Any Potion in a StormPacific 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
