The Joy of Hex Read online

  The Joy of

  Hex

  WOMBY’S SCHOOL FOR WAYWARD WITCHES

  SARINA DORIE

  Copyright © 2019 Sarina Dorie

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1091842328

  NOT-SO-COZY MYSTERIES

  IN THE womby’s school for wayward witches SERIES listed in order

  Tardy Bells and Witches’ Spells

  Hex-Ed

  Witches Gone Wicked

  A Handful of Hexes

  Hexes and Exes

  Reading, Writing and Necromancy

  Budget Cuts for the Dark Arts and Crafts

  My Crazy Hex-Boyfriend

  Spell It Out for Me

  Hex Crimes

  Of Curse You Will

  Cackles and Cauldrons

  Hex and the City

  Wedding Bells and Midnight Spells

  Hex Appeal

  Safe Hex

  The Joy of Hex

  Hedgewitchin’ in the Kitchen

  Other Titles to Be Announced

  Table of Contents

  NOT-SO-COZY MYSTERIES

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PART ONE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Hedgewitchin’ in the Kitchen

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  If you are reading this far in the Womby’s School for Wayward Witches series, I’m guessing you have read the other books as well. Whether you have stuck with the series because you love the quirky characters, you want to know if Clarissa will turn into a wicked witch like her mother, or you are waiting to see what happens with the potential love interests, I appreciate your enthusiasm.

  If you haven’t already signed up for my newsletter, I want to encourage you to do so. This helps me as an author connect to my readers, lets you know when books are being released, and gives me a way to gift you with free books and short stories.

  You can find the newsletter sign-up on my website: sarinadorie.com or you can go to: https://mailchi.mp/sarinadorie/authornewsletter

  Happy reading!

  PART ONE

  In Which the Reader Travels Back in Time to the End of Hex Appeal, Book 15

  PROLOGUE

  A Trip down Memory Lane

  My memories returned, flooding into me in an overwhelming tide. I understood why my husband, Felix Thatch, had thought it was for the best that I didn’t remember my past. I saw with perfect clarity what had happened to my fairy godmother, my baby, and us. I understood the Fae Fertility Paradox, the truth about the Ruby of Divine Wisdom, and the Lost Red Court. It was more than my past I saw. I understood the significance of Thatch’s bargain with Elric and his depression. I understood my own.

  It was all connected.

  Felix Thatch had feared if I remembered everything, I would see him as a monster.

  He hadn’t known I would see myself as one as well.

  I went back to the moment the queen had stolen my fairy godmother and husband from me. . . .

  The Raven Queen’s castle loomed above the trees, radiating evil. It felt as if a thousand eyes watched us from the spindly spires. Felix Thatch ushered me out into the forest, away from the castle with his sister, Odette, who carried Abigail Lawrence, my fairy godmother. We had to hurry if we were to save her.

  Abruptly, Thatch stopped walking. He drew me into his arms and kissed me. When he broke away, he said, “Promise me you won’t come back for me.”

  “No,” I said.

  He kissed me again. I knew what he was doing—or trying to do. He kneaded his fingers into my hips, attempting to arouse me. His touch was so full of desperation he couldn’t make me forget the sorrow in my heart. I didn’t lose myself as I had before when he’d tried to manipulate me.

  “Promise me,” he repeated.

  I twisted away. “Stop it. I’m not going to promise.”

  “You have to,” he insisted. “You need to stay at Womby’s where it’s safe.” There was a strange echoing quality to his voice.

  He felt insubstantial in my arms. “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “My queen is summoning me.”

  My hand went through him, scattering his chest into swirls of vapor.

  He touched his lips to mine, the sensation cold and ghostly. “If you loved me, you would leave me be.”

  It was a cheap shot, and it wasn’t going to work. He faded from my sight.

  “No,” I said. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

  “The competency lozenge—” I started to say. We could use its knowledge to help us.

  Thatch’s voice came as a breath of wind. “It didn’t work. The Raven Queen’s wards made them inert before you’d ever swallowed it. Go. Before she changes her mind.” It sounded like he said more, but the distance between us was too great.

  If the competency lozenge hadn’t helped me in the first place, was he saying I had figured out how to master my affinity all by myself? Yet, if the competency lozenge had worked, I would know how to solve this problem. He might have more at Womby’s. If I could get there in time. . . .

  “Clarissa,” Odette Thatch called from the shadows of the trees. “There isn’t much time.”

  I ran into the shadows off the path toward Felix Thatch’s sister. Odette had my mom standing on her own feet. That seemed like a good sign. Only, my fairy godmother’s face was mottled, the texture of the freckles and dirt on her face wrong. Her eyes were closed, and she swayed.

  Odette swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Undo it. Felix said to undo it. You have to.”

  The calm mask Odette had worn in the Raven Court was gone, replaced by regret. “I can’t. I’m not strong enough, nor have I the skill.”

  I searched myself for the knowledge. There had to be a way. I would not accept this as an answer.

  Abigail Lawrence stretched her arms up to the sky. She dug her toes into the earth. Amni Plandai magic rolled off her. I didn’t want her to turn into a tree, especially not here, so near the Raven Queen’s castle. The gloomy palace crested over the trees like a half-submerged monster ready to strike at any moment. If my fairy godmother transformed here, the Raven Queen could chop her down at any time.

  We didn’t have a lot of time. I shifted my awareness outside myself, trying to see the magic Odette had used. Fractals of green were woven into a mess of red light. The magic was knotted and twisted together in a jumble of patterns.

  I reached out with my mind, trying to untangle a knot around my fairy godmother’s heart. I pushed the fabric of spells back,
but they kept growing and closing in on her. For every jumbled mess I unraveled, two more were created. I tore through the weaving as though it were the fragile silk of a spiderweb.

  “Careful,” Odette said. “You’ll hurt her if you aren’t gentle.”

  I didn’t want my mom to suffer. I wanted her to be safe at home. I wanted her to be happy.

  How could I be gentle and quick? If only time would slow for me again and my senses speed up as they had when my enemy, Quenylda, had been about to strike. I needed to burn through the spell Odette had used. I pushed at the tangle, trying to force it away from my mom, to place my will between her soul and the magic as a shield.

  The competency spell was supposed to help me learn faster, but I had to have a foundation to build on. All I knew how to do was shoot out magic to kill someone or cycle my energy into another Witchkin. That wasn’t going to undo a spell made by a Red. It would only feed it.

  A reedy sound came from Abigail Lawrence, pain and anguish in that inhuman breath. My inaction only furthered her suffering. I had to do something, but I feared I would make the wrong choice.

  With all the electricity I had left in me, I projected it out of my hands and into the strands of the spell. My magic traveled out of my body and into hers, breaking into fractals as it split along branches of the magic.

  Either this would cure her or it would kill her.

  “No!” Odette said. “You’re going to feed my magic with yours.” Odette shook me and tried to break my hold. “You’re making it worse.”

  I had suspected this might happen. I’d nourished the spell. Opening my eyes, I found my fairy godmother transformed. She wasn’t a woman as before, nor was she completely tree. She was halfway in the process of changing. Her branches shifted in the breeze above my head, and in that wordless lullaby, I heard her song of pining.

  I didn’t know how to cure her or turn her back. I did the only thing I could do. I pushed more magic into her so that her metamorphosis would be complete. My store of energy felt depleted, even as I churned the electricity in my core to generate more. I thought of Thatch’s lips on mine, hoping to inspire pleasant sensations.

  Tears rolled down my cheeks as I gazed at the woman who had raised me. It was difficult to have happy thoughts to inspire touch magic.

  I dug deeper inside myself and willed everything I had into the oak woman before me, strengthening the spell. It still wasn’t enough. I gathered strength from the trees around me, adding to the Amni Plandai magic. I drank in Odette’s own affinity, her hand on my arm lending me more power, whether she intended to do so or not.

  I poured magic into the tree until she stood tall and strong. Abigail Lawrence was just another tree in the forest, though whether that would conceal her, I didn’t know.

  Odette dropped to her knees, gasping for breath. My magic had petered out. I also fell to my knees, hugging the tree as I sobbed.

  I had done this. I had tried to do good, and I’d made everything worse. If I had rescued my mom sooner, she wouldn’t have resorted to accepting Odette’s magic acorn as an escape from being tortured. She wouldn’t have needed to transform herself like this. But even if my husband and I had come to the Raven Court sooner, his fate would likely have been the same. He would still be in the queen’s service, trapped once again as her slave.

  Had he bargained his soul away again? For my freedom this time? He hadn’t behaved like someone without a soul. I touched my lips where he had kissed me only moments before.

  Twigs snapped in the darkness. Odette shifted where she had fallen. I’d probably drained her. I didn’t even care. Maybe I was like my biological mother, Alouette Loraline, selfish and uncaring for anyone other than myself.

  The Raven Queen had stolen the two people I loved most. She had taken my fairy godmother and my husband away from me. She had won this battle. I couldn’t allow her to win the war.

  I would put an end to her evil ways. I would make her suffer, even if it cost me my soul in the process.

  Move over, Alouette Loraline. The world was about to meet a true wicked witch.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Seeing Red

  The forest of spindly black trees around me were silhouettes against the haze of the night sky. Mist blotted out the illumination of stars and moonlight. Trees peeked through pockets of fog along the path. The Raven Queen’s castle loomed over the forest in the near distance, another spiky shape jutting up toward the gloom.

  I vowed I would have my revenge. It didn’t matter whether I turned into a cruel and self-serving witch like my biological mother, Alouette Loraline, in the process.

  It would take magic, skill, and action to fix what I’d done. To fix what the Raven Queen had done.

  I could not allow Queen Morgaine to steal away everyone and everything I loved. I stood, stepping on the long hem of my gown and tearing a scalloped edge of fringe. I wiped my eyes. It wasn’t just for myself that I had to defeat the Queen of Pain and Pleasure. I had to rescue Felix Thatch. I needed to help my mom.

  As exhausted as my body was from spending so much energy on the spell that had hastened my fairy godmother’s transformation, my mind was still sharp. I had learned how to harness my magic more efficiently—without a competency spell. Like pieces of a puzzle drifting in space, all the components were there in my brain. I simply had to select the correct parts and put them together so I could figure out how to trick the Raven Queen.

  I knew what the Raven Queen wanted. It had never been a secret. If I were to save my husband’s heart and soul, I would need to give her the Fae Fertility Paradox. My mind sharpened, an idea forming. I could give her the answer she sought, or enough of it to satisfy her desire for an heir. It didn’t mean I had to tell her the complete truth.

  I turned back toward the castle rising up out of the mist beyond the tops of the trees. The black towers resembled a phantom looming in the surreal landscape of a nightmare.

  “Morgaine Le Fay,” I shouted. “Queen of Pain and Pleasure, Ruler Over Ravens of Day and Night, Ruler of All That Is Evil, I summon you.” Her full title was longer, but that seemed sufficient. It was a wonder I could even remember that much.

  The silence of the forest greeted my ears. Twigs popped to my right.

  Odette panted nearby. “Felix wouldn’t want you to do this. He asked you to leave.”

  “I don’t care what he wants. It’s what he needs.” Hadn’t he said as much to me when I hadn’t wanted his help in solving my problems?

  “He shall never forgive you if you do this,” she said.

  “I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t.”

  I screamed up toward the castle, trying to project my voice with magic, but I didn’t think it went much farther than it would have by normal means. “Queen Morgaine, I summon you to make a bargain!”

  Odette dropped to her knees on the ground next to me. Her midnight hair cascaded into the plumage of her wings and gown. “That isn’t the way it works. She won’t come unless you make it worth her while. She requires a sacrifice.”

  “Haven’t I sacrificed enough for one night?” I asked.

  The clouds parted, and moonlight spilled across Odette’s pale face. “Give her pain, or give her blood. A queen does nothing for free.”

  I didn’t want to give the Raven Queen something from my body, something she could use in a spell against me later. Pain seemed the safer tool.

  I scanned the ground for a stick. Most were too brittle and decayed to be of much use. Finally I found one just wider than my thumb that I suspected would do. I smacked it against my forearm. It smarted enough to make me wince.

  “Harder,” Odette said. “Show her you mean it.”

  I hit my arm with the stick again.

  Odette’s cape of feathers rustled in the wind on her back. Only, there was no wind. The mantle trailing behind her was her wings. At any moment, I expected her to launch herself from the ground and fly into the night to fetch her mistress, bu
t she didn’t.

  I struck myself again. The rough bark tore the lace of my sleeve. My instinct was to anesthetize the pain and to cool the sting so that I could transform the magic and funnel it into my own system. I resupplied a fraction of my own strength that way. Taking from the pain to use it for myself was hardly a sacrifice. It didn’t surprise me she didn’t come.

  Only if I allowed the numbness of my protective magic to slip so that I could feel the lashes I inflicted upon myself would she answer my summons. I also knew that would make me weaker. I couldn’t afford to decrease my strength or stamina further when facing the Raven Queen.

  But I needed her to come. I needed her to bring my husband back. A sob bubbled up out of my throat, and I forced it back down. I would do anything to save him.

  I had to be pragmatic, like Felix Thatch had taught me. I needed power, and I would do what had to be done. A moment of worry flashed across my mind that what I was about to do made me like my biological mother, but I pushed my fears aside. Another worry came that my fairy godmother, a good and just person, would see what I was about to do, and she wouldn’t approve. She had raised me to be a compassionate person.

  All the compassion in the world wasn’t going to help me now. I would never get my husband back unless I embraced my dark side. I had to speak the language of cruelty and pain that the Raven Queen would understand.

  I understood what needed to be done.

  Even so, I had to soften the blow with words of compassion. “Odette, you’ve been unexpectedly kind. I’m sorry to do this.”

  I sucked in a breath and fortified myself. I lashed the stick across her face, wincing as I did so. She turned away and fell back.

  Hitting someone filled me with an icky feeling that made me hate myself. Even so, I couldn’t stop. I needed her pain and the power it brought. I needed a tithe to pay the queen.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m only doing this so I can save Felix.”

  Odette laughed, the sound deep and maniacal. “Do you think that’s going to be enough to call the Queen of Pain?”