by Mara Webb
Copyright © 2021 by Mara Webb
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 noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Hallow Haven Witch Cozy Mystery Bundle 2
Books 4-6
Mara Webb
Contents
Rags to Witches
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
May Day
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
Witch Way Down
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
Thanks for Reading
Mailing List
Rags to Witches
Book Four
1
“What color should the sauce be? It’s browning faster than I expected,” I asked, frantically stirring the wooden spoon through the mixture. I had been desperate to get back into cooking, especially at the café, and this was the first day since I’d arrived that I’d been able to. I was eager to impress.
“Hmm,” Tara said, peering into the pan. Tara and Fern were the cooks at The Sand Witch, and I didn’t dare question their abilities. They were both domineering women, they were phenomenal in the kitchen and down-right terrifying in all other areas. Somehow, I had won them over.
“Burned,” Fern yelled from the other side of the kitchen. “I can smell it from here. Burned.” Don’t sugar coat it, jeez.
“Let’s tip this away and try again,” Tara said. Out of the two, it seemed that Tara was the most patient with me this morning. That wasn’t always the case. It was like a constant guessing game to figure out who was playing good cop.
I sighed, disposed of the sauce, and took the pan over to the sink to clean it up. Tara and Fern were both witches, obviously, but used minimal magic when cooking. Out of respect, I was keen to follow suit. Although I technically owned the café, this was very much their kitchen.
“Don’t you have some peacekeeper stuff to do?” Fern asked. She was more prickly than usual, so I made a mental note to tread carefully.
“Not today,” I smiled. She didn’t even look over to see my response. I let the smile fade from my face as I stared at her questioningly. Maybe I could convince her to wear a bright yellow shirt when she was in a bad mood, that way I’d know. That’s how it works in nature, right? Poisonous frogs are always bright colors to let you know that they are dangerous and that you should stay away.
“Quiet week?” Tara asked. I nodded. It wasn’t true, necessarily, but the real answer was long and complicated. I worried that if I spoke for too long then Fern would get even more annoyed. I didn’t want to risk it.
Since I moved to Hallow Haven, it felt as if all I did was put out fires, metaphorically speaking of course. I was the peacekeeper for a group of islands where everyone seemed to have a problem with everybody else. If the residents weren’t arguing about trespassing, or fighting over money, then they were killing each other.
In a place where witches and humans lived side by side, it wasn’t possible for the police to do much. That’s why my role existed, I was seen as a suitable middle ground that had the authority to oversee the disputes and keep the peace. Again, this was all theoretical. I’d stumbled across more dead bodies than I could count at this point.
That had been one of my main motivations to get back into the kitchen. In here, there was usually a right way and a wrong way to do something. There were no grey areas. An egg is either cooked, or it isn’t. There was no need to debate or reason with anyone. Well, other than Fern that is.
“There is the golf tournament coming up,” I mentioned. Somewhere deep down I was hoping that Fern was a secret golf enthusiast and that I could win her over. I had offered to prepare the sauce in an effort to help, and clearly my time out of the kitchen had affected my skills. Some people say that cooking is like riding a bike, for this analogy it seemed I needed to put my training wheels back on.
“Oh?” Fern grumbled. She put down the meat cleaver, thank goodness, and turned to face me. She hadn’t given me much eye contact since I’d shown up this morning. It was almost unsettling. “I like golf.” That was it, just a statement. She wasn’t asking me a question or asking for my opinion on the matter.
“Cool! Me too!” I lied. I could think of nothing more boring than spending hours in the baking sun knocking a small ball around. My attendance at the tournament was mandatory, or so I’d been told. It seemed that the peacekeeper in Hallow Haven was a role that had a lot of overlap with a football mascot, I was supposed to show up at random events to cheer people on.
“Oh yeah? Who won the Masters Tournament last year?” she asked. I swallowed hard. Why was she testing me? I was tempted to pretend I’d burned my hand on the pan in the sink, fake a medical emergency and then run out of the building. Too dramatic?
“Well, I’ll tell you who should have won it…” I began. Great. I’d backed myself further into the corner.
At that moment, Effie burst into the kitchen like she’d been thrown. She was waving her arms around and talking quickly enough that I couldn’t understand a word she was saying.
“And then it’s like, receipts? Sure! But then… where are the numbers?” she flapped. As much as I wanted to know what was causing her so much distress, I was grateful that she had cut through the tension of me trying to feign an interest in golf.
“Effie, what’s going on?” I asked.
“Oh just, disaster,” she said. She had her hands on her hips and was now pacing up and down in a line. She was going to wear through the floor tiles in no time if she carried on stomping her feet like that.
She had her brightly colored hair up in a ponytail today, peach on the right side of her head and lavender on the other. Her bangs had grown out a little and were more curtain-style, framing the heavy eyeliner look on her eyes.
Some weird magic had caused my own hair to develop a blue streak, it was the most exciting hairstyle I’d had in my entire life, so I had no plans to dye it out. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her a little, trying to break the spiral of panic she was locked in.
“We’re being audited!” she finally shrieked. “We’re being audited, audited!” she repeated.
“All right?” I
replied, releasing her shoulders and letting her fall back into her pacing route. Her hands weren’t on her hips anymore, they were gesticulating wildly as she mumbled about receipts and balance. “Is that a problem?”
I hadn’t contributed much to the paperwork side of The Sand Witch since I’d moved here. There hadn’t been much time to get involved, but Effie had worked here for so long and was pretty much running the place as the manager, so I’d left her to it.
Now that I thought about it, I didn’t cook much, I hadn’t really served many customers out front, and I wasn’t taking any responsibility for the administrative side either. I needed to pull my finger out and help, or everyone in this café was going to turn against me.
“Not necessarily,” Effie said. When I first arrived, Effie had given me the impression that she was utterly unshakeable, that nothing could penetrate her cool exterior and that she took everything in her stride. This was probably only the second time I’d seen her freaking out, admittedly, but it was good to know that I wasn’t the only person that got overwhelmed around here.
“Then why are you doing this?” I asked, gesturing at her whole body as she flapped her arms around in a panic.
“Audit isn’t scheduled,” Fern replied from behind me. That was a whole sentence, apparently. Fern had returned her attention to chopping meat and Tara was stood by the stove looking at Effie sympathetically.
“An unscheduled audit is typically because there is a suspected discrepancy,” Tara added.
“What do you mean? Is the accounting off?” I asked.
“No!” Effie shrieked defensively. “I have been keeping the books balanced for years, Greta can back me up if you don’t believe me!”
“Of course I believe you!” I replied. Greta was my cousin, the former owner of The Sand Witch. She had also been the peacekeeper but had been murdered during a solo trip to one of the outer islands and I had inherited the role. Her ghost was an ever-present part of my day-to-day life now, I didn’t even find it weird anymore.
“What can we do? If the books are balanced, and you are so sure that there hasn’t been a mistake, then we just ride it out, right?” I said. “So, what if they send someone over here to look through everything, it’s just a procedure that we have to tolerate for an afternoon and then it’ll be over!”
“There is only one IRS agent that comes out here,” Effie explained. She had stopped pacing at this point and was trying to take enough deep breaths to get her words out. “The guy is, how do I put this politely?”
“He is a self-centered man with no empathy, no awareness of the impact of his words and with dangerous delusions of grandeur,” Fern called out. I’ve met plenty of men that tick those boxes.
“He will drag this out for ever,” Effie complained. “He gets paid to fly out here from mainland USA, it’s basically a holiday. That means he drags out every little detail and only works an hour or two a day, then says he needs to head back to his ‘office’ to go over some stuff. Without fail, he will head straight to the beach. He’s also flirty, he makes everyone uncomfortable.”
“He is wrong about almost everything, but he is so confident in his delivery, it’s infuriating,” Tara said. “He would tell you the sky is green and refuse to hear a word about it. He once told me that Jennifer Lopez was the lead actress in the movie Chicago. I literally showed him the website for the film, with the cast list, and he said it was fake.”
“Yeah, sometimes when he speaks, I think of how easy it would be to strangle him with my belt…” Effie said, drifting off into a daydream. “Don’t worry, I probably won’t kill him.”
“I can’t make the same promise,” Fern laughed. As much as I wasn’t looking forward to this unpleasant man making an appearance, I couldn’t help but think it wouldn’t be all that bad.
“Well, the audit will just be for the last tax year, right? Where is all the paperwork for the tax stuff? I can help go over it with you and get ready, right?” I offered.
“Oh boy…” Fern mumbled. She was laughing as she sliced up a ham joint and I was glad that she seemed to be in a slightly better mood, even if it was at my expense.
“This way,” Effie beckoned, stepping through a door off the kitchen that I hadn’t noticed before. How could I have missed this?
Effie unlocked the door with a key she had stuffed into the pocket in her shorts. I heard the lock click, but she didn’t seem to be able to open it. I was about to say something, but Effie had taken a few steps back and then shoulder-charged at the door. It opened three or four inches and she reached a hand in to switch on the light.
“Here it is,” she grinned. She looked a little nervous again, what could be so bad? She was sure that the paperwork was all in order, so what was the big deal? I pressed my face against the gap in the door and saw exactly what was causing her to feel anxious.
“Ah, I see…” I muttered. I had to assume that somewhere under the piles and piles of paperwork there was a desk. Shelving units against the walls were stacked high with notepads and it looked like receipts had been thrown in through the gap in the door, forming a heap.
“It was going well until the pile collapsed, but now I can’t really get in,” Effie smiled.
“You’re a witch! This makes no sense; can’t you use your powers to sort this out?” I asked.
“That’s the thing about Kane, the guy from the IRS,” she began. “He isn’t just a regular guy. He has a little magic, just enough to be a real jerk about everything. He put a spell on this place to make sure that I did everything by hand, no witchcraft of any description. He knows I’m super busy, he does this so that when he shows up, he gets an extra couple of weeks in the sun trying to work through it all.”
“But you said it was in order,” I muttered.
“Yeah, I have my own system for the bookkeeping, and that’s up to date. He will want to look at this though, filing isn’t my favorite thing in the world.”
“When is he due to arrive?” I asked, nervous about the answer.
“I think he’s coming tonight,” she said. “Sorry.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes.
“If we are going to fix this,” I said, meaning that we were absolutely going to fix it, “then I’m going to need coffee and plenty of it.”
“Coffee isn’t what we need here,” Effie replied. “I have a better idea.” What?
2
Effie thrust her cell phone into my hands, and I realized that it was already ringing. I could see on the screen that it was trying to call Kate, Effie’s sister. After a few seconds, Kate picked up.
“What’s up, Sadie? Is this another classic call where you tell me a bunch of spicy details about you and Miller? You know I love to hear it,” Kate laughed. I initially wondered how she had known it was me when it was Effie’s phone making the call, but she was a mind-reading witch, so go figure.
“When have I ever called you to talk to you about that?” I replied. Miller was the island sheriff, and I suppose he was technically my boyfriend, not that I’d officially used the term yet. Kate was fascinated with our relationship; I’d never seen anyone so invested in a couple before. It was weird, but then again Kate was weird, so what should I expect?
“I just figured that after Miller took you to Shell’s Day that there would be a little sleepover action for you to tell me about! Maybe there was some Netflix and chilling?” she teased.
“You guys don’t even get Netflix here, the internet is awful, and Hallow Haven still has a VHS rental place,” I reminded her.
“Yeah, I’ll be honest with you,” she laughed. “I don’t even know what Netflix is. One of my friends sent me a postcard with a meme on it and I thought I could just drop it into conversation. So, did you and Miller VHS and K-I-S-S? Does that phrase work?”
“I didn’t call to brainstorm ways for you to annoy me,” I replied. “Effie is actually the one that dialed, and I don’t know why. We have an unscheduled audit, and—”
“Put me on speaker
,” Kate interrupted. I pressed the button and held the phone between Effie and I. “Eff, is Kane coming?”
“Yeah, tonight, I think. It’s a Richter in the office, full Richter,” Effie said.
“Richter?” I asked.
“Yeah, Richter scale,” Kate replied, as if it made all the sense in the world. “You know, earthquakes and stuff. Come on, Sadie. Keep up!” Even though she was on the phone, I could almost hear Kate rolling her eyes.
“I’m freaking out, Sadie asked for coffee, but you normally get me that tea I like…” Effie said, pausing in anticipation of Kate finishing the thought for her.
“You want me to go get you tea right now?” Kate asked. “Dude, this place is looking we’re giving out free money today. I don’t know if I can leave.”
Kate had two jobs, one was the host of a very late-night show on the island’s radio station, and the other was as a staff member at Pete’s Za. It was a pizza joint on the high street that ran along the main island.
“But, but…” Effie sniffed, she was clearly faking that she was upset. She winked at me and made a few whimpering sounds as if she was about to cry.
