Witches and Wine (A Paranormal Cozy Mystery) (California Witching Book 1) Read online

  Witches and Wine

  Samantha Silver

  Megan Marple

  Blueberry Books Press

  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

  Also by Samantha Silver

  Also by Megan Marple

  About the Authors

  Chapter 1

  I didn't know what was worse — being subjected to an important 'all-hands' meeting run by my overly-sweaty boss, or being the only one left to man the car lot while everyone else was in an 'all-hands' meeting. On the one hand, I probably would have had to sit next to our boss Richard's skeevy brother, Daniel, who always nudged me with a goofy look on his face anytime anyone said something that could be taken as a double-entendre. Because, you know, we were all twelve- year-olds, and certainly not adults at work. On the other hand, I had sold exactly zero cars in the last week and a half, marking my worst dry spell since I began working at Little Richie's Car Emporium, thus making me the weakest link and therefore deemed not important enough to attend the stupid meeting, anyway.

  Clearly, my days at the car lot were numbered.

  I rubbed at a nonexistent scuff mark on the sleek red coupe next to me that screamed "totally not overcompensating for anything!" and sighed to myself.

  I had worked at the car lot for over six months already, desperately trying to save up enough money to make it into a decent veterinary school, but without making many sales, I was on the short path to getting the rug yanked out from underneath me. I just didn’t have the psychopathic personality required to make it in this business.

  Not to mention working as a used car salesperson was so freaking boring that half the time I just wandered around aimlessly, hoping someone would give me something better to do. It certainly didn't help that the most interesting thing that happened to me today was while trying to set up the front of the lot was managing to let a whole handful of balloons escape the moment I wasn't paying attention. They sort of reminded me of a more vibrant and colorful gang of prisoners busting loose from nearby Alcatraz, the wind carrying them far away from me as quickly as possible.

  The moment Richard beckoned his plump finger at me, I rushed right over, relieved at being able to take my hour break. It was one time during the whole work day where I didn’t feel like I was about to fall asleep while standing upright. At least working at Little Richie's meant I was in close proximity of half of my favorite food places.

  "Taylor, why don’t you go ahead and take your lunch? I'm going to have Daniel come out and take over for now."

  Had sweeter words ever been uttered?

  I made a quick stop at Beverly & Jam's to pick up a container of their famous pierogis and a bag of sweet pork buns, my mouth already practically drooling as the steam from the bag hit me square in the face. I threw the door back open, sending the little bell chiming above my head and giving Beverly a quick wave before dashing across the street.

  "Mmm, delicious," I muttered to myself, more inhaling than eating the first pierogi.

  I debated whether I wanted to head over to the park to eat and maybe do a little people watching, or whether I just wanted to go back and sit outside on the curb behind the lot, reveling in the silence. The little person on the pedestrian sign lit up, signaling for me and the half a dozen other people on the corner with me to cross the street. Holding my precious goodies close, I followed the crowd and glanced upwards. With the clouds starting to roll in above me, I decided at the last minute to take the shortcut away from the park and back to the car lot, instead. Looking like a drowned rat when I got back to work was even less likely to get me any sales.

  Skirting around several heaps of empty crates tilted this way and that, I sidestepped a dumpster that was definitely being used by the Asian fusion café around the corner, the stench of day-old seafood turning my stomach.

  Just as I was about to pass through the alleyway to reach the other side of the block, frantic whispering caught my attention. Usually I tended to ignore that sort of thing; there were plenty of freaks around San Francisco and I wasn't about to make friends with the next one, but a woman's voice piped up for a minute before a very obvious muffled cry escaped from her, followed by the soft sound of feet shuffling. Something bad was happening - that much I knew.

  Part of me wanted to run away and to find the nearest authority figure, but another part of me knew I might be too late by the time I came back with someone, and there was no way I would have something bad happening to this lady on my conscience tonight.

  I hid behind the edge of the dumpster, peeking around to see what was going on.

  Barely twenty feet away from me, a bald man with beady little eyes was making a grab for a middle-aged woman, lunging for her oversized Coach bag, as she twisted out of his grasp.

  She caught him with the edge of her heel, right to the leg, and although he stumbled, he quickly recovered, just in time to pull out a black object that sent cold fear piercing through my heart.

  It was cowardly and I knew it, but I scrunched my eyes shut, knowing there was no way she could get away easily enough to avoid his aim, and unable to watch as the pop of the gun reverberated back and forth between the tall buildings, echoing down from one end of the alleyway to the other. He had shot her! My eyes flew back open, and my moment of self-preservation must have passed, because I was already scrambling toward the woman across the dirty, trash-strewn ground, as the man with the gun rushed away with her purse in tow before I reached her.

  The woman, looking so ordinary with her tidy blonde hair and expertly-applied makeup, had laid her back up against the brick wall, her watery eyes glazed over. She was most definitely in shock. Not that I could blame her—I wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure that I wasn’t right there with her.

  "Oh my God, are you okay? Did he shoot you?" The dumb words tumbled out of my mouth as I moved her long, fashionable coat away from her chest, checking to make sure she wasn't hit anywhere important. Of course she had been shot.

  A well of red blossomed from her abdomen, and without even thinking, I pressed my hand against it, trying to keep this lady from freaking out even more.

  "I think so, yeah. It really hurts," she groaned, trying to move to show me.

  "I see it. Please don’t move, ma’am, you're gonna be all right, okay? My name’s Taylor. What's yours?" I asked her, trying to keep her mind off of everything. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do with shock victims? My medical specialty was going to be animals, not humans, and I definitely hadn’t even started veterinary school yet, but I could've sworn I saw this on an episode of Law and Order, or something.

  "Miranda." She took in a big, deep breath. "Miranda Banks."

  Man, even her name sounded wealthy. With the big Coach bag, and ears dangling with what must have been worth an easy ten grand in diamonds, it really wasn’t much of a surprise that the mugger made a move for her.

  "Okay, Miranda. I'm gonna go ahead and pull out my phone here and call 9-1-1," I said slowly. “I just need you to sit still for me."<
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  She nodded vaguely, but the moment I took my hand away from her stomach to turn and reach for my phone from my pocket, she quickly shook her head. "Please. Don't let go."

  Her face had gone an awful ash gray, and the red was only spreading wider, seeping through her coat, so I held on tightly to her stomach as she asked, silently hoping beyond anything that it wasn’t too late for Miranda as I dialed emergency services and told them they needed to send an ambulance.

  The next thing I knew, sirens were blaring down the street in our direction. I said a silent prayer they would find us, and Miranda was stirring even more. She'd gone from that sickening gray look, to very pale, to slightly flushed, with the color moving back up to her cheeks. If I hadn’t known any better, I'd have said that she was actually doing much better than I thought someone who had just been shot in the stomach should have been.

  "And then he turned around and ran off. I'm sorry, I couldn't… I didn't really see him all that well," Miranda told the police officer right as they loaded her into the back of the ambulance.

  I turned my attention back to the paramedic who was walking back up to me.

  "It's a good thing you were here, ma'am," he said to me, scratching at his head, looking perplexed. "Miss Banks is doing incredibly well, considering that she was just shot in the stomach at close range."

  "Yeah, no kidding."

  "To be honest, I can't help but wonder how on earth she's even alive. If the attacker was as close as the two of you claim he was, the gunshot should have killed her almost instantly.”

  “Well, sometimes funny things have a way of happening when you least expect them. Or at least that had always been the case for me. Maybe she’s got a really good guardian angel. I better be getting back to work,” I told him. “Thank you for getting here so quickly."

  The paramedic nodded, his eyes casually sweeping over the state of my appearance, and for the first time since Miranda had been shot, I looked down and nearly screamed myself. I had totally overlooked the fact that my clothes were ruined, and as stupid as it sounds, all I could think about - besides hoping for a speedy recovery for Miranda - was how pissed Richard was going to be when I showed back up to work both late and covered in blood.

  Carefully holding my purse and dumping my cold and ruined food into the nearby dumpster, I accepted my loss of appetite and shrugged, not wanting to wait any longer to get out of there.

  Was I going to be able to make it back down the street without people staring at me? The answer was definitely a hard no.

  The sirens whirred to life once more, this time speeding Miranda in the same direction as I was going, to the hospital only a few blocks down from the car lot. As I left the alley and blindly began walking back to work, hoping I’d get sent home for the afternoon, I knocked right into someone who gave a soft "oof."

  Shoot. Today was not going to be my day. "Oh man, I'm so sorry. I should've been watching where I was going," I said, wincing.

  To my surprise, the person in front of me — a taller, gracefully elegant woman with graying hair — was smiling at me.

  This was definitely not the usual San Franciscan gesture, that was for sure.

  Chapter 2

  "That's quite all right, my dear. You're probably still in a little bit of shock, yourself, correct?" The lady asked gently.

  I looked around, my eyes narrowed slightly. Had she seen me in the alleyway or something? "Er, yeah. I guess you could say that."

  The smile on the woman's warm face only got bigger. "If you don't mind, I'd love to buy you a quick coffee. I know place right around the corner there," she said, pointing her thin finger across the street.

  I chuckled nervously, suddenly feeling very put on the spot. This was definitely weird. "That's, um, that's okay, thanks. Really. I'm definitely not a hero, I promise. I just tried to make sure she didn't bleed out, or anything."

  The woman waved me off. "Oh, I absolutely insist. Whether you think it was heroic or not, the fact is that you saved a woman's life today, and I feel that warrants a nice big dose of caffeine. Please, I really do insist," she said, the smile going nowhere. What was this lady's deal?

  I searched my brain, trying to think of the perfect excuse, when I remembered that I already had one. "Actually, Miss…"

  "Barbara. Barbara Dunham."

  "Miss Dunham, right. If I don't hurry up and get back to work, I know I'm going to have one heck of a time trying to explain all of this to my boss. He’s a bit of a jerk, you see."

  "All the more reason to have a nice sit-down over some coffee, if you ask me. And I wouldn't worry about your boss, Taylor. I'm sure he'll understand that you were just too busy working miracles."

  I was at such a loss for words that I found myself being pulled along after this Barbara Dunham lady, still trying to put it all together.

  "Hey, how do you know my name?" I asked. I quickly reviewed our very short conversation in my brain and concluded that nope, I definitely did not give her my name. This lady was more than weird, she was creepy. This was creepy.

  Even though Barbara’s back was to me, I could already tell that the smile had crept back up on her face.

  "I suppose it's something we could go over in the coffee shop, but I happened to hear you give your name to the paramedic."

  Ok, that made sense, at least. Barbara probably wasn’t some alien about to take me to a teleport point where I’d get sucked back up to her spaceship and whisked away to another galaxy. Probably. We stopped in front of a small windowed display of two raggedy mannequins sitting at an old wrought-iron bistro set painted white, one of them wearing a top hat and a monocle on its blank face, while the other one was donning a hat fit for a Christmas day church service, and pretending to sip from a teacup. It was pleasantly bizarre, a lot like this entire exchange I’d had with Barbara so far.

  I stood behind Barbara as she ordered us two hazelnut lattes, given to us in polka-dotted ceramic mugs. I had no idea how she knew what it was I always ordered from coffee shops.

  "How did you?" I started to ask, but Barbara interrupted me with that same smile, like she knew exactly what I was thinking.

  "Let's take a seat."

  Barbara led us to the very back of the café, and I took a seat in one of the two lumpy chintz armchairs, crossing my legs carefully as I watched her take a sip of her coffee. I waited for her to finally speak up, getting the itching feeling that whatever she was going to say would be just as off-the-wall as the rest of the last hour of my life had been.

  Barbara took another sip of her coffee, blowing across the top of it before looking over at me. "I do wonder... have you ever noticed before?"

  I checked around the rest of the small café, looking for something out of the ordinary. Nope. This was definitely a normal San Francisco coffee shop. “Noticed what, exactly?"

  "Your ability. To heal people, I mean. Was that the first time, out there in the alley?"

  The skin on the back of my neck pricked; Barbara was definitely a crazy person. Still, I felt the need to answer it. "Uh, no? I don't have any kind of ability. That’s the kind of thing that exists in X-Men, and I’m pretty sure I’m not a mutant. I work at a tiny used car lot with a bad reputation; the only ability I have is the patience to put up with stupid people."

  Barbara arched a brow at me, still sipping from the ridiculously bright mug of coffee. "So this was the first time, then. Interesting. Usually we find out about our abilities much earlier in life. Your parents never said anything to you?"

  I set my coffee down on the table between us and stood up, my hands beginning to shake.

  "What do you know about my parents?" I hissed, all pleasantries subsiding. The last thing I was going to let this woman do was badmouth them, especially when they weren’t even here to defend themselves anymore.

  Barbara simply looked at me, ok, stared at me was more like it, and as she kept calmly staring at me, it occurred to me that maybe I was overreacting. She’d been polite enough to offer me a drink.
And there I was, getting all offended because the woman mentioned my parents. It wasn’t like she knew what happened to them. She couldn’t have. I went to open my mouth to say something, but quietly sat back down, the distrust and anxiety that was rising up inside of me before dissipating away.

  I knew it was weird, but then, everything about this lady was weird.

  "All I'm asking for, Taylor, is the truth. You really can't think of any other occasion when something happened that you couldn't explain? Were you ever sick as a child?"

  I leaned back in the chair, my coffee all but forgotten. "I just have a good immune system." And that was the absolute truth. In school, everyone I knew would always make fun of me, saying I was some sort of secret superhero, never having a sick day in my life. I used to pretend to be sick just so I could stay home sometimes like the other kids. I’d always chalked it up to the fact that I ate vegetables and washed my hands when I was supposed to. Was I really that much of a freak?

  From the look on Barbara’s face, she was obviously reading mine. She set her cup down too, and turned to face me full-on.

  "So, you weren't sick. You probably never have been, in fact. That does make sense," she said, smoothing out the long purple skirt she was wearing. "Has there ever been any time when maybe you should have hurt yourself, and didn’t?"

  "I don’t think so?” I started with a frown, but then memories starting to float up to the surface of my mind like the froth from the cappuccino machines. "Actually, there have been a few incidents. When I was five I fell out of a tree in our front yard. I had to have been fifteen feet up, but I didn't even get a scratch on me. My mom and dad kept saying it was a miracle that I didn't break my arm or something, but I always chalked it up to drinking a lot of milk as a kid, I guess."