Dewitched (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 3) Read Free Page A

“ You’re joking, right? What witch in even her half-right mind would want one of those two hooligans for a familiar? They couldn’t guide a pet rock, let alone a fully grown witch with fully grown powers.”
    I loved Belfry. He was my family, always—but his family?
    The Bats (yes. That’s really their last name. Bat) were a firestorm of crashing, sticky fruit drippings and mayhem.
    His twin brothers Com and Wom were like toddlers on a continual sugar rush, always into something. And Mom Bat? Mostly as adorable as Bel but not exactly on top of things, if you know what I mean. She turned a blind eye to her sons’ shenanigans more often than not.
    And Dad Bat, well, he was of the mind that boys will be boys. The translation of that? Win’s house and all the beautiful things he’d filled it with were going to crumble around our ears by the time they left.
    But wait…
    I gripped the white porcelain sink and closed my eyes as a shiver of dread slithered up my spine.
    “Belfry? Is Uncle Ding coming, too?” Then I winced and said a silent prayer.
    “Yes…?” he replied in a hesitant squeak.
    My head fell to my chest and I took deep breaths. Uncle Ding Bat (again, yes. That’s his real name) was a feisty senior—all wings and snout in all the wrong places. Mostly my wrong places.
    But okay. I could do this. If I could handle a houseful of two hundred guests or so, people spinning from sheets in the living room, and a testy French chef in the kitchen, I could handle the Bats coming for a visit. They deserved to see their son as much as the next parents.
    “Are we still speaking?” he asked, flying into the bathroom as I quickly applied some lipstick and mascara.
    “Don’t be silly. Of course we are. Just remember to keep them away from Dita. You know how much she loathes the twins.”
    He settled on my loofah on the sink. “I’m on it, Boss. By the way, have I told ya how proud I am of you for inviting Momster?”
    Nodding, I jabbed my earrings into the holes in my ears and slipped on my sandals. “You have. She’d have found out about the party anyway, because she and Bart are traveling through Seattle to Ebenezer Falls to pick up some things she has in storage. So it was an easy decision.”
    In truth, it wasn’t an easy decision. Sharing my life and all the new things in it with my mother wasn’t something I was doing lightly. I’d thought a lot about this. But over the last couple of months, I’d seen people torn apart who’d never be able to make things right. Not until they met somewhere else again—if they met somewhere else at all.
    I didn’t want to leave this plane motivated by disharmony and anger.
    “You’re a good egg, Stevie. I know Dita’s not exactly Donna Reed, but maybe you can make lemonade. Or at least martinis. Booze has helped less get through far worse.”
    The moment my mother Dita heard I’d been booted from my coven—after a powerful warlock accused me of meddling with his family and slapped the witch out of me from the great beyond (yep. He literally slapped the witch right out of me)—she’d shut down all communication. Probably for fear our leader, Baba Yaga, would punish her for consorting with the shunned.
    It didn’t matter that when it came to your child, nothing should prevent you from supporting her—short of murder, that is. And even then, you can hate the crime and still love the criminal.
    But my mother wasn’t that sort of mother. She was shallow, vain, and went through boyfriends and husbands like I went through Pop-Tarts. Nurturing wasn’t part of the plan with my mother. Sometimes I wondered how I’d survived my childhood, as distant as she’d been…as caught up in her own life as she’d been.
    But over the past couple of months, with the changes in my life being what they were, I’d realized I’d be in my grave long before her immortality would run out.
    I’d seen a lot of death these past couple of months, and even if we didn’t get along, I