Ground

by Kirsten Weiss

  Table of Contents

  Books by Kirsten Weiss

  PREFACE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Spell for Home Protection

  Spelled Bath Salts/Bombs

  Get Grounded

  DOWN – CHAPTER ONE

  About the Author

  Books by Kirsten Weiss

  Copyright

  Ground

  Book Two in the Witches of Doyle Trilogy

  Kirsten Weiss

  Sign up for a free e-copy of the urban fantasy novel, The Alchemical Detective, exclusive content, and author updates at kirstenweiss.com

  Books by Kirsten Weiss

  Follow the links below for more information on each title and purchase links for all vendors.

  The Witches of Doyle Series

  Bound (Book 1) | Ground (Book 2) | Down (Book 3) | Spirit on Fire | Tales of the Rose Rabbit

  Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum Series

  The Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum | Pressed to Death

  The Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery Novels

  The Metaphysical Detective | The Alchemical Detective | The Shamanic Detective | The Infernal Detective | The Elemental Detective | The Hoodoo Detective | The Hermetic Detective

  The Mannequin Offensive

  Sensibility Grey Steampunk Suspense

  Steam and Sensibility | Of Mice and Mechanicals | A Midsummer Night’s Mechanical

  PREFACE

  Low in the Sierras, deep in a forest glade, water pure as luck bubbled through granite. The spring flowed from deep beneath the stone mountain, piercing the veil between here and there.

  It had been a long time since Belle had been there.

  She knelt beside the spring — her spring — and touched the surface of its chill water. Her fingers left nary a ripple. Even in the summer, the water was ice. Now, in winter, she sensed an unnatural coldness.

  Frowning, she stood. Impossible as it seemed, the blight was spreading from her world to this one.

  Her fist clenched. White light seeped through the gaps between her slender fingers, illuminating the bones in her hand, and died.

  The sisters.

  She should have strangled them in their cribs. She'd known they would be a bane to her plans from the moments of their birth. Triplets! Worse, they'd inherited magic from both their parents' lines. And unlike their forebears, they were neither of that realm nor this, but of the modern world.

  A generation ago, they would have been married and mothered and dead, her magic having worked its will. But they dallied, playing at being women, and the world changed.

  Last summer had been a disaster. She’d sent murder spinning the eldest sister’s way. Against all sense, the middle child, the weakest of the triplets, had thwarted her efforts.

  It really pissed her off.

  CHAPTER ONE

  My wakeup call came in a pub.

  Naturally.

  And just as naturally, I didn’t listen.

  At the table, I twisted a crimson bar napkin between my fingers and hoped I hadn’t made yet another mistake.

  Fairy lights strung the rafters of the Bell and Thistle. A fake Christmas tree leaned, off-kilter, in a corner beside a stone fireplace.

  The bar hadn’t changed much since the eighteen fifties. Walls of horizontal, wood slats. An ornate bar with wooden ivy and dancing cherubs. Hanging lamps with red, glass shades. Dark corners filled with the sense of smoke, though no smoke actually existed. Smoking had been long banned in California pubs.

  My back pressed into the chair’s uncomfortable wooden slats. It felt wrong to be in a pub without my favorite glittery miniskirt and stiletto heels. Tonight, I wore jeans and high-heeled boots and a winter sweater. Sensible clothes, though being here was anything but.

  At a nearby table, Mrs. O'Malley, a forty-something with the skin and figure of a twenty-something, shot me the evil eye. She nudged her thick-haired husband, leaned forward, and said something I couldn't hear. I could guess what she’d said. Reckless.

  I smiled at her, a real smile, because how could I help it? At the bar, the man I’d loved since forever stood, his black hair coiling about his neck, ordering fresh drinks. Brayden and I were finally together.

  Maybe.

  Mrs. O’Malley scowled.

  I wished I knew a magic spell to open her heart, but we all have our own paths to walk, and it would be wrong to interfere. Mrs. O’Malley was walking hers. Whether she reached her destination was her choice.

  Biting my lip, I looked away. Our family doctor, Doc Toeller, sat at the other end of the bar, her platinum blond hair shimmering beneath the hanging lamps.

  I couldn't tell who sat beside her. They both faced away from me, but he was young, with thick, brown hair, and he filled his jeans almost as well as Brayden. The mystery man leaned close to the older woman, his hand light on her arm.

  I sighed. Doctor Toeller wasn’t concerned about what people thought. I wasn't sure why or when I’d started caring.

  Brayden, his jeans tight against his muscular thighs, ambled to our table. He set my dirty martini in front of me, and he was close enough for me to smell his cedar scent. Brayden lowered himself into the chair opposite. His forest green, cable-knit sweater set off his emerald eyes, eyes I was struggling not to get lost in.

  I heated beneath his gaze, hard and assessing. But Brayden had always had that effect on me, making my skin tingle, my heart pound. It was a problem, like my yearning to lean across the table and brush the lock of wavy, black hair from his forehead. We Bonheim sisters couldn’t afford to give our hearts away. That was probably why I’d fallen so hard for Brayden, married and unavailable. Now he was neither, and I had to make a decision.

  I wasn’t ready.

  I raised my chin. This indecisiveness and insecurity wasn’t me. Brayden and I were just two old friends getting together. It wasn’t a date.

  Or was it?

  I put down the napkin and gulped the martini.

  “You don't want to be here.” His bronzed face creased.

  “Why would you…? That’s not true,” I said quickly.

  He cleared his throat. “If you think this is too soon—”

  “I don't.” It was high time to break the cool casualness that had grown between us.

  “Because I'm used to waiting for you.” He grinned. “You made me wait thirty minutes tonight.”

  “I did not.” I laughed. Had I really?

  “Did too.”

  “Fifteen minutes. Fashionably late.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Brayden was rarely late, and he was always patient. “Look,” I said, trying to break the ice, “this is stupid. We've been friends for years. What's wrong with two friends meeting for a drink?”

  His green eyes darkened. “Friends?”

>   I caught myself reaching for the napkin and dropped my hand to the damp table. “I'm only saying, who cares what the town thinks?” It had been my motto for most of my twenty-nine years. A motto I was starting to despise.

  “We’re not friends,” he said.

  My head jerked up, my mouth going dry.

  “This was supposed to be a date,” he said.

  “Was?”

  He smiled, crooked. “Is.”

  So it was a date – our first. He was ready and finally free.

  Was I ready? So what if I wasn’t? Uncertainty had never stopped me before. I was Jayce Bonheim, dammit. Fearless party girl by night, disreputable café owner by day.

  Reaching across the table, I laid my hand atop his. A jolt of heat flooded me at the touch. I would finally tell him that I loved him, had always loved him.

  But he turned my hand over and ran his thumb along the inside of my wrist, and I couldn’t speak a word. Ironic that I, who could tie cherry stems with my tongue, was utterly tongue tied. “Brayden—”

  “Tell me about Ground.”

  “My coffee shop?” I drew my hand away. “Are we making small talk now?”

  He raised a black brow. “Is it wrong to want to know what's happening in the most important part of your life?”

  “Ground’s not the most important part of my life.” But it was the one part I hadn't screwed up, the one thing I'd put all of me into, finished. I'd never completed college, one quarter short of a degree in dance and debauchery. Romantic life? Disaster.

  And when I'd been accused of murder earlier this year, I'd retreated into avoidance. Thanks to my inaction, my sister, Karin, had nearly been killed. Even Ground wasn’t my own success. My aunt had financed the café. When she’d died last summer, my debt to her had been erased. It didn’t seem right.

  I fingered my gold-plated bangles.

  “Then what is?” he asked.

  “My family.” You. “I think Nick is going to pop the question.”

  “Your sister’s getting engaged? Good for Karin and Nick.”

  Why had I brought up the possible engagement? Now he’d think I was fishing for my own gold ring. I sighed. Things between Brayden and I had been so easy once. Tonight I fumbled for words.

  His thumb made slow circles on my hand, and my breath quickened. “I've missed having you around,” he said.

  The jukebox thumped an upbeat, country song about betrayal and revenge. Couples moved to the center of the pub and made their own dance floor.

  “I've missed you too. Brayden, I...” I wanted to slink out of my chair and kiss him in front of everyone. I wanted—

  “Yeah?” He angled his head, his lips hinting at a smile.

  “I have to find the ladies’ room.” I hurried down the narrow hall to the bathrooms.

  Someone had opened the high window in the ladies’ room, and it was cold as a morgue. Teeth chattering, I did what I needed to do, then washed my hands. The water was ice, cramping my fingers. The bathroom mirror had warped, giving my green eyes a funhouse look and putting more waves in my caramel-colored hair than my curling iron had been capable of. It wasn’t just my face that was skewed. Something in the atmosphere was off, sideways, wrong. Not knowing what it might be, I grabbed for the paper towels. The dented bin was empty. I tapped the ancient hand dryer.

  Broken.

  Grumbling, I wiped my hands on my jeans and went to close the small window.

  In the parking lot outside, a pickup’s taillights flared.

  My pickup.

  I stared, baffled. What were my taillights doing on outside when I was in here?

  My F-150 reversed from its spot.

  “No!” I raced from the bathroom and through the bar’s rear exit. Patches of snow dotted the dirt parking lot, and I slipped in the white stuff. My breath left a trail in the winter night air. “Stop! Get the hell out of my truck!”

  The truck kept moving.

  “I see you!” I shouted.

  My truck paused at the parking lot entrance.

  I slowed, disbelieving. Was the thief having second thoughts?

  Maybe one of my sisters had needed to borrow my pickup. Maybe it wasn't being stolen.

  The truck reversed toward me, its wheels skidding in the earth, its engine a whine. Faster and faster it came.

  I froze, rooted in the thin snow.

  “Jayce!” Brayden shouted.

  My brain kicked in. I shrieked and dove, rolling between a Jeep and a red SUV and onto my back. Even in my shock, I noticed the brightness of the alpine stars, an audience watching and wondering what tiny Jayce would do next.

  The truck sheered past me and skidded to a halt. It screeched forward, kicking up small stones.

  Movements jerky, I stumbled to my feet and watched my pickup fly from the driveway, bounce off the curb and land in the highway. It roared down the road. Its red lights disappeared around a curve.

  I brushed snow and wet earth and small stones from my palms. My hands shook. I smoothed the front of my purple knit top and jeans.

  “Jayce!” Brayden raced to me, his movements smooth, athletic. “Are you all right?”

  My muscles quivered with fear and fury. “Someone stole my truck!”

  He grasped my shoulders and gently turned me toward him. “But are you all right?” He ran his hands over me with a practiced touch, calm and detached like the paramedic he was.

  And in spite of my rage, I felt myself relaxing, comforted by his expert touch. We were both healers in our own ways, and that had drawn me to him as well. I swallowed. “I'm fine.”

  “You call the police,” he said, grim. “I'm going after him.”

  For a millisecond, that sounded like a great idea. Then dread iced my stomach. “No.”

  “I won't do anything crazy, just follow him and let the police know where he is.” He dug his keys from his jeans and made a move toward his green Jeep.

  “Brayden, no!” Fear dizzied me, and I clutched his muscular arm. For once cautious, I gulped, my teeth chattering. “It's not worth it. It's only a truck. It will come back to me.”

  He frowned. “Is that your magical thinking talking...” He trailed off. “You're freezing. Come inside, and we'll call the police.” Looping an arm over my shoulders, he pulled me close.

  We walked inside, his body warm against my side. I pushed from my mind how good this closeness felt.

  My truck! I've never cast a curse, and there are a whole host of reasons why it's a bad idea, but how I wanted to zap that thief tonight.

  We returned to our table. Shaken, I prospected in my slouchy purse for my phone and called the sheriff's office. (It depresses me that I have that number on speed dial.) I made a report to a bored-sounding woman on the other end of the line. She told me I'd need to come to the station tomorrow.

  “He was heading east,” I said.

  “We'll put out an alert,” she said, her voice flat, uninterested.

  “What are the odds I'll get my truck back?” My voice reached a crescendo, shrill.

  “We'll do our best.”

  I knew pessimism when I heard it. “Thanks,” I said. We exchanged more information, and I hung up.

  “You should have told them the guy tried to run you down,” Brayden said. “That might have lit a fire under their butts.”

  I rubbed my lips. “I'll tell them tomorrow. I’ll have to go to the station then to fill out a report.” Which assumed my truck wouldn’t have been found by that time. My teeth clenched. Was my baby headed for a chop shop?

  “I’ll take you home,” he said, a hopeful lilt in his voice.

  “Thanks.” I knew he wanted me to say everything was okay, but my mood had been ruined. As first dates had gone, this had been a disaster. Was the universe trying to tell me something? Of course it was. The universe was always speaking, my sister, Karin, insisted. I just never listened.

  I let Brayden pay the bill. Speaking in short, senseless sentences, we drove west, down the mountain highway and p
ast tall redwoods.

  At a sporting goods store, he turned off the highway and into Doyle. It stood at an odd, middle place — not quite alpine, not quite foothill. Quaint, gold-rush era wooden buildings, frozen in time, lined the mining town’s Main Street. Wine tasting rooms, restaurants, tourist shops had replaced dry goods stores and barns.

  He turned the Jeep off Main Street and veered into an alley. We glided to a halt beside a two-story brick building. A wooden, exterior stairway switchbacked to my upstairs apartment. “Here you are.”

  “Yep.” I made no move to unbuckle my seatbelt. I had to say something, make things normal between us. But things would never be normal.

  “I'm sorry about your truck,” he said. “If you need a lift anywhere, just let me know.”

  “Thanks. Brayden...” My speech grew rushed. “I'm sorry our date crashed and burned.”

  He blinked. “It didn't. You were there.” Brayden stepped from the Jeep and walked around to my side, opened the door.

  I unhitched my belt and stepped out. “Our first date was a disaster. I barely knew what to say to you. You probably thought I was ditching you when I ran out of the bar.”

  “It crossed my mind.” He stood close and angled his head as if to see me better.

  “And it ended early because someone stole my truck.”

  “Why don't you know what to say to me?”

  Because a part of me thought this was too soon. Because a part of me felt guilty, that this was a betrayal of his dead wife. Because I wanted him so badly. My pulse raced. “Maybe my truck being stolen was a sign.”

  “A sign that you need better security. Cars get stolen. Did you even lock it?”

  No, I hadn't. I rarely did, because cars didn't get stolen in Doyle. My nostrils flared. “Are you saying it's my fault my truck was stolen?”

  “No. It's the car thief's fault. I'm just saying, not everything that goes wrong is a sign of doom.”

  Easy for him to say. Brayden wasn’t a witch.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I burrowed deeper beneath the soft, bamboo sheets. Stolen truck. Wrecked first date. Mrs. O’Malley. My eyes flashed open. Mrs. O’Malley? Why was I worrying about her?