Witch Ever After: A Sweet & Quirky Paranormal Romance Read online

  Witch Ever After

  Witch Ever After Book 1

  Kallie Khan

  Copyright © 2019 by Kallie Khan

  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.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is coincidental.

  Cover by Rebecca Poole of dreams2media

  For my parents, the most

  awesome pair of people I’ve ever known

  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

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  34. A Note To The Reader

  35. Acknowledgements

  36. About the Author

  Chapter 1

  TOBIE

  October Moon wished her name were anything but October Moon. So, barring a complete departure (she quite liked the name Rebecca if she’d been able to choose for herself), she called herself Tobie.

  And so did everyone else—except her mother, the regal but eye-rollingly imperious Isidora Takahama Moon.

  And at this particular moment, Isidora was calling Tobie “October” and trailing it with things Tobie definitely didn’t want to hear. “Listen, October, I’m telling you—this boy is different. He’s from the Bloodsong clan. He’s such a good boy. He’s a third-year medical resident, and he studies weekly with the Coven of Darken Sky. They’re very well-connected, October. You need to come meet him. I’ll make a date of it.”

  Tobie scrubbed a hand over her face. “But Mom—”

  “October Moon. Don’t you ‘but Mom’ me; I know what’s best. And this boy is one of the best.” She launched into a description of Alistair’s accomplishments.

  Tobie rolled her eyes and jangled her car keys in her hand. She was standing in front of Aster’s Fine Ethiopian Cuisine, her new local haunt. Gadise, the owner’s daughter, waved at her through the window in a commiserating sort of way. She saved back, and took the opportunity to try to interject into her mother’s monologue. “Mom—”

  “And anyway—”

  “Mom! We just got the new place unpacked, and Mystia and I are just about to grab lunch. Can it wait?”

  She’d prefer it if it didn’t happen at all, but also she knew her mother, and the chances of her absolving Tobie from having to attend these ridiculous match-making family dates were slim to absolutely never.

  Isidora let out an aggrieved sigh on the other end of the phone. (Isidora had wanted to send a magical tele-technician out to Tobie’s new place to have a scrying bowl installed so they could speak through the enchanted, opaque water, but Tobie had insisted on her phone instead.)

  Finally, Isidora spoke. “Alright. Another week or two. But you call me first thing when you’re settled.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Yes, yes. Be good, October. I’ll tell Daddy you send your love.”

  “Oh, but—”

  But the line was dead.

  “Didn’t want to talk to Dad anyway,” she grumbled into the phone.

  “Tobie!”

  She whipped around toward the voice. Her sister Mystia was waving manically at her, wavy dark hair long and caught under the strap of her purse. “Ow!” She yanked hard on her hair and tossed it over her shoulder. “Might as well just chop the mess off,” she said.

  Then she saw Tobie’s expression.

  “You were talking to Mom, huh?”

  Tobie snorted. “Who else?”

  Mystia bumped her gently in the shoulder. “Let’s go drown our sorrows in doro wat and azifa, shall we?” Mystia smiled encouragingly.

  Tobie gave her a lopsided grin in return, and shrugged, like she had nothing else to lose. “You make a compelling argument, Mystie.”

  So she followed Mystia into the restaurant, where everyone greeted them with, “Hi, Tobie! Hi, Mystia!” and Tobie’s sense of affront faded into a warm appreciation of spicy doro wat, bright afiza, all wrapped in delicious, porous injera.

  When they left, Tobie cast a small spell of what her mother used to call “good luck light” in the corner of the front window, back before her mother had become such a serene, unruffled battleship.

  “I saw that,” said Mystia.

  “Saw what?” Tobie said, and winked.

  Tobie’s undying passion was botany. The running joke in her family was that she was destined to be obsessed with plants, since she was born with a green streak in her hair. Everyone she met thought she’d dyed it, but in actuality, she’d inherited a rare kindred gene that gave her hair a brilliant streak of color.

  It was purely cosmetic, but it marked her as a witch. And since it was green, she clung to it as proof that botany was her calling.

  Because, green streak or not, it was.

  She’d studied biology with a focus on plant science in college, earning a degree that qualified her for either (a) graduate school and several hundred thousand dollars in loan debt or (b) work as an overeducated (and underpaid) barista.

  “Why settle for magical phytology when you can do anything, October?” her mother had said. “You did so well in your witching basics; anyone would want you as their apprentice.”

  But Tobie didn’t care what her mother thought.

  Plants were her jam, her ode, her song. She kept up with all the non-magical academic journals, and several of the witching ones as well.

  And when she showed up to her fourth shift after lunch, she was ready to work.

  “Really nicely done, Tobie,” said Hettie. She pressed a finger into the soil below a bed of flowering zinnias and nodded. Henrietta Argent, known affectionately by Tobie and Mystia as “Hettie,” was an old family friend and just so happened to own and operate the most sprawling, gloriously green and vibrant nursery in their local conglomerate of towns. Hettie’s Perennial Oasis was nine parts greenhouse and one part florist, the latter of which she ran as a small but bustling business just off Main Street.

  “Thanks,” said Tobie, warming at the compliment. It was an easy thing, potting a plant, but there was a certain artistry to it—tailoring the pot and the soil to the species; packing the soil firmly, but not too tight; infusing it with just the right amount of water, and, if the occasion called for it, magic.

  Hettie straightened up, pressing her hands to her hips and cracking her back. “Ooh, that felt good.” She smiled encouragingly at Tobie. “Have you been working on your application?”

  Tobie felt anxiety crawl up her neck like a harmless but annoying rash. Hettie ha
d spent several years under formal magical apprenticeship with Pepper Keeling, and Pepper Keeling also happened to be Tobie’s hero. She was widely known to be one of the greatest witches of the age, a pioneer in the field of plant-based magic—and she offered a competitive apprenticeship every year to one to three young witches and warlocks.

  Tobie swallowed hard. “It’s...coming along.”

  Hettie quirked an eyebrow. “You sure?”

  Tobie twirled her finger around a browning spray of leaves. An answering bloom of green swept through the leaves, brightening and smoothing the wilt out of them.

  “You’ve got talent,” said Hettie, nodding with a sharp aggression as though she dared Tobie to disagree with her. “We’ll work on your application together.”

  She gave Hettie a small smile, though the thought of submitting an application and being rejected made her positively sick to her stomach.

  “Anyway. Don’t mean to make you a bundle of nerves. Got any plans for the weekend? You young things?”

  “Unless you count collecting pollen samples and river algae. I mean, I think it’s fun.” She shrugged.

  Hettie laughed. “Well, if you’re interested, I’d head over to the Saturday Craft Bazaar. They host it at Main and Third every other weekend. People bring good stuff, and we’ve got a few older witches and warlocks in Glimmerdale, so you’ll find some great little enchanted houseware and clothes. Nothing outrageous, of course. Phoebe Wise makes some lovely enchanted knitwear. Nice things for the young, independent witch.” She gave Tobie a reassuring smile, like she knew more that she let on about the way Tobie struggled in the margins of work and unpacking with her overbearing mother and her general twenty-four-year-old, what-do-I-do-with-my-life malaise.

  Then an electric bell toned.

  “A customer, I think. I’ll go. If you’ll just come up front when you’re finished?”

  Tobie would’ve liked to have stayed longer in the nursery, just wandering up and down the aisles. Most of the flora were mundane—utterly non-magical, save to nerdy plant girls like herself—but others were enchanted. Some enchantments enhanced their existing properties, and others added whole new attributes to the plant. One silvery beech shown a true, radiant silver under the light of the moon.

  But she didn’t want to disappoint Hettie, so she trouped back through the threshold, kicked off her rubber boots, and entered the storefront.

  A young man was leaning over some flowers with Hettie. He was tall, with curly dark hair that just grazed his shoulders. A huge bag of golf clubs was slung over his back. He looked up when she entered, and gave her a smile. He was cute.

  Like, really cute. Like a cross between a puppy and a fireman (which didn’t make a lot of sense to her in retrospect, but that’s how her brain processed his cuteness in the moment). And his smile was warm, the kind of toasty warm that made her think of s’mores and mittens and crackling fires.

  She smiled back for a moment with a goofiness usually reserved for her favorite cluster of rock cap and cushion moss, or an enchanted perennial whose leaved glowed gently in the moonlight.

  Then she quickly slapped what she hoped was a bland, disinterested expression on her face. Men—especially attractive men—didn’t smile at her like that.

  She was the weird plant girl with the weird family and weird things manifesting around her all the time, and cute guys didn’t just smile at girls like her.

  She cleared her throat and went over to the display tiers, arranging and rearranging the little moss gardens, the annuals, the twisted shoots of bamboo strung through with the errant gold ribbon. She could tell that some of these were enchanted with simple protection spells or happiness spells, things that would wear away after a week or a month. But they were sweet things, and she smiled at each of them.

  “I’ll be right back, Kaiden,” called Hettie. “Just want to double-check on that baby’s breath stock. Tobie can help you if you need anything.”

  “No problem, Ms. Argent,” said Kaiden. He turned to Tobie and smiled again.

  She studiously ignored him this time, giving him a tight-lipped smile that was more like a smirk or a grimace and turning back to her work.

  Seriously, you couldn’t just smile like that at people, she thought. It was disarming. She didn’t like being disarmed. Plants weren’t disarming, though. She positioned a ceramic begonia planter so the majority of the blooms were facing outward. She gave a small, subconscious little nod.

  “So your name is Tobie?”

  “Yep.”

  “Where’s that come from?”

  “It’s Italian,” she said, without skipping a beat.

  He laughed. “Italian? Really? Is it short for something?”

  She turned reluctantly, but just a moment too late—his eyes caught on her name plate, which Hettie had made before she realized how much Tobie hated being called October.

  “October?” He gave her another warm, hot-chocolate-and-scarves smile. “That’s some interesting Italian.”

  She ground her teeth to keep from retorting (it actually was semi-Italian, if you went back far enough), and turned back to her display. She caught his expression as it fell, just a touch.

  And she felt bad. Just a touch.

  But then, by some great or terrible power—kismet, fate, just plain bad luck—Tobie stepped back to admire the symmetry and balance of her display at the same time Kaiden presumably did the same with the flowers opposite.

  He backed into her, stepping hard on the heel of her shoe, his bag slamming into her shoulder blades, club handles smacking her in the back of the head.

  She pitched forward into the tiers of her display, moss and soil and leafy foliage flying, ceramics shattering.

  “Oh my—I’m so sorry!”

  But when he swung around to help her up, the bag swung around too—like a battering ram, into all the flowers she’d so lovingly arranged and rearranged.

  She just stared at him for a moment, blinking the soil out of her eyes.

  “Why would you bring that in here?!” she blurted, pointing at the bag of clubs.

  “Oh, I’m—I wasn’t even thinking—I’m so sorry!”

  Tobie was not normally a vindictive person. She’d like to think she was even, on the whole, a pretty decent person.

  But she’d spent the last two weeks unpacking her new home, dealing with leaky faucets and a gurgly toilet that seemed to spit back more than it actually flushed, and the constant—and loud—stream of vocal disapproval about how she was conducting her post-college life from her mother. And then he had to go and knock everything over, and then, to add insult to injury, comment on her name.

  So she was a little ashamed of what she did next.

  She set his pants on fire.

  It wasn’t a big fire. It was barely more than a candle flame’s worth. And it never actually touched his skin—Tobie was a responsible witch, so she made sure of that. But it licked up the seam of his blue jeans at a staggering pace, like a spark along a line of gunpowder.

  He stared at it for half a second, incredulous, during which time she seized the opportunity to shout (far more maniacally than necessary), “Don’t worry, I’ll save you!”, grab the huge bucket of fertilizer-enriched and distinctly non-potable water, and toss the entire contents right in his face.

  He just stared at her for a moment, mouth slack, dripping all-purpose plant food and water. “Th-thank you. I don’t even…” He looked down at the blackened seam of his jeans.

  “Gracious Goddess!”

  Hettie was standing in front of the counter, clutching a lacy spray of baby’s breath to her chest and staring, bulging-eyed, at the ruin of her storefront.

  Kaiden rushed forward. “Ms. Argent, I’m so sorry, it was my fault. I knocked everything over, and then—well, there was a fire, which I’m not sure how...but it was my fault.”

  Hettie nodded, speechless, and gestured him over. “Well, we’ll just—no harm, no foul, Kaiden. Why don’t you come on up and we’ll finish yo
ur order. Tobie?” Hettie said, turning to her. “Would you be a dear and get the mop?”

  Kaiden, to his credit, gave her a look that was both deeply apologetic and deeply commiserating.

  Tobie, to her credit, did not set his pants on fire again.

  But it was a close thing.

  Chapter 2

  KAIDEN

  Kaiden Farr left Hettie’s Perennial Oasis in a sodden daze. He wasn’t sure how a bunch of plants and spatial disaster had caught his pants on fire, but October—Tobie—sure had acted fast.

  He was still pondering it a block later, when he pushed through the smooth-wooded door of Mr. Yi’s pawn shop.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Yi,” he called.

  Mr. Yi stuck a hand up from behind the counter. “Back here!” His head and shoulders popped up shortly after. “Trying to fix the display cabinet door back here,” he said. “Dang thing keeps sticking. Hang on, are you okay?”

  Mr. Yi’s eyes went over Kaiden’s soggy, dirt-streaked attire.

  Kaiden gave him a blithe smile and a shrug. “It’s a...weird story. But I’m fine. Just came to have Phoebe’s golf clubs appraised.”

  Cursed golf clubs, more like it. Phoebe Wise was his next door neighbor, an elderly woman with a sweetness apparently countered by her late husband’s malicious golf clubs. He’d caught on doorways and smacked himself in the head a few times. Probably should’ve just gone back to the car and driven to the pawn shop instead of trying to run the errands in a row. But it was a glorious day—the last touches of summer sun felt wonderful on his cheeks.