Prologue

Here’s a little conundrum for you… Why is it that we always want something more when someone else goes after it? Mystery of life? Human nature? The grass is always greener on the other side?

Is the root of the issue important?

I don’t believe it is. However, using the conundrum to bring about good is the key. And when you’re dealing with witches who possess enormous egos… playing the game with finesse is to the advantage of the entire enchanted Universe. Plus, games are quite fun.

And I am very, very good at games.

Since every wonderful story starts with a charming beginning, this one shall be no different. Buckle up, buttercup. It’s going to be a wild ride.

Once upon a time in the far, far away kingdom of West Virginia, there was an exquisitely enchanted place called Assjacket.

Assjacket was a glorious and magical land with a hideous name, in my opinion. However, names are irrelevant when the magic and goodness are pure. In the deliciously spellbinding town, there lived a witch named Zelda—an extremely powerful, red-headed, profane, materialistic gal who wanted everyone to believe she cared for nothing or no one but herself.

She had failed miserably.

The silly witch had an abundance of love for all and did a terrible job of hiding it. Being happy had been the key to her downfall. Her former crappy reputation as an uncaring witch lay in tatters.

Secretly, Zelda was delighted. Publicly, she bitched and bitched.

No one was buying the nonsense she was selling—especially me. The lovely green-eyed witch was the infamous Shifter Whisperer, or Shifter Wanker as she preferred. Zelda could heal all Shifters and magical beings—a gift that she used often as the Shifters of Assjacket were quite clumsy.

What the good folk of Assjacket might lack in coordination, they made up for in brilliance. The town looked like a total dump on the outside so humans would just drive right through without looking back. However, inside the ramshackle structures, everything was pure enchantment. All magical beings lived very public but secret lives. It had to be that way. A world without magic would be a very sad place indeed.

The mystical town of Assjacket was filled with beautiful, bewitching misfits who happened to fit perfectly together—Shifters, witches, dryads, warlocks, talking cats and a deadly troll called Fucking Derrick. Of course, the troll took some getting used to, but he was fitting in quite nicely now that he’d become a vegetarian.

I won’t go into that story. Like my witches, I have an over-active gag reflex. Let your imagination go… and go and go and go and you still won’t get it right. Suffice it to say, Fucking Derrick might be tiny but he can ingest a tremendous amount of evil groundhog Shifters.  

Even the leader of the witches, the illustrious and questionably dressed, Baba Yaga, aka Baba Yostuckintheeighties aka Carol, had planted roots in the lovely town of Assjacket.

Of course, Baba Yaga was nearing retirement, but that’s another story for another time… No. Wait. Let’s stick to that story. It’s delightfully interesting. 

Zelda had been hand chosen by me to take over as the new Baba Yaga when the time was right. She had begrudgingly agreed after a fair amount of coercing and a bit of blackmail. However, the naughty witch was still trying to escape her fate.

As the gal in charge of everyone, I already had quite a lot on my plate and dealing with a bad attitude was getting less appealing by the day.

What to do…

Solve the problem of course!

With a little magic, a whole lot of love and a few games thrown in for amusement, I’d have my way in the end.

I always did.

For I am the Goddess, and the protection of my people was my unending life’s work.

Carol had done the job of Baba Yaga brilliantly for hundreds of years. The time drew near to give one of my favorites a well-deserved rest. She would be replaced by another of my favorites.

I hoped.

Zelda had one last chance to accept her fate before her fate changed dramatically.

Let the games begin and may the most worthy witch win.

xoxo,

The Goddess

 

 

Chapter 1

“Cornhole,” Sassy shouted, tossing beanbags in the air in a very sad attempt at juggling.

My eyes narrowed to slits and my fingers began to spark. “What did you just call me?”

“Do you prefer Cornholio to Cornhole?” she asked, putting the bean bags into color-coordinated piles—clearly oblivious that she was about to end up warty or hairless.

Closing my eyes, I reminded myself that there was very little I could do about idiocy. Zapping Sassy bald would be just plain mean. While it would also be satisfying and wildly fun, I was working on my maturity. I was a mom now of two beautiful little witch/werewolf toddlers. Henry and Audrey were my world and I was trying to live up to the gift of being their mom. While my mothering instincts were shitty due to my own heinous maternal example, I did have a freaking boatload of love to share. I also had an overactive potty mouth. However, I was putting duct tape to excellent use. My babies thought it was hilarious that mommy’s lips were taped shut a good deal of the time. Giving my friend a face full of warts was unnecessary. Sticks and stones and all that crap… Goddess, being mature sucked.

“I prefer neither, dorkhole,” I said with an eye roll.

“I said, Cornhole, not Dorkhole,” Sassy announced, slapping her hands on her hips in exasperation.

“How about we stick to Zelda?” I suggested. She looked so put out I had to shove my hands into my pockets to keep my magic from involuntarily moving her nose to the middle of her forehead.

“Bagging a hooker or nailing a backdoor dirty roll up will cause cornfusion if we call it Zelda,” Sassy explained. “But if you want your name associated with dirty bags and a woody, I’m down.”

I was so bewildered I didn’t have a response. Sassy was good like that. She was a weapon of mass confusion. 

Today was not turning out as planned. It took everything I owned not to be a bad witch and a bad friend.

First, I was sweating and it had nothing to do with banging Mac. Unacceptable. Standing outside in the morning sun while a dumbass called me a cornhole wasn’t working for me. Second, Sassy had taken it upon herself to hang out at my house for a week while everyone else in the town of Assjacket went camping. I’d flat out refused to pee in the woods for seven days.

Mac, my gorgeous werewolf mate, had insisted that I could glamp instead of camp, but that was a no-no since it would mean using magic for selfish reasons. I wasn’t allowed to do that anymore. After a stint in the magical pokey with Sassy for egregious misuse of magic, I was sticking to the rules. Conjuring up a hot tub, a toilet and a king-sized bed in the woods for a week fell under the category of self-serving sorcery. Plus, the thought of going back to the Big House in Salem, Massachusetts and having to wear an orange jumpsuit again for any length of time was out of the question. It clashed hideously with my red hair. 

My little family unit could shift into werewolf form and take a dump anywhere. Occasionally, I was jealous of that fact, but mostly not. I was perfectly fine with being a fabulous, well-dressed, slightly materialistic witch. As the Shifter Wanker—the one who healed the clumsy idiots of Assjacket, West Virginia—it was probably a bad move to have let all the Shifters leave town at the same time. Whatever. If someone busted their head open or broke a femur, I was a cellphone call away.

Sassy squealed with delight. “We will call ourselves The Flying Cornholes! We can get t-shirts and tattoos.”

“You clearly have a death wish,” I muttered.

“You know, if you spoke Canadian, this would be much easier,” Sassy pointed out as she skipped around my front yard setting up Goddess only knew what.

Explaining to my de facto BFF that Canadian was the same language as English would end badly—as in an explosion accompanied by the complete decimation of my yard. Sassy had been on a tear for the last few years to learn every spoken language.

She was having a tough time mastering Canadian.

Nuff said.

I sighed and sat down on the grass while Sassy meticulously measured out the distance between the two slanted, large pieces of wood she’d arrived with. If she called me Cornhole again the rectangular wood was going to be shoved where the sun doesn’t shine.  

“Why in the Goddess’s mom jeans are we doing this?” I asked, flopping onto my back and staring at the big blue sky.

“Because it’s fun,” Sassy informed me.

Her idea of fun was vastly different than mine.

I idly wondered if Mac, Henry and Audrey were looking at the sky right now. The shades of blue were bright and comforting. The puffy clouds sailed by and danced on the breeze. The summer-scented wind puckered its lips and blew the clouds across the landscape without a care in the world. Sometimes I felt the weight of the magical world on my shoulders. My future was overwhelming. I was, dare I say, happy being the Shifter Wanker. However, I was supposed to take over as the freaking Baba Yaga eventually. Chewing on that gave me gas. I wasn’t what came to mind when the term responsible witch was mentioned. But right now, I felt free—other than sweating and being called Cornhole by a dummy head.

“Get your sphincter off the ground and get ready to throw a hooker,” Sassy instructed. “That was Greek in case you were wondering.”

“Hookers are Greek?” I asked. The feeling of freedom disappeared and the need to give her horns and a tail increased.

“Not all hookers,” she said, handing me four beanbags. “Some are right-handed Canadians.”

“Are you missing brain screws?” I asked, getting to my feet.

“On Tuesdays,” she replied. “Today is Wednesday. So, no.”

Again, I was stunned to silence. My BFF was a font of never-ending nonsense.

“I learned cornholing from Harry McLarryburger,” Sassy explained.

I squinted at her and tried not to laugh. “Harry McLarryburger?” I wasn’t about to ask about cornholing. Some things were better left unknown.

She nodded. “Yes. The McLarryburger clan are famous cornholers. They go by the team name The Flying Bags of Terror—formally known as The Cornadoes.”

“And are these your imaginary friends from Canada?” I asked, throwing a beanbag at her head.

The idiot returned the favor with gusto and a grin. “As a matter of fact, they are Canadian and they are notimaginary.”

The name was appalling. But then again, it shouldn’t surprise me that Sassy had hideously named buddies. She’d married the sweetest kangaroo Shifter who happened to go by Jeeves Pants. Now her name was Sassy Pants. It was only slightly better than her maiden name—Sassy Bermangoggleshitz.

“I was at the orphanage with Harry when we were little,” she explained as she grabbed my hand and pulled me over to the long piece of wood with a circular hole at the top of it. “He was incredibly good at hide and seek. The bitchy witches who ran the joint were forever searching for him. To this day Harry and his people are the best at hide and seek in the Universe.”

“The McLarryburgers are warlocks?” I asked, unable to stop myself. My need-to-know things that I didn’t need to know bit me in the ass on a regular basis.

“Nope,” Sassy said.

“Shifters?” I tried again. It was odd that there was another species besides witches at the orphanage.

“Nope,” she replied with a giggle.

“Trolls?” Up until recently I hadn’t known that trolls even existed until the arrival of Fucking Derrick—the angriest little bastard in the Universe. Fucking Derrick wasn’t just a butthole, he was a gaping crevasse of a butthole.

He was a couple inches tall and his voice was so high I was pretty sure he didn’t have nards. A bushy, wiry, gray beard covered most of his little face exposing only his crazed purple eyes. He had a serious attitude problem. The troll’s hands and feet were small like the rest of him, but it was clear the miniature son of a bitch was a killer.

I seriously hoped that Fucking Derrick had gone camping with the rest of Assjacket. A week-long vacation minus an asshole sounded awesome.

“Nope, not a troll. You wanna keep guessing?” Sassy asked with a twinkle in her eye.

“What’s it going to cost me?” I inquired, raising a brow.

“Every time you get a wrong answer, I get to pick something from your closet.”

“You mean steal,” I clarified.

“Yes.”

“Only if every time you pilfer something from my closet, I decrease or increase your bust size,” I countered. Sassy was inordinately proud of her perky knockers.

“Interesting,” she replied. “That’s a very British move.”

I had no fucking clue what she was talking about, and I was pretty sure she didn’t either. “Deal?”

“So, for every Birken bag I purloin, I lose a cup size?” she asked, mentally debating if it was worth it.

“Or gain,” I pointed out to be fair.

“Which could mean if I looted ten Chanel purses and twelve pairs of Prada shoes, I might end up an E cup?”

“More like a quadruple Z cup.”

Sassy blew out an audible sigh. “It might be hard to fly on my broom with hooters the size of hot air balloons. If I’m constantly whacked in the head by a boob I could crash.”

I nodded. I thought about reminding her that she crashed all the time with her C cups, but refrained. She was a menace in the air. Witches didn’t need brooms to fly, even though Sassy was a big fan of using one. I’d tried it once and crash-landed right in the middle of Main Street in front of all the good folk of Assjacket. I was not going to make that embarrassing mistake again.  

“Fine,” she huffed. “Harry McLarryburger is a Bigfoot.”

There was no such thing as Bigfoot. “Shut the front door,” I said with a laugh.

“Oh my Goddess, Zelda,” Sassy shot back with an enormous eye roll. “We’re outside. There are no doors.”

I zapped her. It couldn’t be helped. “Bigfoot doesn’t exist,” I said flatly.

“Don’t tell Harry McLarryburger that,” Sassy warned, slapping out the fire on the seat of her hot pink romper. “He’s very sensitive.”

Breathing in slowly and exhaling even slower, I eyed Sassy and internally debated if she was telling the truth. Why would I find it so difficult to believe Bigfoot existed? I was a witch. I was mated to a werewolf. My sister-in-law was a dryad. My fat, ball-licking familiars were talking cats. And Fucking Derrick was a troll for the love of everything profane and horrifying.

“Okaaay,” I said, opening up my mind to the bizarre possibility. “So, you cornholed a Bigfoot?” I winced after the words left my mouth.

“No, silly,” Sassy said. “Harry McLarryburger taught me how to cornhole.”

“There’s a difference?” I was so confused. Not abnormal when conversing with Sassy.

“The game,” she said, pointing at the two rectangular boards. “He taught me the game.”

“What game?” I asked, ready to call it a day and send Sassy back to her house with a wave of my hand.

“Cornhole,” she replied.

“Wait. Cornhole is a game? Not a swearword?” I asked, kind of disappointed.

Sassy pursed her lips then shrugged. “I suppose it could double. But the one I’m talking about is the game Cornhole—not the vegetable in your ass, Cornhole.”

“Got it,” I said with a groan. “Next question.”

“Will you be speaking French?”

“No.” I sighed dramatically and considered conjuring up a few ears of corn just in case I needed one to make a point. “I’m sticking with English today.”

Sassy nodded. “Good. My French is iffy right now since I’ve been learning British.”

Again, I wasn’t going to touch that. “Why are we playing games at all? We could be inside a nice air-conditioned house watching the Charm Channel.”

She was tempted. The Charm Channel was a secret network for magicals. Henry and Audrey loved it. I was addicted to the game shows. Let’s Make a Broom was hilarious and The Hexywood Squares was the bomb. There was a sixty percent chance that Sassy wouldn’t end up bald if we simply spent the afternoon watching TV.

“Nope,” she announced. “Baba Yobighair said we need to find activities that have nothing to do with magic. I feel that cornhole could be our destiny. We could practice and then do cornhole tournaments all over the world. Since I speak every known language except British, we would be fine traversing most foreign countries.”

“No,” I said.

Sassy ignored me.

“Since you didn’t seem to love the team name The Flying Cornholes we could call ourselves, The Hole Ringers or The Corn Thugs.”

“No,” I repeated.

Again, the idiot ignored me.

“I also think that Harry McLarryburger would be fine if we pilfered The Cornadoes since he and his people now go by The Flying Bags of Terror. Problem solved! We’re going to dedicate two hours and eleven minutes every day to our new leisure pursuit. I’m speaking Spanish in case you’re confused right now. I think we’ll be ready to compete on the circuit in about four weeks and two and a half days. We’ll have Prada design our uniforms and I say we wear stilettos when cornholing. It will make us stand out, and the heels will double as weapons if we need to dismember a competitor who might be beating us.”

“Is that allowed?” I asked. The only part of Sassy’s diatribe that sounded even remotely appealing were the Prada uniforms. The rest was bullshit.

“Cornhole can get violent. I’ve seen videos on the interwebs where humans beat the crap out of each other at cornholio tournaments. Looks like tons of fun.”

“The entire scenario is stupid,” I groused.

Sassy nodded and giggled. “Possibly, but it would get Baba Yobossypants out of our asses about having a hobby that doesn’t have to do with shopping or sorcery.”

She had a point. And for the life of me I couldn’t think of another hobby that didn’t require magic. I was certain I was going to regret going along with any idea that Sassy had come up with, but maybe… just maybe… cornhole would be fun.