through the blinds and immediately wanted to crawl back under the covers.
“Miss Spritely?” I called down.
The older Witch stood on my stoop, arms crossed, mouth pursed into a wrinkled scowl that could curdle fresh milk.
“I’ll be right there!” I called quickly and ducked back inside before she hexed me for tardiness.
With no time for proper grooming, I opted for my go-to cheat—magic.
Quick spell, flash of light, and poof! Showered, dressed, and reasonably deodorized.
Was it as satisfying as a long soak in my rosemary-lavender bath salts?
No.
But desperate times, etc.
I tugged on a soft peach dress, threw on a coordinating cardigan, and stepped into my sensible, one-inch nude heels—because fashionable mayor required some heel, but practical Witch refused to twist an ankle over aesthetics.
I caught my reflection in the hall mirror and gave myself a once-over. Not bad.
Hair wasn’t frizzing.
Dress was cute.
I looked like a woman who’d definitely not spent the night getting thoroughly ravished by a silver-eyed Werewolf who made me come so hard I saw stars.
Twice.
Ivan glared at me from the arm of the couch as I passed through the living room.
“I hope you remember to file your paperwork for that magical shower. Regulations exist for a reason.”
I waved him off with a tight-lipped smile. “Love you too, grumpasaurus.”
He harrumphed and turned away, but not before I noticed the twigs and leaves, he’d decorated the dumbwaiter door with.
Why? No idea.
Was it weirdly charming? Kinda.
Would I let him keep doing it? Probably.
The little beast had clawed his way into my heart, even if he did leave the toilet seat up like a frat Goblin.
But then I passed the kitchen—and stopped dead.
“Oh no, absolutely not.”
Chaos.
Dirty pans, crusty bowls, and a stack of unwashed plates that leaned at a dangerous angle like the damn Tower of Pisa.
“Ivan!” I called, spinning around.
He looked up innocently. Too innocently.
“Those aren’t mine,” I snapped. “Or Jaxson’s.”
He shrugged. “I had an early breakfast. And second breakfast. And a pre-lunch snack.”
“You ate seven eggs yesterday, you hairy garbage disposal!”
“They were deviled, and you said I was your guest.”
I resisted the urge to fry his tail again and kept moving.
The sexy high of post-coital bliss was slowly evaporating under the weight of dirty dishes and door-banging Witches.
But still, nothing could completely ruin my morning.
Not after a night like that.
Jaxson Reid had rocked my world.
Emotionally. Physically. Spiritually. Cosmically, even.
That man was sent by Gaia herself, and he knew exactly how to use his hands.
And his mouth.
And his—I fanned my face.
Focus, Evie.
I was not going to get sidetracked thinking about how he licked me like I was the last slice of peach pie at the Harvest Festival.
Or how he fed me chocolate mousse and zabaglione in bed like a gentleman, then made me scream like a heathen.
Nope. Not thinking about it.
Except, now I was wondering if he’d come back tonight.
For dessert. Or dinner. Or both.
In that order or reversed.
Goddess help me, I was sure the man could make a tuna melt taste like foreplay.
Just thinking about his lemon-basil scent had me clenching.
Was there a word for being totally, unapologetically, out-of-your-mind dick-whipped?
Cock-mused? Wolf-struck? Mate-ridden?
I needed to get a grip. I was the mayor. I had responsibilities.
A town full of Shifters, Witches, and wandering Fae.
I couldn’t go swooning over every hard-bodied newcomer with a jawline sharp enough to cut glass and a cock that made me forget my own damn name.
Just one.
One cock.
One jawline.
One growly, possessive, maddeningly perfect Wolf.
And why not? My inner voice purred. It’s not like he didn’t earn it.
I couldn’t even argue.
The only mistake I made last night was letting him leave.
Another knock rattled the whole damn house.
“HELLO! EVELYN CASTOR, OPEN THIS DOOR!”
I winced. Miss Spritely was not going to be pleased. Hopefully she was here about potholes and not the flare of blue sparks that exploded from my chimney around midnight.
“Coming!” I shouted, hustling to the door.
Still flushed from my memories.
Still grinning like a teenager.
Still hoping Jaxson showed up again tonight.
And maybe the night after that.
Because, ready or not, I had a feeling my Wolf wasn’t done with me.
And I wasn’t even close to being done with him.
Thoughts of bedrooms and sexy Wolves fled my brain at the sound of my old principal’s harsh voice.
Guess it was back to work for me.
Saturdays be damned.
Ugh.
Miss Spritely banged on the door again, along with her accompanying yell. I closed my eyes, praying to Gaia for patience.
Ivan growled his annoyance.
The Domovyk then scurried away to his dumbwaiter/hideout/nest.
Looked like I was on my own for this one. I didn’t know much about having a familiar, but Ivan and I would muddle through it.
Not like I had much choice since the almighty Witch Wheedler, aka La Befana, sent the little creatures to me and my besties.
“One moment!” I shouted and opened the door. “Miss Spritely, how nice to see you this morning.”
Did I say that? Well, I lied.
The pinched face of the school principal greeted me, and I backed up a step.
My most polite mayor’s smile did nothing to soften her harsh stare, and I stepped aside to avoid being trampled.
“This is unacceptable, Evelyn. I warned you something was going on and now we have two students missing!” Miss Spritely hissed and handed me a hot off the presses copy of The Daily Corner.
How did the town’s only paper do it?
The Corner, as it was nicknamed, was somehow created with one journalist/editor, a decidedly unpopular Wizard named Iggy Barrens.
The pinch-faced man always seemed to be one step ahead with the local gossip and news.
It was beyond me!
Must be magic, but I swear I detected nothing extraordinary when I ran into the little creep.
Wizards, in general, were not very savory.
That he was a journalist made it even worse.
“Did you call the sheriff?” I asked.
“Sheriff Davis is a one-hundred-and-seventy-year-old goat Shifter, Madam Mayor. What exactly is he going to do?”
“His job?” I said, though it came out sounding more like a question.
“No! Evie, it is up to you. As our mayor and the last remaining Castor, you must investigate. How could this happen? And letting in those Shifters too? No. No. it is your duty as a Castor to make this right.”
With that final word, Miss Spritely stormed out of my house.
Leaving me feeling exactly the same as I had back in sixth grade when I’d failed to turn in my homework two nights in a row because I’d binge-read the entire Sweet Valley High book series by Francine Pascal.
Before I could work myself up into a frenzy, my laptop started trilling, and I recognized the sound as a Swoosh call coming in.
What the freak now?
Seriously. If it wasn’t one thing, it was something else!
Now, who might this be?
I blew out an exasperated breath and stalked over to the small corner desk I’d put in the living room by the back window overlooking my yard.
I liked natural light when I was working.
Now that it was fall, the leaves were turning beautiful shades of gold and red. I enjoyed the view very much.
The barrage of interruptions this Saturday morning—meh, not so much.
“EVELYN CASTOR, BY THE GODDESS’ PERFECTLY PROPORTIONED ASSETS, YOU BETTER COME GET THIS LITTLE SHIT OUT OF MY HOUSE RIGHT NOW!”
Donny’s voice hit my ears like a banshee with a megaphone. It roared through the two tiny, enchanted speakers perched beside my laptop, which rattled ominously under the audio onslaught.
“Evie! I swear to Gaia, this little hairy demon is testing me!”
It took a second for the visual to catch up—Swoosh always lagged a bit when it was heavy on the rage-fueled spellcasting.
Swoosh, for the record, was the Witch community’s magic-based answer to Zoom.
You couldn’t exactly trust traditional cell service when your blood ran hexes and high-voltage vibes.
Witch magic and electricity didn’t mix well.
Think Mentos and Diet Coke with sparks.
I blinked at the purple mist swirling inside my screen as the image loaded.
“One sec, Donny, I can’t see what’s going on.”
“Oh, I’ll tell you what’s going on!” she screeched, like a banshee who moonlit as a New Jersey hairdresser.
“This Domo-dick is LEAVING SURPRISES.”
And just like that, the mist cleared and the full wrath of Donatella the Destroyer was upon me.
Hair frizzed, cheeks flushed, and eyes glittering with murder.
She angled her phone’s crystal-ball lens and—ugh.
I instantly regretted it.
The floor of her salon looked like a unicorn had gotten violently ill after eating too many flaming Cheetos and jellybeans.
Glowing piles of neon orange and slime-green poop littered the sleek black tile.
One particularly menacing turd sat nestled inside a leopard-print stiletto like it paid rent there.
I slapped a hand over my eyes.
“Oh, gross! Donny!”
“GROSS?!” she shrieked. “GROSS is hardly adequate for fishing this Day-Glo demon dung out of my favorite pair of Louboutins!”
“I didn’t even know you owned Louboutins,” I mumbled.
“They were secondhand! BUT THEY WERE STILL MINE.”
She kicked the shoe across the room, narrowly missing her freshly enchanted shampoo station.
The thud it made echoed with finality.
“Okay, deep breaths,” I offered, ever the sensible one. “You just need to talk to your familiar and maybe establish some basic boundaries—”
“BOUNDARIES? Evie, this thing pooped in my incense burner and spelled it to smell like burned licorice and Ogre ass hairs! Boundaries left the chat the moment this Domo-bastard decided to go ape shit-literally!”
Suddenly, her eyes darted to the side.
“There you are, you hairy little turd dropper!”
I saw the blur before the crash.
Donatella dove across the screen like an NFL linebacker, aiming straight for the broom closet.
If the New York Giants hired her, their record might actually improve.
But the thought was gone the second her phone hit the floor.
Now, the camera was filming sideways chaos as couch cushions flew through the air and a furious string of curses filled the audio feed.
“I’m gonna bleach your entire body! I’ll wax a stripe down your fuzzy ass like a racing skunk! You’ll be the first Domovyk to be neutered by salon shears!”
“Yikes,” I whispered, wincing as something shattered offscreen.
A small puff of orange fur flew past the screen.
I stared for a second, then calmly reached for my Swoosh dial.
“Maribella, you better get over there before Donny commits supernatural war crimes.”
To her credit, Bella picked up right away.
Her image shimmered into place with a bright, cheery glow and a halo of sunshine framing her perfectly curled golden locks.
She looked like a walking Pinterest board.
Figures.
“Evie! Why are you shouting? I could hear you all the way from—oh.” She tilted her head, noting my expression. “Let me guess, Donny again?”
I sighed. “She’s on a rampage. Her Domovyk—Grady? Grover?”
“Gryn,” she corrected with a patient smile. “Honestly, Evie, it’s four letters.”
“Right, Gryn. He’s redecorating her life in poop emojis—neon green ones—and Donatella is threatening to Nair him bald. I figured I’d call you before she ends up with a Domovyk pelt rug.”
Bella snorted. “Okay, okay, I’ll go talk her down. Petyr and I were just having some tea anyway. He was telling me the funniest story about a squirrel who got turned into a bar of soap—”
“Sounds delightful,” I cut in. “But we’ve got bigger issues. Two kids aren’t accounted for over by the cemetery.”
Bella sobered instantly. “What? Evie, that’s sheriff territory.”
I gave a one-shoulder shrug.
“Apparently not anymore. The vibes are spooky, and the Sheriff said it’s Trifecta business now.”
She muttered something that sounded suspiciously like useless Weregoat, but nodded.
“Alright. I’ll check on Donny. But for the record, you all need to start treating these Domovyks like the sweet, sentient beings they are. They’re sensitive, powerful, and practically immortal.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Tell that to the pile of nuclear feces that just tried to assimilate Donny’s decorative throw pillows.”
“And you could be nicer to your Domovyk,” she said with a pointed arch of her brows. “Ivan’s been doing his best.”
“Ivan electrocuted my houseplants and left fur in the refrigerator,” I reminded her. “And I’m almost sure he stole my vibrator to use as a back massager.”
“Boundaries, Evie,” Bella said sweetly, giggling at something Petyr said and winking at him saucily.
Boundaries, huh?
We shall see.
I sighed and gripped the lid on my laptop.
Between glowing poop, Witch-on-Domovyk warfare, and magical Swoosh calls with a laggy spell buffer, it was just another day in Castor’s Corner.
Now I had a haunted cemetery and two missing kids to check on.
At least I had my sensible shoes on.
And, if Gaia loved me at all, maybe a smexy Wolf waiting for me tonight with dessert in bed and a firm hand on my ass.
A Witch could hope.