Spell Disaster (Silver Hollow Paranormal Cozy Mystery Series Book 2) Read online

  Ember was the first, carrying her kittens, Bellatrix and Endora, in a cauldron-shaped tote bag, as they were still too young to trot around on their own.

  “How is the bonding coming?” Issy asked as Ember took out first Bellatrix, the white one, and then Endora, the black one, and set them on the ground. As soon as they were loose, Bella ran over, and the three of them sniffed each other in greeting then tumbled happily in a ball of black, white, and orange fur.

  “Pretty good. I think Endora tried to communicate a thought to me today.” Ember smiled fondly at the cats and then turned to Issy. “What about you?”

  “Bella is coming along. She might have tried to tell me something about Luigi this morning, but it was a bit garbled,” Issy said.

  “Well, it does take months and sometimes even years for the bonding to happen.”

  “I know. Though having Brimstone around might not be helping. He can be kind of a negative influence, and I hope his vibes aren’t stunting Bella’s growth.”

  Raine came around the side of the house, holding her familiar, Mortimer, a Venus flytrap, in her arms. “Brimstone talks tough, but he’s very fond of the new familiars. They’ll come along in time. Just like Morty.” Raine tapped the plant pot affectionately.

  “What’s it like communicating with a plant?” Issy asked. Raine’s way with plants was legendary, so it wasn’t unusual that her familiar was a Venus flytrap. But Issy had never been able to communicate with plants. Dogs, cats, even lizards and toads, yes, but not plants. “Do they have the same kinds of thoughts as animals?”

  Raine shrugged and poked a stick into the fire pit, sending orange sparks up into the air. “Sort of, you just have to know how to interpret them. Plants are better at some things than animals. And it’s much easier to leave them somewhere and have them absorb the feelings and emotions. Remember how we did that at Hans Geller’s?”

  Raine referred to earlier in the summer when they’d been tracking down a dark witch. They’d left Mortimer in an office where they thought there might be nefarious dealings. In that way, a plant was much superior as a familiar because you could plunk them anywhere and no one would think twice. That came in handy since Issy or Ember couldn’t very well leave the kittens or Bella at someone’s office. “I suppose Morty does have his uses.”

  “And he looks good on an end table,” Ember added.

  They all sat down around the fire pit and grabbed the sticks they’d whittled down to perfect marshmallow-roasting points. Issy stretched her feet out, digging her toes into the warm sand.

  “You really think Enid conjured a demon?” Raine asked, her face illuminated by the huge campfire. “Issy, can you pass the marshmallows?”

  “Sure thing.” She picked up the bag and passed them to Ember, who sat beside her around the large fire pit. “And yeah, I’m pretty sure. That black hole was not normal.” Issy shivered despite the heat of the flames and the warm summer night. “You guys should’ve seen it—all big and dark and fathomless.”

  “Yikes.” Ember took out a marshmallow and jabbed it onto the end of her stick before handing the bag to Raine. Her long wavy hair looked even darker auburn tonight, and her emerald eyes sparkled. “That sounds terrifying.”

  “Terrifying and stinky,” Gray said, joining their group, his large white cockatoo familiar, Cosmo, perched on his shoulder. “Sorry I’m late. Got behind with a cut and style.”

  “No problem.” Raine handed him a roasting stick. “S’mores again. Courtesy of Issy and Ember.”

  “Awesome.” Gray took a seat on a log beside Issy then picked up one of the homemade chocolate bars and narrowed his aqua eyes on Ember. “These aren’t enchanted, are they? I’ve got enough trouble keeping the ladies at bay.”

  “Not a drop of love potion. Witch’s honor.” Ember crossed her heart and grinned. “I can’t help it, though, if you’re just a born stud muffin.”

  Gray shook his head and stared into the fire. With his muscled brawn and shoulder-length midnight-black hair, he looked as though he’d walked right off the decks of some pirate ship. The bird only added to his swashbuckling aura.

  Issy chuckled. “Hard day at the office?”

  “You have no idea.” He sighed. “My power went out three times this afternoon.”

  “Mine too,” Issy said. “Another reason why I’m afraid Enid might have summoned a demon. I seem to recall something about them messing around with energy.”

  “Could be.” Raine stroked Morty’s leaves. “I’ve heard that too.”

  “What do you think it wants?” Ember nibbled on a freshly made s’more and cuddled Endora and Bellatrix, in her lap.

  “Don’t know.” Issy poked her empty stick into the fire, stirring the coals. Bella snoozed on the ground near her feet. “We’re not even sure what kind it is yet. Or even if there is one.”

  “The power outages could be everyone’s air conditioners. It’s been sweltering, and demand might overload the system.” Gray stopped with his s’more halfway to his mouth as all attention zeroed in on him. His cockatoo familiar, Cosmo, squawked loudly from his left shoulder. “Or not.”

  “At least that excuse will give us a good cover with the normal folk around town,” Issy offered. “And, hopefully, Luigi.”

  “Ugh. Seriously, people.” Brimstone strutted over and took residence on the log beside Ember. He eyed the young kittens warily then preened a moment before continuing. “It doesn’t matter what kind of demon it is. They all wreak havoc by attaching to energy because they have no physical body. Everyone knows this.”

  Issy stuck a marshmallow onto her stick then plunged it into the fire once more. “Okay, say we’re dealing with a phantom demon who craves voltage. Where will he get it?”

  “Wherever he can,” Brimstone continued. “Computers. Light fixtures. Car batteries. Anywhere with a power source.”

  “Huh.” Raine shoved her last bite of graham cracker into her mouth, her stick-straight copper hair brushing her shoulders as she shrugged. “Well, I guess we can count ourselves lucky it’s not like the demons in all those horror movies. They like to possess people’s bodies and make them do heinous things.”

  Brimstone narrowed his orange gaze but remained silent.

  “Okay.” Issy blew on her toasted marshmallow, then slid it off between two chocolate-bar-lined graham crackers and squished it all together before taking a bite. The sweetness of the crackers and smoky melted marshmallow blended perfectly with the slight bitterness of the chocolate and tasted like nirvana. “These are yummy by the way, Ember.”

  “Mmm.” Gray agreed around a mouthful of food. Once he swallowed, he said, “So what do we do now? Power outages, fathomless holes, the stinky smell of sulphur—seems like Enid really might have summoned a demon. Maybe it’s all a big coincidence, but we can’t take that chance with Luigi breathing down our necks. He’s already suspicious. So, say Enid did summon a demon, how would we get rid of it?”

  “Sage,” Ember said, her tone decisive. “It’s the ultimate purifier. Demons hate sage. All we have to do is burn some and send the thing back to where it came from.”

  “Finding it shouldn’t be hard, right?” Raine stood and wiped her hands down the front of her overalls. Given that she spent most of her days digging in the dirt or holed away in her greenhouse, her practical outfit made sense. “All we have to do is follow these weird electrical outages. If there’s a demon, we’ll send it back, and if not, then no harm done.”

  “Sounds good to me. I say we get on it.” Gray pushed to his feet as well then ran his finger down Cosmo’s back. “The sooner, the better. Before anything worse happens.”

  “Agreed.” Ember placed her kittens back into the tote bag beside her.

  “I’ve got sage handy already. Just let me know where and when.” Raine hefted Morty’s pot onto her hip.

  “Cool.” Issy picked up a tired Bella. “I’ll see if I can figure out a pattern to the energy fluctuations. Maybe we can use them to predict where this demon might
strike next. If so, there’s a chance we can get there first and banish it once and for all, before Luigi even suspects it’s here.”

  3

  The next afternoon, Issy sat beneath a dryer at Sheer Magic, listening intently to the conversations around her. Everyone knew that the best place to find out all the local gossip was on Tuesday afternoons at her cousin’s hair salon, so after lunch, she’d left Enchanted Pets in the hands of her trusty assistant, Hannah, and headed on over. Besides, she’d been overdue for a cut, anyway.

  The cashier at the local pharmacy sat to her right and chatted away endlessly on her phone about their weird power outage earlier that morning around six. Issy scribbled the time and location down in her notebook then tuned into the conversation to her left—the wife of Silver Hollow’s grocery store owner. According to that lady, all their freezers had died about three hours after the pharmacy outage. Behind her, the gal who ran the register at the penny candy store said they had a blackout three hours after that.

  Pattern detected.

  It seemed that their demon needed an energy feed every three hours.

  Issy then sketched out a crude map of Silver Hollow. By connecting the dots of the three locations, it gave her a rough idea of the direction the demon was moving in. If her hunches were correct, that meant the demon should make his next move on the town’s diner at…

  She glanced at her watch.

  Three p.m.

  Adrenaline coursing through her bloodstream, Issy pulled out her phone to text Raine and Ember then slid out from beneath her dryer and headed to where Gray was working his magic on one of his patrons.

  “I’ve got the next location,” she whispered while her cousin snipped tiny sections of hair. “Three o’clock this afternoon. The diner on the corner. You in?”

  “Aw, I can’t today. Playing catch-up after yesterday’s outages. I’ll send you good vibes, though.”

  “Okay.” Issy removed the salon’s black smock then finger-styled her strawberry-blond curls in the mirror before heading out. “See you around.”

  “See you,” Gray called from behind her. “Be careful. And stay out of trouble.”

  Two hours later, the three female Quinn cousins sat on a bench in the town green, staring at the tiny diner on the corner. Through the restaurant’s front windows, Issy spotted Enid inside, and her heart ached a bit for the elderly woman eating all alone. It was better she didn’t know about the demon she may have conjured. With her memory issues and all, Enid had enough problems. Besides, Issy and her cousins could handle the demon on their own.

  “Did you bring the good sage?” Issy asked Raine.

  “Heck yeah.” She held up a black-ribbon-tied bundle. “Most potent in the bunch and straight from my greenhouse.”

  “Great.” After a quick check of her watch, Issy stood and started toward the alleyway beside the diner. “Let’s go.”

  They crossed the street. Enid saw them through the window and waved. Rushing, the three hurried past the diner and into the mouth of the alley, taking refuge against a tall fence that encircled the restaurant’s dumpster.

  Raine wrinkled her nose at the smelly scent of rot in the air. “Remind me again why we can’t do this inside?”

  “Why don’t you just send Luigi Romano an engraved invitation to come arrest you too while you’re at it?” Issy gave her cousin a perturbed look. “We can’t just walk in there and start burning sage and exorcising demons.”

  “Point taken,” Raine said. “Luigi’s presence is an added complication to this whole mix. Do you really think he would throw the book at Enid?”

  “I was wondering that too,” Ember said. “He doesn’t seem as mean or tough as I thought he’d be. I would have thought the committee would be ready to crack down after they caught someone in Silver Hollow doing dark magic. But Luigi seems kind of mellow.”

  “He didn’t seem mellow when he thought Enid or Gray or I were practicing illegal magic yesterday.” Issy chewed on her bottom lip. “But now that you mention it, he isn’t as mean as I expected him to be. And all this business with the pizza. He seems to be more focused on that than on finding violations for the committee.”

  “Maybe he has another agenda,” Raine suggested.

  “Maybe, but right now, we need to get rid of this demon whether Luigi is going to punish Enid or not. It won’t do to have a demon loose in town.”

  “No kidding.” Ember made a face. “I ruined two batches of fudge this morning because the electricity went out.”

  “We can’t have that,” Raine said. “Could start a riot in town.”

  Issy shushed them both. “Keep your voices down. We don’t want anyone coming back here and sticking their noses into our little exorcism.” She pointed toward the brick wall. “The diner’s electrical box is right there. If our demon starts blowing circuits, we’ll know he’s fighting us. If not, I think we can assume we’ve vanquished him.”

  “Fine,” Raine whispered. “Let’s just hurry, okay? Before I pass out from the stench.” She carefully snipped off a large stem of sage and whispered an incantation before setting it ablaze then walked around in a small circle, eyes closed, repeating the same spell seven times. Finally, she stopped and opened her eyes, smiling. “Done.”

  “All righty, then.” Ember sighed. “Seems to have worked. No power zaps to report so far.”

  “Yep.” Issy checked her watch again. 3:05. It seemed that they had done it. She gave a relieved sigh and rolled her tense shoulders. “Well, that was ea—”

  A bloodcurdling scream pierced the air, and Issy’s stomach lurched.

  All three cousins slowly peeked around the edge of the fence to see a terrifying sight.

  The cook from the diner stood over the dead body of a young redheaded dishwasher. A meat cleaver protruded ominously from the victim’s back while blood pooled on the trash below her. The distinct smell of sulphur wafted through the scene.

  It seemed that the demon had struck again.

  And, this time, it had turned deadly.

  4

  “Explain to me again what you guys are doing here,” Deputy Deirdre Clawson—otherwise known as DeeDee—of the Silver Hollow PD said. She eyed the three Quinn cousins pointedly while the town sheriff, Owen Gleason, processed the murder scene.

  “We were just out for a walk,” Issy said. “Don’t tell me that’s against the law now too.”

  “No. Walking’s fine.” DeeDee glanced behind her then leaned closer. EMTs zipped the victim into a body bag then wheeled the gurney over to the waiting ambulance that would take the body to the hospital morgue. “As long as that’s all you were doing.”

  DeeDee, being a werewolf shifter and part of the paranormal community of Silver Hollow, served as more than an upholder of the law in town. She kept their all-too-human sheriff from finding out about all the magic lurking just beneath their tiny lakeside village’s surface.

  “Of course that’s all we were doing,” Ember said. “Why would you think otherwise?”

  “Well, let’s see. Maybe because of all the stuff that went down with the Drummond case? Or maybe because mayhem follows you Quinns around like a loyal pup? Or maybe…” DeeDee raised her superhumanly sensitive nose and sniffed. “Because it smells an awful lot like sage out here.”

  Raine harrumphed and crossed her arms. “We were just standing there, behind the fence, when we heard the scream. Witch’s honor.”

  “For all your sakes, I hope that’s true.” DeeDee turned back to watch Owen dig around in the dumpster for any clues they might’ve missed, and Issy couldn’t help noticing her spiffy new uniform. It looked several sizes smaller than before, and her hair and makeup were done too. Huh. It seemed that ever since Gray had done a full-moon ritual on DeeDee’s behalf earlier in the summer, she was turning into quite a fashion plate. She’d even gotten a new hairstyle from him.

  Issy didn’t blame her, though. DeeDee hadn’t been blessed with sleek good looks. She’d been a bit on the feral side and downright
hairy before. But Gray’s ritual had spiffed her up. And she was definitely taking advantage of her new good looks with the eligible bachelors in town. Issy didn’t blame her on that either. According to wolf pack rules, DeeDee might not have long to sow her wild oats.

  The deputy glanced back at Issy, gaze narrowed. “Are there any peculiar elements I should keep away from Owen?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure.” Issy stopped short of mentioning the demon they’d been tracking. She didn’t like keeping things from DeeDee, but for all she knew, this really could’ve been just a regular old murder. Never mind the lingering bubble of dread swelling in her chest that told her otherwise.

  Taking Raine by the arm, Issy drew her cousin away from the others a few steps. “Are you sure that sage was strong enough?”

  “Define sure,” Raine said.

  Ember joined them, frowning. “She grows the most potent sage in three counties. If that’s not enough to banish bad demons, I don’t know what is.”

  “DeeDee, I need an evidence container,” Owen called from where he was crouched beside the dumpster, his right arm halfway under it.

  “Oh, newt shizzle. That doesn’t sound good.” Issy exhaled slowly then moved closer to the crime scene again to see what they’d found. She’d never seen Owen process a crime scene so diligently before. Then again, they didn’t usually have murders in the Hollow. Not until recently, anyway, and ever since the last murder, Owen had been getting more serious about his job. Issy wasn’t convinced that was a good thing.

  Owen was a good guy, but she preferred it when he made surfing and paddleboarding a priority. It was better for the paranormals if he didn’t pay much attention to the crimes in town. Owen knew nothing of paranormal activity, and they’d learned long ago, the less the humans were exposed to the magic side of things, the better. Not only that, but when a paranormal crime ended in a murder investigation, things could get sticky.