Spell Bound, page 1
SPELL BOUND
Also by Gretchen Rue
Something Wicked
SPELL BOUND
Gretchen Rue
www.headofzeus.com
First published in the United States in 2023 by Crooked Lane Books,
an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
First published in the UK in 2024 by Head of Zeus,
part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Ashley MacLennan, 2023
The moral right of Ashley MacLennan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (PB): 9781035904280
ISBN (E): 9781035904310
Cover design: Meg Shepherd/Head of Zeus
Head of Zeus
First Floor East
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM
For my mother, Jo-Anne.
My first fan, my biggest fan,
the best person I know.
Contents
Also by Gretchen Rue
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Recipes
Easiest Sourdough Starter
Cheddar-Jalapeño Sourdough Bread
Homemade Ricotta Cheese
Amy’s Breakfast Hand Pies
Peach’s Signature Butter Smash Burger
Acknowledgments
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
Chapter One
“Dead people have the best books.”
I looked down at the newspaper that had been placed in front of me, then up at the woman who had put it there. Imogen Prater, the only other full-time employee who worked at the little bookstore-slash-tea shop that I owned, was staring down at me expectantly, her brown eyes gleaming.
Imogen was usually pretty stoic, rarely wearing her expressions so keenly on her face, so I leaned back on my stool and picked up the newspaper she had slapped down.
“I’m sorry, did you say dead people?”
She nodded eagerly, reaching over the top of the page to tap an area of specific interest. “Look, there’s going to be a massive estate sale at the old Weatherly mansion in Barneswood. The former owner was apparently a massive bibliophile. Phoebe, I bet there are thousands of books in the library.”
I read the item she was pointing to, which did indeed advertise a large estate sale and auction happening the next day. I then glanced past Imogen to the bookstore behind her. While the shelves still appeared to be full and we had several boxes of extra stock in the basement we could use to top them off—not to mention the new releases that arrived weekly—I had to admit that our bargain bin was looking a little barren. And the idea of going to an estate sale to scout for books was pretty enticing.
It had been about seven months since I’d inherited the Earl’s Study from my aunt Eudora and moved to the small town of Raven Creek to take over the business and start my life from scratch. Divorced, without a home or a sense of direction, I had mourned my aunt’s passing, but was also grateful to her for the opportunity she’d given me.
I had a new home—a beautiful Victorian mansion, no less—and a thriving business to run. Between that and Bob, the fat orange tabby cat she’d left behind, Eudora had given me everything I needed to start fresh and feel fulfilled. Of course, my introduction to life in Raven Creek hadn’t gone totally smoothly.
My first week in town, someone had ended up dead behind my shop, and I’d gotten myself on the wrong side of the town busybody, Dierdre Miller. Seven months later, no one else had died, thankfully, but Dierdre still wasn’t terribly fond of me.
Being more settled into my place in the little town also meant I no longer felt too guilty about taking a day off work at the shop or making big decisions on behalf of the business. It was my business, after all.
“It says here it starts at eleven. I’m supposed to work the morning shift tomorrow …” I worked the morning shift almost every day, as Imogen wasn’t an early bird, and Eudora had always been the one to open the shop. I wasn’t much of a morning person either, but I’d learned to enjoy the quiet time the mornings offered me. I would go for a run, weather permitting, then load Bob up into the most ludicrous cat backpack I’d ever seen, and we would bike over to the shop together.
Charlie Bravebird at the pet store had sold me on the backpack when I’d admitted that I wanted to keep bringing Bob to work with me but hated wasting gas and hurting the environment by driving such a short distance. I didn’t want to walk with Bob’s carrier, though, even if we lived fairly close. The backpack looked like something out of a sci-fi movie, with little bubble windows Bob could see out of and breathing holes to give him air. And much to my surprise, he loved it.
Every morning, once he finished scarfing down breakfast, he would go to the front door and sit next to the backpack, letting out a plaintive “Mrow?” as he waited for me to get ready.
Over the winter we’d eschewed the bike in favor of a warm car, but now that spring was turning into summer and the weather was delightful when it wasn’t raining, we biked.
Currently, Bob was curled up in one of the big leather armchairs next to the fireplace, dozing. In the other chair was old Mr. Loughery, who came in every day for tea and to read his latest used-book purchase. When he finished the book—he was currently reading a Laura Lippman mystery—he’d trade it back in for store credit and start the process all over again. He had done this pretty much since Eudora opened the shop. I liked the comfort of the routine. Plus Mr. Loughery gave good feedback about new test recipes from my little kitchen.
We didn’t make a lot of food at the Earl’s Study, as it wasn’t a restaurant, but we liked to supplement the pastries we brought in daily from the Sugarplum Fairy next door with ones we made ourselves. Our Earl Grey Tea Shortbread was hugely popular, and I’d started adding homemade sourdough toasts to the menu a few times a week. Sometimes we did avocado toast with eggs on top; other times I’d do a ricotta toast with figs and honey. No matter what was on the menu, it always disappeared by the time the lunch rush died down.
I looked from Mr. Loughery, who was currently asleep, snoring softly, back to Imogen. “If I open up shop tomorrow, do you think you could come in for nine instead of ten? That would give me enough time to get to Barneswood before the sale starts.”
“Bless you for not asking me to get here for seven,” Imogen laughed, brushing her long black braids over her shoulder. She changed the color in them on a semiregular basis, augmenting the black hair of the braids with fun statement pieces. Right now she was sporting electric blue, which managed to give her dark skin an almost golden undertone. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
“Obviously, I’ll give you overtime for the extra hour,” I added, as if she still might need convincing.
Imogen scoffed. “Thank you, but it’s not exactly a hardship to come in for an extra hour.”
“We can call Daphne to help you for the lunch rush. I know she’s always looking for more hours than just her weekend shifts.” I wished I could give the girl more time on a regular basis, but the shop was rarely busy enough to justify the added wages, and while we were doing well, we weren’t doing so well that I could manage another full-time staffer.
It was a small town, after all, and while tourist traffic was beginning to pick up now that winter was over, I still liked to keep the budget tight to balance out the off-season slow times where it was mostly just locals coming in to collect special orders or stock up in case they got snowed in.
Being “snowed in” in the Pacific Northwest didn’t look the way it did in the Midwest, by any means, but it rankled me sometimes that people made fun of our responses to ice storms. I’m sorry, but have you ever tried driving a car up a sharply inclined hill when the road is a literal sheet of ice? Try walking up it. Impossible.
I cut out the notice from the paper and went to the office to slip it into my wallet. I had a relatively decent idea of where the sale was, and I’d driven to Barneswood a few times since I’d moved to Raven Creek, but just in case I got lost, I wanted to have the details handy.
Looked like I was going on a store-sponsored shopping spree. I had to admit I was more than a little excited.
Chapter Two
The next day dawned bright and cheerful. After the long winter with its gloomy mornings, it was such a relief in May to have the sun come up before I did. I turned on the coffeemaker and fed Bob his favorite wet food before lacing up my running shoes and heading out the door for my morning jog.
It was just before six, and I went only about three miles, which gave me enough time to run home and have a quick shower before meeting Amy at the Sugarplum Fairy around seven. She was there a lot earlier than that prepping breads and pastries for the day, but seven was plenty early enough for me.
The morning run had become a part of my ritual, and while it had often been too cold or otherwise difficult to do it over the winter, I tried to get one in whenever I could. The morning air today was crisp, still holding the tiniest hints of winter’s chill, and I was glad I’d decided to wear my long-sleeved running jacket.
While the forecast for the rest of the day was sunny and warm, we weren’t quite at that point yet, and I didn’t want to catch a cold. My long, nearly black hair swayed back and forth in its high ponytail as I ran, and my running playlist pounded out a beat that matched my footfalls. There’s nothing quite like a little Destiny’s Child on a spring morning to put some extra bounce in your step.
I completed my short loop, waving to early-morning dog parents who had to let their fur-children out before the workday began. I remembered the dogs’ names but rarely the people’s. Eugene was the little corgi whose owner was a middle-aged woman with a graying pixie cut, and Goliath was the towering Great Dane who belonged to a tall, slender man with thick black glasses and a neatly trimmed goatee. I saw them both like clockwork every morning, and we waved in mutual early-bird greeting but rarely stopped to chat.
There were a handful of other regulars I sometimes saw: a Chihuahua named Tank, and three golden retrievers named Sandra, Ruth, and Sonia, which made me chuckle every time their owner called them inside. Naming your dogs after female Supreme Court justices was absolutely fabulous, and I often wondered what the older woman with her coiled gray perm had done for a living, because she certainly appeared to be retired now.
After my three-mile loop was complete, I jogged back up my front steps and paused on the top board as it let out a loud creak.
Since I knew I hadn’t suddenly put on any extra weight, I didn’t think the board was protesting that. I stepped backward, then onto the board again, and sure enough, it groaned and sagged under me.
I let out a loud sigh. Auntie Eudora’s house was glorious, truly a beautiful thing to behold, looking for all the world like somewhere the Addams family would feel at home if they decided to go on vacation. But it was also very old, and in my aunt’s later years, she hadn’t been able to do as much maintenance on it as she had when she was young and spry.
I’d been trying to ignore a lot of the necessary upkeep over the winter, but evidently the months of wet snow and ice had taken a bit of a toll on the front porch and steps.
Cautiously I moved around the porch, testing out several of the graying boards, and found quite a few places that bowed under my weight.
Replacing them was going to have to go to the top of my to-do list.
I wondered vaguely if I might be able to bribe Rich and Leo— with a case of good local craft beer and some delicious pizza from Tony’s Pizzeria—into providing a little elbow grease and getting the job done.
When I’d visited Raven Creek as a kid and stayed with Eudora, I’d befriended two local boys, Leo and Ricky, and we’d been fast friends for about as long as it was cool for boys and girls to be buddies at that age, and then as teens we’d drifted apart. My family moved to Chicago, and I’d stopped coming to visit as frequently. But Leo and Rich had remained close to Eudora, and she had put them to work quite often in their teen years helping with upkeep on the old house. Maybe it was time to get them back into the habit.
After I’d come back to town, I’d reconnected with the boys, who were now fully grown men, obviously, and while it had initially felt as if something might be blossoming between me and Rich, we’d put things on an extended hold almost immediately. We were both freshly divorced, and starting a new romance seemed like a recipe for disaster.
Leo, I suspected, might like to ask me out, but he was shy and hadn’t taken the plunge yet. While he wasn’t my normal type—he was a big bear of a man, tall and heavy, with a big beard—I thought I would say yes.
Well, I’d give them a call when I got back from Barneswood to see what their weekend plans were. Didn’t make sense to put off the inevitable with the porch, and I could probably pick up some lumber on my way home today. Raven Creek had only a small hardware store, but Barneswood had a proper lumberyard.
I checked my watch, then ducked into the house quickly to grab a tape measure from the kitchen junk drawer. I couldn’t exactly buy lumber if I didn’t know what I needed. Back out on the porch, I realized just how major of a job it would be to get the whole porch completed and decided beer and pizza wouldn’t cut it for something of that scale. But we could probably get the entrance boards replaced over the weekend so I didn’t accidentally put my foot through them coming home after a run.
I did a quick measurement of the area I thought was most vital to tackle, including the front steps themselves, and jotted the numbers down on my phone. By the time I finished, I had only about five minutes for a quick shower, which wasn’t nearly enough for the water to heat up properly, and I was grateful to my past self for setting out my clothes the day before so I didn’t need to think about it.
While the weather was turning toward summery, it was still cool enough in the mornings and evenings to justify long sleeves. But in the Earl’s Study, we had the fireplace going, and the heat from the ovens as I baked bread and cookies also kept me pretty toasty. I opted for a pair of nice jeans, my comfiest black loafers—standing all day meant smart footwear ruled over cute, and who knew what the estate sale situation would be like—a light-gray T-shirt with an Alphonse Mucha art print on the front with shiny gold highlights accenting it in places so I glittered in the right light, and a cinnamon-colored long cardigan that fell to my knees. The cardigan had actually belonged to Eudora and was one of several items of her clothing I had salvaged from her closets to keep for myself. The rest had been donated to a local thrift store, but I was impressed by some of Eudora’s clothing choices and loved that she had favored high-quality wardrobe staples that felt timeless enough to easily blend into my existing wardrobe. Between the cardigan and the T, I was set for any kind of weather that might come my way.
Bob was waiting for me at the front door when I finished getting dressed, his orange tail swishing back and forth and his big yellowgreen eyes watching me carefully. He had noticed that his backpack wasn’t at the door waiting, and the judgment in his expression was as clear as day.
“Mreow,” he trilled.
“Don’t look at me like that. You’re still coming; we’re just taking the car today. Though I probably should leave you at home rather than force poor Imogen to deal with that stare all day.”
He slow-blinked at me and made a little mrr sound, which I knew meant he didn’t believe I’d leave him behind and that Imogen loved spending time in his company because he was a perfect gentleman with her.
When I’d first taken ownership of Eudora’s estate, no one had told me there was a cat involved in the package. He’d just been waiting on the porch for me when I arrived. Leo told me later that Eudora had asked him to come by periodically to feed the cat before I arrived, and Leo had been very generous with Bob at mealtimes. The ginger menace had been quite the chonk when I’d met him. He was still a big boy but definitely a bit healthier now.
