A Lying Witch Book Three Read online

  All characters in this publication are fictitious, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A Lying Witch

  Book Three

  Copyright © 2016 Odette C Bell

  Cover art stock photos licensed from Depositphotos.

  www.odettecbell.com

  A Lying Witch

  Book Three

  Chi may have defeated Fagen, but the battle for Bane City’s hearts has only just begun.

  The questions keep mounting, but Chi has no time to find their answers.

  The Lonely King strikes again, and this time there may be no stopping him. He’s intent on using Chi’s heart to open a door to the past. Chi is the only witch who can stop him. But there’s a problem - a big one. Chi has finally figured out her magic comes at a cost. Now she’ll have to decide between everyone else’s future and her own….

  Chapter 1

  I sat at the kitchen table, head rested on my palm, gaze locked on my magical bodyguard’s back.

  Max was back to normal. Technically. He’d lost most of his memory after his fight with Dimitri.

  But me? Oh, my memory was fine. I could remember every single detail of what had happened to me in the past.

  The only problem was, I still had no clue what had actually happened. What was worse? Oh, what was worse is I couldn’t even begin to ask Max. Because every time I did, this would happen—

  “Max, I know you keep dodging the question, but I’m still curious about your past—” I didn’t even get the chance to finish my question. As soon as my words were out, Max stiffened.

  His whole back became a washboard. I could practically see each muscle seize one-by-one.

  What’s more, I saw it – the shadow.

  It may have only been a couple of weeks since the incident with Fagan, but that didn’t mean I’d been idle. I’d been questioning Max at every opportunity I got, and every time I did, that shadow would always loom larger and darker than before.

  I was way beyond thinking it was a mere trick of the light. Hell no. It was the way it sat over objects, not accommodating to their shape but smothering them like a dark swathe of fire.

  Oh, and its effect on me was always unmistakable. Though I always hid it, my heart would race, my mouth would dry, and my skin would prickle with fear. Fear, and something else.

  “Chi, how many times do I have to tell you,” Max began.

  I plastered a friendly smile over my mouth as I continued to watch Max’s shadow. “You don’t have any memories of your past. And what you do remember, you can rarely trust. Yeah, sorry. I just forgot,” I lied, never shifting my gaze, let alone blinking.

  Max still had his back to me as he did the washing up, and finally, his stiff shoulders dropped.

  The shadow? It seemed to stick around for a while, looming large and dark over the kitchen bench and a chunk of the white-and-black linoleum.

  … It couldn’t be him, right? The Max I’d seen from the past? Because that had just been a vision, yeah? Some random throwback to Mary McLane – some crazy nightmare induced by my near-death experience.

  Max suddenly turned. I blinked and immediately hooked my fringe behind my ears, resting my hand there as I kind of hid behind my fingers to distract him.

  It didn’t work. He frowned at me as he hooked a chair leg with his boot, tugged the chair around, and sat roughly.

  Weirdly, he didn’t cross his arms, just reached a hand forward, rested his broad, marked palm on the edge of the bench, and began drumming his strong fingers against the wood. “Chi, what is it?”

  I pressed my bottom lip high into my top lip and shrugged. “Nothing. Just enjoying the bright sunny day,” I said without thinking.

  Max pointedly gestured towards the French doors to our left. They were currently drenched in sheets of rain as a hell of a storm drove down over the town. It drummed against the drains, rattled against the roof, and sent leaves and small branches scattering across the lawn. “Yeah, beautiful sunny day,” he agreed with a deadpan tone. “Now, you wanna tell me what’s really wrong?” He turned to me and looked directly into my eyes.

  It stilled me. Well, half of me. The other half of me shuddered into a sprint as my heart skipped a beat and a tight pressure pushed through my chest.

  There was something so soft about Max. Yeah, you had to scratch the surface to find it – way, way under the surface. But it was there. The soft droop to his eyes, the subtle curl to his lips, the way he always tilted his head to the left when he was watching me.

  “Chi?” he pushed. “Why are you just sitting there and staring at me? You’re not your usual self,” he pointed out with a hint of worry crumpling his forehead and pushing his thick dark brows together.

  I laughed. It was kind of exasperated. “You barely know me,” I said, more for my own benefit than his. Because it was true. A fact I kept trying to remind myself. I barely knew this guy. So what if he was my perfect type. So what if it had felt like my destiny had knocked on the door when I’d first met him. So what if my heart kept overriding my brain and begging me to trust him. The fact remained that I’d only known Max for a little over a month. Sure, it had been a seriously wild month, but that didn’t negate the fact I didn’t really know this guy.

  Max leaned back, plucking his hand from the table as he rested it on his broad knee. He tilted his head even further to the left. Reaching a hand up and running it through his stubble, the smallest of smiles crinkled his lips. “You think I don’t know you, ha? I know you hate it when you’re not in control – a throwback to your mother. You also try way too hard to keep a cool, calm, unaffected persona – even when you’re a jittery mess on the inside. Now, what else? Oh, yeah, you always wanted to be a baker – but it was a pipe dream. You lack the discipline. And, let’s face it – you wouldn’t be able to get up early enough. Plus, you don’t deal well with messes and surprises. You tend to scream and run in the other direction.”

  “What? Hey, that’s not true.” Wow. Nice. Seconds ago, I might have been staring at Max’s soft smile and letting it hook me like a fish, but now my lips hardened into a grim frown.

  Max cleared his throat. “But you don’t need to be a baker, Chi. You don’t need to be a cheap fortune teller. You don’t even need to be your mother’s daughter. All you’ve got to do is—” He stopped. Abruptly. A frown spread across his face as he ticked his head towards the front door.

  I was way too distracted by what he’d been about to say to bother wondering if a magical fiend was on our doorstep.

  “All I’ve got to be is what?” I pressed as Max rose warily and inclined his head towards the French doors. The rain still plastered them, rivulets gushing down the window panes and pooling against the uneven cobble of the courtyard. The little potted lavenders and verbenas that sat just outside the door drooped and swayed in the downpour, the buds of long lavender huddling against one another as the wind howled through the courtyard. And speaking of huddling together, as Max stood up he shifted past, locking a hand on the backrest of my chair as he inclined his head to get a better view through the window above the sink.

  The bare, warm, slightly rough flesh of his knuckles and the back of his hand pressed a little into my neck. It might have only been a light sensation, but that was all it took to kick my imagination into overdrive. I could envision his hand slipping down my shoulder, the soft touch of his fingers lingering over my jaw until they dropped down my neck and cupped my chin. Only problem was, this vision wouldn’t come true. I wasn’t using my powers here – just my ridiculous desire.

  Suddenly, without warning, Max leaned in. He jerked his hand off the backrest of the chair, sending a slight shudder through the wood as he shifted, flatten
ing his torso against the chair as he leaned forward. The hard, carved line of his torso pressed against my neck and pinned my hair to my shoulder as he hooked an arm down.

  Then Max, my fairy bodyguard, cupped a hand to my chin.

  A thrill of pure anticipation spiked through my heart, shot hard into my pelvis, and sent fire racing through my veins.

  But no, this was not the prelude to a kiss.

  “Ah, there we go,” Max hissed out a breath of satisfaction as his rough fingers dug into my chin.

  I yelped as he pulled something out. “Hey, what the—”

  Max shifted around until I could see him in full. He was cupping something in his hand. And, disappointingly, it was no longer my chin. Instead, it looked like a bug.

  I usually had a cast-iron stomach. Animals, bugs, rodents – none of that stuff bothered me. Unless it had been crawling on my skin, that was.

  I jolted backward, my chair skidding across the linoleum. “What the heck is that?”

  Whatever Max was holding, it was definitely a bug, and it was definitely magical – that, or it was a truly gruesome experiment that had escaped a renegade genetics lab. It was changing color and size, pulsing in and out like a beating heart.

  “It’s a magical tick,” Max revealed as he brought it up and frowned at the small thing.

  “… Wait, that thing was on my neck? What the hell was it doing? Was it feeding off my blood? Was it laying eggs?! Oh god, do I need to go to the hospital?”

  He chuckled lightly. “See, I told you you don’t deal well with surprises.”

  I looked at him, blinking madly as I kept a hand latched on the spot where Max had plucked the tick from my neck. “Wait… did you plant that there to prove your point?”

  He shook his head, disappointment obvious. “Why would I do that, Chi? I’m here to protect you. I would have thought I’d made that point clear by now.” Max rather abruptly turned his back on me, walked over to the sink, turned on the tap, and appeared to wash the tick down the drain.

  Without getting out of the chair, I leaned over to watch. “Ah, is that a good idea? I mean, won’t that thing just get into the pipes and… I don’t know, create a colony of evil magical ticks in the subway?”

  He shook his head again, mirth obvious. “Directed, clean water will kill a magical tick. There’s nothing you have to worry about.”

  I kept my hand clutched against my neck, and there wasn’t anything on God’s green earth that would remove it. “How the hell did I get it? And what the heck was it doing on my neck? Wait… wait,” I swallowed, the move so pronounced I could have popped the buttons on my shirt, “this isn’t punishment, is it?” As I asked that question, I didn’t look at Max. Rather, I swiveled my attention and locked it on his shadow. For the briefest fraction of a second, it grew larger, but then Max shrugged his shoulders and laughed.

  “No, Chi, this time it’s not punishment. It would have come in with the rain.” Max shrugged towards the French doors. The rain was still pounding down outside, kind of like the meteorological equivalent of an army assaulting the house, rattling the windows, and trying to tear the tin from the roof.

  I frowned. “But if it came in by the rain, then how the heck did you kill it by washing it down the sink?”

  “The water has to be clean,” he leaned around and patted a large hand on the faucet, “and your grandmother’s pipes have been sanctified. “Plus,” Max’s voice became distant as he returned his attention to the storm through the windows, “wherever this weather is coming from, I doubt it’s the sky.”

  I frowned even harder at that completely bizarre comment. “Ah, looks like it’s coming from the sky to me. What do you mean, anyway?” I asked as I quickly swallowed my sarcasm – there was a look in Max’s eyes, and it was making my stomach turn summersaults.

  “If I’m any guess, it’s the Lonely King drawing something to himself,” Max answered so quietly I had to shift forward half over the table to pick up his muttered tones.

  The hair along the back of my neck stood on end, and a cold wave of sweat prickled between my shoulders. I sat back slowly and swallowed. “I thought you said we had some time on that? I thought you said taking Fagan down would be a blow to him?” My words weren’t hysterical – far from it. They were quiet, slow, directed. And as I asked, I watched Max for all I was worth.

  Max sucked in the kind of breath that punched his chest out and rumpled the fabric of his tight T-shirt. “We still do have some time. How much I’m not sure. But,” Max turned his full attention to me, “it all depends on you, Chi McLane.”

  There. There he was. The shadow. I watched it grow sharper, darker, take up more space by Max’s side.

  “Have you been trying to develop your powers like I showed you? Have you been reading through your grandmother’s journals and following her instructions? Have you looked through the newspaper clippings I left by your bed?”

  And by the bath, and by the back-porch door, and by the couch. Oh, Max had been leaving pictures and newspaper clippings everywhere – all in an attempt to call on my powers.

  I watched him, the pounding rain falling away, the stiff table beneath my equally stiff hands falling away, too. In fact, the rest of the world seemed completely irrelevant as I faced Max. Or his shadow, at least.

  Several minutes ago, Max had been completely normal. Or at least mostly normal. He hadn’t bothered to mention a thing about the photos or my powers. Now all that levity was gone.

  He was like a completely different person. A person with the intensity of a burning sword right by your throat. Or should I say palm?

  As I blinked my eyes quickly and rubbed at them, I swore I saw a perfect copy of that carved up palm pressing towards the center of my forehead.

  I leaned back and took a breath. Then? Then I nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been working on my powers,” I answered with a completely neutral expression. There was a small, easy smile pressing gently at my lips, and my shoulders and torso were relaxed, not a hint of tension anywhere.

  Max looked at me evenly then shrugged his shoulders.

  He believed my lie. He turned away and continued with the dishes.

  I watched him like a hawk surveying the meadows. It took exactly 32 seconds before his shoulders relaxed, before the stiff line to his back eased off, and before his shadow settled back to its normal size.

  I sat there and controlled my breathing.

  I’d just lied to Max, and he hadn’t picked up on it. Because I was a very good liar, wasn’t I? I had a lifetime of experience to draw on. A lifetime of experience of reading people and telling them exactly what they needed to hear. And right now the shadow needed to hear I was throwing myself into my powers….

  I leaned back, thumbed my hair behind my shoulder, and came to a decision. No more playing games. It was time to draw on every resource I had to figure out who the heck Max really was.

  I shoved a hand into my pocket and texted the only person I could think of. Bridgette. She owed me. Plus, she was the only other witch I knew in this magical world who told it as she saw it. And I seriously needed that kind of honesty right now.

  As I waited for her to reply, I returned my attention to Max. Though my interaction with the shadow had been more than enough to banish the last of the passionate tingles that had raced down my spine at Max’s proximity, I hadn’t forgotten that interaction. Not at all.

  “Max, um, how exactly did you know that tick was on me in the first place? You just went all stiff and started looking out the window—”

  “I sensed it,” he answered without turning.

  “Really? You can sense magical ticks from half way across the room—”

  “No, Chi,” his tone was low, quiet, “I could sense it feeding off your magic. I am attuned to you, you know.”

  … There was something about that answer. Something that simultaneously made me sick and yet sent my heart pounding into outer space.

  It took every skill I’d ever developed as a crappy fortun
e teller to control my expression when Max turned around. He wiped his soapy hands on his jeans, then leaned backward against the bench. He did not, however, cross his arms. For some reason, he wasn’t doing that so much these days. Maybe Max was opening up to me. Literally.

  “Believe it or not, I get hurt when you get hurt,” he continued in that same low tone.

  I fidgeted with my hands in my lap. Though part of me wanted to turn away from this conversation, the rest of me saw a hook. I pressed my lips together and drew them close to my teeth. “Max, what are you?” It sounded innocent. Stupid even. It wasn’t just my preschooler tone, like I was asking what a cloud was or why the sky was blue. It was my ridiculous open face. I couldn’t control my expression no matter what I did.

  I waited for him to stiffen, waited for the shadow to return. It didn’t.

  “I’m your bodyguard, Chi.” The old Max would have taken the opportunity to point out I was a prize numbskull for having forgotten that. The new Max simply watched me.

  I paused for a heck of a long time before nodding stiffly. “I know. But who were you before you were a bodyguard for the McLanes? Were you always a fairy? What—”

  This time his smile didn’t stiffen.

  “I’m here to help you, Chi. I always have been. So just…” Max trailed off, and it was one of the most awkward, pronounced pauses I’d ever heard him give. Another clue that there was something much deeper beneath the apparently gruff and two-dimensional Scottish bodyguard’s surface. “Just trust me, and we’ll get through this.” For the briefest fraction of a second, Max made eye contact, and there was nothing in this world that could pull me away from his penetrating gaze. Then? Then his phone rang, he answered it, and he walked outside into the rain.

  Trust?

  My brain said no, but as always, my heart said an emphatic yes.

  I watched Max walk out into the rain to answer his phone call. All too soon, he was out of sight, trudging through the darkened garden.