Charmed to Death, page 1
Charmed to Death
Sonoma Witches #4
Gretchen Galway
Eton Field
From the Back Cover
On the eve of the winter solstice, demons surround the enchanted town of Silverpool. Reckless witches want to summon more—even after one death, then another. To bring peace, Alma must use her unique magic to find the killer.
CHARMED TO DEATH
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Copyright © 2021 by Gretchen Galway
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Eton Field, Publisher
www.gretchengalway.com
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Cover design by Gretchen Galway
Stock art images: Depositphotos and Shutterstock
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All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author.
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All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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eBook ISBN: 978-1-939872-27-2
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-939872-28-9
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v.20210205
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Epilogue
A Note from Gretchen
Also by Gretchen Galway
About the Author
1
Not for the first time, screaming fairies drew me out of my house in the middle of the night.
Who’s dead now? I wondered, pulling up my hood to shield me from Northern California’s first big storm of the season. After months of summer drought, the sky had finally opened—just in time for the winter solstice. Wishing I was wearing a bra, I jogged down the hilly street that led from my bungalow to the river. I was still in my pajamas, having only paused to pull on a raincoat and garden clogs.
The fairies’ cries were coming from the Silverpool Bridge. A few voices were angry, but most were simply afraid. They didn’t know my name, but the locals had learned there was one young, female witch nearby who could hear them, and I was flattered, though unhappy with the time and weather, to be summoned again.
My rubber shoes kept slipping out from under me on the wet road. Only my magic—a gravity spell enhanced with the redwood bead necklace I wore—kept me on my feet.
I paused at the stop sign on Main Street to catch my breath. Just across from me was the bridge over the Vago River, already swelling with the sudden runoff. And right in the middle of the bridge, forming a Circle marked with glowing lanterns, was a group of people.
Witches. I took a moment to count them.
Nine.
No wonder the fae were alarmed. It looked like a Circle of Summoning, which at this time of year could only mean one thing.
I used my magic to amplify my voice. “What in Brightness are you doing?” I shouted. The rain was falling in diagonal sheets now. Not a drop for six months, then a flood.
The huddled figures on the bridge didn’t reply, but one or two looked over at me, their worried faces lit from below by the lanterns. Worried, not angry or triumphant.
They weren’t a serious threat.
I wiped the rain off my face with both hands and sighed. Something about the solstice made otherwise decent, law-abiding witches want to explore Shadow. Unfortunately, the fae didn’t know these particular witches didn’t have the heart or the skill to summon anything more dangerous than an extra gordo burrito at the taqueria down the street. The fairies were screaming as if a mob of demons was about to appear any second to consume them.
The loudest voice was coming from beneath the bridge where the river fairy hung out. I sent out a calming spell, hoping he’d quiet down. He’d spoken to me in the past—maybe my magic could touch him. His piercing cries were certainly touching my ears. Most people couldn’t hear fairies; I didn’t always appreciate my gift.
“Hey, you’re scaring the fae,” I told the witches.
“Who are you?” a voice shouted in challenge.
I paused. Some witches might use my name against me, but this crowd was too pitiful. “Alma Bellrose. I live here.”
Maybe it was because of my nightgown-and-clogs getup, but they didn’t seem intimidated by my presence.
I wiped the rain off my face again, tempted to go home and crawl back into bed. Where was Raynor? A high-profile Emerald witch and famous demon hunter, he’d arrived last week to take over the job as Protector. Keeping out witches like these tourists, as well as supernatural beings, was his job, not mine.
It was the most dangerous week of the year. With only six days until the solstice, fae from all over California had come to our remote village in the redwoods to celebrate at the magical Silverpool Wellspring. Right behind them, hungry for their spirit energy, were the demons. From the heaviness of the rain soaking my shirt, I expected the magical pool of water, triggered by floods, to appear any day now.
The witches began dancing around the blazing ring of candles. Humans weren’t supposed to know there was a wellspring here, but obviously the word had gotten out. Events of the past few months must have led to rumors, and rumors led to silence spells being broken.
I gave up on home just yet and stepped out into the street to approach the bridge.
As I got closer, I saw the lanterns didn’t even contain real flames. LEDs. With a weak show like that, the fae had nothing to worry about. Snorting to myself, I moved some of my power away from a defensive boundary spell to a rain-deflection spell.
A tall man stepped back from the Circle and pointed at me. “Stay away.” His jacket was better than mine, with nonmagical brand markings that suggested he was a well-compensated, traditionally employed individual when he wasn’t standing in a Sonoma County rural backwater in a rainstorm at midnight, trying to summon a demon.
I didn’t slow down. “Evening,” I said, stepping up on the walkway that ran beside the road across the bridge. I was about ten feet away from the edge of the Circle. “Who are you?”
“Did you not hear me, foolish stranger?” the tall witch asked. “I told you to stay away.”
“I feel the same,” I said. My rain-deflection spell was working, and I appreciated how it kept the rain out of my eyes. I looked down at the LED lanterns, some still marked with price stickers getting soggy in the downpour. “Did you get those at Cypress Hardware?” I expressed my scorn in my tone of voice.
“Begone,” another witch said. She was about my age, midtwenties, with a face heavily pierced with steel—lip, nose, eyebrows. Metal gave power, but from what I could feel from a scan, she hadn’t had much to begin with.
They weren’t going to do any real harm, but the fairies didn’t deserve to be terrorized. I was pretty sure I had the power to overwhelm a few of them, but there were nine in total, and they had the passion of their stupidity to fuel them. I’d need help.
Rather than waste my time arguing, I touched my redwood bead necklace, drew from the power in the old tree, and cast a spell that hid me in darkness. It wouldn’t have worked in daylight, but in the midnight rainstorm, it bought me a few minutes of cover, long enough to walk past them to the other side of the river.
From there it was a short walk on the shoulder to the driveway that led up the bluff to the Silverpool Vineyards. Raynor, the new Protector, had moved in last week. He must not have set up enough spells to alert him of strange activity in town or he’d be down here already. He hadn’t arrived with any apprentices or assistants, either. He’d been demoted from his big job in San Francisco. Maybe he was sleeping because he was bitter about his reduced circumstances.
The private house next to the tasting-room building was at the top of the hill. I rang the doorbell, then sent a spell through the warded threshold to give him a more effective alarm. Sizzling light flashed, and I jumped back with a yelp at the sting.
Good boundary spell. I’d been at the house many times before, but that was a new one. I decided to give him time to come to the door before risking another jolt. He finally arrived a few minutes later, opening the door with a bleary bark of annoyance.
“Alma!” he said.
“Hi, Raynor.” The
“Demon’s balls.” He did not invite me inside. “What time is it?”
I huddled under the eaves and looked behind me, down toward the bridge. “Strange witches are in town. Freaking out the fae. Don’t you hear them?”
Raynor was the only other witch I’d ever met who could also see and hear the fae, even when they didn’t want us to. We’d learned it was because we’d had demon interlopers in our family trees. Mine was recent; his was a mystery, at least to me.
He stepped out onto the landing with me, his eyes widening as the sound of the piercing cries reached him. Rain pelted his bald head. He was an impressively large, muscular man, built like a Hollywood action hero, but that didn’t stop his blue-and-white-checked pajamas from getting wet.
“What’s the matter with them?” he asked, swiping the rain off his forehead.
“Some witches are trying to make a Summoning Circle.”
“Demon’s balls,” he cursed, shaking his head. He stepped back into the house. “Hold on. I’ll be right there.”
“Wait! Don’t leave me out here. Your boundary spell zapped me.”
He called out over his shoulder, “Alma Bellrose, I invite you to enter” as he ran away into the house, his bare feet slipping on the tile. It was a rich man’s ranch home, all modern lines, monochrome palette, hard surfaces. It was perfect for a metal witch who eschewed messy, earthy things. Quite in contrast to my woodsy cottage.
He reappeared a moment later in all black, denim and fleece, and strode past me to the closet. As I watched him pull on his boots, I thought about how strange it was to see Raynor, the former Director in San Francisco, live like a normal person.
“Let’s go,” he said, gesturing at the door. Polite witches usually didn’t touch each other unless they were intimate friends or more.
I ducked back out into the rain and strode ahead, fantasizing about my warm bed. I’d left Random, my dog, snoozing on the quilt. Somehow he’d known this wasn’t a walk he’d wanted to join.
With his long legs, Raynor walked faster than me, and I had to jog to keep up with him. We hit the bottom of the hill, then turned toward the bridge. I knew immediately something was wrong.
There was nobody there.
2
“Where did you say they were?” Raynor was striding faster, his head swiveling around as he cast scanning spells.
I cast a spell of my own, but felt no sign of them. Running alongside him, I peered through the dark at the bridge to see if they’d just turned off the lanterns, but no—it was empty. “They’re gone.”
He spun around to face me. “They’re what?” Rain fell on his lips, making him spit.
“There were a bunch of them,” I said. “Nine.”
He pulled out a flashlight—nonmagical items had many benefits—and swept its beam across the bridge, road, and walkway. Then he aimed it at me. “Are you hexed?”
Recoiling from the light, I threw up a spell to extinguish the bulb. “Hey! You’re blinding me.”
“You’re sure you saw—” he began.
“You heard the fae.” I paused, realizing the unpleasant whine had stopped. “They’re calm now.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t think it did anything,” I said. “I sent a calming spell to the river fairy and told the witches to cut it out.”
He walked to the center of the bridge, in the middle of the roadway, and squatted down with his hand extended, searching for magic fingerprints. “They were here.”
“Of course they were,” I said. “I didn’t come to your house in the middle of the night for fun. The fairies were making it impossible to sleep. You should’ve been alerted too. Maybe your boundary spells are too strong.”
He grunted and stood up. “Maybe,” he said. “So where in Shadow did they go?”
I went over to the railing and looked down into the river, which was rushing from the new rain. Had they fallen in? Enough fae, when united in a common cause, could do unpredictable things.
“Well, that’s your job, isn’t it?” Turning, I smiled at him, proud my magic was keeping my face dry while his was shiny with pelting rain. “Good night, Protector.”
“How many did you say there were?”
“Nine, I think. They had the elements of a Circle set up.” I started walking toward my side of the river. “Other than the LED flames, it was textbook.”
“LED? Seriously?”
“I know, right? Maybe somebody at Cypress Hardware store could tell you who bought them. I’m sure you’ll see them around town.”
He made a frustrated sound. “I don’t want to see them. I want to block them. They’re stirring up trouble, asking for demons to come here right when the wellspring is about to show up.”
I stopped and turned to him. “That’s the idea.”
“I need your help. Tomorrow. And don’t bother arguing—I’ve got a budget now. I can pay you.”
“Now you have a budget? Didn’t you have one before?”
“It was watched too carefully,” he said. “But now I have a discretionary fund. I can pay fired Flint witches with Incurable Inabilities such as yourself whenever I want. And I want you now.”
In spite of myself, a warm flush spread through me, which I ignored. My brain knew he didn’t mean it romantically, but my body was stupid. And lonely.
More relevantly, however, my bank account was short on funds, and I was excited at the thought of remedying that situation. Selling magic beads wasn’t a direct route to financial security.
“I’ll tell you my rates,” I said. “If you can afford me, I’ll help you.”
He nodded. “I knew the money would hook you.” He turned away, casting a belated spell to shield himself from the rain. “I’ll text you in the morning.”
I watched him walk away for a moment, then turned and hurried back home. Although my face was dry, the rest of me was soaked, and garden clogs made terrible running shoes. I was cold and miserable when I reached the top of the hill where my house and two others perched on a bluff, surrounded by redwoods.
Just as I was passing the second house, my feet making squishy sounds in my shoes, the changeling Seth Dumont appeared in front of me, as dry as a cotton ball in a sauna.
“Did he believe you?” he asked.
I glanced at Seth, a handsome, dark-haired guy around thirty. Knowing he’d flirt if I showed how happy I was to see him, I kept walking. The house next door to mine was his, but just last week he’d said he was leaving town, and it had been dark all week. He and I had a long history but were now friends, or something in the neighborhood of friendship. The witches at the Protectorate, however, especially the ones guarding this town, wouldn’t want him to be here. They’d kill him if they could.
“Yes, he believed me,” I said. “I’m a very credible witch.”
Seth fell in step beside me. “He probably felt their clumsy magic on the bridge.”
“He would’ve believed me anyway,” I said.
“I made sure I left some of it, just so he wouldn’t think you were crazy.”
Annoyance shot through me. He was the one who had done something to the witches instead of letting Raynor do it.
