Witch In Charge: Real Men Love Witches, page 1
Witch In Charge
Real Men Love Witches
Celia Kyle
Marina Maddix
Contents
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
About the Authors
Blurb
It's all fun and games until Kelly's gargoyle statue turns into a real man...
If there's one thing Party Witch Extraordinaire Kelly Holloway likes, it's a good time. So what if her coven thinks she's so immature they've tacked an extra year onto her wardship? Of course, that's why it's such a surprise when she learns she's inherited Hollow House. Oh, the epic ragers she plans to throw!
But all isn't Jello shots and booty calls. Not only does she have to deal with two quirky roommates she's forced to take in, a snarky vampire living in her basement (rent free, no less!), and a curmudgeonly new boss who doesn't find her habitual tardiness the least bit charming, but also a pesky sentient house that seems hell-bent on thwarting her love life.
Things only get weirder when the gargoyle statue she's been messing with for months turns into a man. A hot man. The hottest she's ever seen. And Ronun's not a fan of Kelly's...at all. Considering all of the funny outfits she's dressed him in, she can't really blame him. But...dayum. He's so fine even Hollow House seems to like him.
Whatever. Kelly has far more important things to focus on--such as finding her family's missing spell book so she can figure out how to rein in the uncontrollable Hollow House, impress her dubious boss, and break the curse that turns Ronun to stone for half the day.
Hey, no pressure or anything!
One
“That should just about do it.”
Kelly Holloway hung the last of her streamers from her favorite gargoyle's horns in her boss's office. Rubbing the last scrap of tape in place on the top of its stone head, she leaned back to admire her handiwork. Thanks to the drinks she’d already tossed back, she had to steady a hand on the desk as she snickered at herself for getting more than a bit tipsy before the party really got started.
But since it was a baby shower and her boss certainly wouldn’t be indulging, Kelly liked to think she was drinking for two. Which was as good an excuse as any.
“You know what sucks?” she asked the gargoyle, blowing a handful of confetti in its face. “We won't get quality time like this anymore. Cora’s going on maternity leave, so you know what that means, right?”
The grotesque stone face remained as silent as ever, its gaping, fanged mouth choked with multicolored bits of paper.
“That’s right,” she said, patting its cheek affectionately. “No more unpaid internship for me. The year I’ve spent here has been great, and I’m gonna miss your ugly face, but it's time for me to move on.”
She heaved a sigh and took another hearty drink from her plastic cup, coughing against the back of her hand as the strong booze burned the back of her tongue.
“That’s so good,” she rasped. “Anyway, no internship? No class credit. No class credit? No Othercross U diploma for me. So…that’s fun.”
She studied the bulbous, furious features staring sightlessly back at her while the booze warmed her from the inside out.
“You’re the perfect man, you know that, don't you? You listen and never say a damn thing back. No advice, no questions, no judgment. Just pure, unadulterated listening. If only you were easier on the eyes.”
She laughed again and polished off her drink.
“I’d better enjoy this while I can,” she said, gazing ruefully into the bottom of her cup. “Cora found a new internship for me. Did I tell you about this?”
The gargoyle just stared. That’s why she liked him.
“No answer, huh?” She kissed his cheek, then spit a few pink and yellow flecks of paper off her lips. “The new gig is at night. Ugh. How am I supposed to have any kind of social life? Not that it’s been much lately, but still…”
That wasn’t entirely true. Just a few days earlier, she’d turned twenty-five, and that celebration had turned into a rolling party. Which is to say, it had been hard to get hung over, because she and her close friends just woke up and started drinking again. The baby shower was just around the corner, right? Why not just roll one party into the next? It wasn’t always Kelly’s style to go on a multi-day rager like that, but it wasn’t entirely out of character either. Still, she found the long nights took more of a toll than they used to.
“You know what you really need?” she asked her inanimate companion, shaking off the little jag of boozy melancholy. She raised a palm full of red glitter and held it in front of granite eyes, letting out a wicked little giggle as she did.
“I know you’re not planning to blow glitter all over my office, Miss Holloway.”
Cora leaned against the door frame to her office, and Kelly hid the palmful of trouble behind her back. Cora only addressed her as ‘Miss Holloway’ when she meant business.
“Maybe?” She fired an innocent, toothy grin at her very pregnant boss.
“Huh-uh.” Cora wagged her finger, barely suppressing a smile over her mischievous intern's antics. “You know that stuff never comes out. There’s no spell strong enough to get glitter cleaned up. If you blow that around in here, I’ll be finding it when this little devil is studying at OCU.”
She rubbed a palm on her stomach, and Kelly marveled at how Cora glowed at the mere mention of the baby. The woman had always been ravishing but there was a new shine to her that anybody could see.
“Fine,” Kelly said guiltily, dusting her hands off into her empty cup. A thousand tiny flecks stuck to her fingers. She picked and scraped with her fingernails, only succeeding in getting little red flecks lodged beneath them. “Dammit, you’re right. This shit is the worst.”
“You knew that before you started.”
“Yeah.” The young witch flashed that faux innocent smile again.
“It’s not even the office I’m that worried about,” Cora said, coming forward to look at the streamers hanging off her granite friend. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times—gargoyles are people too. The last thing he’d want is to be covered with glitter and be unable to get it off.”
“I guess,” Kelly shrugged.
At times, it seemed as if her boss was just a little too attached to the thing, considering how protective she was over a statue. Still, she had to admit, she had just been talking to the guy.
“Well,” Cora said brightly, “shall we go out? It’s nearly sunset, and it’d be no good for me to be hanging out in here when my own party starts.”
“Let’s hit it!” Kelly snatched up her cup and headed for the door. “I could use a fresh drink anyway.”
“Just remember to get a new cup.”
“Ha, right!”
As Kelly stared down into the sparkly, globby mess at the bottom of her cup, Cora waddled past her and into the crowd of her friends and coworkers. For a second, Kelly hung in the doorway, looking back into the office.
“Not too bad,” she whispered to herself as she admired her handiwork. The gargoyle glared at her in multicolored silence before Kelly snapped off the light and closed the door behind her.
“New girl.” The laconic, dry greeting wafted over Kelly’s shoulder the second she stepped into the party proper, and she didn’t even need to glance back to know she would find Holly Woodbriar leaning against the wall.
“Old chick,” she said, without bothering to look.
Kelly was right. She turned back to find Cora’s actual assistant lazing against the wall, one knee up so that her shoe was planted above the baseboards. That’s gonna leave a mark, Kelly smirked to herself. Maybe Holly would actually catch a bit of hell for it.
“I thought you were going to hide back there all night. What were you doing in there anyway?”
“Nothing. Just…decorating.”
She cracked off a pixyish grin, dripping with false sweetness. It wasn’t that the two hated each other, but their snappy repartee always had more than a hint of edge to it. Kelly figured her older counterpart felt just a teeny bit superior for actually having a paid gig. Still, with Cora going on leave, they were both out of work.
“Everybody has to have a hobby.”
Holly lifted her cup to her lips, lined in thick, black lipstick. The sprite seemed to pride herself on a kind of calculated carelessness, and leaned hard into a decidedly goth look. It’s like she was dying to be something darker than a sprite, and lived with a heavy chip on her delicate shoulder.
“You know what?” Kelly had no idea where she was going next, and was saved from having to come up with the perfect quip just in time when she was essentially tackled to the floor by Ryan Glittermist. She should have seen it coming—it was her fairy friend’s typical greeting.
“Oh god,” Kelly groaned, holding her head. “Don’t do that.”
“Girl, are you serious? You’re not still…”
“Hungover? Yeah.” Despite the drinks she’d already had, the lingering effects of protracted partying were still making themselves evident.
“You want to know a secret?” He leaned in and cupped a hand around his mouth. “Me too!”
They shared a laugh about his stupid joke, and Kelly was grateful to have a truly friendly face show up. It was going to keep her from getting into a true snark-off with Holly.
“So,” he shook off the laugh but kept the conspiratorial tone, “how is it?”
“How is what?”
“Girl!” Ryan heaved a dramatic sigh, and clapped her on both shoulders. “Being twenty-five? Is it everything you dreamed of?”
“Aren’t you over twenty-five?”
He simply waved off her question with a hand encrusted with rings. They sparkled with cheap green gems, which clashed gloriously with his electric orange shirt. Yeah, he was in full effect.
“This isn’t about me, Kel-leeeeee. This is about you! You’re free now, right?”
“You’d think so,” she scoffed. “But apparently they’re sticking to the sentence. I’m still an official ward of the Holloway clan until I turn twenty-six. Which is the definition of injustice, if you ask me.”
“I’d say it’s fairly just.” Iris Holloway-Santos edged into their conversation, her baby, Willow, smiling placidly in her arms.
Kelly flushed visibly at having been caught out complaining. “We were just talking…”
Her excuse was cut off, or rather brushed aside, by the genial, if slightly haughty, Arcane Sentinel. “I’d say that an added year in recompense for misusing a truth spell is a pretty light consequence. To call it a ‘sentence’ is a little extreme, don’t you think?” She flashed those bewitching eyes of hers, practically daring Kelly to recall that Iris had been the one to impose the added year.
“Oh, I’m just running my mouth. You know that.”
Kelly’s innocent grin was getting a workout that day, and the slightly older witch clearly saw right through it. There was a moment of tension between them, then Ryan clapped his hands and leaned in with a wicked gleam.
“Ohmigod, are you guys going to fight? Please say yes! I love it when there’s drama at a thing like this. Baby showers can be so tame.”
“Fight?” Kelly dissolved into laughter. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
A tray of drinks wandered past, and she scooped up two of whatever cocktail was making the rounds.
“No hard feelings here,” she said, downing the first one in a single swallow. “Just blowing off steam.”
“Not even that much,” Iris smiled.
She tickled her fingers at the baby in her arms, and the little stunner grabbed one of the exquisitely manicured digits and crammed it into her mouth. The domesticity of it settled uneasily under Kelly’s skin. It seemed like everyone she knew was either getting married or having babies. Or both.
“Anyway,” she said, lifting the second of her drinks. “I guess my only gripe is that I’m twenty-five and still being treated like a child.”
“Then stop acting like one.”
Iris's tone wasn’t meant to wound, Kelly was certain, but it stopped the second cup right at the brink of her lips. She cut her eyes up, but Iris was already sauntering away. Malicious or not, her work there was done.
Before Kelly could let herself get too bent out of shape over it, her phone vibrated in her pocket. It was a number she didn’t recognize, so she let it go through to voicemail. If it’s somebody important, they’ll leave a message. If not, fuck ‘em.
For a late afternoon shower, things ran pretty late. That’s what happened when you made a lot of free hooch available to people who needed to blow off some steam. The whole thing rattled along beautifully, but after nearly two hours, Kelly was feeling decidedly over all the baby stuff. Armloads of clothes and toys and teething goodies had been foisted upon Cora. While adorable, it was a lot.
Clambering out into the hall, she was finally able to suck in a breath that didn’t have the word ‘baby’ infusing it. Just standing in that room would be enough to make anybody pregnant—even Ryan.
There was a light movement at one end of the corridor and Kelly started slightly, realizing she wasn’t alone. At the far end of the hall was a security guard. Even with her eyes slightly goggled from some varsity-level drinking, her jaw dropped. Whoever he was, he was the single hottest security guard she’d ever laid eyes on.
Scratch that. He was one of the single hottest men she’d ever laid eyes on.
Calm down, girl. She squared herself for seduction. You got this.
After deploying her innocent face so much over the course of the evening, it was a blessed relief to slip into something a bit more bewitching. Smiling with just a glint of invitation, she waggled her fingers at him. He held his place, his eyes shining back at her across the distance.
Jackpot! she told herself. He’s totally into you. Okay. Keep calm. Let’s just walk down there and… I don’t know. Flash him or something.
Before she could tumble drunkenly into what was bound to be a mistake, a hand grasped her upper arm. Spinning around, she found herself face-to-face with Ryan, who was every bit as much into the booze as she was.
“Kelly, I don’t want to freak you out or anything, but they just busted out a whole new box of liquor bottles. You’re not gonna make me do this alone, are you?”
Stealing a single glance back down the hallway to see which route her evening was going to take, Kelly was a little disappointed to find that the stupidly good-looking security guard was gone. Problem solved. She turned back to her friend and could already feel the three-day hangover waiting on the other side of this night.
“Let’s do this!”
She let out a cackle, Ryan answered with a whoop, and they had the best time of their lives. Or so she was told.
Two
“Why is it that everyone likes to schedule things in the morning?”
Kelly huffed out a hard breath and sipped the dregs of mud-thick coffee from a paper cup. Sure, she had shouted it, but the windows were closed so nobody could hear her. She figured that counted as privacy, regardless of the family in the car next to her at the stoplight.
Offering up that same innocent smile at their bewildered faces, she raised her fingers in a wave. They may not have liked it, but Kelly still felt like it was a legitimate question. When she had peeled open her sticky, hungover eyes that morning to find an envelope under the door to her dorm room, she’d smelled trouble.
At least it wasn’t a summons from the dean…or the witches’ council. Again. Maybe she hadn’t done anything the night before that she would regret now that she was sober. Ish.
“Dammit.”
It was hard to read the tiny address on the envelope, particularly through her best pair of hangover sunglasses. While driving. But she figured she was a can-do kinda gal, so it was worth the effort. Even if everyone else felt the need to honk at her, she was determined to keep living her best life.
That was until she looked up to see what a fresh round of vehicular outrage was about. Turns out she was steering headlong into moving traffic, and right about to jump the median in the process. You know what? It was time to pull over. Her car may have been a complete heap, but at least it ran and it was paid for. Wrecking it was not an option.
Swerving just in time to dodge a very nice-looking sports car, she banked over the curb and slid to a halt in the parking lot of a filling station. She even managed to land perfectly between the lines.
Nailed it! she smirked to herself, then shook out the letter to take a closer look. It was from someone named Louie Walthrop, the executor of her parents’ estate. Even seeing their names in the formal legalese raised a knot in her throat. Ducking a finger under her shades, she swiped away the threat of a tear. Which, weirdly, made her feel silly.
