Suddenly Sorceress

Suddenly Sorceress

A Red Adept Publishing Book

Red Adept Publishing, LLC

104 Bugenfield Court

Garner, NC 27529

http://RedAdeptPublishing.com/

Copyright © 2013 by Erica Lucke Dean. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Control Number:  2013957092

First Kindle Edition: December 2013

Cover and Formatting:
Streetlight Graphics

This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

To my kids,

For never letting me forget the world is full of magic.

Prologue

“Y
ou’re too sexy, my ass!”
I tried to tune out the Right Said Fred ringtone as I fished my fiancé’s cell phone from the pocket of his discarded Dockers. I glared at the flashing caller ID. “You just don’t give up, do you?”

That was lucky number thirteen. Thirteen missed calls in the span of an hour. Thirteen calls he was unable to answer.

Because of me.

After pressing
ignore
one more time, I shoved the phone back into the pocket where it belonged, hoping it would muffle the sound somewhat. I didn’t know why I didn’t just turn off the damn thing. I’d endured his ridiculous ringtone more times than anyone should have to, obviously determined to punish myself. Between the maddening song and the horrible smell, I certainly felt punished. Even if it wasn’t nearly enough.

Way down deep in my bones, I knew my life had been forever changed
.
Even if I could somehow fix things—put them back to normal—
nothing
would be the same again. Not ever.

Swallowing against the crystal ball-sized lump in my throat, I dropped Matt’s pants where I’d found them, along with his shirt, his boxers, and his shoes, and I collapsed onto the rumpled blankets on the bed.

That sort of thing didn’t happen in the real world. Only small children or crazy people believed in… no, I refused to even think the word
,
let alone say it.
It’s impossible.
But I’d seen it with my own eyes, and
whatever
it was, it definitely
wasn’t
normal.

My scruffy housecat made another frantic orbit around my feet as the phone sounded again, the self-centered lyrics looping, making me cringe. Apparently, he’d also grown weary of the tune.

If only I could say the choice of ringtone was ironic, a product of his wry sense of humor. But he didn’t have much of a sense of humor. Matthew Green was
exactly
that arrogant. Despite every despicable thing he’d done to me, every insult, lie, and betrayal that had led us there, I truly wished Matt could answer his stupid phone himself. Unfortunately, wishing didn’t seem to be on my side that morning.

Stifling a groan, I pulled myself from the warmth of the bed to dig the phone out of Matt’s pocket again.
Geez, persistent much?
With a deep, cleansing breath, I mashed down the button to accept the call.

“Matt! Where are you?” Matt’s receptionist, Ginger, snapped before I had a chance to say hello. “Friday’s your busiest day. Do you have any idea what time it is? You’ve already missed two appointments.”

Even without caller ID, I would have recognized her breathy Betty Boop voice. She sounded as though she’d been sucking helium all morning. I didn’t know her well, but I suspected she was banging my fiancé.

“We’ll be lucky if there’s enough time for a quickie before the next patient arrives,” she continued in a whisper.

Yep… definitely banging him.

“And another thing.” Her sweet baby voice morphed into a feral growl. “Candy’s been standing outside your office all morning. I thought you said you were done with her? I’m not kidding, Matt, if I find out you’re still screwing her, I’m going to cut off your balls.”

Apparently, I was engaged to a pathological cheater. Of course, I hadn’t known that when I agreed to marry him. There were a lot of things I didn’t know about Matt. Then again, there was a lot I didn’t know about
me
.

“Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“Uh… hi, Ginger.” I cleared my throat and resisted the urge to “
say anything
.” “This is Ivie. Matt can’t come to the phone. I… uh... don’t think he’s going to be able to… uh… make it into work today.” I managed to stammer through the basics without my voice cracking.

“Oh, hi, Ivie.” Her voice changed again; she sounded as if she’d been sucking lemons. She didn’t even have the decency to be embarrassed. “What’s wrong with Matt? He hasn’t missed a day in… Actually, I don’t think he’s ever called in sick.”

My eyes darted to the closed bathroom door, and I shuddered. “He’s really not feeling like himself today.” Understatement of the century.

“Is he sick?”

“Um… I definitely don’t think anyone wants what he has.” I tiptoed around the answer. I wasn’t good at coy, but I gave it my best shot.

“Oh… Well, in that case, maybe it’s best if he stays home.” I could almost see her coiling a lock of her thick red hair around her finger as she spoke. “Just tell him I hope he feels better, and not to worry. I’ll reschedule his appointments for him. Do you think he’ll be well enough to come in Monday?”

I tamped down a flicker of panic. “I really hope so.”
But I seriously doubt it.

After listening to Ginger rant for a minute about missed appointments and the difficult task of rescheduling, I ended the call, staring at the bathroom door as if I expected a silent command to open it. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the door swinging wide and my fiancé sauntering out. I popped open one eye. The door hadn’t moved—not even a crack.

For far too long, I’d avoided that room. With three tentative steps, I closed the distance between myself and the master bathroom, covering my mouth and nose with one hand as I cracked the door. I’d almost gotten used to the foul odor in the bedroom. It was bad but not unbearable. The stench in the bathroom was overwhelming. The fumes poured out, bringing tears to my eyes. The small space reeked worse than when I’d locked him in there last night. It smelled as if someone had cooked up a potion of burning tires and rotten eggs in a boiling vat of sour ammonia, and even that comparison wasn’t quite bad enough.

Blinking back the sting of tears, I scanned the room. I didn’t see him anywhere, just a puddle that looked suspiciously like urine in one corner and in the other, a makeshift bed fashioned out of—were those my good bath towels?

No Matt.

A quick rush of adrenaline kick-started my heart.
What’s happened to him now? This is bad. Very, very bad.
As if things weren’t bad enough already. What sort of person was I? What I’d done was unspeakable, so horrible even
I
didn’t know what I’d done.

Just as I was about to have a full-blown panic attack, he slunk out from behind the hamper. I should have been relieved he was still alive, but I wasn’t sure if his current state was much better. He stared up at me—his beady little black eyes blinking in the harsh fluorescent light—so much smaller than he used to be and covered in a thick pelt of black and white fur. My fiancé.

The skunk.

One

M
aybe I should have started
from the beginning—when everything first spun out of control— the day of the annual farm field trip.

Thursday was the kind of day that inspires mass suicides… or improper Valium use at the very least. The sort of day that could only happen once in a person’s lifetime. I certainly hoped so anyway.

In theory, the outing should have been loads of fun—visiting the cows, touring the milking facilities, feeding the chickens and pigs, even a hayride through the pumpkin patch. But I hated it. Hate wasn’t nearly strong enough a word. Loathe. Detest. Abhor. Despise. I practically broke out in hives on the first day of October in bitter anticipation of what was to come.

Even before that—the moment the permission slips were printed with the date. October twenty-fourth.

Doomsday.

Bright and early that morning, Helena Ferrell, our lead teacher, corralled the miniature debutantes and future billionaires onto the bright yellow deathtrap doubling as our transportation. “Okay, everybody into the bus.” She winked at me and snagged a little boy by his jacket as he was about to take my feet out from under me. “Come on, no need to push.”

“Thanks,” I mouthed. Then, with as genuine a smile as I could muster, I stepped out of the way of the rush. My only wish was to head in the other direction, away from what lay in store for me at the end of that bus ride. In hindsight, I should have stayed in bed. “Hey, Helena, I’m not feeling well.” I sidled up to her petite frame and pressed my palm to my forehead. “I think I have a fever. I should probably go home.”

“Suck it up, Ivie. You don’t have a fever. You’re probably just having hot flashes brought on by anxiety.” Helena grinned, twisting her chestnut hair into a ponytail. “We’re going to a farm, not the gas chamber. I thought you
liked
animals.”

“Of course I like animals. But after last year…” I was reluctant to jinx myself by even thinking about last year.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Ever the optimist, Helena patted my shoulder as if I were a child, despite our barely existent age difference. “Last year was your first time. You’re a second year teacher now. Older and wiser, right? Besides,
nobody
could have such bad luck two years in a row. You know what they say, lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place.”

With an exaggerated sigh, I nodded. Like it or not, the field trip was part of my job. A job I loved every other day of the year. I flashed her a forced smile and moved to the back of the bus to oversee the rowdiest of the bunch. I wished I taught something safe—like auto shop. Power tools had nothing on kindergarteners. Especially at my ultra-snobby school. The parents drove Hummers and BMWs, and the kids had trust funds and iPhones.

No joke. Three of my kindergarteners had iPhones. I didn’t even have an iPhone, and I was marrying a doctor. Okay, a
chiropractor
. But that was close enough for my mother. She would have been just as excited if I were marrying Dr. Seuss. (Oh, the places I’d go!) As long as he had Dr. in front of his name, she was happy.

Once the kids were all present and accounted for, the bus groaned out of the school parking lot. Destination: the Maxwell Dairy Farm. I adored my students—for the most part —but armed with nothing more than my meager charm and a cell phone with 911 on speed dial, I was naïvely determined to make it through my second farm
field trip unscathed.

The idea exhausted me, and the wheels on the bus nearly lulled me to sleep. The ride was shorter than I remembered, but I supposed time moved more quickly as I marched ever closer to my doom. We pulled into the long drive leading to the barn and I tensed from my hair to my toes.

“We’re here.” Helena winked at me as she bellowed over the excited chatter. “Everyone stay in your seats until the bus stops.”

My lips twitched as I tried to return her smile, and she laughed at my pitiful attempt.

“Ivie, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were terrified.” Helena pulled out her clipboard with the day’s agenda. “What’s to be afraid of? They’re just cows, right?”

“Right.” I nodded, staring at the black and white bovines grazing and potentially plotting my demise.

Didn’t she understand my relationship with cows was strictly dietary? I glanced at my leather riding boots. Cows came in handy in many ways. Even for city girl, Ivie Marie McKie. The name had a nice ring to it, especially with my father’s Scottish brogue—the one I didn’t have.

Of course, it would be Green soon. Ivie Green. It sounded like a paint color. Or a lawn service.
Green
… just like the grass in the nearby pasture. After a quick scan of my surroundings, I climbed out of the bus and realized I’d left my life, and my favorite clothes, in the hands of fate.

“Miss Key.” Robby Patterson, one of the boys in my class, butchered my name as he tugged on the hem of my blouse.

I looked down at the top of his blond head. “What is it, Robby?”

He pointed to my boots. “You stepped in poop.”

Helena was wrong. Lightning most definitely strikes twice in the same place.

“Those are riding boots, aren’t they?” Helena smirked. “They’re meant for this environment.”

“They’re Ralph Laurens,” I said, wiping my feet on a clump of clean hay.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have worn someone else’s boots on farm day.” She winked, scooting past me to corral her class.

The whispers and giggles of the group of moms-slash-chaperones behind me caught my attention.

“Should he be wearing that shirt with kids around?”

“I doubt the kids would understand anyway.”

“Still, highly inappropriate.”

I spun to catch them gesturing toward the barn, then whirled again just in time to see the back of a tall, nicely built man in a dark-blue T-shirt and a pair of well-worn jeans.

“What’s wrong with his shirt?”
Other than the fact that it clings to his body in a most distracting way?
I asked the short chubby mom with the Grumpy Cat sweatshirt.

“Wait for it.” She grinned.

As he turned, I elbowed Helena. “Check that out.” I pointed with my chin.

“Veterinarians do it doggy style,”
she mouthed and burst out laughing. He lifted his face in our direction.

“Oh, my God. He heard us.” I whipped around as if that would make me invisible.
If I can’t see him, he can’t see me, right?

Helena shifted her attention back to the hot guy and nudged me. “He’s checking out your butt.”

I made another dizzying spin to face him again.

I heard one of the moms whisper, “What butt?” as he tipped his baseball cap at me, his lips curving into a cocky smile.

Helena asked, “Do you think we can get him to take off the Ray-Bans and the hat? I’d like to see if his face is as amazing as the rest of the package.”

I couldn’t have agreed more. If the face matched the rest of him, he would be the most perfect specimen of man I’d ever laid eyes on. I peeked around Helena to get another look. “I wonder who he is.”

“Oh, that’s the vet. He’s here on a call. Something to do with the goats,” a cheerful female voice said from behind me. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind talking to the kids while he’s here. I could go ask if you like.”

“That would be great,” Helena answered before I could stop her. The last thing I needed was to come face to face with the guy after shamelessly gawking at him. “Come on, kids. We’re going to go meet the veterinarian.” Helena rounded up the group and herded them toward the barn and the hot doc.

I hung back to watch for stragglers. Or to hide behind a group of five-year-olds. Either way.

Engaged women are
not
supposed to flirt, I reminded myself. Especially when one is an engaged kindergarten teacher on a field trip with students. But flirt I did, staring at him from across the pasture like a—like a goat in heat. If I hadn’t been so busy smiling in his direction, feeding off his sideways glances, I might have paid closer attention to where I was walking. I might have seen the path I was on… or what was directly in front of me. Things might have ended up okay. But I was never that lucky.

“I was wrong, you know.” Helena bit back a smile, checking each student’s name off her clipboard as we boarded the bus two hours later. “Your luck really is that bad.”

I glared at her, scrubbing a wet paper towel through my hair. “I told you that this morning.” Thankfully, the handsome vet had disappeared during the Goat Incident. But not before witnessing the entire mortifying scene. It would take hypnosis to purge
that
from my memory. I could never face him again. Not that it mattered. I had no business worrying about another man when I had a fiancé at home. A perfectly respectable chiropractor with a bizarre fascination with
Zoolander
. “Whose brilliant idea was it to plan a field trip during mating season?”

“I suppose it could have been worse. At least you still have all your fingers and toes.” Giggles punctuated her words.

Of course, I had more to lose than toes. My pride, for one.

Also amongst the day’s casualties—coming in slightly behind Robby Patterson’s two front teeth, which were probably going to fall out soon anyway—the field trip took out my favorite pair of brown leather boots. They were also my
only
pair of brown leather boots, and they had been a ridiculous extravagance even on sale. I also lost a pair of Rag & Bone jeans—the Golden Snitch of Goodwill finds—and
my favorite white button-down shirt. It wasn’t a designer label, and it wasn’t expensive, but I absolutely loved that shirt. That shirt had managed to survive multiple run-ins with spaghetti sauce, at least one pomegranate martini, and cat vomit, all without as much as a shadow of a stain.

The bloodstains—thankfully, not mine that time—would have probably come clean. And the L-shaped tear in the sleeve could have been stitched. But to my deepest regret, no amount of scrubbing could
ever
eradicate the abject humiliation. My brain might need a thorough bleaching for good measure.

Helena opened her mouth to say something else, but I gave her my best bitch-face, scrunching up my features until I imagined I resembled a constipated pug. “Not another word about the goat.”

“Chin up, Ivie.” Helena snickered. “At least you got lucky.”

“Not funny, Ferrell.” I wadded up the dirty paper towel and lobbed it at her. Even at close range, I missed.

She coughed around a laugh. “Oh, trust me. It’s funny.” Helena stood to address the children. “Come on, kids, let’s sing.
Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O, and on his farm he had a
goat…”

The kids continued singing, but Helena and the other teachers, and most of the chaperones, dissolved into a fit of giggles at my expense. Mrs. Patterson glared at me as if I’d purposely seduced a goat in front of her precious child.

“I’m never going to live this down, am I?”

“Never.” Helena gave my shoulders a quick squeeze, wrinkling her nose. “Wow, you really do stink.”

I felt cursed. But I didn’t believe in curses. Well, I didn’t then. After the excruciating ride back to the school with a busload of five- and six-year-olds, I headed home to pour myself a glass of wine, take a hot bath, and relax. That was the plan anyway. Before I could even step inside the house, I got a text message from my best friend.

Chloe: How was your Ygirsday?

I glanced at the message as I fumbled for my keys. The auto-correct on her phone always messed up Thursday. Chloe never bothered to fix it.

Me: Sucked!

Chloe: How was the farm? You’re texting, must still have all your fingers.

Me: Don’t even ask.

Chloe: Wedding shopping tomorrow am. Pick you up at 8?

Me: Can’t.

My phone rang. Chloe didn’t even give me a chance to say hello before starting in on me. “Ivie Marie McKie, you haven’t even shopped for your dress yet. What sort of bride are you?”

“The sort that has to work for a living?”

“Screw work. I may not be a fan of the groom, but you can’t expect me to allow my BFF to show up for her own wedding looking less than amazing. Seriously, I’m not taking no for an answer. Besides, there’s a huge sale at Coach tomorrow.”

A sale at Coach.
Figures
. “Forget it! I’m not going.” I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t want to encourage her. The seconds ticked by while I waited for her to say something before I realized she’d hung up on me. Chloe considered ignoring a sale at Coach a mortal sin.

When I’d first met the trust fund baby, Chloe had an infinite credit line on her American Express card, and she knew how to use it. I called her a serial swiper our freshman year of college, and I was only half joking. She spent more on shoes and purses than I paid for my car.

About a year ago—right around the same time the ink dried on our college diplomas—Chloe was forced to get a real job. Her father had cut her off. He said independence was for her own good, and it worked. Sort of. She got a job as a promotions director for a radio station, where she pulled in considerably more than my annual salary, plus bonuses. She didn’t have to worry about a house or a car because her father had already bought her both before pulling the plug on the money. Of course, she’d had to make horrible sacrifices due to her poverty. She couldn’t afford to buy Gucci, Coach, or Ralph Lauren until they went on sale. Even then, she still dropped a month’s worth of groceries at a clip. No matter how hard I tried to avoid the impromptu excursions, she always seemed to find a way to drag me along, kicking and screaming the whole way.

Once safely inside my house, I shed my ruined clothes, shoved my boots into a black garbage bag, and threw them into the back of my bedroom closet, prepared to let them stay there indefinitely. Unlike my spoiled blouse and jeans, I wasn’t quite ready to chuck them into the trash… yet. They’d set me back enough money to buy a cheap car. I wasn’t about to just throw them away.