Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 1-3 by Mara Webb (books to read fiction .txt) 📕

leave me alone. You shouldn’t have come here.” That must be Simon. He and Rosie stepped to the side to continue bickering and I was left waiting for them to stop.

“Young love, eh?” Kieran chuckled. “They’ve been off and on for a long time. Very dramatic but I like her.”

I smiled but couldn’t help wondering if Simon might be the one stalking Rosie.

12

By the time I was back home, I felt that I had done some solid detective work and was ready for bed. It seemed the universe had other ideas. The sun was beginning to set, the café had closed for the day and Effie was the only one still around.

“Tivercana live up to the hype?” she asked.

“I hadn’t heard of it before yesterday,” I laughed. “But I’ve appeased the Davick’s by making sure they got a visit on the same day that I went to Port Wayvern. They really hate each other but I don’t know why,” I said.

“I don’t even think they know the reasons anymore. If your great great-great-great-great-grandfather had an argument with someone, you wouldn’t pass on the rage to all of your descendants, that’s not a normal thing to do. It goes so far back that I don’t think they have a hope of just letting it drop,” she said.

Effie was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen table wearing a biking top and denim shorts, it was so humid that I had gone to change into a similar outfit, only my bare skin was just bare, Effie was covered in so many tattoos she looked like she still had clothes on. She was eating an ice-cream sandwich and I couldn’t take my eyes of it.

“Catch," she shouted. Her right hand was empty, and she made a fist as if she was holding something to throw to me, I cupped my hands in front of my face to receive whatever was coming my way, but I didn’t see it until I felt the weight in my hands. She had thrown nothing, yet I was now holding an ice-cream sandwich in its wrapper.

“How did you do that?” I asked, flummoxed.

“What part of ‘witch’ is confusing?” she laughed. “Look, think of something that you want, food is super easy so think of a snack.”

“The soft cookies from the grocery store by my old house,” I said. This made Effie laugh again for some reason.

“You don’t have to tell me, just think about it. Imagine that you are holding it in your right hand, make a fist really tight, then open up so that your palm is flat and facing upwards,” she instructed. I did as she said and when the cookie appeared on my skin, I was so alarmed that I threw it across the room.

Despite having just watched Effie cause an ice-cream sandwich to materialize, it felt too much to be doing it myself. “I did it,” I said through heavy breaths.

“None of it is all that hard, but if you are born and raised in a world that dictates to you what’s possible and what isn’t then you’ll never try. We don’t raise kids that way on the islands, even the humans that don’t have a drop of magic in their body think that if they try enough times that they might just spontaneously become something exciting,” Effie smiled.

I decided that I would clean up the floor cookie later, eat the ice-cream sandwich now and not try magic again until my brain had caught up with me.

“Kate said you and Miller have the hots for each other.”

“Did she now?" I said through a mouthful. The heat of my breath as I spoke condensed against the ice-cream, so it looked like I was exhaling smoke.

“He’s a strange guy. Greta said he was a solid partner for all the diplomacy stuff, mad patient with all the lunatics that live around here, but just some eternal bachelor. Never seen him on a date, never seen him grinning like a goof down at his phone like he just got a text from someone cute, nothing. If he’s into you then you should know that you are about to be the envy of just about every chick on this island, a few of the dudes too.”

“He seems shut off, like he wants to keep things very professional and not blur the lines. I can appreciate that he is all kinds of fine, but if he wants to keep to himself then I can’t do anything about it,” I replied. I thought again of the time that I had stumbled on the shore and he had jumped away to avoid my arms touching him. As much as I liked the idea, I didn’t think he would be asking me out anytime soon.

“I would love to stay and talk boys all night, but Kate is out on one of her weird GPS roulette games with her weird friends and that means I get the house to myself for precisely two more hours, so I’d better run!” Effie jumped down from the counter, clicked her fingers to have her trash dance through the air into the trash can and then she skipped out of the room. Shortly after that I heard the door click shut as she left the building.

I stood up and made my way over to the cookie I had thrown on the ground. I couldn’t help but smile as I swept up the mess, I was a witch, a real one. I can’t claim that I had spent a lifetime not feeling as though I fit in, that wouldn’t be true. Everything on the mainland had seemed normal, the same old regular things that happen to regular people. It was only being on this island that I realized how different things could have been. Why had I been sent away? Would Greta know?

A noise from another room made me think that maybe Greta had shown up and maybe now was a good time to ask her about the family