Crescent Prophecy
The Crescent Witch Chronicles - Book Two
Axelle Chandler
Crescent Prophecy (The Crescent Witch Chronicles - Book Two) by Axelle Chandler
Copyright © 2017 by Axelle Chandler
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.
Cover Design: Rebecca Frank Art
Formatting: Axelle Chandler
www.axellechandler.com
Chapter 1
Sitting behind the counter of Irish Moon, the crystal shop I owned and ran in the small Irish village of Derrydun, I lazily shuffled my tarot cards.
Summer was coming to an end, and with it, marked my first three months as a new resident of Ireland.
When my mother had passed—the same mother who abandoned my late father and me when I was two years old—I was drawn to Ireland to claim my inheritance. The cottage and Irish Moon I knew about, but a more mysterious legacy had revealed itself in the most unexpected way.
Thinking about all the things that had happened since I first arrived in the little Irish village, I smiled. It hadn’t exactly been smooth sailing.
It had all started when Robert O’Keeffe, the lawyer of my mother, Aileen, turned up and zapped me with his golden pen. It wasn’t as dirty as it sounded because that zap had unbound my magic.
Yep, I was a Crescent Witch. The last in a long line of badasses who protected the magical creatures of Ireland, and now it was my turn to protect Derrydun and its hawthorn trees.
Outside the window, I caught a glimpse of a handsome Irishman wearing a black and red checkered shirt. Boone. He was cutting back Mrs. Boyle’s—the unpredictable old lady who loved whacking people with her broom—hedges.
Boone... Well, he was another story. He turned out to be a shapeshifter with amnesia.
Seeing your crush turn into a fox, then a gyrfalcon, and a tabby cat, kind of made things impossible to deny.
Add that in with my life in Australia falling apart—my boyfriend Alex dumping me and being handed a redundancy package from my employer. Then throw in a pinch of my witch legacy, a battle with a grotesque monster, almost being drowned by a bunch of shadow people, and my estranged mother being killed by a trickster fae called a spriggan and not a run-of-the-mill heart attack, and there you had the last four months of my life. One big ball of W.T.F.
Oh, yeah, and the whole magic double life? Only Boone and I knew. To everyone else, I was just a weirdo in a crystal shop, and Boone was the sweetheart of Derrydun. He didn’t know where he’d come from before landing in the village, and no one cared. He could do no wrong, which had been infuriating for an outsider like me, but I’d since been accepted into the fold. Derrydun had claimed me, magically and ‘Irishly.’
The tarot cards were heavy in my hands, and I placed the deck on the countertop. They were a pretty set of black cards with metallic gold artwork and had been a favorite of my mother. They were one of the few things I knew about Aileen and something I had found comfort in during the tumble dryer my life had become.
The cards were not meant to see the future but act as words of wisdom and guidance for the journey ahead. Something that had come in handy a lot lately.
The Tower had brought me here, and The Star had given me hope that things had been rebuilt enough, and now I could now look forward to a future of discovery and stability. At least for the time being.
Glancing at the clock on the wall, I frowned. Mairead was late today. She was the seventeen-year-old shop assistant who helped me here at Irish Moon. Since it was her last day before she went off to Trinity College in Dublin, I would give her a pass.
She was a moody Goth girl, who had an epic crush on my newly acquired boyfriend, Boone. I’d forgiven her weeks ago for tricking him into giving her a kiss as payment for looking after the shop when I was sick. Sick being the covert word for totally depleting my magical reserves healing Boone when he ran afoul of a craglorn. The awful creature that wouldn’t have even been stalking the village had it not been for my carelessness.
Long story short, I owed him one—hence the healing—and in repayment, he’d planted his lips on Mairead. You better believe I’d made him suffer.
Speaking of… The door thrust open, the bell jangling furiously, and Mairead stormed through the shop and disappeared out back to dump her bag. She looked nice today, her usual Goth attire ramped up to ten. Black boots, shiny black leggings, black top with white skulls printed on it, and a long black cardigan. When she reemerged, I smiled.
“Last day. Glad to get rid of me?” I asked, scooping up the tarot cards.
She rolled her eyes and pouted, her black lipstick making her skin look paler than the ivory of her makeup already did. Hugging a black folder against her chest, she sighed dramatically.
I’d learned not to take her moody Goth attitude to heart because hers was always in the right place. How many times had she chastised me since arriving? Too many to count. Ultimately, it was the Crescent Witch legacy that forced me to stay, but it had been one of Mairead’s teenage tantrums that had sealed the deal and made me see that it wasn’t all that bad here.
“I drew a card for you this morning,” I went on, waving the tarot deck. “It was the bitch card.”
“Very funny.”
“What’s that you’ve got there?”
“I made this for you,” she said, handing me the display book.
Flipping open the cover, I leafed through the silky plastic pockets, my eyebrows raising. It was an Irish Moon employee handbook. Mairead had actually sat down at a computer, typed out
