Pride & Joy, Tome 2: Bound Powers

Pride

The streets and buildings of Agedale had iced over in the month since Gabriella Pride and Joy Mackenzie had gone into the town hall to confront a witch killer. Gabi was glad when her car finally make it to the sturdy slab of stone that was her Aunt Cheryl’s pub, The Tipsy Witch. A huddle of middle aged men in varying states of shabbiness and inebriation, each with a cig in hand and puffs of smoke around them, gave a round of laughter when Gabi got out of her car and grabbed the brick wall, her boots sliding from under her on the slick ice. God, she hated winter. It was cold and treacherous and generally uncalled for. At least the step to the pub’s entrance had been doused with salt and made a safer path. Inside was blessedly warm. Thanks to her elven environmental magic, Aunt Cheryl always kept the place toasty.

Inside the long rectangular room, Gabi wove in and out of wooden chairs and wobbly tables, snow flicking off her boots and fluttering from her collar to the floorboards.

“Hey, you,” Aunt Cheryl said over the drone of conversations and an enthusiastic argument at the far end of the room. A large huddle had gathered around the flat screen TV showing a repeat of a football game. “Rosé or hot chocolate?”

“Chocolate.” After the freezing walk from the car park around back, anything hotter than room temperature was more than welcome. “Any trouble lately?”

“Nah.” Aunt Cheryl made quick work of frothing milk and boiling water, her thick curls—precisely styled, not natural ringlets—bouncing with every efficient movement. “After what you did for this town? No one dares risk it. They’re scared if they start something in here, my big scary niece will come and kick their ass.”

“She will,” Gabi replied with a smile, leaning against the bar. Within a minute, a large mug was placed before her, tendrils of steam carrying the scent of rich chocolate and … whiskey to her nose. Gabi raised an eyebrow.

“It’s warming,” Aunt Cheryl said with a shameless smile that was identical to Gabi’s dad’s smile. They looked so alike sometimes. “Plus, your ex’s eyes haven’t left you since you entered the room. A little Dutch courage won’t hurt.”

Gabi swallowed a mouthful of chocolate to cover her trill of nerves. She and Joy had been … cordial. Perfectly, ordinarily cordial. No more confessions of feelings, no lingering touches. Gabi would like to report there had been no longing glances either but she couldn’t quite control her eyes. “Not a word,” she told Aunt Cheryl, who only smirked in reply, wiping down the bar. But when Gabi turned to make her way to the table in the back where she’d seen Joy and her coven from the corner of her eye—Joy’s pink hair and Eilidh’s turquoise dip dye much too bright, newly coloured, to miss—Aunt Cheryl stage whispered, “Go get her, tiger.”

Gabi pointedly did not make any kind of response. A glare over her shoulder would only encourage her.

Joy and the others were sat at a table with a banquette along the back wall, Victoriya laid out across the whole thing, looking carefully careless. Gabi skirted a coat hanging off the back of a chair and turned her body sideways to slide through what passed for an aisle—a narrow pass through elbows and outstretched legs and handbags and extra chairs—and tried out a smile as she took a seat at Joy’s table.

“Alright, Gabi?” Gus greeted, looking uncharacteristically tired. When Gabi had first met him, he’d been neatly presented and his eyes had sparkled with amusement. Now his eyes were shadowed, and his formerly artful hair was just untidy, strands falling over his forehead.