Small Town Charms: Mystery of the White Witch

By Cora Cuba

Small Town Charms: Mystery of the White Witch is the first in a series of seven thrilling paranormal romance novels, quick, fun, suspenseful reads each with their own mystery and a serialized romance.

Twenty-something Mandy Flores moves to the tiny mountain town of Big Bear, California, to take a job house sitting the huge, isolated mansion of the ruggedly handsome Clyde Weathers. Her primary duty is watching over his fiancée, Jane, who fell into a coma the day before their wedding, and now lies in the back of the house tethered to machines and dead to the world.

When a mysterious voice starts waking Mandy with calls for help, she's driven to spend more time out on the town with Jessica, the charismatic bad-girl owner of the town's most popular bar. She reveals to Mandy that she is the Dark Witch of Big Bear Mountain, and Mandy is a witch as well: does she want to be her Dark Novice? Mandy agrees, thinking it's all a joke. When Mandy casts a Love Spell on Clyde with Jessica's help on Halloween, she doesn't even mean for it to work, but when Clyde returns to her side for an unforgettable three nights, Mandy's guilt is overwhelming.
And then, his fiancee Jane wakes up.

Mandy has been drawn into a hidden war raging on the mountain between White and Dark magic, and she must take a side. She must untangle the secrets of the dangerous occult world hidden just below the surface of this seemingly perfect small town, or she will never leave the mountain alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cora Cuba
• Release date: Nov 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311199577

Cora Cuba

Cora Cuba spent an unforgettable winter living and working up on Big Bear Mountain. Inspired by the natural beauty and close community she found there, she put her professional background in writing and personal interest in witchcraft together to create Small Town Charms, a paranormal romance and mystery series set against the backdrop of one of the most unique places in the USA.

Book preview

SMALL TOWN CHARMS:

Mystery of the White Witch

© 2013 published by Cora Cuba, all rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with another person, please download an additional copy for each reader. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Chasing angels or fleeing demons, go to the mountains

– Jeffrey Rasley

Table of Contents

NOVEMBER 10, 2013

SEPTEMBER 1, 2013

SEPTEMBER 10

SEPTEMBER 20

OCTOBER 2

OCTOBER 15

OCTOBER 31

NOVEMBER 8

NOVEMBER 10

NOVEMBER 12

NOVEMBER 13

DECEMBER 1

NOVEMBER 10, 2013

It was impossible to feel alone in the house, knowing what was behind the back bedroom door. All the silence of the falling snow couldn't mute the tinny breaths struggling through the baby monitor next to Mandy, as she burrowed further into her neon pink Snuggie next to the crackling fire. Surely the chill that creeped down her back was a natural reaction to the electricity going out. It had happened only moments ago, her beloved South Park stopping mid-sentence, stripping away her only company and leaving behind the stark reality that it was just her and Jane, weathering the storm that had been battering Big Bear Mountain for hours.

There was a back up generator that would keep Jane's machines going. Mindful of what Clyde had told her, Mandy had no intention of frivolously using that energy to resume flipping in between South Park and a gaggle of beauty queens on TLC. She sat on the couch in the dark, listening to a house that suddenly seemed keenly aware of its audience.

8pm. She should have checked on Jane two hours ago. Her pulse raced at the thought. It wouldn't take long, but she never got used to it. Her dread seemed to increase every time she opened the back bedroom door.

Stifling a groan, Mandy propelled herself to her feet, shucked off the polyester comfort of her Snuggie, and hurried through the dark. She ran across the thick carpeted living room, past the large spotless kitchen and untouched dining table, up the little stairs that led up to Jane's room. The back bedroom door, as Clyde had specified, was always slightly ajar.

As she looked in she focused carefully on the medical monitor by the side of the bed so the wasted figure under the neatly folded quilt was obscured in a peripheral blur. Even so, Mandy was filled with a creeping sense of horror at the young woman's unnaturally white hair, her face's slack expression half hidden in shadow, the thin arm with its useless, extended fingers clenched closed, reminding Mandy of a wilted flower blossom. A network of wires branched from the key points of her neck, her arms, the sensitive skin inside her elbows lacquered with medical tape. Even making every effort not to look directly at her, Mandy could sense the stagnation below Jane's surface, as though her bones and muscles and organs were congealing with cold like a pan of leftovers in the fridge, with just the surface holding firm. She refused to look and focused instead on the monitor: the heartbeat was regular as ever. Or slightly faster? It seemed slightly faster. A nightmare, maybe?

Or maybe she sense what Mandy was doing under this very roof. Maybe she'd heard Mandy's moans or Clyde's whispers in the next room. Maybe a betrayal that profound could create its own atmosphere, could settle into Jane's bones, into her blood, into her brain. Maybe that was what Mandy was feeling when she came in this room: pure hate.

The heater's pilot light kicked on with a thud that jolted Mandy from her morbid thoughts and she retreated, duty done. She had made it almost to the couch when she heard the other thud.

A load of snow slipping off a branch overhead, or…?

Her throat felt tight. Irrationally, she looked toward the front door and wondered if she could run to the car in time. If she could inch her way down the mountain, back to her parent's house two miles below in Hunter's Valley. But the roads were closed with good reason. The air was white with flying snow.

Jane could have fallen, Mandy scolded herself, willing herself to move. The shiver making her tremble was just the cold. Just go look and come back.

Mandy padded back down the hall and the back bedroom door made not a sound as she opened it and peered in again.

Jane's bed was empty.

SEPTEMBER 1, 2013

Mandy was driving up to Sugar Loaf with her daddy's truck and her mamma's blessing. The roads up the mountain were clear and dry, the pines were tall and dark, sunlight fell through them and sparkled between their needles like constellations. She was singing along to an old country song, proud of the bright woman who looked back from the rear view mirror, with neat eyeliner over merry brown eyes and a long dark ponytail. She had the radio turned up loud and she was singing along on the way up to her first job interview after eight months of relentless searching. This interview would be her ticket out of her high school bedroom, a chance to spend the winter up on Big Bear Mountain, and a way to vanish from her small hometown of Hunter's Valley and leave her no-good ex-boyfriend Brick guessing where she went.

Her dad had plucked the Help Wanted flyer off the Spin N' Save Laundromat wall the day before. It begged for earnest inquiries by phone only, for a position as house sitter with very specific duties through the winter up on Big Bear Mountain. She'd called the number and from the voice on the end of the line she knew immediately her potential new employer was no more than 35 and handsome. She could hear confidence and sorrow gleaming through the rough tones of Clyde Weather's cheerful, deep voice.

Now, driving through the lakeside neighborhood of Fawnskin, she was learning he was rich. The a-frame log cabins that clustered along the streets of Bear Mountain had given way to goliath timbered mansions, classic cabin styling swollen to gargantuan proportions to accommodate multiple-car garages and high ceiling living rooms. As she drove up the long driveway she saw the largest of the houses she'd seen yet appear from behind the pines, a three story knotty pine chalet with a broad-shouldered figure watching her from the shadow of an expansive porch. That must be Clyde.

Mandy! he called, striding toward her car, his smile bright against tanned skin tinged with five o'clock shadow. Deep dimples bracketed a slightly off-kilter smile and he towered over her when she slid out of the driver's seat.

Yes. Hi Clyde!

There was a moment of pause where she felt him restrain himself from looking her up and down.

You're a lot younger than I thought -

I'm twenty-five. Mandy smiled.

Oh? he sounded surprised, but led her into the large house, which hummed with the efficient engines of domestic comfort - the hum of a steel refrigerator, the steady whisper of the heater, all muffled beautifully by deep green carpets that interrupted the knotty pine of the floor. The walls were knotty pine, the ceiling was knotty pine. Mandy felt like Tinkerbelle, shut in Wendy Darling's wooden drawer.

I run a contracting firm and we've been lucky enough to keep our clients and even find some new ones in a tough market. That means we don't just work locally anymore, and I've taken a job off the mountain for the winter. If it were just me, I'd turn down the work and sell the house if I had to to stay with my fiancee while she's poorly, but its not just me that'd take the hit, it'd be every man in my crew. So I'll be down in Santa Barbara until April, maybe May. I'll try to come back for the holidays, but of course that might get a little tricky once the snow starts falling.

It gets pretty deep up here, huh? Mandy asked, blinking out at the golden sunlight and blue sky shining through one of the broad picture windows on either side of the front door.

Six feet last winter and they're predicting worse this season. Or better, if you're a skier. Are you a skier?

Mandy shook her head.

"We're close to the lodge if you ever want to give it a try. Of course, part of the job would be coming back to the house every three hours to check in on her. Even that's more than I'd like. The doctors