Bewitched, Bedeviled and Bewildered (Sister Witchcraft Book 1)

  Sister Witchcraft: Bewitched, Bedeviled, and Bewildered

  J.D. Winters

  Dakota Kahn

  Contents

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Also by J.D. Winters

  About the Authors

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental. All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  Copyright © 2016 J.D. Winters and Dakota Kahn

  Cover images from Shutterstock.com

  First Edition October, 2016

  Created with Vellum

  Foreword

  The Sister Witchcraft idea was begun by Julie Van Dorn and taken up by J.D. Winters and Dakota Kahn who hope you like the way we’ve developed it. The original still appears in the Spooky Cozy Box Set that is given free for signing up for our mailing list. We hope you enjoy what we’ve done with it!

  Chapter 1

  “Sybil, I swear, hand over my heart and nothing witchy about it, I won’t be a witch while we’re living here. Not for one minute. Not for one second. My witchcraft days are over.”

  And I meant every word of that when I said it. Really I did.

  My older sister Sybil didn’t believe it, and I suppose she had history on her side.

  “Mimi,” she said, her dark eyes filled with tragedy, “I know you mean well, but I just don’t see how you’re going to be able to manage it. Not without a little magic on your side. And we can’t do that! We just can’t.”

  The thing is, we’ve got witchery in our blood and in our genes. We’ve had ancestors burned at stakes and other ancestors fed to lions. We’ve had last minute escapes and bloody nights of revenge. All before my time, of course. But those were the legends we were raised on.

  Sybil had worked hard to put all that behind her. She was married now, to a Typical (meaning non-supernatural being) who had only a hazy idea of the fact that her family had something weird going on. She had two adorable kids. She was president of her local PTA. And she didn’t want me living in her town, threatening to reveal her witchy background at any moment.

  The trouble was, I didn’t have much choice. I’d been living in the city—Los Angeles—for the last five years, raising our little sister Lucy on my own, working at one of the studios as a production assistant. Lately Lucy had become almost impossible to deal with. At seventeen, she thought she knew it all and she’d picked up friends who had already introduced her to things she shouldn’t even know about at her age. It made me physically sick to think about it.

  I had to get her out of there. Fate took over, as it often does. I lost my job when I got a little rough turning down the advances of a really disgusting but famous producer. At the same time, our grandmother died and left the three of us girls her house and her little tea shop. Luckily, it was in a small town far from the ugly city. Unluckily, it was the small town of Lafay where my sister Sybil lived.

  So we had a place to live and the means of making a living—but my sister didn’t want us there. And that was why I was practically on my knees, making promises.

  The truth was, this small town was just as much mine as it was Sybil’s. Our family—the Auclairs--had lived here for four generations—five if you counted Sybil’s kids. We belonged here. And push come to shove—I was staying.

  I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  But I was willing to try to put witchcraft behind me. What good had it done me anyway? When I’d set that producer’s hair on fire with a well-timed spell, I’d sealed my fate on that job. I knew he wasn’t going to take me back.

  But my sister was skeptical. We were walking through the tea shop, trying to decide if it was going to need a hired contractor to bring it up to speed, or if we could do it ourselves. That latter was the answer, no matter what the truth was. Because there was just no money for contractors.

  “How long has it been since she had this place open for business?” I asked her.

  “It’s been over a year. She kept things going until she was really too sick to come in any longer, and then she let the girls go and just closed the doors.” Sybil sighed. “I just don’t see how you’re going to be able to open up again without a lot of work and a lot of money behind you. Where are you going to get that? It’s just too hard.”

  I looked at Sybil. She’d always been the pretty one. Her linen suit was impeccable, and her shiny brown hair was a testament to weekly visits to the hairdresser. But she would have told you she was hard up and just didn’t have any extra cash. I sighed. I didn’t blame her. She deserved to live her life with her husband Gary and her two kids and not have to worry about me and Lucy. I understood that. But at the same time, it wasn’t fair for her to actively try to thwart us. I knew she understood that deep down.

  As far as looks go, I’m not so bad, but Sybil is downright beautiful and Lucy is a blond attention-getter like I’ve never been. I’m the middle sister and I fit the role—not as tall and slender as careful Sybil, not as bold and naturally appealing as wild-child Lucy, with her long hair and her impish grin. My hair is shoulder-length, light auburn with natural blond highlights. Sounds odd, but it works well for me. And I love my sisters to death, even when they’re trying to argue me out of something I want to do, like Sybil was at the time.

  “Okay,” she said, stopping and facing me head on. “Here’s what Gary says. He thinks we ought to sell her house and sell this shop and divide the money three ways. He says that is what he would consider appropriate. That’s fair, isn’t it? Let’s just get it over with.”

  I stared at her. Maybe she didn’t understand after all.

  “You give a third of that money to Lucy and she’ll be down on Sunset Strip in five hours,” I said. “We’ll never see that money again.” I shrugged. “You’ll have funds you probably need for doing things like having a nice vacation and adding on to your house. But Sybil, I won’t have enough to do anything much. The only chance I have for a real life is to live in Grand-Mere’s house and open her tea shop. That’s it.”

  She stared at me. She knew I was telling the truth. She didn’t like it, but she knew it.

  There was a sound, a scratching sound, coming from the double glass doors that were the entryway to the tea shop. We both went up to take a look.

  “Look at that,” I said, smiling. A long, sleek black cat was pawing at the door, as though asking to come in. His front paws worked feverishly, his golden eyes intense. He was so handsome, with a white patch at his throat that made him look formally dressed-- what they call a tuxedo cat. I looked at Sybil.

  “Did Grand-Mere have a black cat?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” she said shortly. “But he died before she did. That’s not him.”

  We stood there watching for another moment while the cat tried hard to convince us he really, really wanted to come in.

  I turned to Sybil again. “Do you think I should….?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “No. He’s just a stray. You don’t want a cat like that hanging around.”

  I nodded. She was probably right. But still, it made me feel bad to just leave him out there, pawing away at the glass.

 
; We went back in and looked around at the dirty, dusty scene. It was a real mess. But I remembered how it had looked when I was a little girl. I’d loved to come here. The air always smelled of peppermint and chamomile and Grand-Mere always had a special cup of tea ready for me, with cookies on the side. There had been a huge chandelier hanging just inside the entry. Its gem-like crystals caught the light and sent fire across every wall. It seemed like magic to me at the time. An enchanted place. And knowing Grand-Mere, it probably was.

  Was it even possible for someone like me with few resources to make the attempt to bring that wonderful time back? I was going to try.

  “I can get this place into shape in no time,” I lied.

  Sibyl sighed, then turned to face me. “Okay. So you want to try it. I get that. I can hardly blame you. But consider this. You get a place to work and maybe make a living, if things go right and you’re lucky. Lucy gets a place to work after school. What do I get?”

  She had a point. I cringed a little. “You can work here too,” I suggested, knowing that wasn’t going to fly.

  “I’ve got two little girls,” she reminded me. “And a husband who doesn’t want me to work. He thinks it wouldn’t be appropriate.”

  “Right. I know that. I just thought, in case you needed an outlet of some sort….”

  “Forget it.” She looked at me worriedly and sighed. “Mimi, you didn’t see what was going on here those last months. Something strange was happening. Some force seemed to ruin every plan Grand-Mere made. Something was destroying her supplies. And when people started getting sick after eating here…” She shrugged. “That was when she gave up and closed her doors. She was near the end and she just didn’t have the strength to fight it anymore.”

  I turned away so that Sybil wouldn’t see my face. I swallowed hard, chills down my spine. I hadn’t known about that. No one had bothered to tell me. Some force? That didn’t sound good.

  I looked around the little shop, my gaze darting into the dark recesses and tiny corners. Was something hiding in here, something I was going to have to deal with? Maybe my promises not to use witchcraft had been a little hasty.

  Sybil glanced around too, her reaction clear. She didn’t want to be there. She looked at me and I looked back. I probably looked pathetic, because she crumbled. Sort of.

  “Okay listen. If you’re so dead set on doing this, I guess you’re going to try it, come hell or high water. And no, I won’t work here. But I will try to get some time to help you set things up. I remember how Grand-Mere had it. I probably remember that better than anyone else.”

  I looked at her hopefully. “So you are going to be okay with me doing this?”

  She grimaced. “Not really. But we’ll give it a trial period. Say three months. At the end of that time, we’ll have a meeting and decide what we should do next. Okay?”

  I nodded and smiled at her. “Thanks, Sybil. I appreciate it. I’ll do my best to…”

  “Just don’t use any witchcraft. That’s all I ask.”

  The next day was a Saturday, so Lucy came with me to start the cleanup. Not voluntarily, you understand. It was certainly not her choice of how to spend her last weekend before registering for her new high school. But she came with the bottom lip protruding and a lot of whining came with her.

  “Why can’t I just go down to LA for Mary Ellen’s Halloween party?” she said for the tenth time. “I could take the train down. I could stay over at Mary Ellen’s. I would come right back the next day. Honest.”

  It wasn’t that I thought she was lying. I was sure of it. She was looking for a way to get back down to Southern California with her buddies and raise a little hell. And that was exactly what I was bound and determined she wasn’t going to do.

  I didn’t want to come down hard on her. I was trying to explain, very gently, how we didn’t have the money for trips. We didn’t even have much money for food. But once I’d gone over all that three or four times, I know my voice was beginning to get an edge to it and the way I was using the broom was beginning to get rough. Dust was flying. Luckily, we got company right around my breaking point.

  “Oh, look,” Lucy said, suddenly a different girl from the complainer I’d been dealing with. She fluffed her hair as she went to the door to unlock it. “He’s cute,” she whispered back at me, eyes shining.

  He was that, in a red-headed, freckled way. I put down the broom and smiled a welcome. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” He grinned at Lucy, then at me. “You’re Mimi Auclair, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Martin Tanner. Gary is my brother.”

  “Oh!”

  Lucy bounced up and down. “Gary Tanner? The guy Sybil married? Hey, does that mean we’re related?”

  “Not quite,” I said, shaking his hand and grinning at him. He was an attractive man. Bright eyes and thick, thick lashes. “Only by marriage.”

  He looked around the shop. “I just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood. That’s my place next door. One Tin Soldier.”

  “Oh.”

  I’d noticed it earlier. The tea shop was one of four places set in an alcove, back from the street and centered on a little courtyard that had a couple of trees, a picnic table, a bench and a small fountain. Very charming, actually. “It’s a gaming store, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Mostly role playing games, some war gaming stuff. We have a nice regular clientele. What are you planning for this place?”

  “I want to bring back the tea shop, just like my grandmother had it for thirty years.”

  He looked surprised. “No kidding? Are you sure you want to take that chance?”

  “Chance?” I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  Something shifted behind his blue eyes. “Uh, nothing. Say, did you stop in at city hall and get all your paperwork squared away? Don’t put that off. There are some real nitpickers on the council and they want things done their way. It’s worse than a Homeowners Association.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. Hey, thanks for cluing me in.”

  “Don’t mention it. I’ll come in and have a spot of tea once you get things organized.” He grinned and turned to go. “Good luck.”

  I went to the door with him in time to see that black cat running up as though he thought he might take advantage of the open door. “There’s the cat that was here yesterday,” I started to tell Lucy, but Martin scooped him up before he made it in.

  “This guy again,” he said, shifting him up against his shoulder. “I’ll get rid of him for you.” And he began to walk off, cat and all.

  “But… .” I watched them go. The cat looked at me over his shoulder and meowed. There was something about the look in his eyes that stopped me in my tracks. He really wanted to come in here. Why? And why was there something in me that felt like I ought to let him in?

  “So that’s the cat you told me about?” Lucy said. “He’s big. Was he Grand-Mere’s?”

  “I…I’m not sure,” I said softly. Sybil had said Grand-Mere’s cat had died when she did, but I was beginning to wonder if that was true.

  “I love cats,” Lucy said.

  Surprised, I looked at her. She was smiling. With her corn silk curls and her dimple, she looked young and sweet and exactly like she ought to be all the time. The surly teenager I’d endured was gone, at least for the moment. My love for my sister surged and I gave her a hug.

  “I like them too,” I said. “Let’s get this place clean enough to let in everybody, cats and all.”

  Chapter 2

  It took a few days and some superhuman effort just to get close to that. Meanwhile, various townspeople stopped by to wish us luck and welcome us. And a couple of strange-looking middle-aged ladies—one with a head of hair so brightly purple, I thought for a moment she was dressed as a clown, the other model-thin with her jet black hair in a pixie cut, reminding me of a 50’s Italian movie star-- dropped by a few times to try to see just what we were up to. The trouble was, they didn’t kn
ock and didn’t seem to want to introduce themselves. After I’d found one of them for the third time peeking in the window from the alley side, I began to get a little annoyed.

  “Hey,” I called, opening the door to the alley and dashing out, hoping to catch her and find out what was going on.

  But she was gone by the time I made it out. Vanished into thin air, it seemed. I was curious as to their identities. But they never showed up when anyone else was around, so I couldn’t ask any of the others, not even Sybil.

  Actually, they were beginning to give me the creeps.

  But that wasn’t the only thing creeping me out. As I stood there in the alley, looking up and down the way, then at the various buildings back to back with mine, I began to realize something. There was a man hanging on a telephone pole over my head.

  “Hey,” I said, frowning up at him.

  “So’s your Mama,” he said back, looking annoyed that I’d spotted him.

  “What are you doing up there? Spying?”

  “Looking for birds,” he countered. “It’s a hobby of mine.” He waved a camera at me—a pretty fancy looking one.

  This didn’t seem right. What was he really taking pictures of?

  “I’m going to call the cops,” I said, not believing a word of his excuse.

  “Hey, no, don’t do that.”

  “Give me one good reason not to.”

  He stared down at me, then sighed and began to climb down. “Hold on. Actually, I’m not looking for birds.”

  “No kidding.”

  He hung from the last climbing spike in the pole like a monkey, them dropped to his feet and stood gazing at me and that was when I realized he was quite an attractive man. For a spy.

  “You’re actually a peeping tom, aren’t you?” I said, looking at him through narrowed eyes.

  “Ach!” he choked. “No. Actually not. But I am on an assignment and I can’t tell you about it because it’s secret stuff. So listen…”