Witch Ever After: A Sweet & Quirky Paranormal Romance

by Kallie Khan

  “Than people.”

  He threw out his arms with a grin. “Well that’s excellent! I’ll handle the people, you handle the plants, and together we can rule the world. Except for the animals—the animals might get out of hand.”

  She snorted. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “I’m demonstrating that actually I’m pretty terrible at conversation also, so we’re in good company together.”

  His smile softened her, softened the crusty little grump of a Tobie in her heart. It was gentle, but more importantly, the expression in his eyes was one she only usually saw in Mystia.

  It was understanding. A commiseratory, share-in-the-exhaustion-of-the-universe understanding.

  Her grin came out lopsided. She felt it doing it’s weird little half-happy, half-maudlin thing on her face, and a sinking suspicion came with it—the suspicion that she realized she actually really liked Kaiden. Like, really.

  Like Mystia-would-lose-her-marbles-over-Tobie’s-confession-of-liking-him really, and her-college-friends-wouldn’t-believe-it-really, and her-mother-would-never-approve really.

  Really.

  He cleared his throat again, and she realized she was still grinning stupidly at him.

  “Well,” he said, “shall we go inflict our poor conversational skills on the rest of Glimmerdale?”

  She give him a smart nod. “I do believe we shall.”

  “Then right this way.”

  She discovered quickly that Kaiden was not, in fact, a poor conversationalist. He spoke naturally and easily, and also seemed to know way more than she could discover in a lifetime about the denizens of Glimmerdale despite the fact that he’d moved here barely two months before she had.

  “So why’d you move?” she asked.

  His pleasant expression flickered for a moment.

  Of course. She’d manage to put her foot in it during a perfectly good conversation.

  “Sorry,” she said quickly. “That was nosy of me.”

  “No, no. Please, no.” He held up his hands and waved her apology away. “It’s just funny—no one’s asked me that yet. Everyone’s just wished me well and asked how I’m liking Glimmerdale. Never realized no one’s asked why I moved in the first place.” He shrugged.

  “You really, really don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business,” she said, subconsciously quickening her pace past a fairy light stand.

  “Oh, fairy lights!” he exclaimed, and she drew up short. “My mom used to collect these. Jars of them. All over the place. Everywhere.” He held one up so she could see.

  They weren’t actual fairies; actually fairies tended to be either shy or grumpy or a recalcitrant cocktail of both. Instead, these were tiny, battery-powered lights strung on delicate gold and silver and copper wires, coiled inside jars and little glass terrariums and green beer bottles with the label peeled off.

  “They’re adorable,” she said, reaching for it. “Does your mom still collect them?”

  She knew instantly, as the words were coming out of her mouth, that she’d asked yet another resoundingly stupid question.

  He smiled at the jar of fairy lights, then smiled down at her. His eyes were soft and far away. “Well, that’s kind of the reason I moved. She’d been sick. For a long time. She, uh, passed away about six months ago. Realized I needed a change of pace.”

  She looked down at fairy lights. “I’m—I’m so sorry to hear that,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “It’s...it’s really nice to talk about her. Haven’t had much of an opportunity lately. Hey,” he added suddenly. “Can I get you some fairy lights? After I’ve really talked them up with that jocund explanation of my fondness for fairy lights?” He shrugged apologetically.

  “Jocund? How’d you do on your SATs?”

  He chuckled. “They’ve changed the scoring so many times since I took it, I don’t even know. You?”

  “Moderately well.”

  “You studied plant science, I remember you saying.”

  “And you studied computer science, right?”

  “Yep. ‘Hello, world,’” he said, pretending as though the words were written in the air by blocking them out with his hands.

  “Gross,” she offered agreeably.

  “Yeah, well, I confess my passion waned.”

  “All those gothic lit courses?” she asked archly.

  He shook his head and laughed. “Make fun all you want, but those gothic gardens, mazes—all those cool things? Totally my landscaping jam.”

  “Oh yeah?” She knew he’d mentioned landscaping before, and so had Hettie, but the way he brought it back up resonated with her—despite the fact that some judgmental little voice inside her head which rolled its proverbial eyes at her for resonating with gothic landscaping as spoken by some guy she met a few days ago.

  But she quashed the little voice soundly and brushed her discomfort aside.

  “Oh yeah. I made sure to buy a property with a lot of landscaping potential. I had a lot of great clients, and the work was just—wow, I mean, talk about fulfilling—but then, the things you’re building—they’re not really for you, are they?”

  She shook her head. “That’s why I like my little garden,” she said. “Bryophyta, aloe, basil, ginger. Some flowering annuals and perennials. We have a backyard now, so I’m thinking about planting some beeches.”

  He gave her a warm, appraising look. “You really have a passion, Tobie.”

  She shrugged. “Gotta have a passion in life.”

  “You’d be surprised. Some people don’t. My old man—great guy, don’t get me wrong. But he sees the world...I don’t know. He doesn’t love anything too much. He’s really...grounded. I guess that’s how you could say it. My mom, on the other hand,” he said, gesturing at her with the fairy lights, “she was a dreamer. She loved everything. She loved them too much. Like, in a good way. She was a poet, too.”

  “A poet?”

  “I mean, she didn’t have anything published. But she’d write like crazy. Constantly. Some of her poems were flat-out silly. But others were gorgeous. And the silly ones—honestly, the silly ones were some of my favorites. They were just so quintessentially her, you know?”

  She smiled back at him, unsure of what to say. She saw the contents of his heart in the way that witches could sometimes see those things. He placed the imagery of his mother in front of her. Poetry. Memory. Wonder.

  (Hearts were huge things, contrary to popular opinion, which conflated the heart organ with the soul-heart. Soul-hearts, true hearts, were things that engulfed your body and the space you occupied.)

  She wanted to say how much she appreciated the way he opened his heart to her, even just a little bit of it—but that sounded ridiculous. She wanted to say what a lovely woman his mother must’ve been—but that sounded forced and trite, even though she meant it sincerely.

  So she just kept smiling until his own faraway smile faltered.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “This was supposed to be a fun thing, and I’m making it dark like a hipster movie.” He nodded his head at her. “So what’s your story? Smart girl, stuck in boring old Glimmerdale?”

  “I’m not stuck!” she says, putting her hands on her hips and leaning forward. “I’ll have you know that Hettie Argent is one of the most—er, uh—I heard about her work during college. And she’s basically a genius, so working with her is exactly where I want to be right now. And then, hopefully, eventually, I’ll get to work with Hettie’s teacher too. She teaches a master class in London.”

  Between nearly revealing herself (and Hettie) as a witch and her excitement over the thought of taking a master class (and perhaps an apprenticeship) with Pepper Keeling, her voice had grown rapturous and light.

  “I think you should do it,” Kaiden said.

  “Do what?”

  “Everything you said. You want something in life, Tobie. And you’re going for it. I think that’s awesome.”


  Despite her naturally blush-resistant sensibilities, she could feel a blush start its slow, hot crawl up her neck. “Oh,” she began, “really, it’s nothing.”

  “But it is,” Kaiden insisted. “You know what you want and you’re going to get it. You don’t care what people think—”

  That wasn’t exactly true…

  “—and you’re on a path.”

  She was indeed on a path. On a path to family disgrace, if her mother was to be believed.

  Especially if she continued to keep friendly company with handsome young men who had no magical ability.

  But the way Kaiden said these things with such conviction reinvigorated her attitude toward them; yes, she worked hard, but she often—and increasingly, after college—had this horrible suspicion that she was just spinning her wheels.

  “Thanks,” said Tobie. “I know it sounds stupid since we just met, but that really means a lot.”

  His expression was a mixture of surprised and pleased.

  She found she liked it when he looked pleased. Especially something she’d said incited his pleased expression.

  Darn blush. Creeping into her cheeks when it had just faded.

  “So, Tobie—”

  But then her phone rang.

  They both jumped, and she scrounged around in her purse for a few seconds before she was able to locate it.

  “Oh, Goddess,” she grumbled under her breath.

  “What?”

  “It’s my mother.”

  “Oh, if you need to answer—”

  “No.” She looked up at him suddenly. “You know what? No. I don’t need to answer. I very much don’t.”

  She also didn’t have the courage to press “ignore,” but she silenced the ringer with the tap of one of the side buttons and tossed the phone back into her purse.

  “Are you sure that wasn’t important?”

  “Very.”

  But then her phone dinged, four times in rapid succession.

  One voicemail from her mother, followed by a text:

  Call me back. Important preparatory information for your dinner with Alistair.

  She rolled her eyes. Then two more texts, but this time, they were from Mystia.

  UGH. WORST NIGHT EVER.

  PLS BRING SISTERSHIP. ALREADY HAVE CHOCOLATE.

  “Oh.”

  “Bad news?” He’d shoved his hands back into his jeans, tilted his head.

  “Oh...sort of. It’s my sister. It sounds like she a rough day.”

  “Do you need to go?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I think so. I’m sorry. I had a really nice time.”

  “I did, too,” he said, hot cocoa smile warming her.

  “I’m surprised,” she said, giving him a mischievous quirk of her eyebrow. “There were no natural or manmade disasters. Thought it might’ve been too dull for you.”

  He threw back his head in a laugh. “Man, and just when I thought you’d forgotten.”

  A witch never forgets, she thought to herself. But what she said was, “Watch yourself, sir. I think I like you, but it doesn’t mean I trust you.”

  “You like me?”

  She was immediately mortified. “I...I said think.” She tried to keep her tone light, but she had this horrible inkling that her expression gave her away.

  He nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll take ‘think.’”

  His easygoing smile never changed, but it was suddenly warmer than she could take—brilliant, handsome, but too hot on her face.

  She tried her best to disentangled herself gracefully from the situation, but she ended up saying something that sounded like “Wellokayitwasfunbye!” and sped off to the eastern lawn where her car was parked.

  Once the ignition was started, she slapped a hand to her forehead. “Smooth, Tobie,” she said to herself. “Smooth like butter.”

  And then she thought about butter the whole way home (salted, unsalted, cow’s milk butter, goat’s milk butter, the different pasteurization processes, that upstart imposter margarine) so she wouldn’t have to think about how spectacularly she’d embarrassed herself in front of the young man with the warm smile and sweet memories about his mother and unshakable belief that what she was doing with her life was right.

  Chapter 6

  KAIDEN

  Kaiden left the bazaar in a daze. He felt a little like he’d been hit bodily in the head and like he’d maybe had a touch too much to drink—except it had only been Phoebe’s iced tea.

  As he helped Phoebe back to the car (“Did you have a nice time with October Moon, dear?”), he wondered what he’d done wrong.

  Phoebe seemed to sense his perturbed mood and asked if he needed her to “put that little sprite back in her place.”

  Kaiden laughed. “No, she’s definitely in her place. Just wish I had a place, is all.”

  Phoebe’s expression softened into one of deep understanding. In fact, he thought she probably understood far more than he ever would.

  “October Moon’s mother is a hard one,” she said after a while.

  He glanced over at her for a moment. “Oh, how so?”

  “Lovely woman, but she does have such high expectations of the girls.”

  “Tobie said she called.” He thought back to the way the pale freckles on her nose had popped into sharp relief as she’d paled underneath them. “She didn’t answer.”

  “Really?” said Phoebe, head jerking toward him. “That girl’s got gumption. I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of Isidora Takahama Moon.”

  Kaiden’s brow furrowed together, just above the bridge of his nose. “How exactly do you know the Moons?”

  “We see each other now and again.” The small, impenetrably serene smile was back on her face, edging toward smugness but not quite there yet.

  He laughed, low and incredulous. “Why do I feel like I’ve moved to a town full of secrets?”

  “Oh, because you have, dear.”

  He laughed again. “Wow. Well, I admire your honesty. Anything else I should know about the Moons, you think?”

  She gave a thoughtful little, “Hmm,” and tapped a a finger to her lips. “They’re a very old family. Been living in the area for centuries, although they have very strong ties to the Old Country.”

  “Old Country?” he asked.

  Phoebe turned her unruffled smile to him. “Yes, dear.”

  “Oh.” He was rather hoping for an explanation of what the Old Country was, but he let her continue.

  “They’re a very good family,” she said. “But, as I mentioned, Mrs. Moon does have such expectations for her daughters. I would recommend—”

  But then she stopped herself.

  Kaiden waited a few beats. When it was clear Phoebe probably wasn’t going to say anything else on the matter, he prompted, in light, careful sort of voice: “Would recommend what?”

  She harrumphed. “Actually, I wouldn’t recommend anything at all.” She turned to him with a hard expression, conviction giving her sweet face an alarming sharpness. “I think you should do whatever feels right. The Moons are a good family,” she repeated, “but they do get rather high and mighty sometimes.”

  Kaiden had only the vaguest of ideas to what she was referring, but he did know that Tobie, for all her quick wit and the way her left cheek dimpled when she smiled, could be weirdly prickly.

  But her prickliness had, he admitted, probably been warranted the first few disastrous times they’d met.

  And she was funny. Self-deprecating. Occasionally bashful.

  And deeply smart.

  She made him think (and feel no small amount of humility). She was, in all, the kind of complex human to which he always found himself drawn.

  “I’d like to get to know her better,” he said finally, trying to match Phoebe’s conviction.

  She gave him an affirmative nod. “Good on you, dear. I approve.”

  Chapter 7

  TOBIE

  Tobie arrived home to find Mystia in utter shambles. She woul
dn’t have called it that, but Mystia had thrown herself into Tobie’s arms and cried, through tears, “I’m in utter shambles!”

  Mystia had a bottle of wine and several chocolate wrappers laid out on the coffee table already.

  “What happened?” asked Tobie, slinging her arm around Mystia and walking her back over to the couch.

  “I thought—” Mystia hiccuped “—that it was actually going well. You know. These things never go well.” She hiccuped again. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue, but her eyeliner and mascara were already streaming down her face.

  “Here,” said Tobie gently, and breathed a small spell of wicking and cleaning across Mystia’s face. (Only the gentlest of spells, of course—magic could be much too abrasive for sensitive skin unless properly spelled.)

  Her spell removed most of Mystia’s makeup-infused tear tracks, and Tobie dabbed at the rest with a clean tissue.

  “Th-thanks,” Mystia said.

  Tobie reached out to rub her shoulder. “Do you want to watch Scarface?” she offered.

  Scarface was—weirdly, if you asked anyone else—their go-to movie whenever one or the other was particularly sad. Something about the overblown Cuban accents and the way Tony built himself up from nothing—and ultimately tore himself down—resonated with her. (The famous chainsaw and the fully automatic weapons were incidental, in her opinion.)

  “Y-yes,” Mystia hiccuped. “We don’t have to watch the whole thing. Just—hic—some highlights.”

  So Tobie put it on in the background, poured some more wine, and stuck a bag of popcorn in the microwave. (Popcorn, chocolate, and wine were the key elements in their sister’s night triumvirate of fine foods.)

  She dumped the popcorn in their favorite bowl (ugly pink plastic which matched absolutely nothing), narrowly avoiding burning her fingers, and sat down next to Mystia on the couch.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  Mystia shoved a handful of popcorn into her mouth and chewed mournfully for a while before speaking. “Mom had such high hopes,” she said. “She said, ‘This one’s the one for you, Mystia,’ and like an idiot, I thought maybe she might be right. Maybe.”