Three Witches #1: Magnus and Magnolia

Chapter 31 (Magnus): Talking About Me

Sumrak, Tarek and Yonaka were suddenly in front of me. To be specific, Yonaka was sitting on the barrel of Treat's gun like he was riding a horse, Sumrak was dangling from the muzzle and Tarek was hanging by his knees from the trigger guard, swinging back and forth.

"You seem to be in quite a predicament," Sumrak said. "This could be worse than the trials."

No one else in the room seemed to be moving.

"What'd you do?" I asked.

"Just froze things for a bit," Tarek said. "The Fae version of a timeout for all these naughty boys. We didn't expect things to get so out of control so quickly, so we just needed to buy a little more time."

"Why would you show up to protect me?"

"Would you believe it's because we like you?" Yonaka asked.

"No," I said decidedly. 

Far off in the distance, I heard a low rumble. I knew that sound.

"OK, good, you're smarter than you look," Yonaka quipped.

"We're here as a favor," Tarek explained, which wasn't much of an explanation given that it didn't make any sense to me. The three of them abandoned Treat's gun and flew in front of my face.

"A favor to me?"

"Nope!" Sumrak said.

"Magnolia?"

"Wrong again!" Sumrak told me. "You aren't very good at guessing games."

The rumbling was getting louder.

Taking advantage of my former brothers' frozen state, I removed the guns from their hands and any other weapons they had hidden on them and dumped them in the kitchen trash can. 

By then, the rumbling was right outside my mother's house and it suddenly stopped. I knew that noise, knew that it took a lot of Harleys to make that much noise, and I hoped it wasn't the rest of my former brothers showing up for an assist.

"Finally," Tarek said.

"Aaaannnd action!" Yonaka said.

Everyone in the room suddenly became reanimated, and I wished I'd had the foresight to record Treat's reaction.

"What the fuck?" he asked, staring at my gun pointed at his face, just as he realized his hands were empty.

There were exclamations from the other brothers as they discovered they, too, were weaponless.

But before anyone could say anything, the front door of my mother's house was pushed open and Butcher walked in, followed by at least twenty Mayhem, all of them with guns drawn. They immediately surrounded Treat and his men, patting them down, and I noticed Treat started sweating. I noticed that the three fairies inclined their heads to Butcher, said Sceptre in unison, then poofed away.

Walking up beside me, Butcher looked at Treat.

"You're a dumb motherfucker."

"Butcher," Treat started to say, but Butcher wasn't having any of it.

"Don't talk. We'll talk later in the Mayhem guest accommodations. Or, as my wife likes to call it, Hotel Hell."

Then he smiled at Treat, and I swear Treat whimpered at the unearthly sight.

"You think I wouldn't find out that your boys came into Mayhem territory and tried to sell fucking drugs?"

Treat lost all color from his face. Selling drugs? Moving into Mayhem territory? What the hell had happened since I'd quit the MC? We'd never dealt drugs, and we sure as hell would never set foot in Mayhem territory to do anything illegal.