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

“Shifter?” I interrupted. I felt the need to re-insert myself into the conversation as I was clearly missing key pieces of information.

“Fitz is my familiar. I don’t know what I did in a past life to be assigned a shifter familiar, but now he’s yours and I suggest you make your peace with it fast because it won’t be changing anytime soon,” Greta moaned. I looked back at Dr. Barrow and he was staring, un-blinkingly at a passing butterfly. I stared a little closer at his eyes, the pupils fully dilated like a cat stalking prey.

“What’s a familiar? What’s a shifter? What...?” I floundered.

“Fitz is only in this human form by choice, he is usually a cat and I have caught him in pigeon form at least twice. He won’t admit it, but I know what I saw,” Great smiled. “A familiar is like an assistant for witches. I read somewhere that familiars are actually low-ranking demons, so keep that in mind,” she laughed.

“How does- but he’s a dentist, how can he? With the? What?”

“He has powers of his own, but he is bound to you through an unbreakable bond. Now that you have met, your fates are linked. Clearly when I died, he decided to abandon the cat life and just live as a dentist, hopefully now you are here he can go back to doing what he does best,” Greta said, making a coughing sound to get Fitz’s attention.

“Huh?” he said, turning his face away from the butterfly but with his eyes still darting back to check on its location.

“I was just saying, you can get back to being a familiar now,” Greta said.

“Okay, well I have part-time hours at the dental office due to an agreement with the other dentist who is a friend of mine. That means I can help you out with your witch stuff, but I have other stuff going on as well,” he explained.

“That sounds reasonable,” I agreed.

“You’re a pushover,” Greta laughed. “I assume you are heading on down to the rocks again.”

“How did you know?” I asked, beginning to walk in the direction of the boulders with Fitz skuttling along behind me.

“I saw you earlier, I was wandering around by the marina and spotted you having a picnic there. You ran away cupping your face and I knew that the stars had acted to bring you and Fitz together, it was only a matter of time. Something about those rocks required the two of you to meet,” she said.

We walked closer to the water to give the café a wide berth, Greta told me tales of familiar history and how in the old times familiars could be animals or imps. I couldn’t decide if she was embellishing for dramatic effect, or if I was now supposed to believe that imps were real.

Dr. Barrow, or Fitz as I guess I was now supposed to call him, was making sure his feet didn’t get wet. I was carrying my shoes and letting the gentle waves lap at my ankles, but he wanted no part of it. By the time we reached the rocks, we had passed multiple groups of people bathing in the sunlight on brightly colored towels and they didn’t seem to notice, or care, that there was a ghost floating along beside me. They mustn’t be able to see her.

“Here?” Fitz asked. He jumped up on to the rocks. Somewhere mid-leap, his human form morphed into a black cat’s body. I hadn’t seen the transformation as I had been looking at the cliffs, but a human had left the ground and a cat had landed.

His ability to speak wasn’t inhibited by his new cat body. No one could see us now, so he began to use more of his magic to lift up the rocks, allowing them to rise above the ground before placing them down softly on the sand.

My biceps started to ache slightly, as if I were lifting something heavy. It was only a slight, dull ache but it seemed worth mentioning. Greta anticipated what I was about to say.

“Your magic is connected,” she said. “He uses his magic to move something and you share the load. When we put these rocks here in the first place my arms were burning for days.”

“You put them here? Why?” I asked. The more rocks that Fitz moved, the more of the cave behind them I could see. It seemed to twist downwards.

“There is a tunnel system that connects the islands. I shut it down because the Davick’s and the Conerty’s were using it as a battlefield. Honestly, they all need their heads banging together. I figured if there was no sneaky way to get from one island to another then some of the fighting would stop. The boats are monitored, but the arguments continued.

“Peacekeepers can go anywhere they like, but the outer islands are very particular about who else can visit them. I thought this pile of boulders would be the best solution for everyone. As far as I knew, no one had the ability to move these rocks except Fitz.”

I told her about finding the keys and the incident with the wolf and Simon. I told her that they ran this way.

“Simon Davick,” she sighed. The look on her face seemed to be one of disappointment, as if she and Simon had been close and the thought that he might be her killer was too much to handle. Fitz finished moving the rocks and the cave was now on full display. Did that mean that the werewolf was living down there too?

16

Fitz stayed in his cat form as we headed back to the house. He wasn’t talking much now, just leaping dramatically over wet patches of sand, bouncing high into the air and landing gracefully. Greta had decided to leave the caves open. The rock barrier clearly wasn’t stopping people from