Witch Is The New Black (3 page)

“Aren’t I the luckiest witch ever?”

Bernie actually bit back a smile. She’d never tell him, but she was relieved Fee was here with her, wherever
here
was, talking testicles who sounded like Lou Rawls and all.

“I could’ve applied to mentor that head case over in cellblock B, you know. At least she’d be grateful.”

“The one who eats toilet paper and hoards her hair from her brush?”

“The one and only.”

Bernie smirked. “God, you’re such a giver.”

“Damn right, I am. Now, the next bit of bizniz. We’re in Texas. Paris, Texas. A town primarily made up of witches and a few werewolves and the occasional paranormal who checks the ‘other’ box. Also home of the infamous Winifred Foster-Yagamowitz you heard so much about from Chi-Chi—and Baba Yaga’s niece by marriage, as well. She and her husband Benjamin run a rehabilitation house for wayward witches like yourself. You’ll live there while you serve out your two-month parole doing community service.

“If, and I stress
if
, you do your time clean, you’ll have one more hearing, where Winnie, your parole officer, and members of the community give their testimony on how you fared. If all goes well, then and only then will you be free to run amok wherever people like you—who don’t care about the enormous sacrifices their familiars make for them—live.”

Most of Fee’s explanation went in one ear and out the other. Who could think when it was this hot? The one thing she
had
heard? Community service.

“Community service? What kind of community service? Like chain-gang, pick-up-litter-on-the-side-of-the-highway community service?”

“Horse puckey. Cow patties, too,” someone said. Someone male.

Someone with a voice very different than Lou “Testicles” Rawls, but equally as deep and resonant—maybe even a little shiver-worthy.

Bernie’s eyes lifted as she followed the new, long shadow stretching out before her and blocking the sun.

“Seven hells and an extinct unicorn. If I had opposable thumbs, I’d fan myself! Who are
you
, Cowboy, and are there more where you come from?” Fee purred the saucy words, deserting Bernie to rub shamelessly up against the calves belonging to the male voice.

“I’m her boss.”

Bernie’s eyes decided finding out what the face attached to the voice looked like was probably prudent, so she let them roam all the way up—past his scuffed brown boots, over his lean hips encased in tight denim, beyond his rippling stomach and along his broad shoulders—until they landed on his sun-weathered face.

And what a face. Deeply tanned, hard-jawed, with clear skin stretched tight over sharp cheekbones. Grooves on either side of a full mouth and eyes so stunningly blue with dark lashes rimming them, she inhaled a breath.

The fringes of his chocolate-brown hair hung just beneath his white Stetson, not quite touching his jaw. His stare was even and steady as a rock. No blinking.

“Ohhh, saints be,” Fee cooed with delight. “We hit the hottie jackpot, Bernie girl!”

“You’re Bernice Sutton,” he said, deadpan, without addressing Fee’s forward comment and minus a single hint of emotion.

She was still trying to formulate her words. Rather than stumble on them, she nodded, her mouth dry.

“I’m Ridge Donovan. Your boss for the next two months. Baba Yaga told me you’d be arriving today. I just didn’t expect it to be out here in the middle of someone else’s pasture.” He scowled down at her as though she had any control over whose pasture she’d landed in.

Fee hopped into her lap and brushed his cold nose against her ear. “Don’t just sit there, Bernie. Get up and greet hotpants right and proper!” he whisper-yelled.

She struggled to her feet, wobbling a bit when the confines of her sticky orange jumpsuit and the heat of the sun mingled, hitting her with their blazing impact.

Licking her dry lips, she wiped her sweaty palm on her thigh and held out her hand. “Yes. I’m Bernice Sutton. But Bernie’s fine.”

Ridge didn’t reach out for her offered hand. Instead, he turned on his booted heel and pointed a lean finger toward a distant dot on the scorching-hot horizon. “The farm’s this way. Better get a move on. The horses’ stalls need cleaning before they get back from their morning walk with the seniors from the center. Oh, and don’t forget your fancy toilet paper roll.”

Her eyes fell to the ground, where her jailhouse Academy Award lay crumpled.

Ridge slapped Bitty on the back. “Good seein’ ya again, old man. Give Nash and Calla a howdy from me, would ya?” Then he stalked off over the brittle grass, his boots crunching a path toward the dot.

“Can do, Ridge,” Bitty responded cheerfully.

Fee took off, skipping his way over the distance between him and Ridge, his tutu fluttering wildly in a pink cluster as he tried to keep up. “Hurry, Bernie!” he called over his shoulder giddily, breathless excitement in his words. “You have shit to shovel!”

Fuck.

Left for a hot cowboy in tight jeans and a Stetson.

Some familiar, her Fee.

Traitor.

* * * *

Bernie fell against the opening to the barn door and gasped for breath, clinging to her crushed award. Cheese and rice, it was GD hot here.

She’d followed the outline of Ridge’s back for what felt like miles, struggling to keep up as they crossed the field, her Kotex slippers tripping over hard patches of thick grass, dying from the heat while the sun ate her face off, only to be told to wait here.

At a big dilapidated barn that looked as if it just might be on its last legs, positioned next to what might have been a storm cellar with two rusty doors. The red paint was peeling everywhere on the face of the structure, the stench coming from inside was enough to gag ten men, and the fence posts surrounding the property were falling down.

Overall, her new gig, though bar-free, was pretty rough.

Though, she had to give it up for the landscape. There were enormous trees everywhere, dirt paths that led to places she’d, under other circumstance, like to explore. Chickens roamed free in a large pen with a small red wooden house, and pigs rolled in a pen full of mud, and cows dotted the outlying pasture, contentedly chewing on grass.

Yep. Bernie Sutton from the city was on a real live farm. Boy howdee.

The shade of the wide entry to the barn did little to cool her off. If anything, the shadows served only to keep her from catching fire.

Bales of hay lined the entryway to the horse stalls, the stink heightened and cloying from the muggy heat. Fee hopped up on a block of compact straw and settled back on his haunches. “So yammer at me, Bernie.”

“About?”

“About how ssssinfully hot Ridge Donovan is.”

“You’re drooling.”

“Hell yeah, I’m drooling. He’s hotter n’ habaneras and Chris Hemsworth.”

She wrinkled her nose and wiped the sweat from her brow. No drooling over men. A man was part of the reason why she was in this predicament in the first place. If she’d just gone with her gut, she wouldn’t have ended up in a bank vault with fistfuls of cash and no recollection of getting there.

“That’s not why I’m here, Fee. I’m here to do my time. I have zero interest in anything else.” And from the looks of Ridge Donovan and that stone set to his jaw, he had nothing else in mind either.

“Doesn’t hurt to look.”

She rubbed her temples with her thumbs and squeezed the beginnings of a rousing headache. “Are you advising, as my thrust-upon-me familiar, that I should ogle my boss while I’m on parole? I’m pretty sure that breaks some enormous parolee rule.”

“Excuse me, I wasn’t thrust upon you. I was
chosen,
thank you very much. You know, like by a panel of celebrity judges for the Miss Familiar Pageant?”

Bernie almost grinned, but couldn’t manage it because it was too hot to move her facial muscles. “Is ‘chosen’ the new word for ‘begging and scraping until Baba Yaga gives in’?”

Fee’s straight back slumped a little as he sank into the hay. “I only scraped a little, you dreadful beast. I needed a new gig after…”

“Yeah. You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you, Fee. Why
did
you need a new gig anyway? I thought witches were immortal and they kept their familiars forever?”

She’d always wondered what had drawn Fee to her—what had made him stick around even when she’d ended up sedated after he’d first “spoken” to her at morning exercise.

He lifted his chin haughtily. “Why didn’t you know you were a witch?”

“Touché, pussycat.”

“Still not ready to share your secrets with me, are you?”

She rolled up her sleeves and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not ready for anything else but doing what needs to be done for my surprise parole so I can get the hell out of this place and go back to Boston. It’s scorching and it smells like a hot brew of sewer and toxic waste in here.”

“That’s good to hear,” Ridge said, strolling toward the opening to the barn, all big and muscle-y. “If you’re in the mood to make good on your parole conditions, it’ll make your time go that much faster. Idle hands, as they say.” He held out a rusty shovel.

Fee collapsed on the hay and let out a soft and, if Bernie wasn’t mistaken, flirty meow.

Bernie fought a roll of her eyes. Okay, so Ridge looked good, even sweaty and dirty. In fact, he smelled good, too. Like hard work and fabric softener. There was no denying his enormous frame was easy on the eye.

But freedom was easy on the eye, too, and that was the prize she was focused on.

She pointed to the shovel. “For the horse puckey?”

He gave her a curt nod, his gaze eating a hole right through her bruised soul. “For the horse puckey. Lunch is at twelve sharp. You’ll meet Greta, your parole office then. Be on the front porch to the big house or miss your meal entirely. Fresh water is in the cooler by the pigpen. Follow your nose and you’ll know where to find it. If you need to use the facilities, there’s an outhouse over there.” He thumbed over his left shoulder. “Any questions?”

Because he made the asking so approachable…

Rocking back on her heels, Bernie shook her head.
Say as little as possible and suck it up, Buttercup
, had been her motto from the moment she’d realized no one believed she didn’t know she was a witch.

She’d gone from wigged-out, anxiety-riddled Bernice Sutton to reliable, dependable, model inmate in less than two weeks. If she could do that behind bars, she could do that here in Catch Fire-Ville.

Taking the shovel, she didn’t even think twice about her shredding Kotex slippers as she pushed off the side of the barn. “Not a one.”

Ridge tipped his hat and sauntered off into the blazing mid-morning sun without another word.

Fee blew out a breathy escape of air. “Isn’t he just the shiznit, B?”

“Oh totally,” she muttered, stomping her way toward the farthest stall and unlatching the hinged door. “He’s like fuzzy kittens and Yanni’s pan flute playing in the background all rolled into one nurturing bundle of shiznit.”

Fee padded toward her, scurrying and weaving as he went. “Don’t be so grudgey. It could be worse, you know. You could still be that nutball KiKi Lemieux’s prison pet.”

She was getting testy and she knew it. She’d fought hard to maintain her cool all while she’d absorbed this witch thing in prison. But it was starting to eat its way through her gut. Add to that her stiff upper lip was on fire, and she was a hotbed for a meltdown.

“You’re so right, Fee. I could still be in a nice, cool prison cell brushing KiKi Lemieux’s hair for her, instead of here in Boiled Alive Landing in the middle of August, mucking horseshit. How ungrateful of me.”

“There’s the pity party I’ve been waiting for!” Fee swished his tail and a festive party noisemaker appeared out of thin air, sounding off in the general vicinity of her ear.

Bernie jumped as the abrasive noise intruded on the quiet of the barn. “Knock it off, Fee!” She swatted it away with an irritable hand—only to hear a crackle and a sharp pop, leaving the scent of smoke wafting to her nose.

Her eyes went wide when she looked down at her feet and saw the now-blazing party favor fall to the ground, hitting a bale of dry hay.

Fee squeaked and jumped up onto the stall door when the embers ignited in a dry huff.

“Water, Fee! We need water!” she yelped as the entire bale of hay began to burn in an orange and blue blaze.

Her eyes flew around the enormous barn, one that was so old and decrepit, if she didn’t do something it would surely go up in flames from so much dry wood.

She ran for a thick blanket draped over a stall door and grabbed it, her heart throbbing against her ribs, thick smoke making her eyes tear. “Fee! Make it rain or something!” she bellowed, her makeshift slippers sticking to the dirt floor.

Fee hopped around as the fire began to spread. “I suck dirty ass at elementals, Bernie! But if you listen to me, you can stop this!”

Lunging for the rapidly spreading fire, she threw the blanket on it, hoping to tamp it out, but that only made everything worse as the blanket caught fire, too.

Acrid smoke began to fill the barn in thick clouds of black. Rather than risk smoke inhalation, she scooped Fee up and ran for the door.

“Bernie!” he yelled, clawing the front of her jumpsuit. “You have the power to make it stop. Just concentrate!”

Bernie chose to ignore his advice, running straight for the door. She wanted no part of this witch business, and even if she did, at this panic-filled moment, she couldn’t parse frog sweat from the tears of a Dutch maiden to mix up a spell that would douse the fire anyway.

Smoke continued to billow in thicker clouds, moving upward toward the ceiling as the flames rose.

She couldn’t see a damn thing as she tripped and stumbled toward what she assumed was the front of the barn.

As though manna from Heaven, a weak shaft of light poked through the thick smoke to the barn entry and Bernie aimed for it, holding her breath and running with Fee tucked under her arm like a quarterback at a homecoming game.

She barreled outside to the front of the barn, only evident due to the harsh beat of the sun and her first intake of steamy air.