Dances With Witches
A Hannah Hickok Witchy Mystery Book Five
Lily Harper Hart
HarperHart Publications
Copyright © 2020 by Lily Harper Hart
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
1. One
2. Two
3. Three
4. Four
5. Five
6. Six
7. Seven
8. Eight
9. Nine
10. Ten
11. Eleven
12. Twelve
13. Thirteen
14. Fourteen
15. Fifteen
16. Sixteen
17. Seventeen
18. Eighteen
19. Nineteen
Mailing List
About the Author
Books by Lily Harper Hart
Books by Amanda M. Lee
1
One
“Are you sure we should be doing this?”
Hannah Hickok stared hard at the resume in front of her, so hard in fact that her boyfriend Cooper Wyatt worried her head was going to explode.
“Do what?” he asked in a soft voice. “Hire a new bartender? What could possibly go wrong?” His tone was cheeky, but he knew exactly what worried her. The last few bartenders they’d hired had turned out to be homicidal maniacs — two of them had actually been demons from another plane (no joke) — and their track record on hiring was currently in negative numbers.
“You’re not funny.” She shot him a quelling look and went back to studying the résumé. “I just ... maybe we should hold off.”
He understood why she would suggest that — actually, he’d been anticipating it — but he couldn’t allow her to react out of fear. “We need a bartender.”
“We have me.”
“You can’t work every shift for the foreseeable future.” He hesitated and then barreled forward. “I know what happened is upsetting, but we can’t hold back on what’s right for Casper Creek.” And you, he added silently. “We have no choice but to look forward instead of back.”
It was a reasonable argument, Hannah told herself. He wasn’t saying anything she hadn’t told herself ... and he was convincing. Still, fear niggled at the back of her mind. “What if we hire another murderer? I don’t think Casper Creek’s reputation can survive another blow.”
Months before, Hannah hadn’t even known about Casper Creek. Her maternal grandmother ran the town, which was located on top of a mountain and only accessible through a back road or ski lift, and Hannah had been estranged from the woman for the entirety of her life. Then, when her grandmother died, a man showed up with a deed and informed Hannah that it belonged to her ... and her life had irrevocably changed.
Most of it was for the better, and that’s what she told herself over and over again, but since moving from Michigan to Kentucky, Hannah had seen more hellacious things than any one person should ever be exposed to. From evil witches to ghosts to creatures that served as the basis for the Seven Deadly Sins, she’d seen it all ... and been scarred because of it. That was on top of finding out she was a witch and had magic at her fingertips.
It was all so new ... and overwhelming. Since losing one of her own people, a woman who willingly allowed one of the furies to take her over, Hannah had been second-guessing herself at every turn.
“We’ve only been open again for a few weeks,” she reminded him. “We’ve hosted one big event since then. One. Someone died at that event, too.”
“Yes, but for once it wasn’t one of our bartenders doing the killing,” he pointed out. As much as he wanted to coddle her, tell her everything was going to be all right and give in to her every whim, he knew that’s not what she needed. It was time for some tough love ... although he wasn’t entirely sure he had the strength to hold out in the face of her misery.
“No, it was the victim’s daughter and assistant working against each other that resulted in her death,” Hannah agreed. “She was still killed here. There was yet another story about someone dying on my property.”
Cooper studied her a beat, internally debating, and then moved his hand to her back to rub at some of the tension building there. She’d been a coiled spring of late, ready to break free and complain at the least provocation. He didn’t want that to happen again, and yet he refused to simply agree to whatever she wanted to avoid a fight. Casper Creek wasn’t just her home. It was her livelihood. Numerous people relied on the place staying in business. That meant she had to suck it up and do what was best for the business instead of hiding in the shadow of fear hanging over her that seemed to be growing larger and larger every single day.
“What happened at the ghost event was terrible,” he acknowledged, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t think any of us wanted that as an outcome for our first big event back. That being said, if there was going to be a death playing out on this property, that was a good one for us to have.”
She made an incredulous face. “Did you just say it was good that Velma Sanders died up here? She was a world-famous psychic and medium.”
“Who happened to be a fraud.”
“That’s neither here nor there. It’s not important. What is important is that we’ve had fifty bodies on this property since I took over as owner.”
He arched a challenging eyebrow. “Fifty?”
“It’s close to that.”
“It’s more like five.”
“It feels like fifty,” she groused, turning back to the résumé. “I don’t think five is a number to be bragging about, especially when referring to dead bodies.”
“I agree but ....” He trailed off, exhaling heavily as he studied her profile. She was a beautiful woman. That was the first thing he noticed when she appeared in downtown Casper Creek to take over. He’d been attracted to her from the start. In addition to being beautiful on the
