Cloudy with a Chance of Witchcraft: A Paranormal Women’s Fiction Romance Novel
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Cloudy with a Chance of Witchcraft
A Paranormal Women’s Fiction Romance Novel
Mandy M. Roth
Cloudy with a Chance of Witchcraft: A Paranormal Women’s Fiction Romance Novel (Grimm Cove) © Copyright, February 2020, Mandy M. Roth
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
All books copyrighted to the author and may not be resold or given away without written permission from the author, Mandy M. Roth®.
This novel is a work of fiction. Any and all characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or events or places is merely coincidence. The book is fictional and not a how-to. As always, in real life practice good judgment in all situations. Novel intended for adults only. Must be 18 years or older to read.
Published by Raven Happy Hour, LLC
Oxford, MS 38655
www.ravenhappyhour.com
Raven Books and all affiliate sites and projects are © Copyrighted 2004—2020
Contents
Praise for Cloudy with a Chance of Witchcraft
Grimm Cove Series
Blurb
1. Poppy
2. Poppy
3. Brett
4. Poppy
5. Poppy
6. Poppy
7. Brett
8. Poppy
9. Brett
10. Poppy
11. Poppy
12. Poppy
13. Poppy
14. Poppy
15. Brett
16. Brett
17. Brett
18. Poppy
19. Poppy
20. Poppy
21. Brett
22. Poppy
23. Poppy
Sources
PWF
About the Author
Praise for Cloudy with a Chance of Witchcraft
"Mandy Roth delivers once again with a unique and fabulous paranormal spin on a second chance at love in the second half of life."--Jana DeLeon, NY Times, USA TODAY, & WSJ Bestselling Author
"Mandy M. Roth's Cloudy with a Chance of Witchcraft showcases strong women navigating life after forty with a lot of fun and unexpected paranormal speed bumps along the way!" —K.F. Breene, Wall Street Journal, USA TODAY, and Washington Post bestselling author
“Mandy M. Roth delivers in this stirring tale of a woman who’s been given a second chance, and a new life . . .as a witch. What could go wrong? You will adore these characters and want to be besties with their creator, but you’ll have to get in line. I call dibs!” –Darynda Jones, NY Times Bestselling Author
"Mandy M. Roth writes the kind of paranormal woman's fiction I want to disappear into. Who doesn't love some fated mates and a second chance at a first love? Yes, please!" - Kristen Painter, USA TODAY Bestselling Author
"Mandy M. Roth proves that friendship can last a lifetime, laughter is the best medicine, and when all else fails, making out with a hunky wolf-shifter can improve any mood. Second chances have never been so delightful.” —Robyn Peterman, NY Times and USA TODAY Bestselling Author
“Unputdownable! Mandy M. Roth knows how to weave a story with believable characters and kickass paranormal world-building. I've always been a fan of her Urban Fantasy, and now she's rocking Paranormal Women's Fiction. I want to rent a house in Grimm Cove.” —Michelle M. Pillow, NY Times and USA TODAY Bestselling Author
Dedication
To the Fab13 for weathering the storm with me and for including me in this wonderful project. Showcasing books that feature women who are forty and over has been such a treat for me. Thanks for taking this journey with me: Shannon Mayer, K.F. Breene, Michelle M. Pillow, Jana DeLeon, Kristin Painter, Denise Grove Swank, Robyn Peterman, Deanna Chase, Darynda Jones, Christine Gael, Elizabeth Hunter, and Eve Langlais.
Grimm Cove Series
Cloudy with a Chance of Witchcraft
Hexing with a Chance of Tornadoes
Spellcasting with a Chance of Spirits
Blurb
When it rains, it pours…
On the eve of my fortieth birthday, Fate has given me a second chance at the happiness I once knew in the odd Southern town of Grimm Cove. But only if I can come to terms with some rather eye-opening revelations. Supernaturals are a real thing. I'm a witch. My high school sweetheart, who happens to be the Chief of Police in Grimm Cove, is my fated mate and a wolf-shifter. Ghosts exist and can be very nosy and meddlesome. Someone is murdering witches left and right. And last but not least, my ex-husband's barely legal arm candy is taking fatal attraction to new levels of Hell.
I'm no shrinking violet, and with the help of my best friends, I'm going to live life on my terms—come Hell, high water, or magikal mishaps.
One
Poppy
California, Six Months Ago…
“I don’t love you anymore.”
The five words hung in the air at the table between my husband of nearly nineteen years and me. I knew that he’d spoken them. I’d seen his mouth move, but I couldn’t fully wrap my mind around the implications or the full weight of their meaning.
Surely, I’d heard Thomas wrong. He couldn’t have possibly said that he wasn’t in love with me anymore.
Right?
I mean, we’d been together nearly all our adult lives. He couldn’t have just magikally fallen out of love with me.
Could he?
Shock kept me from tearing up as I reached up and clutched my wire-wrapped basanite pendant that hung from a black leather strap around my neck. It had arrived in the mail the day prior and was a gift from a close friend. The pendant was supposed to help with calmness and aid with grounding energy, among other things. Right now, it wasn’t helping in the least.
The classical music playing at a level that would mask other people chewing filled the fancy restaurant he’d insisted on taking me to for a surprise dinner. When Thomas had called me from work, telling me he wanted to treat me to a night out, I’d stopped everything to be sure I was ready. And I’d been looking forward to spending time with him.
He’d been so busy with work as of late that quality time together was sparse. While he might have fallen out of love with me, he was still a vital part of my life.
I’d been working in my greenhouse when he’d phoned home, telling me to put on a fancy dress and be ready for an evening out. I’d had to use the speaker option on the phone because I’d been elbow-deep in dividing and pruning herbs. It was a messy task with the sheer number of herbs I had to handle. Prior to that, I’d been in the outside portion of my gardens, weeding and tending to my various plants and flowers. It was something I not only loved to do but was required for my business.
So despite the fact I’d been busy with tasks that needed to be done, I’d set it all aside to spend time with him. Never had I thought Thomas wanted to treat me to a night out only to tell me he wasn’t in love with me anymore.
Yet sitting across the table from him in the high-end restaurant, with the words still hanging in the air between us like a giant lead balloon, I began to make sense of it all. Normally, we met in the middle in terms of the places where we liked to eat. I was into simple choices. Nothing that would be reviewed in a fine-dining magazine. He liked fancy establishments where he could flaunt his wealth and use his perfect French. Such was the case with the one we were at now. To me, it was a place that grossly overcharged for so-so food, piled in a tower shape.
I couldn’t help but to pluck the parsley from the side of my plate and run my fingers ov
er it. Having grown up with a grandmother who fancied herself a kitchen witch, I was very aware of the supposed uses for various herbs to help push away negativity.
While I didn’t necessarily buy into that end of the many uses of herbs, I was in need of anything I could get at the moment to help with the oppressive negativity at the table.
As Thomas crossed his fork over his butter knife on his plate, I grimaced. The crossing of silverware was another affront that would have sent my grandmother into a tizzy. Right about now, I wished she were still alive so she could not only act as the emotional pillar she’d always been throughout my life, but possibly lend me a hand in cursing the man before me.
The one I’d spent half of my life with.
The one who had dragged me to the damn fancy restaurant to begin with.
The entire establishment screamed Thomas. From the ridiculously wordy menu that spent a good paragraph or more explaining one entrée, to the gentleman who had seated us, pretending like we were the King and Queen of England or something, it was all too much.
Pretentious.
That was what the place was.
And it was the kind of restaurant where talking above a low whisper didn’t go without notice.
Precisely why he’d brought me there.
In the hopes I wouldn’t cause a fuss.
Not that I was known for outbursts or anything, but I wasn’t above them when warranted. And this was more than warranted.
I knew it, and from the look on his face, so did Thomas. His expression was guarded but there was something in his gaze that smacked of smugness. Like he knew he had me right where he wanted me, trapped in a public place while he dropped the equivalent of napalm on our relationship.
Unlike my best friend Dana, I wasn’t the type of woman to cause a fuss in public. Hell, I rarely caused one in private either. Confrontation wasn’t something I thrived with, so I tried my best to avoid it, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t capable. And it didn’t mean my normally kind temperament equaled me being weak.
I wasn’t.
Thomas pulled the white linen napkin from his lap and set it to the side of his plate of half-eaten red snapper with sunflower risotto. “Poppy, did you hear me?”
I’d heard him all right. I was still struggling with what he’d said. Honestly, I was torn between breaking down in tears and throwing my plate of food at his face while shouting and making the biggest scene he’d ever borne witness to.
A slight nod was all I could manage as I reached for my water glass with a shaky hand. Suddenly I was parched. As if I’d been without water for days. The news my husband evidently didn’t love me anymore had not only taken the wind out of my sails, it had stolen the saliva from my mouth as well.
Why not, right?
I took a sip but struggled to get the small amount to go down as my stomach dropped out on me and the tiny portions of pan-seared salmon that I’d eaten threatened to pay me another visit. Would it taste better coming up than it had going down?
One could only hope.
I set the glass on the table and noticed the slightest of trembles remaining in my hand.
Thomas hadn’t even waited until we were finished with the meal before he’d tossed down the gauntlet. Wasn’t that kind of news something you delivered after cake or a decadent dessert? I mean, at least then I’d have had comfort food in front of me. Not the crap the restaurant wanted a lot of money for that lacked flavor.
Right now the only saving grace was the fact I could use the garnish to help counter the negative energy surrounding me. Then again, I’d probably need the olive oil from the bread plate, the entire saltshaker, and every bit of rosemary in the bread to make even a small dent in the amount of bad vibes Thomas had brought with him. They were hovering over us now like a black cloud.
“I don’t think you love me anymore either,” he continued, doing what he’d been known to do in the past—put words in my mouth.
After nineteen years of marriage, I knew him well, or thought I did. He was the type of person who twisted words around to suit his needs and desired outcome. And apparently, he was the type of man who was willing to throw away nineteen years of marriage without any warning.
Did I really mean that little to him? And if so, how had he managed to buffalo me into believing otherwise for so long? I was hardly what anyone would label as gullible, yet I felt like the biggest heel.
How could I have not seen it all coming?
“I think it goes without saying that I want a divorce,” he stated, as if that was the type of thing one dropped on another after having wined and dined them, claiming it was a special occasion. Since his forty-second birthday was approaching, I hadn’t thought anything of it. I even had a watch gift wrapped for him at home. I had planned to give it to him when we returned. Right now, I just wanted to cram it down his throat. “We’ll need to iron out the details on assets, and of course you can keep your little hobby.”
“Business,” I corrected, surprised I’d managed to find my voice considering the state of disbelief I was in. Not to mention the amount of negative energy hanging above us like a dark cloud, waiting to descend and swallow us both whole.
If my mother could hear my thoughts, she’d have been quick to point out I was letting my grandmother’s influence show through. That there was no such thing as negative energy or bad vibes.
For the most part, I tended to believe her, but at the moment, they sure felt real.
Ironically, for as skeptical as I was, I made my income off selling various items that would lead others to think I was a practitioner of witchcraft.
I wasn’t.
Not that witchcraft was truly real or anything, despite what my grandmother had believed while alive.
I just had an incredibly thorough understanding of certain things. All thanks to my grandmother and my formal education. And those had lent themselves nicely to what I did to make money.
My small online shop offered a variety of herbs, handmade soaps, crystals, candles, and lotions. If you asked Thomas, witchy potions had never been what one would call a windfall, but the business ran in the black. It provided me a modest income, and of course, I could have pushed to increase revenue by pouring money into advertising, but I’d been content and had more than enough business for me to handle alone.
Yet, it was nothing Thomas ever took seriously.
No shock.
Most of what I did or enjoyed was laughable to him. And he rarely paid it any mind.
Case in point, my feelings on the bombshell he’d dropped upon me. He hadn’t really cared or bothered to hear my side of it all, as noted by the fact he was still speaking. The sound of his voice apparently was all the fuel he needed to go on all damn night.
Like I was invisible.
It hit me then that this was far from the first time he’d done such a thing to me in the last several years. For some reason, I’d accepted it during all those other occasions, brushing it off like it didn’t hurt.
But it did.
It hurt a lot.
And it made me mad. So much so, I accidentally crushed the small bit of parsley as I moved it around with one finger. Soon enough I’d have it ground to a pulp if I kept going. I managed to stop but had to work to get the parsley flecks off my fingertip.
“Of course, with the twins having only just started college, that will continue to be taken care of by me. I wouldn’t expect that to fall on you,” he said with a flip of his hand in the air. The act was so dismissive that I wanted to scream out in frustration.
I didn’t.
He continued on. “Tucker and Pepper need quality educations. They are Davieses, after all, and nothing but the best is expected from them. So they’ll need to continue at Yale. It’s a Davies tradition. Tuition is well and truly out of your budget. Besides, books alone would be more than you could swing.
“Then you and I could come to a buyout arrangement for your half of the house. You have that house in South Carolina in that town�
�I can’t recall the name of it, Cove something or other—that your grandmother left you in her will when she passed. The one I’ve made sure the property tax is paid on and that someone tends to. It’s not like you’d be homeless.”
I stared blankly at him. He expected me to leave the home I’d made for us? The one I’d raised our children in? The one with marks on the mudroom wall where I’d measured the kids each year on their birthdays to be able to track their growth? The one that had their tiny handprints in the concrete of the walk path through my garden?
He had to be joking.
I ran my business out of my home. My inventory was housed there in the back shed that I’d converted over to something of a greenhouse and a workstation. My garden was there, where I grew my own herbs. My entire life was there.
Not to mention, Thomas hadn’t been the one who had covered the taxes or paid to have someone tend to the property. That had all been seen to by my grandmother prior to her passing. All Thomas had done was make sure that our joint taxes were completed. That meant including the inherited property. Nothing more. But he liked to embellish and take credit where it was not due.
My grandmother had never much cared for him, and that always confused me. Right now, I totally got her thoughts on the man.