Yes, Middy had to say that she was feeling very pleased with herself.
“That’s it, that’s all you want? You’ll do this, details un-specified for a ride on my wand, as you so delicately put it, and my support of the Masque until my death? I agree to these terms and do so swear. Do you swear it?”
“I swear it,” Middy said with confidence. After all, what’s the worst that could happen?
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Worst That Could Happen
It was that worst thing that could have happened! Dred Shadowins had found scruples in some bargain bin at the thrift store. He’d actually dropped her at home without even getting out of the limo.
That lout had actually tried to refuse the great and wonderful gift of her virginity. As she’d told Dred, she thought that warlocks were like her cat: They wanted to be the first to mark in a new territory. It didn’t matter if they were going to stay there or not.
She should have known better than to make a deal with the devil or Mordred Shadowins. Middy realized after the deal had been sealed and he’d pressed that lukewarm kiss to her cheek that she should have specified
when
she wanted to avail herself of his “passion wand.”
Now that she’d actually had his hands on her, she didn’t think the centerfold would do. No, nothing but the infuri-ating warlock in the flesh could satisfy her now.
This nasty little revelation caused her to rethink her plans.
If she was already addicted to his touch from a Seven in Heaven makeout session like a witch still in Academy, what would it be like when she got the whole package? Middy was feeling a little light-headed at the prospect.
Maybe demanding coital bliss from a sex god hadn’t been the brightest idea she’d ever had, but Middy was never one to do anything halfway. If she was going to have someone butter her muffin, she wanted it to be a quality product.
Now what to say to Tally when she pounced on her and demanded details? News of her “engagement” was bound to travel fast.
Unicorn balls in a pastry puff! What was she going to tell her mother?
Hi, Mom. I know I didn’t tell you I was dating
Dred Shadowins, dark warlock and filthy rich sex god, but we’re
getting married. Yeah. Oh, and . . .
She couldn’t even tell her mother that the engagement was a ruse. She’d sworn on her magick.
If Middy hadn’t been sure that she would have knocked herself on her ass, she would have palmed her forehead at the very deep pile of unicorn dung that she was standing in.
Never mind her mother! What in the name of Avalon was she going to tell her brothers?
Falcon, Hawk, and Raven were going to curse her fiancé’s balls off. They’d be hanging on the Yule tree like faerie bells. Why hadn’t she thought of this when she’d been considering the ruse?
She looked at her Witchberry, and her brain was franti-cally thinking of ways to murder it before her mother could call. The garbage disposal seemed to be the best option.
Dred Shadowins’s engagement was breaking news. All of the warlockian channels would have coverage and it was only a matter of time before the mortal gossipmongers smelled blood, too.
Middy knew the right thing to do would be to call her family before they saw it on the news. That way, she might be able to save Dred’s wand. Otherwise, she’d be getting stiffed at the end of this deal and not in the way she’d bargained for.
She had a flashback to senior year at the Academy.
Middy’s date had come to pick her up for the winter formal, but they’d never made it to the dance. Her brothers, otherwise known as the Trifecta of Doom, had gotten their claws into him and he hadn’t lasted long. He’d run screaming from the house before Middy could make it down the stairs.
She was just going to have to put her foot down.
Where the hell was Tally? Middy had quickly taken in-ventory of the house and discovered it to be sans her partner in crime. Why wasn’t she home? On the one hand, she was thankful that the witch wasn’t there to pounce on her, but on the other, she needed her to pounce on her brothers.
Middy was going to have to take charge.
Right now, apparently, because her lovely elvish-carved door splintered in half and melted away as the aforemen-tioned Trifecta filled the space.
In that moment, Middy was struck with the realization that her brothers looked like Simian blowfish. She knew other witches found them handsome, and she supposed they were if they could keep from dragging knuckle and puffing up like gorillas.
The same with that huge vein in each of their foreheads that pulsed with testosterone. Middy thought something was going to burst from them like in a mortal horror flick.
“Midnight Marie, what the fuck?” Raven growled.
He was the youngest of her brothers, though only by ten minutes. But those minutes made all of the difference in the world. Raven was the hothead, as was obvious by the way he careened through the door like a rabid St. Bernard.
She narrowed her eyes at him and put her hand on her hip. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“You could, but this isn’t about him,” Hawk stated, trying to take charge.
“You think? It sure as shit is now. Have you seen my door? No? Oh, that would be because . . .”
“Now, Midnight.” Falcon eyed her sternly.
“Now Midnight nothing!” She stomped her foot.
“Are you going to invite us in?” Raven said more softly.
“Would it keep you out if I said no?”
“You’d think that you’d be a little more grateful.” Hawk was surly.
“Grateful? For what exactly?” She eyed them all with displeasure. “What if I’d been entertaining?”
She knew, of course, that would be the thing to say to get them to inflate again. Middy knew she was kicking the junkyard dog, but she didn’t care. She’d had enough of their well-intentioned interference.
This lot just had to learn that she was an adult.
Which was going to be a long time in coming, judging from their reactions. Three identical jaws set with purpose and three chests filled with air and puffed, ready for battle.
Three sets of biceps bulged with the adrenaline that shot through them at the thought of their baby sister “entertaining.”
Not just entertaining, but entertaining Dred Shadowins.
They would have charged her like Hannibal’s elephants if not for Falcon. He held out his arms to block his brothers’ advance. If it had been anyone other than the level-headed Falcon, they would have broken ranks and charged anyway.
“So, it’s true? Where is the bastard?” Falcon said, his lips tight like rubber bands.
“At home, I imagine. Sleeping like any normal warlock would be at this hour of the night.” Her irritation was rising and her other hand made it to her hip.
“Dred Shadowins. Butcher of Shale Creek?” Hawk’s nostrils flared and his jaw ticked.
“He is not.” Not that Middy knew anything about it, but she felt the need to defend him. She almost cringed because when they “broke up” and ended that little charade, it would all come back to bite her in the ass with really sharp teeth. It would be a chorus of “I told you so” and pitying looks; not only that, but the breakup would forever and ir-revocably seal her fate in their eyes.
This would make it obvious to them that she couldn’t be trusted to manage her own life. If Middy thought they were a pain in the ass now, after this debacle, they weren’t even going to let her have tampons for fear of poking out her eye.
“Oh, no, Middy. No.” Raven’s hand fluttered to his chest like an English miss.
“No, what?” she demanded.
“You’re serious,” Raven whined.
“As a heart attack.” She grinned. Middy was enjoying his discomfort.
“I thought this had to be some sort of joke,” he whimpered again. “I knew we shouldn’t have let her get that magazine. I told you no good would come of it.”
“What do you mean by ‘let me’?” Middy’s ire was raised now and her hair began to stand on end as her power gathered around her.
“Uh, Raven,” Hawk started.
“What, you didn’t think we knew about your dirty little magazine? I told them that we should . . .”
Raven was promptly cut off as a Cornish hen flew from Middy’s freezer and tried to work its way into his mouth, seemingly of its own volition.
“The magazine was Mom’s idea,” Hawk offered.
“What?” she shrieked again.
He opened his mouth to say something else, but thought better of it as he watched Raven trying to battle the Cornish hen’s stubby appendages.
Falcon was ever the voice of reason. “Midnight Marie, behave yourself. We’re just here to take care of you.”
“When are you going to realize that I don’t need you to take care of me?”
“Now that you’ve got Dred to do it?” Falcon said, rolling his eyes.
“No. Now that I am a woman grown. If I need your help, I will damn well ask for it.”
“It was Mom’s idea anyway,” Raven said as the hen dropped lifelessly to the ground. “She’s the one that got you that subscription, but I swear if any of us knew that you were going to fall in love with the centerfold . . .”
“Why didn’t you tell us, Mids?” Hawk interrupted, giving her his best impression of a kicked puppy.
“I didn’t know myself until last night.” Middy didn’t feel bad for that one because it was true.
“If you want to have a fling with Shadowins, by all means. But do you have to marry him?” Hawk asked.
“Look, it was all very sudden. Tristan couldn’t keep his hands to himself and . . .”
The three of them puffed again like balloons at the mention of Belledare pawing her.
“There were reporters at the Masque, it turned into this whole thing and . . . Why weren’t any of you at the Masque?”
This drew a collective silence from the trio.
“I see.”
“We’re here to talk about you,” Hawk said.
“You keep saying that. I suppose you may as well come in.” She spun on her heel. “And you’d better magick my door back hale and hearty if you want to keep your mouth free of dancing hens and used cat litter.”
A plain, not to mention ugly, steel door replaced the gaping entryway where her brothers had stood.
“
My
door! The one carved by elvish hands with the ancient sigils.”
“Why couldn’t they have impressed the symbols on steel?” Falcon asked.
“That would be safer,” Hawk added.
“Because they carved them into Holy Oak. Now!” Middy demanded. She was about to invoke the kitty litter. . . .
Her door appeared hale and hearty just as she’d demanded and with a wave of her hand she summoned coffee and tea on her guest china. She even went the extra mile and conjured chocolate pumpkin cookies. Those were her brothers’ favorites.
Falcon was the first to sit down. “So—” He paused as he took a cup of coffee and crammed two cookies into his mouth. “When are you bringing him home?”
It sounded more like a drunk with a harelip trying to recite Shakespeare, especially amid the crumbs falling out of his mouth, but she knew what he was asking.
“I’m really not sure,” she demurred.
“Midnight, it’s not just us asking. Mom wants to know.
In fact, it took something just short of tying her down to make her stay home,” Raven said as he crammed three cookies in his mouth.
“Hell.” This really was the worst that could happen. “I need to check with Dred’s secretary and take a look at his schedule.”
“If he wants to marry you, he can damn well clear it,” Falcon shot back.
“If he wants to live to make it to the wedding,” Hawk said under his breath.
“I heard that, Hawk Cherrywood. If any of you lay one hand on him, no, one finger . . . One breath! Just one whisper of hexes or curses and none of you will have any grandchildren to tell this story to. Do you understand me?” Middy looked at each of them pointedly and in turn until they hung their heads.
“I can’t wait until one of you decides that you’ve found
the one
. I’m going to make that witch wish she’d never been born.” Middy gave them a wicked grin. “All for your own good, of course. Have to test her, make sure she can go the long haul, right, boys? Everything that you dish up to Dred, I’ll be taking notes.”
“Go ahead, Mids. I don’t think any of us is the marrying kind,” Raven snorted.
“Yeah, remember that. And don’t forget to repeat that little gem in front of Mom.”
They all cringed.
“Yeah, so you better get onboard with this Dred thing.
If someone has to give her grandbabies, wouldn’t you rather it be me? Of course, that will only get you a temporary stay of execution, but it’s better than nothing.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Midnight Marie.” Falcon seemed to get some sort of kick out of using her full name.
Her face flamed; she couldn’t help thinking of her
hard
bargain with Dred.
“Oh, son of a two-headed hydra.” Raven was rubbing at his temples as if the act could push the newly budded pain out of his head.
“What’s your problem now?” Middy snapped.
“I know where your mind went. I was right there with you. Not about Dred, of course, but you’re a witch. You’re not supposed to think like a warlock.”
“And why not? I’m allowed to have a healthy sex drive.” Middy was sure that if Raven could have plugged his ears just then and sung something really loud to keep those words from ever reaching the processing center of his brain, he would have.
“No, technically you’re not. We remember when you were born, Midnight. We were seven,” Falcon said. “You were the sweetest baby. So pink and happy.” He scowled then, his brow furrowing in displeasure.
“But I’m not a baby anymore, Falcon. I’m a witch grown. And normal red-blooded witches have sex. With warlocks. Or other witches if that’s what moves them—”
“Middy, I’m sorry about the door. Really, I am. Heartily and forever. Please, can we not talk about sex?” Hawk begged.
“This is a new Middy. You’ve never been like this before.” Raven shook his head.
“Well, it’s all about coming into my own, I guess. See, I liked that look of startled confusion on Dred’s face so much that I’ve uninstalled my filter. I find I quite like the look on all of your faces, too. That and—” She paused for the max-imum effect. If one of her brothers didn’t fall over in a dead faint, she’d be surprised. And disappointed. “I got laid. Does wonders to loosen the tongue, don’t you know.”