Once Blessed, Thrice Cursed
A Sister Witches Urban Fantasy #1
Coralie Moss
Copyright © 2019 by Coralie Moss
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
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.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, objects, and incidents herein are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual living things, events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Published internationally by Pink Moon Books, British Columbia, Canada.
ISBN 978-1-989446-05-8
Editor: Michelle Meade
Cover Design: Elizabeth Mackey
Proofreading: Beth Attwood
Created with Vellum
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. She lives on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia with her family and two globe-trotting rescue cats.
Join Coralie’s mailing list for book news, giveaways, and the occasional homage to sisterhood.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, all the gratitude to my editor, Michelle Meade. Thank you for hearing me, for guiding me, for wielding the red pen with dexterity, and for knowing when to put down the pen and pick up the pom poms.
Thank you, Elizabeth Mackey, for creating a gorgeous cover.
Massive thanks to the beta readers—Kim Kennard, Laurel Buchanan, and Leslie Mart. It’s always a delight to see what stray bits you’ve caught. Your suggestions were spot on!
Last and by no means least, THANK YOU to the readers.
Contents
Author’s Note: The Sister Witches & other series
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
Author’s Note: The Sister Witches & other series
Once Blessed, Thrice Cursed is book #1 of the Sister Witches Urban Fantasy Series. Set in Northampton, Massachusetts, it introduces us to Clementine, Beryl, and Alderose Brodeur.
Demon Lines (book 2) is the continuation of Clementine’s story.
The Scarab Eater’s Daughter (book 3) gives us the sisters’ continuing adventures from Alderose’s point of view.
Readers first meet the sisters’ aunt, Maritza Brodeur, in the Calliope Jones series:
Magic Remembered (book 1)
Magic Reclaimed (book 2)
Magic Redeemed (book 3)
Magic Restrained, a novelette (book 3.5)
The Magic Series: Box Set #1 of the Calliope Jones novels
Join Coralie’s mailing list for news of upcoming book releases.
This book is dedicated to my sister, Karen, who has always had my back;
and to my grandmother, Dorothy,
who taught me to make magic with needles and threads.
Once Blessed, Thrice Cursed
Introduction
When my sisters and I were handed the keys to our deceased mother's shop, we thought we’d spend a crisp and colorful October weekend together.
We planned to divvy up the shop’s contents, keep what we wanted and sell off the rest, then close the doors to Needles & Sins for good.
Our mother had other plans.
1
“Needles and Sins.”
My oldest sister, Alderose, shielded her eyes from windborne grit and contemplated the sign’s faded lettering. “Why did Mom have to give her shop such an awkward name?”
“Never bothered me,” I said, tracking the path of Alderose’s stormy gaze. I found the shop’s pitiful appearance far more unsettling. Seven years after our mother’s death—and a scant month after her successor’s passing—two grimy, unlit display windows whispered of hard times and a dearth of customers.
I’d lost count of the hours and days I’d spent ensconced in the shop’s overstuffed armchairs, sneaking glimpses of swooning, half-naked humans on paperback book covers while my mother and her friends taught me how to knit and crochet.
Or tried.
“You were too young to care.” Alderose shrugged off my touch and shifted her weight. The wind whipped a hank of her wavy, dark brown hair across my cheek while sending clusters of bright yellow leaves scuttering across the sidewalk. “Mom opened the shop when I was in junior high, and that name haunted me from day one. The girls were brutal and the boys assumed I knew way more than I did.”
Middle-sister Beryl stepped in between us. “I say Mom was ahead of her time. I think it’s cool she decided a store devoted to romance novels and the womanly art of needlework would thrive in a town already devoted to women’s empowerment.”
“‘Womanly art’?” I asked. Northampton, Massachusetts, was home to a famous all-women’s college and, as an alumna, I chafed at my sister’s phrasing.
“I was being ironic.”
“Moira Brodeur. Pioneer for witches, stitches, and dukes in britches.” Alderose turned on her booted heel and offered us fist bumps. An updraft lifted the skirt of Beryl’s plaid dress, and more of Alderose’s hair. She grabbed the wild locks and returned to scowling at the sign and jangling the ring of keys the estate lawyer had pressed into her hand.
During our hour-long meeting, the insipid warlock repeatedly voiced the assumption that at least one of us would pick up where the shop’s most recent caretaker—our mother’s longtime friend, Serena—had left off when she’d died. Her will passed the care and running of the shop to us. It was nobody’s business that the Brodeur sisters had met multiple times over HexenApp and agreed to sell what we could and divvy up the proceeds.
“It’s going to be dark soon. Let’s get this over with.” Alderose—shortest, fiercest, and our de facto leader—broke away, read the tags on the keys, and separated two. She unlocked the shop and tugged on the heavy, crosscut oak and beveled glass door. Hinges groaned and the strip of rubber at the bottom flaked off in pieces.
Beryl elbowed the door and followed Alderose inside. I paused on the threshold. A web of protective threads, frayed by time and invisible to the non-Magical eye, spread across
