by M K Mancos
“Because I know you. You’ve always been a cautious girl. I think there’s a time to throw it to the wind and see where you wind up.”
“I wound up surrounded by golems and fighting for my life.”
Rallie tsked into the phone. “You wound up where you belong; with the Convention.”
Surprised, I pulled the phone from my ear to look at it. “What?”
“You heard me. You’ve always been meant for bigger things than living on this mountain and selling herbs and spells to your neighbors. That’s my life. And it’s been a good one, a fulfilling one, but it’s not yours.”
“Are you saying you don’t want me to come home?” Even the possibility broke my heart.
“Honey, you’re welcome to come home any time you want. What I’m saying is, if you were offered a position with the Convention, you need to take it.”
I scraped a nail across the grain in the wood where I sat. “It’s not the one I want. I don’t think I could live in the thick of danger day in and out for years on end. Ebbing and flowing through time.”
I heard a door close behind me and turned. I hadn’t noticed Malachi had come home. “Aunt Rallie. Let me call you back.”
I ended the call and went inside to speak with Malachi. Hearing half a conversation never did anyone any good but had caused plenty of problems.
He stood in the kitchen with the tea kettle in hand, filling it. “How long?”
No explanation was necessary. He’d heard enough of my side of the conversation to piece it together.
I slid my hands down into my back pockets. “I don’t know.”
“Will you come back? Or is this it?” He closed the lid on the kettle and placed it on the stove. The gas burner clicked a few times before it ignited.
“I’m not giving up on you—on us. I just really need to decide what it is I want out of life. How I’m going to help support us. Contribute. I don’t think I’m cut out to be a war witch. I’m a researcher.”
He turned, and a smile lit his face for the first time since we’d gotten back to Fox Run. “You don’t have to work in the field. Astrid needs someone like you to help direct the efforts of the mages.”
Energy poured through me. Excitement.
“I could really play with Gutenberg?”
“Any time you wanted.”
It seemed too good to be true. “Are you sure? You aren’t just saying this to get me to stay?”
“Honestly, right now I’d promise you anything to get you to stay, but no, that came straight from the top.”
Hope soared. I threw my good arm around him. “I’ll still have to go and present my dissertation. If that’s still an option.”
“We can commute. I’m not exactly tied to this office.”
My heart leaped. And soared.
This, right here, was the happy ending my visions never gave me. They’d been so stuck on the moment we parted they’d never bothered to show me the possibilities before me. Of what came after. The life Malachi and I forged together.
“Are you sure?”
He slid his arms around me and pulled me close. “Oh, yeah.”
EXCERPT FROM HATTIE’S SPIRIT
ONE
I really had to hand it to Hattie Doran. She always got the last laugh. Death was no exception. But then again, why should it have been? She’d always lived her life on her terms, which makes the tale herein all the more remarkable.
Driving from Upstate New York to Cooper’s Mill, North Carolina, was a long way by car. Add to that an insistent voice coming from the passenger seat—giving directions and remarking on the changes of scenery in the past fifty years—and it made time expand as if we’d been caught up in some sort of weary travelers’ vortex. Given the fact said passenger had been dead for the past six weeks and rode shotgun as a ghost in my car, and it made for one hell of a long drive. Temporal vortices or not.
Now, I wouldn’t say Hattie was—had been—a bad person. Just the opposite. In life, she was polite, sweet, loving, and exceptionally giving. Unfortunately for her, she gave it to the wrong person at the wrong time and got her ass ran out of her hometown for the effort. In any case, that’s what I assumed since she wasn’t talking. At least about that. Which was why I found myself in a car headed to a town I’d never been, to meet relatives I’d never known. As a ghost, Hattie was another matter altogether. When she’d cast off the yoke of humanity, she’d gone for broke.
“There’s so much freedom in being dead.” Hattie shimmied in the seat and hugged herself. She shot me a stern look, complete with a raised brow. “Not suggesting you try it anytime soon.”
She appeared, not as she had at the end when cancer had ravaged her body and stolen her focus, but as she’d been in her prime. And let me tell you, Hattie was a looker. Honey blonde hair and big innocent eyes. She had a sharp wit and fun personality edged with a sadness I could never put my finger on. Not until she’d decided to plop her regrets in my lap at the zero hour.
If anyone had seen us side by side, they might believe us twins. Not identical, but close.
I looked over at her pointedly. “I don’t plan to die anytime soon. I’ve got too much to live for to be playing those games.”
“Good. See that you don’t.”
My ability to speak with the dead was seconded by my ability to turn a profit in a profession that had probably seen better days. Confession time: the Doran family history is filled with witches. Me included. Yes, card-carrying members of the pointy hat set. (Not that there really was a card. Or a hat for that matter. That’s just an expression.) Stores that sold magic items and mystical offerings kind of went out with the New Age era—that whole pre-Y2K craze. For those of us who were legit, generational witches, well, we didn’t need our practice to be fashionable in order for it to fit us.
So, I run a little shop in the Village. Yes, that Village. New York, New York. Right off Christopher Street. Easily accessible from the PATH and subways. Oh, cheese and rice, I should have stuck with writing copy for my business instead of taking up the mantle of author. Anyhow, my ability to speak with the dead formed much earlier in life than my following of the Goddess path.
The first spirit I had ever spoken with was my first-grade teacher who had died giving birth to her second child. I remember all the adults being so whispery and sad because Ms. Fleming had passed, and her poor baby would grow up without a mother. Even at six I wanted to tell them to hold up, not so fast, Ms. Fleming had other plans and they didn’t include surrendering her child’s care to anyone corporeal. Of course, trying to get people much bigger and older to believe such a story is damn near impossible when they think they know better. Especially living in a house with a mother who wanted nothing to do with our family legacy, even though the gift came down through her direct line.
I wouldn’t say I was like that kid in that movie—“I see dead people”—since they only came to me every once in a great while now. Over the years, I’d learned the hard way how to turn them off , so I wasn’t bombarded with their nonsense. Walking down a New York street and being accosted by people both living and dead is not for the faint of heart! It would’ve made me one batshit crazy lady in no time.
“Turn here, Kara dear.” Hattie pointed to the exit for Cooper’s Mill.
I glanced over at her in exasperation, as I did every time she opened her mouth to navigate the journey. I had a pretty good sense of direction and really didn’t need a post mortem GPS to give me directions I could easily read for myself.
The exit wound through the mountains and went on for another twenty miles down a county road of some of the most breathtaking country I’d ever seen. Pines and rowan, maples, and oaks, lined the sides of the road. Sunlight tried unsuccessfully to breach the tree canopy but didn’t stand a chance against the Green Man.
We came to an intersection that either went right or left. A small sign, almost taken over by the foliage, pointed to Cooper’s Mill, bearing right. I turned and glanced at my co-pilot, who’d
gone silent, and found the seat empty.
About the Author
MK Mancos lives and writes from the beautiful Florida Gulf Coast where she can sit and watch the Blue Angels practice overhead. She shares her life and home with her hubby, Dave and two dogters, Lily and Daisy.
Please contact me her at the following social media places, or contact her via email. She’d love to hear from you.
[email protected]
Also by MK Mancos
CROWN AND COUNTRY
Queen’s Menagerie
Weather Mechanics
Crystal Spyglass
Weather Mechanics
DORAN WITCHES
Hattie’s Spirit
Rewind
Shadow Realms
PINE BARRENS
Immorati
Corpesetti - coming soon
Anathematti - coming soon
THE HOST
Shadows
Bloodlust -coming soon
MKYA BOOKS - YOUNG ADULT NOVELS
CASTLE STREET FAE
Into the Pink -coming soon
Blue Day - coming soon
With Envy - coming soon
Gold is the Son - coming soon