Magic and Mayhem: Harmony: A 'Not-Quite' Haunted Love Story (Kindle Worlds Novella) (The 'Not-Quite' Love Story Series Book 8)

by Julia Mills

  Laying in the safety of Sam’s arms, I started to wonder why he was so different from every other ghost I’d ever met. (I know I should’ve been going over my plans for the next day, but my hunky ghost was so much more interesting and I liked the way being with him made me feel. Now, if you tell Auntie Dot, I swear I’m turning you into a toad. I have the power, and I know how to use it. Okay, I’d probably just give you ears and a tail for a day or two. After all, I am a big softie when it comes right down to it.)

  Sam wasn’t cold or clammy. I didn’t feel the icy fingers of death crawling all over my skin when he touched me. He wasn’t transparent, just not quite as ‘in focus’ as the rest of us livin’ folks and I could see his breath when it was cold outside. Also, ahem, he could kiss like a demon, and I happen to have firsthand knowledge that all his parts were in working order. (Get your mind outta the gutter. I just felt it when we kissed. Sheesh! I’m not that easy. Well... just teasing.)

  While all of that was really good, especially since I was pretty sure I was falling for him – in a really hard way – when something in the magical world doesn’t make sense, that usually means something wicked this way comes. (Yep, I just quoted Ray Bradbury for ya’. What? You thought I only read grimoires and horoscopes? Pfft! No way! I love a good story.)

  I had just decided not to poof my ghostly Prince Charming’s soul into Pearly Gates Paradise and get to know him better when a sound that made me think a nuclear bomb had just gone off in my garden shook my house like it was a bag of Legos. Jumping out of bed, ignoring Sam’s yells of, “Wait for me!” I ran as fast as I could down the stairs, through my office and out into the garden.

  What I saw took a minute to process, but when it did, I screamed, “Damn you, Nate. I swear to the Goddess, I’m gonna rid this world of your rotten, good for nothing, tainted sperm-spreading ass, once and for all.”

  Starring up at the ten-foot, eggplant-colored, glowing-like-runway-lights, puffed-up version of my dear old dad, I had to dive behind one of my wooden flowerbeds to miss being zapped by the jerk’s putrid yellow bolt of lightning. Smelling something burning, I looked over my shoulder, only to find one of my favorite black kitty slippers reduced to a pile of smoldering ash.

  “My slipper? Really you piece of shit? What did my slipper ever do to you?”

  “Just come out, Harmony Jane,” Nate the Dick boomed. “I will make your death quick and painless.”

  “Oh, thanks, Dad,” I spat the word because it really did burn my tongue to say it. “That way I can’t say you never gave me anything, right?”

  “Harmony, stop taunting the demon,” Auntie Dot whispered. “Do you have a death wish or something?”

  Turning on my butt, I glared at my aunt and whispered back, “No, I’m just a little pissed that I finally got to meet my dad and he wants me dead. Out of all the dysfunctional families in the world, we top the list, Dot. Ya’ get me?”

  Looking overly apologetic, especially since we had a demon trying to fry our asses with nasty-smelling bolts of lightning, not to mention, destroying my garden, Auntie Dot patted my shoulder and consoled, “I know, hun. Go ahead… Scream and yell. Get it all out. You’ll feel better that way.”

  “Oh, brother,” I rolled my eyes. “Thanks, Dr. Phil. How about we have this counseling session after dear old dad is dead?”

  “I just hate that you’re hurting,” Dot pouted.

  “Yeah, well, I’m gonna hate it more if I’m dead, so, MOVE!” I shrieked, rolling like a snowball down a hill to avoid getting blasted by a steaming bolt of muddy-colored, swamp-smelling magic.

  Crawling on my hands and knees to the far corner of the garden, I damn near had a heart attack when Sam burst out of the shed with my propane torch in one hand and a bunch of cleansing herbs in the other. Looking down at me, his brown eyes nearly the color of polished onyx and stark determination coloring his features, the ghost I now had no doubt I was in love with motioned with a nod of his head towards the pasture to the west and bellowed, “Get up! I need your help! We have to set the meadow on fire to stop those ghoulies.”

  “What?! Who?!” I shrieked, turning around so fast I had to grab the thin trunk of my pink crepe myrtle tree to keep from falling over. Of course, what I saw was the shit of nightmares.

  Apparently, Nate the Dick thought we needed to have a family reunion, because at least fifty people, all about my age from the look of them, were plodding across my pasture, impersonating the mice of Hamelin with dear old delusional dad as the Pied Piper. It was obvious they were under some kind of spell from the vacant look in their eyes and the drool sliding down their chins. What sucked more was that my magic recognized theirs which meant they really and truly were my bastard father’s offspring, related to me by blood and all that good shit. (Goddess save me. The crazy runs so deep, I’m lucky I can tie my own shoes.)

  “Son of a bitch!” I spat, jumping out from behind my crepe myrtle and screaming, “You really are a slimy piece of shit, Nate. What the hell is wrong with…”

  Diving to the left, the words stolen from my lips by the black, fiery balls of the stinkiest magic I’d ever smelled flying from Nate’s big ass fingers, I saw Sam had made it all the way to the cute, little white picket fence I’d spent forever-and-a-day putting up the first week I moved in. It sucked that he was setting it on fire, but I would get over it…if I lived.

  Just as I was about to fire on Nate the Dick, Auntie Dot finally snapped out of her pity party and started fighting the big, nasty son of a bitch, allowing me to go help Sam with the fire barrier that I was praying would keep my braindead siblings from ripping me and everyone that I loved to pieces.

  Coming up beside me, Sam demanded, “You need to get into the basement and lock the doors. The copper and lead pipes should hide you from your father until I can figure out how to get rid of him.”

  “And miss all this fun?” I chuckled, a little more manically than I liked. “No way, that bastard is mine.”

  Dropping the torch and pulling me to his chest faster than I could track, Sam smashed his lips to mine in one of the quickest, most passionate kisses of all time. Pulling away, way too quickly for me, my ghost looked me in the eye and winked, “Damn, I love you, you stubborn witch.”

  Shocked silent by his words, Sam took advantage of my surprise, picked up the torch and raced towards Nate the Dick, screaming, “Be gone from this place. Go away post haste. You are not welcome here. Not ever, not this year. Be gone, you freak. You fucking reek!”

  Bolts of dark blue mysticism and huge silver starbursts flew from Sam’s fingertips, colliding with Nate’s putrid yellow and mud-colored black magic, bursting into a spectacle of pyrotechnics any eighties hair band would have been proud to have on their stage. Acrid smoke and fetid ashes filled the air, making it hard to breathe and impossible to see.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw all of Nate’s zombified offspring hit the ground as I sped into the gnarly mist, searching for Sam, but ready to blast Nate’s ass to kingdom come if the useless bastard still dared to draw breath. True to form, my luck was pure shit and as I ran up the hill my foot slipped in an icky pile of the Goddess only knew what. Sliding on my round ass, I ended up in a pile of arms and legs with none other than dear old dad.

  Acting on pure instinct, I shoved my hand through the mass of polyester and velvet from his shredded sports coat, plastered my hand over his cold dead heart and poured every ounce of magic into my words. “Go the fuck away! I hate you more every day!”

  A rumbling started in the bottom of my feet, raced up my legs, flew through each vertebrae of my spine and down my arm with bone-shattering tremors I know registered seven-point-five on the Richter scale. Bursting from the tips of my fingers in a shower of blood-red flames, eggplant-colored blobs and thick plumes of chartreuse mysticism, my magic connected with Nate the Dick’s evil, black heart and in the blink of an eye, blew the stupid son of a bitch into a million ooey, gooey, nasty, gnarly pieces all over what used to be my garden.


  Frantically pushing up onto my knees, knowing there was no way I could stand as shockwaves from the mega-tons of magic I’d just expended to waste my father made my legs feel like jelly and my spine like a lump of worn-out silly putty, I searched for Sam like a chubby kid looking for the last piece of Halloween candy.

  Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, I spotted his hand, still wrapped around my torch, sticking out from under a huge pile of what used to be Nate the Dick. Scrambling forward on my hands and knees, I threw the propane torch over my shoulder, grabbed Sam’s hand, pulling as hard as I could.

  Sliding out of under the mound of smoldering gore with a loud pop! Sam laid lifeless in my lap, his features slack and his chest eerily still. Slamming my palms onto his chest, I screamed, “Wake up you jerk! Let me see that sexy smirk. Open your eye. Don’t make me cry. I love you dammit. More than anyone else on this planet.”

  But nothing happened…

  No bubbles, no stars, no smoke, no nothin’…

  I was tapped out…

  Dot was too…

  Sam was really dead this time…

  And there was nothing I could do…

  Chapter Nine

  “Come on, Harmony. You need to get out of this awful basement and start living your life again.” Lola stood looking over my shoulder, trying to cheer me up and failing miserably. “It’s been two weeks.” She moved across the table and knocked on the wooden surface like it was a door. “Hello, hello, anybody home?” Chuckling at her own joke, the goofball went on, “I know you loved Sam and what happened is shitty, but you can’t stop living just because he did.”

  Looking over the rim of my glasses, thinking about zapping my best friend into an eggplant or maybe a Venus Flytrap, I grumbled, “I am living. I’m trying to find a spell to locate Nigel for Dot.” Dropping my eyes back to the old, faded pages of one of the hundred grimoires I’d borrowed from Carol and Zelda, I mumbled, “At least I can make somebody happy.”

  “Damn you, Harmony Starshine. You have to be the most stubborn, bull-headed, pain-in-the-ass I’ve ever known.” I listened to the click of her black kitten heels on the concrete floor as she called over her shoulder, “But I love you and I’m not giving up. I’ll leave you alone for now, but I will be back.”

  “Don’t threaten me,” I grumbled, focusing back on the spell I was reading while making notes for the ritual I was going to write, and ignoring Lola fading laughter as she clip-clopped up the steps.

  Several hours later with my eyes blurring and the muscles in my shoulders burning like I’d been lifting weights, I climbed the rickety steps to the kitchen, made a cup of tea and went out to my rebuilt garden. I’d tried to make it look just like the one the fight with Nate the Dick destroyed, with one addition – a huge Oklahoma Redbud right in the center, in honor of Baron Sampson Merriweather, the only man I would ever love.

  Curling up in the corner of my swing, I drank my tea and thought about Sam. I remembered the way his eyes twinkled when he smiled, the deep rumble of his laugh when I did something stupid, the scent of sandalwood and cinnamon that always filled my senses whenever he was near. But, most of all, I thought about the way he made me feel like I was the most special person in the whole damn world.

  I knew I was wallowing in a pit of my own self-pity. Knew I should find a way to get over it. Sam was gone. But still…

  I’d talked to Zelda and Carol, the two strongest witches in the world, and they couldn’t help. I’d even went to Marge, Carol’s sister and a powerful creator witch, but she was just as much at a loss as the others.

  My last hope was to appeal to the Goddess in a formal ceremony. It took three witches and a shit ton of magic, but I had to try. I was a witch in love with a ghost, just trying to get her man back and if putting in a call to an all-powerful deity was the only way, then I was all about it.

  Auntie Dot had agreed to help, and according to the instructions in Zelda’s grimoire, it didn’t matter if the witches were dead or alive. Now, all I needed was one more spell-casting crazy to agree to join my foolhardy mission. I had thought about Lola, but my bestie can’t keep a secret to save her life, and I couldn’t let Zelda or Carol get wind of my plan because there was no doubt in my mind that they would try and stop me. So, that left Faith, the only one of my psychotic siblings to survive the fight with Nate the Dick and thankfully, not have inherited the homicidal tendencies of our sperm donor.

  Lola had found my half-sister unconscious underneath a pile of dead bodies and pieces of dear old dad when she showed up at eight the morning to find the fallout of our Go to Hell, Nate party. We’d locked Faith in the cage in my basement (Don’t judge. It’s only ever used for moonstruck shifters and those freakin’ carb-eating fairies. Do I seriously have to keep reminding you to keep your mind out of the gutter?) and waited for my half-sister to wake up.

  On the third day, Faith’s big blue eyes popped open, she looked around the basement with a confused look on her face then whispered, “Is that idiot dead?”

  “What idiot would that be?” I warily asked.

  “My stupid sperm donor, Nate the Bastard.”

  From that moment on, we were best friends. Anyone who hated dear old dad was a friend indeed. After I let her out of the cage, we went and got her clothes, and she’s presently occupying the attic. She puts up with Auntie Dot and listens to all the old bird’s stories. She yells at Ernesto when he makes cracks about my butt, consoles Wendy when she’s wailing at three in the morning and makes sure Festus and Vanessa don’t take my baby carrots and hummus. (It’s the only health food I like.) Come on, I couldn’t even conjure up that kind of sisterly solidarity. Faith’s a keeper. Besides me, she’s the only good thing we know of that Nate the Dick ever made.

  Gulping down the last of my tea that had gone ice cold, I slammed the huge grimoire sitting on my lap shut, climbed out of the swing, and headed into the house. Luckily, both Faith and Dot were in the living room helping Wendy through her umpteenth breakdown of the day.

  Crossing the threshold, I announced, “Tonight’s the night. I’m tired of waiting and my magic’s recharged. We’re gonna call on the Goddess and ask her to return Sam and Nigel to this realm.”

  Clapping her hands while floating up and down like she was jumping on her toes, Auntie Dot squealed, “Thank you so much, Harmony.” She flew over to me, kissed both my cheeks and then my forehead before gushing, “I know you don’t have to do this, especially since Sam being gone is my fault.” She looked away as her eyes filled with tears then added, “You really are one of the good ones, girlie. Your momma would be so proud.”

  Chocking back my own emotions, I grinned, “Yeah, well, I damn sure hope so.” Snickering when Faith snorted out a laugh, I couldn’t help but tease, “And that’s enough outta you, Faith Annabella Fairyflower. Just ‘cause we share DNA doesn’t mean I won’t zap your ass.”

  Sticking out her tongue and giving me a good old-fashioned raspberry, my goofy half-sister said, “No, it’s because I’m just as much a smartass as you are.”

  Everyone erupted into laughter at the exact moment Ernesto sang, “Baby make your booty go da na da na. Girl I know you wanna show da na da na. That thong th thong thong thong.”

  “Zip it, Ernesto,” Faith, Dot and I yelled in unison.

  A split-second later, we all looked at one another, gave a single nod and burst out laughing until we all had tears running down our faces.

  Damn, it’s good to have people who understand my brand of crazy…

  Chapter Ten

  It took the better part of the day and into the night to get everything ready, but it didn’t matter. It was well worth it and time was not an issue. I wanted to contact the Goddess at the stroke of three in the morning, the bewitching hour, and the time I’d always found the most peaceful. A lot of people considered it all an old witch’s tale, but I knew for a fact that between three and four AM, everything magical and mystical was at the strongest and the veil between realms was easier to cross
over.

  I’d chosen to perform the ritual out in the open, sitting on the ground beside Sam’s tree. It wasn’t an overly complicated spell, after all, I was the one who made it up on the eve of my thirteenth birthday.

  I remembered it like it was yesterday. Auntie Dot thought I’d been working on my own personal spell to communicate with the Goddess since the day after my twelfth birthday. It was the excuse I’d given her to get out of everything from cleaning the frogs’ cages to scouring her cauldron, and the old bird had never caught on that I was just plain goofing around. She’d also never asked me to see my spell, thank all the fishies in the deep blue sea, because that sucker was not written until three-thirty AM when in all actuality I was already thirteen. (That’s between you and me. What Dot doesn’t know, will keep my ass from getting’ zapped. Ya’ get me?)

  And…the only reason I added a white pillar candle and a large sage stick to the whole ritual because they were the only things in the bottom drawer of my desk when Auntie Dot called me down to the Sacred Circle to perform my rite for the ladies of her coven. (A great bunch of witches, who sadly, are all in the Pearly Gates Paradise now. Might have something to do with the fact that all their ceremonies were done in the nude with copious amounts of tequila. I’m not judging, just saying. Those were some great times, but thirteen old broads drunk and naked in the middle of January, when there’s snow on the ground, well, you do the math.)

  Looking at my half-sister and my aunt, I lit the sage stick just as the grandfather clock in my office chimed that it was three AM. Sitting in silence, I waited until the clock had had gone silent before clearing my throat before instructing, “Sisters, please bow your head in reverence to our Creator, our Mother, the Goddess.”

  Closing my eyes, I hoped with every fiber of my being that the little rhyme I’d written more years ago than I wanted to admit worked. It really, really had to. I mean, I needed to speak to the Goddess more than I needed white chocolate-covered Oreos dunked in my hazelnut cream coffee.