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

I tried to remember what Greta had taught me about using my magic for trivial things, like hairstyling. Standing in front of my reflection, I focused on the tangled mess that was sitting on my head. The scrunchie floated away from me and my hair became suddenly straight and up in a perfect ponytail.

“Thanks!” I whispered gratefully to the ceiling. Maybe there was a witchy god up there, looking out for me.

I sprinted down the stairs and realized that the knocking was coming from the front door, not the door that connected my house to the café. It didn’t make sense for Effie to have walked out onto the sand and around the entire building. My hallway had a door out onto the beach, and one into the café kitchen. Who was knocking then?

I pulled the door back and saw Sheriff Miller standing there in all his uniformed glory. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and his beard had grown in dark, making his face look even more chiseled than before.

“M…Miller,” I stuttered.

“Hey Sadie, sorry to bother you so early,” he said. “You’re needed off the mainland; we have an incident.”

Miller had discovered that he was my guardian, something about my arrival had triggered some mystic, genetic destiny for him and we were both still trying to figure out what that meant. Well, figuring out that and the fact that he was a werewolf. It was complicated.

“Incident? Like what?” I said.

“I’ll fill you in on the boat. I went to the café first to look for you, so Effie knows we have to go.”

“Okay,” I muttered. I wanted to ask a million questions, but it seemed as though he wanted to walk in silence. Unfortunately for Miller, that was when Fitz decided to show up. Fitz was my familiar and one of the strangest creatures I had ever met.

“Good morning, gang!” he purred. He was a cat, or at least he was a cat right now. He could shift between forms and apparently chose to live half of his life in human form as a dentist. I know; weird.

“Hey, Fitz,” Miller said.

“Where have you been?” I asked. “I’ve been leaving cream out for you and you haven’t visited in days!”

“Sadie, Sadie, Sadie,” Fitz laughed, weaving between my legs as I walked along the sand. “A busy guy like me can’t be tied down to one plate of cream, I’ve got dairy suppliers all over this island.”

“Is that a euphemism for something?” Miller smirked. It was the first smile I’d seen on him today and I felt better for having seen it.

“Sheriff, I don’t know what you are implying! A few people on the island think I’m a stray, so they feed me up and give me tickles. Mrs. Winter doesn’t even know she is giving tuna flakes to the man that fitted her veneers last week!”

“I thought you were supposed to be helping me with my magic, Fitz,” I said. He looked up at my stern expression.

“Oh yeah, I forgot that you are new to all this. Eesh, my bad. I am such a scatter brain when I’m in cat form. How about I hang out with you all day today? I don’t have any patients until tomorrow afternoon,” he purred.

“It is so freaky that you are my dentist,” Miller laughed.

“It’s pretty freaky that you turn into a wolf under the full moon, but I don’t hear anyone making fun of you!” Fitz grunted. There was a moment of silence as Miller stopped walking and stared down at Fitz, clearly working through a series of responses to find something appropriate. He thought better of it and turned to keep walking towards the marina.

“Where are we headed?” I asked.

“Wilmore,” Miller replied. It meant nothing to me as a name, but Fitz seemed to have a strong reaction to it. I had only visited two of the islands off the mainland so far. The others were much smaller and required less supervision, apparently.

“Oooh, oh this is going to be crazy,” Fitz said, leaping about like a grasshopper. “Oh Sadie, are you ready for this? I should have brought a camera… oh wait!” A polaroid camera appeared in front of Fitz and he slipped the strap over his head and wore it like a necklace. “I don’t want to miss a second of this. Wait until Mrs. Winter hears about this one!”

“Fitz, this stays private or you don’t get to come,” Miller instructed.

“What is Wilmore?” I said, still confused. No one answered as we were almost at the boats. Miller ran into a small hut on the beach to sign the travel book. It was an old-school way of tracking people’s movements which had been rendered almost totally useless after we discovered that there was an underground tunnel network connecting the islands. Miller was probably the only one still using it.

“Wilmore is the island where Greta’s father lived. We’ve been called over by your uncle,” Miller explained.

Now Fitz’s reaction made sense. I had met my uncle in the café a few days after I arrived. He had been Greta’s guardian, and now he was my best chance of finding out about my family. He had told me that if I wanted to find out the truth then I needed to head to the family home, but I hadn’t been brave enough to go yet. He must be taking matters into his own hands.

“Don’t tell me we are taking that thing,” Fitz sulked. Miller was already climbing into a small rowboat that didn’t look sea-worthy enough to get us there without sinking. I could hear his shoes splashing in a shallow puddle of water inside it, that wasn’t a good sign.

“This, or you swim,” Miller smiled at Fitz.

“It’s a good job you’re cute, I doubt you’d get half the attention you get now if you were relying on your personality,” Fitz jibed back.

I was skeptical about the boat too, but Miller seemed confident enough, so I climbed