Three's a Coven Read online

  Three’s a Coven

  Western Woods Mystery #3

  Samantha Silver

  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

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Also by Samantha Silver

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  “Is that supposed to be on fire?”

  I looked at the cauldron my friend and roommate Ellie was working on, which currently had glittery purple and red flames shooting from it towards the ceiling.

  “Of course,” Ellie grinned. “How else am I supposed to make brown butter brownies?”

  “By browning the butter in a pot on the stove, like a normal person?”

  “There’s no fun in that. Besides, the flames weren’t to brown the butter. They were to create the fiery desire that a person feels when they eat the brownies.”

  “So basically, you’re making love potion brownies?” I asked, poking my head into the now-extinguished cauldron. It just looked like normal brownie mixture to me, with bits of red and purple glitter mixed into the batter.

  “Well, it’s not necessary love that the eater feels. Whatever the eater needs most in the world, they feel the desire to get it done. So it’s great for when you’re doing something super boring at work but you know you need to get it done, or when you’ve been putting off doing the laundry for the last week because life just keeps getting in the way.”

  “Ah,” I nodded. “Nice. Is that for the coffee shop?”

  “Nah, I only make food to serve customers when I’m at work. I’m sure you can guess which workaholic this batch is for.”

  “Amy?” I asked with a small grin, and Ellie smiled.

  “Sure is. She begged me to make them for her since she didn’t have the time to make a batch herself. She has an important exam coming up that she’s convinced she isn’t studying enough for.”

  “Right. Because that sounds exactly like her.”

  “That’s what I said. But of course, with Amy, getting ninety percent is basically a failing grade.”

  “It is a failing grade,” Amy said, rushing down the stairs. Her dark eyes darted all over the place, and her pixie-cut hair was somehow disheveled. “What’s even the point of living if you’ve only gotten eighty-seven percent in Advanced Planetary Mathematical Structure and Movement?”

  Ellie hid a smile and raised her eyebrows at me as if to say “see?”

  “You know, I think maybe you’re taking this exam a little bit too seriously,” I said.

  “Too seriously?” Amy said, turning on me, and I involuntarily took a step back. Wow. Amy could be scary when she wanted to be.

  “Never mind, you’re obviously in complete control of your emotions right now,” I replied.

  “How long until you’re going to be finished?” Amy asked, looking at Ellie.

  “About thirty minutes. The ingredients just need to cook in the oven.”

  “So even magical baking has to happen in an oven? You can’t just use a spell to do it?” I asked, peering into the cauldron as Ellie got a baking dish out from underneath the stove.

  “Nope,” Ellie replied. “What happens to molecules from baking is actually so complex that we eventually found it easier to just use an oven to do it rather than to try and figure out a way to speed up the process with magic. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t add magic to the cooking.”

  “Cool,” I replied as Ellie slipped the baking tray into the oven.

  “Hey, we might be witches, but we’re still inherently lazy. Why come up with a convoluted magical way of doing something when the human way works better? I think some of the fire covens have discovered ways of improving cooking methods with magic – one day I’m hoping to be invited to one of their covens to learn some of their ways – but we just use plain old ovens.”

  “Right. How long will those brownies take to cook?” Amy asked.

  “Twenty-two minutes,” Ellie replied.

  “I’ll be back then. I haven’t got even a minute to waste,” Amy replied, turning on her heel and heading right back to her room.

  Ellie laughed. “See? Amy on exam day is definitely a bundle of nerves.”

  “No kidding. Have you guys not heard of Xanax?”

  “She thrives on the anxiety. Says it makes her work better. She refuses any sort of magical or human aid.”

  “That sounds about right.” It did sound like exactly the sort of thing Amy would say.

  I hung out with Ellie while we waited for the brownies to cook. A part of me didn’t really want to eat the magical part – after all, I had absolutely planned on having a lazy day today – but at the same time, a part of me was curious, too.

  When they came out of the oven, Amy walked into the room at the exact moment that Ellie opened the oven door.

  “Wow, that was some good timing,” I said, impressed.

  “I managed to go over my definition of an ellipse by the directrix property notes,” Amy said. “Now, I really need those brownies. The exam starts in six hours.”

  “Alright, alright,” Ellie said, handing her over four brownies on a plate, steam still rising from the chocolatey goodness. Amy took the plate, thanked Ellie and quickly disappeared once more.

  “I assume she’s always been like this?” I asked, reaching for a brownie myself.

  “Let me put it this way: when we were in the second year at the academy, so still little kids, Amy misread a question and got ninety percent on a test instead of one hundred. She cried for the entire afternoon, then swore she would never get such a low mark again. She studied so hard for the next test the teacher actually ended up giving her over a hundred percent because she was that far in front of the rest of us. And she really was. I mean, I was still basically eating crayons, compared to her.”

  I laughed. “I actually believe that story one hundred percent.”

  “It’s completely accurate. She’s been like this her entire life. She actually thrives on this kind of pressure.”

  “Well, I think it would drive me insane,” I said, taking a bite of the brownie. The soft texture, somewhere between fudge-like and cake-like melted in my mouth, with an added taste of browned caramel floating through. I closed my eyes and savored the bite, letting the sweet sugar sit on my tongue.

  “This is so good,” I said as I swallowed. “You’re amazing, Ellie.”

  “Thanks,” Ellie grinned. “Now enjoy spending your afternoon doing something you really, really needed to get done.”

  About thirty seconds later, my brain zoned in on something I’d been putting off for a bit: really making my room my own. I headed back towards it with a determination that I was going to really, truly settle in here.

  “Wow, someone’s on a mission,” my cat familiar, Mr. Meowgi, said from the spot on the comforter he was currently occupying.

  “I’m going to do this,” I said, reaching into the bag I’d brought a few things from the human world in and organizing the books on a small shelf. To be honest, there wasn’t that much to do, but an hour later my room was a lot more organized, and a little bit more me. I made a note to buy some things in town for my room; a
few nice pieces of art on the walls could be a good way to really bring the room together.

  It was funny; this was the first time since my mom had died that I really felt home. When I lived alone in Seattle I always made a point of not decorating. Decorating would get me too attached to a place, which I couldn’t afford when I was working minimum-wage jobs and finding myself moving from place to place fairly regularly.

  When I was finished, I put my hands on my hips and admired my handiwork. My books were now on the shelf, I had moved the bed around – much to Mr. Meowgi’s disgust – so that the afternoon sun fell on the bed, and I had taken a few of the succulents from the garden outside and moved them onto my dresser. I had called up Ellie to help with a spell, and she had turned the pots from simple terra-cotta to beautiful glittering pink, blue, and orange that shimmered in the light.

  Yes, this was definitely much better.

  “Hey Ellie, do you want to come into town and find some art with me?” I asked as I made my way into the kitchen. Just then I noticed Sara sitting at the counter staring at the brownies.

  “Sure,” Ellie replied. “I’m just fixing up another batch of brownies for Sara without the focus spell added in.”

  “I’ve been at work all day; the last thing I want to do is actually focus on anything, but those brownies smelled so good I begged Ellie to make more,” she said.

  “Oh good, you’ve saved me from doing the same thing,” I giggled. “Want to come along? Thanks to that first batch I spent the afternoon redecorating, and now that I’ve been working on it I kind of want to get it finished completely.”

  “Thanks, but I think I’m going to just veg out for the rest of the night,” Sara said, poking a finger in the cauldron Ellie was carefully adding ingredients into, chanting incantations at the various ingredients and making them rise up and fall straight into the large, cast-iron pot.

  “TV and brownies does sound good.”

  “You guys had better leave soon before all the stores close.”

  “True. If I put these in the oven, can I trust you to take them out in twenty-two minutes?” Ellie asked.

  “Of course,” Sara replied. “I mean, of course normally the answer would be no, but seeing as there are delicious brownies on the line, I will watch the clock like my life depends on it.”

  I laughed as I ran back to my room to grab my purse as Ellie and I headed out into the night.

  Chapter 2

  “How long do magical exams take?” I asked Ellie as we headed out. Summer was coming to an end; it was late August now and the first signs of the crisp fall were in the air. It still wasn’t jacket weather – we did live in the Pacific Northwest, after all – but that time of year was definitely on its way. I briefly wondered where exactly Western Woods was. After all, I knew we were still generally in the Seattle area, but that was all I knew. Where did magical towns build themselves? It wasn’t like you could type the name into Google Maps.

  As Ellie began to answer, though, I decided that was a question for another time.

  “It depends on the class. In the basic classes, the ones Sara and I did, which are the ones almost all witches end with, they generally take about one to two hours. We don’t actually do exams until the later years, until we turn fifteen. Some of them are way shorter. For example, when we took Introduction to Jupiter’s Spells, the exam only took about twenty minutes per person. We had to see the professor individually and perform about ten different spells that we’d learned that year, so it didn’t really take all that long. But A History of Covens was a two-hour sit-down exam comprised of two hundred multiple choice questions.”

  “Ugh,” I shuddered. “That reminds me of calculus.”

  “What’s calculus?” Ellie asked.

  “Like math, only harder.”

  “Ew.”

  After a few minutes, Ellie led me into a cute little cottage near the outskirts of town. It was part of a row of four cottages, all painted a different pastel color, but all keeping with the same European-style shutters and design. This one was a robin’s egg blue, with a sign above the door reading “Once Upon a Trinket”.

  “Is this going to be the kind of shop with kitschy things like the ones my grandmother loved?” I asked with a bit of a frown. That definitely was not my style.

  “Oh, just you wait,” Ellie replied with a grin. “It’s absolutely not like that at all.”

  I followed after her as Ellie made her way through the front door, the bell above tinkling to indicate our entrance. I stood in the entrance, stunned as I looked around.

  This was basically as if someone had taken all the best things you could get in an Etsy store and made them real. And made them magical.

  To my left was a set of metal shelves, with rectangular wicker baskets set on an angle to better display the products they were offering. It was obviously filled with bath bombs, and as I read the descriptions on some of them, I knew this wasn’t exactly the sort of thing I would buy at Lush.

  The Gift of Gab: Making an important presentation? Going to a party and you’re not the chatty type? This bath bomb will make the user feel confident and outgoing for the six hours following its use.

  Fairy Fairy Happy: Feeling down? This bath bomb releases a scent that will give you temporarily relief from whatever is bringing you pain at the moment. Please limit use to one per day, and use for no longer than one week at a time. See a Healer if you feel your depression to be serious.

  Big Blue Baby: Looking to bring a new baby witch, wizard, fairy, or vampire into this world? Take a bath with this bomb six hours before your next mating ritual to improve your chances of success.

  Wow. Those were certainly some serious claims.

  “Do these actually work?” I whispered to Ellie, motioning to the bath bombs, and she nodded.

  “Of course. Ceres, the fairy who owns this store, has a witch who works for her and makes a bunch of the magical stuff, like the potions that go into the bath bombs.

  “Wow,” I said, making a mental note to look at the rest of the bath bombs later. After all, there was just so much stuff everywhere. There were cute purses that promised only the owner could reach inside to get anything. Pillowcases with cute slogans like “Not a basic witch”, “If you’ve got it, haunt it”, and “I’m fairy adorable” were surrounded by handmade leather collars for familiars, which a sign promised could be personalized. Special “vampire approved” sunscreen sat on a shelf next to glitter saver – apparently, for the fairy who thought her wings needed a little bit more shimmer than what was natural.

  I was so caught up in looking at all the little knick-knacks in the store that I didn’t even notice when a fairy, taller than the other ones I’d met at almost four feet, came fluttering over towards us. Her long, blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail that reached her lower back, and her pale purple wings fluttered effortlessly behind her as she looked at us from behind large blue eyes.

  “Hello there, witches. Can I help you find anything today?”

  “No, thanks, Ceres,” Ellie replied. “Tina is looking for some decorations for her room, and I’m pretty sure she’s overwhelmed just by the sheer number of things in here, so I think we’ll just look around for a while.

  “Ah, you’re the new witch in town,” Ceres said with a nod. “Sorry, we usually get a decent number of tourists in here, so I’m never sure who’s a permanent fixture and who isn’t.”

  “Yeah, that’s me,” I said with a shy smile. “I’m Tina.”

  “Ceres. It’s nice to meet you. I hope you’re feeling welcome in town.”

  “Absolutely, everyone’s been incredibly kind to me.”

  “That’s wonderful to hear. Well, please let me know if you need any help, I’ll be behind the counter.”

  “Thanks so much,” I said as Ceres floated away back towards the front of the store.

  “Come here, check out these wall hangings,” Ellie suggested, taking me towards the wall at the far right of the store. “How about something l
ike this?” She motioned to a large print on the wall with a motivational message: “Life is tough, my darling, but so are you.” Not too bad. I gasped, however, as suddenly the letters began moving, shifting themselves around into a different message. “If not now, then when?”

  “How about things that don’t move?” I suggested. “There’s enough magic all around me right now, I think I want my room to be one little reminder that I used to live life without it. How about something like this?” I made my way over to another print, made of four planks of wood, with a calming picture of the ocean printed onto it. I figured it was fitting, seeing as I was from a water coven, apparently. “This isn’t going to change into anything, is it?”

  Ellie shook her head. “Doesn’t look like it. We can ask Ceres to be sure. That’s really cute, you should definitely get it.”

  I picked up the wooden art off the wall and began to take it to the counter. On my way there, I also passed a small rusted cactus sculpture that I figured would look good on the dresser with my succulents on it, so I grabbed that as well.

  “Perfect, is that everything for you?” Ceres asked as I made my way to the counter.

  “Yeah, I think so. This art piece, it doesn’t do anything magical, does it?” I asked, motioning to my wooden ocean painting.

  “No, not at all,” Ceres said with a smile. “I like to keep a mix of magical and non-magical items in here. Some of my customers find things from the human world to be incredibly fun novelties.”

  I smiled to myself at the idea of something that didn’t move on its own being a novelty as Ceres packed things up for me, and Ellie paid her.