Page 9 of Frazier


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“She did. She thought it would have been a waste of her time to have come here and killed you when you can’t even hold your coven together. But when you started to kill off lesser witches, it opened up a whole new set of rules that I’m going to make you responsible for. How do you wish to die?” Sandra asked her why she was so sure that she was going to die and not her. “Haven’t you been listening to me? I’m the grand witch with the powers not only of my own but those of my mother.”

Reaching up into the air, she pulled lightning to her, a tornado, as well as a great ice storm. It was working up to be quite the storm of storms when Frazier shifted into his bear and stood on his back paws. Then the magic of the two of them doubled then tripled before she released it on Sandra and her standing coven.

The screams were cut off. She couldn’t see what damage she’d done to the women, but she knew from the smell of blood that some of them were hurt badly, if not dead. When the smoke cleared, she made her way to where the standoff had started and looked at the only woman left. She was so mangled, barely alive, that it made her slightly sick that she’d done this to her.

“You shouldn’t have been able to beat me. I’m much stronger than you.” Amelia didn’t bother with a response. It was obvious who was the stronger of them. “You broke the rules. You should have made me quit.”

“I gave you ample opportunity to walk away, Sandra. You’re the one that chose to stand your ground. And for what? You’re dead, as is your so-called coven is.”

“Repair me. I want to be able to come back for you over again.” Frazier told her that she was too far gone for that. “You’re a shifter. How is that possible that you were able to help her with her magic.”

“I’m her mate, and I didn’t help her with her magic. I reined it in so that she’d not destroy the earth behind you. I helped control it, not enhance it. All the magic that came at you, it was all her, grand witch Amelia Cross.” She leaned back on him when she stood up. Amelia was suddenly exhausted. When a glass of juice was handed to her, she could have jumped for joy that she had a mate like this one. Frazier was perfect. Exactly what she needed in her life. “I’ll clean this up, then we’ll go home. All right?”

It took them together only a few minutes to get the bodies cleaned up. The scorched earth would take a while to heal, but it would once she gave it a bit of herself. The women’s bodies would be found in a few days. A fire in the building caused by a candle falling over would be blamed for their deaths. The people in town already thought that the group was off their rocker, so this wouldn’t be a surprise to any of them that this came about.

Once they were home again, she helped Frazier move his things back to the master bedroom. Once things were just how they wanted them, everything was put away and neatly stacked, they headed to the kitchen for dinner. One of the women in the group that had left was standing there waiting for them.

“I would wish to serve you, my lady, my lord.” She nearly told the woman, Tabby, that she didn’t want her around her, but Frazier asked her what her qualifications were. “I can cook and clean. I’d rather cook if you’d not mind, but I can clean too. I want to repay you for my life and that of my daughter. Sandra, well, I don’t like speaking ill of the dead, but she blackmailed us into following her, and we couldn’t get free. It’s been more decades than I like to think about, and since then, Patty and I have outlived our families and have no one else to put up with us anymore.”

“Is Patty going to be working for us too?” The timid little woman came out of the pantry with her arms loaded up with things that she didn’t think had been in there before. “You’ll follow the rules of the white magic, correct? You’ll never bring the dark or gray into this house, or you will be killed. I won’t cut you any slack even if you make the world’s greatest apple pie. I will gut you and kill you without thinking about how lost I’ll be without it. Understand?”

“I do, my lord.” Frazier told her to call him Frazier. “I can do that too, sir. Yes. And I do make a good apple pie. The child and I are going to make you both up a dinner tonight that is sort of quick, but we’ll do better from now on. You just leave us a list of things you won’t eat, and we’ll make sure to try things we don’t have here too.”

“I’m a shifter bear. As is my entire family. We will eat just about anything.” Frazier looked at her and winked. “Well, my dear wife, we have staff now. That’s even better than my other married brothers have. I have to go rub it in their faces.”

With a kiss, he was gone. After talking to Tabby and Patty, she let them get to work. Since the meeting had taken so very little time, they had gotten back home well before dark. Going into the office that she’d claimed as her own, she set to work on finding the list of names that she was to mark through as being killed.

Before dinner was ready, the other two women came to work for them. Their names were Mary and Libby. She liked them both, and with such a huge house, Amelia thought they’d need the extra hands to keep up with it. Not that she couldn’t use magic to clean it, but this would be so much better, she thought. There wouldn’t be any cause for people thinking that she was using her magic for her own gain too. That was the biggest rule not to break, she’d always thought.

By the time she and Frazier were ready for bed, the dinner being better than she could have hoped for, she felt like she’d been doing her job forever instead of just tonight. Tomorrow she had another list of things to take care of. Also, she was going to go on a fall walk with grannie and the other two women to gather things for tea. Amelia was going to be hunting the earth for herbs that she could use for her magic.

Frazier was going to back to work tomorrow. She had a feeling that, like Mark, he’d be putting in his notice before too long. The park service was going to lose all the Cross men before too much longer if she didn’t miss her bet. Once they had mates, they’d be working more from home and getting more in the way. Laughing to herself, she wondered how the newest bride for the men would be, hopefully, like the rest of them.

Just as she was dozing off, she felt her mother’s presence. Not moving so as not to disturb Frazier, she asked her mom if she was coming back now that she’d done all the hard work.

“Listen to you being a smart ass. No, I’m not coming back. I’ve no reason to. The earth is happy with you too. You did a good thing in killing off the coven tonight. And making the earth heal faster was also the best way to go.”She told her that it was Frazier’s idea.“Yes, he is much like you. A lover of all things earth. I see him working more and more with you in the coming years. He’s a good person to have on your side if you were to ask me.”

“He is. And you should see him pouring over the books that I’ve given him. I can see him helping me will all the bylaws when they are breached.”She thought of something.“Mom, do you suppose this is what it’s like to have a mate with you when you’re magical? That they not just enhance you when you need it but are able to pull you back when that’s needed too? Tonight he did that for me. I was ready and willing to destroy the town that these women came from if not for him. Was that what father was to do for you?”

“I believe so. But since I don’t know, I can only assume, as you have, that is the way it should work.”Mom sounded sad at that moment, and Amelia told her that she was sorry. “Don’t be child. I’m so happy for the two of you that I can hardly contain myself. If he’s not working with you daily before the end of the fall season, I’ll be surprised. But do allow him time to work too. His art, it’s what saves him at times. He is also very good at it.”

“I will. He’s going to be bringing some of his work into his home now. As are the others, I think. They’re all so very talented, don’t you think?”Mom said that they were.“Good. I need some sleep, mother dearest. I love you and miss you more all the time. I’m so happy that you came to me tonight. Thank you for that.”

“‘Tis my pleasure, my child. My pleasure indeed.”Once her mom was gone, she snuggled into Frazier’s warmth and closed her eyes. Tomorrow was going to be good, she thought. Just what she’d needed and didn’t know about. A good man at her side and a home and hearth to be happy in.

Chapter 5

Frazier put the miniature log cabin down and picked up the barn. He’d started off his morning with the barn and was frustrated with it, so he’d gone to the house. Looking it over, he saw what he was going wrong. Not only had two of the lightning poles fallen off someplace, but the door wasn’t like the one that was on the barn here. He’d somehow put the wood going in the wrong direction.

He’d been working on the table for the store for about a year now. He was not working all that hard really but picking up a piece to put in it here and there when he was out working. Being quite proud of it so far today, he decided that it was time to get it finished or do something else entirely with the wood that he’d placed in the frame.

Grannie had asked him, well, all of them, for a large showpiece to put into the shop. So far, no one had done it, and he was feeling bad about it. When she’d asked him what his plans were for the day, then told him a nice table would be good, he decided to get on it as soon as he entered the shop. And so far, things had been going nicely for him. After fixing the wood planks he’d made himself, he put the barn down to dry and looked over at the pinecones he still had to form.

All he’d done to make them in miniature was to take one of the many scales that keep the seeds safe from weather and animals and shape it the way he wanted with his knives. He knew that having a lot of them, several hundred as a matter of fact, was going to take time, but he was going to make this setting look like it had been pulled right off the mountain. So far, Frazier thought he’d done about six hundred of them and decided that he was going to take a few scales in the house and work on them while watching television.

Frazier had seen something like the table he was working on online. The person had taken wood that had been thoroughly dried out and cut in to fit in the frame. His frame was fairly large for a table, but he’d been thinking at the time no one would want to buy it if it was this large. Then it would be at the store for a long time.

The wood was in two opposite corners of the frame. Taking up the upper and lower half of the mold so that when he was ready, he could fill in the empty space with his mountain scene. So far, in addition to the house and the barn, he had fashioned a garden with vegetables in it, such as corn and tomatoes. Also, he’d been able to figure out a way to make several bears, both brown and black, to be put in different places throughout the scene. The roadway was just a lot of sandstones, tiny rocks that he’d picked up pocketfuls as he’d been out on tours.

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