by Raven Snow
Table of Contents
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
Epilogue
“A War Between Witches”
Supernatural Witch Cozy Mystery
Lainswich Witches Series Book 10
Raven Snow
© 2017
Raven Snow
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner & are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Products or brand names mentioned are trademarks of their respective holders or companies. The cover uses licensed images & are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any person(s) that may be depicted on the cover are simply models.
Edition v1.0 (2017.05.26)
http://www.ravensnowauthor.com
Special thanks to the following volunteer readers who helped with proofreading: Sue Fay, Michele Beschen and those who wished to be anonymous. Thank you so much for your support.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
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
Epilogue
Chapter One
It was a good day to be a Greensmith. It was the sort of day where the sun was shining, the birds were chirping and no one had anywhere that they needed to be. They were all out on the front lawn, fussing over the garden. It was that time of year when most of the planting was done. Rowen stood by with her arms full of clippings from previous years. Eric took them from her one at a time. Rowen couldn’t help but note that her husband looked awfully adorable in his thrift store coveralls. With that blond hair and strong jaw line, he looked a lot like a male model. Dressed like one too. Or at least he did most days. They’d had to go out of their way to get something for him to wear for this. Fancy suits and designer jeans just wouldn’t do.
“Put that one here,” said Willow, pointing to the hole she had just dug out. She and her sister had put themselves in charge of getting the soil ready. Peony was right beside her sister, digging out another hole of her own. Once they had looked too similar to tell apart at a glance. Now, Peony’s faded purple locks really stood at contrast with the blond of Willow’s. They had really come into their own as two different women recently. That wasn’t to say they didn’t still prefer the company of each other over that of the rest of the family.
“Does anyone else want to do these?” asked Margo. She was standing a few feet away from the garden holding a box. The box was full of seeds they had bagged up from last year. They were damp and sprouting and ready to be planted.
Margo had worn a slinky red dress and kitten heels for some inane reason. She looked a bit like a blond skeleton sweating through its makeup standing there. “Why can’t you?” Rowen asked, unwilling to cut her any slack. Margo was always looking for an easy way out.
“Because I have to work!” Margo sounded scandalized that she even had to ask. “I have to go meet with Channel 2 about Spring Festival coverage. I know you’ve given yourself the day off, but not everyone here has that privilege.”
That first part had cut a little low. It was a slow news day and it was their paper. The only part of the Lainswich Inquirer that they needed to keep track of was the blog. They could do that while spending time with family. In fact, Rose was inside doing some work on it as they spoke. As for the rest of Margo’s excuse, well, Rowen supposed that was a fair reason, but she doubted it was as urgent as Margo was making it out to be. “Are you really in that big of a rush?”
“I will be if I don’t get a move on,” Margo countered, placing the box at her feet and putting her hands on her hips. “What about them? They could help, couldn’t they?” She indicated their aunts lounging on fold-up chairs on the lawn. They were both wearing sunglasses and barely seemed to register when their names were called.
“Hmm?” Aunt Lydia slid her glasses down to the tip of her long nose. “What’s that?”
“They think we should pitch in.” Aunt Nadine was already beginning to rise. She was probably one of the sweetest members of the Greensmith family. Rowen was about to object to the help, but someone else beat her to it.
“We’ve got this, Mom,” Peony assured her.
“Yeah,” Willow added. “Margo is just whining.”
“I am not,” Margo insisted, but it seemed like she was beaten. With a huff, she squatted down in her kitten heels and set about planting seeds.
“Mind you do that with a good attitude,” Aunt Lydia called, pausing to take a sip of lemonade. “Seedlings can sense your hostility.” At this point, Rowen felt fairly certain that Lydia was just messing with her niece, but it was always hard to tell with her. “Why don’t you-” Lydia fell silent when her daughter stepped out onto the front porch.
Rose looked tired. She was rubbing her temples and taking long, deep, cleansing breaths. “What’s the matter, Dear?” Lydia asked her, sitting a little straighter in her chair. She was waiting for drama. Lydia was in a perpetual state of waiting for drama.
Rose was probably the least likely to give it to her out of all of them. She took most everything in stride. Maybe it was because she was adopted. With her long black hair and decidedly Asian features, she didn’t look much like the rest of them. That wouldn’t be a problem except that she had never really been able to do magic. That had always been a bit of a sore spot.
“We need to get rid of comments on our blog altogether,” Rose said, more to Rowen and her cousins than to her mother. “I don’t like moderating them. I’m all for freedom of speech, but some of the things people leave are just obscene.”
Rowen handed the next plant to Eric and gave Rose’s words some thought. They had already disabled anonymous comments. To hear Rose tell it, that apparently hadn’t deterred enough people from being nasty online. “You’re in charge of the place now,” Rowen reminded her. When they had first started up, Rowen had been the one in charge of the Lainswich Inquirer. Now that her time was split between that and Eric’s investigating gig, she had long since handed the reigns over to Rose. That didn’t keep Rose from second guessing herself in times like these.
Rose bit her bottom lip, looking torn. “If we get rid of the comment section, they’ll just e-mail us directly.”
“Probably,” Rowen agreed. The town of Lainswich didn’t have a whole lot of love for the Greensmiths. Some of them had come
around recently but, well, folks were afraid of what they didn’t understand.
“Then again, at least what they have to say wouldn’t be online where everyone can see it. Maybe they would even get bored of harassing us after a while.” Rose had come to her own conclusion, just like she normally did.
Rowen smiled, relieved but unsurprised that her expertise wasn’t needed. Rose had a good handle on things. Maybe once she had been shy about most everything. These days, she was much more confident in her own abilities. Putting her in charge of the Inquirer had really been the right call. “So, you wanna come down here and help out or what?”
Rose looked down at the garden as if she had forgotten they were even here working on it. “Oh!” She came down the steps with quite a bit more pep than Rowen was feeling. “How can I help?”
“You should help Margo,” Willow said, her words terribly sarcastic. “She has somewhere to be, so she can’t mess her dress up.”
“I’m sorry I have such a busy schedule. Not all of us can take days off whenever we want.”
Rowen could feel the smile tugging at her mouth. She wanted to hide it, but it didn’t feel like she was having much luck. “You do kinda make your own schedule, though. I mean, it’s not like you didn’t schedule today to go meet with Julia.”
“She has a very busy schedule!” Margo insisted, though her face was turning red.
“Do you want my help or not?” asked Rose, still sort of lingering behind her and looking lost.
Margo took a deep breath and looked down at all the seedlings she still had left. “Yes, please,” she muttered irritably.
Rose crouched down in the dirt beside her cousin and started working. A breeze came through which was nice. Aunts Lydia and Nadine brought out a couple rounds of lemonade. They also brought out some snacks about mid-afternoon. Margo had been making her excuses to leave right about then, but the promise of finger sandwiches stopped her. “I’ll stay for a few.”
Sweat was running down the back of Rowen’s neck. After pulling back that muddy red mass of hair of hers, it absolutely had to be a matted mess. Her skin tingled with the promise of a sunburn later. Even so, it had been a good day with her family. They were missing a few members, like Margo’s dad, Norman. He was handling the New Age shop he ran with her aunts. And then there was Grammy. Her absence hurt the most— in prison for a decade’s old crime. She had murdered a dangerous man who had threatened the family and hidden the body after. Part of Rowen wished every day that Grammy had gone right on denying that crime, but that wouldn’t have been right and she knew it. It wasn’t even what Grammy had wanted.
Rowen took a deep breath in and let out a long sigh. She forced herself to focus on what she had, on the people who were there. Margo was about to leave. She would likely miss out on the family dinner they would be having later. Still, it was nice. It was the nicest day Rowen had had in some time. And all that meant was that she should have been wholly unsurprised when something ruined it.
All of a sudden, a big RV trundled its way up the hill and to the Greensmith house. It was an ugly thing with peeling multicolored paint and headlights that looked cross-eyed. The words “Wash Me” were spelled out in one of the side windows. “Expecting guests?” Rowen asked her aunts, but Lydia and Nadine were just exchanging startled looks.
“It’s not,” said Nadine. “It couldn’t be her.”
“It could too,” Aunt Lydia shot right back. She fell silent and still for a moment as if sensing changes in the air around them. “In fact, I would bet it is.”
It was only now that Rowen was beginning to catch on. “Oh,” she said, standing. “Oh, no.” What else was there to say? Already her emotions were at war with each other, unsure how she should feel about any of this. That became doubly true when the doors to the RV opened and her mother came hopping out with her arms wide open.
Tiffany Greensmith had always been a free spirit in the way that the rest of her family distinctly was not. She looked a lot like Rowen, really, with her reddish hair and petite but curvy frame. Except, Rowen didn’t weave flowers into her hair every morning and Rowen didn’t reek of fifteen different kinds of incense or wander off with whatever man would take her. Rowen had always really resented her mother for that last one. “What was wrong with her own family, her own daughter?” she had always wondered. Were they not important enough to stay in one place?
Rowen swallowed her anger down. She was an adult now. The past was the past and her mother was who she was. Mostly, Rowen was just annoyed, straining for a peek at whatever creep she had brought home with her this time.
“Baby!” Tiffany threw her arms around Rowen first. “Aww, I missed you. Look how long your hair’s gotten. Soon it’ll be as long as mine!”
Rowen silently swore then and there that she was getting a pixie cut within the week. “This is a surprise,” she said instead of anything she really longed to say. She pushed the resentment down long enough for a hug. “I missed you, too.” That was true at least.
“Sorry for the short notice,” said Tiffany, like she had given any at all. She took a step back and smiled at her sisters. “I hope you haven’t burned the shop down to the ground without me.”
“Oh, we’re doing quite well without you,” Aunt Lydia assured her, coming in for a hug anyway. “It’s good to see you.”
“Are you staying long?” asked Nadine, sounding hopeful.
“I don’t know,” Tiffany admitted, hugging both of her sisters. “Something drew me back here. You know how it goes.” She had always gone wherever her whims took her. Apparently, this time, her whims had brought her back home. Oh, joy.
“I hope you’re coming back to the shop,” said Nadine. “We’ve had a lot of old clients asking after you. None of us can read the Tarot quite like-” She stopped talking as a man stepped out of the RV.
Of course there was a man. There was always a man. Rowen looked this one over. He was a far sight better than a lot of the others she had brought home before. She had to give her mother that. He was a rugged looking fellow with straggly brown hair and a thick brown beard. It suited his large frame and broad shoulders. In his plaid shirt, he gave Rowen a kind of sexy lumberjack vibe.
“This is Clarence,” Tiffany said with a grin, motioning to her new beau. “We met at Burning Man.”
“She was dancing around this strawberry gelatin model of Abraham Lincoln,” Clarence explained in a deep gravelly voice. “She was enchanting.”
Tiffany gave him a playful shove, like she couldn’t stand the flattery. “Anyway, don’t worry about us. We’ll stay in the RV, won’t take up any room in the house.” She looked at Nadine. “I’ll definitely come back to the store. I’ve missed doing readings there. It always had the best energy.”
“What about you?” Rowen asked, looking at Clarence. It was probably a rude question, but she couldn’t help but ask. She instinctively didn’t like the men her mother brought home.
“Me?” Clarence laughed. “Well, it’s usually just me and this old girl.” He gave the side of the RV a pat. “When my folks died, they left me a pretty big inheritance.” His expression grew a bit somber at that. “I’ve been traveling ever since. Sometimes I might pick up an odd job here and there just to do something, earn a little extra cash.”
“He goes where the universe guides him, too.” Tiffany smiled and went up on tip toe to press a kiss to his cheek.
“And the universe told him to tear up our front yard?” Rowen muttered. No one really seemed to hear her, which was just as well. It wasn’t like there was anything to do about it. Instead, she forced a smile, mirroring the ones her aunts were wearing. “I’m glad you’re home,” she said, reiterating that point.
Tiffany smiled right back at her. “And I’m glad to be home.”
Chapter Two
“I don’t like Clarence,” Eric announced over a breakfast of waffles. He stood on one side of the bar while Rowen sat on a stool across from him.
Rowen looked up from her foo
d. That had been an odd outburst. Clarence and Tiffany had been in Lainswich for a couple of days. In that time, Rowen herself had deemed Clarence fairly harmless. He was an outdoorsy sort. Any meal not eaten with the rest of the family, he spent sitting outside, beneath the shade of a tree.
Once Rowen had seen him skinning his own fish. Where he had gotten them, she wasn’t sure. She was even less sure about the fire he started on the lawn to cook them. She had mentioned as much to her aunts, but they didn’t really seem to mind. “So long as he doesn’t burn the house down,” Aunt Lydia had said with a shrug.
“I hope he leaves us some,” Nadine had mused. And he had. Even Rowen had gotten a couple of browned fillets to take home. They’d been good. He didn’t talk much to her, but Rowen didn’t mind that. She preferred it, honestly.
“He seems like a bad guy,” Eric insisted, spearing another piece of waffle onto his fork.
“Why do you say that?” Rowen was amused to hear that sort of thing from him, honestly. “I haven’t had any problems with him. I mean, he’s not a murderer. That’s a step up for my mom.” Tiffany was notoriously bad at choosing men.
