Karma's Shift (Magical Midlife in Mystic Hollow Book 2) - Lacey Andersen (black female authors .TXT) 📗

I knew they were witches, and not when they were being all magical. I’d never seen Deva make her food, only experienced it, and Beth’s talking animals weren’t a spell she had to cast or whatever, it was more like a forcefield around her, though I supposed she had got us into that nightclub when I was looking for Henry. I still wasn’t clear on what she did there though. Carol was the only one I’d seen actively using magic when she was knitting, and she was the one who picked me up first thing the next morning. I hopped in the back seat as Deva, Carol, and Beth smiled and said their good mornings as I settled in next to Beth.

“Are you guys really okay with going?” I asked. They hadn’t exactly seemed pleased when we realized that a witch might be behind this whole thing with Beth’s ex and his business partner.

“Of course. Visiting the local coven is always fun.” Carol backed out of my driveway and headed down the road.

“But you guys aren’t in the coven, are you?” I asked.

They shook their heads almost in unison.

“Why aren’t you, if you don’t mind me asking?” I wasn’t sure how they’d respond to the question. It’s not like I expected my friends to be keeping secrets from me anymore, but they had kept the entire supernatural world a secret from me for years, so you know, it’s not like there wasn’t a precedence.

The car filled with an awkward silence. Finally, it was Beth next to me who huffed and said, “The coven is demanding. They require a lot of time and energy, which isn’t something I could provide with raising Tiffany. Since I wasn’t about to give up on raising her, I fell out of favor with the coven, and they never let me join as an adult.” Guilt and frustration suffused her voice, and I couldn’t help but reach out and take her hand in my own, squeezing it in support.

“I wouldn’t have been able to give up on raising Henry if I was in the same situation.”

“We didn’t like how they treated Beth, so we chose to stick with our best friend and not a bunch of women we barely knew,” Deva said, turning to grin at me from the front passenger seat.

“All for one and all that jazz,” Carol said with a wink at me in the rearview mirror.

We pulled up at a stoplight, and I glanced over at one of the few restaurants with a drive-through. Some teen boys had just ordered, and they were all smirking, windows down, while one of them readied his phone, holding it out like a camera. My karma sense started to tingle, and my eyes narrowed. When they drove around to the window, the first guy was handed a giant shake. I pointed a finger at him as he opened the lid and threw it at the drive-through worker. Only, with karma doing its thing, the drink hit the side of the window and bounced back, soaking the whole inside of the car, and the jerks.

I could hear their howls of outrage. And the drive-through worker, a young girl, began to laugh hysterically, before slamming the window closed on them.

“Was that you?” Carol asked, and I could hear the amusement in her voice.

I shrugged. “They had it coming.”

Everyone started laughing, and I felt glad that my powers could ease some of the tension we were all feeling. One day I’d have to ask them if life was this complicated before I came back into town, because if it was, their lives were pretty dang tough. And if it wasn’t, I’d start to question if I’d brought more trouble into their lives than it was worth.

As the laughter died down, Carol started to talk, “I remember Bryan worked there in high school and he’d always tell me about--” she abruptly grew silent, and a pained look came over her face.

Beth and I exchange a look. We always suspected that the reason Carol had never gotten married, or even seemed to take an interest in dating, was because she’d never gotten over Bryan. Not that we blamed her. Out of all the kids in high school who dated people and seemed to think they’d always be together; Carol and Bryan were the only ones I thought were meant to be together.

But I’d heard, Bryan had simply left town one day with nothing more than a curt letter breaking up with her. He’d never explained why. And she’d been heartbroken.

“It’s okay,” Carol said, but her laugh lacked sincerity. “He was my high school boyfriend. I don’t care about him anymore.”

“It’s alright if you still do,” I said, gently.

“It’d be stupid to care about someone who couldn’t so much as tell me goodbye in person.” Her voice was firm, edged with anger.

“You’re right,” Deva forced out, a little too chipper. “Screw him!”

I frowned, an old memory surfacing. “Wasn’t Bryan related to Cliff somehow?”

Darn it. I’d managed to make everyone uncomfortable again.

“Yeah,” Carol said, softly. “He was.”

She stopped talking. I looked at Beth, and she gently shook her head, so I knew it was time to shut up. I’d have to ask the others about the whole situation soon. But for now, we’d focus on figuring out which witch could possibly want revenge against Roger. And more about how witch magic could be used to kill someone.

A couple of minutes later, I knew we’d reached the right place. Surprisingly, the coven house was closer to mine than I expected, and yet, I wasn’t sure I ever even knew there was a house over this way.

“I can’t believe all this stuff went on right under my nose and I never even knew,” I muttered as Carol turned up a long driveway. Halfway up it, a gate appeared from between two huge hedgerows ahead of us.

“To be fair, a lot of stuff is bespelled, so humans don’t grow suspicious,” Deva said with a shrug.

“Okay, that makes