I was so proud of how we had transformed Lockwood House.
I made cookies the night before, and now they were piled on a silver tray atop the old wooden table in the kitchen, a table so solid it was basically an island. A pitcher of lemonade with mint from the garden sat beside it, gleaming in the sun.
Jake and Jasper had cleaned up a lot nicer than I expected. Jasper had a suit on; Jake, a crisp black shirt with Western-style snaps and some dark jeans that really highlighted what a nice butt he had. But I wasn’t going to get caught checking that out.
I straightened up and readied a smile as I heard Hester letting in the first potential buyers—or nosy local witches. You could usually tell pretty quickly.
“Welcome, come in—welcome to Lockwood House.” I heard a large dog barking outside and I heard Hester gently informing them that maybe the dog should stay out there. I snickered, but I hoped this place didn’t sell to the type of people who expected to just waltz their dogs into my perfect house before showing me the money.
Several sets of footsteps came in, making lots of noise on the old wooden floors. Music to my ears.
“This is the living room, or front parlor as it would be considered, with one of four original fireplace mantles in the house.”
“Love the high ceilings,” an older woman said, while a younger woman said, “I don’t think I could fit my cauldron in there.”
When Jake and Jasper looked at me with twin raised eyebrows I had to clap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
Meanwhile, the dog smelled wolf, apparently, because it had circled around the house to the kitchen windows and was standing out there barking at Jake and Jasper.
“Smart dog, I’ll say that much,” Jake said.
“And here is the dining room…,” Hester was saying. “This is something truly special. This wallpaper was painted and enchanted by the original owners and the paintings help with hunting and foraging.”
“A focusing spell,” the older man said, sounding approving.
“You can finally learn to hunt deer,” his wife said.
“That will help,” Hester said.
“Oh, so…the kitchen is cut off from the living space?” The younger witch peered through the door and saw us. “Oh, hi.”
“Welcome!” I said. “Feel free to have some cookies and lemonade! I can vouch for the range. It works like a dream.”
“Don’t I know you?” the girl said. She was a skinny but somewhat pregnant blonde girl dressed like a fashionable witch. The style was basically “British royal family”—an appealingly modest and stylish dress in blue and a little fascinator on her head. She could have been anyone from any of my school days. “Helena? Right?”
“Oh.” I laughed. That’s always fun. “Yep. Guilty as charged.” Oh, jeez, why did I say it like that?
“So you’re doing this now. Huh. That is not what I would have expected.” She took a cookie. “Nice house.”
“Thank you,” I said, slightly more pained now.
Her husband had made a beeline for the oven. “Wow—Sienna, check out this range! This is killer! Does it still use logs?”
“I mean, it’s wood fired, yes,” I said.
“Oh, gosh, I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” Sienna said. Sienna? I still had no idea who she was. Which meant my family was definitely much wealthier and more prominent than hers, and also meant she was thinking what a huge loser I was right now.
“And what’s this?” Sienna kept nosing her way through the house ahead of everyone else while the older couple were still back there marveling over the wallpaper. “Oh, a tiny little bathroom. Mmkay.”
“Sorry about Dudley,” her husband said, looking out at the dog, who was still barking his head off out there.
Well, at least they weren’t going to buy it.
“The Pierces have put in an offer,” Hester said several hours later after taking a call. “They’re the young couple.”
“What!?” I cried. “No!”
“It’s for two thirty-nine…”
“Thousand?” Jasper asked, making a face.
“Obviously,” Hester said. “And it’s a cash offer, no contingencies, we have a thirty day closing in the contract but they want to move faster if possible, and they’re not asking for any additional closing costs.”
“Ohhh whyyy?”
“Why are you wailing?” Jake said. “Shit, I’d take that. You listed it for two sixty and they came in at two forty basically? Come back at two-fifty and we’re making a sweet profit.”
Well, he would, thanks to our deal for me to pay him based on net profits. I would barely get more than what I put in.
“I’m wailing because they’re not going to appreciate this gorgeous historic house! She said she wanted a spot for a cauldron but then she didn’t even pause to admire the apothecary workroom after I spent two days re-painting all those cabinets. That is the worst kind of witch poser. And I bet she tears down that dining room wall, too.”
Jake shrugged. “It’s all about the money, honey.”
“Not for this one,” Hester said, pointing at me, although she definitely agreed with him. Frankly, if Hester had been a white lady and not black, I think she would have been hard to tell apart from that old real estate lady on Shark Tank. She had the same style and was friendly but verrry calculating.
“That older couple seemed to like the house. Or what about that family that came last?”
“The Pietrowskis weren’t sure about finances. But don’t worry, I have more showings lined up tomorrow.”
The work was done and winter temperatures were starting to grip the house, but in the dream garden, it was sunny and warm. I dreamt myself onto a blanket in the grass, and Byron was with me, unpacking a picnic basket.
“Oh…this is a nice dream,” I said.
“Almost,” Byron said. “The ants are in the picnic basket.”
“Are the ants blonde and complaining about the layout of the picnic basket?”
Byron slid closer to me and leaned over my body, slipping an arm around my waist and trailing his fingers through my loose hair. “You have something against blondes?”
“It’s just…I know why there are invaders in my beautiful dreams. I’m just so heartbroken. After all the work I put into that house and we haven’t had any other offers! Why did those two even make an offer when that bitch complained about everything, even the bathroom upstairs which I would die to have. The Sullivans want me to just take it!”
“I think you came to love the place as much as Fiore did. I love that house too, and it was my haunt for decades, but in the end, nothing in this world is permanent. You have to let things go. We need the money for Greenwood Manor. Better to have one offer than none.”
“Everyone tells me I get too attached to these places…” I looked at the sky. Little puffy clouds were sailing slowly over our heads. I would make more money if I could just accept that houses were only things, but more than once I accepted a lower offer because I liked the buyers better, and it felt like the right thing to do.
“I think you have a strong sense of justice,” Byron said.
“I mean…it’s just a house.”
“Yes, but you like to see good things happen to good people,” he said. “And this is something you can control. But if you truly want to do something good for this world, get as much money as you can and let’s hurry to rescue Deveraux’s manor before it’s too late. Sienna might not appreciate the house, but her husband was very excited over the range, and the dog was absolutely loving the yard. Her kids will too. And those woods and the garden and a house with the echoes of wizards gone by in its walls…they change people.”
“I guess…”
“I know what will make you feel better.” He opened a box of truffles from the picnic basket, flicking off a few ants, and slipped one in my mouth. They were already melting.
“I’m gonna get so messy,” I said.
“Yes, you are,” he said, mov
ing down and lifting my skirt. My dream self still wasn’t wearing any underwear. Man, what a naughty subconscious. He pushed my legs open and slipped his tongue in between my folds, giving the sensitive flesh a long, slow lick.
I took another truffle and moaned with abandon. It was just a dream, so I might as well eat the whole box. It turns out, there is nothing like orgasming with your mouth full of melting chocolate.
Hopefully I didn’t get too spoiled for real life at this rate.
We signed the paperwork on Wednesday. Ridley Pierce, the husband, and Dudley the dog (Ridley and Dudley? What was up with that?) came to meet us while Sienna apparently had a meeting with her midwife that day. He wanted me to demonstrate the range and walk the property, and I could tell that he was totally in love with the garden and the whole forty acres. And so was the dog. Byron was right. Whatever Sienna thought about it, Ridley and Dudley were going to have a grand old time there.
“Hey, Hel? After spending those weeks in the house I’m almost positive the wall I wanted to tear down is actually structural,” Jake said after they left. “So I doubt she’ll take down the wallpaper either.”
I felt a little better.
I had hardly seen Graham in recent weeks, as we were getting close to election day and he was incredibly busy, but I kept calling him with updates.
“That’s a relief,” he said. “Because I have an update for you too, and…well…I’m not too happy about it.”
“What?”
“Blanche Greenwood called me and another buyer came in on Greenwood Manor.”
“But you have a handshake deal.”
“Yeah. She was all apologies. But this buyer offered twice what I did. If you’re up for it, we can match it, but…”
Another buyer? Who offered twice the money before the house even came on the market? Ohh, this was bad.
“If it’s Kiersten and Caleb, I will sell a kidney to get this place out from under them,” I said. “But I guess I’d better see the place first. Are you guys ready to head to Louisiana?” I called to the brothers behind me. We’d been playing an increasingly flirtatious game of poker and eating pizza from the nearest pizza place, which was also the nearest gas station, and not very good.
“Are they just there all the time?” Graham asked in a low voice.
“Either get used to it or learn to use a power saw,” I said.
“Well, I’m buying a plane ticket,” Graham said.
“What about your election?”
“It’s still two weeks away. I’ll meet you there.” He hung up.
As crazy a time as I’d had at Lockwood House, when it came to both men and magic, I had a feeling this was only the beginning.
*
More to come very soon with Wolves at the Door! This one will be forever remembered by me as the first book written while sheltering during the Covid-19 pandemic. Blah. What a stressful time. So I needed something fun to escape, and I started working on this series early. I’ve been addicted to HGTV for the last ten years and I first had the idea of Paranormal House Flippers when I was writing Tempted by Demons, which takes place in an old Victorian bed and breakfast and was my very first book set in the Ethereal/Sinistral/Wyrd paranormal world. It took much longer to think of a way to actually structure a plot around house flipping!
I’ve written many books in this world since, and if this is your first one, you might want to check out A Witch Among Warlocks, which is the story of how Helena’s brother broke with his family and ended up in a bond marriage, got killed by a demon at some point, and…a lot of other stuff.
Thank you reading! Love to my readers, hope y’all are safe and happy! Please join my Facebook group and come hang out! And sign up for my mailing list to get a free copy of the Witch Among Warlocks prequel novella, The Wild-Eyed Boys!
33
The Fairer Hex-Book One of A Witch Among Warlocks Preview
Charlotte
“Charlotte!” Dad screamed my name from downstairs, interrupting a pretty important fight with a dragon in my favorite MMORPG.
“Just a sec!” I screamed back.
“Charlotte! I need an explanation right now!” He was getting that high-pitched voice he gets when the raccoons are in our trash.
I had absolutely no clue what he could need an explanation about, seeing as I had no life and had not done anything out of the ordinary, but it sounded important.
“Charlotte!”
omg, I hastily wrote. i have to go. i’m so sorry. emergency unfolding in-house. brb.
The rest of my fellow adventurers freaked out on me, but my sexy elf warrior girlfriend/boyfriend Firia said, You’d better talk to him. The rest of us can handle it.
uhh…how did you know it was ‘him’?
I just assumed it was your dad.
oh yeah well you’re right. thx.
It was a weird moment because I was pretty sure I’d never told Firia that my Mom was gone and I wondered how he guessed the emergency wasn’t burnt toast or something, but I didn’t have time to fully ponder it. I had to check on Dad. Anyway, Firia was awesome for not getting upset at me for ditching on the dragon fight, seeing as my brooding mage character Larius had the pivotal dark spells for defeating said dragon. Firia was also the closest thing I had to a boyfriend. We’d been playing Fortune’s Favor for years. I met him on Christmas when Dad gifted me a year’s subscription, and we’d stuck together through a lot of fights. Before long, we were flirting. A couple months in we figured out that we had each chosen avatars of the opposite gender, but we were having fun anyway, so I called him “my girlfriend” in the game.
Of course, I was fully aware Firia could be lying and was not really an eighteen year old guy but was actually like…a fifty year old guy, or whatever. We’d never taken it off the game. Whenever I tried, he got cagey. Which was probably a warning sign, and his hot babe elf avatar might not be a good sign either, but maybe he was just a self-conscious nerd boy. At least he took all my hassling about sexism in the gaming industry without getting upset.
I padded down the stairs. Dad was standing at the dining room table, staring at an envelope that sat in the middle of the wooden surface, looking at it like it was poisoned.
“Dad? What’s wrong?” I stood on the first step, shoving my hands in my pockets. “Something came in the mail?”
“Is there something you aren’t telling me about?” he cried.
“Um…no? I don’t think so. I’m eighteen. I guess there might be something.” I laughed, but then I realized this was going beyond my dad’s usual level of overreaction. “Hey, what’s up? Just tell me.”
My dad and I had a thing going. We were opposite in a lot of ways. He was fun and also had a tendency to overreact. I was stubborn but chill. He liked loud music, barbecuing, tattoos. I liked magical-sounding soundtracks, gaming, pajama pants. It wasn’t unheard of for him to freak out over nothing. I went to look at the letter. Maybe the bill from our annual checkup was more than he expected or something.
“I don’t know how to explain all of this,” he said. “Shit. I wish y—”
I shot him a look. It seemed like, for all the world, he was going to say that he wished my mom was here. I could hear the ghost of the “your” when he cut himself off.
He never talked about Mom.
I saw the return address on the envelope.
Merlin College
P. O. Box 332
Small Hollow, NC
“You’re freaking out about ‘Merlin College’? What is that? Sounds like spam.” I started opening it.
He grabbed it from my hand and slammed it on the table. “No. It’s not spam. It’s a reckoning, that’s what it is. I thought you were safe from all this. I thought your mom—like—sealed that stuff up. Were you talking to your elf friend online?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Maybe I should make him explain it. Nah, you’re my daughter.”
“Him? Firia? What does he have to do with it?”
He took a de
ep breath. “Your mother had magical blood. I believe this letter is from a witches’ college. That’s why it’s so nondescript.”
“Well, I’m already going to college, so…” I’m not sure why I said that first. Like, when you get your Hogwarts letter do you go, oh dang, but I already sent in my paperwork to the Montessori school? “Magical blood? What do you mean?”
“Your mom’s mother was an Ethereal witch from a very old witch family. Her father was a Sinistral demon who could turn into a wolf. So a werewolf, basically. I mean—let me back up. Magic is real. You know that, right? Deep down, I’m sure you know that.”
Admittedly, I believed in magic longer than other kids, because my dad played along with all my childhood games, built fairy houses with me and was very insistent about offerings for Santa Claus. And yet… “Did the neighbors sell you drugs or something?”
“I wish. Your mother was supposed to protect you from this shit!” He grabbed a stuffed cat that I had seated at the dining room table because I was a dork, and threw it on the floor.
My heart was beating pretty fast at this point. “Be nice to Jiji! Calm down.” I grabbed the letter and ripped it open.
Dear Mr. Char Byrne,
Your application has been accepted. You will attend Merlin College, the elite school for warlocks, with a starting date of September 12th. We were stunned by your test results and are thrilled to have you with us. Please be packed and prepared on that day, as we will send a vehicle for you. Please refer to the attached list of items that are not acceptable at Merlin College and familiarize yourself with the rules of conduct.
We look forward to meeting you,
Ignatius Blair
Dean of Merlin College
“God, the list of stuff I can’t take to Merlin College is ten times longer than the acceptance letter. What the hell? Warlocks? Why do they think I’m a boy? They think my name is ‘Char Byrne’.” I laughed. “I mean, whatever, I just won’t go.”
Demons in the Bedroom (Paranormal House Flippers Book 1) Page 18
