by Morgana Best
Dizzy Spells
(The Kitchen Witch, Book 2)
Copyright © 2015 by Morgana Best
All Rights Reserved
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy from your favorite ebook retailer. Thank you for respecting the author’s hard work.
* * *
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The personal names have been invented by the author, and any likeness to the name of any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book may contain references to specific commercial products, process or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, specific brand-name products and/or trade names of products, which are trademarks or registered trademarks and/or trade names, and these are property of their respective owners. Morgana Best or her associates, have no association with any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, specific brand-name products and / or trade names of products.
By this act
And words of rhyme
Trouble not
These books of mine
With these words I now thee render
Candle burn and bad return
3 times stronger to its sender.
(Ancient Celtic)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Connect with Morgana
Next Book in this Series
Other books by Morgana Best
About Morgana Best
Chapter 1
Thyme held two bags over her head. “You had better get in there, Amelia. Those sales won’t last forever.”
“I’m good, thanks.” I smiled at my friend, who also happened to be my employee, as we left the store window and started down the busy sidewalk. The day was absolutely perfect for window-shopping, with a light breeze carrying along the scent of old English roses and gardenias from the local florist. All in all, it was a nice, pleasant shopping day.
“You need to get something to commemorate the occasion,” Thyme insisted. “Your carrot cake was almost edible today. You’ll be baking cakes before you know it.”
I shook my head. “What do you mean? It was as hard as a rock. Even the knife couldn’t go through it. When I dropped it on the floor, it made a crack in the concrete.”
Thyme beamed. “But you didn’t set anything on fire!”
The trouble was, she was genuinely pleased about that. I’m not a good cook. In fact, it’s a wonder that the government hadn’t hired me to make me produce bio-hazardous waste with my baking. After all, I had sent my ex-boyfriend to the hospital with my nachos, and had been evicted from my apartment for the constant fires caused by my attempts at baking.
Yet by some strange twist of fate, I had been left a home and a cake shop by an aunt I had never met. I was expected to take my toxic waste and somehow make it edible enough to sell to customers. Real customers. It didn’t help that a man had died during a cake tasting just after I arrived. I did have the consolation of knowing it wasn’t the cakes that did him in, but I knew it would be a long day before cakes I myself had baked would be on display, unless it was in a museum of horrors. And ironically, being the owner of a cake shop was not the strangest thing that had happened to me since I arrived in Bayberry Creek.
“Hey, has that always been there?” I pointed to a sign I hadn’t noticed before. The swirling, smoky lettering, along with golden stars painted in the center, displayed the words, ‘Madam Dianne’s Shop of Mystery’.
“Oh, come on!” Thyme let out a frustrated whine and wrinkled her nose at the sign. “They leave this spot vacant for almost a decade, and they fill it with one of these jokers? They could have put in a health food shop. At least the herbs and special salts would have been useful.”
I gazed into the window. “Is it that bad?” I at once jumped back when I came eye to eye with a skull. It took me a minute to notice the stump of a wick sticking out of its creepy painted face. There were stuffed crows along with several black roses scattered all over the display. I could also see books, crystals, glass displays full of jewelry, and various tarot cards.
“Very bad.” Thyme sighed and shook her head. “These people are harmless, but some people take a touch of intuition and go way out there with it. They give our kind a bad reputation. As if Hollywood wasn’t already doing a good enough job at that!”
“So this person isn’t, well…?” My voice trailed away. I was still trying to come to grips with the fact that magic existed, and with the fact that I was supposed to be practically overflowing with ‘raw natural talent’ as Thyme put it at least once a week.
“The real deal?” Thyme asked, as she glanced around to see if anyone was in hearing range. “If she is, she doesn’t know it. Take another look at her shop and tell me what you feel, compared to Ruprecht’s shop.”
I looked inside the shop again, bringing Glinda’s, Ruprecht’s books and antique store, to mind. It was like night and day, come to think of it. Where his shop was cluttered in a pleasant, lived-in way, this one screamed over-the-top and commercial with an artificial edge to it. Bright plush furniture and heavy velvet tablecloths with tacky stars, moons, and tassels were arranged everywhere. It was nothing like Ruprecht’s homely, cozy shop at all.
“A mess,” I said, earning a nod of acknowledgment.
“Excuse any clutter you see,” a throaty, raspy voice crooned.
I jumped and turned from the window. A woman was trying to lounge alluringly on the trashcan right by the doorway. Her jet black curls screamed Halloween prop wig, and she was wearing layers upon layers of skirts to mimic a gypsy look, complete with a corset straining in its bindings around her ample belly. Her giant hoop earrings constantly bounced on her shoulders as she moved. I stared at the fire-engine-red lipstick and bright blue eye makeup. There seemed to be more eye makeup than actual eyes.
“We have traversed a great distance from our ancestral home to offer the guidance your spirit seeks,” the woman said dramatically as she waved her hand before her.
“Thanks, but our spirits have GPS. No directions necessary,” Thyme said with a giggle.
“Perhaps,” the woman said thoughtfully, “you might be able to fool yourself. But the great Madam Dianne, she knows. The spirits whisper to me of your troubles.”
I felt my stomach clench as I instinctively tucked my purse under my arm. The woman looked nice enough. She was certainly eccentric, but nothing about her screamed that she was any sort of threat. Yet there was something about her theatrics that felt like slime had dripped down over me and soaked into my clothes. It was nothing like when I had met Ruprecht, Thyme, and the others.
“So how long have you been in town?” Thyme said in
a pleasant voice as she crossed her arms in front of her. “I didn’t know anyone had moved in.”
“I’ve only been here a short time,” the woman said, seeming taken aback by the question. She did not seem prepared to give a dramatic answer this time. “Come in; come in. Madam Dianne shall tell you what the fates have in store for you!”
Thyme waved off the invitation. “Thanks, but I don’t like spoilers. They keep life interesting. My friend and I have someplace to be anyway.”
“Come now,” Madam Dianne scolded in a gentle, encouraging tone, as if she were trying to reassure a young child. “There is no reason to fear the spirits. They are but messengers from worlds beyond. You need not fear the opinions of others over receiving a glimpse of your destiny, do you? You have a spirit right by your shoulder. Grandparents perhaps? They send you their love and blessings.”
I tried to keep a straight face. Thyme was the opposite of fearful. She didn’t concern herself with town opinion unless it had to do with the cakes.
I stiffened nervously as the woman trained her eyes on me. “The spirits also tell Madam Dianne that you should make peace with your mother. You need not work so hard for her approval. She’ll come to understand that your life is your own, eventually. Your spouse, though, you should keep an eye on. He keeps a dark secret from you.”
“I’m not married,” I blurted out, furrowing my brow at the randomness of the prediction. “And my mom passed away years ago.”
The woman’s eyes widened slightly. She gave a strained smile as she collected herself. “Ah, yes, yes. This I see. You and your partner do spend so much time together. A ring must be very close in your future. Sometimes the flow of time can be difficult to interpret.”
“I’m sure,” I said skeptically, suddenly over my initial nervousness. I was beginning to understand why Thyme was so unhappy to see the shop. If I had met this woman before Thyme’s quiet little circle, I would have spent weeks trying to get past the idea that they were trying to scam me. Accepting magic had been difficult enough when they were acting normal, and that was even with my own house trapping unwelcome houseguests and spitting them out on the front yard.
The woman apparently mistook my thoughtful expression for curiosity, because she promptly trained her attention on me. “Come!” She waved her hand at the door with a flourish. “This street is far too loud and distracting. There are too many auras to get a clear reading. We’ll consult the cards to find out the nature of this secret you must find. Madam Dianne will do it free, just for today. I’m also offering a discount on amber necklaces. They drive away negative karma.”
“No, thanks.” I gave the woman a polite nod and turned to leave. I just wanted to get some lunch and unwind from the morning rush. I didn’t feel like listening to a woman in clown paint and a bargain bin gypsy costume fabricate my future with some imaginary lover. I let out a gasp as an icy cold hand clamped down on my wrist.
“You must hear what I have to say.” The woman stared at me with wide eyes. There was something in the tone that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “There is great trouble coming your way!”
Thyme carefully removed the woman’s hand from my arm. The woman didn’t have a chance to speak, as Thyme was already pulling me down the street.
“Gracious, she should have made it a drama club,” Thyme said with irritation as we started for a nearby café. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I assured her as I glanced over my shoulder. The woman was still watching us from the doorway like a spook from a bad horror movie. “That was an experience.”
“Dead grandparents, difficult mother-daughter relationships, and men who hide something from their partners—talk about pandering to clichés. If she was going to do a cold read, she should have read up on how to do it first.”
“A cold read?” I was new to magic and the paranormal.
“It’s a trick used by stage artists,” Thyme explained. “There are actually psychic people, as you know, but there are also fakes. Fakes use cold reads to make it look like they are reading you. The good ones make a general statement and watch your body language. In fact, it’s all about body language and calculated guesses.”
I looked at her blankly, and Thyme laughed, “Okay. How are you today?”
“Fine.” My response was automatic. It had been a busy morning, and it was hard not to be affected by the weird encounter with the strange woman. I frowned and rubbed my temples.
Thyme laughed. “You say you’re fine, but there is great unease around you. You have met with an unusual occurrence today, have you not?”
“I get it now. Cold read?”
“Yep. That’s the part where you would’ve blurted out your day or given clues that you were stressed, like you just did. They get a feel for your personality based on how you talk, what you say, and how you move, and then give you prompts. They’re a cross between psychologists and body language interpreters. You never even realize that you’re the one filling in the blanks for them.”
“So it’s fake?” I was a little disappointed at the idea that the amazing reads I had seen on TV might be a game.
Thyme shook her head. “No. Intuition is real. The point is that not everyone who claims to have psychic ability actually does.”
“She sounded awfully convincing about trouble coming, though.” I was uneasy. As outlandish as the woman was, something about that moment really bothered me.
“Don’t worry about it. It was just a bunch of badly crafted drama.” Thyme waved a hand dismissively and gave me a wide smile. “And my grandparents don’t need to bother spirits to say they love me. They email me every other week.”
I grinned at that, but something about the woman’s words kept nagging at me. There is great trouble coming your way.
“Seriously, don’t worry about it,” Thyme said again when she saw my worried expression. “She was wrong about everything else. How accurate could a drama queen in a cheap Cher wig be?”
Chapter 2
When I arrived back at my house, the crazy woman’s words were still whirling around in my mind. What did Madam Dianne mean when she said that something terrible was looming ahead of me?
I walked up the pathway toward my front door. As I passed the large lilac tree in the front yard, I saw what looked like a hand jutting out into view on the porch.
I caught my breath, the woman’s words foremost in my mind. I was scared to get a glimpse of what was waiting for me at the front door. With the bushes obstructing most of the porch, I couldn’t see enough of the object to figure out what I was staring at from a distance. When I was just a few steps away, a corpse came into view.
I stumbled backward in horror. A motionless body lay sprawled out in front of the door to my house.
I gingerly approached the body, my heart beating fast. At that moment, my two cats ran up to me and meowed. Hawthorn looked up at me and hissed before looking back down at the body. The ginger and white cat, Willow, hissed at the body and then darted off into the bushes.
I forced myself to look at the body. The pale, bluish tone of the body’s skin caused my skin to crawl. I reached for the man’s wrist and touched it with two fingers. There was no pulse, but the body was so cold that it sent shivers down my spine.
I shook my head and tried to think what to do next. The first thing that crossed my mind was that my house might have killed the man. Perhaps he was robbing the house, and the house spat him out a little too violently. I shuddered at the thought. And what about the cats? They were reacting weirdly. “What did you do now?” I asked the house.
Obviously, I had to call the cops, but I figured I should get help from my neighbor, Camino, first. If the house had something to do with it, I needed to speak to her before the cops looked around.
I took off next door to the elderly woman’s home. When the front door opened, Camino stood there, her hair up in curlers as she greeted me with a big smile. “Hello, there. Wait, what’s wrong?” She motioned for m
e to come inside.
I shook my head and swallowed the lump in my throat. “I just got home and found a man lying on my front porch. His skin was pale and cold. He doesn’t have a pulse. He’s dead! What if the house did it?” I covered my face with my hands and then massaged my temples.
Camino, however, seemed to take the news calmly. “Well, I can assure you that your house had nothing to do with that,” she said slowly. “Houses don’t kill people. Not even yours.”
“Maybe it’s not just the house,” I said with mounting hysteria. “What if the cats did it?”
Camino shook her head. “Your familiars certainly aren’t to blame, either,” she said. “They are spiritual creatures that can sense things that you and I just don’t understand until it’s too late. They were probably watching over the body.”
I sighed. “Well, who is that man and why is he on my front porch?”
“That’s something that I couldn’t possibly answer. Have you ever met this man before?” she asked me. “Perhaps he had business for the store or something?”
“I don’t believe so,” I replied. “Anyway, what do we do now?”
Camino frowned. “You haven’t called the police?”
I shook my head, feeling like an idiot. “No, I wanted to speak to you first. I was worried that the house did it. I mean, what if he was robbing the place and the house overreacted?”
“I’m sure the house didn’t do it,” she said, “but let’s go back and have a look before you call them.”
We got back to find the cats were still on the porch, but rather than being calm and quiet like earlier, Hawthorn was happily chasing Willow around, leaping to and fro as if the body wasn’t even there.
“At first, all I could see was what looked like a hand sticking out. I guess I’m happy that it wasn’t just a hand, though,” I added.
“Did you happen to see any marks or anything on the body?” Camino asked, crouching beside the corpse.