Fruitcake and Familiars: A Cozy Paranormal Mystery (Blue Moon Bay Witches Book 3) by Sierra Cross

Author:Sierra Cross [Cross, Sierra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

Fourteen

In case it’s never happened to you, there’s almost nothing as disorienting as having a moss-covered tree ogre lift you off the ground, haul you over his branch-like shoulder, and lug you like a rag doll through the ever-deepening woods.

Shock gave way to helpless terror in my belly as his deafening, oak-trunk feet pummeled the ground, tossing twigs and smaller bushes helter-skelter. Delivering us to the Red Witches? Was there really a price on Elliot’s head—the final puzzle piece he’d been hiding from me?

Then Loomer began to pick up speed, and all I could think of was trying not to lose my breakfast.

The cedars. The red spotted mushroom caps. The tails of fleeing squirrels. The marshmallow cumulous ocean above.

All of it jerked and jumped in my visual field with the heavy up and down plonk of Loomer’s running. He was making my stomach lurch like the world’s most annoying mall-arcade roller coaster.

Nauseous sweat crawled down my neck.

“I think I’m gonna puke,” I blurted out, cursing my choice to eat so much revenge chocolate earlier.

“Hazel, we’re almost at the north portal entrance.” Elliot’s voice seemed to oscillate with every swing of Loomer’s mighty arms. Did he say portal? To what? “Can you hang on two minutes?” he yelled.

“I don’t know!” Panic was prickling in my guts. I wasn’t a good puker. I tended to retch dry heaves for hours—or what seemed like hours.

“So. My pattern with attractive women holds.” Loomer sighed like a cold wind. “The touch of my bark repulses the pretty witch.”

“Oh my God.” How had I ever found him charmingly self-deprecating? He was a self-obsessed monster. “You’re taking my motion sickness personally?”

Elliot laughed darkly. “This fool takes the sky personally. Can you conjure a focus point with your magic?”

“I … can try…”

Was Elliot more worried about my comfort than his own life being in danger?

It took me a moment to concentrate, but I conjured an extra-large, neon-green ethereal daisy in the air ten feet ahead of me. As I forced my eyes to focus on its glowing center, reality blurred into the background. My stomach contents stayed down, but for how long would that hold?

Especially since Loomer was still waxing about his insecurities, his one eye closed to everything but his own pain.

“Why must you curse me, Mother Earth?” he boomed. “That every pretty witch or fae walking on you spurns my affections?”

“Shut up, dude, you’re not cursed,” Elliot muttered. “You’re just super annoying. Mother Earth’s probably as sick of your whining as we are.”

Again, it struck me as eerie that Elliot was treating Loomer’s betrayal as a mere annoyance. Our situation was dire. Why wasn’t he struggling to escape Loomer’s grip or shifting to crow form to peck his eyes out?

Maybe it was the magic of this place, but the colors of the forest seemed brighter the further we jerked up a steep switchback that smelled of sweet pine and petrichor. The moss blanketing the trees was a nauseatingly vibrant green. The overcast sky a pulsing beluga white.

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