Back Room Bookstore Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1 - 12

by Susan Harper

  “No way!” Abigail cried. “That… That’s a time coin!”

  “A what?” Brian asked.

  “No, that can’t be,” Monica said, taking the coin from Brian to examine it. “Whoa, it really is.”

  “What’s a time coin?” Holly asked.

  “Just like what it sounds,” Monica said. “It allows you to go back in time. Or forward, I think. I’ve never actually used one. They’re rare. I’m sure Chip’s family probably didn’t realize this was amongst their goblin gold. These things are crazy valuable. Worth more than all the gold on this table combined.”

  “Sounds dangerous,” Brian said.

  “Very,” Monica said. “They’re not illegal or anything. Most time coins only allow you to go so far back in time, but by the looks of the back of this one, you could travel pretty far back. Crazy.”

  “Should we return this to Chip’s family?” Brian suggested.

  “Um, no!” Abigail exclaimed. “Do you have any idea what those people just gave us? You can use them only once, you know? Takes you back, leaves you there for a while… I’ve never actually used one myself, so I’m not entirely sure how they work. These things are about as rare as Ibeji.”

  “Well, looks like you guys just have a knack for finding rarities,” Holly sang, handing Brian his coffee.

  “We’ll have to think about what to do with this,” Monica said. “If we give it back to Chip’s family, they might would be tempted to go back and time and stop his murder. That would make it pretty illegal.”

  “Really?” Holly asked

  “Yeah, using time coins is not illegal, but what you can use them for is very heavily regulated,” Monica said. “I’d almost hate to tempt them if we showed up telling them they accidentally had a time coin amongst their gold. They’d land themselves in prison for life messing with the timeline like that.”

  “Then maybe it’s best we just get rid of it?” Brian suggested.

  “I don’t know, they can be harmless if you know what you’re doing,” Monica said and smirked at him. “Maybe you can I could make a date out of it? Go back to when we were kids. I wouldn’t mind seeing a little Brian running around on a soccer field or taking you to see a little me crash landing her first broom.”

  Brian smirked, suddenly seeming much more interested in the time coin. “That does sound fun…”

  “Time coins are basically just expensive vacations,” Abigail said. “You can’t do anything to change the past—that’s when it becomes a legal issue. But people like to go back in time to relive things. Watch as a third-party participant. Visit a great grandparent or something.”

  “That’s actually pretty cool, I guess,” Brian said, still somewhat skeptical.

  “What are you guys looking at?” a voice behind asked, and they all jumped nearly a foot to see that Isaac had somehow managed to slip into the shop unnoticed. “Whoa! Look at all that gold! Where did you guys get all this?” he asked.

  “It’s nothing! It’s nothing!” Monica exclaimed, rushing to shove the gold back into the bag. The last thing they needed was to have to try to explain to Isaac what all this was and where it had come from.

  “You guys sure are acting weird,” Isaac said with a laugh, and he reached toward the time coin.

  Abigail jumped on it, likely to prevent him from accidentally setting it off, but her attempt backfired. There was a flash of light, and they all started spinning—Isaac included. “Crap!” Abigail shouted. “Grab onto each other!”

  Isaac was screaming. The others were close to being in just as much of a panic as he was. Monica grabbed Isaac by his shirt collar and reached out to Brian, who took her and Holly by the hands. Holly managed to grab Abigail by the back of her neck, and they were all shaken around a swirling tunnel that seemed to be displaying their pasts in fast motion all around them.

  Monica caught glimpses. Her and her Aunt Wilma at the shop. Her and Mona learning to fly their broomsticks. Her and Uncle Drac running around his castle. The explosion that killed her parents. Glimpses of Holly. Holly walking around Wysteria for the first time. Holly and Isaac hanging out at the movies. Holly on the playground of an elementary school. A baby Holly in the arms of a very solemn witch, a second baby in the woman’s arms. “Mom?” Holly cried, but the image zipped past them.

  Brian’s past zipped by. The Romp-A-Roo fields. Him and Monica’s first kiss. Him being awarded for some service he had performed for the city. Training as a cop. Football games. An old girlfriend who nearly caused Monica to crane her neck for a glance. Running around as a freckle-faced kid and sliding into home-plate.

  Abigail’s past. The past hundred years or so as a cat—all the witches and wizards she had been a familiar for, and she seemed to be scowling constantly in dislike. For a split-second, Monica saw Abigail, a teenager, in a meeting room, and suddenly they were blasted into the side of the swirling vortex.

  They landed hard. Monica groaned, and when she sat up, they were in the middle of the woods. “Um… What! What! What!” Isaac was already up on his feet, walking around in a circle trying to figure out what had just happened to them. “How? Where are we? What just happened?!”

  “Crud,” Abigail said, sitting up. “What a waste of a time coin!”

  “The cat talks!” Isaac fell over completely as Brian and Holly were standing up to brush themselves off.

  “Where are we?” Monica asked, rubbing her head and looking around.

  Abigail was in the process of climbing up a tree to get a glimpse. “What a waste,” Brian said. “You said we can only use that time coin once, right?” he asked, looking around frantically for it. He found it lying in a bush, and both sides now looked brand new. He put it in his pocket. “We’ll have to try to figure out how to work it to get back, I guess.”

  “Guys!” Abigail called. “You all might want to come up here and take a look.”

  They exchanged glances. Isaac was still having some sort of panic attack, so Holly knelt beside him to attempt to calm him—explaining to him everything they had for so long tried to hide from him as it wasn’t like they were going to be able to cover everything up this time. Monica and Brian began climbing the tree, doing so much slower than Abigail had done.

  Gazing out past the trees, Monica could see a town not too far off. “What is that place?” she asked.

  “Boston, Massachusetts,” Abigail said and swallowed hard. “Before the Split.”

  Monica gulped. Brian stammered. “You mean to tell me we’ve been thrown back in time several hundreds of years?”

  “Yup,” Abigail said. “Since I was the one who touched the coin, it took us to a point in my past… And the last time I was in Boston…”

  Monica gasped. “We’ve found ourselves smack dab in the middle of the aftermath of the Salem witch trials!”

  “Oh, perfect!” Holly called up from the ground. “A time in which witches were hung regularly, and the Sorcerer’s Council declared war on immortals and Ibeji like myself. This is just…just perfect…”

  “We have to get out of here,” Monica said. “We have to get out of here now.”

  A Trip Through Time

  Back Room Bookstore Cozy Mystery, Book 10

  1

  Monica Montoya found herself lost in the middle of the woods, which in and of itself would not be too terrible, except that she had been thrown back in time several hundred years along with a handful of friends. With her was her boyfriend, Officer Brian, who had recently been promoted to portal keeper of Bankstown and Wysteria; her friend Holly, the mortal-raised Ibeji; Abigail, her black cat familiar who was really a witch serving a long-term sentence as a cat; and finally, Isaac—the last person on earth they would have ever wanted to stumble across even a sliver of magic but was now in the midst of one of the biggest magical exposes even Monica had ever seen.

  The five of them had been trudging through the woods for the past half-hour, and Isaac had hardly stopped talking for more than thirty seconds at a time. “And, so, what exac
tly is an Ibeji?” Isaac asked.

  “It’s when a mystic and an immortal have kids together. It produces twins called Ibeji twins,” Holly explained. “They are destined to kill each other before adulthood because they are two bodies with one soul. However, if on the off chance they survive into adulthood without accidentally killing the other, the soul matures into two separate souls and supposedly have a lot more magic. I’ve never been able to use any of my magic myself as I don’t know how because there aren’t any other Ibeji out there to teach me.”

  “And now we’re smack dab in the middle of a time when Ibeji and immortals were being systematically wiped out by the Sorcerer’s Council,” Abigail said.

  Isaac jumped. He had heard Abigail speak already, but it was still surprising him every time she opened her mouth to say something. “How can you be sure we’re in the sixteen hundreds before the… What was it called? The Split?”

  “Yes,” Monica said. “Before the Split, mystics and mortals lived together in one realm until the Sorcerer’s Council performed the Split and wiped the existence of mystics from the minds of all mortals, making us nothing more than fantasy creatures to them. Two realms formed after that. And, if Abigail’s right, we’re in the pre-Split era.”

  “So one realm,” Brian said. “Crazy.”

  “Yeah, but how does Abigail know that for sure?” Isaac asked.

  “When I climbed up in that tree earlier, I saw Boston,” Abigail said. “It was definitely pre-Split Boston from what I saw.”

  “What are you, some sort of history expert cat?” Isaac asked.

  “No, I am just really old,” Abigail hissed. “I grew up in Salem during the Salem witch trials, and I fled to Boston afterward. I know what pre-Split Boston looks like because I lived it.”

  “Why are you so old?!” Isaac exclaimed. “Wait… Salem… Abigail… You’re not…”

  “Abigail Williams?” Brian said, patting Isaac’s shoulder. “Yeah, the weirdness… You get used to it.”

  “What year is it exactly?” Monica asked.

  “How am I supposed to know that?” Abigail asked. “I only caught a glimpse of Boston’s skyline. I’m pretty sure we’re somewhere in the sixteen-nineties.”

  “Oh!” Monica exclaimed suddenly, pointing through the trees. “Look, you guys! Hobbit holes!”

  “Thank goodness,” Holly said. “I need to rest my feet, and all that walking has made me hungry. Are hobbits in this time friendly enough?”

  “For the most part,” Abigail said. “Just…don’t tell them who I am. Not sure how far my reputation has spread in this time. I wasn’t exactly well liked during this era.”

  “Good point,” Monica said.

  “Hobbit holes…” Isaac said, mesmerized. “Outside of Boston…”

  “Like I said,” Brian said with a smirk. “You will eventually get used to the weirdness.”

  There were several hobbit holes spread around the woods, but they looked like temporary homes as opposed to the ones Monica was used to seeing in modern-day Wysteria. “It’s a refugee camp,” Abigail whispered as several hobbits started cautiously emerging from their homes, eyeing all of them hesitantly.

  “Friend or foes?” one of the hobbit women asked, wielding a small dagger.

  “Friends!” Monica said, raising her hands.

  “She’s an unnatural,” Holly said, and the hobbits all seemed to relax instantly.

  “What’s an unnatural?” Isaac whispered to her as they were welcomed into the camp.

  “Means I was born with very little magic,” Monica whispered back. “Something Remembrance wouldn’t like very much.”

  “And Remembrance is…what?” Isaac asked.

  “A bunch of witches and wizards who think they’re better than everyone else,” the hobbit woman said bitterly. “Been hunting people like us for the past few years. Why are you dressed so strangely?”

  Monica pulled out the shiny coin that had brought them to this time. “We had a little accident. I don’t suppose you know anything about time coins, do you?” Monica asked the hobbit woman, stretching the coin out to her.

  “Oh! You’re from the future!” the hobbit woman said. “Well, my name is Toph. Pleasure… This is an awfully interesting time to choose to travel to as an unnatural.”

  “It was an accident,” Monica said. “Have you ever seen or used a time coin before? Obviously, none of us know what we’re doing.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Toph said, shaking her head. “But there are a number of witches and wizards in Boston who could probably help you. Though you are several miles away still. Do you folks need a place to camp for the night?”

  “That would be really appreciated,” Brian said, shaking the hobbit woman’s hand with a smile. “Do you have the room?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Believe me, you lot don’t want to be walking around today. Remembrance witches have been flying around outside the city a lot the past few days. Not to mention the Sorcerer’s Council has been in and around town a good bit as well. I’ll tell Munderic you’ll be staying here.” Toph scurried off, disappearing inside one of the huts.

  Monica and the others made themselves comfortable around one of the campfires the hobbits had started to set up in preparation for the evening. A few moments later, a hobbit man approached and sat down by them. “I am Munderic,” he said, smiling. “I’m leading up this camp. You are time travelers?”

  “Yes, we’re sorry to come barging in,” Brian said in a friendly tone.

  “You’re mortal. With all this talk of a Split happening, I didn’t expect to see mortals and mystics traveling together,” Munderic said as the sun started to set. Some of the other hobbits were handing out dinner.

  “I believe the rules of time travel dictate we’re not supposed to talk about what the future looks like,” Monica said.

  “Yes, I suppose,” Munderic said.

  “Can you tell us what year it is?” Abigail asked.

  “You really don’t know how to time travel, do you?” Munderic said, raising an accusatory brow at Abigail. “I may not know much about time coins, but I do know the date you travel to appears on one side of the coin.”

  “Oh!” Monica exclaimed, pulling out her coin. “1698! We’re in 1698, Boston!”

  “June, if that helps,” Munderic said with a slight laugh. “The fourteenth.”

  Abigail stirred beside Monica, which did not go unnoticed, but she elected not to say anything just yet in front of Munderic. Once they had food, Munderic pointed to one of the hobbit holes and stated they could sleep there for the evening. Eventually, he headed off to his own hobbit hole. Toph brought them blankets a few moments later, smiling. “I do hope you all rest well if your plan is to travel to Boston in the morning,” she said.

  “Yes,” Monica said. “Thank you so much for your hospitality.”

  Toph smiled. “Such a polite witch.”

  “I try,” Monica said, giving Toph a tired, but polite, smile.

  “It’s just a nice change of pace, dear,” Toph said with a sigh. “Last witch we ran into tried to blow us to bits.”

  “Remembrance?” Monica asked.

  “Of course,” Toph said, her face falling a little.

  “I’m very sorry about your troubles,” Monica said. “I hope you know we’re not all like that.”

  “I know,” Toph said, smiling. “This is just the world we live in.”

  “Have you all had to flee your homes?” Brian asked.

  “I’m afraid so,” Toph said. “Our last village was attacked, and we were no longer safe where we were. I do hope things change in the future.”

  “Of course,” Monica said, though she did wonder with the resurfacing of Remembrance how much things really had changed. Toph thanked her and disappeared, and once the five of them were alone by the fire, Monica reached down and picked up Abigail.

  “Hey!” Abigail exclaimed.

  Monica sat her down in front of her. “Okay, spill it. I could tell you got
all fidgety after Munderic told you what year it was. What happens in June of 1698?”

  “I…get arrested,” Abigail said. “We’re in the same week that I am taken in by the Sorcerer’s Council and turned into a cat for my crimes.”

  “Oh, perfect, so there are two Abigails running around now,” Brian said.

  “Except one of them is a seventeen-year-old witch running from the law and the other one is a cat taking an accidental vacation to one of the worst moments in her life,” Abigail groaned. “Of all the times the coin could have accidentally dropped us off in, it would of course be now when things couldn’t have possibly gotten worse for me.”

  “Why exactly were you punished and turned into a cat, Abigail?” Isaac asked, eating his hobbit food and trying to get a full understanding of the situation they were all in.

  Abigail sighed heavily. Maybe it was everyone’s minds playing tricks, but it looked like Abigail almost blushed, looking embarrassed and a little ashamed of herself. “I sort of accused a bunch of mortals of being witches and got them all killed.” Abigail twitched her tail and looked at the ground.

  “So the witch trials… Those were all mortals?” Isaac asked.

  “Yeah,” Abigail said, glancing up at Isaac. “I was the only witch in town. People were very anti-witch in that area, and I was worried about being found out. I was twelve, so I started pointing fingers at others, and eventually, well, a few people died. I got the scent thrown off me, but it made matters worse for everyone else.”

  “It sounds like it was an accident,” Isaac said.

  “Of course it was!” Abigail said, tail lashing as though to emphasize her statement. “I wasn’t trying to kill a bunch of mortals. I didn’t actually kill anyone. I just lied and said a bunch of women were witches because I was afraid of what everyone else would do if they found out I was a witch.”

  “I’m sorry, Abigail,” Isaac said. “The council really sentenced you to live as a cat?”