Supernatural Psychic Mysteries: Four Book Boxed Set: (Misty Sales Cozy Mystery Suspense series)

by Morgana Best

  I paced around the room, trying to make sense of it all. “So you’re telling me that you were only pretending the entire time to be so hateful and mean?”

  “What?”

  “The way you always act and talk to me,” I continued. “Great acting job, I must say. I thought you were seriously just a cruel old woman.” I laughed, but Skinny did not laugh, too. “I’m just saying that your nasty act was a great cover. I never would’ve guessed that you were the leader of The Orpheans in a million years, and I certainly never would’ve imagined that you would be protecting me.”

  Skinny shook her head. “What act? And I didn’t exactly want to protect you, but we all have duties that we need to carry out, even if some of those tasks involve babysitting a new member for a while.”

  I sighed. Skinny didn’t seem at all pleased that I’d praised her acting skills. “Well, thanks for babysitting me then, because whether you wanted to or not, you saved my life.”

  “There is much more we need to save than just that,” Skinny said, walking toward the center of the room and looking at the journal in her hands. “Do you have a lighter or something we can use to burn this? It’s the only way to destroy it for good.”

  “I think there are some matches inside the drawer,” I said, as I checked through the dresser in my room. “Here you go.” I pulled them out and handed them to her, and then pointed to the bathroom. “We could probably use the sink.”

  Skinny rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I guess that’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

  I gasped, surprised that my boss was still just as rude and sarcastic as she had always been. I shrugged it off—I suppose it’s hard to break character, after all—and then followed Skinny into the bathroom. She opened the journal and tore pages from it. One by one, she dropped them in. As she did so, she chanted quietly in a language I did not know.

  “Should I go get some salt?” I asked.

  Skinny shot me a quick glance, her eyebrows arching high up on her forehead. “Why would you do that?”

  “I’m just trying to help,” I replied, unsure what else to say.

  Skinny shook her head and sighed. “We’re burning a book of spells, not cooking dinner.”

  A feeling of embarrassment swept over me and my cheeks burned.

  Skinny was still talking. “We need to make sure that the entire journal is destroyed. If any of it can be retrieved at all, there’s no guarantee that the information won’t be recovered somehow.” She threw the last pieces of the book into the sink. She then pulled out the matches and struck one, and then dropped the match into the sink. A quick flame engulfed the pages, sending licks of fire shooting upward. As the blaze slowly died down, a cloud of smoke swirled around the sink before escaping up into the ceiling.

  I stepped closer to the sink and looked in to see a pile of ashes. “Are we done now?” I asked.

  “Yes, it’s finished, but don’t forget to thank me for this,” Skinny said.

  Chapter 17

  I stood in the doorway of Melissa’s room, my arms folded, leaning against the frame.

  “Skinny had to have made some sort of mistake, hadn’t she?” Melissa said as she packed, pulling a sweater from the small closet and tossing it into the bag that lay open on the end of her bed. “She never sends me anywhere by myself. We’re a team. Doesn’t she know that?”

  I laughed. “I think you’ll be able to handle yourself, don’t you?”

  Melissa stopped packing for a minute and turned to me. “Of course I can handle myself. I’m a good journalist, if I do say so myself.”

  “I don’t know if any of the writing we ever do can be considered journalism,” I said. “Definitely not this assignment.”

  “The dog that can see ghosts might get me a Pulitzer,” Melissa said with a snort. She went to her bag and stuffed one last pair of pants inside, and then zipped it up. “Really, though, I’m going to miss you.”

  “It’s going to be ruff, but you’ll be fine,” I said. “Get it? Ruff? Like rough, but ruff, like a dog barking.” I burst out laughing.

  “And suddenly I’m okay with you not going,” Melissa said.

  “I’m a gold mine of dog related puns,” I said. “You’re going to miss that, for sure.”

  “I’m not. I know I’m not.”

  Melissa shouldered her bag and slipped past me into the hall. I followed her. “It’s only three days, so try not to miss me too much,” Melissa said.

  “I’ll try to get through it. You’ve got your plane ticket?”

  “Yes. I’m going to miss going by train,” Melissa said as we went into the elevator.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “No, I’m not,” Melissa said. The doors dinged and opened and Melissa led the way through the lobby. A cab was waiting by the curb in front of the hotel, and Melissa opened the door and slid her bag inside. She turned and hugged me.

  “I wish I had my car here. I would have driven you to the airport,” I said.

  “Don’t you have a big date?” Melissa asked.

  “Something like that,” I said. I didn’t know if dinner with my boyfriend and Skinny could count as a big date, but Melissa could not know that Skinny was here.

  “Well, have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “Is there anything you wouldn’t do?”

  Melissa laughed as she dropped into the back seat of the cab. “No,” she said, and she shut the door. I watched the cab drive off, waving once when my best friend turned to look back through the rear window. It felt weird seeing her go off to a story without me, but I was relishing the chance to sit down with Skinny and grill her a little.

  I turned and headed back inside the hotel. I had a few hours before dinner, and I was considering a nap or a long bath. I definitely wanted to relax. I deserved at least that after everything that had happened. When I got to the hotel room and unlocked it using the plastic keycard, I paused. Something seemed different. Surely the portal hadn’t reopened?

  I pushed the door open, and I saw what the difference was. I had not left a hundred burning candles in the hotel room, but there they were. I realized it was the scent that had given me pause, that burning fragrance from the candles. They were all thick and white, sitting on glass discs that caught the droplets of wax that rolled from the wick and down the side of each burning candle.

  I went in, and shut the door behind me. The lights were off, and the curtains drawn.

  “Hey,” I heard, and I turned to see Jamie coming from the bathroom, the place he had hidden from me.

  “How did you light all of these so fast?” I asked him.

  Jamie laughed and came forward, taking my hands in his own. He smelled good, and his touch was strong, his hands big and rough, but somehow still gentle. “That’s the first thing that pops into your mind when you see all of this?”

  I blushed and lowered my gaze. “Sorry,” I said. I hoped I hadn’t ruined his romantic intentions.

  Jamie put the tip of his index finger under my chin and forced me to lift my gaze. “Don’t apologize. I love the fact that you’re so practical, even in the face of ghosts and goblins. It’s one of the things I love the most, actually.”

  “You know, I’ve never come across a goblin,” I said, and I smiled. “It’s beautiful.”

  A slow red flush traveled up Jamie’s face. “I was just thinking—you know, I don’t have to live so far away. I do so much traveling. Um, I don’t think SI7 would force me to stay in Oxfordshire.”

  I gasped, and my heart stopped beating, or so it felt. “You want to move here?”

  “Well, not to this hotel, but maybe to your town.”

  I laughed. “You know what I meant.”

  “Oh, you’re the only one who’s allowed to be annoyingly practical?” Jamie asked.

  “Hey, you said you loved that about me.”

  “I love you for a lot of reasons.”

  I looked up at Jamie. I saw myself reflected in his eyes, and I could tel
l he was telling the truth. He did love me. And I loved him.

  “I love you, too,” I said, shyly.

  And then, to my shock, Jamie pulled away. He got down on one knee and pulled a small box from his pocket. He opened it. Inside, glinting as it caught the orange light from the candle flames, was a ring with a huge pink diamond on it.

  “Will you marry me?” Jamie asked.

  “Oh,” I said, clutching my throat.

  “I can live here, with you. I’ll have to travel. I’ll have to go to the UK sometimes, but we can make it work.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes, we could make it work? Or…” Jamie said, trailing off.

  “Yes, I’ll marry you!” I said. He stood and we threw our arms around each other.

  Two hours later, we were walking hand in hand to the restaurant down beside the lobby. Skinny was already there, sitting at a small round table with two empty chairs. She had a drink in front of her. When she saw us, she rolled her eyes. “You two look entirely too happy,” she said, with obvious disgust in her voice.

  I held up my ring finger. “He asked me to marry him.”

  “Marriages never work out these days,” Skinny said with a snort, but I let it roll off my shoulders. Nothing the woman could say would deflate my mood.

  “I thought it best we get together and debrief as it were,” Skinny continued. “Now that you know who I am.”

  I thought back to all of the times I could have used guidance and help. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked.

  Skinny shrugged. “I was busy,” she said simply. “I am busy. Often.”

  That answer rankled me a bit, and Jamie must have sensed it, because he reached over and placed his hand on my arm.

  Skinny went on, oblivious to the fact that I would like nothing better than to push her out of her chair. “So it seems as though this case has wrapped up rather satisfactorily,” she said. “I am glad that Douglas is in that portal.”

  I thought back to the nightmarish bat creatures, and the demon who had come after me from the portal world. I shuddered.

  “I hope he never gets out,” Jamie said.

  I didn’t know how I felt about that. Douglas had been a horrible man, but those things… The longer he was there, the higher the chance that one of them got him. Nevertheless, maybe it was a reap what you sow situation. Douglas had brought it all on himself.

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I’m rather impressed with you, Misty,” Skinny said out of the blue. “You got things right for once.”

  My mouth opened in shock. That was high praise coming from her. I was struggling to think of something to say, but couldn’t.

  “Well, the only thing left to go over is how you’re doing,” Skinny said, turning once more to business.

  I didn’t quite know what Skinny was getting at. “I’m fine,” I said.

  “You went into another dimension. At least, that’s what we think it was,” Skinny said.

  “Really, it was scary, but I’m fine.”

  Skinny nodded. “We’d still like you to speak with someone. We have a doctor on the team.”

  “A shrink?” I asked, surprised.

  “Sort of,” Skinny said. “He specializes in counseling survivors of vampire attacks. We found him that way. He’s able to handle strangeness.”

  I laughed. “I’m getting better at handling strangeness,” I said.

  Skinny nodded and slipped a card out of her purse which hung on the back of her chair. She slid it across the table to her left, and I picked it up. “His number,” she said. “The other thing, Douglas was speaking of gold. Did you see any?”

  I shook my head. “No, but I was being attacked by a couple of giant creatures while I was there.”

  Jamie leaned over to Skinny. “You people aren’t going to go there, are you? For the gold?”

  Skinny shrugged, turning her steely gaze on him. “What we do costs a lot of money. We’re looking into it.”

  “Messing around there would be a mistake,” Jamie went on.

  “Looking into it doesn’t mean we’re going to do it,” Skinny said, raising her hand a bit, indicating that the discussion was over.

  It was just as well, because the waitress arrived with our food. I hadn’t realized just how hungry I was. Fighting the supernatural could really take it out of a person. I cut a piece of potato and ate it. As I was chewing, I looked up and saw Skinny staring at me.

  “You know, with a wedding coming up, maybe you should just eat half of that,” Skinny said. “You’re already going to have a hard enough time finding a cute wedding dress at your size.”

  I swallowed the potato along with my anger. In a way, it was comforting to know that even if I were going to different dimensions, investigating ghosts, and almost being killed by giant bat demons, back in the real world, some things never changed.

  * * * The End * * *

  Connect with Morgana.

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  Other books by Morgana Best.

  Miss Spelled (The Kitchen Witch Book 1)

  A humorous mystery

  Amelia Spelled has had a bad week. Her boyfriend dumps her when she inadvertently gives him food poisoning; her workplace, a telecommunications center, fires all their staff as they are outsourcing offshore, and she is evicted due to smoke damage resulting from her failed attempts at baking. Amelia thinks her luck has changed when she inherits her aunt’s store and beautiful Victorian house.

  Yet has Amelia jumped out of the frying pan into the fire? The store is a cake store, and her aunt was a witch. To add to the mix, the house has secrets all of its own.

  When a man is murdered in the cake store, will Amelia be able to cook up a way to solve the crime? Will her spells prove as bad as her baking?

  A Ghost of a Chance (Witch Woods Funeral Home Book 1)

  A humorous mystery

  Nobody knows that Laurel Bay can see and talk to ghosts. When she inherits a funeral home, she is forced to return from the city to the small town of Witch Woods to breathe life into the business. It is a grave responsibility, but Laurel is determined that this will be no dead-end job.

  There she has to contend with her manipulative and overly religious mother, more than one ghost, and a secretive but handsome accountant.

  When the murder of a local woman in the funeral home strangles the finances, can Laurel solve the murder?

  Or will this be the death of her business?

  (Note: This book is humorously irreverent in places, so please read only if you won’t be offended.

  Christmas Spirit (The Middle-aged Ghost Whisperer Book 1)

  Prudence Wallflower tours the country, making live appearances. She connects people with loved ones who have passed on. However, her reputation as a psychic medium is failing, and even Prudence has begun to doubt herself. She has never seen a ghost, but receives impressions from the dead. This all changes when the ghost of a detective appears to her and demands her help to solve a murder. Prudence finds herself out of her depth, and to make matters worse, she is more attracted to this ghost than any man she has ever met.

  About Morgana Best.

  #1 Best-selling Cozy Mystery author, Morgana Best, lives in a small, historic, former gold mining town in the middle of nowhere in Australia. She is owned by one highly demanding, rescued cat who is half Chinchilla, and two less demanding dogs, a chocolate Labrador and a rescued Dingo, as well as two rescued Dorper sheep, the ram, Herbert, and his wether friend, Bertie.

  Morgana is a former college professor.

  In her spare time, Morgana loves to read cozy mysteries, repurpose furniture, and renovate her old house. She is vegan.
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