Love's a Witch by Roxy Mews Page A

just wanted to get me away from the group and feel me out. Why not? It wasn’t like I had anything to hide. There wasn’t much to me. You can only dig so deep into a person before you hit honesty. I was in the shallow end of the deception pool.
    “You care for them. And you aren’t dazzled. I’ve never seen that before.” Kari didn’t ask a question, but it was obvious she wanted an explanation. The woman wasn’t prone to trust the supernatural. After feeling like she needed whatever it was I washed out of her hair for protection, I couldn’t blame her. I would be mad about that too.
    “I’m not under anybody’s control. Amber is the closest thing to family I’ve ever had. I’m not going to just throw that away because she gets furry on occasion. And she can’t dazzle people yet. She has been working on it, but it looks like she won’t obtain the advantage any time soon.”
    This tea we were drinking tasted awful. Seriously funky. I never drank tea, but I think my new buddy might have some serious lack of tea making ability. Essence of wet dog feet would have been more palatable. I didn’t want to be rude though. Maybe she was still having issues after her attack.
    “You don’t even recognize what you are drinking, do you?” Kari said this phrase without the least bit of psycho in her voice.
    I put the cup down on the small teak table in front of me. I could probably yell really loud if I needed to. Amber said they had really good hearing. But I had never asked if they understood speech when they were in wolf form. Crap.
    “If you are some creepy chick who wants to eat my intestines, just know that I have been eating a lot of fast food, and I probably wouldn’t taste very good. I can scream loud.” Thoughts of Amber commenting on my blood drifted towards my brain, but I pushed those back. Did everyone want to chomp on me? I was going to get a complex.
    Kari leaned back in her chair with an eruption of honest laughter. “Oh, I am so glad you came here, Mary. I haven’t laughed this much in years. You are drinking Angelica Root tea. It’s particularly empowering to women. It can break a jinx or spell over the drinker. It tastes like feet, but when you need to break a compulsion from a vampire, nothing works better. Your story hasn’t changed one bit and you choked down quite a bit of this stuff. You’re a trooper.”
    She handed me a bottle of water. The only reason I put the bottle to my mouth was the unbroken seal. Kari just watched as I guzzled the clean water and tried to wash the nasty taste from my palate.
    “You don’t trust me.” Kari’s voice lilted in surprise.
    “Well, you just gave me funky jinxy tea. That tasted horrible by the way. Why can’t magical herbs taste better? Someone should work on that. Witches have all this magic and they can’t make potions taste good? That just sucks.”
    Kari was still chuckling as she got up. I was really ready for my friends to get back. I also wished I was something more than a friend. But I would settle for someone not trying to get something out of me at this point.
    “Your aura is so troubled. We need chocolate to get rid of that blackness. Nobody can have black in their aura after chocolate. Come on. I have a bag of Dove squares stashed under my altar.”
    This chick was nuts, but at the same time full of awesome. She was talking about chocolate and it was getting close to that time of the month. I would have followed her into a snake breeding pit for some chocolate.
    “You really keep chocolate in your altar space?”
    “If there is anything more magical than a good bar of chocolate, I certainly haven’t found it. Hell, some sex magic isn’t even as powerful as the orgasmic properties of a good piece of chocolate.” Kari spoke and I fell in step with her. She was calm, and I felt some of the stress leave my body. This was my kind of witch.
    “Wait…aura? You see the colors too?”
    Kari stopped our chocolate trek, with a warm palm