Stealing Time: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel Read online

  Stealing Time

  A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel

  Christine Gael

  Contents

  Introduction

  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

  Introduction

  Just when Cricket thought things couldn't get much worse, Mee-maw's a witch now, too! And she might be the most powerful of them all.

  The Crow's Feet Coven of three is finally complete, but hell if any of them know what to do next. With the Organization still hot on their trail and a new enemy they hadn't expected, their burgeoning powers will be put to the test.

  If they succeed?

  They will stop the senseless killing of witches around the world.

  If they fail, their magic will fall into the hands of a being so evil, humanity itself is at stake.

  Chapter 1

  "You've got to be kidding me."

  Zoe's stunned voice jarred me out of my state of silent disbelief and I turned to meet her gaze, which had previously been pinned on our grandmother.

  "She's kidding, right?" she asked me this time, eyes wide.

  We both wheeled on Mee-maw, staring at her expectantly.

  "What?" she demanded with a growl as she scratched at her chin. "Geez, you guys should be happy."

  I blew out a sigh. "We are happy. Or, we will be, at least. Once you explain why we've been holed up at Zoe’s house together for three days and you're only now getting around to telling us that you managed to stuff a bunch of magical items into your purse before we ran out of Finneas's compound!"

  I tried to sound indignant, but I didn’t have much of a leg to stand on. After sneaking out and handing myself over to the leader of the Organization that had been hunting my coven in an effort to take him down from the inside, I was hardly in position to complain about secrets. I’d barely made it out alive, and my survival had been due to the people standing in front of me. A fact that Mee-maw clearly hadn’t forgotten, as she held up her hands in front of her barrel-like chest.

  "First of all, stop being such an exaggerator. Two isn’t ‘a bunch’, Cricket. Second of all, you got a lot of nerve, missy! You ran off half-cocked without telling anyone and almost got your fool head blown off. On purpose, no less! I'm an old lady. I forgot that I even put that stuff in my purse until yesterday when my throat had a tickle and I went looking for a butterscotch. Lo and behold, there they were."

  "How do you forget that you have some of the most powerful magic in the world just sitting at the bottom of some raggedy, thrift-store carpetbag, sharing space with loose hard candies and sugar packets you stole from the diner?" Zoe shot back, clearly still exasperated as she began to pace the floor again.

  "See, you two are always putting a negative spin on things. Sugar packets are left out because they want you to take them. That’s not stealing. It’s called being frugal and thinking ahead. And, to be fair, I wasn’t exactly in the best frame of mind. I’d just rescued one of my granddaughters from a monster--" She broke off and faced Patrick , who was leaning against the doorjamb observing silently. "No offense, Patrick, but your dad was rough," she mumbled before addressing me and Zoe again, "and I'd finally connected with my very own magical item. Once I had the pocket watch in my hands, I forgot I’d put the other stuff in my bag. It was like…nothing else mattered. You remember how that feels, doncha?"

  Zoe looked away and nodded reluctantly. "I remember."

  I remembered, too. Even now, as I thought of my typewriter, Maude, sitting in my room, a warm thread of life pulsed between us.

  When women of the Crow's Feet Coven finally touched the object that connected us with our destinies, it felt like coming home. Mee-maw's distraction with hers was totally understandable.

  Except...

  "Wait. Did you say you found them in your purse yesterday?" I pressed. "Why didn't you tell us then?"

  Mee-maw sniffed and shot me a glare, one, steely brow raised high. "I think that's pretty obvious, isn't it? Look how you two are treating me! Excuuuse me for not being in a big rush to tell you and subject myself to more of the Spanish Inquisition. Not to mention, the cops have been in and out of here like a billion times grilling us, we got every reporter in a fifty-mile radius parked out on the lawn shoving microphones in our faces asking questions, and fake witches trying to join our coven coming out the wazoo.”

  She wasn’t wrong. The phone had been ringing off the hook, and we’d had a dozen fan letters come in yesterday from wanna-be witches pledging their fealty to us, despite being told that it was all a misunderstanding.

  They’d been waiting their whole lives for someone to tell them magic was real. No newspaper story about a conspiracy-theory loving cult who persecuted innocent women on suspicion of witchcraft was going to change their minds. They’d even dismissed the police report as bogus, claiming we probably had the cops under a spell.

  If they only knew how close they were to the truth, we’d never get another moment’s peace.

  I raked a hand through my hair, turning my focus back to Mee-maw. "You know what? It's fine. We know now, and that's what counts," I said, stepping into the role of diplomat. Having more of the Organization’s magical items in our possession put an even bigger target on our backs, but there was no point in crying over milk that hadn't even been spilt. "Verbena is going to want them back. We're going to have to make sure that we're not only protecting ourselves, but also these items." And, silver lining: In the meantime, at least she couldn’t use their powers against us.

  I reached out and gingerly traced the handle of an ornate, silver hand-mirror laying on the table before me. It was oval-shaped and slightly tarnished, but the craftsmanship was meticulous. Being careful not to look into it or point it at anyone else, I turned it this way and that, inspecting the markings.

  "Patrick, this is the mirror you told us about, right? The one that's supposed to show a person's true intentions?"

  He pushed his leanly muscled frame from his space in the doorway and straightened, but didn't come closer. "Yep. Looks like it."

  But his gaze wasn't on the mirror at all. All his attention was focused on the pewter candleholder with a squat, butter-yellow candle nestled inside it.

  I squinted, trying to recall what he'd said about the other magically charged items in his father's possession. It took a moment, but eventually, his words from a couple weeks before floated to the surface of my mind.

  "A candlestick…supposed to allow the user to commune with the dead. To my knowledge, that one has never been utilized.”

  My breath caught as it hit me.

  That’s why Patrick had been so quiet since Mee-maw’s revelation. He was thinking of using it to contact his mother, Lydia.

  He'd gone through most of his life believing his mother had left him in order to embrace life as a witch. Right before Verbena--the true mastermind behind the entire Organization--had killed Finneas, he'd told Patrick that Lydia hadn’t abandoned their family. The truth was, she’d been dead for decades. And even more devastating? Finneas admitted that he’d been the cause of h
er death. Jealousy, fear, and greed had pushed him to do the unthinkable and command the Organization to hunt her down.

  Now, upon Mee-maw’s confession, it had become clear that we might possess the ability to contact her through this candlestick. It was supposed to be a mystical telephone of sorts. If he was right, and the items were still charged with magic and in working order, that meant all Patrick had to do was dial...

  I had to admit, after having lost my parents as a child, the possibility of contacting my own mother or father was almost too much to bear.

  I spared a glance at Mee-maw, who clearly didn’t recall the previous conversation about the candlestick, and for that I was grateful. The death of Bree Hawthorn nearly killed my grandmother, and while decades had softened the sharpest edges of grief, it never, ever went away. If she had known what the candlestick was purportedly capable of, her hopes of contacting my mother would’ve been even higher than my own.

  No.

  Without proof that it was charged and worked as Patrick had been told, it was better to keep this between us for now.

  And, judging by the stricken expression on his face, there was no danger of him spilling the beans at the moment. He was lost in his own pain and grief.

  "Maybe we should just get rid of them," Zoe muttered, pausing in her efforts to wear a hole straight through the kitchen's tile floor with her pacing.

  “No!” Patrick and I spoke at the same time, and Zoe frowned.

  "We don’t even know how to use them, and frankly, it feels like bad karma to use another witch’s magic.”

  I couldn’t disagree with her there. My skin still crawled as I thought of the torture necklace I’d had used against me, and had been forced to use myself. I could still see Finneas’s agonized face as he writhed on the floor. Both suffering its power and wielding it had left a mark on my soul.

  “We don’t know if we’re going to need them. I’m not saying we have to like it, Zoe, but we may have no choice. We’ve got to use every advantage we have. It’s not just us we’re trying to protect here. Every witch left in this world is at risk until Verbena is taken down.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s not after every other witch in the world right now, is she?” Zoe shot back. “She’s got us three clearly in her crosshairs. If she knows we've got these, too? Geez, you saw what she did to Finneas. What's stopping her from doing that to all of us?"

  The thought of becoming a mummified sack of bones in leathery skin, like Patrick’s father, was unappealing, to say the least.

  I spared another glance at Patrick’s pale face and turned back toward Zoe. "Well, for one thing, she wants to ensure that the pocket watch, cauldron, and typewriter are all fully charged first,” I reasoned. "And Mee-maw still hasn't gotten her watch to work at all yet."

  Not for lack of trying...

  Just the night before, I'd woken up feeling parched so I'd come downstairs to get a cup of water, only to find her parked in front of the oven, dressed in a winter parka, mittens, and a pair of Zoe's ski boots. The oven was on broil, and the door was open, bringing the kitchen to a balmy hundred-plus degrees. Mee-maw’s eyes were glassy and her helmet of steel wool hair was plastered to her scalp with sweat. When I'd asked her what she was doing, she’d told me she was too old for hot flashes to trigger her magic, so she was trying to trick her body into thinking she was having one, in hopes of kicking it into gear.

  Unfortunately for poor Mee-maw, all it had gotten her was a dry cough and some singed eyelashes.

  She'd been bitterly disappointed, and I could hardly blame her. While Zoe and I certainly had our struggles perfecting things, we'd both been able to connect with our magic within the first day or so of finding our items. Despite Mee-maw's very clear attachment to the watch, so far, after days of having it in her possession?

  She was batting zero.

  It was going to take a bit more to get the juices flowing.

  Unless it was too late?

  The thought had come to me more than once over the last couple of days, but I again pushed it aside. Verbena had all but admitted that we were a threat, especially once we were able to meld our powers as a coven of three again. And surely, when we'd talked to our Coven's Everlasting Conservator, Connie, and she’d tipped us off to Mee-maw’s potential powers, she would've mentioned that there was an expiration date on connecting with our magic?

  The thought of contacting Connie ran through my mind for the hundredth time and I shut it down. As much as I desperately wanted to ask her a thousand new questions, I also couldn't risk it. Verbena had inhabited her body once. What was to stop her from doing it again?

  No, for now, we had to lay low and hope we were able to get Mee-maw's powers cracking so we could find Verbena before she had a chance to regroup and come find us.

  I shuddered as I recalled our conversation with the ancient witch. Despite never having laid eyes on her personally, I'd had several run-ins with her; once when she had been in control of Connie's body, and when she'd reanimated Finneas's leathery corpse after she'd killed him.

  “So, sisters of the Crow’s Feet Coven…” Finneas’s cadaver had said, its mouth opening and closing grotesquely, “it looks like you’ve neutralized my favorite pawns. I wonder if you’ll be as successful when you have to face the queen?”

  The queen.

  She certainly wasn’t modest, was she? The sad part was, I had a sense that her assessment of her power was bang on. She was one bad witch.

  We needed every single advantage we could get, and that meant the three of us being at full strength, and tapping both Trudy and Patrick to assist us. If we failed…

  Nope. Scratch that.

  Failure was not an option.

  “We’re keeping the items on hand,” I said, hoping Zoe picked up on the note of finality in my voice.

  We had been a team in every way that counted to this point, but as the first to connect with her powers and the strongest of the three of us, I was putting my foot down here. I only hoped she didn’t feel the need to push me. She was like a sister to me. Had been by my side from the beginning, and had even opened her home to us all while we regrouped. If we were on the outs, this whole thing would be a million times harder.

  The room was silent and Zoe finally nodded.

  “Okay, then. We keep them. We’ve got to hide them somewhere safe.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” I said softly, more relieved than I let on.

  I would definitely make sure the items were hidden somewhere safe. And, the second Patrick and I were alone, I’d broach the topic that was clearly on both our minds.

  His mother.

  For now, though, we needed to move ahead and see if we could figure out how to trigger Mee-maw’s powers.

  I shot a quick glance at the burner phone by my elbow and sighed. Nothing yet, but I still had some hope that Trudy would be getting in touch soon. The local librarian was not only a great friend and ally, she was also a crack-shot researcher. If there was more information on our coven's path to becoming whole again, Trudy would find it.

  I just had to hope it was sooner than later, because the clock was indeed ticking. The showdown with Finneas had kicked off a flurry of activity, which had, in itself, been a form of protection for the past few days. Knowing we'd struggle to practice magic under the too-watchful eye of the local police, we had refused to move to a safe house despite some of the Organization members still being at large. Still, the Sheriff and his Deputy had been around more often than not, trying to make heads or tails of what they'd found at the compound. Between them coming in and out of the house, and members of the press from around the state all vying for comments from “the woman who had escaped the crazed, witch-hunting cult”, Rocky Knoll had been far too much of a hotspot to risk another major upheaval this soon.

  But the world was a dumpster fire. It wouldn't be long before another shiny tragedy, grisly murder, or hive of murder hornets captured the attention of the masses, leaving us and Rocky Knoll at Verbena's mer
cy.

  Tick-tock.

  I shifted in my seat, wincing slightly at the tight, pulling sensation in my thigh.

  Given that it had only been days since Finneas's bullets had pierced my skin, I was faring pretty well, thanks to Patrick. He'd, yet again, done the honors of fixing me, stitching up both gunshot wounds. I'd been lucky that both had gone straight through, but even with my faster-than-usual healing abilities, both my arm and my leg still needed more time before they'd be one hundred percent.

  The fact was, we needed a little more time before we faced off with Verbena again, for a whole host of reasons.

  As I peered through my lashes to see Mee-maw fiddling with her elegant, gold pocket watch, I couldn't help but appreciate the irony.

  The one thing we still couldn't control was the thing we needed control over most of all.

  I settled back in my seat and tried to focus on the positive.

  At least my kids were safe. Zoe, Mee-maw, Patrick, and I had passed on the safe house. But, once the police had corroborated my story, it had been easy enough to convince Lizzie and Jack to take them up on their offer. With their father fresh from the hospital after the Organization burned down the house we’d raised them in, they were freaked out by everything going on and were glad for the protection. They had agreed to spend the next couple weeks with Greg in a house two hours north of Rocky Knoll, in another, cooperating town’s jurisdiction where they could be far enough away, while also being monitored by the police, just in case.

  They’d pleaded with me, Mee-maw and Zoe to join them, and Lizzie was still angry that we’d refused, but that was all right by me.