“Ursa major.”
THE END
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my editor, Jeni Chappelle for your willingness to try different approaches to the writing and editing process, and for helping me grow exponentially as a storyteller.
My gratitude to cover designer, Elizabeth Mackey. You make collaborating a joy. I am in awe of your creativity.
The Beta Belles—Leslie Mart, Kim Kennard, Maureen Marshall, and Diane Castro. Thank you for reading MAGIC RECLAIMED in its rough stages and sharing your thoughtful feedback.
The ARC readers. Your time is valuable and I am so grateful you read and reviewed. Thank you!
About the Author
Coralie Moss loves everyday heroines and complicated witches, layered magic and earthly moments, and will always believe in the power of love. Whether she’s writing Urban Fantasy or Contemporary Romance, her characters get her up in the morning and Assam tea keeps her going. She lives on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia with her HEA, their son, and two globe-trotting rescue cats.
Also by Coralie Moss
URBAN FANTASY
Magic Remembered (Book #1 in the series)
Magic Redeemed (Book #2 in the series. Releases June 6, 2019)
CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
Summer Rules, a novelette
Invisible Anna
Opening Nights
Read on for the first chapter of MAGIC REDEEMED.
Magic Redeemed (book #3) A Calliope Jones novel
When my ex-husband proposed we get matching tattoos, I thought Doug’s motivation was to celebrate the birth of our second son and recommit to our life together as partners and parents. Unbeknownst to me, the ink used in the tattoo was imbued by a Spellbinder in my ex-mother-in-law’s employ. Once the design was etched onto my lower belly, the altered ink began to halt the development of my magic.
I was made painfully aware of the tattoo’s true function fifteen years later, when the spell began to burn its way deeper into my flesh. A druid I met during the course of an investigation was able to diagnose the situation and remove the tattoo before it did more harm. He performed the procedure using a magic-infused chant. I had to scream into a pillow for lack of anesthetic.
Though I never wanted to go through that kind of pain again, here I was, on a sunny day in the middle of September, face-down on a padded chair at Salt Spring Island’s only tattoo parlor.
“Ready?” My friend, River settled onto the rolling stool and snapped on a pair of non-latex gloves. Like Tanner, who removed the old tattoo, River was a druid and one of the growing group of Magicals who were fast becoming fixtures in my life.
“Ready,” I said, giving him a relaxed thumbs up. A local plant witch, knowing my history, assured me I could use a heavy hand with her proprietary blend of pain-relieving herbs and still stay alert while getting inked. The drops tasted of crushed grass and worked wonders. I was relaxed and feeling no pain, physical or emotional.
I asked River to create a design that would honor my Aunt Noémi and her daemon, a towering Kodiak bear. Noémi, who had raised me from age six on, died over the recent Labor Day weekend. For strongly sentimental reasons, I wanted bear paw prints inked at the base of my neck, one to either side of my spine.
The stories I had told myself about my aunt and her hands-off parenting methods were based on a series of profound misconceptions. I thought she didn’t care about me, or resented that my mother’s death left her with a third child to raise. The truth came to light in the month before Noémi’s death. A moment of lucidity from her dementia had shed a hazy beam of light on my childhood.
With narrow swaths of the past growing clearer, I had to find out more about my mother, and what triggered our flight from an idyllic, small town in Maine to my aunt’s home in British Columbia.
“I have to shave you, Calli.”
The serious edge to River’s voice made me laugh. “Is that you telling me politely I have a hairy back?” I asked.
“No, no, not at all,” he said. “You’ve got peach fuzz. I didn’t want you to be surprised at the sensation.”
“So far, everything about this experience rates better than my first.” I shivered as a droplet of cool water slid underneath my armpit. River patted my skin dry, sprayed a different liquid across my neck and upper back, and pressed on the transfer.
“Stay still.” His fingers smoothed over the paper before he peeled it away. “Perfect. Ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
I exhaled, sinking the front of my chest into the padded support, only to jerk when he started the motor that powered his set up, and again when the needle bit into my skin.
“Steady, Calli. The first few minutes are the hardest.” River set up a steady rhythm of applying a gentle pressure with both hands, lowering the needle, then drawing a line. I wanted to say it was soothing, but the constant drone of the motor set my teeth on edge.
“I’m creating the outline first,” he said. “Then I’ll fill in the solid areas.”
“How long did you say this was going to take?”
He chuckled. “As long as it needs, Ms. Jones.”
I tuned out the noise and checked my phone. My mostly dormant magic had reawakened in July. As a forty-one year old witch, that meant I had to learn about and practice my gifts as much—and as quickly—as possible. And I had to study. At the urging of River’s sister, Rose—the Head Witch of the Pacific Northwest Covens and a woman not to be questioned—I enrolled in a five-year Basics of Witchcraft program. One and a half months in and I already itched to condense the time commitment to two or three years.
With that goal in mind I had taken a six-month leave of absence from my position with the local agricultural commission’s office. My former assistant texted me frequently. Otter or cat
