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Any Potion in a Storm: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery (Pacific North Witches Book 4) Read online




  Any Potion in a Storm

  Pacific North Witches Mystery #4

  Samantha Silver

  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

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Discover Enchanted Enclave

  Also by Samantha Silver

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Have you ever found yourself locked in battle with a strange kind of ghost-cloud that’s been cursed to haunt you so you’re unable to find the stolen family heirloom you’ve been hired to recover?

  Because if so, I could use a bit of advice right now. This was a first for me, and Ghostman, as I was calling him, was starting to really get on my nerves.

  “Rhea, goddess mother, destroy this ghost and send him under.” I pointed my wand at Ghostman, but nothing happened. I grunted in disappointment.

  “You know, that’s not very helpful, Rhea,” I muttered under my breath. I was going to have to identify exactly what Ghostman was before I could figure out how to properly dispose of him using magic.

  Right now, all I knew for sure was that he was incredibly annoying.

  Ghostman had been following me for the last two hours, and I knew exactly who had sent him to me. It was Jeremy, a wizard who had stolen a family heirloom from his brother Joseph. An heirloom which I had been hired to retrieve. Jeremy and Joseph’s father had died about two months earlier, and the will had left the family’s most important piece of heritage – a cuckoo clock that magically generated a hundred abracadollars every hour when the bird popped out – to Joseph since Jeremy was a perennial loser who had never held down a real job in his life. The father, Jeremy, and Joseph all knew Jeremy was just going to take the money and lose it all gambling or doing drugs, so Joseph was the one to inherit.

  About two days ago, the cuckoo clock disappeared from Joseph’s home where he had kept it. It was obvious Jeremy had been the one to steal it. On top of his perfect motive, the clock was magically enchanted so that only a member of the Berg family could move it, and the only members of the Berg family still living were Jeremy, Joseph, and Joseph’s two-year-old witch daughter. I was never one to quickly cross people off my suspect list, but I was fairly certain in this case she was innocent.

  Joseph had initially gone to the Enforcers here in town, but when they told him they needed proof that Jeremy was the thief before they could search his home, he came to me. I was a lot more liberal with my interpretation of those pesky little things called laws.

  After all, while it might technically be breaking and entering, if I didn’t get caught, was a crime even committed?

  Unfortunately, I had slipped up while looking through Jeremy’s home, and he had spotted me. I didn’t find the cuckoo clock – he had to be hiding it somewhere – and he managed to curse me with Ghostman, who had now been following me for about an hour, and I was sick and tired of him.

  My first visit with him following me had been to the coffee shop where Ghostman caused a smell to emanate from me that was so strong I could practically feel the fairies begging me to leave without actually asking. One elf rushed to the bathroom upon smelling me, and one witch took a small bottle of perfume from her purse and started spraying it directly into her nostrils.

  It was not my finest hour.

  I ended up getting the hint and rushing out of there, and now we were in the park where he couldn’t do anything to me that other paranormals could smell, seeing as we were alone. I had to figure out how to break this curse and get him away from me so I could focus on finding out where Jeremy had hidden the family cuckoo clock.

  “Do you talk? Or do you just smell?” I asked Ghostman grumpily. He looked like a giant grey-purple cloud just following me around. Where his eyes should have been were two glowing red triangles, giving him a rather mean look. The cloud separated where his mouth should have been, and a low, deep rumbling sound escaped from it. I figured that was supposed to be a laugh.

  “Ok, I’m going to take that as a no,” I grumbled. I pulled out my phone and called the one person I figured could help me with this. Surely at this point Grandma Rosie had been cursed multiple times in her life.

  “Hello,” she answered, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Hi, Grandma,” I said. “I need some help.”

  “What do I get in return?”

  “The knowledge that you’ve helped your loving granddaughter navigate her way through this twisty, turny road we call life?” I offered and heard a snort on the other end of the line.

  “Please, that’s not going to be enough to even get me out of bed in the morning.”

  I sighed. “What do you want, then?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I’ll take a favor for the future.” I had a sneaking suspicion that I did not want to owe Grandma Rosie a favor and that I was going to regret this in the long run, but I was short on options right now.

  “Fine. But you only get the deal if you can actually help me.”

  “I like a good negotiation. Deal. What do you need help with, dearest Ali?”

  “Jeremy Berg cursed me with some sort of weird ghost-cloud, and I don’t know what it is or how to get rid of it. It’s embarrassing me, and it’s getting in the way of me finding the thing Jeremy stole from my client.”

  Grandma Rosie burst into laughter on the other end of the line. “Oh, I love a good curse cloud. I’m surprised Jeremy Berg managed to get his nose out of the white powder for long enough to cast a spell that worked.”

  “Me too, and it’s rather annoying,” I replied. “So you know how to get rid of it?”

  “Yes,” Grandma Rosie replied. “A regular spell won’t work. It’s a curse, which means it’s immune to your magical powers. Also, while it’s going to start off being pretty harmless, it’s going to get more and more destructive until finally, after a few days, it’s going to do its best to kill you.”

  “Well, that’s a promising thought. How do I kill it first?”

  “You need to fool it,” Grandma Rosie replied. “Make it follow something else that it believes to be you. You’ll have to disguise yourself and convince the curse cloud to follow someone else. Then, when it has finally detached from you, you can use a spell to destroy it for good. But none of your spells will work so long as it’s still attached to you.”

  “Alright, so he’s like an annoying ex-boyfriend,” I muttered. “He’s going to try and keep latching onto me until he finds someone else.”

  “Exactly, now you’re getting it. Although frankly, compared to some of the guys you’ve dated, he looks like a catch.”

  “No argument there,” I answered. “Alright, thanks, Grandma.”

  “Good luck.”

  I hung up the phone and glared at the curse cloud. “Alright, Ghostman. Time to get rid of your clingy butt once and for all.”

  I quickly developed a plan and started putting it into motion. I poin
ted my wand at a tree and cast the first spell I needed.

  “Rhea, mother of the gods, turn this tree into me.”

  The cloning spell worked. The half-grown fir tree suddenly began to shift in size and shape, going from seven feet tall and green to about five and a half feet tall, dressed in jeans and an oversized black T-shirt. It was weird, staring back at something that looked exactly like me. Well, apart from the eerie, dead-looking black eyes that betrayed that this was totally not a real human.

  My eyes were freaking brilliant.

  Fake Ali walked up towards me casually, without any sort of sign that she wasn’t the least bit real and had been created by magic.

  “Ok, that’s kind of cool,” I said. “Follow me.”

  Fake Ali obeyed as I walked in the other direction back towards town. I had to find a large group of people, and while Ghostman was probably going to do his best to embarrass me while I did, it was a sacrifice I was going to have to make.

  Ghostman floated back up in front of me and tried the smelly gas trick again. I scrunched up my nose and waved my hand in front of my face to try to make the smell go away. It was so bad my eyes were watering.

  “Seriously, dude?” I asked him. “She’s not even real; she has no idea I smell. But of course, I guess it’s better that you think she is. And that you got whatever that smell was out of your system before we hit the crowd.”

  Fake Ali and I quickly reached downtown where a group of tourists was walking towards The Magic Brewmstick. Their guide had a purple flag floating above his head, and his voice had been amplified magically so that it carried to the back of the group of fifty-plus people in the tour.

  Perfect.

  I rushed towards the group with Fake Ali following behind me as I had ordered her to. The ghost cloud followed closely after us, and I dove into the crowd.

  Fake Ali and Ghostman followed. Our intrusion wasn’t welcome; we were being yelled at in a language that sounded like Italian. A young witch took one look at Ghostman and burst into tears. I couldn’t really blame her.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I muttered as I passed through. Then, I quickly pulled out my wand and pointed it at myself. “Rhea, goddess mother, turn me into a cat for just a quarter hour.”

  My insides suddenly felt super strange, like I’d just gone over the big crest of a roller coaster, and everything began to get smaller. I shrunk bit by bit until finally I was looking at people’s calves and shins, and I darted away from the group as fast as I could.

  Of course, the first step I tried to take on four legs I completely forgot about my front paws, and I face-planted directly into the pavement.

  “Ohh, povero gattino,” one woman said, stroking me softly on the back. I bristled, not really used to strangers stroking me, and ran off, this time remembering that running with four paws was different than running on two legs.

  I darted down an alley and then turned to see if my plan had worked. Fake Ali had obviously lost track of me and was now wandering aimlessly, occasionally walking into a wall, stepping back, and then doing it again. As far as clones went, she could certainly have been more convincing.

  Still, it was enough to get Ghostman off my back. He was following Fake Ali and had moved on from smells to shooting water from his mouth directly into her face. Boy was I ever glad I had gotten away before he got to that point with me. I didn’t know where that water had been, and I didn’t want to know.

  The good thing was, my plan had worked. He had totally hooked himself onto Fake Ali thinking she was me when I had disappeared into cat form. I just had to wait out the rest of the fifteen minutes before turning back into myself, and then I could use my magic to send him back to the netherworld of curses or wherever Ghostman came from.

  When I felt that weird stomach sensation once more, I knew I was going back to being Real Ali. My wand appeared in my hand again, and I pointed it at Ghostman, who was still harassing an apparently unfazed Fake Ali. She really wasn’t all that intelligent. Definitely not a perfect clone of me.

  I pointed my wand at Ghostman, ready to send him into the abyss. “Rhea, goddess mother, destroy this curse and send him under.”

  This time, the spell worked. Ghostman let out a horrible shriek causing everyone on the street to stare, and then he spun into a tornado that caved in on itself, turning into a kind of super-fast ball, before it finally disappeared with a “poof” sound.

  I was free from the curse, and I was about to make sure Jeremy Berg regretted every life choice he ever made.

  Chapter 2

  Two hours later I was back in Jeremy Berg’s home, and this time, I had found the cuckoo clock. He had cast a spell to have it appear to be a bookshelf.

  “That was what gave you away, Jeremy,” I told him as we waited for Joseph to show up and take back the cuckoo clock. “You just don’t strike me as the reading type, and there are some pretty crazy titles up here, including from the human world. Can you even pronounce the word ‘Metamorphosis’? Well, I guess you can’t right now, anyway.”

  Jeremy glared at me. He was hanging upside down, his body turned into a cocoon made of ropes that I’d generated from my wand. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to cast any spells on me from there, but just in case, I covered his mouth with duct tape through which he was currently hurling some form of insult at me, I was sure.

  Unfortunately for him, it all came out as “hrrrrmmmmmm” at best.

  I was pretty proud of myself for figuring out he had used magic to disguise the clock, actually.

  Joseph arrived about ten minutes later. He took one look at his brother and shook his head.

  “I’m really disappointed in you, Jer,” he said. “Dad wanted me to have the clock because he knew I’d take care of you with the money it generates. I can’t believe you wanted to steal it from me.”

  Joseph made his way to his brother and peeled off the duct tape. Jeremy grimaced from the split second of pain as it was torn off.

  “It’s all thanks to that witch over there,” Jeremy said, spitting in my direction.

  “We’re still in your house, genius. You’re the one who’s going to have to clean that up,” I replied casually.

  “Yeah, well, they’re going to have to clean up more than that when I’m done with you,” Jeremy replied, glaring at me.

  “So here’s the thing,” I said. “You’ve stolen the cuckoo clock from your brother, and we can prove it. So if you don’t want to spend the next ten years of your life in prison for the theft of a magical item, you’re going to forget you ever met me and you’re going to forget about this clock.”

  “She means it,” Joseph warned. “And if anything happens to her, I’ll make sure the Enforcers know exactly who’s responsible. Got it?”

  Jeremy just let out an incomprehensible mumble in reply.

  “Got it?” Joseph asked, his tone a lot less amiable this time.

  “Fine, fine, I got it,” Jeremy grumbled. “I still can’t believe she found that clock.”

  “Alright, well, it was a pleasure doing business with you,” I said to Joseph, shaking his hand.

  “And you as well. I’ll have the rest of the money wired to your account. Thank you for saving this piece of my family’s history.”

  I nodded, gave Jeremy a finger wave, earning myself another scowl from him, and went home.

  “Good news, Vinnie,” I said to my familiar, a fainting goat, when I walked through the door.

  “There was a sale on pears at the grocery store?”

  “Nothing that good,” I said with a laugh. “But I’ve managed to fix a problem for another client.”

  “Which means you’ve been paid, which means you can afford to buy me some pears. So it is good news!”

  I laughed again. “Fine, I’ll buy you some pears later from the grocery store. I have to go down to The Magic Brewmstick and apologize to the fairies there, anyway.”

  “Then it is a good day,” Vinnie said, bouncing around on all four legs. He was adorable when
he did that.

  “See? Told you,” I said with a small giggle. To be totally honest, I wasn’t used to being this flush with cash. It wasn’t that I was totally rolling in it – I certainly still had a budget that I did my best to stick to – but for the first time in my life, I actually had savings, and I was making a pretty decent income.

  It turned out I was way better at investigating things and solving peoples’ problems than I was at anything else. I had kind of accidentally fallen into this job, building a reputation after solving the murder of a vampire at the behest of his parents, and now I was the paranormal world’s go-to private investigator. In the last month I had not only recovered the cuckoo clock for Joseph but I had found proof that a wizard was cheating on his wife, I’d recovered a necklace stolen by a movie star, and I’d managed to track down a local witch’s familiar who had gotten lost and accidentally taken one of the portals to Australia.

  Yes, life was good, and as I was saving the world one client at a time, I was also managing to put away the money I needed to buy my mom a nice house, the main goal I had in life.

  I moved some of the money Joseph sent me into my savings, admiring the larger figure, and then decided I really needed a coffee. And it wasn’t just because I had to apologize to the fairies working at The Magic Brewmstick.

  I said goodbye to Vinnie and a few minutes later found myself in the coffee shop’s warm interior.

  “Welcome back, Ali,” Starr, the fairy working the counter, greeted me. I couldn’t help but notice her looking around, like she was expecting to see the cloud curse ready to embarrass me again.

 
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