Witch of a Neighbor
Witch Reborn 6
By Belinda White
Copyright 2021 Belinda White
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Witch of a Neighbor (Witch Reborn, #6)
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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
Epilogue: A New Beginning
Other Books by Belinda White
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Chapter 1
Orville had been acting odd all night.
Even through Nancy and Mason’s little after-dinner magic show. He usually perked up for those.
As much as I hated to admit it, the shows were worth perking up for. The kids were getting good. Very, very good.
The trouble was that I could see through their thinly veiled plot. The shows weren’t just about entertaining the family and showing off their skills. No. They were a master stroke of manipulation.
I’d like to say it wasn’t working one whit on me, but I couldn’t and be truthful about it. The kids were putting so much effort into this whole thing. It was kind of hard to see how little payoff they got from all that work.
Still, I wasn’t quite ready for them to go public with their show just yet. I had a terrible feeling all of our lives would change once I agreed to let that happen.
Truth be told, I kind of liked my life just the way it was. As selfish as that may have been of me.
Our farmhouse was not small. At the current time, it housed not only Orville and me with my adopted daughter, Nancy, but also a whole other family in the rest of the upstairs space. The second floor was the kids’ rooms, to include Baby Pearl’s nursery. Each child (Nancy, Baby Pearl, and Mason) had their very own room. And there was a sitting room, a playroom, and two bathrooms for them to share. Plenty of space for kids to be kids.
Mason and Baby Pearl’s mom, Kimberly, and her new beau, Gray, spread out in the newly renovated attic. The kids spent a lot of time up there with them, too. They made a nice little family group.
But most nights, like tonight, we all shared an evening meal together. No sense in both me and Kimberly cooking big meals, now was there? Not when we could share the task and only cook half the time. Plus, the family time was nice.
Yes. I considered us all one big, happy family.
But as I said, my house was not a small one. Each floor was pretty well insulated, too. Which made Orville’s waiting for the others to go upstairs even more worrisome.
I could tell he had something to share with me. From his failure to do so yet, I could also tell that it would not be something I wanted to hear. The fact that he waited until the children had all gone upstairs to bed was another warning factor.
It must be bad news, indeed. Either that or Orville simply wasn’t sure how I was going to react to the news. Or, quite possibly, both.
By the time the two of us settled onto the sofa, I couldn’t take it any longer.
“I really wish you’d just spill the beans and get it over with. You should know by now that I’m not going to bite you.”
He put down the remote, giving it a last, sad look. “It isn’t me I’m worried about.”
“Then who? One of the girls?”
“No. Not family this time.”
I felt my shoulders drop. That was a huge relief to me. As long as it wasn’t family related, whatever it was, I could deal with it. Or so I thought at the time.
Raising an eyebrow to show him I was still waiting, I crossed my arms and just stared at him. The ball was in his court.
“You know I ran into town this afternoon to grab some fishing supplies, right?”
“I do. I can also tell stalling when I see and hear it, just so you know.”
He took a deep breath. “All right. But remember, you asked for it.” He still hesitated another second or two, though. “You know the old Wilson place down the road?”
I cocked my head at him. He knew full well the answer to that. I’d had my eye on that property for years. It butted right up against our magical hilltop out back. I’d been wanting to expand that area forever, it seemed.
My breath quickened. “Is there a for sale sign up? Should I call Cecil?”
He swallowed. “Calling Cecil will not be an option I’m afraid.”
I blinked at him. Old man Cecil Wilson and I had a very long-standing deal. If he ever decided to sell out, I’d be given first dibs on the purchase. Unfortunately, we’d made it a gentleman’s agreement over a promise and a handshake rather than a fully drawn-up contract.
Somehow, I thought I was about to hear how that was going to come back and bite me on the hind side. I wasn’t wrong, either.
“Don’t tell me,” I said.
He shrugged and reached for the remote. I smacked it out of his hand. “You know full well that’s just an expression of speech. What happened to Cecil?”
It was a good question. Normally, with a small town like Wind’s Crossing, I’d have heard the moment a friend, or shoot even an enemy, got sick or passed away. But Cecil had moved to his daughter’s house in Oak Hill a couple of years ago. Sadly, we’d lost touch in the time since.
Mostly because his daughter hated me. And, no, hate was not too strong of a word for her feelings toward me. She’d told me that enough times since our initial little disagreement. Kelly Wilson was not one that was overly fond of burying the hatchet. She preferred to carry all of hers with her at all times. Just in case she ever had the opportunity to use one of them.
My sinking heart was telling me that might just be the case now.
Orville reached over and pulled me in close, making sure to contain both my arms in the hug. “He died, Opal. Two months ago. And no, his daughter never thought to announce it to the Wind’s Crossing Press.”
Just like the self-centered girl. Why give his old friends and acquaintances time to pay their respects? Things like that wouldn’t matter one whit to that girl. A shame, really.
I nodded slowly, even though by now, I had a pretty good intuition about what Orville’s end all news was going to be. The Ravenswind witch’s intuition really couldn’t be beaten. “Go on with it, then. You passed the old Wilson place...”
“It’s been sold, Opal. I know you had a deal with old Cecil, but once he died, I guess that deal ended. At least Kelly Wilson seemed to think so.”
She would now, wouldn’t she?
I took a few
deep breaths and tried to get a grip on my feelings. It wasn’t easy. I’d wanted that property for a very, very long time. I couldn’t hold out for another owner to give it up.
But maybe I wouldn’t have to. Just maybe if I offered enough of an incentive, I could buy it from the new owner before they’d even moved in. That kind of thing happened often enough, surely.
“Do you know who bought it?”
He nodded. “I do.” And that’s right where he left it, too. Okay, so now my worry was ratcheting up a notch again. Apparently, the bad news hadn’t just been centered on the selling of the property. It also included the person who had bought it.
“Who?”
“Patience Goodheart.”
Well, crapsnackles. Double, possibly even triple crapsnackles.
In another time and place, Patience and I might have been friends. Good friends. But I rather thought that possibility flew out the window when her daughter went to jail for killing two men (and trying to do the same to me, mind you) all to keep Orville and me from getting married.
The daughter had decided Orville was meant for her. And she’d been willing to kill multiple people to make that happen, too. Not the sanest of people, Trixie.
I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I reached over Orville to pick up the remote and hand it to him. “You might as well put something on to watch. I will not be good company tonight. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.”
“I rather thought that might be the case,” he said. But he didn’t turn the television on, either. “You need to talk it out?”
“Maybe tomorrow. Tonight, I just want to think on things for a bit alone.” I stood, then bent down to kiss him. “Goodnight, Orville.”
“Goodnight, Opal.” He hesitated, his expression turning to one of worry. “You, um, aren’t planning on casting any Karma spells tonight, are you?”
I gave him the sweetest smile I was capable of at the moment. “No, dear.” His expression cleared. A little too soon, I was afraid.
“I don’t have the supplies I need for that tonight.”
THE NEXT MORNING, I heard the alarm go off and Orville start to stir. I couldn’t see the proceeding movement, as I was already up and in the next room working.
Not a good time to let the grass grow under my feet. Not if I had any chance at all of stopping that sale before it was completed.
Yes. Orville had been under the impression that the sale was final. But was it really? That was what I intended to find out today. And then, I planned to take it from there.
In other words, I had a plan of action in place. The start of one, anyway. The only problem was the waiting part. To keep myself busy, I’d already cleaned the downstairs of the entire farmhouse. Well, everything but vacuuming. That just didn’t seem all that fair to the others. After all, they weren’t the ones having trouble sleeping, were they?
It was a real quirk of nature, the way the sound of a vacuum could carry through walls and floors. Even when most noises couldn’t. But there was plenty of other stuff to do instead.
I was just booting up the computer to find out what time the real estate office would open when I’d heard the alarm. It didn’t take long for Orville to come looking for me.
“Did you get any sleep at all?”
“Not much, to be honest. My thoughts wouldn’t rest.”
He glanced around, and his eyebrows rose. Yeah, I’ll admit I wasn’t all that great at dusting on a regular basis. My house only really got a thorough cleaning when something was on my mind that I needed to work through. Like now, for instance.
“The place looks... nice,” he said slowly. Then his eyes met mine. “You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”
I shook my head. “Not without at least trying to get them to honor the deal I had with Cecil. The very least they can do is hear me out.”
Orville swallowed. “And if you can’t change the outcome?”
I lifted a shoulder. “One day at a time, dear. One day at a time.”
“Yup. I was afraid you were going to say something like that.” Then he paused, his eyes brightening. “We have that meeting with the insurance company this morning, you know. About the new case they have for us? You’ll for sure not want to miss out on that, right?”
Normally he would be correct on that. But I’d been partners with Orville for long enough now to trust him to handle meetings. He was far better at them than I ever would be. For some reason, my presence seemed to make some of the insurance people a bit nervous. I didn’t think they’d much enjoyed having it proven to them that magic was actually a real thing.
Especially since it was rather obvious that it wasn’t something they had access to. Not without a lot of work, anyway.
Magic is there for everyone. Maybe not to the extent that it’s there for my family, but it’s there. The normals just have to work harder to gain access to it. That didn’t mean it couldn’t be done. And done well at that.
I knew a few pretty powerful hedge witches. One of them, Lily Hilton, was practically family.
His shoulders fell when I shook my head. “I think I’ll take a pass on that meeting. You’ll take notes, and they’re likely just going to hand over all the information in a nice little file for us, anyway. If they knew much about the case, they’d have already solved it.” Then they wouldn’t have needed our little detective agency.
He reached out and turned my face to his. “Promise me you won’t go getting yourself into trouble out there on your own?”
I just looked at him. “I’m not going looking for trouble, Orville.” But then, I never did, did I? Yet trouble seemed to have no problem finding me, anyway. Then I saw his worried look. “I promise to be on my best behavior. How’s that?”
“It’s the best I’m going to get, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Then I guess I’ll have to take it.” The man looked torn. We’d been together long enough for me to pretty much read his thoughts. And no, I didn’t have an ounce of clairvoyance in that magic of mine. I just knew my man.
If I was correct, right about then he wanted to ask me what my plans were for the day. But there was also a part of him that really, really didn’t want to know.
I left it up to him.
He didn’t ask. Probably for the best, that.
Chapter 2
Wind’s Crossing isn’t a major city. It isn’t even a major town. In fact, it’s pretty much just a dot on the map.
I liked it that way. We had what we needed, and that was all that mattered to me. It made my current mission much easier, too, as there was only one real estate agency in the entire town.
Yes, the deal might have been handled out of Oak Hill, where there were plenty of agents to work with. I was betting, however, that Morgan Truesdell and Associates had a hand in this one.
My assumption of that solidified when she didn’t seem to be all that surprised to see me walk in her front door.
The office on Main Street wasn’t much to talk about. Then again, as I’ve already said, Wind’s Crossing wasn’t a very ritzy and high-fashioned kind of place. As such, the little real estate office fit right in.
There was only one agency in town, that was true. However, there were two agents working out of that office. Morgan Truesdell and Freddy Black. At one time, the two of them had been an item as a couple. The only thing that had lasted in that relationship had been the business.
For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to work with an ex. I shivered at the thought of having to work with Alden. It was hard enough just being around the man again.
Morgan stood at my entrance with both hands out, palms toward me. “Now, Opal, this isn’t my fault.”
I gave her the full Ravenswind look treatment, and her face lost a little of its high color. For good reason too. But I still hadn’t said a word. I wanted to give her a chance to hang herself first. So I upped the look with a raised eyebrow.
She lost a little more color, too. “Yes.
I know you and Cecil had a deal.” She should have. It may have been a gentleman’s agreement, but we’d fully discussed how we’d make it work if and when the time came with Morgan. “Unfortunately, it isn’t Cecil we are working with now.”
“So I heard.” I left it at that.
Morgan sank back down in her chair. “For what it’s worth, I tried. I really did. But...” Her words trailed off.
“But Kelly Wilson refused to sell the place to me.”
She nodded. “Yes. I even visited with Cecil before he got so bad, hoping to close the deal for you. She axed that rather quickly. Made him believe she wanted to keep the house for herself.”
“And you didn’t think maybe you should warn me what was going on? Before you tried to sell the place right out from under me? After all the years I’ve waited for it to hit the market?”
Morgan swallowed. “Well, to be totally honest—I truly hope you’ll appreciate how honest I’m being here, Opal—the person who bought the place had been waiting for it for years too. She approached me the moment she moved back to Wind’s Crossing.”
I glanced over at Freddy Black, who was sitting at his desk, apparently absorbed in the paperwork in front of him. I really didn’t think a single piece of paper would hold anyone’s attention for that long, but if that was how he wanted to play it, that was fine with me.
“Why would Patience Goodheart want that place?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid you’ll have to ask her that. But I should tell you that there really isn’t anything you can do to stop the sale at this point. It’s kind of a done deal. That property now belongs to Ms. Goodheart. If you want it, you’ll have to buy it from her.”
I tilted my head at her. “Only you don’t think she’ll be willing to sell, do you?”
“Truthfully? No. Not as bad as she wanted the place to begin with.”
“I see.” Reaching across her desk, I pulled a single hair from her top. Lucky for her, it wasn’t attached at the time. Her face pretty much lost all its remaining color when I pocketed the strand before standing. “Well then. As you’ve done nothing but follow the book and your client’s wishes, you shouldn’t have anything to fear, should you?”
Witch of a Neighbor (Witch Reborn Book 6) Page 1