New Ghosts, Old Tricks (A Return to Magic Cozy Mystery Book 2), page 1
New Ghosts, Old Tricks
A RETURN TO MAGIC COZY MYSTERY BOOK TWO
LILY HARPER HART
HARPERHART PUBLICATIONS
Copyright © 2023 by Lily Harper Hart
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Contents
1. One
2. Two
3. Three
4. Four
5. Five
6. Six
7. Seven
8. Eight
9. Nine
10. Ten
11. Eleven
12. Twelve
13. Thirteen
14. Fourteen
15. Fifteen
16. Sixteen
17. Seventeen
18. Eighteen
19. Nineteen
Mail List
Acknowledgments
Books by Lily Harper Hart
Books by Amanda M. Lee
One
“Barney, come here a second.”
Harper Harlow-Monroe held up a facial towelette and waited for her godson to come over. He was playing with the other kids—his sister Buffy and Harper’s daughter Poe to be precise—but he had something smeared on his face, and she knew her best friend Zander Pritchett would melt down if he saw the mess. Having kids had mellowed him on some things. A messy face was not one of them.
“What did you just call him?” Zander demanded from the other side of their picnic site. Since it was early spring, the two families—who lived across the road from one another—had decided to do their first picnic of the season down by the river behind Harper and her husband Jared’s house.
It hadn’t been going all that well.
Harper managed to keep her expression neutral, but it wasn’t easy. Zander had been mad at her for weeks, ever since she’d told his son Barnabas that he didn’t have to go by that name if he didn’t feel like it. It was a lot of name for a five-year-old. Barney had jumped at the chance to lighten things up.
Thus, World War III officially hit in the aftermath.
“Mind your own business,” Harper called out as she used the wipe on Barney’s face. The boy was adorable, big cheeks and eyes, but there was a lightness about him ever since he’d started informing people his name was Barney. Harper couldn’t be certain, but she had a feeling that Barney was enjoying it so much because it irritated Zander. Since Zander would’ve done the same thing to his parents at Barney’s age, Harper found the entire thing entertaining.
“That’s better, huh?” She grinned at the boy, who returned her smile with no hesitation. She was Barney’s godmother—along with his twin sister Buffy—but they called her “Aunt Harper,” and that’s what she considered herself to be. She and Zander had been best friends since they were children, and the friendship remained intact even now that they were in their thirties. Well, mostly intact. Zander really was mad about the Barney thing.
“Cool beans.” Barney shot her a thumbs-up.
Harper smirked. “Where did you hear that saying?” She knew darned well that Zander and his husband, Shawn, would never utter those words together.
“One guess,” Zander hissed as he drifted closer to the duo. His dark hair was slicked back with sweat—chasing three kids under the age of six around was work—and the fire in his eyes told Harper she already knew the answer.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Jared ordered when multiple sets of eyes moved to him. He was helping Buffy put together a kite they’d bought at the store when deciding to throw their first picnic of the year. “That’s a very cool saying.”
Harper’s lips twitched. Her husband was effortlessly cool. He didn’t care that his sayings were dated or that Zander was convinced his nipples needed their own ZIP code. He was a chill guy, and a patient father and godfather. He didn’t care what others thought.
“Tell him that saying has got to go,” Zander ordered.
“Yeah, I think I’m okay with him teaching the kids ‘cool beans’,” Harper argued. She absently cleaned Barney’s hands while she had the wipe out. “It’s better than a few months ago when you taught them Gucci sandals were a necessity of summer this year.”
“Gucci slides,” Zander shot back. “There’s a difference. I would never suggest kids under the age of thirteen wear freaking sandals. They’ll complain the whole time that they pinch.”
“Yes, that’s the thing to worry about,” Harper drawled. “It has nothing to do with the fact that sandals that cost more than thirty bucks are completely wasted at this age or anything.”
“Oh, I can’t even talk to you.” Zander held up a hand to blot out his best friend’s face. “You’re one of my least favorite people right now.”
“What about me?” Barney asked, his eyes going wide. “Am I one of your least favorite people?”
“No,” Zander replied, not missing a beat. “You’re one of my favorite people … even if you let your Aunt Harper talk you into going by a weird name.”
“It’s not weird.” Barney sounded utterly knowledgeable. “Uncle Jared says some of the greatest people in the world were Barneys.”
“And you trust him?” Zander shot back. “What did I tell you about your Uncle Jared?”
“That he has nipples the size of dinner plates,” Barney replied automatically.
Harper darted her eyes to Jared and found him glowering.
“I’m going to kill you the next time you say that,” Jared warned. He had more patience with Zander than he used to, but everybody had their limits. “I’m a police officer too. I know how to hide a body.”
Harper pursed her lips to keep from laughing and went back to watching Zander and Barney. “What Barneys did he tell you about?” she asked curiously.
“Barney Rubble,” Barney replied without hesitation. “He’s cool. I saw the cartoon. Then there’s um … Barney Pipe.”
“Fife,” Jared automatically corrected.
Zander’s mouth fell open. “You did not tell him that Barney Fife was cool.”
“Of course I did.” Jared dusted off his hands and helped Buffy lift the kite. When Shawn Donovan, Zander’s husband and the twins’ second dad swooped in, he happily handed it off so he could return to the blanket to sit with his wife. “Who doesn’t love Barney Fife?”
“Nobody that I want to hang out with,” Harper replied on a grin, her delight obvious when Zander narrowed his eyes into dangerous slits. “I hate you all.” He quickly glanced at Barney. “Except you and your sister. The rest of them are morons though.”
“Okay.” Barney didn’t look bothered by the tension rolling over the picnic site. “I’m going to go fly a kite with Dad and Buffy.”
“That sounds fun.” Harper smiled at him encouragingly, and then something occurred to her. “Where is Poe?”
“Over there.” Jared pointed toward the riverbank, where their daughter Poe was hanging out by herself. The girl was several months younger than Barney and Buffy, but all three kids were close. Despite the joy Poe got from playing with the other kids, there were times when she preferred being by herself. Apparently, this was one of those times because Poe had completely tuned out everybody else and was intent on digging in the dirt near the river.
“What’s she doing?” Harper asked, her heart twisting before she could force herself to calm down. If Poe wanted to be by herself, something Harper understood from her own childhood, there was nothing wrong with that. Or, well, at least that’s what Harper kept telling herself. She wasn’t certain she believed it any longer.
“She says she’s digging for Megalodon teeth,” Jared replied as he reclined behind Harper, resting his head on one elbow as he watched his only child focus on the dirt. “I tried to tell her that Megalodon weren’t prevalent in Michigan, but she told me that the topography—and, yes, she used that word, so I think she’s been watching the Discovery channel again—changed millions of years ago so Megalodon could’ve totally swum here before the land dried out.”
Harper blinked twice. “Do you think that’s true?” she asked after a beat.
Jared shrugged. “I have no idea. She’s your daughter. I never watched the Discovery channel as a kid. I watched cartoons and am a better man for it.”
“Speaking of Barney Rubble,” Zander muttered under his breath.
Harper flicked her friend’s ear and focused on Jared. “Are you worried?” she asked finally. It was a question they’d promised to stop asking themselves in the shadow of Poe’s weird behavior over the past few months. Just because they’d tacitly agreed not to bring it up verbally, however, that didn’t mean they both weren’t thinking about it.
“I don’t know.” Jared rubbed his chin and then flopped to his back so he could study the sky. “I want her to be her own person.” He cast his wife an adoring look. “I mean … her mother is her own person, and I couldn’t possibly love her more.”
“I may puke on both of you,” Zander complained.
“She’s alone a lot though,” Jared continued, pretending he hadn’t heard Zander. “Buffy and Barney live right across the road, and sometimes she plays with them. She seems just as content to play by herself though.”
“I played by myself a lot at her age,” Harper pointed out. “I mean … Zander was my best friend, but my parents could only take so much of him, so he wasn’t allowed at the house five days a week.”
Zander made a protesting sound. “That is ridiculous,” he sputtered. “Your parents loved me.”
Harper smirked. “My mother stopped loving you the day you told her that she was polishing the silverware wrong and then proceeded to coach her through the correct way to do it.”
“My mother is an expert at polishing silverware,” Zander snapped. “I was trying to be helpful.”
“And that’s exactly the way my mother took it,” Harper lied.
Jared idly played with the ends of Harper’s hair as he considered their Poe conundrum. “Speaking of your parents, are they on or off this week?” he asked his wife. “I only ask because your mother is supposed to take Poe for the afternoon on Wednesday. That’s when you have that cemetery tour that goes late, and I have that training session with the state police that’s considered mandatory.”
“Um … I think they’re off,” Harper replied. “Why?”
“Because when they’re on, they teach Poe things like ‘foreplay’ and ‘wiggle until you jiggle’, and I don’t like explaining those things in the context your parents mean them when asked by our daughter after the fact.”
Harper chuckled. She’d long since given up trying to figure out the deal with her parents. When she was growing up, she was convinced they hated one another. She figured as soon as she got to college, they would separate. It didn’t happen then, but it did happen once she left college. They proceeded to embark on the pettiest divorce ever, fighting over spoons and coffee mugs. They took it to the limit. Then, right before the divorce was supposed to be finalized, they called it off and started sleeping together again. They’d been running hot and cold ever since.
“I’ll talk to them,” Harper promised when she realized Jared looked sincerely upset. “They’ll probably tell me I’m acting like a prude, but I’ll talk to them. The last thing we need is Poe dropping ‘foreplay’ as the word of the day when she goes back to school in the fall.”
“That was my feeling on the subject.” Jared rubbed Harper’s back as they both watched their offspring. Poe didn’t smile as she dug in the dirt with her stick. She didn’t necessarily look unhappy either.
“Oh, will you guys let it go?” Zander asked after a full minute of silence. “She’s just a little kid. Of course she’s going to be odd with you guys as parents. You need to stop worrying. I can feel your tension from over here, and if I can pick up on it—you guys say I’m the most oblivious man in the world—then the kid can pick up on it. You’re going to make her neurotic.”
Harper appreciated the words, but she was convinced Poe was already neurotic. “If it’s not neurotic to sleep in caskets at the cemetery, what would you call it?” she demanded.
Zander shrugged. “Ingenious? Those tiny couches we have in the display room are not comfortable to sit on, let alone sleep on. The kid likes a comfortable nap. There’s no reason she can’t enjoy herself in the casket, is there?”
Harper glared at him. “It’s a casket. She’s taking three naps a week in them when she’s at the cemetery. I think that’s weird.”
“If you act like it’s weird, then she’s going to do it more and more often,” Zander shot back. “That’s what kids do. They needle. Why else do you think Barnabas is making us call him Barney now?”
“Because Barnabas is a stupid name,” Harper replied without missing a beat.
Zander mock-clutched at his heart. “You know Barnabas is my favorite vampire of all time,” he growled. “I mean … he even beats out Spike and Angel, and that takes some work. That’s how much I love him.”
“Who is Barnabas again?” Jared asked.
“Dark Shadows,” Harper replied. “His mother was obsessed with it when he was a kid, and he grew up to be obsessed with it too.”
“And you didn’t like those shiny vampires that were all the rage back in the day? They seem like they would be more your speed,” Jared mused. “They all had great hair.”
If looks could kill, Jared would be in his own casket at this point. “You are dead to me,” Zander muttered. “You can’t hold up those Twilight freaks against Barnabas Collins and not make me want to kill you.”
Harper held up her hand to stop the argument before it got worse. “Let’s ignore the vampire conversation for now, huh? I have an actual kid who is sleeping in a coffin. I need to know what to do about that.”
“Who says you have to do anything?” Zander replied sullenly. “She’s not doing anything wrong, Harper. She’s just … feeling out her boundaries. That’s what kids do. The more you react, the more she’s going to do it.”
“I think she’s trying to normalize death in her head,” Jared countered. “She spends a ton of time at the cemetery—not that there’s anything wrong with that—and she hears things. She sees things. Her mother can see and talk to ghosts. This is just her way of dealing with that.”
“I hate to agree with Captain Nipples over here, but I kind of do,” Zander said. “She doesn’t live in a normal world, Harp. Two weeks ago, you were up north helping Ivy deal with murderous ghosts. Even though we do our best to keep the kids from hearing things, we’re not always good at it.”
“Yeah.” Harper rubbed her cheek. “I guess.” She pushed herself to a standing position. She wanted to agree with Jared and Zander—more than anything really—but she couldn’t. Her inner alarm, the one that warned her about trouble, was constantly dinging these days when she looked at Poe. To her, that meant something was happening … and it wasn’t good, whatever it was.
“Where are you going?” Jared asked. “She’s not hurting anything digging in the dirt.”
“And I’m not going to stop her,” Harper said. “I’m just going to check in with her.”
“Okay.” Jared forced a smile that he didn’t feel as he watched his wife meander down the hill toward his daughter.
“How do you feel about getting your nipples filed down?” Zander asked out of nowhere. “I’m only asking because it’s going to be swimming season soon, and the kids are going to notice those nipples this year. There’s no way they can miss them.”
“I’m definitely going to kill you,” Jared muttered.
Harper was already smiling by the time she reached Poe’s side. The girl, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, had stopped digging and was now fixated on the river. “What’s up, buttercup?” she asked, repeating one of Jared’s lines to her. He often asked her that very question when he was in a good mood after finishing up his shift at the police station.
“I’m not doing anything,” Poe replied without looking at her mother.
“I didn’t say you were doing anything. I just thought I would do nothing with you.”
“Okay.” Poe kept her gaze on the river.
Frustrated because her daughter wasn’t engaging, Harper kept pushing. She didn’t mean to, but she couldn’t always help herself. “What do you see when you look out there?”
“Nothing yet,” Poe replied.
“Yet? Do you expect to see something?” Harper cracked a smile. “I don’t think your Megalodon is going to show up in the river.”
“No. They’re extinct. Although some people believe they’re in way deep down parts of the ocean still. Places people can’t go because they’ll die.”
“What do you believe?”
“I believe they’re dead, although it would be cool if they were alive.”
“Very cool,” Harper agreed. “If you’re not looking for the Megalodon though, what are you looking for?”
“The ghosts. They’re almost here.”
Harper swore her heart skipped three beats. “What now?” Her eyes were focused on Poe’s profile. “What do you mean?”
