Magic Before Mischief (The Magic Before Mysteries Book 1)

  Table of Contents

  Magic Before Mischief

  Dedication:

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Also By Beth Byers

  Also By Amanda A. Allen

  Sneak Peek of Spaghetti, Meatballs, & Murder

  Author’s Note

  Copyright

  Magic Before Mischief

  The Magic Before Mysteries

  Book 1

  By Beth Byers & Amanda A. Allen

  for mumma who rocks her chronic illness with grace

  Chapter 1

  “Come on, Buttercup!” I called, cackling under my breath and darting for the side of the road. My energy level was crazy high, and I almost felt like I could fly.

  “Don’t call me that,” Jinx shot back.

  I grinned over my shoulder at her and then ducked through the fence slats to the field beyond. I kicked off my heels, so I could run through the grass barefoot.

  “You swore never to call me by that name,” Jinx hissed. “Or to even say it out loud.”

  “I was in second grade,” I hissed back, biting my bottom lip and preparing my leap. Jinx was squatted down next to me a like an Olympic racer. “You should have known better than to trust me.”

  “I was in the second grade too! You swore it on our very friendship,” Jinx muttered. “Nothing is more sacred. We were blood sisters!”

  “You knew better than to trust me then. Never trust a second grader.” I burst forth, running at full tilt into the field. To the undiscerning eye, my best friend, Jinx and I were mid-20s women darting through a field at sunset to catch fireflies. To the discerning eye, we were two witches who needed fairy dust.

  I leapt high, grabbing one of the little bastards. Here’s the thing about fairies: those winged, fanged rodents bite. I tossed him into my bag, ignoring the slew of insults and feinted to the side before grabbing another. Here’s another thing about fairies: they make a trucker sound like a saint.

  Jinx and I had a bet on who would pay for dinner. I needed to win since I didn’t have extra cash at the moment. Jinxie was gonna be real peeved if she won and we had to go back to my place.

  “I’m done,” Jinx called about a half-hour later. “I’m out. They’re gone. It’s over.”

  “Kay,” I called. Movement in the bushes caught my eye. Those tricky little punks. I let Jinx get a few feet away, before I darted at the bush, sliding into the space like a kid making a home run, and found myself face to face with four holed-up fairies and one pissed off mama fox.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I said to the fox, while I grabbed the fairies, tossing them into my bag.

  When I got up, backing away from the growling fox, Jinx said, “You suck. We were neck and neck until you pulled that trick.”

  “You’re the one who gave up first.”

  “I might not have called it quits if I realized you were going to win at all costs.”

  “You know I went shopping yesterday,” I told her. “You should have been prepared for a win-at-all-costs scenario.”

  “You have problems. How many pairs of boots do you even have?”

  “So many,” I agreed. “But I didn’t get boots, I got some super cute peep toe sandals.”

  “It’s fall,” Jinx said. “Why peep toes?”

  “Rowan won tickets for a cruise. No one can go except me because of the whole job thing.”

  “You’re going on a cruise?” Jinx’s scowl was fierce as she put her hands on her hips and then said, “You’re going to expect me to help you out while you’re gone aren’t you?”

  I made a pleading face and dropped to my knees, “Please? Please, please? It’s the Virgin Islands! You can’t let me down! And you and Rowan are the only ones who know all my secrets!”

  “I hate you so much,” Jinx said. “You have money, you punk. You have more cash than everyone I know, and now you’re going to get me to do your stuff while you’re gone.”

  I winked at her and said, “Dad and Oaken will help. I’m sure Dad will do the animals and the cottages. I just need you to keep my tinctures that need to be monitored while I’m gone and send out my online orders. I’m working to keep it ahead.”

  “I’m not doing the paper route.” Jinx crossed her arms her and raised her brows for emphasis. Her sharp cut waved around her ears and her dark eyes were intense with their firmness that she would not be doing a thing. Jinx had the body of Audrey Hepburn with the small boobs and tall frame that was swan-like. She dressed a little retro accenting her slenderness and owning her skinniness out and out.

  Compared to her, I was huge. It wasn’t that I was all that much taller than her, we were nearly the same height. I was just sturdy and curvy compared to her swan frame. At nearly 5’10, with curves for days, There was enough viking blood flowing through my veins to interest a modern viking into stealing me for breeding.

  I had the golden hair of my nordic ancestors woven through with layer upon layer of highlights. The accent colors were every color of the hair rainbow from black to strawberry blond, but the overwhelming takeaway was golden with something a little extra. I also had same big blue eyes as Mama, high cheekbones, full lips, and a dimple on one cheek.

  “Little sisters are for paper routes,” I told Jinx, winking at her and stretching my back. I tried and failed to scrub the dirt off of my knees. “Ally said she’d do it. The punk is making me pay her extra.”

  “Give up that stupid paper route and you won’t have to worry about it. It makes you look like a deadbeat.”

  I shrugged. “But I appreciate the freedom of everyone thinking I’m a loser. They already pay too much attention to what I do. Either to use me as an example of why Hummingbird Syndrome isn’t a real thing or because my family is a bunch of nosy jerks.”

  “Your con is going to explode eventually. That paper route is the best cover. No self-respecting adult would have a paper route.”

  “Whatever,” I muttered, shaking up the fairies. Don’t feel bad for them, the biting, blue-mouthed rodents were like cockroaches. They’d probably throw themselves against brick walls to escape faster if they knew that was what it took, and the bag didn’t hurt them a bit. “That’s good money and good exercise. You’ve seen my butt, I’d be exercising anyway. Now I have the slim legs and tight behind of a bicyclist.”

  “It’s an excellent butt,” Jinx said. “Dudes love it.”

  I rolled my eyes at all of it. If dudes loved my behind so much, my last boyfriend wouldn’t have dumped me by text message while he was going through my place for anything worth selling. He’d taken jewelry and cash. Unfortunately for him, I’d warded against thieves. I hope he enjoyed his bouts of explosive truth. By my count, he had a few more months left of my curse though the timeline varied on how often he tried to lie. On second thought, he might have burned it out already.

  The bag of fairies leapt, and I shook it a little. The bags were spelled to collect the dust from the creatures. We’d let them out near their nests, so they could get home safely. We’d be stuck near the fairy holes until the gathering was done since it took about twenty minutes to get it all. That was good harvesting time and a fairy meadow was good harvesting grounds, I wasn’t gonna sit around and bemoan my ex.

  Unlike Jinx, who had a regular job as an accountant, I worked a series of side hustles. With my health issues, I wasn’t cut out for a 9-to-5 cubicle life with ever-lowering pay due to ever higher taxes and insurance deductibles without receiving a cost-of-living raise.

  Instead, I made money in whatever way it took to avoid getting a ‘real’ job. I grew and sold witchy tinctures and charms, delivered newspapers, refinished and resold furniture, bought and sold items on eBay and Amazon, self-published novels, had a vlog on youtube, as well as a cooking blog. I’d even been known to help out one of my million (or so) family members with their businesses and had been found, re-roofing houses, painting houses, waiting tables washing dishes, working as a bartender, and even babysitting. My true income—the stuff that really set me up—was flipping houses and renting them out, but most of my family didn’t even realize I did it.

  They all thought I was just working some side gig when they realized I was across town painting a house. Their expectations that I would fail at everything was so ingrained and had gone on for so long that now I felt the need to keep everything to myself.

  I checked out the plants as I wandered and crowed a little when I found chickweed. It helped make a more powerful tincture when it was harvested in the moonlight especially when the moon cycle was waning. I rubbed my hands together. My arthritis tinctures were worth a fortune and kept me in flirty little dresses.

  “You know…” Jinx started.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “I’m just saying…”

  “You’re just saying that I should get a job and have a regular income. If I worked for the right people, they’d work with my illness. In a supernatural town, hummingbird syndrome might be rare, but it isn’t unheard of. First of all, I love my life. Second of all, we both know how that ends. If HS wasn’t bad enough, there’s the curse of the Crowe women.”

  “Cough, bull crap, cough,” Jinx said.
>
  “Cough, wench, cough,” I replied. “How many times has one of my bosses grabbed me?”

  “Two? Three?” Jinx smirked, knowing the answer. Her brilliant eyes twinkled at me. My grandfather was half siren and half witch. For the Crowe women, especially, we were a little more alluring than was comfortable. It did, however, help my brother, Oaken, who was an out and out floozy.

  “Seven,” I snarled. “Seven times my boobs or butt have been palmed by my boss and that doesn’t include the out and out sleep with me or I’ll fire you threats. Mind you,” I said with my voice rising, “I haven’t had a job since I left college. Not a real job.”

  I emptied the patch of chickweed to the point where it would still be healthy and come back for the next round of harvesting. I continued to wander, finding both wild mint and fairy weed. The fairy weed was worth more than the dust which had me humming a happy song and doing a happy dance.

  “What did you find?” Jinx asked as we tapped the fairy dust bags a few more times.

  “Fairy weed, chickweed, wild mint.”

  Jinx considered, knowing the value of the night and then said, “I want some mint tea when you have it dried.”

  I hummed while I cleared the fairy weed patch dry and then winked at her. A few minutes later, we started letting the fairies go.

  “Gah!” Jinx said. “That one got me.”

  I laughed and karma kicked me when the last three fairies bit me all up and down my wrist.

  Jinx helped me knock them off and then we ran back to my truck. I slipped my heels at the fence and then we ducked through to the gravel road.

  “Is that going to be enough to see you through?” Jinx asked.

  I was stocking up on supplies to last me through the winter. With the approaching of late fall, a lot of my ingredients would be a little harder to find. Of course, others would be available, but fairy dust, fairy weed, those were like cash in the bank and wouldn’t be found while the fiends were hibernating.

  “I’m going to keep trying until it’s well past the date I should find it,” I admitted. “You know I hate to just let a harvest go. I have a place up on Wilbur’s Lane that usually has a big batch of fairies. That tends to be a nice harvest for me every few weeks. The barrier islands are always a cash cow since no one else tends to go out there to harvest.”

  “You see not harvesting like leaving cash on the road, don’t you?” Jinx shook her head and then added, “You’d run down the road for a floating five dollar bill. Even if you had a few hundred in your pocket.

  “Who me?” Internally, I was nodding.

  “You beat me even before you cheated,” Jinx muttered. “And I don’t want cereal which is, no doubt, all you have that’s easy. Theodore’s?”

  “With their inexplicable Chicago deep dish in the heart of the south? You know it.”

  Chapter 2

  “Heya cuz!”

  Jinx and I waltzed through the front doors of the restaurant and bypassed the hostess heading straight toward my cousin. Theodore who’d spent a few years in Chicago and come back with the need to recreate a brewhouse and pizza joint.

  The walls were lined with pictures of Chicago, Savannah, and the Crowe family. If you knew where to look, there was one with me and my cousins, coated in mud and with a crown of sticks in my hair. My cousin Rowan was standing next to me just as dirty with her big sister, Emerson looking on in disgust. Theo thought it was adorable, I thought Emerson’s condescension was typical and the only thing that had changed was that we were all adults now.

  “Heya little one,” Theo said, bumping my fist as he said, “You know I have a hostess for a reason.”

  “What?” I gasped and then winked at him. The booth in the corner did not have any pictures of me, had a great view of the dining room, and was semi-private.

  “It’s not like you’re so busy that we are cutting past someone waiting for a table.” I ran my fingers through my hair and said, “Be nice. I’m starving.”

  “You two want your usual order?”

  “The Fiery Warlock and two Goats in the Garden? Yes, yes we do.”

  “You have dirt on your knees,” he said with lifted brows.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter,” I mock- gasped, fluttering my fingers against my chest and staggering back a step or two before I turned and walked to the booth. I didn’t have to explain myself. That dirt was from wearing a dress for fairy dust gathering, and what I was up to was none of his business.

  “You do look like you took a roll in the woods,” Jinx told me when I told her. “Your knees are bad enough, but the twigs in your hair really clinches it.”

  I scowled at her and hurried to the bathroom to clean up before too many people saw me and I got a random call from Mama or Gramma about my ‘behavior.’

  When I got back to the booth, we’d been invaded by a couple of guys, one hulking, one normal sized. I shot Jinx a nasty look, but she pretended not to notice.

  “Turns out we stole their booth,” she said as I slid in next to her.

  “Well now, mercy me,” I said dryly. “My apologies lads.”

  “Then the kids came in, and Theo said we had to share.”

  Theo came back and set my chilled beer in front of me. He gave me a look. I wasn’t sure what it was for, but my family was always either trying to take care of me or trying to fix me up with someone or other.

  I needed a drink for that. I took a long pull on the beer, loving the elderflower taste in the microbrew in Goats in the Garden. It reminded me to shoot myself a message to see about adding elderflower to my garden. Which reminded me to check my elderberry stock for my elderberry serums. I needed those done before the cruise. I took that serum myself for the whole of the winter trying to keep one of my torpor bouts off.

  “Don’t mind her,” Jinx told the guys I was ignoring. “She’s antisocial AF when she’s thinking about her 9000 jobs. She’ll check back in a second.”

  I winked at her, smiling at them after I sent the message and ordered another beer with a nod to my cousin and a tap on the bottle. For that remark, Jinx would be paying big time.

  “What are you drinking?” One of them asked me and I looked up and had to take a moment to breathe in. I hadn’t given him my attention until that second. Turned out, if I had, I’d have lost my train of thought. The man was FINE. His eyes were a burning golden brown and his size screamed shifter. His size proclaimed he was either shifter or professional athlete. His dark brown hair was almost black. He had the rugged sort of masculinity that called to the deepest parts of me.

  I blinked a time or two causing my second sight to come out and paused in sheer appreciation. It wasn’t the bear that overlaid his aura that had me in shock, it was the near navy blue color of his aura. This was a man with a foundation, a will, and a soul at peace. He was like a deep pool in the woods.

  “Goats in the Garden,” I said. “A Georgian microbrew with an elderflower touch.”

  “Weird,” the other guy said. I turned to him with my second sight still in place. He was a human, but his aura was lovely. It was a swirl of brown and tan. These were good guys. I let go of the second sight and took in his actual face. There was something familiar about him. He had slicked back blond hair and a square jaw. He was handsome as well but overshadowed both literally and in looks.

  “What can I say?” I shrugged. “I like herby shite with a strong preference towards the unusual. It’s the witch in me. Bear shifter?”

  Jinx snorted and I elbowed her.

  “Why is that funny?” The human asked, defensive for his shifter friend. “You’re a native Longfolker, right? We’re a mix of everything under the sun.”

  “Too true about us. Jinx could tell you why she’s mocking me, but I’d have to kill her. Suffice it to say, she’s laughing at me, not you.”

  “You have a problem with bear shifters?” The human asked again, scowling. “There might not be a whole lot of bear shifters around here, but we’re not a town for hating the other.”

  “I don’t hate anyone.” I was nearly squirming. “I just won’t explain why it’s a joke. It is, however, on me.”

  Jinx laughed harder, choking on it, and I elbowed her again. She gasped. “You have a sharp elbow, brat.”