Rather than discuss Chase’s verifiable hunkiness with my dead aunt, I changed the subject, “So now what do I do?”
“You continue to learn and grow,” she smiled. “And you make a good life for yourself here in the store.”
“Did you have a good life here?” I asked.
“I had a wonderful life here,” she said.
Fumbling with the edge of the quilt on my bed, I said, “Am I getting the witch thing right, Aunt Fiona? I don’t want to let you down.”
“Oh, honey,” she said, “you couldn’t possibly let me down. You have the most wonderful heart, Jinx. You always have. And that’s where being a good witch starts, with a good heart.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For the store and for my magic and for being you.”
Aunt Fiona smiled again. “You’re welcome, honey,” she said. “Now,” she added briskly, “I have to go. I have people waiting for me.”
“There’s one more thing I want to know,” I said.
“What’s that, dear?” Aunt Fiona asked.
“Why couldn’t you solve the murders and help the girls?”
My aunt smiled at me. “Because I wasn’t as strong as you are, honey,” she said. “I could sense the evil, but I didn’t have the power of psychometry. I could never have attracted Beth’s attention and brought her spirit out of the forest or spoken with the hickory tree the way you did.”
“Really?” I said.
“Really,” she assured me.
“Will you come back?” I asked hopefully.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “I’ll pop in from time to time. Now, before I forget, be careful during the shop renovation. Myrtle likes things done a certain way.”
“What do you mean a certain . . . ”
But Fiona was gone. Seriously, after what we’d just been through, how hard could a little renovation work on the store be?
Note to self. Quit tempting fate with rhetorical questions.
ALSO BY JULIETTE HARPER
This book is the first
in The Jinx Hamilton Mystery Series.
The next in the series will be Witch at Odds
coming soon on Amazon.
Juliette Harper is also the author of The Lockwood Legacy.
Six full-length books are currently available in that series including:
Langston’s Daughters
Baxter’s Draw
Alice’s Portrait
Mandy’s Father
Irene’s Gift
Jenny’s Choice
These books may also be purchased
in two specially priced collections:
The Lockwood Legacy Books 1-3
and
The Lockwood Legacy Books 4-6
The Lockwood Legacy includes
a companion set of short stories.
The first two installments are:
Langston’s Ghost: Aftermath
Langston’s Ghost: From Limbo to Lust
Other works in Juliette Harper’s catalog include
the Selby Jensen Paranormal Mysteries,
the Study Club Mysteries,
the Fermata Post-Apocalyptic Series,
and the Before Series of short-story romances.
The Selby Jensen Paranormal Mysteries
Descendants of the Rose
The Study Club Mysteries
You Can’t Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet
The Before Series
Before Marriage
The Fermata Series
Fermata: The Winter
Fermata: The Spring
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juliette Harper is the pen name used by the writing team of Patricia Pauletti and Rana K. Williamson. As a writer, Juliette's goal is to create strong female characters facing interesting, challenging, painful, and at times comical situations. Refusing to be bound by genre, her primary interest lies in telling good stories.
Six of Juliette's series are currently available. The best-selling Lockwood Legacy, is a nine-book chronicle of the lives of three sisters who inherit a ranch in Central Texas following their father's suicide. The first six novels appeared in 2015: Langston's Daughters, Baxter's Draw, Alice's Portrait, Mandy's Father, Irene’s Gift, and Jenny’s Choice. The seventh, Kate’s Journey, will be available early in 2016.
Descendants of the Rose is the first installment of the Selby Jensen Paranormal Mysteries. The second book, Lost in Room 636, will also be available in 2016. Selby's business card reads "Private Investigator," but to say the least, that downplays her real occupation where business as usual is anything but normal.
And don't miss the hilariously funny "cozy" Study Club Mysteries, a light-hearted spin off of The Lockwood Legacy. Set in the 1960s, this series takes on the often-absurd eccentricities of small town life with good-natured, droll humor. The first book, You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet, is already listed in the Amazon store with You Can't Put a Corpse in a Parade coming soon.
Juliette has also made forays into the arena of short fiction arena with Before Marriage, a light, sweet romance and Langston’s Ghost, a short-story companion to The Lockwood Legacy books.
Fermata: The Winter is the first in a four-novella post-apocalyptic survival series. Five years after an unknown virus divided the world into the living and the dead, four survivors stumble into a winter sanctuary. Brought together by circumstance, but bound by the will to stay alive, a concert pianist and a girl from South Boston forge a friendship and a purpose to cope with their new reality.
Juliette’s newest series, The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries opens with Witch at Heart, a lighter paranormal tale featuring a heroine who possesses powers she never dreamed existed. Jinx has been minding her own business working as a waitress at Tom’s Cafe and keeping up with her four cats. Then she inherits her Aunt Fiona’s store in neighboring Briar Hollow, North Carolina and learns that her aunt has willed her special “powers” to Jinx as well. They say admitting you have a problem is the first step and Jinx has a major problem. She’s a new witch and she has no earthly clue what that means — until she’s given the opportunity to use her magic to do a good thing.
In Book 2, Witch at Odds, set to appear soon on Amazon, Jinx accepts her new life as a witch and is determined to make a success of both that and her new business. However, she has a great deal to learn. As the story unfolds, Jinx sets out to both study her craft and to get a real direction for her aunt’s haphazard approach to inventory. Although Jinx can call on Aunt Fiona’s ghost for help, the old lady is far too busy living a jet set afterlife to be worried about her niece’s learning curve. That sets Jinx up to make a major mistake and to figure out how to set things right again.
For more information . . .
@jharperbooks
www.JulietteHarper.com
[email protected]
By Juliette Harper
Copyright 2015, Juliette Harper
Skye House Publishing
License Notes
eBooks are not transferable. All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-943516-84-1
Created with Vellum
Table of Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Also by Juliette Harper
About the Author
Copyright
Witch at Heart: A Jinx Hamilton Witch Mystery Book 1 (The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries) Page 20
