Summary:
Siôn Ruston has fled to Rosewick Bay to recover from a breakdown which led him to attempt suicide. He needs the peace and tranquility of this lovely North Yorkshire seaside village to recover, but instead he is awoken by the ghost that walks across his bedroom at dawn. Seeking answers, Siôn finds Mattie, the ghost's descendant, working in the local museum (not to mention his other jobs in the local pub, at the ice cream stand, and on the local lifeboat crew).
Mattie is everything Siôn isn’t—young, bold, and confident—but as they work together to discover the secret history of Rosewick Bay, Siôn falls for him anyway. But the ghosts which stalk the village are far from friendly, and soon Siôn and Mattie realise that not just their chance of love but their very lives are at stake.
I had never read this author before this past summer and Spindrift is my fourth in about 3 months time, can I just say that Amy Rae Durreson knows how to tell a ghost story. Spindrift, like the others, is so much more than just a ghost story, it's a love story with wonderful characters and incredible detail to atmosphere, combined they create an incredible tale I just couldn't put down until I reached the last page. Mix in secrets, a past mystery, and a ghost or two and what you have is a read that leaves you mesmerized and a little creeped out, okay a lot creeped out at times but completely hooked. A definite must for paranormal lovers.
RATING:
Summary:
Fox Hollow Zodiak #1
A grieving wolf. A hunted fox. Fated mates, thrown together by chance, and the looming threat of a fabled Huntsman who might tear them apart forever.
Fox shifter Liam Reynard is running from a killer. He uproots his life to find sanctuary in Fox Hollow, deep in the Adirondack Forest in New York.
When his car breaks down, sexy wolf shifter Russ Lowe comes to the rescue, and one touch makes it clear they’re fated mates. Neither man was looking for love, and both are still mending from past heartbreak. When mysterious fires and disappearances threaten Fox Hollow, Liam fears the killer is hot on his trail. Can he protect the town and his fated mate from the evil hunting him, or will an ex-lover’s betrayal cost Liam everything he loves?
Huntsman is full of sexy shifters, hurt/comfort, second chance love, sincere psychics, hot first responders, found family, and fated mates. Intended for readers 18 years of age or older.
Summary:
Enchanted Occasions #1
With his heart’s desire at stake, can he resist giving Fate a little nudge?
Half-norn event planner Anders Skuldsson is under strict orders from Asgard not to meddle with Fate. But with Enchanted Occasions’ latest booking—the competition for the hand of Faerie’s one true prince—crashing around his ears, it’s really, really, really difficult to toe that particular line. So… if Andy just happens to pose as a contender for the prince? It’s an emergency, damn it. Besides, it’s only temporary, so Odin can hardly blame him. Right?
If Conall of Odstone hadn’t sworn a blood oath to protect his half-brother, Prince Reyner, he’d murder the idiot himself. Rey was supposed to be here, choosing a mate before being crowned and wed. Instead, he’s disappeared, leaving Con to impersonate him. Again.
But when Con meets Andy, his anger turns to desire… and despair. Even if Andy forgives him for pretending to be someone he’s not, how could a man as appealing and accomplished as Andy—a man who’s eligible for a prince’s hand, for pity’s sake—settle for the court outcast?
As for Andy, his burgeoning feelings for the prince are both unfortunate and hopeless because hello? Half-norn? Faerie prince? Not exactly a match made in Valhalla.
When the Faerie Queen herself hands down an ultimatum, the double deception isn’t their only obstacle. Unless Andy makes the right decision, both their fates could be sealed by… well… Fate.
Summary:
Rath and Ruin #1
Monsters. Murder. Librarians.
Librarian Sebastian Rath is the only one who believes his friend Kelly O’Neil disappeared due to foul play. But without any clues or outside assistance, there’s nothing he can do to prove it.
When bookbinder Vesper Rune is hired to fill the vacancy left by O’Neil, he receives an ominous letter warning him to leave. After he saves Sebastian from a pair of threatening men, the two decide to join forces and get to the truth about what happened to O’Neil.
But Vesper is hiding secrets of his own, ones he doesn’t dare let anyone learn. Secrets that grow ever more dangerous as his desire for Sebastian deepens.
Because Kelly O’Neil was murdered. And if Sebastian and Ves don’t act quickly enough, they’ll be the next to die.
The Witch's Familiar by TJ Nichols
Summary:
Familiar Mates #1
He can hold lightning in his hand, but will love slip through his fingers?
Jude Sullivan has one more chance to prove he isn’t a danger to the paranormal community. If he fails, he’ll be stripped of his magic, a painful process to make a witch human.
As a test, the Coven sends him to Mercy South, Colorado, to stop a creature that’s been mutilating cows and scaring the locals. Jude hates cows and small towns. The Coven should’ve sent a nature witch.
Rob Mackenzie is the local mechanic and bear shifter. If the locals knew his secret, they’d run him out of town. He wants someone to really know him and not be afraid. With several chewed-up cows and some other weird happenings, he’s wondering if he’s no longer the strangest creature in Mercy.
After meeting Mack, Jude thinks he’s found the cause of the trouble. But the trouble is only just getting started when Mack realizes he’s Jude’s fated mate. As the cow-mutilating creature starts hunting in town, Mack and Jude will have to quit fighting their attraction and each other, to stop the creature from killing again.
For readers who love fated mates, bear shifters and small town gay romance.
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Random Paranormal Tales of 2020
Spindrift by Amy Rae Durreson
Chapter 1
SIÔN DREAMED he went back to the bridge again, stepping out along the pedestrian walkway with his camera banging against his chest where it hung uselessly. The fog was just as deep as it had been on that day in March, wrapping around him like a bag around his head. It muffled his steps and made even the occasional rumble of passing cars sound far, far away. The fog closed behind him, hiding the north bank and the river below. As he walked he became convinced that he would never reach the far end, that he would walk forever through this damp gray shadow of a world.
Gradually, just like the first time, his steps slowed until he simply stood where he was. A bleak, quiet conviction settled over him.
He was completely alone in the world.
It seemed inconceivable that there even was a world out there beyond the fog, and he knew there was no one there who would miss him if he stayed here forever. He had no family, no friends, no lover, only a few colleagues he never socialized with. He didn’t even have a cat.
So why keep walking? Why not just stay here in the fog?
But he knew that the fog would lift and the world would still be there, and it would still be empty for him.
Even as he thought it, fear was clenching around his heart. Something was wrong.
Something was wrong with him.
And a shadowy figure came walking out of the mist toward him, stopping a foot away. Siôn recognized him at once—knew the expensive camera hanging around his neck, the soft old university hoodie with the St John’s College logo faded on the breast, the jeans that had never sat comfortably over his narrow hips and too long legs, the flop of pale hair. He was looking at himself, but it was a version of himself that had no face.
Looking at that dark emptiness, feeling that thin, screaming fear in his heart, Siôn suddenly understood. It wasn’t the world that was empty. It was him. He was the problem.
It seemed only logical to turn to the water. The stone handrail was elbow height, easy enough to climb, and he knew the river below was deep and fast enough to suck him down. Carefully, he took off his camera, handing it to his shadow self, and made for the edge.
Out in the gray, a gull cried, and then another and another, squabbling with sudden energy.
Their noise pulled Siôn away from the bridge, and he came out of the dream with a sudden gulp of relief. The cold fear released him so fast that he choked on his own indrawn breath and began to cough painfully, his lungs hurting.
By the time he could breathe again, he was fully awake and knew where he was—not on that cold bridge, but tucked under the sloping ceiling of Spindrift Cottage. The first light of the summer dawn was spilling softly through the dormer window and the lace curtains, creating thin patterns of light on the polished wooden floor and tufted rag rug in front of the unused hearth. Those seagulls were still squabbling outside his window, and he could just hear the sea breathing softly against the harbor bar.
He was alive. He was sane again. He was safe.
He was still alone.
But that was one of the thoughts he had learned to guard against, so he took another steadying breath, pushed himself up against the pile of lace-trimmed pillows, and went through his mantra again.
Alive. Sane. Safe. It had been three months since the bridge, and—with the help of a change of scene, mandatory therapy, and plenty of pills—he knew everything he had seen and felt up there had been false. He no longer believed that death was the only logical conclusion.
Tempting sometimes, but not logical.
Another breath, and this time he said the three words aloud to remind himself more firmly. “Alive. Sane. Safe.”
It helped to be here, in a sunlit room in this quiet house. Siôn had been reading before he went to sleep, Gavin Francis’s travelogue True North, and he reached out for his e-reader to keep going. There was nothing like the fascinating yet distant details of life in a cold climate to soothe his restless mind.
But as he turned, he heard a soft noise from his bedroom door. Then he saw the man standing there.
He was an ordinary-looking young man, of average height and squarely built, not much more than twenty. His dark hair was cropped close to his skull, and his face was ruddy and weathered. He had a slightly pointed face, not unhandsome, but not remarkable either, his expression solemn, although there was something around his eyes that suggested he could laugh. He wore a heavy navy blue jersey, cable-knit in complex patterns that drew Siôn’s eye, and faintly oily looking.
He had a thin little mustache and a gray leather flat cap, both of the sort Siôn associated with period films and a particular subset of urban hipster, and they seemed out of place in this little coastal retreat.
The initial surprise was giving way to indignation. Siôn had let the cottage for the next three months, and the agency had promised him that he would be left alone to enjoy it. They had also mentioned that the owner’s grandson would be staying in the basement flat once his university term was over, and “if you need owt and can’t get us on t’ phone, young Mattie will take a gander for thee.”
Siôn had managed to hide his instinctive grimace at both the idea and the exaggerated-cod Yorkshireism being thrown in his tourist face, but at least he now had a clue who this intruder was and how he had managed to get in. Bloody students.
Irritated, he snapped out, “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”
The man turned his head toward Siôn. His eyes were very wide and a little unfocused, as if they were seeing things Siôn could not, and suddenly the room felt icy, all the soft heat of early June seeping away like a retreating tide. The hairs on his arms stood on end, and his back cramped.
“Sarah,” the man said, and his voice was as cracked and distant as an old record, fading more with every syllable. “…Sorry… d—ned… shua….”
And he came forward across the room, bringing with him a stink of salt and rotten seaweed and something worse, something old and deep and dead.
Siôn couldn’t move.
Frozen in place, naked under the duvet, he watched this man—this dead thing—come gliding closer and closer to him, and he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even flinch.
The ghost passed across the room, his blank eyes unblinking, brushed past the bed, and walked toward the wide, low window where the dawn light was blazing in, thin and white and dazzling. He stepped into it and was gone, leaving behind only a lingering smell of death.
And then Siôn could breathe again, though part of him didn’t want to. The thing he had feared since he woke up in hospital had finally come to pass.
He had lost his mind again.
HE DIDN’T go back to sleep, though it was a long time before he could talk himself out of the bed. It was only when his alarm went off that he forced himself up. Routine was important, and he followed his with a dim, cold sense of detachment.
He ate his breakfast standing at the sink, forcing cornflakes into his mouth as he stared out of the window, for once not registering the soft loveliness of the morning light over the rooftops and harbor below. He washed up his bowl, put it carefully in the rack to dry, showered, and tried to shave.
His hand was shaking so much he put the razor down before he hurt himself.
It was only then that he realized he was tensed for that feeling—the bridge feeling—to come back, for that certainty to steal over him and make him believe it was time to die. If his brain was starting to break apart, to show him ghosts, that was the inevitable next step, wasn’t it? He was hallucinating again, this time without the excuse of months of insomnia. If his eyes had failed him, how long would it be before his logic turned on him too? He was used to analyzing risk, to recognizing situations that could not be overcome, and he wondered, a little frantically, what it would be this time—a bridge or the sea or, oh God, the cliffs?
What had possessed him to come and recuperate in a place with cliffs?
Had he been self-sabotaging even then?
It was the worst thought yet—that all these months of dealing with the shock and fear of what he had done, of recognizing that he wasn’t okay, whatever logic told him, and slowly picking up the pieces… they had all been for nothing if the dark, cold place inside him was still building traps.
“Routine,” he said to his reflection, which was hollow cheeked and wan, but at least still possessed a face. “Get back to routine.”
Routine meant dressing in light summer clothes and then shrugging on his windbreaker, because it might be June, but it was still Yorkshire. It meant gathering up his art supplies, checking that his phone was charged—for all the good that would do him when he couldn’t get a signal at the bottom of the village—and making sure he had some cash to buy lunch in the pub.
Staring at the emergency numbers pinned to the kitchen notice board wasn’t part of his usual routine, but it took an effort to drag himself away. Should he be calling someone? What would he say? Hi, I’m not suicidal and am frankly embarrassed that I ever was. I feel fine, except for the fact that I just saw a dead man walk across my bedroom.
What could they say to that? Nothing much, beyond suggesting it had been a bad dream and he should come in for a checkup, which would mean either a whole day driving or hours on buses and trains followed by twiddling his thumbs in the too solemn quiet of the waiting room, then having to find a hotel, and then losing another day traveling back. No. Let them spend their time on people who really were at breaking point. He would monitor himself as closely as he could and call if he started feeling genuinely bad.
Newly resolute, Siôn picked up his bag and strode out the door of the cottage and down the narrow steps into the sloping street.
Spindrift Cottage stood on the corner of a lane in the village of Rosewick Bay. The road curved down around the house to drop toward the tiny harbor below. Siôn had to enter the house by climbing a steep flight of steps to the kitchen door. The front windows of his living room looked over the rooftops and tiny patio gardens of the houses on the street below, while the back ones overlooked a small patio of his own and the foundations of the houses on the next street up. Below his part of the house was a tiny single-floor flat that backed into the cliff side on two faces, had a door opening onto the street at the front, and a window that was above head height on the sloping road that turned around the corner of the house. The whole village was a precarious tumble of red-tiled rooftops and terraced houses crammed into every foothold.
It had been an artists’ paradise since Edwardian times, and Siôn had chosen to retreat here for that reason. He had been here a fortnight already and was still not tired of trying to capture the higgledy lines of the houses, the water below, the gulls soaring overhead, and the light over the North Sea.
Today he walked briskly down through the village, heading for the harbor bar. It was early enough that the air was still cool, though in a way that promised heat later. The light was as thin and bright as sugar glaze, and he quickened his stride, no longer alarmed by the startling steepness of the lanes and the narrow ginnels that wound between the houses.
The harbor was pressed between two high cliffs, both of which were the haunts of seabirds who screeched and yammered as he walked below them and headed out across the breakwater that stretched from the foot of Minehouse Nab, the northern cliff. From the breakwater he could position his easel so he could look back at the village, and he took his time selecting a good spot.
But today, miserably, the art would not come. Every thin line he sketched seemed skewed, and when he gave up on guidelines and tried to splash watercolor straight onto the page, everything came out misshapen or saccharine.
He had never lost his art before—and he knew that, not the pills and therapy, was the main reason he had recovered as well as he had. He had heard so many horror stories about creativity and antidepressants. He had always been able to paint, although the mood and nature of his paintings had changed, the grays and stark lines of his urban landscapes giving way to a more dreamy, romantic palette. So he had come here to paint, and nothing else. Sometimes, still, he woke in the night with his heart pounding at the thought of going back to the silence and loneliness of London. Here, though, in this little bubble of light and sea and watercolor, he was safe.
But today, his muse failed him.
Perhaps it was the worry. Perhaps it was the way the keening gulls sounded so eerie today, or the way the sigh of the sea on the other side of the breakwater kept making the hairs rise on the back of his neck. Perhaps it was the memory of the hallucination’s eyes focusing on something other than Siôn, something only it could see.
“It was a dream,” he said firmly out loud. That was the only logical explanation. He had woken from a nightmare, and his still-dreaming brain had constructed something out of shadows and reflections.
He had never before had a nightmare that smelled like anything, let alone rot and water.
Just thinking of it brought the memory of the scent back so strongly that he was sure it was rising out of the big boulders of the modern breakwater behind him.
It was the harbor and the tide, he told himself. He had been living in the city so long he just didn’t know how to cope with natural smells any longer.
But the tide was high, and the stink was getting stronger and stronger.
Behind him there was a faint scrabbling noise, as if the rocks were shifting—or something was crawling across them.
Siôn shot to his feet, knocking his easel over, and spun, throwing his hands out defensively.
There was nothing there—only the open sea and the long stretch of the coast, the far cliffs still soft with morning mist.
All the same, since his paper was ruined and he was clearly getting nothing done here, he gathered his stuff and headed along the breakwater to get his feet back on solid ground.
He wandered the village for a while, trying to find a perspective that appealed to him, but nothing worked and the first coachload of day-tripping retirees had arrived. Giving up, he took his easel back to the cottage and contemplated just staying there, taking advantage of the light in the attic studio to improve some earlier pieces.
But isolating himself in this frame of mind was a bad idea, so he dragged himself out again, tucking his sketchbook under his arm as a defense against the world. He wasn’t required to talk to anyone directly, but he could eavesdrop a bit and sketch a few poses, and so feel a little more connected to the rest of the world. His first instinct might always be to isolate himself, but he had been forced to learn better, however much he resented having to step out into the world.
Halfway down the hill, he passed the open doors of the Rosewick Bay Heritage Center and paused. He hadn’t been in there yet, and perhaps this was the day. He could find out a little more about the history of the place and soak up some inspiration. If he was very lucky, they might even have some information about the Rosewick Group, that little offshoot of the Yorkshire impressionists who had settled in the village in the 1890s and early years of the twentieth century. One of the first pieces he had bought when he was finally earning enough to invest in real art had been Elinor Castle’s Rosewick Cobles, showing fisherwomen helping to pull a boat ashore. The painting had brought him here when he’d had to choose a place to recuperate. He had liked the idea of following in the footsteps of an artist he admired, and although her studio, now a lucrative little holiday cottage, had been let all summer, his inquiring phone call to the letting agent had brought him to Spindrift Cottage, which had been a family home until last year and had only just become available.
There was no guarantee the little museum would have anything about Castle and her circle, but they were the village’s only claim to fame, so there ought to be a postcard reproduction or two for sale at least. Castle herself was still moderately famous, and her pieces sold for more than a local museum could afford, but there might even be some works by, or information about, the lesser artists of the group. Siôn knew little about them, and perhaps today was the day to repair that gap in his knowledge.
Inside, the museum was bigger than it had looked from the outside. A glance along the main corridor revealed that a new frontage must have been built across the original terrace, because there was space for a whole row of Victorian-style shops done up in painstakingly authentic style. A spiral staircase led upstairs, with a sign taped to it that announced, “Fishing gallery, Art and Artists in Rosewick Bay, a Victorian Missionary in the South Seas, Childhood Past and Present.”
There was a wooden sign on the wall by the door that stated the entrance fees, as well as a counter, although it was unmanned. Someone had Blu-Tacked a bit of paper to it that read, in a scrawl of purple felt-tip, “Back in 5m! Please leave cash in honesty box!”
Siôn guessed that meant the wooden box with a slit in the top that was chained to the counter. He put his two pounds in, amused and oddly touched. London seemed very far away.
He wandered over to the first exhibit, a display of fishing lines carefully strung with hooks, and leaned in to read the typed explanation pinned to wall above. It was surrounded by framed photographs of fishermen and boats, old newspaper clippings, and a rather ferocious-looking fish mounted on a board with its teeth showing. Glancing around, Siôn realized that every wall was covered in the same way. At a guess, he would say that every single scrap of the village’s history was on display here.
It was charming, in a cluttered sort of way, and he moved on to study the contents of a reconstructed chemist’s shop, which seemed to feature the rescued contents of local medicine cabinets from Victorian times to the 1970s, all arranged so the brand names faced outward. There was even a door with an old-fashioned knocker. It was closed, and he wasn’t sure if it was just for effect or whether there was more to see inside the shop. Carefully, he reached out and pushed at it slightly, to see if it would open.
“Nowt but wall behind that one,” a warm, cheerful voice said behind him. “You have to go round to get to the history of the lifeboat.”
Irrationally embarrassed, Siôn stepped back. “I’m sorry.”
“You weren’t to know,” the kid behind him said. He had a nice voice, deep with a thick Yorkshire accent. He sounded friendly, young, confident—everything Siôn struggled with. “I keep telling Mrs. Peacock that we ought to put a sign up, but she won’t have it. Says it would spoil the authenticity.”
Siôn turned round, preparing a smile, and started to say, “I’d hate to see anyone try to force….”
Then the words dried up in his throat.
The young man leaning over the counter and grinning at him looked very, very familiar. In fact, Siôn had last seen him only a few hours ago, although he had been dressed very differently then.
This was the man who had walked across his room at dawn and vanished into a blur of light.
Huntsman by Morgan Brice
From Chapter One
Liam pulled himself out of his thoughts and forced himself to pay attention to the road. There were no streetlights out here. Once the sun set, the darkness out here was really dark.
Liam knew if he could shift into his fox-self, he’d be able to see just fine. But so far, he hadn’t figured out how to drive a car as a fox, and while Dr. Jeffries told him that Fox Hollow was both shifter-aware and shifter-welcoming, Liam didn’t want to bet on the tolerance of the county mounties or the state cops.
Just keep driving. Once I’m in Fox Hollow, I’ll be safer. Not too much farther now.
Liam had stopped at an ATM for cash and to fill the gas tank before he left Ithaca. He’d loaded up on road food and plenty of coffee so he could drive straight through. That would still get him into Fox Hollow late, but Dr. Jeffries had assured him that no matter what time the call came, he would be over to give Liam the keys and help him get settled.
He passed a sign by the side of the road that read: Fox Hollow, 10 miles just when the engine started to rattle and clank. A mile or so later, the noise grew alarmingly worse. Cursing under his breath, Liam pulled off to the side. The state highway didn’t have a generous berm, but there hadn’t been many cars for the past half hour. He was unlikely to be sideswiped but equally unlikely to have a passer-by offer to help.
Then again, since he hadn’t gotten a good look at the Huntsman’s face, Liam wouldn’t have dared accept help from a random driver.
With a sigh, he grabbed his phone and dug in his wallet for his roadside assistance card, hoping that he wasn’t too far from civilization to get a tow that didn’t cost a fortune.
“We’ll have someone out as quickly as possible,” the customer service operator assured him, remaining vexingly light on the details. “Stay where you are, remain in your vehicle to be safe, and we’ll send a tow truck.”
“Can they tow me to Fox Hollow? That’s where I’m headed. I don’t know if they have a place that can fix cars.”
“You’re in luck,” she replied. “They do. I’ll take care of that for you. Just sit tight.”
Liam tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel, feeling twitchy about waiting for a stranger, alone in the dark. While he had heard plenty of people talk about the gorgeous, rugged scenery of the Adirondacks, Liam had apparently skipped over the parts about how dark, empty, and vast the area could seem.
He debated, then discarded, the notion of shifting to his fox to get a sense for his surroundings. He didn’t know how quickly the tow truck might arrive, and while the area might tolerate shifters, confronting a hapless driver with a too-knowledgeable fox or a naked man who had just shifted back didn’t seem like it was the right way to make new friends.
Unhallowed by Jordan L Hawk
The monster boarded the train in Boston.
He found an unoccupied seat at the back of the rail car. Warm May air drifted in through the open window, along with the tang of burning coal. Men and women crowded the platform outside, the plumes in the women’s hats bobbing in the breeze.
A small girl tugged urgently on her mother’s skirts, demanding attention. The monster stiffened, expecting the woman to backhand the child. Instead, she smiled indulgently, bending down to better hear her offspring’s excited babbling.
“Pardon me,” said an affable voice practically in his ear.
He jumped, then cursed himself. Inattention wasn’t something he could afford, ever. Certainly not now, when so much hung on the outcome of this journey.
A smiling man, his face flushed from the heat, stood looking down at him. “Is this seat taken?”
He thought about lying, but he’d be caught out when no companion appeared. “No.”
The man stowed his suitcase, then dropped into the seat. “Dave Moore,” he said, thrusting out his hand.
“Vesper Rune.” Ves shook reluctantly, withdrawing his own hand as quickly as possible. The last thing he needed was a gregarious seatmate, but a quick glance around the car showed no other empty seats. It seemed he was trapped, at least until the next stop.
The train whistle screamed, and a few moments later, it lurched into movement. Ves turned to the window, suppressing a flinch as he caught a glimpse of dark hair and brown eyes reflected in the glass. Fortunately, his reflection was distorted, and he was able to look through it and pretend to be deeply interested in the passing scenery.
Alas, that wasn’t enough to dissuade his seatmate. Mr. Moore launched into a long monologue concerning his business (traveling brush salesman), his family (wife and three children), and the weather (warm). Ves murmured where it seemed polite, but his thoughts were only half on the other man’s idle conversation, until he asked, “So where are you headed, Mr. Rune?”
Resigning himself to an unwanted conversation, Ves said, “Widdershins.”
To his surprise, Mr. Moore paled. “Widdershins? Is that…I mean, do you hail from there?”
“No,” Ves said, and hoped Moore didn’t pry any further into his origins. It was tedious to lie all the time, and he was becoming sick of it. But what choice did he have? I was raised in an insane cult was the sort of answer that only invited even more intrusive questions. “I’m visiting on business.”
Moore seemed marginally less concerned, though a frown still creased his brow beneath the brim of his hat. “I see. You won’t be there long, I hope?”
The task Mr. Fagerlie had given him was simple enough. With any luck, Ves and his brother would be leaving New England behind forever in only a little over a week’s time. With the curse lifted, they’d be free to go anywhere they pleased, live as they chose.
“I’m not planning on staying,” he replied. “May I ask why?”
Moore worried at his lower lip with his teeth. Then he leaned in, dropping his voice to a whisper. Ves stiffened, hoping the cologne he’d splashed on this morning covered his natural scent. “They claim the town was founded by a man fleeing the witch trials, back in colonial times. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s said those who live there even today scorn the laws of both man and God. I wouldn’t linger any longer than you must, if I were you.”
Ves barely kept from rolling his eyes. What a bunch of rot. Widdershins might be a small port town, but it was still a town, which meant people and their prying eyes. It wasn’t like the countryside where he’d grown up, where the remoteness of farmsteads meant their inhabitants had the privacy to engage in activities that would make Moore’s blood curdle were Ves to name them aloud. Nothing Widdershins had to offer would be stranger or more horrible than what had surrounded him growing up.
Nothing would be stranger or more horrible than himself, when it came down to it.
But of course he couldn’t say that out loud. “Thank you for the warning, but I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
Moore still seemed uncertain. “What sort of work do you do, Mr. Rune?”
Here, at last, was a chance to secure some peace and quiet. “I’m a bookbinder and conservator,” Ves said, and immediately launched into a long dialog concerning the importance of margin width in rebinding. As predicted, Moore’s eyes began to glaze over within seconds.
“How very interesting,” Moore said hastily, when Ves paused to draw breath. He retrieved a newspaper from his suitcase, signaling an end to the conversation. Ves suppressed a smile of triumph.
Moore settled himself, unfolding the paper. The front page occupied him through the stop in Revere, but as the train pulled out of that station, he angled it in Ves’s direction. Ves glanced down and saw Moore was indicating the daily update on the speed and visibility of Halley’s Comet.
“What do you think about all this?” Moore asked. “That French astronomer says we’re all going to die when the earth passes through the comet’s tail next week. That it’s the end of the world.”
“It isn’t,” Ves said shortly.
“But how can we be certain?”
Ves turned away without answering. Because he knew what Moore—what most people—didn’t.
The end of the world was supposed to have happened eight years ago. And it had been Ves’s purpose to help bring it about.
Chapter 1
SIÔN DREAMED he went back to the bridge again, stepping out along the pedestrian walkway with his camera banging against his chest where it hung uselessly. The fog was just as deep as it had been on that day in March, wrapping around him like a bag around his head. It muffled his steps and made even the occasional rumble of passing cars sound far, far away. The fog closed behind him, hiding the north bank and the river below. As he walked he became convinced that he would never reach the far end, that he would walk forever through this damp gray shadow of a world.
Gradually, just like the first time, his steps slowed until he simply stood where he was. A bleak, quiet conviction settled over him.
He was completely alone in the world.
It seemed inconceivable that there even was a world out there beyond the fog, and he knew there was no one there who would miss him if he stayed here forever. He had no family, no friends, no lover, only a few colleagues he never socialized with. He didn’t even have a cat.
So why keep walking? Why not just stay here in the fog?
But he knew that the fog would lift and the world would still be there, and it would still be empty for him.
Even as he thought it, fear was clenching around his heart. Something was wrong.
Something was wrong with him.
And a shadowy figure came walking out of the mist toward him, stopping a foot away. Siôn recognized him at once—knew the expensive camera hanging around his neck, the soft old university hoodie with the St John’s College logo faded on the breast, the jeans that had never sat comfortably over his narrow hips and too long legs, the flop of pale hair. He was looking at himself, but it was a version of himself that had no face.
Looking at that dark emptiness, feeling that thin, screaming fear in his heart, Siôn suddenly understood. It wasn’t the world that was empty. It was him. He was the problem.
It seemed only logical to turn to the water. The stone handrail was elbow height, easy enough to climb, and he knew the river below was deep and fast enough to suck him down. Carefully, he took off his camera, handing it to his shadow self, and made for the edge.
Out in the gray, a gull cried, and then another and another, squabbling with sudden energy.
Their noise pulled Siôn away from the bridge, and he came out of the dream with a sudden gulp of relief. The cold fear released him so fast that he choked on his own indrawn breath and began to cough painfully, his lungs hurting.
By the time he could breathe again, he was fully awake and knew where he was—not on that cold bridge, but tucked under the sloping ceiling of Spindrift Cottage. The first light of the summer dawn was spilling softly through the dormer window and the lace curtains, creating thin patterns of light on the polished wooden floor and tufted rag rug in front of the unused hearth. Those seagulls were still squabbling outside his window, and he could just hear the sea breathing softly against the harbor bar.
He was alive. He was sane again. He was safe.
He was still alone.
But that was one of the thoughts he had learned to guard against, so he took another steadying breath, pushed himself up against the pile of lace-trimmed pillows, and went through his mantra again.
Alive. Sane. Safe. It had been three months since the bridge, and—with the help of a change of scene, mandatory therapy, and plenty of pills—he knew everything he had seen and felt up there had been false. He no longer believed that death was the only logical conclusion.
Tempting sometimes, but not logical.
Another breath, and this time he said the three words aloud to remind himself more firmly. “Alive. Sane. Safe.”
It helped to be here, in a sunlit room in this quiet house. Siôn had been reading before he went to sleep, Gavin Francis’s travelogue True North, and he reached out for his e-reader to keep going. There was nothing like the fascinating yet distant details of life in a cold climate to soothe his restless mind.
But as he turned, he heard a soft noise from his bedroom door. Then he saw the man standing there.
He was an ordinary-looking young man, of average height and squarely built, not much more than twenty. His dark hair was cropped close to his skull, and his face was ruddy and weathered. He had a slightly pointed face, not unhandsome, but not remarkable either, his expression solemn, although there was something around his eyes that suggested he could laugh. He wore a heavy navy blue jersey, cable-knit in complex patterns that drew Siôn’s eye, and faintly oily looking.
He had a thin little mustache and a gray leather flat cap, both of the sort Siôn associated with period films and a particular subset of urban hipster, and they seemed out of place in this little coastal retreat.
The initial surprise was giving way to indignation. Siôn had let the cottage for the next three months, and the agency had promised him that he would be left alone to enjoy it. They had also mentioned that the owner’s grandson would be staying in the basement flat once his university term was over, and “if you need owt and can’t get us on t’ phone, young Mattie will take a gander for thee.”
Siôn had managed to hide his instinctive grimace at both the idea and the exaggerated-cod Yorkshireism being thrown in his tourist face, but at least he now had a clue who this intruder was and how he had managed to get in. Bloody students.
Irritated, he snapped out, “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”
The man turned his head toward Siôn. His eyes were very wide and a little unfocused, as if they were seeing things Siôn could not, and suddenly the room felt icy, all the soft heat of early June seeping away like a retreating tide. The hairs on his arms stood on end, and his back cramped.
“Sarah,” the man said, and his voice was as cracked and distant as an old record, fading more with every syllable. “…Sorry… d—ned… shua….”
And he came forward across the room, bringing with him a stink of salt and rotten seaweed and something worse, something old and deep and dead.
Siôn couldn’t move.
Frozen in place, naked under the duvet, he watched this man—this dead thing—come gliding closer and closer to him, and he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even flinch.
The ghost passed across the room, his blank eyes unblinking, brushed past the bed, and walked toward the wide, low window where the dawn light was blazing in, thin and white and dazzling. He stepped into it and was gone, leaving behind only a lingering smell of death.
And then Siôn could breathe again, though part of him didn’t want to. The thing he had feared since he woke up in hospital had finally come to pass.
He had lost his mind again.
HE DIDN’T go back to sleep, though it was a long time before he could talk himself out of the bed. It was only when his alarm went off that he forced himself up. Routine was important, and he followed his with a dim, cold sense of detachment.
He ate his breakfast standing at the sink, forcing cornflakes into his mouth as he stared out of the window, for once not registering the soft loveliness of the morning light over the rooftops and harbor below. He washed up his bowl, put it carefully in the rack to dry, showered, and tried to shave.
His hand was shaking so much he put the razor down before he hurt himself.
It was only then that he realized he was tensed for that feeling—the bridge feeling—to come back, for that certainty to steal over him and make him believe it was time to die. If his brain was starting to break apart, to show him ghosts, that was the inevitable next step, wasn’t it? He was hallucinating again, this time without the excuse of months of insomnia. If his eyes had failed him, how long would it be before his logic turned on him too? He was used to analyzing risk, to recognizing situations that could not be overcome, and he wondered, a little frantically, what it would be this time—a bridge or the sea or, oh God, the cliffs?
What had possessed him to come and recuperate in a place with cliffs?
Had he been self-sabotaging even then?
It was the worst thought yet—that all these months of dealing with the shock and fear of what he had done, of recognizing that he wasn’t okay, whatever logic told him, and slowly picking up the pieces… they had all been for nothing if the dark, cold place inside him was still building traps.
“Routine,” he said to his reflection, which was hollow cheeked and wan, but at least still possessed a face. “Get back to routine.”
Routine meant dressing in light summer clothes and then shrugging on his windbreaker, because it might be June, but it was still Yorkshire. It meant gathering up his art supplies, checking that his phone was charged—for all the good that would do him when he couldn’t get a signal at the bottom of the village—and making sure he had some cash to buy lunch in the pub.
Staring at the emergency numbers pinned to the kitchen notice board wasn’t part of his usual routine, but it took an effort to drag himself away. Should he be calling someone? What would he say? Hi, I’m not suicidal and am frankly embarrassed that I ever was. I feel fine, except for the fact that I just saw a dead man walk across my bedroom.
What could they say to that? Nothing much, beyond suggesting it had been a bad dream and he should come in for a checkup, which would mean either a whole day driving or hours on buses and trains followed by twiddling his thumbs in the too solemn quiet of the waiting room, then having to find a hotel, and then losing another day traveling back. No. Let them spend their time on people who really were at breaking point. He would monitor himself as closely as he could and call if he started feeling genuinely bad.
Newly resolute, Siôn picked up his bag and strode out the door of the cottage and down the narrow steps into the sloping street.
Spindrift Cottage stood on the corner of a lane in the village of Rosewick Bay. The road curved down around the house to drop toward the tiny harbor below. Siôn had to enter the house by climbing a steep flight of steps to the kitchen door. The front windows of his living room looked over the rooftops and tiny patio gardens of the houses on the street below, while the back ones overlooked a small patio of his own and the foundations of the houses on the next street up. Below his part of the house was a tiny single-floor flat that backed into the cliff side on two faces, had a door opening onto the street at the front, and a window that was above head height on the sloping road that turned around the corner of the house. The whole village was a precarious tumble of red-tiled rooftops and terraced houses crammed into every foothold.
It had been an artists’ paradise since Edwardian times, and Siôn had chosen to retreat here for that reason. He had been here a fortnight already and was still not tired of trying to capture the higgledy lines of the houses, the water below, the gulls soaring overhead, and the light over the North Sea.
Today he walked briskly down through the village, heading for the harbor bar. It was early enough that the air was still cool, though in a way that promised heat later. The light was as thin and bright as sugar glaze, and he quickened his stride, no longer alarmed by the startling steepness of the lanes and the narrow ginnels that wound between the houses.
The harbor was pressed between two high cliffs, both of which were the haunts of seabirds who screeched and yammered as he walked below them and headed out across the breakwater that stretched from the foot of Minehouse Nab, the northern cliff. From the breakwater he could position his easel so he could look back at the village, and he took his time selecting a good spot.
But today, miserably, the art would not come. Every thin line he sketched seemed skewed, and when he gave up on guidelines and tried to splash watercolor straight onto the page, everything came out misshapen or saccharine.
He had never lost his art before—and he knew that, not the pills and therapy, was the main reason he had recovered as well as he had. He had heard so many horror stories about creativity and antidepressants. He had always been able to paint, although the mood and nature of his paintings had changed, the grays and stark lines of his urban landscapes giving way to a more dreamy, romantic palette. So he had come here to paint, and nothing else. Sometimes, still, he woke in the night with his heart pounding at the thought of going back to the silence and loneliness of London. Here, though, in this little bubble of light and sea and watercolor, he was safe.
But today, his muse failed him.
Perhaps it was the worry. Perhaps it was the way the keening gulls sounded so eerie today, or the way the sigh of the sea on the other side of the breakwater kept making the hairs rise on the back of his neck. Perhaps it was the memory of the hallucination’s eyes focusing on something other than Siôn, something only it could see.
“It was a dream,” he said firmly out loud. That was the only logical explanation. He had woken from a nightmare, and his still-dreaming brain had constructed something out of shadows and reflections.
He had never before had a nightmare that smelled like anything, let alone rot and water.
Just thinking of it brought the memory of the scent back so strongly that he was sure it was rising out of the big boulders of the modern breakwater behind him.
It was the harbor and the tide, he told himself. He had been living in the city so long he just didn’t know how to cope with natural smells any longer.
But the tide was high, and the stink was getting stronger and stronger.
Behind him there was a faint scrabbling noise, as if the rocks were shifting—or something was crawling across them.
Siôn shot to his feet, knocking his easel over, and spun, throwing his hands out defensively.
There was nothing there—only the open sea and the long stretch of the coast, the far cliffs still soft with morning mist.
All the same, since his paper was ruined and he was clearly getting nothing done here, he gathered his stuff and headed along the breakwater to get his feet back on solid ground.
He wandered the village for a while, trying to find a perspective that appealed to him, but nothing worked and the first coachload of day-tripping retirees had arrived. Giving up, he took his easel back to the cottage and contemplated just staying there, taking advantage of the light in the attic studio to improve some earlier pieces.
But isolating himself in this frame of mind was a bad idea, so he dragged himself out again, tucking his sketchbook under his arm as a defense against the world. He wasn’t required to talk to anyone directly, but he could eavesdrop a bit and sketch a few poses, and so feel a little more connected to the rest of the world. His first instinct might always be to isolate himself, but he had been forced to learn better, however much he resented having to step out into the world.
Halfway down the hill, he passed the open doors of the Rosewick Bay Heritage Center and paused. He hadn’t been in there yet, and perhaps this was the day. He could find out a little more about the history of the place and soak up some inspiration. If he was very lucky, they might even have some information about the Rosewick Group, that little offshoot of the Yorkshire impressionists who had settled in the village in the 1890s and early years of the twentieth century. One of the first pieces he had bought when he was finally earning enough to invest in real art had been Elinor Castle’s Rosewick Cobles, showing fisherwomen helping to pull a boat ashore. The painting had brought him here when he’d had to choose a place to recuperate. He had liked the idea of following in the footsteps of an artist he admired, and although her studio, now a lucrative little holiday cottage, had been let all summer, his inquiring phone call to the letting agent had brought him to Spindrift Cottage, which had been a family home until last year and had only just become available.
There was no guarantee the little museum would have anything about Castle and her circle, but they were the village’s only claim to fame, so there ought to be a postcard reproduction or two for sale at least. Castle herself was still moderately famous, and her pieces sold for more than a local museum could afford, but there might even be some works by, or information about, the lesser artists of the group. Siôn knew little about them, and perhaps today was the day to repair that gap in his knowledge.
Inside, the museum was bigger than it had looked from the outside. A glance along the main corridor revealed that a new frontage must have been built across the original terrace, because there was space for a whole row of Victorian-style shops done up in painstakingly authentic style. A spiral staircase led upstairs, with a sign taped to it that announced, “Fishing gallery, Art and Artists in Rosewick Bay, a Victorian Missionary in the South Seas, Childhood Past and Present.”
There was a wooden sign on the wall by the door that stated the entrance fees, as well as a counter, although it was unmanned. Someone had Blu-Tacked a bit of paper to it that read, in a scrawl of purple felt-tip, “Back in 5m! Please leave cash in honesty box!”
Siôn guessed that meant the wooden box with a slit in the top that was chained to the counter. He put his two pounds in, amused and oddly touched. London seemed very far away.
He wandered over to the first exhibit, a display of fishing lines carefully strung with hooks, and leaned in to read the typed explanation pinned to wall above. It was surrounded by framed photographs of fishermen and boats, old newspaper clippings, and a rather ferocious-looking fish mounted on a board with its teeth showing. Glancing around, Siôn realized that every wall was covered in the same way. At a guess, he would say that every single scrap of the village’s history was on display here.
It was charming, in a cluttered sort of way, and he moved on to study the contents of a reconstructed chemist’s shop, which seemed to feature the rescued contents of local medicine cabinets from Victorian times to the 1970s, all arranged so the brand names faced outward. There was even a door with an old-fashioned knocker. It was closed, and he wasn’t sure if it was just for effect or whether there was more to see inside the shop. Carefully, he reached out and pushed at it slightly, to see if it would open.
“Nowt but wall behind that one,” a warm, cheerful voice said behind him. “You have to go round to get to the history of the lifeboat.”
Irrationally embarrassed, Siôn stepped back. “I’m sorry.”
“You weren’t to know,” the kid behind him said. He had a nice voice, deep with a thick Yorkshire accent. He sounded friendly, young, confident—everything Siôn struggled with. “I keep telling Mrs. Peacock that we ought to put a sign up, but she won’t have it. Says it would spoil the authenticity.”
Siôn turned round, preparing a smile, and started to say, “I’d hate to see anyone try to force….”
Then the words dried up in his throat.
The young man leaning over the counter and grinning at him looked very, very familiar. In fact, Siôn had last seen him only a few hours ago, although he had been dressed very differently then.
This was the man who had walked across his room at dawn and vanished into a blur of light.
Huntsman by Morgan Brice
From Chapter One
Liam pulled himself out of his thoughts and forced himself to pay attention to the road. There were no streetlights out here. Once the sun set, the darkness out here was really dark.
Liam knew if he could shift into his fox-self, he’d be able to see just fine. But so far, he hadn’t figured out how to drive a car as a fox, and while Dr. Jeffries told him that Fox Hollow was both shifter-aware and shifter-welcoming, Liam didn’t want to bet on the tolerance of the county mounties or the state cops.
Just keep driving. Once I’m in Fox Hollow, I’ll be safer. Not too much farther now.
Liam had stopped at an ATM for cash and to fill the gas tank before he left Ithaca. He’d loaded up on road food and plenty of coffee so he could drive straight through. That would still get him into Fox Hollow late, but Dr. Jeffries had assured him that no matter what time the call came, he would be over to give Liam the keys and help him get settled.
With a sigh, he grabbed his phone and dug in his wallet for his roadside assistance card, hoping that he wasn’t too far from civilization to get a tow that didn’t cost a fortune.
“We’ll have someone out as quickly as possible,” the customer service operator assured him, remaining vexingly light on the details. “Stay where you are, remain in your vehicle to be safe, and we’ll send a tow truck.”
“Can they tow me to Fox Hollow? That’s where I’m headed. I don’t know if they have a place that can fix cars.”
“You’re in luck,” she replied. “They do. I’ll take care of that for you. Just sit tight.”
Liam tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel, feeling twitchy about waiting for a stranger, alone in the dark. While he had heard plenty of people talk about the gorgeous, rugged scenery of the Adirondacks, Liam had apparently skipped over the parts about how dark, empty, and vast the area could seem.
He debated, then discarded, the notion of shifting to his fox to get a sense for his surroundings. He didn’t know how quickly the tow truck might arrive, and while the area might tolerate shifters, confronting a hapless driver with a too-knowledgeable fox or a naked man who had just shifted back didn’t seem like it was the right way to make new friends.
Unhallowed by Jordan L Hawk
The monster boarded the train in Boston.
He found an unoccupied seat at the back of the rail car. Warm May air drifted in through the open window, along with the tang of burning coal. Men and women crowded the platform outside, the plumes in the women’s hats bobbing in the breeze.
A small girl tugged urgently on her mother’s skirts, demanding attention. The monster stiffened, expecting the woman to backhand the child. Instead, she smiled indulgently, bending down to better hear her offspring’s excited babbling.
“Pardon me,” said an affable voice practically in his ear.
He jumped, then cursed himself. Inattention wasn’t something he could afford, ever. Certainly not now, when so much hung on the outcome of this journey.
A smiling man, his face flushed from the heat, stood looking down at him. “Is this seat taken?”
He thought about lying, but he’d be caught out when no companion appeared. “No.”
The man stowed his suitcase, then dropped into the seat. “Dave Moore,” he said, thrusting out his hand.
“Vesper Rune.” Ves shook reluctantly, withdrawing his own hand as quickly as possible. The last thing he needed was a gregarious seatmate, but a quick glance around the car showed no other empty seats. It seemed he was trapped, at least until the next stop.
The train whistle screamed, and a few moments later, it lurched into movement. Ves turned to the window, suppressing a flinch as he caught a glimpse of dark hair and brown eyes reflected in the glass. Fortunately, his reflection was distorted, and he was able to look through it and pretend to be deeply interested in the passing scenery.
Alas, that wasn’t enough to dissuade his seatmate. Mr. Moore launched into a long monologue concerning his business (traveling brush salesman), his family (wife and three children), and the weather (warm). Ves murmured where it seemed polite, but his thoughts were only half on the other man’s idle conversation, until he asked, “So where are you headed, Mr. Rune?”
Resigning himself to an unwanted conversation, Ves said, “Widdershins.”
To his surprise, Mr. Moore paled. “Widdershins? Is that…I mean, do you hail from there?”
“No,” Ves said, and hoped Moore didn’t pry any further into his origins. It was tedious to lie all the time, and he was becoming sick of it. But what choice did he have? I was raised in an insane cult was the sort of answer that only invited even more intrusive questions. “I’m visiting on business.”
Moore seemed marginally less concerned, though a frown still creased his brow beneath the brim of his hat. “I see. You won’t be there long, I hope?”
The task Mr. Fagerlie had given him was simple enough. With any luck, Ves and his brother would be leaving New England behind forever in only a little over a week’s time. With the curse lifted, they’d be free to go anywhere they pleased, live as they chose.
“I’m not planning on staying,” he replied. “May I ask why?”
Moore worried at his lower lip with his teeth. Then he leaned in, dropping his voice to a whisper. Ves stiffened, hoping the cologne he’d splashed on this morning covered his natural scent. “They claim the town was founded by a man fleeing the witch trials, back in colonial times. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s said those who live there even today scorn the laws of both man and God. I wouldn’t linger any longer than you must, if I were you.”
Ves barely kept from rolling his eyes. What a bunch of rot. Widdershins might be a small port town, but it was still a town, which meant people and their prying eyes. It wasn’t like the countryside where he’d grown up, where the remoteness of farmsteads meant their inhabitants had the privacy to engage in activities that would make Moore’s blood curdle were Ves to name them aloud. Nothing Widdershins had to offer would be stranger or more horrible than what had surrounded him growing up.
Nothing would be stranger or more horrible than himself, when it came down to it.
But of course he couldn’t say that out loud. “Thank you for the warning, but I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
Moore still seemed uncertain. “What sort of work do you do, Mr. Rune?”
Here, at last, was a chance to secure some peace and quiet. “I’m a bookbinder and conservator,” Ves said, and immediately launched into a long dialog concerning the importance of margin width in rebinding. As predicted, Moore’s eyes began to glaze over within seconds.
“How very interesting,” Moore said hastily, when Ves paused to draw breath. He retrieved a newspaper from his suitcase, signaling an end to the conversation. Ves suppressed a smile of triumph.
Moore settled himself, unfolding the paper. The front page occupied him through the stop in Revere, but as the train pulled out of that station, he angled it in Ves’s direction. Ves glanced down and saw Moore was indicating the daily update on the speed and visibility of Halley’s Comet.
“What do you think about all this?” Moore asked. “That French astronomer says we’re all going to die when the earth passes through the comet’s tail next week. That it’s the end of the world.”
“It isn’t,” Ves said shortly.
“But how can we be certain?”
Ves turned away without answering. Because he knew what Moore—what most people—didn’t.
The end of the world was supposed to have happened eight years ago. And it had been Ves’s purpose to help bring it about.
The Witch's Familiar by TJ Nichols
Chapter One
Jude gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. He was the wrong witch for this job. He knew it, and the Coven knew it, but he had no other options. No good ones anyway. And while he didn’t want to be an investigator for the Coven, he wanted to fail even less. He could always turn down the job—if he passed.
No matter what he’d done, he didn’t deserve to have his magic stripped and be turned into a magicless human. He didn’t want to be human, but right now he didn’t want to be a witch either. He probably shouldn’t have gone for the jackpot, but there had to be a use for his magic, and it had seemed like a good idea. It didn’t seem worthy of the punishment.
The odds of him succeeding were smaller than someone winning big without using magic. The Coven, Landstrom in particular, wanted him to fail. Jude was going to enjoy it if, when, he succeeded. He could do this. How hard could it be to find the creature? It couldn’t be that difficult…stopping it was another problem that he’d cross when he knew what he was dealing with.
He checked the map on his phone again. He wasn’t that far away from Mercy South, but the ever so helpful voice on his phone had gone silent a few miles ago. He checked the screen. Another fifteen miles to go on this road. Already he’d seen more cows that he’d had steaks. He preferred to see cows on a plate with a nice salad and some fries.
Maybe that was what he’d have for dinner.
He pressed the gas pedal on the two-door hatch he’d hired—it wasn’t electric, so he was actually going to have to pay for gas. He’d send the Coven a bill for his expenses after, if he wasn’t fleeing the country so they couldn’t take his magic—assuming his passport showed up.
What happened to magic that was stripped from witches? Was it stored in a bottle? Did it evaporate? What happened to the ex-witches? He should probably do a little research into that, too, just in case, so he was prepared. He’d already lost two days traveling down here. Twelve to go.
He sped past the sign that read ‘Ten Miles to Mercy South’. “Ten miles and a million cows.”
A crooked sign warned him that the Mercy North turnoff was in a mile. He had no interest in seeing the old mining town, although if anyone asked, that was exactly why he was here. He couldn’t go around talking about magic and monsters to humans, that would just give the Coven another reason to strip his magic.
The creature killing the cows might move on to people next, or worse, the people might realize that things from their horror movies did exist. Then there’d be panic, and that would be bad for all the paranormals. He understood the danger, but he wasn’t the problem…anymore. His magic was under control and carefully controlled. He barely even used magic.
If the Coven was really worried about the creature, they should’ve sent a nature witch, someone who could talk to animals not electrons. Maybe the problem wasn’t that bad. However, he was going to have to talk to people and ask questions, or at least listen to the local gossip.
The sun was setting, casting the sky in shades of pink and red. Any other day and he’d have thought it pretty, but the closer he got to Mercy South, the tighter the knots in his belly drew. He drove over the bridge, the fuel gauge slipping lower.
These could be his last days as a witch. If they were, he didn’t want to be spending them in a place with more cows than people. But he didn’t want to give Landstrom the pleasure of seeing him quit before he’d even tried either. Having his magic stripped was going to hurt worse than when he’d done his knee in as a teen. If he hadn’t been trying so hard to impress the cute catcher on the team, he wouldn’t have risked taking third base.
It had been worth it. His lips curved at the memory of his first boyfriend. Back then, he hadn’t known what the Coven was. They’d learned who he was when he’d fried the MRI—in his defense, he had told the doctor that he didn’t want to go in there. When he’d healed, the Coven had made themselves known. That had been the first time he’d been called before the board of three. It had been a different three witches then. The board of three drawn from the full board of thirteen. He’d made an effort to learn how the Coven operated and who the members were after the second time he’d got called in. That Landstrom had ended up on his last two boards was just unlucky.
Houses appeared, and Jude eased off the accelerator. The last thing he needed was a speeding ticket. He didn’t want to be here, and he didn’t want to fail. Bitterness rose in his throat. He was going to be spending his last few days with magic in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Not for the first time he wished he had some other magic. Something less lethal or easier to hide. If he could talk to animals, the Coven would probably have never realized he existed. His parents, whoever they were, hadn’t told anyone what he was. There’d been no warning note handed to his foster parents. No training guide for when weird things had started happening.
His phone came to life, directing him to the motel he’d booked. The pictures and reviews had been okay, better than the other option, and it was up the road from what had looked like the decent bar. The bar on the other side of town was the kind of place where he’d have to check for lice and hose off his shoes after stepping foot in there.
After two more turns, he pulled into the parking lot of the traditional U-shaped motel building. He took a moment to take some deep breaths before he got out. He could do this. He had to believe he could.
Find the creature, call the Coven, and he could be home within days. Then he’d pack up his apartment and go. Not even Landstrom would be able to check up on him from the other side of the world. The faster he did this the better.
He uncurled his fingers from the steering wheel and switched off his cell with barely a thought. Luck was on his side as it didn’t blink and die. The motel wasn’t that much different to the photos. It could do with some new paint and a gardener to trim the bushes that were no longer a neat hedge, not that he was a gardener by any stretch of the imagination.
He had a simple plan for tonight. Check in and then check out the bar—to listen to the local gossip about the cow mutilations, not to drink away his problems. Well, maybe a little drowning of his problems. But he knew from experience when he dried out, they’d be waiting for him like long-lost acquaintances he couldn’t get rid of. He wasn’t going to start creature hunting tonight. That was the kind of thing that should be started in daylight after a strong coffee.
He grinned, and while despair was lurking, he wasn’t going to entertain it. Sitting alone in his room would only give it permission to play, and he’d spent far too much time dwelling on what might happen in the car. He was here, and he had tonight, and tomorrow morning sorted.
Ten minutes later, he’d dropped his bag and pillow in the room—he always traveled with his own pillow—searched the crevices of the mattress for signs of life and was walking down the road to the bar. The bar had once been a shop, complete with gingerbread trimming. However, like most of what he’d walked past, it needed a fresh coat of paint and some repairs or burning to the ground and starting over.
A small rainbow flag was stuck in the window with a note about the next social event, which had happened last month. Overhead, the sign flickered, the short in the circuit an annoying hum that buzzed through his body like an itch he couldn’t scratch. In the time it took to draw breath, he harnessed the charge and sent it through the circuit, clearing the blockage so the electrons could flow freely through the light. The light glowed blue and bright above his head. Jude paused for a heartbeat, waiting for something to go catastrophically wrong and for sparks to fly. When nothing happened, he smiled and walked into the Whiskey Riot.
A few people turned to look at him. He knew immediately that he didn’t fit. There were a couple of men in suit pants with rolled-up shirt sleeves, but most of the men here got their hands dirty at work. The women were better dressed for the most part. There was a group of them from the chain store wearing black pants and shirts with the company logo on. They watched him with a little too much interest.
They were out of luck if they were hoping he’d buy them a drink.
He ordered a Dark and Stormy from the bar, knowing that there was probably no point in asking for his favorite spiced ginger beer or vanilla rum. He did request the rum they had on the top shelf, but only because he hadn’t drunk the cheap bottom-shelf rum since he’d been broke, which had been about two months ago. He took his drink to a corner table well away from everyone else, then pulled out his phone and pretended to be super busy—which he was as he needed to make a list of all possible creatures that could kill cows.
Five minutes on the Coven database revealed there were rather a lot of things that could eat cows. Things he didn’t want to believe existed.
***
Mack watched the stranger get his drink and take a seat. It was pretty clear he was no local. Given that Mercy wasn’t a tourist destination, he was probably passing through.
Ned nudged him. “Do you think he took a wrong turn?”
Mack smiled and sipped his beer. “I don’t think he’s the replacement vet.”
The vet had seen a mutilated cow, crossed herself, and taken an urgent visit home according to some stories. Others said she’d become a victim herself. Mack chose to believe the former. He didn’t get caught up in gossip and he didn’t listen to superstitious chatter either.
However, since the mutilations, he was heading farther away from town to shift as he really didn’t need another farmer shooting at him. Old Mr. Riley really needed his glasses checked if he thought a brown bear matched the description of the creature given by Jake and Donny—not that Mack put much weight on what they’d described as they’d both been drinking. If house-sized dogs were stalking around Mercy, Mack would’ve noticed.
“I’ll flip you,” Ned said with a nudge that almost spilled Mack’s beer.
“What for?” But Mack already knew. If a stranger came into the bar, they flipped a coin to see who’d get to make an ass of themselves. Sometimes the stars aligned and one of them got lucky. If not, and a drought had settled in, they knew each other well enough to spend the night without expecting more.
Mischief flashed in Ned’s eyes. He wanted to know who the city boy was. Not really a boy. He was a young man with too-trendy blond hair and fancy pointy-toed boots sticking out from the bottom of his tight jeans.
Mack shook his head. “I don’t think you’ll be able to sell him a car.”
“It’s not his car I’m interested in.” Ned already had a coin out.
“You go.” He didn’t want to walk over and make polite talk.
“Don’t break tradition.” Ned tossed the coin up.
Mack watched it flip through the air, then he stuck out a hand and caught it. Keeping it covered, he put it on the back of his hand. In his gut he knew no matter what Ned picked Mack was going to have to go over. The man glanced in their direction as if he knew they’d been talking about him. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing to introduce himself. It was only a conversation, and he’d lost count of the number of times it had never gotten past a hello. Ned had more luck picking up than Mack had ever had.
The new guy wasn’t his type. He was too…too…something. Mack glanced over again and ignored the quickening of his pulse. “Your call.”
“Heads. Always heads.” Ned smirked.
Mack tried not to roll his eyes. The trouble with living in Mercy was he knew most people too well. He’d been friends with Ned for far too long. Mack lifted his hand.
“Jeez, Mack, you have all the luck.”
Yeah, luckiest guy in town. “Maybe you shouldn’t have flipped if you were that keen.”
“I saw you watching. Besides, I won the last two tosses and stayed out all night.” Ned took a long drink and didn’t seem too devastated. “You need this.”
Mack was about to argue, but he had been glancing at City Boy, and it had been more than a while. He checked out the newcomer again. He didn’t need a type to have one night of fun. And it might be fun to get him out of those ridiculous boots or at least have them locked around his hips.
City Boy looked up as if aware he was being watched. His gaze landed on Mack and lingered for a moment too long before his drink consumed all of his attention.
“He gave you a look.” Ned lifted his eyebrow.
“It wasn’t a look.” Had it been a look? “What makes you think he’s one of us?”
Ned grinned. “Because if he was straight, he’d have noticed the women checking him out and he hasn’t smiled at them once. If Alice stares at him any harder, her eyes will fall out.”
Mack didn’t need to glance at Alice to verify that. She was always searching for fresh meat. But Mack didn’t want to get up and stroll over either. He sucked at small talk and conversation. It was much easier to go to the city and to a bar where hooking up was expected and everyone wanted the same thing. That he could do. This was torture for him, and Ned knew it and delighted in Mack’s discomfort. Mack couldn’t remember the last time he’d been successful at this game, but he played anyway, because when Ned failed it was funny.
“Seems you’re all out of beer.” Ned snatched up Mack’s glass and drained it.
Next time he shifted he was going to leave a bear crap on Ned’s front steps. That was the secret lodged between their friendship, and why they were only friends. He couldn’t tell people what he was. There were rules, and some rules had to be obeyed. “Remind me again why we’re friends?”
“Because I’m an awesome guy who is honoring the coin flip for the next three minutes. After that…” Ned shrugged.
Mack considered letting those three minutes slip by, but City Boy lifted his head again.
Don’t look at me.
He stared straight at Mack. This time Mack caught his gaze and gave a small nod. He was almost sure his lips had attempted to smile even though he’d thought those muscles long broken.
“That was definitely a look, and it was all about you. What is it about you? It’s like they know about your long—”
“Legs.” He was over six foot. But unlike his father, he wasn’t hefty like he’d swallowed a dumpster for breakfast. He had his mother’s leanness. Being lean didn’t mean he lacked the strength of a bear, though. If people were watching him fix their cars, he had to remember to make things appear heavy.
“That’s what I was going to say.” Ned gave a low chuckle.
Mack shook his head and stood. “I need another beer.”
“I want details.”
Mack scratched his jaw and gave Ned a not-so-subtle middle finger.
He made his way to the bar, nodding to the people he knew. The hair on the back of his neck prickled as he ordered his beer. He didn’t need to turn around to know he was being observed. He hated this bit. The awkward hello and the quiet working out what was going on. It didn’t have to go further. The coin flip was just to see who got first shot. It had been a stupid thing that had continued even after they were both old enough to know better. Now it was tradition.
He wiped his palms on his shirt front as casually as he could then thanked the bartender for his drink. He needed to turn around and make eye contact again. Get the man to invite him over to his table. Ned would’ve walked straight over and sat down, but Ned didn’t have secrets to hide like he did. He couldn’t let people too close, even Ned, in case they discovered shapeshifters were real and freaked out. He didn’t want to be run out of town by God-fearing locals with pitchforks.
The beer was cold and sharp, and he hadn’t planned on having a second one, but here he was. He hadn’t planned on picking up either. Yet here he was. Did he really want to do this?
Just be polite. It didn’t have to be more, but he was most definitely being watched by City Boy. If he turned now… Their gazes clashed, and there was no mistaking the interest this time. The blond-haired man smiled.
Mack tested out his rusty smile and hoped it wasn’t terrifying. It seemed to work because the other man wasn’t glancing away this time. His gaze slid down Mack’s body, no doubt taking it the oil-stained jeans and the not-so-white undershirt. He should’ve buttoned up his plaid shirt on his way over to the bar, so he seemed more presentable. The man’s gaze resettled on Mack’s face for a heartbeat before he finally looked away.
That was definitely interest.
Was he interested? Yeah, he might be. The man had a nice smile and eyes, and while his hair was over-styled and probably cemented in place, that wasn’t a grave sin. The man in question finished his drink and stood. Was he leaving? No, he was walking toward the bar.
Toward him.
The dark hairs on Mack’s forearm lifted. As the man got closer, Mack was sure he smelled ozone, sharp like before a storm. Was this man human or other? Then he kind of forgot to breathe because the man watched him with green eyes that could kill.
He was so very interested now.
His skin prickled, and his heartbeat was too fast to be safe. He wasn’t brave enough to pick up his beer just in case he spilled it. Lust had bitten and bitten deep. He needed to say something. The man placed his order, but Mack wasn’t about to pay for it. Not yet. He needed to be sure.
City Boy got his drink and turned to face him. He had to tilt his chin a little to hold Mack’s gaze. “Know anywhere around here that makes a decent coffee?”
He only had instant. That probably didn’t count as decent, and it was definitely too forward. “You could try Billie’s Diner. Or there’ are a couple of places in the mall.”
The man considered him for a moment. His stare was far too intense, as though he knew too much about Mack already. Mack had thought this guy to be all hair gel and brand names, but clearly he had a soul of steel. That only spiked his interest further. Men like him didn’t turn up at his local bar every day of the week. Or even once a month.
“Got business here? Or is this an unfortunate stop over?” Mack hoped he sounded more casual than he felt. One night with this man seemed like a very good idea right now. His jeans were starting to get tight in all the wrong places. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d needed so badly. Lust could be like the overwhelming urge to shift. It was all-consuming.
Turning into a bear right now would be a bad move. If he didn’t manage to take this guy home, he might take off into the hills to terrorize some wildlife and blow off some steam, or he could stay home and watch porn. Neither seemed like a good substitute.
“Got a few days here. I’m Jude.” He put out his hand.
It would be rude not to shake. Jude’s grip was firm, and Mack swore that something sparked between them. His palm tingled. “Mack, I run Mackenzie Auto Repairs.”
It was then he realized Jude hadn’t expanded on why he was here. No one came to Mercy for fun. “I’d offer to show you around town, but that would only take twenty minutes.”
“I’m staying here but checking out the ghost town. Know any tour guides?”
Mack’s eyebrows lifted before he could school his features. “Why would you go out there?”
“It’s a hobby of mine. I like to visit ghost towns.” As if realizing that Mack’s interest had dropped, Jude flashed that smile again. “Everyone has some weird interest.”
For a moment Mack wondered if Jude knew what his was. He shook off the feeling. No one knew he was a shifter or came from a long line of shifters that could trace their lineage back hundreds of years—his mother was big on genealogy while his father didn’t give a rat’s ass as history didn’t pay the bills. Mack agreed with his father.
“Not me. Camping is a pretty ordinary interest.”
He went alone and ran around as a bear for a few days. Totally ordinary. And the reason why he didn’t get too involved or too attached. Jude was attractive and passing through, and right now that was all that mattered.
Amy Rae Durreson is a quiet Brit with a degree in early English literature, which she blames for her somewhat medieval approach to spelling, and at various times has been fluent in Latin, Old English, Ancient Greek, and Old Icelandic, though these days she mostly uses this knowledge to bore her students. Amy started her first novel a quarter of a century ago and has been scribbling away ever since. Despite these long years of experience, she has yet to master the arcane art of the semicolon. She was a winner in the 2017 Rainbow Awards.
Morgan Brice
Morgan Brice is the romance pen name of bestselling author Gail Z. Martin. Morgan writes urban fantasy male/male paranormal romance, with plenty of action, adventure and supernatural thrills to go with the happily ever after. Gail writes epic fantasy and urban fantasy, and together with co-author hubby Larry N. Martin, steampunk and comedic horror, all of which have less romance, more explosions. Characters from her Gail books make frequent appearances in secondary roles in her Morgan books, and vice versa.
On the rare occasions Morgan isn’t writing, she’s either reading, cooking, or spoiling two very pampered dogs.
Series include Witchbane, Badlands, Treasure Trail, Kings of the Mountain and Fox Hollow. Watch for more in these series, plus new series coming soon!
EJ Russell
Multi-Rainbow Award winner E.J. Russell—grace, mother of three, recovering actor—holds a BA and an MFA in theater, so naturally she’s spent the last three decades as a financial manager, database designer, and business intelligence consultant (as one does). She’s recently abandoned data wrangling, however, and spends her days wrestling words.
E.J. is married to Curmudgeonly Husband, a man who cares even less about sports than she does. Luckily, CH loves to cook, or all three of their children (Lovely Daughter and Darling Sons A and B) would have survived on nothing but Cheerios, beef jerky, and satsuma mandarins (the extent of E.J.’s culinary skill set).
E.J. lives in rural Oregon, enjoys visits from her wonderful adult children, and indulges in good books, red wine, and the occasional hyperbole.
Jordan L Hawk
Jordan L. Hawk is a trans author from North Carolina. Childhood tales of mountain ghosts and mysterious creatures gave him a life-long love of things that go bump in the night. When he isn’t writing, he brews his own beer and tries to keep the cats from destroying the house. His best-selling Whyborne & Griffin series (beginning with Widdershins) can be found in print, ebook, and audiobook.
If you want to contact Jordan, just click the handy-dandy icons up there in the menu bar, or send an email.
Urban Fantasy where the hero always gets his man
TJ Nichols is an avid runner and martial arts enthusiast who first started writing as a child. Many years later while working as a civil designer, TJ decided to pick up a pen and start writing again. Having grown up reading thrillers and fantasy novels, it’s no surprise that mixing danger and magic comes so easily. Writing urban fantasy allows TJ to bring magic to the everyday. TJ is the author of the Studies in Demonology series and the Mytho urban fantasy series.
With one cat acting as a supervisor, TJ has gone from designing roads to building worlds and wouldn’t have it any other way. After traveling all over the world TJ now lives in Perth, Western Australia.
Amy Rae Durreson
B&N / SMASHWORDS / KOBO
Morgan Brice
EJ Russell
Jordan L Hawk
EMAIL: jordanlhawk@gmail.com
TJ Nichols
Spindrift by Amy Rae Durreson
Huntsman by Morgan Brice
Nudging Fate by EJ Russell
Unhallowed by Jordan L Hawk
The Witch's Familiar by TJ Nichols
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