Witch In Charge - Celia Kyle Page 0,1

granite friend. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times—gargoyles are people too. The last thing he’d want is to be covered with glitter and be unable to get it off.”

“I guess,” Kelly shrugged.

At times, it seemed as if her boss was just a little too attached to the thing, considering how protective she was over a statue. Still, she had to admit, she had just been talking to the guy.

“Well,” Cora said brightly, “shall we go out? It’s nearly sunset, and it’d be no good for me to be hanging out in here when my own party starts.”

“Let’s hit it!” Kelly snatched up her cup and headed for the door. “I could use a fresh drink anyway.”

“Just remember to get a new cup.”

“Ha, right!”

As Kelly stared down into the sparkly, globby mess at the bottom of her cup, Cora waddled past her and into the crowd of her friends and coworkers. For a second, Kelly hung in the doorway, looking back into the office.

“Not too bad,” she whispered to herself as she admired her handiwork. The gargoyle glared at her in multicolored silence before Kelly snapped off the light and closed the door behind her.

“New girl.” The laconic, dry greeting wafted over Kelly’s shoulder the second she stepped into the party proper, and she didn’t even need to glance back to know she would find Holly Woodbriar leaning against the wall.

“Old chick,” she said, without bothering to look.

Kelly was right. She turned back to find Cora’s actual assistant lazing against the wall, one knee up so that her shoe was planted above the baseboards. That’s gonna leave a mark, Kelly smirked to herself. Maybe Holly would actually catch a bit of hell for it.

“I thought you were going to hide back there all night. What were you doing in there anyway?”

“Nothing. Just…decorating.”

She cracked off a pixyish grin, dripping with false sweetness. It wasn’t that the two hated each other, but their snappy repartee always had more than a hint of edge to it. Kelly figured her older counterpart felt just a teeny bit superior for actually having a paid gig. Still, with Cora going on leave, they were both out of work.

“Everybody has to have a hobby.”

Holly lifted her cup to her lips, lined in thick, black lipstick. The sprite seemed to pride herself on a kind of calculated carelessness, and leaned hard into a decidedly goth look. It’s like she was dying to be something darker than a sprite, and lived with a heavy chip on her delicate shoulder.

“You know what?” Kelly had no idea where she was going next, and was saved from having to come up with the perfect quip just in time when she was essentially tackled to the floor by Ryan Glittermist. She should have seen it coming—it was her fairy friend’s typical greeting.

“Oh god,” Kelly groaned, holding her head. “Don’t do that.”

“Girl, are you serious? You’re not still…”

“Hungover? Yeah.” Despite the drinks she’d already had, the lingering effects of protracted partying were still making themselves evident.

“You want to know a secret?” He leaned in and cupped a hand around his mouth. “Me too!”

They shared a laugh about his stupid joke, and Kelly was grateful to have a truly friendly face show up. It was going to keep her from getting into a true snark-off with Holly.

“So,” he shook off the laugh but kept the conspiratorial tone, “how is it?”

“How is what?”

“Girl!” Ryan heaved a dramatic sigh, and clapped her on both shoulders. “Being twenty-five? Is it everything you dreamed of?”

“Aren’t you over twenty-five?”

He simply waved off her question with a hand encrusted with rings. They sparkled with cheap green gems, which clashed gloriously with his electric orange shirt. Yeah, he was in full effect.

“This isn’t about me, Kel-leeeeee. This is about you! You’re free now, right?”

“You’d think so,” she scoffed. “But apparently they’re sticking to the sentence. I’m still an official ward of the Holloway clan until I turn twenty-six. Which is the definition of injustice, if you ask me.”

“I’d say it’s fairly just.” Iris Holloway-Santos edged into their conversation, her baby, Willow, smiling placidly in her arms.

Kelly flushed visibly at having been caught out complaining. “We were just talking…”

Her excuse was cut off, or rather brushed aside, by the genial, if slightly haughty, Arcane Sentinel. “I’d say that an added year in recompense for misusing a truth spell is a pretty light consequence. To call it a ‘sentence’ is a little extreme, don’t you think?” She flashed those bewitching