Five Charm Fire

by Samantha Silver

  Tears welled up in my eyes, but funnily enough, they had nothing to do with finding out what my birth coven was. It was entirely because of my friends, and their support.

  “You guys,” I managed to stammer out before bursting into a fit of tears. My three best friends took me into a big group hug. I might have been born into the coven of Titan, but, much in the same way as my mom and dad weren’t biologically related to me, my true coven was that of Jupiter.

  “Seriously, Tina, I’m so happy for you,” Sara said when we pulled away. “I’m glad you’re finally getting some answers.”

  “Absolutely,” Ellie agreed.

  “And whatever this new mystery is about, we’ll help you get to the bottom of it,” Amy said. “That was some very impressive magic.”

  “Amy’s going to be jealous, since your spell worked better than hers did,” Ellie laughed. “I don’t think that’s ever happened to any of us before.”

  “I’m not jealous,” Amy protested. “Now come on, let’s cut this cake.”

  We spent the rest of the night celebrating and discussing what had happened once more, and when I finally went to bed, I was content. I knew where I had come from in the magical world. There were still questions, but at least I had a coven.

  Still, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but think of Kyran’s warning. I might have had a coven, but I still had to hide it. At least for a little while.

  As I drifted off to sleep, I thought of covens. I thought of the links that brought people together, I thought of Jack’s death, I thought of the things everyone had told me about him and how someone out there could have wanted him dead.

  And when I woke up, it clicked. I knew who had killed Jack.

  It wasn’t Jason after all.

  “We have to go to Big Rock,” I said to Ellie, Sara, and Amy as I jumped out of bed and launched myself to the kitchen, where my three roommates were happily eating leftover cake.

  “Big Rock?” Ellie asked. “Why?”

  “I know who killed Jack.”

  After making it through Amy’s lecture about why this was a bad idea and why we should inform law enforcement instead of doing anything ourselves, Ellie, Sara, and I all headed over to the portal and made our way to the home of Sean, The Terrorizer.

  His mother Savanna let us in. The house they lived in was more of an estate, very colonial-looking, and easily large enough for multiple families.

  “Sean is in the other wing,” she told us. “Please, come in.”

  I felt bad doing this in a house with Sean’s mother, but we had to confront him. I wasn’t quite sure what we would do if Sean decided to try to fight his way out of things, but that was something for the future. Besides, there were three of us, and one of him. And now that Sara was confident with her spells, she didn’t even count as a liability!

  Savanna led us down what seemed like eight different hallways before finally reaching a room with a huge set of French doors. Stepping inside, I was surprised to see a full gym setup, with dumbbells, a squat rack, a treadmill, a spin bike, and more. The rest of the house seemed so colonial that it was jarring to see such modern equipment in this room.

  “I’ll leave you alone,” Savanna said to us with a smile, closing the door behind the three of us as we looked around. Mirrors lined most of the walls, and Sean was in the back corner, doing some ab exercises with a medicine ball, obviously not having spotted us yet.

  As soon as he did so, he took the earbuds out of his ears and stood up, grabbing a water bottle off a bench and making his way toward us.

  I suddenly realized this was a very imposing place to confront a murderer. But then, maybe that was the part of me that had lived in the human world for so long. After all, what were muscles compared to magic?

  “Hey,” he said to us, flashing a grin. “What’s up?”

  “We need to talk,” I said, and Sean motioned for us to take a seat on whatever benches we could find. “We know you killed Jack.”

  I figured getting straight to the point was probably the right call. The element of surprise might be so shocking he’d admit to everything. But instead, Sean just laughed.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  That certainly wasn’t the reaction I had been expecting.

  “I’m not kidding. It was you. You were the one that beat Jack in a duel all those years ago, and he attacked you. It’s how you got the scar on your neck.”

  Sean’s face clouded over angrily, his hand automatically moving to the scar in question.

  “I’m right, aren’t I? You were the one he attacked.”

  “He was a coward. I had beaten him fair and square in the duel,” Sean admitted angrily.

  “I know. I’ve been told. No one is denying that.”

  “But I didn’t kill him. Yes, I wanted my vengeance. I wanted it in the stadium. I wanted to beat him fair and square in a broom race, and then he’d be sorry.”

  “No, he wouldn’t be,” another voice said from behind us, and we turned to see Savanna. She hadn’t left after all.

  “Mom?”

  “That boy was never going to be sorry. It was written all over him. He was the same brash, arrogant jerk who threw a cowardly spell at you all those years ago. He was a coward then, he was a coward now.”

  I turned to look at the older woman, and suddenly the pieces clicked, but this time differently.

  “You were protecting Sean,” I said. “You’ve always been about protecting your boy.”

  “I saw what that coward did to my son all those years ago. I saw the physical wounds, and the mental ones that were inflicted. I watched as Sean struggled to walk again. I watched as he turned in terror every time he heard a spell cast behind him. I knew that no matter what, that coward wasn’t going to let my son win. If Sean had beaten him in the stadium, Jack would have cast another cowardly spell, and I’d have had to go through all of that again. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “You’re from an earth coven, so naturally you used a potion,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Savanna explained. “I had made it as soon as I saw Jack was going to be competing with my son. I took it with us that night, but I didn’t know if I was going to use it. I wanted to see what kind of man Jack had grown into. After all, I wasn’t hasty. People do change.”

  “But you decided he hadn’t.”

  “Precisely. He was still a coward. He was still a pathetic little boy, but this time in a man’s body. And I wasn’t going to let him hurt my little boy again.”

  It made so much sense. Savanna had been sitting next to Jack; she would have had ample opportunity to spike his drink without anyone noticing. And she had all but told me at the competition that she would do anything for her son.

  “So what happens now?” Ellie asked. “We want you to be brought in, but we don’t want to fight you. Either of you.” She looked pointedly at Sean, who was making his way toward his wand in the corner. His mother held up her hands.

  “I want to tell my story,” she said. “It’s alright, son. Please, leave your wand alone. These young ladies have done nothing wrong. They simply sought the truth. To be honest, what I’d done has been eating at me. I know I did the right thing, and I would do it again, but I do feel for the man’s family. They deserve to know what happened to their son. And I do deserve to be punished.”

  “You can argue self-defense,” Sean said, his voice cracking. My heart went out to him. Within the span of a couple of minutes, he went from being accused of committing murder to discovering his mother had committed one on his behalf.

  Savanna smiled at him. “We will see. Whatever happens, son, I am at peace. I want to tell an Enforcer what has happened. Although I would prefer to hand myself in to anyone except Chief Enforcer Hound.”

  “That can definitely be arranged,” Ellie said. “Is the chief Enforcer here in Big Rock any good?”

  “Yes,” Savanna said. “Yes, I think I could tell my story to her.”

  �
�Then let’s go and see her,” Ellie said, moving to Savanna and taking her gently by the arm. The old witch didn’t resist at all. I followed after Ellie as Sara made her way to Sean. She put her arm around him and whispered something to him, and he followed as well.

  Together, the group of us made our way to the Enforcer’s Hall in Big Rock, and Savanna told the Chief Enforcer what had happened. She was duly arrested, and the three of us made our way back to Western Woods.

  “So that’s that,” Sara said. “I never thought Savanna would have been the one who killed Jack.”

  “Neither did I,” I admitted. “Honestly, I never even put it together until last night. It was only when I realized that Jason wasn’t the only person in that competition who came from an earth coven; there was also Sean. And then I thought of his scar, and I thought he might have done it for revenge.”

  “Instead, his mother did it, to protect him,” Ellie said. “I wonder what would have happened if she didn’t. I wonder if she was right, if Jack would have done the same thing again.”

  “I guess we’ll never know,” I answered. “Right now, it feels like there are a lot of things we’ll never know.”

  “Don’t worry,” Sara said reassuringly. “We always get to the right answer in the end. Now come on, let’s go home. After all, didn’t Kyran say he wants you to stay in Western Woods until we figure out what’s going on with your coven?”

  “Speaking of questions that don’t have answers right now,” I trailed off with a smile. I certainly had solved the first piece of the puzzle when it came to my origins. I knew what coven I came from, and I had even managed to get away with a visit to Kilokilo.

  Now I just had to find the answers to all the questions that had arisen since that visit. Luckily for me, I had the best friends in the world to help me do that.

  * * *

  Book 6: Six Ways to Spellday: When a local vampire turns up dead, and one of Ellie’s coworkers is accused of the crime, the girls know they need to get involved and clear the innocent fairy’s name. But as they get closer to the truth, Tina begins to suspect that not all is as it seems. And why does she constantly have this feeling that she’s being followed? Could it have something to do with her newfound discovery that she’s from the coven of Titan?

  Click or tap here to pre-order Six Ways to Spellday now (available July 10th, 2019)

  Also by Samantha Silver

  First of all, I wanted to thank you for reading this book. I well and truly hope you enjoyed reading this book as much as I loved writing it.

  If you enjoyed Five Charm Fire I’d really appreciate it if you could take a moment and leave a review for the book on Amazon, to help other readers find the book as well.

  You can also sign up to my newsletter to receive an email every time I release a new book. To sign up for my newsletter, click here now.

  Want to read more of Tina’s adventures? The sixth book in the Western Woods Mystery series, Six Ways to Spellday, is now available for preorder on Amazon, set for release on July 10, 2019. Click here to preorder it now.

  Other Western Woods Mysteries

  Back to Spell One (Western Woods Mystery #1)

  Two Peas in a Potion (Western Woods Mystery #2)

  Three’s a Coven (Western Woods Mystery #3)

  Four Leaf Clovers (Western Woods Mystery #4)

  Six Ways to Spellday (Western Woods Mystery #6)

  Willow Bay Witches Mysteries

  The Purr-fect Crime (Willow Bay Witches #1)

  Barking up the Wrong Tree (Willow Bay Witches #2)

  Just Horsing Around (Willow Bay Witches #3)

  Lipstick on a Pig (Willow Bay Witches #4)

  A Grizzly Discovery (Willow Bay Witches #5)

  Sleeping with the Fishes (Willow Bay Witches #6)

  Get your Ducks in a Row (Willow Bay Witches #7)

  Busy as a Beaver (Willow Bay Witches #8)

  Magical Bookshop Mysteries

  Alice in Murderland (Magical Bookshop Mystery #1)

  Murder on the Oregon Express (Magical Bookshop Mystery #2)

  The Very Killer Caterpillar (Magical Bookshop Mystery #3)

  Death Quixote (Magical Bookshop Mystery #4)

  Pride and Premeditation (Magical Bookshop Mystery #5)

  Wuthering Homicides (Magical Bookshop Mystery #6)

  Moonlight Cove Mysteries

  Witching Aint’s Easy (Moonlight Cove Mystery #1)

  Witching for the Best (Moonlight Cove Mystery #2)

  Thank your Lucky Spells (Moonlight Cove Mystery #3)

  A Perfect Spell (Moonlight Cove Mystery #4)

  California Witching Mysteries

  Witches and Wine (California Witching Mystery #1)

  Poison and Pinot (California Witching Mystery #2)

  Merlot and Murder (California Witching Mystery #3)

  Cassie Coburn Mysteries

  Poison in Paddington (Cassie Coburn Mystery #1)

  Bombing in Belgravia (Cassie Coburn Mystery #2)

  Whacked in Whitechapel (Cassie Coburn Mystery #3)

  Strangled in Soho (Cassie Coburn Mystery #4)

  Stabbed in Shoreditch (Cassie Coburn Mystery #5)

  Killed in King’s Cross (Cassie Coburn Mystery #6)

  Ruby Bay Mysteries

  Death Down Under (Ruby Bay Mystery #1)

  Arson in Australia (Ruby Bay Mystery #2)

  The Killer Kangaroo (Ruby Bay Mystery #3)

  About the Author

  Samantha Silver lives in British Columbia, Canada, along with her husband and a little old doggie named Terra. She loves animals, skiing and of course, writing cozy mysteries.

  You can connect with Samantha online here:

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