by Luna Joya
Tides of Time
Luna Joya
TIDES OF TIME
By
Luna Joya
Copyright © 2019 Luna Joya
Edited by Tee Tate.
Cover Design by Mibl Art.
All stock photos licensed appropriately.
Published in the United States by City Owl Press.
www.cityowlpress.com
For information on subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher at [email protected]
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent and permission of the publisher.
Praise for the Works of Luna Joya
“A witch and an FBI agent find love while solving a years-old murder in the wickedly delightful second paranormal romance in Joya’s Legacy series. The anticipation is delicious, and the eventual romance is well worth the wait. This sexy love story will entice longtime paranormal fans and draw in new readers.” — Publishers Weekly
“A magical debut full of unique, complex characters, fabulous sisterhood and an adorable dog. Who could ask for anything more?” — Felicia Grossman, Historical Romance Author
“Ms. Joya does an exceptional job of world building in a way that sucked me in and wouldn't let me go. I felt as though I had stepped onto the pages of the book.” — BookAddict25
“Tides of Time was one of those reads that kept my hands locked around my e-reader and my butt firmly planted in my chair. This book promises witchy mystery and romance, and it doesn’t disappoint.” — Evie Drae, Author of Queer Romance
“A HOT romance with excellent chemistry between the characters, and a paranormal aspect that was both intriguing and contained a unique spin on magical powers.” — Amber K. Bryant, Award-Winning Author
“Highly enjoyable. I was engaged from beginning to end. I was delighted in the different ways the author chose to incorporate magic into the book. These characters were well written. I hope to read more about these witchy sisters! I loved the chemistry between Cami and Sam. A wonderful debut for Luna Joya.” — The Literary Vixen
To Patrick,
My Happily Ever After
Contents
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Keep Reading the Legacy Series!
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
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Sneak Peek of Magic Touch
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
About the Publisher
Additional Titles
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Don’t miss more of the Legacy series with book two, MAGIC TOUCH, available now, and find more from Luna Joya at www.lunajoya.com
A witch with secrets, her reluctant protector, and a murder to solve. What could possibly go wrong?
Delia Donovan has everything under control. Keep her family’s magical secrets hidden? No problem. Rein in her own witchy powers? Easy. Join a clandestine FBI task force to solve a cold case murder? She’s got it covered. But ignoring the intense sexual chemistry she has with the cocky jerk who heads her security detail? Well, that’s another story.
The last thing Mark Cavan wants on his team is a supernatural Lawyer Barbie who traipses through crime scenes in designer clothes and stilettos. But he needs a magical asset to solve the case, and Delia is the perfect witch for the job.
He’ll just have to somehow ignore his growing attraction to the infuriating woman. Seems doable…right?
It’s not long before Mark learns there’s more to Delia than meets the eye—and Delia realizes that falling for Mark would be the easiest—and most complicated—thing she’s ever done.
But they’ll need to put their feelings on the back burner if they want to catch the murderer…before they become the next victims.
BUY NOW!
Chapter One
Magic and family drama sucked Cami in the same as riptides. Sometimes, she could spot them coming on the horizon. Other mornings, like today, they swept her away without warning. Such was life in a legacy witch lineage with all its rules and expectations.
She pushed through the staff door of the emergency animal hospital and blinked against the blinding Southern California sun after another all-night shift. She scanned her surroundings as she’d done everywhere for the last year, balancing her backpack on her hip so she could fumble through it. Had she forgotten her sunglasses? She jumped at the approaching squeal of tires, her scattered nerves fraying. Her older sister’s Mini Cooper skidded to a halt less than three feet away from where she stood.
She scrubbed her hand over her face. Why was Delia here? Shouldn’t she be at work? Her courthouse was an hour away in Los Angeles traffic. So why was she here shoving open the passenger door?
“What the heck, Deals?”
Delia met her gaze. “Mina’s missing.”
Just like that–riptide.
Cami jumped into the car and dumped her bag on the floorboard.
“More like she’s temporarily lost.” Swinging her sleek blonde ponytail over her shoulder, Delia slammed the car in reverse and shot out of the parking lot. “She slipped unsupervised.”
Cami sucked in a breath. Their youngest sister’s power was slipping through time. Mina’s body would move in the location as it was today, but her mind traveled to see a different time through another person in the same geographic space. Scenery changes after the psychic impression made for perilous slips. “Where? When?”
“She toured a historical mansion last night courtesy of a USC alum.” Delia spat the last words.
“Focus.” They didn’t have time for sibling or college rivalries. “Mina’s slip?”
“Right.” Delia shifted gears and raced down side streets toward the ocean. “She followed a woman named Sunny Sol out of the mansion. I ran a search on the name. It came back to an actress from the 1920s and ’30s. Mina trailed Sol along the bluffs down to the beach.”
“The bluffs?” Panic shot through Cami, and her own powers thrummed in response to the strong emotion. Mina had chased an actress from old Hollywood along steep cliffs? Mudsl
ides and falling rocks could’ve easily changed the landscape over the decades. Mina wouldn’t have been able to distinguish the past surroundings from her present ones.
“Don’t get me started.” Delia switched lanes. She barely squeezed between a bus and a truck.
Cami grabbed the handle above her head. “We can’t find Mina if you get us killed with your crazy driving.” Her older half-sister might be the ultimate protector, but Delia drove as though her little race car had its own force field.
“Mina sent a 911 text fifteen minutes ago. Luckily, I was already in Santa Monica interviewing a witness for a trial next week.” Delia slid a look her way. “I knew your ringer would be off so I called her back.”
Cami spent every hour either at the animal hospital, cramming for board certification, in the ocean, or sleeping. She’d graduated with honors from the top veterinary medicine program in the country last year. Her psychic affinity for communicating with animals helped, but she still had to put in the work. Her vet residency didn’t leave much free time. As a deputy district attorney, Delia understood long hours.
“I figured I could catch you before you left work.” Delia streaked through a yellow light. “Mina’s phone died before she told me where she was. She forgot to charge it.”
Typical. Mina could be flighty handling the basics of life.
Delia swung a hard left onto the downhill ramp for the Pacific Coast Highway, locally known as the PCH. “You’ll have to use your call to find her.”
No. Cami’s chest tightened. She didn’t tap into her elemental magic, and there was no way she could tell her sisters why. She—the quintessential “good girl” Donovan sister—had broken the first rule of magic. There’d be no coming back if others discovered why she’d really walked away from her element.
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t the only way without spending hours driving up and down the coast hoping to find her.” Delia’s stone-faced glare gave nothing away, but her voice had softened. “You and I don’t know spell craft. There’s only one person who could whip up a locator spell in an instant, and I didn’t think you’d want me to call her.”
“Ama.” Cami sighed. She couldn’t call Ama. Her mother, a powerful spellcaster, would ask too many questions if she discovered Mina had chased a historical psychic vision alone. Mina didn’t need a one-way ticket to magical mommy guilt trips. It was bad enough Delia knew. “We’re not telling Ama.”
She fingered the pendant at her neck, similar to the one all four sisters wore. Ama had spelled the charms to warn them of danger. Hopefully, Mina had hers on.
“She called from the shore. I could hear waves and seagulls.” Delia swerved into the turning lane and pulled into a beachfront parking lot. She stopped the car. “I know you and your element had some kind of a falling out a year ago.”
Each of the four sisters had a call to an element. Cami’s was water. She could manipulate it, communicate with it, cause damage with it.
It hadn’t been a simple breakup with her element. She had nearly killed a man with her connection to water. So much for harm none with magic. While she’d gone to the beach daily since then and surrounded herself with its comfort, she hadn’t let herself give in to her power. Not when she’d abused and then refused it.
But her sister needed her. She swallowed back the fear of what might come if she tapped into that big source again.
She unbuckled the seatbelt and tugged her stained scrubs off, stripping down to a threadbare graphic T-shirt and undies. She wadded the work clothes into her backpack, slid a pair of shorts on, and switched Crocs for flip flops.
Delia opened her door.
Cami stopped her. “Why don’t you keep your couture, ‘dry clean only’ self in the car?” She didn’t want anyone witnessing her return to her element, because what if it all went wrong?
Delia paused with her hand on the door. “Want some privacy?”
She bobbed her head, checked her necklace, and climbed out. The ocean breeze snagged her short curls. “Give me five minutes.”
“Hey, Cams?”
She ducked into the open car window.
“If you can’t do this, it’s okay.” Delia unlocked her phone screen. “I’ll keep trying in case Mina finds a way to charge her phone.”
Cami took a deep breath. “I’ve got it.” If only her voice hadn’t wavered.
Stepping onto the sand, she slipped off her shoes and strode toward the water’s edge. She wouldn’t risk this but for her sisters.
While she longed for her elemental magic to soothe and guide her, the very same source could rebuke her for misusing her power. She feared its condemnation. It’d be too much, but Mina needed her help. She leaned down, sweeping her fingers into foam on the wet sand.
Fighting doubt and worry, she reached for her magic and sent a tentative call to her element. The ocean responded in warm welcome without judgment, and she forced back the urge to tap fully into her power.
Oh, how she’d missed this.
She wanted to walk into the waves and savor each precious lap against her skin, to let the water bathe away the fear and darkness she’d carried. The need to link to that tidal power pulled her in, promising absolution she didn’t deserve. She had to focus on Mina before she lost herself to the water’s beckoning homecoming.
She pushed past the water’s thrum of longing and expectation until her power conjured images of Mina waiting at the water’s edge further north. Cami breathed a sigh of relief and gratitude along the connection.
“Thank you,” she whispered and said a reluctant goodbye. With a single glance over her shoulder, she hurried back to the car and jumped inside. “Found her. Head north.”
Delia tore out of the lot and zipped across three lanes of traffic. She smacked the steering wheel with her palms when they got stuck at another red light at the busiest intersection on the PCH in Pacific Palisades.
Gas stations, grocery stores, and a restaurant jammed together in the precious real estate across the street from the shore. Cami craned her neck to check the signs as they passed through the intersection and accelerated. Corraza’s Restaurant.
“If Mina has slipped, she’ll be starving.” Each sister’s magic had a price. Mina’s had always been hunger. “We can head back here if they’re open.”
“I’ll check once we find her.”
They passed beneath a pedestrian bridge next to a steep set of stairs cut into the bluff.
“Here,” Cami said. “She’s close by, near the water’s edge.”
Delia flipped a U-turn in the parking area of a large Spanish-style building with arched entrances and windows below a hexagon-shaped center. “Go. I’ll catch up with you.”
Cami jumped out of the car and sprinted for the water. Her power called to her, directing her. She hopped the concrete barrier and raced across the sand, searching for her sister. Perched on a rock jetty, Mina stared over the waves.
Cami called out, relieved when her sister turned with clear eyes, not the dazed obsidian dilation of magic.
Mina ran a shaky hand through her hair. “You came for me.”
“Always.” Cami stooped to pick up her sister’s hooded sweatshirt and sandals tossed nearby. She studied the strain in Mina’s eyes, the dark smudges beneath. “Were you out here all night trailing Sunny Sol?”
Mina took her hoodie and gave a weak smile. “Hazards of slipping. I should’ve known better than to be curious.”
“When I think of what could’ve happened to you.” Cami slid her eyes closed.
“I couldn’t resist, and then I got pulled in too deep.”
She knew all about the overload when magic overwhelmed logic.
Mina’s lips twisted. “Do you ever want to be normal? No elemental powers? No psychic ability?”
Cami wanted a lot of things: to stop looking over her shoulder; to have a good man adore her without going crazy stalker abusive on her; to have her hard work correct the bad choices she’d made so she wouldn’t doubt every new one;
to not have to worry about their family’s magic.
She nudged Mina. “Come on. Let’s go save Delia from ruining whatever designer shoes she’s wearing. We spotted a place to eat a mile back. Maybe they’ve got pancakes.”
Minutes later, Cami half-dragged her younger sister through the glass doors into Corraza’s Restaurant to find a table while Delia parked the car. The swift change from bright sunlight to the darker interior had Cami blinking behind sunglasses she’d borrowed from Delia.
If only the dimmed lighting and dark glasses could excuse her gawking at the man behind the front podium. All muscles and tanned skin, he looked up from his notes, and his gaze locked on her face.
The exhaustion of back-to-back shifts must have caught up to her. Or the cost of her magic decided to crash into her as it did for Delia, who’d black out from using too much.
Cami bit back a groan. She’d drawn so hard on her psychic ability to connect with animals last night and then her elemental magic this morning, she should’ve expected her powers would demand replenishment. Her magic craved fulfillment from a hot guy. This hot guy. She’d probably leaked the desire all over him. She swallowed, shoving down the need as best she could with the powers calling for collection of a debt owed.