Old Flames (Lainswich Witches Book 9) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  “Old Flames”

  Supernatural Witch Cozy Mystery

  Lainswich Witches Series Book 9

  Raven Snow

  © 2017

  Raven Snow

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner & are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover images are licensed stock photos, images shown for illustrative purposes only. Any person(s) that may be depicted on the cover are models.

  Edition v1.0 (2017.05.13)

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  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Authors Note

  Books by Raven Snow

  Chapter One

  Eric Greensmith had never gotten fully on board with the witch stuff. Rowen didn’t hold that against her husband. It wasn’t like he thought she was crazy and made fun of her behind her back or anything—now, that might have been a deal breaker. No, Eric had seen firsthand what Rowen and her family were capable of. He didn’t doubt their abilities. He was uncomfortable with it was all. And who could blame him? Most of Lainswich was uncomfortable with the Greensmiths. Eric loved his wife, but he wasn’t ready to join her for any rituals or anything.

  Tonight was one such night. Rowen used one hand to hold her fuzzy white robe closed and the other to try and give her husband a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Seriously, baby. It’s fine. No one is disappointed you’re skipping again. Not that they wouldn’t like you there if you ever changed your mind.” She offered him a smile. “It’s what everyone expected.”

  That didn’t look like it had comforted Eric in the least. He seemed to deflate a bit, and his gaze moved past Rowen, out to the backyard where they had just about finished setting up.

  It was their annual thanks ritual. It had no proper name, and it wasn’t a holiday or anything. It was a simple ritual they had performed for generations. The family got together and thanked the spirits and other unseen creatures that helped guard the Greensmith household. “I’d join in, I just…” he trailed off, looking torn.

  “We’re married now,” she chimed in, in case what bothered him now was some sense of not belonging. “You’re as much a Greensmith now as any of us. You might not have any witchy powers, but that doesn’t matter either. You know Rose is adopted. She still adds to the circle when—”

  Eric cut her off. “That’s not it.”

  “What then?” This was the first Rowen had heard that her husband might like to join. She really wanted to know what it was that was holding him back. She watched her husband’s eyes drop, like he was giving her a once over. She raised an eyebrow. He did it again. “What?”

  Aunt Lydia picked that moment to stroll past on her way to the back door. She was loudly humming a cheery tune. Her own bathrobe was barely pulled closed, revealing a little more of Aunt Lydia than most people likely wanted to see. Eric motioned emphatically to her as she passed.

  “Oh, the whole sky-clad thing?” Rowen asked, once her aunt had gone out the back door. "You don’t have to strip down for the ritual if you don’t want to.” She hesitated. “Well, I mean, I guess it might be a little weird if you don’t.”

  “I’d be the weird one?” Eric raised his voice. He seemed to regret it and quickly lowered it before continuing. “It’s all right. I’ll just wait in here. You enjoy your…nudist thing.”

  “It’s not a nudist thing!”

  “I don’t see how it doesn’t make you super uncomfortable.”

  Rowen blushed. She could have sworn she had this conversation with him before. “It’s not anything to be ashamed of. It’s natural. The human body is natural. When you’re paying homage to nature, it only makes sense that you present yourself to it as you are naturally.”

  “I’d sooner not stand naked next to my naked wife while her naked family looks on.”

  “No one is looking at you really. It’s not like—” Rowen took a deep breath and waved a hand. This was really no big deal. She hadn’t expected him to go out there with her. He never did. She regretted delving deeper into it. “The remote should be on the coffee table, and you know you can help yourself to anything in the kitchen. My aunts will actually be offended if you don’t. I’ll see you in thirty minutes or so.”

  Eric kissed his wife on the cheek and headed toward the den. He still looked a little uneasy, but Rowen couldn’t tell if that was because he hated this particular ritual or he felt guilty about not joining in. Maybe it was a little of both.

  The air outside was still. It wasn’t too cold or too warm. It was just the right temperature for this sort of thing. The rest of Rowen’s family was already out there. Well, not all of her family, but there were a lot of them out at any rate.

  Aunts Lydia and Nadine were lighting candles. The latter was much more reserved than her sister. She had her robe pulled tightly closed. She was going about lighting the candles with a slow sort of reverence. Lydia, meanwhile, looked to be in a fantastic mood. She bounced around the circle, pulling additional candles from a bag with a smile that never left her face.

  Rowen’s cousins weren’t helping with the set up. Nadine’s daughters, Willow and Peony, were sitting next to each other like usual. Their heads were together and they were taking turns giggling over something the other had said. Rose, Lydia’s daughter, and Margo, Rowen’s Uncle Norman�
�s daughter, were both on their phones. That wasn’t really a surprise. They both had a lot to do. Rose headed up the Lainswich Inquirer, and Margo had started up her own PR business recently. Granted, Margo could be doing just about anything else on her phone. She was good at this new job of hers, but she had never had the best work ethic.

  “Hey,” snapped Aunt Nadine, frowning when she came to the girls tapping away on their phones. “Take those back inside. There’s no place for them out here. You know better than that.”

  Rose lowered her phone, a guilty, chastised look on her face. “Sorry,” she said standing. Margo just gave a big sigh and stood as well. She followed her cousin inside, phone in hand.

  Aunt Nadine’s gaze turned to Rowen. She smiled. “Is that husband of yours joining us?” She never gave up.

  “Afraid not.” Rowen shoved her hands into the pockets of her robe and looked around. “Where’s Uncle Norman?”

  Nadine rolled her eyes. “He weaseled out of it. As he does.” She went back to setting down candles. “He insisted he needed to double-check inventory down at the shop. You know he’s never really been one for ritual.”

  “Neither is Eric, I’m afraid.” Rowen went ahead and took her place in the circle. Her aunts finished up with the candles. The smell of them burning brought back a lot of good memories. Rowen had done a lot of magic out here. There’d been a lot of full moons, a lot of chanting, a lot of candles. The night was still and quiet, like it was just waiting for them to get started.

  Rose and Margo came back from the house without their phones. Seeing everything was set up, they went ahead and disrobed. Margo wasn’t the least bit shy. She dropped the robe and stood there with total confidence. Rose wasn’t terribly shy, but she made a point to go ahead and take her place in the circle, where no one would really be looking at her, before disrobing. Things got rolling after that.

  Despite what Eric had thought, it really wasn’t awkward. Everyone stood facing outward from the circle gazing out at the Greensmith land. Rowen could feel the air on her skin and the grass beneath her bare feet. She heard a bell. Not long after that, she heard her Aunt Lydia begin to speak. “We are here to thank the guardians of this place. The town of Lainswich has never been kind to us Greensmiths. We thank those listening for your protection and—”

  The back door to the Greensmith house opened, cutting off Lydia and breaking the mystic solitude of the ritual. Rowen saw her husband poking his head out on the back porch. He had an arm thrown across his eyes. “Sorry!” he called. “Has it started yet?”

  “Yes!” shouted Rowen, feeling her own face burn red for him.

  “Did you want to join us, dear?” called Aunt Lydia, being a little more generous than Rowen who just wanted him to hurry and go back inside.

  “No,” Eric said quickly. Too quickly. It made his whole interruption just a little more offensive. “I just…Rose; I think your phone is ringing.”

  “Oh!” Rose didn’t move at first. Finally, after a length of awkward silence, she grabbed up her robe and hurried toward the back door. “I guess I’ll, uh, be right back?”

  Well, that certainly stalled things. Rowen pulled her robe back on. “I’ll get out of your hair,” she heard her husband blurt before stepping back inside. Rowen wasn’t going to let him get away that easily. She hurried inside after him. It wasn’t like the ritual was going to pick right back up without Rose.

  She found her husband walking back into the den. The television was on, but it didn’t sound like a program he would be interested in. “What in the world did you do that for?” Rowen demanded.

  Eric turned, apparently surprised she had followed. “What?”

  “Why did you interrupt?”

  “Because Rose’s phone was ringing. She said she was waiting for a call.”

  “And did she ask you to get her if her phone rang?”

  “No, I just assumed she’d want to know.”

  “I don’t think she would have wanted you to interrupt a ritual!”

  Eric frowned at her. “Sorry. I figured you either hadn’t started yet or you had just started. I didn’t—”

  “Even if we had just started, that’s sort of a big deal!” Rowen had assumed Eric knew that. He’d given every indication that he knew that he understood how serious some of this stuff could be. Fortunately, the guardians of the Greensmith house would probably understand. She wasn’t about to mention that to him. She didn’t want a repeat of this.

  Eric winced. “Sorry. I guess I didn’t think.”

  Rowen couldn’t stay annoyed at him over something like this. She rolled her eyes and allowed her anger to subside. “You sure you don’t want to come out there and join us once we start back up?”

  “No thanks.” Eric plopped down stiffly on the edge of the sofa to watch some horrible-looking reality show on television. “I’ll sit in here very quietly and wait patiently for you to finish. We still seeing a movie after or—?”

  Before Rowen could respond, Rose hurried around the corner clutching her phone. She had thrown on the t-shirt and blue jeans she had arrived in. “Hey! I’ve gotta go. Can you tell everyone they can start the ritual without me?”

  “What?” Rowen couldn’t believe she was hearing this from Rose. “Are you kidding? Why? Where are you going?”

  “I just got a call from Julia Martinez at Channel 2. There’s some story breaking about her old boss. Remember? Mr. Hawthorne?”

  “I remember him.” Rowen had been forced to work with him on a murder case before. She’d also helped his wife sue him in a pending divorce. Was that what this was about?

  “It’s big and Julia including me is a big deal.”

  “This ritual is a big deal!”

  “We do it all the time, and it’s not like I have any magic in me or anything.”

  “That’s not really the point.”

  Rose waved a hand, like she already knew the whole spiel. “I really need to go before she changes her mind. You know how Julia can be.”

  “Fine.” It wasn’t like Rowen could stop her. “At least go out there and tell everyone where you’re going.”

  Rose bit her bottom lip. “Can you? I would, but…I really don’t want to. My mother will make a big deal out of it. You know how she is.”

  Aunt Lydia could be a bit much. Even so, Rowen wasn’t going to do Rose’s dirty work for her. “No. If you want to go, then you can—Rose!”

  Rose was already creeping toward the door. She hurried when Rowen called her name. “Thanks! I appreciate it, and I owe you!” Rose stepped outside, the front door closing behind her.

  “See? It’s not just me. I’m not the only one who interrupted your ritual.”

  Rowen glared at her husband. He quickly threw up his hands in way of surrender. “You’re lucky I really want to see that movie.” She gave his arm light punch and headed back outside to give the rest of her family the news. “Rose had to run. Paper business,” she announced as she stepped out the back door.

  Rowen’s cousins exchanged looks, like they were nervous about how Lydia and Nadine might react. This wasn’t something that had happened before. Rituals had always gone smoothly until now. It wasn’t like it was a very long ordeal or anything. Aunt Nadine was the first to give a huff. She was dressed in her robe again. It hung from her thin frame, making her look bony as she put her hands on her hips. “Well, I hope it was important,” she muttered, not one to raise her voice or make a fuss.

  “I’m sure it was,” said Aunt Lydia, jumping to her daughter’s defense. She had put her robe back on as well. She was a great deal plumper than her sister. Not that she was the least bit shy about her body. She looked to Rowen. “What was the scoop?”

  Rowen shrugged. She really didn’t think it was worth Rose leaving an important ritual over. She was reluctant to answer, but telling them seemed unavoidable. “She’s meeting with Julia Martinez. It was something or other about Mr. Hawthorne. I’d think something like that could wait until morning, but—”

&
nbsp; “Mr. Hawthorne?” Aunt Lydia interrupted, her eyes lighting up with interest. “What’s going on?”

  Again, Rowen shrugged. “Divorce stuff, I would imagine.”

  “I’m surprised Julia wants to share something like that.” Margo frowned, lounging back in the grass. She sniffed a bit, as if offended. “I’m surprised she didn’t call me.”

  Rowen was about to say something along the lines of them going ahead and continuing with the ritual, but she was distracted by Aunt Lydia heading for the back door. “You can start without me. I need to make a phone call really quick.”

  “Start without you?” Nadine called after her sister. “This isn’t something we can just start and you come back and rejoin us a few minutes in! Either we wait on you or you skip the ritual entirely. It’s not an—”

  “I’ll have to take a raincheck then.” Aunt Lydia whisked back inside the house, surprising everybody.

  Aunt Nadine seemed the most taken aback. She stood there, sputtering. “What would she…? How could she…? She knows how important these rituals are! What would Grammy think? This is just inexcusable. First her daughter and now…. I just can’t believe this.”

  “We can start again with just us,” Peony offered with a smile, trying to calm her mother down.

  “Yeah,” Willow agreed, following her sister’s lead. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere.”

  “That’s because I have morals and raised you right.”

  Rowen looked around at the family members remaining. There were only five of them left. This seemed like a record low for one of their rituals. Rowen tried not to let it bother her. She just hoped the guardians of the Greensmith family wouldn’t take offense. She also hoped they wouldn’t retract their protection. The Greensmiths needed all the help they could get.

  Aunt Nadine led the rest of the ritual. They managed to finish up without anyone else interrupting or running away. They broke the circle, cleaned up, and went inside to get dressed. Rowen found her husband afterward. He was so into that reality show of his that he didn’t even hear her come up. “You ready to go or do I need to sit and let you finish that?” She indicated the television.