Where A Witch Goeth

Chapter Thirty Five: Speaking Easy

I boldly puttered right through the town of Mystic Mountain, giving every witch I saw on the Main Street the evil eye. I had enough sense not to stop in town, of course. No telling what kinds of defensive wards the town had against invading witches. I worried that if I stopped the car, I'd never make it out again.

I supposed it was a bit reckless to take that route at all, but being here was the only way I knew how to make contact with Maeve, so I had powered up my defensive wards before I hit the town limits and ballsed my way down Main Street in the candy red Mercer. The wards I had put on myself and the Mercer were stronger than whatever offensive invader magic the coven might have placed around the town, because I felt right as rain, cruising with the top down. Well, as right as I could feel with a vise around my heart, squeezing tighter and tighter every mile I put between myself and Evander.

But never mind about me and my dying heart.

At least my magic was on point.

The Mercer purred like a kitty the entire trip through Mystic Mountain, even when I saw one of Ciara's high coven witches drop her shopping bag coming out of the mercantile and blatantly throw a hex at my tires, obviously intending to stop me and my Mercer in my tracks. I gave her the finger and gripped the wheel tighter with my other hand. She jumped in a car with several other women I didn't know—probably lesser witches not powerful enough to be high coven members—and they followed me to the edge of town, but the car didn't offer to sputter or yield up a flat tire or mysteriously overheat. I made it through unmolested and the witches who had followed me abandoned their tail at the city limits.

I realized they were afraid to follow me and pick a fight. After all, I had easily face-planted their entire high-coven and a pack of werewolves to boot. And only Maeve had had the power to stand against me.

That's right, bitches. Who's the biggest, baddest witch in these mountains?

That would be me.

I waved at the witches who had followed me and wove a little secret spell on the wind with my newly acquired skills. It was purposely flimsy and designed for Maeve's eyes only, but if she were in town, I was fairly confident it would find her before it dissipated.

I stopped in the next town down the mountain—a hole in the wall called Weirville. To be such a tiny place with only a three-block downtown, there was a lot of construction going on here—big institutional buildings going up on either end of the Main Street. There was no courthouse nor nary a church, which was weird, but I supposed this place was called Weirville, after all.

Fortunately, there was a modest, three-story hotel right in the center of the downtown. Before I got out of the car, I magicked my clothes, changing my knickers into an attractive, figure-hugging day dress, and glamoured my appearance to be both a little prettier and a little more kempt. I pulled a leather case from the glove compartment that contained the registration from the car and transformed it into a purse, stuffing my considerable cash inside. I marched into the hotel and got myself a room.

It was a little more difficult than I expected it to be. The clerk did not want to rent a room to a lone female with no identification and vague responses to questions. But Nick had left me a surprisingly large sum of money—five hundred dollars, which must at least have ten times the spending power in 1924 than I was accustomed to in my time-and of course, I had my craft. In the end, I had to cast a tiny compulsion spell on him. Compulsion spells were something I had been morally opposed to in my own time, but I was in no mood for the misogynistic bullshit of the times at present. That clerk was lucky that I didn't bundle a case of butt boils with my witchy command to rent me a room.

Finding a drink during Prohibition was no small feat, either. Sanguine Springs had entirely spoiled me for ease of access to the alcohol because it seemed that outside of the resort, the country was pretending to follow the ban on alcohol. There were no obvious bars, and the waiter in the restaurant of the hotel lobby gave me a blank stare and ignored my cocktail request, bringing me a coffee instead.