Witches of devils orchar.., p.1
Witches of Devil's Orchard Paranormal Cozy Mystery Box Set (Books 1–3), page 1
Witches of Devil's Orchard Box Set
Books 1–3
Skye Sullivan
Copyright © 2021 Skye Sullivan
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Also By Skye Sullivan
All Work and No Slay
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Slaying With Fire
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Two Can Slay at This Game
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Recipes Courtesy of The Devil's Lunchbox
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About the Author
Also By Skye Sullivan
Witches of Devil’s Orchard Series
All Work and No Slay (Book 1)
Slaying With Fire (Book 2)
Two Can Slay at This Game (Book 3)
And the Band Slayed on (Book 4)
When the Cat's Away the Mice Will Slay (Book 5)
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All Work and No Slay
Book 1
Chapter 1
On the day of my thirty-third birthday, three notable things happened.
First, I woke up in the hospital.
Second, my mother told me she was not, in fact, my mother, but really my grandmother. My birth mother’s whereabouts are unknown.
Third—and this one’s a doozy—my mother, er, grandmother, told me that I am a witch. Not just a normal witch either. (Yeah, ‘normal’ witch, I know.)
I’m a demon slayer.
I can’t even kill a cockroach without wincing and choking on my own bile.
I’m not even sure how I ended up in the hospital. I was on the roof of my cafe, The Devil’s Lunchbox, trying to tie down a corner of a banner that had come loose. I mean, okay, I can do the ‘The Last Thing I Remember I Was On The Roof And Then I Woke Up In The Hospital’ math. But I’m not sure how I fell. My grandmother insists it was the unseen hand of fate trying to wake up my dormant powers.
Yeah, powers. Because we’re witches. Actual honest-to-goodness witches.
My grandmother even has a wand for crying out loud.
According to her, the number thirty-three is magical. Then again, now that she’s confessed the huge family secret to me, she says everything is magical.
Who knows, maybe it is.
This was all two weeks ago, and my grandmother’s been giving me magic lessons. As if I don’t have enough to worry about.
This morning is going to be busy, so I get to my cafe early, five-thirty in the morning, cursing the hour, cursing the cold, cursing my foolish career choice. I’ve got to prepare for the breakfast rush and the lunch rush, and pack twelve lunch boxes for my morning hike.
The Devil’s Lunchbox is a small cafe specializing in bento box meals. I make everything by hand and arrange it with painstaking care. The tourists always ask me what my Instagram is so they can follow me, but I’m still not entirely sure how all that social media stuff works.
I think you need to have friends; that’s probably step one.
Step two: ???
Step three: profit.
I live in the small coastal town of Devil’s Orchard in Northern California. We’re so far north, we consider San Francisco to be in Southern California. We’re so far North, I’ve heard no less than 20,293 tourists joke that we’re really Southern Oregon, hardy har har.
It’s always cloudy here, and the beaches are not sandy but filled with the type of rocks that are perfect for dashing brains. So don’t go getting the idea that you’d need a string bikini and snorkel if you came here on vacation. More like a down jacket in the winter and mosquito repellent in the summer—and waterproof boots year round.
Our town’s surrounded by towering redwood forests, and if you’ve never been to the redwood forests, then you don’t know the meaning of the word insignificant—because that’s exactly how you feel when you’re surrounded by trees that have been around since 500 AD.
I slide the key into the lock and turn it. The bolt doesn’t click, meaning I must have forgotten to lock it the night before. Oh well. I’m probably not the only shopkeeper on Coast Drive who didn’t lock up.
I flip on the lights and get to work.
Today’s menu is going to be thin sweet omelet with arabiki sausage and raspberries for breakfast and soy-glazed dried pork sandwiches with a corn salad and pecan pie. Most of my customers are either locals getting a quick bite on the run or campers and hikers who need to pack a meal for their excursions.
I’m running behind schedule. The cast-iron omelet pan was too cold for the first batch, then too hot for the next batch, then for the third batch I stepped away to get some butter out of the fridge and forgot completely about the omelet until the acrid smell of char filled my nostrils.
Usually either Kate or Ryan is here in the mornings to help, but they both had their SAT down at the community college today. They’re high-school kids who come in early to work here, using their first- and second-period classes as a work-study program—also known as child labor to Yours Truly. Ryan will probably ace the test, but Kate… let’s just say academia isn’t for everyone, nor does it need to be.
Luckily I had some extra time yesterday to make the pecan pie, so all I have to do is get it out of the refrigerator and slice it up. As I’m working, I get a glob of the pie filling on my thumb and reflexively lick it off. I try not to eat things as I’m preparing food, but sometimes the instinct is too quick to stop.
Good thing, though, because this pie tastes horrible. I hate to brag (no, I don’t) but this pie is my pride and joy and one of the things I’m known for, at least among the locals. This morning? It tastes like burnt beer or worse.
Granny. It was her. I know it.
I don’t really know what to call my mother-that’s-actually-my-grandmother. She told me, ‘Call me anything you please as long as it’s not Granny.’
She’s always nosing around in the kitchen, tampering with my recipes. I’d banish her completely, but sometimes she actually helps. She’s been hounding me to use honey instead of corn syrup for as long as I can remember. Come to think about it, she was licking her fingers when she was back here yesterday peeling potatoes.
Maybe I can order a fingerprinting kit online and dust the honeypot for latent prints.
I look at the clock. No way do I have time to make pies right now. Cookies? Yeah, cookies are fast. I scramble to the pantry, grabbing the ingredients. I get four dozen whipped up in pretty good time and cram them in the oven.
The place looks like twenty-nine wild bobcats fo ught to the death, but I got everything done.
The bell above my front door rings and I startle. It’s still dark, but for reasons beyond my ken, some people are obsessed with sunrises, so I figure it’s one of that ilk.
“Coming,” I say. I wipe my hands on the butt of my jeans right as I come face to face with who can only be a health inspector. I don’t even need to ask. Middle-aged guy, wrinkly polo shirt tucked into generously pleated khaki pants, ball-chain necklace with an employee badge tucked into a protective plastic sleeve.
“Roberta Brooks?” he asks.
“That’s me,” I say. I try to muster a smile, but I know what a disaster the kitchen is. There’s spoons on the floor, and the counter’s covered in flour and globs of corn salad and sausage drippings. I could scrape it all together, put it in the cast-iron skillet and make country gravy. I haven’t prepped the sanitizer buckets, haven’t filled the dishwashing station, and I’m not wearing a hairnet or apron.
“I’m with the Orchard County Department of Health and Human Services,” he drawls. He’s got all the liveliness of one of the fifty-pound sacks of flour in the storeroom. “In accordance with codes—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say. I wave him back into the kitchen. “Go ahead. Do your inspection.”
This is Christopher Boyd’s doing. I know it. My landlord has been trying to catch me slipping so he can void my lease. Let’s just hope today’s not his lucky day.
“Good morning, Bobbi!” The bell jingles again. Great. Things just got a whole lot worse.
“What is it, Granny?” I say, placing extra derisive emphasis on her new nickname.
“I told you not to call me ‘Granny,’” she says. “Call me Lydia. And how’s the pecan pie?”
“It tastes like some daffy old broad got too big for her britches,” I say.
“That really hurts,” she says, clutching her hands to her heart. “To think of all I’ve done for you.” She’s dressed up for work—if you can call it work—in an obnoxious floral print blouse and elastic-waisted polyester pants. As is her custom, bright orange lipstick is shellacked over her lips, and her eyebrows are drawn on with a thick dark pencil. She lost them several years ago after a potion mishap when her cauldron flash-fired in her face and they never grew back. She’s a substitute teacher at the high school, and as a graduate of said high school, I can assure you her day consists of playing movies and collecting worksheets.
“You want a lunch box?” I ask. “Or are you going to eat in the cafeteria?”
“Mercy me,” she says. “If those are my two choices, I might starve.” I get her a lunch box and thrust it into her hands.
The health inspector is watching our interaction out of the corner of his eye. He writes something down on his clipboard.
“What was that you wrote down?” Granny says. She walks to him and tries to pull the clipboard down so she can look at his papers, but he deftly steps out of her reach. It’s not hard since Granny barely clears five-foot. “Let me tell you something, Mister, this is my daughter—er, granddaughter’s—shop and it’s clean as a whistle, so give her a clean bill of health or else I’ll clean your clock.”
“Let me remind you that interfering with a health inspection carries a hefty fine,” he grumbles just as dispassionately as if he was reading the ingredients on a box of bran flakes.
“Well then, Mr. Health Inspector, sir,” she says in a cloyingly sweet voice. “My granddaughter is a reputable business owner and she’d be willing to do anything to keep her store open. Anything. You catch my meaning?” Her left eye opens and closes in a burlesque approximation of a wink.
Did his cheeks just turn red? Oh, puke. “The penalty for bribing a health inspector is even heftier,” he mutters.
Granny summarily dismisses him with a wave of her hand. “This is Boyd’s fault,” she says. “The greedy jerk. This is harassment, pure and simple. He’d better hope I don’t run into him, I’ll put him in the meat grinder.”
The health inspector looks up briefly and then scribbles something on his clipboard.
“I need to check the back,” he says. Without waiting for my response, he heads through the double-doors into the kitchen.
“Listen,” Granny says once he’s out of earshot. “I didn’t come here for a lunch box.”
“You came here to gloat about the honey in the pie? It tastes terrible and the filling didn’t set right. I should make you eat all five pies as punishment, like how in the sitcoms they make a kid smoke a whole carton of cigarettes when he gets caught smoking.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says primly. “I was peeling potatoes yesterday. If your pie is unsatisfactory, it was something that you did. But cut the pie-talk. Pies are the least of your concerns right now. Demons came through the rift last night. Two at least, probably more. I can feel it.”
“A demon came through the rift last night.” Granny only told me about this stuff two weeks ago and it hasn’t quite sunken in yet. She’s shown me the family grimoire, and she performed a few spells for my amazement, so I guess I have to believe her. But demons? Little imps with horns and pointy tails? I’d have an easier time believing that Granny didn’t tamper with the pecan pie.
“Demons.” She enunciates the plural. “Then this morning, I saw this.” She thrusts her phone at me. It’s a news article on the local paper’s website. I read the headline and try to scan the article but she yanks it away. “I don’t care how tired you are when you get home, I’m giving you a magic lesson tonight.”
“It says a graveyard was vandalized,” I say. “Probably teenagers.” I will not have the energy for a magic lesson tonight, but I also know that Granny won’t take no for an answer.
“Not a chance,” she says. “Everyone knows that ‘vandalized’ is a euphemism for the graves being dug up.”
“Everyone knows this?” I say.
“It’s common knowledge, yes,” she says frankly. “That’s the work of demons. Preta, Gaki, Éguǐ—those are different names for them in different languages.”
“What about our language?”
“Hungry ghosts,” she says. “Evil and greedy people who are cursed in the spirit world. They return with an insatiable hunger for foul things as punishment.”
“The only hungry people will be my hikers,” I counter, “and the only ghost will be you after I throw you in the walk-in freezer after the stunt you pulled with the pecan pie.”
“Honey is more natural and delicious than corn syrup. Corn syrup is a tool that they use to keep you fat and logy.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “They. The ones in charge.”
“The demons?”
“Lord no,” she says. “The demons and spirits are part of the natural world just like you and me. Just like cockroaches. Sometimes you can let one scurry away. Other times, you gotta step on it.”
“I can’t step on a cockroach without screaming and working myself up for ten minutes and then burning my shoe afterwards.”
The health inspector busts through the double-doors. “Did I hear someone say something about cockroaches?”
Chapter 2
At ten the hikers start to gather at the front of my store. Part of my business model involves leading hikes out to Orchard Point and other scenic trails. Tourists can sign up to go on a breakfast or lunchtime hike for twenty bucks, which comes with a bento box and my charming company.
I do a quick head count and give them the rundown of the safety rules. “No going off the trail,” I say. It’s November and the steam hangs in the air with every word I say, as if giving it more importance. “Keep your trash in your bags. And the most important rule: if you gotta go to the bathroom, go now.”
A few people slink off to the bathrooms, plagued by visions of having to cop a squat in the middle of the freezing woods.
As I wait, I see Christopher Boyd waddling down Coast Drive towards his office. Blame it on the lack of sleep, the honey in the pecan pie or Granny’s insistence that we’re a family of demon-slaying witches—but something snaps and I storm over to Boyd.
“Hey,” I say. He turns his head and looks at me with what I can only interpret as malicious glee in his little beady eyes.
