haven hollow 00 - 01 to 10, page 1
HAVEN HOLLOW
The First Ten Novels
Gypsy Magic
Cashmere Curses
Faerie Enchantment
Spandex Sorcery
Love’s Goddess
Demon in Denim
Taffeta Trickery
The Black Cat Cocktail Club
French Country Frights
All Hallow’s Eve
by
J.R. RAIN
&
H.P. MALLORY
The Haven Hollow Series
Gypsy Magic
Cashmere Curses
Faerie Enchantment
Spandex Sorcery
Love’s Goddess
Demon in Denim
Taffeta Trickery
The Black Cat Cocktail Club
French Country Frights
All Hallow’s Eve
Mystic Veil
The Yule Log
The Broken Mirror
Art Deco Apparitions
The Vampires Grave
Herringbone Hexes
Raising Cain
Druid’s Curse
Colonial Corpses
Angora Alchemy
Day Dream
Ritzy Business
Pan’s Delight
Armed & Charmed
The Christmas Spirit
Blood Rose
Blood Bond
Georgian Ghouls
Velvet Voodoo
Dead Ringer
Summer Solstice
Lace Laments
Enchanted Emporium
Gypsy Gold
Newlywed and Pixie-Led
Cold Blood
Hexes and Hoarfrost
Satin Superstition
Memento Mori
Silk Skullduggery
Blood & Ice
Royal Ransom
Nightmares and Numerology
Other Books by J.R. Rain
VAMPIRE FOR HIRE®
New Moon Rising
Moon Mourning
Haunted Moon
Moon Dance
Vampire Moon
American Vampire
Moon Child
Christmas Moon
Vampire Dawn
Vampire Games
Moon Island
Moon River
Moon Tales
Vampire Sun
Moon Dragon
Moon Bayou
Blood Moon
Parallel Moon
Moon Shadow
Vampire Fire
Midnight Moon
Moon Angel
Vampire Sire
Moon Master
Dead Moon
Lost Moon
Moon Vacation
Vampire Destiny
Infinite Moon
Vampire Empress
Moon Elder
Wicked Moon
Moon Shots
Winter Moon
Moon Blade
Sasquatch Moon
Moon Cases
Wild Moon
Moon Magic
Moon World
Vampire Deep
Moon Matador
Latin Moon
Sun Dance
Unicorn Moon
Missing Moon
Other Books by H.P. Mallory
PARANORMAL WOMEN’S FICTION:
Midlife Mysteries
Midlife Spirits
Haven Hollow
Misty Hollow
Trailer Park Vampire
Gwen’s Ghosts
PARANORMAL ROMANCE:
Witch, Warlock & Vampire
Lily Harper
Dulcie O’Neil
Gates of the Underworld
PARANORMAL REVERSE HAREM:
Happily Never After
My Five Kings
Haven Hollow: The First Ten Novels
Published by J.R. Rain and H.P. Mallory
Copyright © 2024 by J.R. Rain and H.P. Mallory
All rights reserved.
Ebook Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Gypsy Magic
Cashmere Curses
Faerie Enchantment
Spandex Sorcery
Love’s Goddess
Demon in Denim
Taffeta Trickery
The Black Cat Cocktail Club
French Country Frights
All Hallow’s Eve
About J.R. Rain
About H.P. Mallory
GYPSY MAGIC
Haven Hollow #1
(Poppy’s Potions)
by
J.R. RAIN
&
H.P. MALLORY
Gypsy Magic
Published by Rain Press
Copyright © 2020 by J.R. Rain & H.P. Mallory
All rights reserved.
Ebook Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Gypsy Magic
Chapter One
“That’s it?” Finn asked, turning to me in shock and doubt as we crunched to a stop in the driveway. “That’s our new house?”
I was quiet as I collected myself, both of us staring straight ahead at the dilapidated monstrosity in front of us. “That’s our really, really, really old new house,” I sighed.
“Um…”
My sentiments exactly.
The gravel drive that led to the sprawling brick farmhouse had probably washed out sometime in the early bronze age, leaving it pitted and bumpy. A line of Aspen trees threw long slats of shade onto our path, with lurid stripes of scarlet showing between them. The sun was just beginning to set over the shady outskirts of Haven Hollow, and shadows were starting to pool in the meadow just beyond the trees.
It might have been scenic... if not for the house.
The thing was rundown as all hell and looked older than Keith Richards. The screen door was hanging off the hinges; some of the ginger breading that had once decorated the ornate porch was now lying in a miserable heap beside the house, looking like it felt sorry for itself. Yep, the porch hadn’t seen a paint job since… maybe ever; and I was fairly sure the entire thing was hosting a community of termites and had been for the better part of a century.
“Oh my God,” I muttered under my breath, fingers flexing around the steering wheel. This was what I got for buying the damn thing at auction. Then I did my best to force my usual megawatt smile and flashed it at my eleven-year-old son in the passenger seat. “This place will be just… great.”
Finn’s steely blue eyes stared back at me, flat and unimpressed. He’d bothered to look up from his Gameboy, which meant he was taking this whole thing very seriously. He hadn’t outright said it, but I could see the furious doubt stirring behind his eyes. I’d promised no more haunted houses.
“Mom…”
“We are going to love it here, Finn,” I responded, trying to convince myself, as well.
He looked at the house again. “It looks haunted.”
It really did.
“And what, exactly, does a haunted house look like?” I asked, going for casual skeptic, but failing.
Finn craned his neck at the three-story farmhouse with the wraparound white porch and pointed at it. “That.”
“What do we know about negative thoughts and comments?” I asked, not meaning to sound so much like my mother, but there it was.
“That thoughts are things and negativity only breeds more negativity,” Finn quoted, rolling his eyes.
“Right!” I pulled the keys from the ignition and opened my door. Finn shook his head, sighed, and opening his door, jumped down from the Wrangler. I exited as well, wrapping my arms around myself reflexively as the wind picked up, slicing through my parka like it wasn’t there, tossing my light blonde hair into my face. Oregon weather was going to take some… getting used to. But at least we were out of Los Angeles.
And ready to start over.
Finn watched me struggle to keep a smile with all the stern judgment he could muster, though I could see his mask cracking at the edges. His sweet, round little face rejected anger like oil on water. Even though he was nearly as tall as me, he still managed to look closer to ten than the almost twelve he was. And his braces didn’t help. Between the baby-fine blonde hair and the round cheeks that wouldn’t melt away until puberty, he looked more like a cherub than a preteen.
“Bought at auction, sight unseen,” I whispered and took a deep breath as I shook my head and wondered what I’d just gotten us into.
This was exactly what I’d been worrying about for the better part of two weeks—that the house would be in this level of disrepair. But that’s what I got when I bought a house at auction. Sight unseen.
I followed Finn up the circular driveway to the front entry. The house stood in the center of the ‘U’ section of the driveway and greeted onlookers with what was once an impressive porch and a wide set of stairs that led to the front door and an immense bay window. To the left of the house was a large barn and to the right, a storage shed that was leaning so badly on one side, I was fairly sure the roof had caved in.
Great.
The grim black sign with gold calligraphy that spelled Hallowed Realty rattled on its chains as we approached. The only thing that didn’t look like it needed to be immediately torn down was the immense apple tree right beside the front porch. The thing was almost as tall as the house and covered in bright red and orange leaves and huge, round green and red apples. If we were lucky, they’d be Honeycrisp apples.
“Look, Finn, an apple tree! That means plenty of pies!”
He just looked at me and frowned, as if to let me know he was still unimpressed. So, I took a deep breath and faced the house again.
Ah, yes, the house.
Le Sigh.
Face it with a smile, that’s what my mother would say. I’d always taken that mantra to heart. Of course, my father always said smiling at a turd didn’t make it magically transform into a triple fudge brownie.
This house definitely wasn’t a triple fudge brownie.
“Let’s unlock the front door and look inside,” I said brightly.
“Let’s hope we don’t fall through the stairs on our way up,” Finn grumbled.
I walked just in front of him, not only to unlock the door, but to be the unlucky canary in case the coal mine collapsed. The door opened with a creaking sound, not unlike the cackling of a witch. A rancid odor wafted out, surrounding us in its putrid embrace. I made some sort of inarticulate sound just before gagging.
Finn waltzed into the wide foyer ahead of me, unperturbed by the smell. As a boy prone to an array of them himself, he’d probably been inoculated to the worst nature could throw at him. He craned his neck as he took in the massively high ceiling.
“What the hell died in here?” he then asked as he turned to face me and hid his nose and mouth inside his shirt.
“Language,” I coughed, eyebrows drawn together in disapproval. I couldn’t manage to wrestle the smell from the back of my throat.
I could taste it. God, what was that?
“Hell isn’t a bad word, Mom.”
“It’s not a nice word either.”
“Ah, whatever,” he said and then did a three-sixty as he started laughing. “Wow, you really did it this time.”
“What?” I asked, taking in the expanse of ancient brick walls, and even older planked wood flooring that appeared to be rotting in some places and sagging in others. “It’s… charming.”
“That’s not the word I’d use for it. Maybe ‘old’, ‘crappy’ or… seriously, Mom, what’s that smell?”
“That’s the smell of my soon to be empty bank account.”
All joking aside, the smell was probably an animal or several that had died during the many years this place sat empty. Lord knew how hard it was going to be to remove it.
“This place is totally haunted,” Finn said, shaking his head as he took a deep breath and then released it.
“Oh, come on. Not every old house is haunted!” Although, I wasn’t convinced he was wrong. Finn had the same Gypsy Traveller blood I did, but he didn’t possess the same affinity towards magic. No one knew why, but Y chromosomes just seemed to dampen magic. Witches, gypsy women, mediums, fae… all of us were almost always female.
There was something here though... I could feel it. Cold brushed across the fine bones of my face, sank into every joint and made them throb painfully. Or maybe that was just the reality of being in your early forties in an Oregon autumn. Yeah, I’d go with that for now. I really didn’t have the patience to deal with more ghosts.
Besides, there was no going back now. So, we might as well make the best of it.
“Do you want to check out the rest of the house and pick out your bedroom?” I asked, trying to maintain some level of enthusiasm.
Finn looked up the staircase and swallowed hard. “Will you come with me?”
“Sure.”
As we ascended, I could spy water damage on the walls. At the far end of the hall, the bare bones of the house showed pale in the fading light. The drywall was gone and whatever pipes had once resided within had been gutted.
Great...
My only consolation was that between the sale of the house in Los Angeles and the passing of Great Aunt Margaret, I had enough money to remodel this place and open my shop, if I approached both carefully.
Luckily, I’d bought this house for next to nothing, owing to the fact that the bank wanted it off their books. And I’d walked away with a hefty amount of cash from my inheritance. I could break even if I did this right. Heck, if my new ‘holistic medicine’ shop took off, I might actually be ahead.
I was busy trying to break my teeth on a smile as I noted cracks, uneven floors, missing fixtures and more. Finn trailed his fingers through cobwebs and dust, wiping both away on his blue and black Spock t-shirt that said ‘Trek yourself before you wreck yourself’.
“This room is too small,” Finn said as he walked into the first room on our right. I glanced inside and figured it might make a nice office.
An office I would be putting to use as soon as I could open my store. I’d already found the perfect location—a smallish storefront in the middle of the busiest street in town (which wasn’t very busy considering the population of Haven Hollow was only 680. Well, 682 now). The potential store was the only reason Finn and I had moved to Haven Hollow. Because there weren’t any witches laying claim to this tiny town.
I knocked on a peeling wood banister immediately after the thought and even crossed my fingers.
No witches. Please, please, please.
Witches were territorial and they could make your life hell if they so chose. I never wanted to cross one, if I could help it.
The next room was larger than the first and featured a giant window that revealed a lovely view of the street below and acres of open land beyond. Our nearest neighbor was at least a quarter of a mile away.
“This isn’t bad,” I said as we walked out of the room and back into the hallway. I was immediately enveloped by cold and goosebumps popped along my arms.
Nothing other than cold weather and your aging bones. Cold weather and aging bones...
“Wait… There are only four bedrooms up here?” Finn asked as he counted the rooms off the hallway on his fingers. He didn’t seem to notice the drafty hallway, so I didn’t say anything. Yep, I needed to whip up a cleansing potion and then a consecration potion… post haste.
“Right, the fifth bedroom is downstairs… the guest bedroom.”
He nodded. “I want my room to be right next to yours.”
“Okay, well I think this is the master,” I said as we entered the last room.
It was really beautiful with the high ceilings and crown molding. Well, beautiful if you could ignore the dust and canopy of spider webs. Numerous windows overlooked the street below and the apple orchard off to the right. I walked into the master bathroom and turned around, taking in the view through one window, which showed off the orchard again while the east-facing window revealed a wide expanse of… cemetery?
Oh, no.
Finn was still in the bedroom as I stared out the window, and cursed my bad luck. A cemetery? Bordering the back yard? I walked to the window and yanked it up, the old paint on the wood breaking away in my hands. But, I wasn’t concerned with it, at the moment. Instead, I leaned out to get a better look at the overgrown and ratty plot of land that was home to at least twenty headstones. As I studied it, I watched a woman emerge from behind a copse of trees. She walked between the tombstones and paused before one, kneeling down. The setting sun behind her obscured most of her, bathing her in bright yellow light, making it difficult to see.
“Hey, Mom, did you see this little closet in here?” Finn called out. I turned to look at him, where he stood at the far end of the bedroom.
“Just a second,” I said and turned back to face the woman in the graveyard. But, when I looked again, she was gone. Yet… there was something still there. Something that appeared dark in the setting sun, almost clouded by a shadowed mist. Regardless, it was much larger than a human and almost misshapen. It moved quickly, but its gait was lopsided and strange. The rich yellow light of the dying sun continued to play tricks with my eyes, so much so, that I thought I was looking at something with huge antlers and long forearms that dragged along the ground as it moved between the stones. I leaned out the window a bit more, trying to get a better visual.
Is it a deer? I asked myself.
Come on… it’s way too large to be a deer! Plus, it’s walking upright. Sort of.
“This is a pretty big bathroom, Mom,” Finn said from right behind me. I immediately pulled back and slammed my head into the wooden window frame as I turned to face him, being careful to block the view beyond the window.
“Are you okay?” Finn asked, but I couldn’t answer. I was too worried about what he might see behind me.
I turned around and looked back at the cemetery, but the creature was gone. So was the woman. And the setting sun was throwing all sorts of shadows across the tombstones, which littered the ground like uneven, rotted teeth.
