I look forward to a new Witchy Business flash fiction from Melody Johnson every year! Here is this year’s addition to the collection – and be sure to catch up with stories from previous years (links on her website!)

Love and Other Curses
By: Melody Johnson

The insult of being snared in a witch’s star was by far greater than the injury to her ankle. Had she only suffered the twisted ankle, Caterina Maye could have limped home under the light of the full moon. She could have salvaged her mission, if not her dignity. She could have smacked Harrison Davenport upside his cocky, twelve-year-old head, instead of watching him sprint out of reach, safely un-snared—the only positive outcome of this disastrous All-Hallows Eve investigation. But no. She lay spread eagle, metaphysically bound to the dirt in the swampy woodlands of Thornton, Georgia.

A wolf howled, significantly closer than the howl from five minutes prior.

This wasn’t how she’d envisioned spending her evening. Determining who was wielding death magic before sunrise would have been delightful. Arresting the witches responsible for the sudden spike in missing persons, even better. She should have known that the fantasy of her soaring career would plummet, crash, and explode the moment she crossed the border into her hometown.

A wolf stepped from the shadows.

His gray face was outlined in silver, a unique coat among the Coastal Georgia pack. As unique as his size—closer in height to a bear—and his eyes, the one feature that didn’t change when he transformed. As both wolf and man, his right eye was ice ringed by midnight, a winter storm leaving zero survivors.

His left eye was missing in a maze of raised burn scars.

Harlan Davenport.

Oh, if she survived this shitshow, his little brother was dead!

Harlan paced the perimeter of the witch’s star, a heart-jacking growl hemorrhaging from his chest.

“Stop teasing and slice my throat.” Caterina raised her chin, refusing to yank on the star’s unbreakable bonds. She would only look more like prey if she struggled, and the effort would be pointless. From the moment the star had snared her in its grip, she’d recognized its flavor of dark magic and known she was completely and irrevocably screwed.

The mechanism of release for this particular star would require a death sacrifice.

His growls tripped into silence. Harlan stomped his right front paw.

“A better fate than Clifton Heights’ coven finding me.” She suppressed a shiver—a fate she’d be experiencing soon enough.

Harlan stomped his paw twice more, then scratched at the dirt with a low, breathy huff.

“Nice to know that some things never change. The past eight years haven’t improved your communication skills.”

Harlan snarled, flashing the impressive length of one pointy fang.

“And we’ve returned to empty promises.” Caterina tipped her head back, exposing the carotid. “No one will know it was you. How would I rat without vocal cords?”

He about-faced and loped away, disappearing into the shadowed darkness between the live oaks.

The snapping crick-crack of bones breaking.

The popping grit-grind of joints realigning.

The howling rip-rake of muscles rending.

A zip of a backpack and fly later, and Harlan stalked from the shadows as a man—his least favorite of his three forms.

Caterina eyed his too-familiar faded, ripped jeans. “Make that two things that haven’t changed.”

If given physical form, the piercing impatience in that icy eye could impale her sternum.

Three—make that three things that hadn’t changed.

Harlan lifted his right palm.

“No need to raise your hand to speak. I encourage an open dialogue, something you clearly still struggle with.”

“Eight years without a word.” His palm clenched into a fist over his mouth. “Without even saying goodbye.”

And hello to you, too. “My letter said everything that needed saying.”

“You tucked tail and ran scared.”

“Scared?” Caterina laughed. “I was selected as one of three Harbingers to train in Atlanta to oversee Georgia’s covens. The dream I’d worked toward my entire life was finally coming true, and I—”

“And you were scared that, if you attempted to say goodbye in person, to my face, you’d never leave. You were scared that I’d convince you to stay. For the pack. For the coven.” Even as a man, his fangs and vocal cords never transformed completely from his wolf. His words growled. “For me.”

Caterina studied the grasping tree branches overhead, naked without their foliage. “Had I stayed, how do you see that playing out? I was a liability your pack wouldn’t tolerate.”

“You were the bridge between my pack and your coven. Our chance to come out of hiding without starting a war.”

“Yeah, being the couple between two warring families worked out so well for Romeo and Juliet.” She sighed. They’d been doomed from the start, and she’d wasted enough time and hydration on tears. “You’re welcome for saving Harrison’s ass.”

Harlan paced the witch’s star with the same stalking, predatory stroll as his wolf form. “Harrison chose slightly different words to describe your actions. Something closer to ‘stupid’ than ‘saving.’”

“Well, your brother’s frontal cortex is still developing.”

“I believe his exact words were, ‘Your maniac—I mean, mate—tried to arrest me, chased me into the woods, and got herself snared in a witch’s star.’”

“Ex-mate.”

“Since when is mating not for life?” He leaned forward and sniffed. “And you smell very much alive.”

“Your brother sprinted into the woods the second he spotted me. No hello. No explanation. Just poof into wolf form on All Hallows Eve and right into the witch’s star.”

“The witch’s star shows differently.”

“I knocked Harrison clear of the curse and took his place.”

“Caterina Maye, still the martyr.” Harlan circled the star, leaves crunching underfoot as he paced from her bound wrists to her ankles and back. “Willing to give up her health and happiness to protect her coven.” Crunch crunch. “Willing to sacrifice her future family to ensure that secrets stay secrets, instead of standing up for herself and her heart’s desire.” Crunch crunch crunch.

“Becoming a Harbinger was my heart’s desire.”

“Save your lies for someone who can’t hear your heart beating.” He knelt beside her shoulder, inches from the star. Inches from her face. “You didn’t return to Thornton for me.”

For someone with only one eye, Harlan always managed to see right through her.

“You’re here to deliver justice to the witches practicing death magic.”

Caterina stilled, but her pulse skyrocketed. “The pack knows that witches are practicing death magic?”

“I know.”

“If you know, then the pack knows.”

Something in his smile was off. His lips curled with the same smug sneer she remembered from eight years ago, sans the dimples.

Goddess, she missed those dimples.

He stood, motioned with a hand high overhead, and three women strode from the shadows, the snap and sizzle of their combined power electric.

Only one branch of magic singed the witch and scorched the air. The only branch of magic that stole more than it gave and always led to the grave.

Death magic.

One witch, dressed in a geisha costume, tapped the second with a folded fan. “I told you they’d eventually send a Harbinger.”

The second witch, a policewoman with illegally tight booty-shorts, slipped a knife from her belt. “Who could have guessed sweet little Caterina Maye would have risen so high in the ranks?”

The third witch, clad in a this-is-my-Halloween-costume cut off, shrugged. “Clearly not high enough to handle this case.”

Caterina knew nearly everyone in their tiny town of Thornton, and she certainly knew everyone in the Clifton Heights coven. These women were strangers. “Harlan?”

That smile still hadn’t dimpled. “You should have learned your lesson on martyrdom years ago.”

She didn’t look at his burn scars, but somehow, the missing eye seemed to stare at her. “You used Harrison as bait? Your own brother? Things really have changed.”

“You left. Did you think they wouldn’t?”

“But the pack—”

“We’re his pack now.” The policewitch flipped her knife—a dagger. Thin, long, and double edged with a stylized cross guard etched in protection runes. A ceremonial dagger.

Caterina probably should have been more concerned with the witch wielding a lethal weapon, but she couldn’t tear her gaze from Harlan. “You … you’re a lone wolf?”

He snatched the dagger from the policewitch and twirled the blade through his fingers.

“How could you not tell me? How could you—”

“Should I have written a letter?” He knelt over her and leaned in until one of his fangs and all his growl grazed the shell of her ear. “Bring me back.”

Caterina blinked. Bring him …

Harlan stabbed himself in the chest. Between the ribs. Through the heart.

No.

Not again.

He collapsed, hemorrhaging over the star and breaking its bonds with his death.

Caterina rolled to her feet. The three witches were already sprinting out of sight, damn it. She could pursuit them. Even with a twisted ankle, rage and adrenaline would carry her weight, no problem. Returning to Atlanta with an arrest after only one night of investigation would be some sort of record. Fastest break in a death magic case to date.

But the witches weren’t running from her.

The snapping crick-crack of bones breaking.

The popping grit-grind of joints realigning.

The howling rip-rake of muscles rending.

Groaning. Panting. Leaves crunched underfoot as he unfurled, and Harlan stood in the center of the dead witch’s star, eight feet of unkillable muscle with a wolf’s head and three-inch talons spiking each finger.

His favorite form.

Harlan tipped his head at the full moon and howled.

Caterina didn’t bother unsheathing a potion, whispering a spell, or conjuring a ward. Only one weapon could slay a werewolf.

Before he ran amuck and murdered someone, she lunged for his neck, climbed his body until they were mouth to muzzle, and slanted her lips over his.

The mouth of a monster—as dear and dangerous as the man underneath.

Eight years hadn’t lessened the lock his embrace had on her senses. His pine fresh skin. His mocha-mint tongue. His moaning surrender. Every smell, taste, and sound bittersweet in its familiarity. In its perfection. In its impossibility.

Nauseating to know that some things never changed.

Crick-crack—the possessive press of his claws at her lower back reformed into hands

Grit-grind—his muzzle shrank and softened into lips.

Rip-rake—his form compressed into his five-foot ten self, and all too quickly, her feet replanted on firm ground.

Harlan dropped his arms to his sides, and Caterina realized that her hands were still clutching his neck.

Like severing a limb, she released her hold and nodded at the broken star. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” he growled. “You’re coming with me to explain this mess to my Alpha.”

Double damn it. “Not a lone wolf then?”

“Lying comes with the territory while working undercover.”

She rubbed her forehead, too little too late to stave off the coming migraine. “Undercover?”

“The witches aren’t the only faction hunting practitioners of death magic. The last few months have been …” Harlan winced, knuckling his chest. His wound was healed, but his shredded T-shirt was still soaked scarlet. “People are missing.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here. But are circumstances so dire that the pack is really risking coming out of the closet?”

“If we don’t stop this at the source, people will discover the truth. About witches. About wolves. About me. And we’ll be blamed for all of it.” He reached up and bridged the distance between them. He was going to graze her cheek or tuck her hair or—he brushed a leaf from her shoulder. “We can use all the help we can get.”

Caterina ignored the blaze sizzling her cheeks. “You’re willing to team up with a Harbinger? You, who once set fire to our high school football stadium to prevent your father from forcing you to play left tackle?”

“I’m willing to team up with you.” He bent over her, buried his nose in the thick of her leaf-embedded hair, and inhaled. “Welcome home.”

Copyright © 2026 Melody Johnson

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locals is entirely coincidental. 

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Edited by: Emily Harmston