Tangled Fates: Witches of Willow Creek: Tangled Magic, #2

Dedication

To all those brave souls who’ve started down the well-trodden path, listened to their hearts, and turned away, charting their own course. I hope you find wildness, magic, love, and belonging on your journey.

I know I have on mine.

Blessed Be.

Come to the Labyrinth...

"It only takes the tiniest of fires sometimes

to light the way you knew was always there.

In the heart of matters, it's the journey keeps us warm,

the lights that lead us where we are to go.

May you raise your eyes and know with every step:

we are not alone."

~ S. J. Tucker

Prologue

AIDEN

THE EARTH SANG ITS magic beneath my paws tonight. The moon was full, the September sky clear, a smattering of stars like glitter spilled against black paper.

In my fox form, I slinked through the forests that edged my family’s estate. We weren’t technically supposed to shift here—one of my father’s many rules—but who would know? I was home from law school for the weekend, and my fox needed a moonlit adventure even more than usual. So, here I was.

My family’s estate, just outside of Savannah, Georgia, spanned sixty acres, much of it wooded, the sprawling Greek Revival-style home surrounded by magnolias and boxwoods.

I caught a strange scent. The ley lines of the earth tugged on me, like a compass’s magnet points the traveler home. I perked my ears, waiting for whatever creature drew my fox’s attention.

Nothing. Scent of a rabbit nearby, and the hoot of an owl in a nearby oak. But mostly, besides the normal woodland beasties, I was alone.

No. That tug again, pulling me forward, toward the City of Savannah and the Atlantic Ocean.

I closed my eyes.

Ah. It wasn’t a physical sensation then, but a mystical one, some powerful magical force.

The scent of violets, moss, and candlewax drifted toward me. I sighed and stepped forward, drawn, ineffably, toward that intoxicating aroma of magic.

Peaceful and wild. My nerve endings were electrified, yet my spirit quieted. That energy... It felt like witchcraft mingled with something far more ancient.

I crept forward, my body, blanketed in coppery fur, low against the earth. A lone cloud slid across the moon, shielding me as I entered the space between the woods and the expansive gardens behind my parents’ home.

Magical energy skittered over my skin, like fingertips sliding down my back.

Could foxes purr? Because I was purring right now.

If the woman who created that energy were here right now, I was pretty sure I’d roll over and let her rub my belly. I felt certain she was a witch—only a witch could create such a wake of magical energy. I felt equally certain that whoever she was, she was miles away—in Savannah, perhaps, or on a nearby beach.

I lay down, letting the magic sing against my skin. My body sunk into the earth, heavy and warm.

Whoever she was, she felt like home. Not this home, full of Waterford crystal and artwork that cost more than most people’s cars.

Just...home.

WAKE UP, YOU IDIOT! A foot kicking me in the side woke me up. I stirred. My brother, Liam, thirteen months my junior, stood over me, scowling in the moonlight.

Huh? I wiped drool off my mouth with the back of my hand.

My hand? I jumped up. Shit! I’d fallen asleep and, in my sleep, shifted back into my human form.

Liam’s scowl deepened. He held out a navy-blue bathrobe. Go upstairs and get dressed. Family meeting in Dad’s study in five minutes.

I shrugged into the bathrobe, curse words like galloping horses thudding in my brain.

Liam stood on his tiptoes to match my height. Right in my face, he growled, Five. Minutes.

I couldn’t help but take a step backward. I tried to hide it by making a show of adjusting the belt of my robe, but Liam sniffed, the wolf shifter in the family seeming pleased he’d managed to make his big brother submit, even for half a second.

He strode away, and I rushed inside and up the back staircase to my room.

I’d broken more than my share of rules over the years but shifting on the estate was strictly forbidden.

And falling asleep in the grass, in view of the house while Liam’s non-magical fiancée was visiting?

That was one line no one dared cross.

I slinked into the study seven minutes later.

You’re late, Dad growled without turning away from the expansive windows overlooking the immaculately groomed gardens.

Mom fussed nervously with her hair, and Liam spun the oversized globe beside Dad’s desk in what I knew was a false display of casualness. My brother was more afraid of our father than I was.

My father turned slowly away from the window, a towering six-foot-three, close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, a neatly trimmed beard. Even at this late hour, his crisp white button-down and black trousers appeared newly pressed. His lips turned into a snarl. Even decades of potions that suppressed his shifter magic couldn’t completely quell the wolf lurking within.

My inner fox whimpered—he knew a superior predator when he saw one. And I, the son who often toed the line, sometimes crossed it, but eventually remembered his place, cowered.

My dad crossed the room. We were the same height in sheer inches, but in presence he dwarfed me the way he dwarfed rival lawyers in the courtroom.

George Washington himself would cower in my presence, he once told me. I was thirteen. I’d just shifted for the first time—the first fox shifter in a century in our bloodline.

Bile rose in my throat. His magic might be long suppressed, but my father didn’t need magic to be ruthless. I forced my quaking body to stand my ground.

My father scowled. Your brother’s fiancée saw you out in the garden.

Oh, hell. Bianca saw me shift?

Liam stepped forward. She saw you napping—naked.

Let’s be thankful that’s all she saw, my father growled, shooting Liam a look. My brother stepped backward, fading into the polished mahogany woodwork.

My father walked over to the large globe in its brass stand, a pale ivory with deep brown outlines for continents and scrolled lettering. He flipped it open to reveal his potions stash. He plucked out a crimson red vial with a black stopper.

I’ve given you almost a decade to make this decision on your own. I’ve waited through all of your foolishness. You’re a grown man now. You’ll be a lawyer in a few years. It’s time to stop acting like a child.

I stepped backward, toward the door. You promised it would be my decision.

Your carelessness tonight shows you don’t have the guts or the sense to do what’s necessary.

It wasn’t like that. What could I say? I sensed an alluring magic, and its lullaby sang my fox to sleep? Even to me, it sounded ridiculous. To my father, who regarded such whimsical magicks as the greatest of follies?

No. In my family’s eyes, there was no defense.

I glanced at my mother, but she was studying the oil painting of my grandfather that hung on the wall. Liam was staring at the antique rug as if it held the secrets of the universe.

I was alone in this.

No.

You’ve forfeited your choice, Aiden, my father growled.

You can’t force me to take some damn potion I don’t want to take.

My father glanced at my brother. Now, Liam.

With the swiftness of twin wolves leaping on a stunned antelope, they pinned me to the wall. I fought, thrashing, kicking, but it was two against one, and I was no match for the two of them.

My mother, up to this point silent, took the vial from my father and unstoppered it. Your father assures me you’ll get used to the taste. She said it with the saccharine sweetness of a mother trying to get a small child to take his cough medicine.

I clenched my jaw, but with surprising strength, she pried my mouth open, tilted my chin up, and forced the liquid down my throat, holding my nose to force me to swallow it.

It tasted like swamp water, and I gagged. After I’d swallowed it, Liam and my father released me.

I staggered from the room and fumbled my way, half-blind with pain, upstairs. Spots danced in my vision, heart racing as the potion began to take effect. Why would anyone choose this madness, their magic curdling inside of them, their animal-self crying in pain, over the freedom of shifter magic?

I ran my hand along the toile wallpaper as I stumbled to the nearest bathroom. I vomited until the foul stuff was out of my system.

Inside me, my fox whimpered as if injured. Dark tendrils of magic floated in my vision, shadows hissing like some poisoned lullaby.

Not like the sweet song from earlier tonight, the one that sang of moon magic, white witchery, love and peace.

This? This was a darkness that threatened to consume my soul.

Run, my inner shifter whispered.

When the time is right, we run.

I...Will, I slurred, my heart pounding an irregular rhythm.

I will.

Chapter One

VIVIENNE

Present Day: Midnight

THE ELECTRIC KETTLE beeped. I poured the steaming water over the cup of tea, my own unique blend of herbs and spices with decaf black tea leaves. The scents of cinnamon, bergamot, a bit of burdock root, and a dash of lemon peel rose up.

Outside, a fierce summer storm raged on. It would get worse before it got better.

It always got worse.

And no, I didn’t mean the storm.

A loud mew interrupted my midnight crisis.

Rosemary Caterwaul Broomsticks Gearhart, don’t take that tone with me.

I pulled the cream out of the refrigerator and poured a splash into my cat’s tiny lavender saucer, a find on my latest thrifting excursion with my friend Bailee. I stroked Rosemary’s brindled fur. My beloved tortoiseshell cat, with her missing ear and crooked tail, was the first friend I’d made when I came to Willow Creek shortly after Imbolc, the holiday we witches celebrated in February.

Bailee was the second.

To say a lot had happened in my six-month tenure in Willow Creek, Virginia, would be an understatement.

I poured a splash of cream into my tea, swirling the tea ball. I added a touch more honey than was necessary to satisfy my inner sweet tooth and stared into the darkening mug.

Green Witch, the saying on the outside of the mug read, the deep-purple cursive script framed by an emerald green vine.

Bailee always smirked when she saw it. It suits you, she always said with a knowing smile.

Now I was part of a makeshift coven of witches that included my Great-Aunt Cassie, who’d spent decades trapped in an oak tree, only to emerge still twenty years old and thinking it was 1974. Cassie’s swoon-worthy boyfriend, Nick, also a witch; me; and my friend Bailee, the local librarian, rounded out the group.

A chirp from my phone indicated a text message. Rosemary cocked her head ever so slightly, acknowledging the sound but not stopping her dainty licking of cream from her saucer.

I don’t know who would be texting at this hour either, I told her. Not exactly true—I had an inkling. I leaned against the counter in my tiny apartment kitchen. A gust of wind slammed against the brick building. It wasn’t just a standard-issue July thunderstorm in the mountains.

There was dark magic awakening in Willow Creek. The storm was the earth’s way of trying to wash it away.

What’s wrong? the text message from Cassie read. I didn’t bother to ask how Cassie knew. She just kind of knew things.

Nothing. Can’t sleep, I typed back. I sipped my tea. Go to sleep, I typed, adding an animated GIF of someone sleeping to drive home the point. For a woman who’d never seen a cell phone until a week ago, Cassie learned quickly. To say she was enthusiastic about embracing everything the twenty-first century had to offer would be an understatement. She said she thought she belonged in the twenty-first century, more, perhaps, than she had in her own era.

Can’t, she messaged. 

Evan? Ever since Cassie and Nick had gone to the Crossroads of Magic and returned with Nick’s twin brother, their lives had been topsy-turvy. Evan was...terrified. Waves of pure fear radiated off the guy, as though decades of suffering and pain were trapped within him.

Yes.

There was a pause, but I knew more was coming.

Tell me what you need, I typed.

That tea you make? ;) I ignored the