🎧👻🎃Saturday's Series Spotlight🎃👻🎧: Bedknobs and Broomsticks by Josh Lanyon

Mainly by Moonlight #1

Summary:
A gay high-society wedding. A stolen book of spells. A love-threatening lie.  Can a witch avoid a murder rap without revealing the supernatural truth?

Cosmo Saville guiltily hides a paranormal secret from his soon-to-be husband. And if he can’t undo a powerful love spell, uncertainty threatens his nuptial magic. But when he’s arrested for allegedly killing a longtime rival, he could spend his honeymoon behind bars…

Police Commissioner John Joseph Galbraith never believed in love until Cosmo came along. Falling head over heels for the elegant antiques dealer is an enchantment he never wants to break. So when all fingers point to Cosmo’s guilt, John races to prove his fiancé’s innocence before they take their vows.

As Cosmo searches for the real killer among the arcane aristocracy, John warns him to leave it to the police. But with an unseen enemy threatening to expose Cosmo’s true nature, the couple’s blissful future could shatter like a broken charm.

Can Cosmo find the lost grimoire, clear his name and keep John’s love alive, or will black magic “rune” their wedding bells?

Mainly by Moonlight is the first book in the sexy Bedknobs and Broomsticks romantic gay mystery series. If you like spell-binding suspense, steamy star-crossed fun, and a dash of paranormal, then you’ll love Josh Lanyon’s charming tale.

I Buried a Witch #2

Summary:
Something old, something new, something borrowed…something blacker than the darkest night.

Cosmo Saville adores his new husband but his little white lies—and some very black magic—are about to bring their fairytale romance to an end. Someone is killing San Francisco's spellcasters—and the only person Cosmo can turn to—the man who so recently swore to love and cherish him—isn't taking his phone calls..

The only magic Police Commissioner John Joseph Galbraith believes in is true love. Discovering he’s married to a witch—a witch with something alarmingly like magical powers—is nearly as bad as discovering the man he loved tricked and deceived him. John shoulders the pain of betrayal and packs his bags. But when he learns Cosmo is in the crosshairs of a mysterious and murderous plot, he knows he must do everything in in his mortal power to protect him.

Till Death do them Part. With their relationship on the rocks, Cosmo and Commissioner Galbraith join forces to uncover the shadowy figure behind the deadly conspiracy…

Can the star-crossed couple bring down a killer before the dark threat extinguishes love’s flame?

I Buried a Witch is the second book in the smart and sexy Bedknobs and Broomsticks romantic gay mystery trilogy. If you like endearing characters, spell-binding conflict, and spooky, good fun, then you’ll love Josh Lanyon’s tale of a modern white knight and his slightly wicked witch.

Bell, Book, and Scandal #3

Summary:

Black Magic. Blackmail. Little Black Books. Must a witch break his vows to save his marriage?

Cosmo Saville loves that his husband has finally accepted his witchy ways. And in return, his promise to stay out of police business guarantees them a happily ever after. At least, until he discovers he might be responsible for a dangerous game of blackmail…

Police Commissioner John Joseph Galbraith feels relieved that his marriage is back on track. Especially since he has his hands full with a high-profile suicide and rumors of a city-wide extortion ring. But when he stumbles across Cosmo breaking his vow by playing cop, John agonizes over old wounds.

With the commissioner’s badge and family in jeopardy, Cosmo has no choice but to put his life on the line…

Can the witch expose a dark conspiracy, save John’s career, and return to love’s delicious spell?

Bell, Book and Scandal is the third book in the Bedknobs and Broomsticks romantic gay mystery trilogy. If you like quirky characters, snappy spells, and madcap suspense, then you’ll love Josh Lanyon’s supernatural story.

Mainly by Moonlight #1

Original Audiobook Review October 2020:

I couldn't think of a better time then October, when all things magical and spooky are not only expected but encouraged, to give one of my Best Reads of 2019 a listen.  I wasn't disappointed, Kale Williams does a superb job of bringing Cosmo and John's magical journey to life.  I won't say more to the plot because I still don't want to give anything away but even remembering what happens didn't take away any of the edge-of-my-seat need-to-know emotions in me.  Still brilliant and Mainly by Moonlight will definitely be a re-read/re-listener for years to come.

Original ebook Review August 2019:
Another absolutely brilliant bit of storytelling from Josh Lanyon, and yes, it really is storytelling not just writing.  I'll start off by saying that this is a series that continues on, not just with the same people but the story as well so don't expect everything to be answered, everything to be revealed, everything to have closure.  I am on pins and needles waiting for book two.

Now, let's talk Mainly by Moonlight.  I loved how it made me nostalgic for the endearing comedy of Bewitched, the magical drama of Charmed, and the spell-driven romance of I Married a Witch.  Magic, romance, murder, spells, mystery, these are all there. We quickly learn that John is under a love spell and as much as Cosmo wants to do the right thing and break off the engagement when he learns it, he doesn't but continually searches for signs that the love John feels for him is real once he demands the spell be removed.  Throw in Cosmo being a likely candidate for murder suspect and you have plenty of room for romance, hi-jinks, and drama.  Sure there are times I want to kick both characters in the backside and whack them upside the head to make them see sense but there is just as many times I want to wrap them up and say its going to be okay.  It's this contradicting hit-and-hug scale that kept me going, that fueled the need-to-know-now speed with which I read Moonlight and had me equally kicking myself for not savoring the story once I reached the final page.  That push and pull feeling of needing to know versus savoring is how I know this is a great read for the win-win column.

I have theories percolating for book two(and beyond perhaps) but I won't divulge them as I don't want to spoil anything from Moonlight.   It's these theories that make a few things in John and Cosmo's(mostly John) behaviors and actions acceptable.  Does that mean if my theories don't pan out I'll rethink how much I loved this book?  Not at all because I know the author will further the story in an equally entertaining way.

Now for those who aren't fans of insta-love and question the believe-abilty behind how fast the boys get everything ready in just two weeks time, even throwing out the magic bit that John knows nothing about, I still found it reasonable how he could believe it gets done in just 14 days.  Both families seem to be in-the-know when it comes to getting things pushed through fast so magic or not, 2 weeks to set it all up is definitely acceptable.  I'll admit, insta-love isn't always well written in the fiction world but when its as well done as Josh Lanyon has with Cosmo and John, it's not only acceptable(even with the magical element) its entertaining and fun.

Josh Lanyon definitely has another winner here in Mainly by Moonlight but as I said above not everything is revealed, not what I would label a full-fledged cliffhanger ending but there are questions yet to be answered.  I mention this because not everyone is a cliffie-lover so if you don't like the waiting-for-answers bit, you might want to put this one on hold but if you love well written world-building magical romantic mysteries than you'll definitely want to put her new Bedknobs and Broomsticks series at the top of your TBR list, its not to be missed.

I Buried a Witch #2

Audiobook Review April 2021:

When I saw Josh Lanyon released book 3, I thought what better time to listen to book 2 prior to jumping in.  Just as brilliant as I remembered.  Again Kale Williams brings life to Cosmo and John as he did in Mainly by Moonlight and I can't think of another narrator who could further their journey better.  I'm not going to touch on any real points of the story for those who have yet to begin this series, the mystery is just so expertly crafted I wouldn't want to spoil that for anyone.  I still wanted to smack John with a cast iron skillet at times, though as I said in the original review, as much as was frustrated and borderline angry with him in those moments I also could see his side of the situation seeing as his view of the world was turned on edge with the whole "magic is real" discovery.  As for Cosmo, well again my first instinct is to wrap him in Mama Bear hugs for support but he also has a habit of "speak first think second" and I find myself wanting to shake him, saying "shut up, take a breath, then speak".  These blended warring moments of arguing and loving is why I love Josh Lanyon's storytelling so much. Despite where their journey is at the moment, I still love them together and I can't wait to see where Bell, Book, and Scandal takes them.

Original Review January 2020 Book of the Month:
I Buried a Witch picks up practically right where book 1(Mainly by Moonlight) ended so if you're looking for a beginning and an ending with all the resolutions tied up in nice pretty bow you're in the wrong place.  If you love romance mixed with mystery and magic then you have found a series not to be missed.

I can certainly understand how some might not like John, he's definitely got plenty of qualities that aren't all smiles but he just found out that his new husband is a witch and that many aspects of the paranormal he's only found in books and movies are quite real, that's going to throw anyone for a loop.  Don't get me wrong, I wanted to smack him upside the head with a cast iron skillet more times than I wanted to cuddle him but I get where his reality has been forever changed so it was easy for me to cut him some slack.

As for Cosmo, I still want to smother him in Mama Bear Hugs but I also wish I could get him to take a breath or two before he blurts out stuff.  There are times I want Cosmo to be more assertive but there are also times when I'm screaming "SHUT UP!!"   They are both complex characters that continue to find their place in the world, professionally, personally, and magically.  It's no wonder they're as screwed up as they are.

The mystery just keeps unfolding and getting better and better.  I  can't help but think the Witch Killer isn't completely solved yet or only part of a bigger picture or perhaps it is all said and done and the next one is a whole new who done it(after all magical mysteries play on a whole different level in my mind), either scenario has me on pins and needles waiting to see where Josh Lanyon takes this in book 3: Bell, Book, and Scandal. 

In my review of book 1 I wrote "I loved how it made me nostalgic for the endearing comedy of Bewitched, the magical drama of Charmed, and the spell-driven romance of I Married a Witch. Magic, romance, murder, spells, mystery, these are all there.", well there may not be quite as much humor but honestly I don't think I can sum up I Buried a Witch any better.

Bell, Book, and Scandal #3

Audiobook Review October 2021:

Kale Williams has once again made Josh Lanyon's Bedknobs and Broomsticks universe come alive.  I really won't add anything to my review in regard to the plot and series itself as I don't want to give anything away for any newcomers.  What I will say is the combo of Kale Williams' narration and Josh Lanyon's creative wordage, the storytelling in this magic-infested world of mystery, romance, and drama is incredibly entertaining and it's easy to get so sucked in, before you know it the last page has been read leaving a sense of "oh no!" but it's so fun getting to that "Oh no!"😉😉.

Original Review April 2021:

HOLY HANNAH BATMAN!!! Bell, Book, and Scandal is even better than imagined.  And trust me, I imagined quite a bit.  Josh Lanyon is one of my favorite authors, she is my go-to mystery author in the LGBT genre combined with how much I loved the first two books in the Bedknobs and Broomsticks series I probably went in with pretty high expectations.  High expectations when it comes to any kind or level of art is not always a good thing, so few times does the end result match our hopes.  Well, Bell was not one of those times.  

Nope.  

It surpassed my expectations.

Because this is an ongoing series I don't want to give anything away, either for this book specifically or even too much "hinting" of past entries so that I don't spoil anything for newcomers to Bedknobs.  I will say this, John has really tested my limits of wanting to smack him upside the head because of his reluctance to look outside the realms of his preconceived box.  Don't get me wrong, Cosmo tries my patience too with his hole "speak, speak again, then speak some more, and finally think" habit of tackling obstacles in his life.

I think that's one of the elements I love best about this series, both characters have serious flaws in how they express themselves.  Between their pissing each other off, jumping to conclusions, and then realizing just what the other person was actually thinking, John and Cosmo really are a perfect fit.  The blending of similar and different qualities really revs their chemistry up to such believable levels that if the author were ever to kill one of them off, the remaining one left behind would never find another that fills in all the gaps.  We all know there will never be any major character death here but I guess it's just my way of saying how perfect they compliment and complete each other.

Now, the mystery.

Okay, you know you aren't getting any tidbits in that area from me so I'll just say this: I could see it unfold in front of me as if I was a fly on the wall, right smack dab in the middle of the room witnessing it all.  That's how real Josh Lanyon makes this paranormal, supernatural, magical world, you know it's fiction but it's 150% believable all at the same time.

As for the supporting cast of characters?  I don't want to give anything away by bringing them up individually but I will say that not a single character in this series is page filler.  Each and everyone of them plays a part in the end result, or at the very least getting the reader so involved in the story that pretty soon you forget it's a story and it feels like you are reliving a memory spent with old friends.

Magic, likeable(and some not-so likeable) characters that you can relate to, mystery that keeps you on the edge of your seat, romance, humor, drama, action, but most importantly Bell, Book, and Scandal(the whole series really) has so much heart, so many feels, you don't want to say goodbye.  And it doesn't look like we'll have to yet, the author reveals there will be another storyline arc in the future, I guess she wasn't ready to say goodbye either or more accurately, Cosmo and John weren't ready to leave us out of their journey.

I just want to end with a couple of points:

1. If you couldn't tell from my review, Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a continuing story so you have to read from the beginning, you can't jump in with Bell, Book, and Scandal.

2. Something I've said in both the other two book reviews and it rings even truer now than book one, "I loved how it made me nostalgic for the endearing comedy of Bewitched, the magical drama of Charmed, and the spell-driven romance of I Married a Witch."

Definitely a win-win all around.

RATING:

Mainly by Moonlight #1

Prologue

Something dark was following him.

Preoccupied with his thoughts, he didn’t notice at first.

When he did, he was not unduly concerned. It was an old part of town, a dark part of town—and Valencia Street ran through one of the darkest of the dark parts. Not in the sense of street lamps—or beings—missing a few light bulbs, though yes, come to think of it, it was a Stygian sort of night in the Mission District. The witch’s moon peeping slyly through the purple-edged girders of clouds shed little light on the closed shop fronts and wide empty streets. Deep shadows crawled from the mouths of alleyways, loitered by doorways.

A good night to get yourself mugged. Or magicked.

Neither thought worried him overmuch. He was running late. As usual. His main concern was that Seamus might grow impatient and leave—or worse, take offense and change his mind entirely.

In fact, it was hard to believe Seamus had invited him to this private viewing in the first place. They were not friends. Not even friendly.

Not after the incident of Great-great-great-uncle Arnold and the Louis XVI rococo hanging mirror.

Maybe offering Cosmo first chance at the grimoire was Seamus’s attempt to make amends. Though that was unlikely. There was no more arrogant son of a warlock than Seamus Reitherman. It was doubtful he believed he had anything to make amends for.

No, this gesture, if sincere, would be nothing more than a calculated effort to get the best price possible.

Which he would. If this was the real thing, Cosmo had no intention of quibbling over money. Let alone magic.

In three long strides he reached the darkened storefront of the Creaky Attic. His heart sank.

CLOSED read the sign in the front door. It was gently swinging, as though it had only been turned over a few moments ago.

Oh, but then the shop would be closed. It was well past midnight. Cosmo reached for the door handle.

Wrong again. It was locked.

He swore softly, studying the front of the store for movement within the indistinct interior. With the exception of the swaying sign, nothing moved. Even the playful night breeze stilled. Cosmo took a step back, absently considering the flowery white and gold script that flowed across the top of the unlit bay window: Antiques and the Arcane.

Though the lights were off, he could see straight down the crowded, shadowy center aisle to a sales desk—and the black outline of a doorway beyond. Pale lamplight glowed from within Seamus’s office.

Cosmo raised his hands before the front door. He murmured, “Ticktock, turn the lock.”

Simple magic. The kind of thing they learned as children. He didn’t expect it to work, but like the mortals say, it’s the little things. The locks turned—there didn’t appear to be any wards or enchantments protecting the entrance at all—and the door swung silently open as though pushed by an unseen hand.

Cosmo stepped inside. “Hello? Seamus?”

The shop smelled of old books and furniture polish and incense.

Barring the incense, it smelled like his own shop, though there was a sharp, unpleasant undernote he didn’t recognize. But then disagreeable smells were part of the antiques dealer job description. More often than not, the past stank.

“Sorry I’m late,” Cosmo called into the resounding silence. “Hello?”

No one answered. Nothing moved.

Yet the shop did not feel empty.

Framed in the office doorway, the lamp on Seamus’s desk shined with cheery disregard, a sharp black silhouette against the red walls. Cosmo walked soundlessly down the aisle, passing a Secor wooden barrel chest worth a couple grand, a late 19th century Broadwood upright piano in an ebonized and satinwood decorated case. The ivory keys rippled a ghostly little tune as he passed. Fauré’s “Clair de Lune.”

On the other side of the aisle he could make out Goddess boxes, smudging kits, and figure candles in the gloom. Seamus sold both the cheesy and the costly with equal aplomb.

“Seamus?” This time Cosmo did not call out. Something in the listening silence made him uneasy.

He remembered the presence he had felt on the street outside. But no, whatever that had been, it was still behind him. Unable to cross the shop’s threshold? Perhaps he had been wrong about the lack of wards and enchantments on the front door.

He reached the old-fashioned wooden circulation desk, went behind it, and entered the office. He froze on the threshold.

Seamus was on the floor, lying prone in twin pools of lamplight and blood.

Cosmo stared and stared and yet couldn’t seem to make sense of it.

Every detail was imprinted on his mind—the strands of gray in Seamus’s long ponytail, the silver glint of the ring on his hand, his staring bloodshot eyes—and yet he couldn’t seem to take in the whole picture. He felt strange. Cold and far, far away. Not astral projection far, far away. More Am I about to faint? far away.

Seamus was…dead?

Dead?

Not just deceased. Violently dead.

He could not see a wound, but all that blood had to be coming from somewhere. Some opening not intended by Goddess or nature. He swallowed his rising sickness.

An ebony-handled athame—the double-edge blade black with gore—lay a few inches from Seamus’s outstretched hand.

But this was not suicide.

Murder?

Who? Why?

Cosmo’s stricken gaze lit on what appeared to be yellow chalk markings above Seamus’s head. He moved closer for a better look, and his scalp prickled in horror.

The first strokes of a sacred symbol. Had someone begun to draw a pentagram?

No. This was truly unthinkable. Seamus had been slain by someone within the Craft. Cosmo knelt to reach for the dagger but remembered in time—all those hours spent watching television finally going to good use—and drew back.

He must touch nothing. He must leave. Now.

But those markings. He should make some record. He should… He felt for his phone.

A rustling sound overhead made him look up.

The image sliding across the low ceiling was straight out of his childhood, out of a lot of people’s childhoods: the sharp black silhouette of a witch on a broomstick. His relationship with that symbol was vastly different from most people his age—most people of any age. Even so, ridiculously, the sight of that profile—crooked hat, crooked nose, crooked chin—paralyzed him for a second or two.

“SFPD. Don’t move!” a voice bellowed from the doorway behind him—and Cosmo jumped.

“Keep your hands where I can see ’em. Do. Not. Move. A. Muscle.”

After his initial start, Cosmo did not move a muscle. He did not dare so much as breathe. Even with everything that had happened in the last four minutes, he could not believe he had not sensed the cop’s approach. Fool. Fool. Fool. He really was out of Practice.

“Facedown on the floor and lock your hands behind your head.”

Cosmo said urgently to the blinding white light, “I haven’t touched him. I found him like this—”

“Get on the floor. Facedown. Now.”

There were two of them. Two flashlight beams hitting him square in the eyes, and although the room was not in total darkness, it was disorienting. With time and cover there were evasive actions he could have taken, but he had neither.

The shock of finding Seamus dead had chased everything else from his mind. Now he remembered. The grimoire. Where was it? Was it in the shop? Had Seamus’s assailant taken it?

“Last chance. Get on the fucking floor, or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

They were as frightened as he was.

He could not be arrested. There had to be some way—

Getting shot was not a viable alternative.

Though possibly preferable to having to explain…this.

Cosmo placed his hands on the floor, surreptitiously wiping the heel of his hand across the yellow chalk. He lowered himself, trying to avoid the spreading cobweb of Seamus’s blood weaving across the channels of woodgrain.

He blinked into the glare of the flashlights, forcing his soft voice to an even quieter and more soothing tone, seeking to reach them, to convince them. “This is a mistake. I’m not who you’re looking for. I just got here—”

“Hey,” the voice behind the second flashlight beam interrupted. “Isn’t that…”

“Isn’t that what?” demanded the first cop.

No, no, no. He tried again to reach them, keeping his voice so soft, so soothing… “This is a mistake. I’m not—”

The second cop said in a wondering tone, “Holy shit. I think I know him.”

“Well, who the hell is he, then?”

Goddess, no. Please no. He gulped. “Just listen, will you? This is not what it appears—”

“Holy shit,” the second cop repeated. Then in that same slow, incredulous voice, “Isn’t he the guy Commissioner Galbraith is supposed to be marrying this weekend?”

I Buried a Witch #2

Chapter One
SCENE I. A CAVERN. IN THE MIDDLE, A BOILING CAULDRON.

Thunder. Enter the three Witches

First Witch

Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.

Second Wit—

Yeah, totally kidding about that. There was no second witch. It was one witch, me, and John, my husband, SFPD’s new Police Commissioner. Oh, and the scene was the breakfast table at our house on Greenwich Street in San Francisco. I was fixing French toast, which, for the record, is not French, and the coffee was just about ready.

“… new report, you need to make just over $343,000 in order to afford a median-priced home in San Francisco,” the bespectacled and solemn news reporter on the TV across the kitchen informed us. “The report was compiled by…”

John and I had arrived home the night before from Scotland, where we had been on our honeymoon for the past two weeks. As a side note, I am very much in favor of honeymoons. I mean, yes, they’re artificial in that getting to spend two weeks doing whatever pleasurable thing you feel like doing is not real life. And, yeah, it’s also true that a luxury vacation in a romantic foreign country is probably not the best way to get to know someone you’ve only known a short time—although it certainly works that way in Hallmark movies. But it is a good way to figure out if you want to spend more time together, and needless to say, I had figured out I wanted to spend as much time as possible with John. Ideally, the rest of my life.

John poured coffee into two mugs. “You’re still okay with hosting this cocktail party on Wednesday?”

“Of course.” His expression was doubtful. “What?” I asked.

He nodded at the wall of cardboard boxes filling half the kitchen.  It was pretty much the same situation in every room of the house. Combining our separate households meant John and I had bestowed a lot of worldly goods on each other. And then we’d bought a few new pieces too–like the Victorian black and bronze bed in the master bedroom.

“I’ve got a lot of catching up to do this week. I’m not going to be able to be much help. Presumably it’s going to be the same for you.”

“I can manage. Don’t worry. I’ll have Bridget to help.”

John looked unconvinced, but he poured a generous helping of cream and sugar into my coffee, brought it to me with a kiss.

“I’m going to miss you today,” he murmured.

“Same here.” I kissed him back.

That led to another longer kiss, and before I knew it, I was sitting on the quartz counter with my jeans unzipped, the French toast was burning, and the doorbell was ringing.

“Hell,” John exclaimed, hastily tucking his shirt in and zipping up his trousers. “That’s Aloha.”

“Yes, it is,” I sighed. “In more ways than one.”

Aloha Newman was John’s driver. Though she worked for SFPD, she was not actually a police officer and did not carry a gun. That was fine by me. I’d had more than enough of guns on our wedding day.

What Aloha did possess was a ruthless sense of punctuality.

“I’ll see you around six.” John was already heading for the arched doorway leading into dining room.

“We’re having dinner at your mother’s,” I called after him.

He muttered something uncomplimentary to the universe, returned, “Right. See you at five-thirty.” The front door slammed behind him.

I sighed, glanced at the stove and twitched my nose. The dial turned to off, the flame beneath the pan guttered and died. “Down the sink, before you stink,” I muttered.

Two burned slices of egg-coated bread rose from the pan, floated past my face, and dropped down the sink drain.

Across the room, another reporter, also bespectacled and solemn but female, was reciting, “Though friends of the victim say Ms. Starshine was a practicing Wiccan, investigators speculate these “satanic” elements might be intended to divert suspicion from the killer or killers.”

“What the what?” I hopped off the counter and went to turn up the sound on the television—the remote was still MIA—which promptly zapped me. “Ouch!”

The volume blasted up then died away again.

By the time I managed to dial in the sound, the cameras had returned to the studio and the news anchors (recognizable for the lack of spectacles or solemnity) were exchanging cheery banter about the weather forecast. Sunny with a chance of homicide?

I made a mental note to ask John about the Starshine case, turned off the TV and sprinted upstairs to get changed for work.

“How was Scotland?” Andi asked when I stopped by her apartment in Alamo Square to pick up Pyewacket.

Andi—Andromeda Merriweather—has been my best friend since I can remember. Her mother and my mother were chums back in the day and apparently it was a dream come true to be able to share morning sickness and swollen feet with their nearest and dearest. I’m not entirely kidding about the nearest and dearest. By the time I came along, my parents were experiencing a certain lack of enthusiasm, and Andi’s father had crossed over, so Maman and Belinda did rely heavily on each other. Girl Power being a magic that transcends realms.

Anyway, Andi is three months older than me. She’s tall and slim with short, inevitably spiky red hair, freckles, and hazel eyes. She owns and operates the Mad Batter bakery, which has The Best cupcakes in all of San Francisco. And I don’t say that merely because I concoct the recipes for her exclusive line of cocktail cupcakes.

“Bonnie,” I answered, cuddling Pye. Pyewacket is my three-hundred-year-old Russian Familiar. I mean, I haven’t had him for three hundred years–I only turned twenty-nine in May. Pye inhabits the body of a cat. A Russian Blue cat.

I kissed Pye’s nose, which he bore stoically. “Was he any trouble?” I asked Andi.

She shook her head, smiling as she watched us. “He’s good company for Minerva.” Minerva is Andi’s Familiar, a Dwarf Hotot rabbit with a disposition as benign as the carrots she loves to snack on.

“Did you have fun?” I asked Pye.

His meow was loud and scented with liver-flavored Friskies Paté.

“I bet,” I said.

“So everything is…good?” Andi asked–maybe a little tentatively.

“Everything is great.” I guess I was beaming because Andi looked relieved.

“You look happy.”

“I am. I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy before.” To be honest, it was a little unsettling. Obviously, the honeymoon phase couldn’t last forever, and I wasn’t sure how much of John’s and my contentment with each other was the result of a couple of weeks of nothing to do but sight-see and make love.

“I’m glad.”

I didn’t doubt it. If anyone had a vested interest in my relationship with John working out, it was Andi, who was, when you thought about it, inadvertently responsible for the whole thing. “How’s it going with Trace?” I asked.

“Great.”

I hadn’t expected that. Andi’s…well, picky.

“Really? That’s wonderful.” At least I hoped so.

“Is it? I mean, I really, really do like him.” She sounded troubled.

“But that’s good, right?”

“No. Not right. I’m not like you. I can’t—he’s mortal. Being together would mean, well, I’m not even sure what it would mean. A lifetime of living a lie? Or breaking my oath and telling him the truth?”

I considered. “As far as oaths go, don’t you think the not-telling-any-mortals-anything-ever rule is really more of a guideline?”

“No. I don’t.”

I did not want it to end. It was one of the sweetest, saddest (in a lighthearted way, not big, ugly tears-and-snot way), most romantic-without-feeling-faux original tales I’ve read.

“Because some mortals do know.” I was thinking of Ralph Grindelwood. Not that Ralph was a great example given that I now believed he was the sworn enemy of the Craft.

“That can’t be helped. It doesn’t change anything. We cannot contribute to their knowledge.”

In our silence lies our safety.

The final—and some would say the most important—of the Ten Precepts.

Still I persisted, “I understand, but times are changing. Mortals are more accepting now. Of a lot of things.”

She shook her head. “Not really. Fashions change. That’s about it. And even fashion cycles around again.”

Kind of a bleak outlook from a girl who made cupcakes for a living, but Andi’s feelings mirrored those of a lot of our friends—and both of our families.

“Yeah, but even two steps forward and one step back means progress. Incremental maybe, but progress.”

She shook her head. “You’re an idealist, Cos.”

I let it go and changed the subject. “Well, on the topic of fashion, I brought you something frae Bonnie Scotland.” I shifted Pye onto my shoulder, and handed over a small box.

“You didn’t have to.”

“I know.”

Andi unwrapped the box, lifted the lid, and her face changed. “Oh, Cos.” She picked up the necklace inside. A tiny cinnabar carved sacred heart crowned with a flame of raw garnet stone dangled from a vintage rosary made of bogwood.

“It’s lovely.”

“I found it in an antiques shop in Dumbarton.  It’s Wiccan, I think.”

“I love it. Thank you.”

“And I’ve been thinking of a Drambuie-based cocktail that might work for cupcakes.”

Her eyes lit. “Perfect timing. We need to shake up our menu for autumn.”

“Autumn? It’s only July.”

“Exactly. Time to start planning.”

We chatted another minute or two and made plans to meet for lunch on Wednesday. I coaxed Pyewacket into his carrier, and headed for the door.

As I was leaving, I asked, “Have you heard anything about Rex?”

Rex was a friend of ours who had been injured in a hit and run accident. When John and I had left for Scotland they had still been in a coma.

Andi shook her head. “Sorry. Nothing. But then I’m not sure I’d hear anything. They’re really more your friend than mine.”

“What about Oliver?”

“Oliver?”

“Oliver Sandhurst.”

Andi only looked more confused. “What about him?”

“I thought I told you this. He disappeared after I tried to—after my visit to the Creaky Attic.”

“Oh. Right. That feels like a million years ago. I haven’t heard anything.” She looked apologetic. Not that Oliver was her responsibility. Technically, he wasn’t my responsibility either.

But I did fear for him. And I did feel responsible.

Confused yet?

Let’s recap. A month ago, I met John Joseph Galbraith, San Francisco’s new police commissioner and my husband-to-be, at Bonhams’ warehouse where we were both interested in bidding on a black and bronze Victorian antique four-poster with crystal bed knobs. I was attracted to John from the minute I laid eyes on him. I don’t know why exactly, because he wasn’t really my type. Not that I think of myself as having a type, but if I did, it wouldn’t be a big, brusque Kennedyesque guy with a military background and political ambitions.

Except, somehow, when I gazed into his amber—yes, brown-gold—eyes, something funny happened to me. I’m not saying it was love at first sight, but I did feel some instant, odd connection. Which is why it sort of smarted that John didn’t feel the same. In fact, he was kind of…well, let’s say pointedly not interested.

Which, come to think of it, maybe is a sign of interest?

Or maybe I’d just like to believe that John caustically brushing me off was the equivalent of Gideon Terwilliker pushing Andi into the swimming pool back when we were in the third grade.

Anyway, Andi did not appreciate that slight to my ego and she, er…cast a spell on John so that the next time he saw me, he, well, fell in love.

Or thought he did.

Which is sometimes the same thing.

And sometimes not.

That explains John’s part of all this. It doesn’t explain why I went ahead and married a man I’d only known two weeks. But you know, you either believe in love at first sight or you don’t. And if you don’t, you’re quite right not to because it will never happen to you.

I don’t say that to be mean. It’s a fact. If you can’t conceive of a thing, how will you recognize it when it happens? Unless we’re talking about an earthquake. Anyway, it’s right there in the Bible. Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.

It does happen to some of us. It happened to me.

Granted, part of what—who—I fell so head-over-heels for was the John under the influence of the love spell. The John not under a love spell was a different bloke. Not nearly as romantic—or malleable. Yet it didn’t seem to matter to my heart.

Regardless of the bait, once a fish is hooked, it’s hooked.

I forgot to mention the part where, a couple of days before our wedding, I was suspected of murdering Seamus Reitherman, a fellow witch in the Abracadantès tradition. I was—patently, since I’d just returned from my honeymoon—exonerated, but unfortunately the police had arrested the wrong person.

Or at least, that was my theory before I went to Scotland for two weeks.

After two weeks of Scottish history, Scottish weather, Scottish booze, and an encounter with a Scottish ghost, I was not quite as sure. Scottish women are that rare mix of ruthless pragmatism and blazing idealism. So, yeah, it was possible that Ciara Reitherman had killed her husband. She had tried to kill me.

Then again, Ciara’s attempts to kill me had almost certainly been driven by her belief that I’d killed Seamus.

Or maybe not.

Occam’s razor, as John had pointed out when I’d tried to make a case for Ciara being wrongly arrested. The simplest explanation is the most likely. At least when it comes to police work—according to the police commissioner in the family. It was far more likely Ciara had killed her unfaithful (and generally exasperating) husband than that some shadowy global conspiracy tried to frame me for murder.

Not that I had told John about the shadowy global conspiracy that might or might not really exist.

Just one of the things I hadn’t told John about.

* * * * *

“Welcome home. We missed you.” Blanche greeted me, when I finally arrived at Blue Moon Antiques, cat carrier and peevish occupant, in tow.

“Thank you. It’s good to be home.” I gazed with satisfaction around the spacious and airy downstairs showroom. Light through the protectively tinted windows glanced off gilt curlicues, and silvered glass, warmed the velvets and brocades of aged upholstery, glinted off ivory scrimshaw and ebony trinket boxes.

Blanche asked, “How’s married life?”

“I highly recommend it.”

Blanche Baker has been working for me since I opened Blue Moon Antiques four years ago.

The customers love her. I love her. In fact, everyone loves Blanche. She’s about fifty. Tall and voluptuous with black, curly hair–currently streaked with indigo–one blue eye, one green eye behind a seemingly infinite wardrobe of rhinestone glasses (I’m partial to the ones with butterfly-shaped frames). Her makeup is on the sexy witch side, but she’s not a witch. She’s Wicca. Like most mortals, she’s not aware there’s a difference.

Blanche said cheerfully, “No thank you. I’ve been inoculated against that disease. Twice.”

“So you’re a carrier?”

“Ha.” She took the cat crate from me, set it on the counter, and lifted Pyewacket out. “Oh, you beautiful baby, what has he done to you?”

Pyewacket proceeded to detail his list of grievances into her sympathetic ear.

“Don’t listen to him,” I said. “He’s been living it up on catnip and dried shrimp at Andi’s.” I glanced around the still empty shop. “Where’s Ambrose?”

Blanche sighed. “Another problem with his grandma.”

“Another what problem?”

“I don’t know. He’s being very closed-mouth about it.”

“Uh oh. How long has this been going on?”

“Not long. The Tuesday after you left, he had to leave suddenly, but he was back the next day and he’s been here every day since. Until this morning. There’s a message on the machine. The poor kid is clearly stressed out of his mind.”

“Okay. I’ll deal with it.”

I had hired Ambrose right before the wedding. He’d been recommended by the previously mentioned Ralph Grindlewood. Ralph was a good customer and, once I’d have said, a friend. What exactly Ralph was now, I wasn’t sure. But I had hired Ambrose and agreed to make him my apprentice, so he was most definitely my concern.

“Anything else I should know before I start going through my mail?”

Blanche, still coddling Pyewacket, shook her head. “It’s actually been very quiet since you left.”

“Well, we’ll see what I can do to change that.”

She chuckled. “I don’t doubt it.”

All the same, she looked pretty surprised when she poked her head into my office a few minutes later to whisper, “Pierre Sjoberg is here to see you.”

I put down the catalog for Alexanders Auctioneers. “Who?” The name was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.

“The defense attorney.” Blanche was still whispering. She threw a quick, uneasy glance over her shoulder as though she feared Sjoberg was lurking behind her. “I think he’s her attorney.”

“Her who?”

Blanche hissed, “Ciara. Ciara Reitherman. The woman who tried to kill you!”

Bell, Book, and Scandal #3

Chapter One

“Merde.”

I scowled and sucked on the slice across the pad of my thumb. I didn’t taste blood, the papercut wasn’t that deep, but my tongue tingled with the flavor of…

Odd.

I picked up the letter opener, slit open the envelope, and several glossy black-and-white photos spilled out and slid across my desk.

Black and white? Who took black-and-white photos these days? Who took photos these days? That’s what phones were for, right?

I reached for the nearest photograph, studied it curiously—and dropped it as though it had burned my fingertips.

A man and woman locked in naked—very naked—embrace.

I didn’t recognize the man, though the large tattooed pentacle on his back indicated maybe I should.

The woman was my sister-in-law. Jinx.

I drew in a deep breath.

Well, this was…unexpected. And unwelcome.

I bowed the envelope to check for a letter. I was anticipating something with misshapen letters cut from magazines and spelling trouble, but there was nothing. Just the photos.

Not that that wasn’t plenty right there.

I rested my fingertips on the photos, closed my eyes, concentrated… To my surprise, there it was. The scintilla of the arcane. Magic.

I opened my eyes.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Was there any possibility this wasn’t a threat? That the intent was…what? Hey, here’s something you might want to keep an eye on? I considered that theory hopefully, but I couldn’t quite convince myself that these photos had been sent with anything but ill intention.

To what end, though?

Money, right? That was the way these things usually worked. Not that I had any practical experience of blackmail.

Yes. Blackmail.

It wasn’t a complete surprise.

Or rather, yes, it was a surprise—especially given that Jinx seemed to be the target—but we weren’t the first family in San Francisco to get one of these poison parcels. John had been losing sleep—a lot of sleep—over the past month with the discovery that the city’s high society appeared to have fallen prey to a well-connected extortion ring.

John is John Galbraith. My husband—but more importantly, in this context at least, SFPD’s new police commissioner.

The plot had only come to light because one of the victims, the Rev. Canon Angela Tzeng had had the guts to go to the police and report an attempt to blackmail her. Tzeng was supposed to be consecrated October 1st as the first female bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern California, but her courageous move had been rewarded by the blackmailer releasing information about a teenaged pregnancy to the press. It was the Twenty-First Century. You’d think— But you’d be wrong. The revelation of Tzeng’s youthful mistake was damning information in the eyes of both the public and the diocese. Now Tzeng’s very future in the church was in question.

Needless to say, no other victims had come forward. Not openly. Not officially. But they were out there.

“Someone’s going to get killed,” John had said the other night. He was not a guy for kidding around, and he was not kidding then.

I considered the pile of photos before me. I couldn’t help thinking that choosing Jinx as a blackmail target was kind of a stretch.

Yes, these photos were revealing and embarrassing, but at twenty-five, Jinx was a grown woman. The fact that she was a sexually active grown woman would likely only come as a shock to John. She did not hold public office. She was not married. There was no reason I could see that she shouldn’t have sex with whoever she pleased, although I had to wonder about her good sense in choosing a guy who’d branded himself with the Sigil of Baphomet.

Jinx had been studying with the Duchess for the past few weeks, so she surely knew better. And if this guy was not a poser, if he was Craft, he ought to know better too. But this photo might be months old. When I’d first met Jinx, she’d been a little bit of an occult fangirl. Actually, she was still a little bit of an occult fangirl.

But I digress. As usual.

That the photos had come to me, made me wonder if Jinx had already been approached and had brushed it off. You have to care a lot about what other people think to make a good blackmail victim. When it came to what other people thought, Jinx had, in the mortal vernacular, zero fucks to give. In fact, there had been a time, and not so long ago, when I thought she’d have taken delight in appalling both John, who was twenty years her senior, and her mother, Nola.

And when it came to Nola, who could blame her? I felt the urge to appall Nola now and then myself. Not that I had to try. My existence was enough to keep my mother-in-law in a constant state of pall.

Which meant what?

That the real target was me? The assumption being that I would pay up to keep Jinx’s past from embarrassing her? From embarrassing me? No. From embarrassing John.

Of course.

Because John was the vulnerable one. As Police Commissioner, San Francisco’s first gay police commissioner at that, John was the one with something to lose. The news that the police commissioner’s younger sister was a devil worshipper (oh, I could already hear all the idiotic and ignorant things people would say) would certainly bother the hell out of John—and might even impact his political future. John was an ambitious man. A man with a plan.

So why not send this packet to John?

Oh, right. Because John was as honorable as he was ambitious. He would not be blackmailed. He would see Jinx burned alive—in the court of public opinion, that is—before he paid one cent of blackmail money.

The blackmailer was relying on me to pay up to protect John from himself.

Mistake.

If I had learned anything in the four months I’d been married to John, it was that honesty was the best policy. At least with John.

Author Bio:

Bestselling author of over sixty titles of classic Male/Male fiction featuring twisty mystery, kickass adventure and unapologetic man-on-man romance, JOSH LANYON has been called "the Agatha Christie of gay mystery."

Her work has been translated into eleven languages. The FBI thriller Fair Game was the first male/male title to be published by Harlequin Mondadori, the largest romance publisher in Italy. Stranger on the Shore (Harper Collins Italia) was the first M/M title to be published in print. In 2016 Fatal Shadows placed #5 in Japan's annual Boy Love novel list (the first and only title by a foreign author to place on the list).

The Adrien English Series was awarded All Time Favorite Male Male Couple in the 2nd Annual contest held by the Goodreads M/M Group (which has over 22,000 members). Josh is an Eppie Award winner, a four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist for Gay Mystery, and the first ever recipient of the Goodreads Favorite M/M Author Lifetime Achievement award.

Josh is married and they live in Southern California.

Josh Lanyon

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Kale Williams(Narrator)

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Mainly by Moonlight #1

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I Buried a Witch #2

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Bell, Book, and Scandal #3

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Random Paranormal Tales of 2021 Part 9

Bell, Book, and Scandal by Josh Lanyon

Summary:

Bedknobs and Broomsticks #3

Black Magic. Blackmail. Little Black Books. Must a witch break his vows to save his marriage?

Cosmo Saville loves that his husband has finally accepted his witchy ways. And in return, his promise to stay out of police business guarantees them a happily ever after. At least, until he discovers he might be responsible for a dangerous game of blackmail…

Police Commissioner John Joseph Galbraith feels relieved that his marriage is back on track. Especially since he has his hands full with a high-profile suicide and rumors of a city-wide extortion ring. But when he stumbles across Cosmo breaking his vow by playing cop, John agonizes over old wounds.

With the commissioner’s badge and family in jeopardy, Cosmo has no choice but to put his life on the line…

Can the witch expose a dark conspiracy, save John’s career, and return to love’s delicious spell?

Bell, Book and Scandal is the third book in the Bedknobs and Broomsticks romantic gay mystery trilogy. If you like quirky characters, snappy spells, and madcap suspense, then you’ll love Josh Lanyon’s supernatural story.

Audiobook Review October 2021:

Kale Williams has once again made Josh Lanyon's Bedknobs and Broomsticks universe come alive.  I really won't add anything to my review in regard to the plot and series itself as I don't want to give anything away for any newcomers.  What I will say is the combo of Kale Williams' narration and Josh Lanyon's creative wordage, the storytelling in this magic-infested world of mystery, romance, and drama is incredibly entertaining and it's easy to get so sucked in, before you know it the last page has been read leaving a sense of "oh no!" but it's so fun getting to that "Oh no!"😉😉.

Original Review April 2021:

HOLY HANNAH BATMAN!!! Bell, Book, and Scandal is even better than imagined.  And trust me, I imagined quite a bit.  Josh Lanyon is one of my favorite authors, she is my go-to mystery author in the LGBT genre combined with how much I loved the first two books in the Bedknobs and Broomsticks series I probably went in with pretty high expectations.  High expectations when it comes to any kind or level of art is not always a good thing, so few times does the end result match our hopes.  Well, Bell was not one of those times.  

Nope.  

It surpassed my expectations.

Because this is an ongoing series I don't want to give anything away, either for this book specifically or even too much "hinting" of past entries so that I don't spoil anything for newcomers to Bedknobs.  I will say this, John has really tested my limits of wanting to smack him upside the head because of his reluctance to look outside the realms of his preconceived box.  Don't get me wrong, Cosmo tries my patience too with his hole "speak, speak again, then speak some more, and finally think" habit of tackling obstacles in his life.

I think that's one of the elements I love best about this series, both characters have serious flaws in how they express themselves.  Between their pissing each other off, jumping to conclusions, and then realizing just what the other person was actually thinking, John and Cosmo really are a perfect fit.  The blending of similar and different qualities really revs their chemistry up to such believable levels that if the author were ever to kill one of them off, the remaining one left behind would never find another that fills in all the gaps.  We all know there will never be any major character death here but I guess it's just my way of saying how perfect they compliment and complete each other.

Now, the mystery.

Okay, you know you aren't getting any tidbits in that area from me so I'll just say this: I could see it unfold in front of me as if I was a fly on the wall, right smack dab in the middle of the room witnessing it all.  That's how real Josh Lanyon makes this paranormal, supernatural, magical world, you know it's fiction but it's 150% believable all at the same time.

As for the supporting cast of characters?  I don't want to give anything away by bringing them up individually but I will say that not a single character in this series is page filler.  Each and everyone of them plays a part in the end result, or at the very least getting the reader so involved in the story that pretty soon you forget it's a story and it feels like you are reliving a memory spent with old friends.

Magic, likeable(and some not-so likeable) characters that you can relate to, mystery that keeps you on the edge of your seat, romance, humor, drama, action, but most importantly Bell, Book, and Scandal(the whole series really) has so much heart, so many feels, you don't want to say goodbye.  And it doesn't look like we'll have to yet, the author reveals there will be another storyline arc in the future, I guess she wasn't ready to say goodbye either or more accurately, Cosmo and John weren't ready to leave us out of their journey.

I just want to end with a couple of points:

1. If you couldn't tell from my review, Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a continuing story so you have to read from the beginning, you can't jump in with Bell, Book, and Scandal.

2. Something I've said in both the other two book reviews and it rings even truer now than book one, "I loved how it made me nostalgic for the endearing comedy of Bewitched, the magical drama of Charmed, and the spell-driven romance of I Married a Witch."

Definitely a win-win all around.

RATING:

Ghost Town by Pandora Pine

Summary:

Haunted Souls #3

Ghost Detective Jude Byrne has just landed in magical Key West, Florida for two weeks of fun in the sun. He’s looking forward to working on his tan instead of on haunted houses. Sitting at the hotel bar, he overhears a radio call-in show interviewing a terrified man about the harrowing experiences he had with a ghost at Casa Flores, a local bed and breakfast.

Psychic Copeland Forbes is equally thrilled to be on vacation. He’s still dealing with the effects of the Lewis case and a few weeks in the sun is just what the doctor ordered. Hearing the caller on the radio changes everything. He knows he needs to get involved with this case and places a call to PRIDE XM to offer his services to the scared young man. What starts out as a friendly phone call turns into a bet with Jude and Cope spending the night in this haunted hotel where things do, in fact, go bump in the night.

The vacationing duo soon find out they have a mystery on their hands. Casa Flores was the home of a Cuban cigar baron and his second wife. The problem was that Santiago Flores’s first wife was still alive and well back in Havana. When she learned of her husband’s betrayal, she came to Key West for revenge. In the end, mysterious deaths visited all three members of the Flores family.

Can Jude and Cope get to the bottom of what really happened at Casa Flores or will they become the latest victims in this ghost town?

A Warrior's Heart by Jaclyn Osborn

Summary:

Tales of Fate #2

Malik

I’ve watched over Troy his whole life. But I no longer see him as the boy he used to be. He’s strong, brave… beautiful. Being a warrior is all I’ve known for so long. Yet with him, I find myself wanting more.

He makes me feel alive again.

When King Triton sends me on a mission to find a powerful legendary weapon, I know it will be dangerous. The human king wants a war with my people, and if this weapon falls into his hands it could mean our destruction. Failure is not an option.

I must put aside my feelings for Troy no matter how much I crave him. Love has no place in my world. Not when danger follows me wherever I go.

Troy

Malik is stern, overprotective, and stubborn. He still sees me as the young, scared boy he used to protect, but I want him to see me as the man I’ve become. When he sets out on a quest to the surface world, I leave the protection of our underwater kingdom and go with him.

Trust is hard for me. Intimacy is harder. But Malik makes me feel safe. Treasured. In his arms, my broken pieces begin to mend.

However, tension between the land and sea heightens and war seems inevitable. It’s up to us to save not only our kingdom, but each other.

A Warrior’s Heart is Book 3 in the Tales of Fate series and must be read in order. This is an age gap, hurt/comfort fantasy romance with mermen, pirates, underwater fun, and a wicked king or two. HEA guaranteed.

Fluke and the Faultline Fiasco by Sam Burns

Summary:

The Fantastic Fluke #3

When an earthquake shakes up Sage's night, his instinct is to forget about it. They live in California—quakes happen. But this one sends the consciousness that lives in the ley lines running to him in fear, so he and his gunslinger boyfriend set out to investigate. What they uncover is a century-old plot to destroy not only the ley lines, but the city of Junction itself.

Now, they're in a race against an unknown adversary who wants to annihilate everything they love, and the only man with the answers is Sage's long-dead Uncle Jonathon. Good thing they only have to read his journals, not deal with the insufferable jerk in person.

Between a heist to steal a magic artifact, Uncle Jonathon's bigoted ramblings, and one surprise after another from his allies, can Sage find what he needs to save Junction?

Fluke and the Faultline Fiasco is third in its series, so if you haven't read a Fluke book before, you should definitely start with book one, The Fantastic Fluke. The Faultline Fiasco is a 65k word novel that follows the continuing adventures of Sage, Fluke, Gideon, and their whole family, as they try to save the world. Or at least Southern California.

Sympathy by Jordan Castillo Price

Summary:

Re-learning how to walk takes determination, strength and courage. Re-learning how to date is brutal.

It took Anthony Potosi years to recover from the accident that claimed his father's life, and doctors told him he'd never walk again. He proved them wrong. Now he's back at the landscaping business, Potosi and Sons, he shares with his two older brothers—but they seem more interested in getting him to sell out his share than in celebrating his recovery.

The oil-and-water relationship between Tony and his brothers is hardly new. Even when they were kids, they delighted in terrorizing each other with stories like "The Hook," complete with visits to the abandoned Victorian half a mile down the two-lane.

Now Tony towers over his brothers...but he's still the youngest. When the new owner of the Hook House calls in an order, they take a little too much satisfaction in sending him to face his old fears. And learning to open up again to trust, desire—and maybe even love—is far scarier than The Hook.

Sympathy is a gay romance novella with moderate steam and just a hint of magic.

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Random Paranormal Tales of 2021

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Part 5  /  Part 6  /  Part 7  /  Part 8

Part 10  /  Part 11  /  Part 12

Bell, Book, and Scandal by Josh Lanyon

Chapter One

“Merde.”

I scowled and sucked on the slice across the pad of my thumb. I didn’t taste blood, the papercut wasn’t that deep, but my tongue tingled with the flavor of…

Odd.

I picked up the letter opener, slit open the envelope, and several glossy black-and-white photos spilled out and slid across my desk.

Black and white? Who took black-and-white photos these days? Who took photos these days? That’s what phones were for, right?

I reached for the nearest photograph, studied it curiously—and dropped it as though it had burned my fingertips.

A man and woman locked in naked—very naked—embrace.

I didn’t recognize the man, though the large tattooed pentacle on his back indicated maybe I should.

The woman was my sister-in-law. Jinx.

I drew in a deep breath.

Well, this was…unexpected. And unwelcome.

I bowed the envelope to check for a letter. I was anticipating something with misshapen letters cut from magazines and spelling trouble, but there was nothing. Just the photos.

Not that that wasn’t plenty right there.

I rested my fingertips on the photos, closed my eyes, concentrated… To my surprise, there it was. The scintilla of the arcane. Magic.

I opened my eyes.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Was there any possibility this wasn’t a threat? That the intent was…what? Hey, here’s something you might want to keep an eye on? I considered that theory hopefully, but I couldn’t quite convince myself that these photos had been sent with anything but ill intention.

To what end, though?

Money, right? That was the way these things usually worked. Not that I had any practical experience of blackmail.

Yes. Blackmail.

It wasn’t a complete surprise.

Or rather, yes, it was a surprise—especially given that Jinx seemed to be the target—but we weren’t the first family in San Francisco to get one of these poison parcels. John had been losing sleep—a lot of sleep—over the past month with the discovery that the city’s high society appeared to have fallen prey to a well-connected extortion ring.

John is John Galbraith. My husband—but more importantly, in this context at least, SFPD’s new police commissioner.

The plot had only come to light because one of the victims, the Rev. Canon Angela Tzeng had had the guts to go to the police and report an attempt to blackmail her. Tzeng was supposed to be consecrated October 1st as the first female bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern California, but her courageous move had been rewarded by the blackmailer releasing information about a teenaged pregnancy to the press. It was the Twenty-First Century. You’d think— But you’d be wrong. The revelation of Tzeng’s youthful mistake was damning information in the eyes of both the public and the diocese. Now Tzeng’s very future in the church was in question.

Needless to say, no other victims had come forward. Not openly. Not officially. But they were out there.

“Someone’s going to get killed,” John had said the other night. He was not a guy for kidding around, and he was not kidding then.

I considered the pile of photos before me. I couldn’t help thinking that choosing Jinx as a blackmail target was kind of a stretch.

Yes, these photos were revealing and embarrassing, but at twenty-five, Jinx was a grown woman. The fact that she was a sexually active grown woman would likely only come as a shock to John. She did not hold public office. She was not married. There was no reason I could see that she shouldn’t have sex with whoever she pleased, although I had to wonder about her good sense in choosing a guy who’d branded himself with the Sigil of Baphomet.

Jinx had been studying with the Duchess for the past few weeks, so she surely knew better. And if this guy was not a poser, if he was Craft, he ought to know better too. But this photo might be months old. When I’d first met Jinx, she’d been a little bit of an occult fangirl. Actually, she was still a little bit of an occult fangirl.

But I digress. As usual.

That the photos had come to me, made me wonder if Jinx had already been approached and had brushed it off. You have to care a lot about what other people think to make a good blackmail victim. When it came to what other people thought, Jinx had, in the mortal vernacular, zero fucks to give. In fact, there had been a time, and not so long ago, when I thought she’d have taken delight in appalling both John, who was twenty years her senior, and her mother, Nola.

And when it came to Nola, who could blame her? I felt the urge to appall Nola now and then myself. Not that I had to try. My existence was enough to keep my mother-in-law in a constant state of pall.

Which meant what?

That the real target was me? The assumption being that I would pay up to keep Jinx’s past from embarrassing her? From embarrassing me? No. From embarrassing John.

Of course.

Because John was the vulnerable one. As Police Commissioner, San Francisco’s first gay police commissioner at that, John was the one with something to lose. The news that the police commissioner’s younger sister was a devil worshipper (oh, I could already hear all the idiotic and ignorant things people would say) would certainly bother the hell out of John—and might even impact his political future. John was an ambitious man. A man with a plan.

So why not send this packet to John?

Oh, right. Because John was as honorable as he was ambitious. He would not be blackmailed. He would see Jinx burned alive—in the court of public opinion, that is—before he paid one cent of blackmail money.

The blackmailer was relying on me to pay up to protect John from himself.

Mistake.

If I had learned anything in the four months I’d been married to John, it was that honesty was the best policy. At least with John.

Ghost Town by Pandora Pine

PROLOGUE

Atticus 

Casa Flores, June… 

Atticus Dupriest hated his job. It wasn’t because he was one of those lazy-ass millennials who wanted the world served to him on a silver platter. It was because Casa Flores was haunted. 

Growing up flamboyantly gay in Alabama, Atticus had his share of heartbreak, misery, and hatred. The only thing that got him through those dark days was his part-time job at a chain restaurant. He worked his ass off for the tips that would one day allow him to make his dream a reality. 

When he was thirteen years old, two years after he painfully admitted to himself that he wanted to kiss Dalton Honeycutt more than his next breath, he’d seen a travel documentary on Key West. Atticus had fallen in love with the tropical paradise instantly. He knew this was the one place in the world where he would be able to be himself, no questions asked. No bullying. No judgement. Other men who liked to kiss men. In a word: heaven. 

Every single dollar he made at the restaurant went into his Key West fund. He didn’t spend a penny to treat himself to ice cream or designer jeans. It all went toward being able to live his dream. 

What a dream come true it was. At first…

Atticus was able to find an apartment easily enough. He’d started out serving and tending bar at one of the restaurants on Duval Street. He loved the vibe of the tourists and hearing all about their adventures on the island. The one thing he was struggling with was finding time to explore his new home. Between working full-time and his shifts not ending until 4am, he’d been sleeping until afternoon and missing out on valuable daylight hours. 

One of the guys who tended bar at the restaurant had a solution for Atticus. Bart had lived in Key West for twenty years and knew everyone. He mentioned an opening in the housekeeping department at Casa Flores. Atticus had been interested right off the bat. 

The hotel was an adult-only establishment, which meant no dealing with snot-nosed, over-privileged kids. In addition to making minimum wage, he’d also get tips. It had seemed like a no-brainer to leave the rowdy nightlife on Duval Street behind and move to the hotel where he’d have a set schedule, working daytime hours. That schedule would allow him the opportunity to get out and see Key West and participate in the nightlife, rather than slogging through an eight-hour shift watching everyone else have all the fun, then sleeping through the sunshine. 

He’d heard stories from guests at Casa Flores when he was working on Duval Street. Stories that didn’t quite seem believable. The scent of roses in one of the bedrooms when no flowers were present. Voices in the night speaking in Spanish. The sounds of a woman weeping. Items falling onto the floor that hadn’t been precariously placed. 

Atticus had laughed along with the bar patrons and served up another round. Along with Savannah, Georgia, Key West was one of the most haunted places in America. If you believed in that kind of thing. Nothing sold hotel rooms like a good ghost story. Atticus just assumed that’s what was going on at the bed and breakfast.  It never occurred to him Casa Flores was actually haunted. 

Not until it was too late, anyway. 

Nowadays, it was so easy to search the internet and find stories about Casa Flores. Tourists read about the “strange” occurrences and wanted to book that hotel. Once those tourists were tucked in for the night, their imaginations did the rest. Atticus knew the need to belong or be a part of something was so strong that people weren’t above lying. “Oh, yes, I smelled roses in Room 11…” 

The building was over a century old, things were bound to go bump in the night. He assumed they also went bump in the day, but who was around to hear them except the staff? Women wore rose-scented lotion. Rose tea was served in the dining room. There were bowls of potpourri all over the mansion and a central air conditioning system that recirculated air.

In Atticus’s mind, all of the “hauntings” were explainable using simple common sense. Until they started happening to him. It was a different matter altogether when his own five senses couldn’t explain what was happening around him. 

Here he was, on another Wednesday morning, the start of his work week, pushing his housekeeping cart down the hallway to Room 11. Above the door was stenciled, “Live Your Spirit.” Atticus had no idea what the hell it meant, but so long as his spirit wasn’t living in heaven, he supposed it didn’t matter overly. 

Room 11 had been the bedroom of one of the Casa’s two owners. Concepcion Flores had chosen this room with a view of Fleming Street as her own. The road would have been much different in the 1890’s with no automobile traffic and without the crowds of vacationing tourists. 

Knocking on the door, Atticus held his breath. He found himself hoping the couple who was staying in the room was still there. He knew that would only be putting off the inevitable, but his heart was pounding so hard that he could feel the beats in his toes. “Housekeeping.” He knocked for a second time. 

Atticus counted to one hundred before using his master key to enter the room. After checking the bathroom and finding it empty, he knew he was alone.  He gathered up the used towels and placed them in the bin for the laundry. The bed was next.

Folding the white comforter, he set it on a nearby chair. He was in the process of shaking a pillow out of its case when the scent of roses caught his attention. 

Atticus felt his stomach tighten. This was a bad sign. He kept stripping the bed, hoping the rose scent was as far as it would go today. He slipped the second pillow from its case, stacking them both on top of the comforter. 

Walking around to the opposite side of the bed, Atticus stepped into a cold spot. Freezing in his tracks, he blew out a breath which crystallized in front of him, just like it used to do on cold winter days back home. He took a quick step backward and the room was its usual temperature. 

Looking up at the ceiling, Atticus located the vent for the central air conditioning. It was all the way across the room above the chair where he’d stacked the comforter and pillows. Lifting his hands over his head, he didn’t feel any circulation of air. He knew the cold spot in the room wasn’t from the AC vent, but his logical mind had to check to be sure just in case this cold spot was caused by something other than Concepcion Flores. 

“H-Hello, Ms. F-Flores.” Atticus couldn’t figure out if his voice was shaking from stone-cold fear or from the cold spot. He supposed both were logical answers. That’s what he needed right now: logic. 

“Viene la muerte,” an accented Spanish voice replied.

Atticus spun around. He was still alone in the room. His heart racing harder than before, he tried to focus on the words that had been spoken. Not the best student to ever pass through the doors of Sheffield High School, his Spanish was a bit rusty. He knew muerte was some form of the word death. He had no idea what the verb, viene, meant. Now wasn’t the time to check his phone for the answer. 

“Habla Ingles, Ms. Flores? I’m sure you’re saying something fabulously important.” Unfortunately, asking if the spirit could speak English was probably not the most PC thing he could have done. Not that a century-old ghost would know anything about being politically correct. 

The room was silent. Maybe he’d never heard the words in the first place.  Sighing, he moved back toward the head of the bed to continue stripping it. He was pulling the third pillow from its case when the door slammed shut behind him. While the sound was still echoing, he heard the deadbolt engage. 

Spinning around, Atticus saw he was still in the room alone. He’d wedged a stopper against the door to keep it open while he serviced the suite. Even if someone had pulled it out for fun, there was no way the door would have slammed like that. It would have swung shut gently, engaging the regular door lock when it was completely closed. A tendril of dread snaked up his spine to wrap around his heart. 

There had been stories at the hotel about this very thing happening, the deadbolt engaging when there was no one in the room to turn the knob. The front desk had the key to the deadbolt for Room 11 handy for instances like this. In the few months he’d worked here, he’d known of at least five times when it needed to be used to let patrons into this room. There was no way to lock the deadbolt from outside the room. Guests were only given the key to the room, not the bolt. 

“I’m s-sorry if I offended you, Ms. Flores.” Would that help appease the spirit who’d just mentioned the word “death?” Atticus shook his head. He needed to do his job. He couldn’t allow this foolishness to slow him down. There was a schedule to keep and other duties waiting for his attention. 

“Viene la muerte,” the voice said again. The words were spoken in anger this time. 

Gathering up the dirty sheets into a big pile, Atticus walked toward the door. He was simply going to turn the deadbolt, let himself out of the room far enough to grab the door stopper and then finish cleaning the suite. He didn’t have time to deal with this paranormal crap. 

Two steps from the door, his foot caught on something, sending him crashing to the floor. The left side of his face exploded in pain. Twisting his head to look behind him, Atticus’s worst fear was confirmed. There was nothing to trip over. His stomach pitched. No one had ever reported anything like this happening in Room 11. 

Gingerly sitting up, he lifted a hand to the left side of his face. There was no blood, but he could already feel the area around his left cheekbone starting to swell.

A sound caught his ears. It started low. To his scrambled brain it almost sounded like someone crying. That had been one of the things reported in this room. The sound of a woman sobbing.  Sighing, Atticus climbed back to his feet. 

He stepped into the bathroom to take a look at his face. There were words written on the mirror in lipstick. Viene la muerte. Atticus screamed. His legs gave out under him, sending him crashing against the side of the bathtub. As he stared up at the words on the mirror, the sound got louder. 

In that moment, Atticus realized the voice wasn’t sobbing. It was laughing.

A Warrior's Heart by Jaclyn Osborn

Chapter One 

Malik 

“Again!” I circled Nereus, watching his movements. 

His reaction time was decent but still too slow. In the time it had taken him to see my attack and dodge it, I could’ve easily taken his head clean off his shoulders. 

“Yes, sir,” he panted, righting himself. Sweat matted his brown hair, scrapes covered his arms, and his knees were bruised from the countless times he’d been knocked to the ground. 

What mattered was he got right back up. 

Training recruits for the king’s army had kept me busy over the years, yet my mind still wandered to Prince Lorcan and how I should be at his side, keeping him safe. He had insisted I return to Avalontis though. He and his mate had moved to Emerald Cove, a seaside town in the surface world, and had settled down there with their young son. 

“That’s enough for today,” I said. “Wash up and meet in the mess hall.” 

“Yes, sir.” Nereus nodded before joining the other men nearby. 

I left the training field and made my way down a narrow path toward a spring. I was covered in dirt and sweat and didn’t want to enter the palace in such a state of disarray. After removing my clothing, I dove into the cool water, finding it refreshing after a long day. 

Floating on my back, I stared up at the large dome that surrounded the kingdom. The sea thrived on the other side of it, and I watched a school of fish swim by. 

Avalontis was unlike anywhere else in the world. The underwater kingdom was surrounded by a magical barrier, allowing the merfolk within to walk around in their human forms and enjoy life as most humans did. There were swimming holes, gardens, and forests of colorful trees. Our home had been created by magic. King Triton had wanted a place for the merfolk to live together in peace. 

And we did. For the most part. 

I only stayed at the spring long enough to rinse off the grime. Once I was dressed, I walked toward the palace. The structure could be seen in all areas of Avalontis, for it was grand and golden and stood higher than any other tree or building. 

A man approached me on the path. 

“Evening, sir,” Dathan said, bowing his head. His dark blond hair curtained around his face with the action. He was a servant for the royal household. “The king has requested your presence in his private dining chambers.” 

I had intended to eat with my fellow warriors in the mess hall, but the king’s invitation couldn’t be ignored. An invitation, perhaps, but one I couldn’t refuse. 

“Very well.”

When we reached the palace, the guards outside the entrance saluted me. Once upon a time, I had been the captain of the army. Enemies far and wide knew my name. Feared it. 

I nodded to the guards and kept walking. 

The entrance hall exuded luxury: gems in the tile floor, jewels entwined in the chandelier, and gold-lined columns. The king fancied shiny trinkets, and signs of that fondness could be seen all throughout the palace. I took the grand staircase up to the second floor and walked down the long corridor to my chamber. 

If I was to dine with the king, I wanted to change out of my training clothes and put on more suitable attire. 

Before reaching my chamber, I saw a familiar face in the hall. And, just like it had done for the past few years when seeing him, my heart beat a little faster. 

Troy. 

Light brown hair fell to his shoulders, some of the strands braided and pulled back, and gold shimmered on his eyelids, emphasizing his violet eyes even more. The netted top he wore did little to cover his softly toned chest, and his trousers hugged his ass and hips to perfection. 

I stopped my approach and watched him a moment. He stared at Lorcan’s old bedchamber with a forlorn expression. 

“Standing outside his door won’t bring him back.” 

Troy startled. “You nearly gave me a fright.” 

“Nearly?” I stepped closer. “I believe I succeeded in doing so.”

He curled his nose and put his hands on his hips. “I don’t need any of your sass right now.” 

I grinned. If anyone was sassy, it was the male before me. 

“I just…” Troy touched the wooden door. “I miss Lor. It’s strange for him not to be here.” 

Troy and Lorcan had been inseparable since they were toddlers. Lorcan’s absence had torn a hole in the way of things. Everything felt off. The reminder of him—such as his old room—still stung even years later. 

“I miss him as well,” I said. “When I visit him next, would you like to accompany me?” 

Troy beamed. “I’d love to!” His smile was like the sun breaking through dark water, casting rays of light into a murky abyss. However, it soon fell as a frown took its place. “But perhaps not.” 

Humans frightened Troy, and he avoided traveling to the surface because of it. 

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to change out of these old rags and meet the king for dinner.” 

“Need help?” Troy arched a thin brow and swayed his slender body. 

My body stirred. 

Gods, why did I feel this way around him? He was only twenty-three years of age, and I was… well, much older.

Once a merman—or mermaid—reached adulthood, their aging slowed. For every ten years that passed, we only physically aged one. I had the appearance of a male in his early thirties, but I was closer to one-hundred and forty. 

Troy was still just a boy. 

“I can manage on my own.” I turned away from him. 

“If you change your mind, let me know.” 

I knew if I looked at him right then, he’d appear every bit as mischievous as he sounded. 

Over the past year, Troy had dropped hints that he was interested in me, though I wasn’t certain if he was serious about the advances. He was a flirt. More than that, he loved attention. 

Trust in others was something he lacked, however, and the flirting never went further than a few verbal exchanges and giggles. 

In my bedchamber, I tugged off my leather armor before pulling on a clean pair of trousers and a cotton shirt, adding a belt to hold my dagger. Other daggers were hidden at each ankle. I could never be too careful, especially as of late with some of the merfolk rebelling against their king. 

King Triton’s chamber was in another wing of the palace. Moving down the hall, I passed the grand staircase and turned down another corridor. Tapestries hung on the walls, showing scenes of sea battles. Triton had sunk many ships in his lifetime. He controlled the tides using the conch he wore around his neck, and many of his valued riches had come from attacking sailors at sea. Prior to the treaty with the humans, anyway, which stated neither side could incite violence against the other. 

Outside his door, I knocked and waited. 

“Enter,” a cold voice said from the other side. 

I stepped into the room and did a quick survey of the area, checking corners and glancing at the floor-to-ceiling windows and the view of the palace gardens beyond them. There were many windows in the palace, showing the sea outside the magical dome. Troy liked to perch near the window and watch the fish swim past. 

Now’s not the time to think of him. 

I turned to the king and bowed. “Your Majesty.” 

Triton sat at the head of the rectangular table, holding a goblet between his fingers. His long, silver hair fell to the middle of his back and, like Troy’s hair, many of the strands were braided. He was much older than me, but he didn’t look a day over thirty. Creamy skin covered every inch of his impeccable form, and his eyes were as blue as the sea. 

They could be just as cold too. 

“Sit,” he said, motioning to the chair to his right. 

I did as he instructed, remaining silent. 

He was more than my king; he was my friend. But our friendship only went so far. He had told me on more than one occasion that he would have no problem removing my head if I disobeyed him. Whether that was true, I didn’t know, but I dared not risk it. He hated for anyone to speak out of turn, and thus, I waited for him to tell me why I was there. 

Zander, his manservant, entered the room holding a large tray of food and placed it on the table in front of us. Fish with lemon, roasted potatoes, and warm bread. The servant was incredibly beautiful, which I knew was why the king favored him. 

“Enjoy your meal, Your Majesty.” Zander bowed to Triton. His blond curls bounced, and when he lifted his head, his gray eyes met the king’s. They exchanged what I could only describe as an affectionate stare before Zander turned to me. “Sir.” 

He then exited the chamber, closing the door behind him. 

Triton was known to bed many of the royal servants. He admired all beautiful things, just like the riches and jewels he possessed. However, I sensed there was something deeper with Zander. The tenderness in the king’s eyes as he gazed upon the younger male could not be mistaken. 

The tenderness left his expression now. He stared at me with an iciness that pricked at my skin. As a god, his mood changed like the tide. He could be both self-serving and selfless, depending on the day. 

“Eat,” Triton said, taking a wedge of bread from the platter and slathering it in creamy butter. “You must be starved after training.” 

I cut off a piece of the fish and chewed it. The food was much better than what the soldiers were given, and guilt trickled through me at the fact. My men ate well, but nothing compared to this. They were in the mess hall now, probably draining their mugs of ale and shoving bread, meat, and cheese into their gullets. 

I should be with them. 

“We’ve known one another for many years, Malik.” Triton drank more wine before setting the goblet down. “Tell me what’s troubling you. Are you not pleased with your position in the army? I can remove Captain Orta and have you take her place—” 

“That won’t be necessary, my king.” Captain Orta was a brilliant leader and I wished her no ill will. Whereas I had enjoyed leading the army in the past, I no longer wished to do so. “I’m pleased with my duties.” 

“So, I suppose it’s my son that has you so melancholy?” 

“Prince Lorcan is missed every day, yes. Though, his absence isn’t what ails me. I was only thinking of my men and how they were expecting me in the mess hall this night.” 

“I see.” Triton smoothed a hand down the front of his shirt, causing the jewels woven in the fabric to glimmer in the candlelight. “We should discuss the reason you’re here, so you can return to them.” 

“I meant no offense, my king. I’m honored to dine with you.” 

“We have had our quarrels in the past, dear friend, but you are the only male alive who I trust at my back. Never forget that.” Triton’s expression briefly softened. “My inviting you to dine is more than for the pleasure of your company I’m afraid.”

I dropped my fork and focused on him, waiting. 

“The human king is searching for something,” Triton said, gliding a finger along the rim of his goblet. “My scouts have observed him in secret meetings with his council and speaking of a weapon.” 

King James, the human king, was as wicked as they came. For years, he’d tested the boundaries of the peace treaty between land and sea, one set in motion hundreds of years ago. The treaty stated that the land belonged to his royal bloodline, and the sea belonged to Triton. Though it was only speculation, we believed King James wished to overthrow Triton and rule the sea and all its inhabitants. 

For money. For power. Humans were always waging war for such things. 

“What kind of weapon?” I asked. 

His blue eyes darkened like a storm in uncharted waters. “The trident of Poseidon.” 

“I thought the trident was destroyed upon the sea god’s death.” 

The king’s gaze shifted to the door as Zander walked in. The manservant refilled our goblets with wine, keeping his eyes downcast. Triton lifted a hand and gently caressed Zander’s side before the servant left again. 

“The trident isn’t destroyed,” he answered in a cool tone. “Only… hidden.” 

King James was on his way to finding it then. Using it. 

“What’s stopping you from retrieving it?” I asked. King Triton could move through the sea faster than anyone. With the simple blowing of the conch around his neck, the waves did his bidding.

“The location is unknown to me,” he answered, irritated by the fact. “Upon my father’s death, the trident disappeared. Shielded itself from my powers to locate it. Swords, bows, any weapon forged is said to have a soul. When its master dies, it mourns. I believe the trident suffered such a fate.” 

“So, the weapon hid itself out of grief?” 

“Precisely. I don’t know how the human king learned of the trident, but it cannot fall into his hands, Malik. The trident was forged by Hephaestus, and it not only has the power to control the sea… but to kill a god as well.” 

Understanding dawned on me. Triton couldn’t be killed by any mortal weapon. Neither sword nor arrow could pierce his skin. Canon fire had no effect on him. If King James was in search of the trident, it would verify our suspicions of his motives. 

The only way to rule the sea was to kill the god who governed it. 

“You believe the human king will be able to find the trident?” 

“Nothing is certain. I’ve searched for it for years and found nothing.” Triton sighed and took a drink from his goblet. “I believed if it was hidden, it was safe at least. Yet now that King James is on a mission to locate it… we must act. We can wait no longer.” 

“What of the treaty between land and sea?” I asked. “Does it still stand?” 

A sinister gleam sparked in Triton’s eyes. “For now.” 

I straightened in my chair. “What are your orders, Your Majesty?”

I would do anything he asked of me. My sword and my life were his to command. 

“Simple.” Triton’s stare cut right though me. “Find the trident before the human filth does.” 

Simple. Highly unlikely. The trident had been missing for centuries and I didn’t know where to even begin in the search. 

“Yes, my king.” 

“The details of this mission must stay confidential. Be selective of who you tell and choose your party wisely. If King James catches on that we know he’s searching for the trident, we will lose the advantage in this war.” 

“War? You said the treaty stands.” 

“Only on paper,” he responded. “King James will break the treaty as soon as the moment arises. You know better than I how quickly the tides can change… how friends can become foe, how allies can become enemies. Surely your late husband can attest to the same.” 

Grief gripped my heart at the mention of Aeon. He had been killed in battle many years ago when one of our men betrayed us, telling the enemy our plan of attack. We had walked right into a trap. 

No. I had led them into that trap. I was to blame. 

“Yes. I’m all too aware,” I said through gritted teeth. It was one of those instances when Triton intentionally hurt me with his words in order to motivate me to do his bidding. And it worked.

“Seek out the seer called Phantos,” Triton said. “He dwells in the southern isles, deep in the mountain. He will set you on the right path.” 

“How do you know of him? Have you sought out his help before?” 

“I have.” 

“And?” 

The king’s icy blue eyes landed on me. “Enough with these questions. Your duty is to follow my orders, not question my decisions. Am I clear?” 

In my gut, I sensed… something. An uneasiness that twisted through the pit of my stomach. However, I put my faith in my king. In my friend. 

“Yes, my king.” 

“One more thing.” 

I waited. 

“You are free to choose the members of your party at your discretion, but my son must join you on this mission.” 

“The prince? He will not approve of this.” Lorcan had spent his whole life trying to get away from Avalontis and his duties as prince. 

“I care not for his approval,” the king snapped. “I have let him live in the surface world. I have allowed him to have his family and do what he wishes. But the time has come for him to embrace his destiny. He will accompany you.” 

I nodded. 

He waved his hand. “You’re dismissed.” 

Before I reached the door, however, he stopped me.

“Do not fail me, Malik.” Triton held my gaze, and within the blue swirls of his eyes I saw a warning. 

He needn’t voice that warning. I understood all too well. 

When I entered the mess hall, one of my men greeted me and shoved a drink into my hand. He then held up his own drink. 

“To the commander!” he said. 

The other men mirrored his actions. “To the commander!” 

I took a small sip of the mead before setting it aside. I hardly ever drank. I preferred to have a clear mind. I’d need it with the upcoming mission. First things first, I needed to choose the party that would accompany me. And then? 

The mission would begin.

Fluke and the Faultline Fiasco by Sam Burns

Fluke, naturally, did not mind wandering through town next to Gideon and me on a horse.

I mean, he didn’t have to ride the horse, so of course he didn’t mind. He just had to avoid getting caught underfoot, and given his relationship with Marron, that wasn’t too difficult.

The horse absolutely babied him.

When both had to fit through the same space, Marron stood back and let Fluke through first. When Fluke started sniffing at a dog that growled at him, Marron nosed him out of the way and stepped in between.

Shut up.

It was not the same as my relationship with Gideon.

It was, on the other hand, utterly adorable.

As we rode through the streets of Junction, I yawned and leaned back into Gideon, my eyelids getting irritatingly heavy. Finally, now, my body was ready to sleep, when I couldn’t.

“It’s too early for the coffee places to be open, or I’d suggest we get you some.” Gideon said when he nudged me awake for the second time. Or maybe the third. “I could take you home, and me and Marron could keep looking?”

I shook my head. Then my whole body, to try to wake myself up. “No, I’m fine. I’m sure you could find it, but the convergence talks to me. If it needs to say something, I need to be there.”

Behind me, Gideon grinned. “You don’t say?”

“What?” The sharp edge of my own voice was enough to wake me up a little.

“Oh, nothing,” he said, all faux nonchalance, leaning forward to whisper in my ear. “I just seem to remember a whole lot of worry about being a class two mage who couldn’t do anything. Little different from the man who knows we’re better off with him in the lead.”

And that was fair. It was hard to complain at him for speaking the truth.

Okay, no, not really, I was just too tired to bother. I flipped my wrist to check the time. Three in the morning.

You appear to be awake, the cheerful message appeared on my watch face. Would you like to turn off sleep mode?

Fuck my entire life.

Sympathy by Jordan Castillo Price

There was a time when I would’ve been able to carry the biggest shrub in the yard without breaking a sweat. The yew I was currently loading up was big, no doubt, but I was only bearing half the weight. My brother Chip had the other end of the root ball. And even so, the strain of maneuvering that damn bush into the back of the van just about killed me.

“God damn it, Tony, pull.” Chip gave the root ball a shove that crushed my hand against the door hinge and I saw stars. I lost my grip for a second and lurched to recover, even though moving fast under all that weight was gonna come back to bite me in the ass later. I couldn’t just drop the yew on Chip—it’d squash him. And then I’d never hear the end of it.

I tried to brace my good leg and pull harder, get the lousy root ball up over the bumper, but it was no use. Leaves slicked the bottoms of my boots and I had no choice but to catch myself with my other leg—the useless leg—and the pain that shot up my spine was a cold, relentless kind of pain, nothing at all like the pain of my skinned knuckles. It was a pain that promised to linger. For days.

My good leg caught on the lip of the corrugated bed and finally I had leverage. I hauled one more time, and the burlap cleared the bumper.

I let go and wiped my forehead on my sleeve. I was drenched. Even my upper lip was wet.

“If you can’t cut it,” Chip said, “maybe you re-think selling your third of the business to Sal and me.”

Sal and me, Sal and me…. It never ended. “Maybe Sal and you should have been the ones out here loading the truck.”

Of the three of us, I was the youngest brother, and the biggest. And I figured I’d done a lifetime’s worth of hauling for Sal and Chip in the years before the accident. I’d never said as much out loud—but I’d done my damnedest to convey it with looks that were nasty enough to peel paint.

Not that Chip noticed. He liked his beer cold, his TV loud, and his dinner on the table when he came home from work. It took more than a pissy look to let the air out of Chip’s tires. “Alls I’m saying,” he rambled on, “is you take your cut, maybe you can go to school.”

“Oh God, not this again.”

“You don’t wanna go to Penn State? How ‘bout the community college? I heard you can bring in forty, forty-five grand a year with a two-year degree.”

“What the hell do I want a degree for?” Potosi and Sons. That was all I’d ever wanted to do, from the first time Dad let me work the backhoe.

“Don’t be stupid—you could figure out a way to get some kind of desk job.”

“I don’t want a desk job.”

“I’d think you’d jump at the chance…since your back didn’t heal right, and whatnot.”

My back. A daydream that featured a yew with a three-hundred-pound root ball falling on Chip—ideally from about ten feet off the ground—gave me something to almost smile about. It wasn’t my back that’d been broken. It was my pelvis. Apparently the two-syllable word was one syllable too many for my Neanderthal brother.

I wiped my hands on my jeans and headed back toward the office, and did my best not to limp. It cost me. But everything in life has a cost, doesn’t it?

The phone was ringing when I came through the door, and I heard a series of sounds that had grown so familiar to me I could picture them without even poking my head around the doorframe. The clatter of computer keys—my brother Sal finishing a thought. A sigh—he hates being interrupted, unless the customer happens to be both female and available. A squall of old metal as he leaned back in the ancient office chair—a piece of furniture that weighed as much as a yew, with horsehair stuffing hanging out the splits in the leatherette seat, a holdover from dad’s regime that Sal, the oldest, claimed as his birthright. The thunk of his boot heels on the desk as he prepared to do business. Then a moment of silence as the ringing stopped and he raised the receiver to his ear. “Potosi and Sons.”

They were just phone-words, as empty as “hello” and “how are you” and “have a nice day.” But after the buyout conversation in the back of the van, the greeting rubbed me the wrong way.

I hit the work sink to splash off some of the sweat, but even over the thunder of the water into the deep metal basin, I could still pick out Sal’s voice. “You want what? Really? But you’ll want to transplant hazel in the Spring. I got some hostas you can fill in with, half off…uh, yeah, sure, we got it. Uh-huh. Youse got a truck, or you want it delivered and installed? Okay, gimme the address.”

The cold water felt good on my hands, my face, but the whole core of my body throbbed where I’d caught that yew the wrong way—and yeah, even my back would be aching well into the night—but my knees too, and my hips, especially my hips.

I pulled some rough brown paper from the dispenser and blotted my face. I could take stock for the rest of the day—Sal and Chip hated dealing with numbers that didn’t have dollar signs in front of them, so when I pulled out the inventory sheet they gave me plenty of room. I’d go through our evergreens for the rest of the day, drive home with a hot pack against my lower back, and settle in with some Vicodin when I got back to my apartment. No problem.

“Tony, we got another one of them chump-changers.” Unless you were willing to drop a grand to have your yard graded or your perfectly good old growth replaced with new hybrids that looked just like your neighbors’ azaleas and forsythias, you were chump change to Sal. “You want to do the dropoff?”

Maybe—if they weren’t in the market for yew. I wouldn’t mind getting in my truck that much sooner and breaking open the heat pack. “What’re they…?”

“Hazel, three units. I think we got some leftover stock in Greenhouse Four.”

I did the inventory, not Sal. Corylus americana. Greenhouse Two. Maybe forty pounds each—a lot more back-friendly than the yew. I’d manage. I turned toward the door carefully, so as not to aggravate my aching hip.

“And get this,” Sal went on. “It’s at the Hook House.”

Josh Lanyon
Bestselling author of over sixty titles of classic Male/Male fiction featuring twisty mystery, kickass adventure and unapologetic man-on-man romance, JOSH LANYON has been called "the Agatha Christie of gay mystery."

Her work has been translated into eleven languages. The FBI thriller Fair Game was the first male/male title to be published by Harlequin Mondadori, the largest romance publisher in Italy. Stranger on the Shore (Harper Collins Italia) was the first M/M title to be published in print. In 2016 Fatal Shadows placed #5 in Japan's annual Boy Love novel list (the first and only title by a foreign author to place on the list).

The Adrien English Series was awarded All Time Favorite Male Male Couple in the 2nd Annual contest held by the Goodreads M/M Group (which has over 22,000 members). Josh is an Eppie Award winner, a four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist for Gay Mystery, and the first ever recipient of the Goodreads Favorite M/M Author Lifetime Achievement award.

Josh is married and they live in Southern California.

Pandora Pine
Sick of the slogging rat-race of her 9-5 job, Pandora Pine put pen to paper (literally!) to make her ambition of becoming a romance novelist a reality. She cut her teeth in the dog-eat-dog world of fan fiction, still dreaming of the day when she would be a published author.

In her spare time, Pandora fancies herself an amateur nature photographer. She enjoys mucking around in swamps, hiking through the woods and crawling around on her hands and knees in her backyard seeking out the perfect shot. Pandora is a fan of roadside seafood shacks and always thinks Mexican food is a good idea at the time.

Some of Pandora's favorite things are chocolate, writing longhand with purple pens, and handsome men falling in love with each other.

Jaclyn Osborn
Jaclyn Osborn was born and raised in the state of Arkansas. When not actively writing a new book, she can be found plotting and gaining inspiration for the next story. Writing is her passion and she's thankful for each day she's able to live her dream. A firm believer in happy endings and redemption for damaged souls, her boys in her stories mean the world to her, and she'd be lost without them.

All types of genres in the m/m world interest her, in both reading and writing, and she hopes to delve into a few of them in her writing career.

Sam Burns
Sam lives in the Midwest with husband and cat, which is even less exciting than it sounds, so she's not sure why you're still reading this.

She specializes in LGBTQIA+ fiction, usually with a romantic element. There's sometimes intrigue and violence, usually a little sex, and almost always some swearing in her work. Her writing is light and happy, though, so if you're looking for a dark gritty reality, you've come to the wrong author.

Jordan Castillo Price

Author and artist Jordan Castillo Price is the owner of JCP Books LLC. Her paranormal thrillers are colored by her time in the midwest, from inner city Chicago, to small town Wisconsin, to liberal Madison.

Jordan is best known as the author of the PsyCop series, an unfolding tale of paranormal mystery and suspense starring Victor Bayne, a gay medium who's plagued by ghostly visitations. Also check out her new series, Mnevermind, where memories are made...one client at a time.

With her education in fine arts and practical experience as a graphic designer, Jordan set out to create high quality ebooks with lavish cover art, quality editing and gripping content. The result is JCP Books, offering stories you'll want to read again and again.

Josh Lanyon

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Jordan Castillo Price

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Bell, Book, and Scandal by Josh Lanyon

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Ghost Town by Pandora Pine

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Fluke and the Faultline Fiasco by Sam Burns

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Sympathy by Jordan Castillo Price

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