Small Town Charms 2: Growing Darkness

By Cora Cuba

After Mandy becomes magically bound to the town of Big Bear, Dark Witch Tiffany arrives on her doorstep ready to teach her how to make spells and run the popular local bar, The Holler. But when Mandy asks her handsome bad boy ex-boyfriend Brick to come help tend the bar, he only agrees if she'll let him move in.

Of course, Mandy's current boyfriend Clyde is not exactly thrilled about Brick moving in. And Dark Witch Tiffany is determined to get revenge on White Witch Jane. And White Witch Jane is doing her best to seduce Brick. To protect the friends she loves and the town she's bound to, Mandy will have to face the greatest pain she's ever known and learn the heart-breaking secret that will change her life forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cora Cuba
• Release date: Dec 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310614095

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.

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SMALL TOWN CHARMS ll:

Growing Darkness

© 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.

I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.

–Friedrich Nietzsche

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE: An Unexpected Guest

CHAPTER TWO: Pulling Magic

CHAPTER THREE: Growing Darkness

CHAPTER FOUR: Baggage

CHAPTER FIVE: The Grand Re-Opening

CHAPTER SIX: The Death Spell

CHAPTER SEVEN: Reunion

CHAPTER EIGHT: Desperate Measures

CHAPTER NINE: Darkness Falls

CHAPTER TEN: Lights in the Night

CHAPTER ONE

An Unexpected Guest

Dear Diary, or whoever I’m writing to: my future self? Future kid? Sole survivor of an apocalypse?...whatever. Hi Diary. It’s me, Jessica, your favorite dark witch. I slapped a Misfits sticker on your cover so, enjoy that.

I am back up the mountain, stuck in Big Bear. I know, I know, I know. I keep thinking of that one quote, what you find on top of a mountain is what you bring there with you. Well, in terms of life-changing experiences and introspective wisdom, I’m afraid I packed too light. Now that I’ve arrived I can take on being Dark Witch of the mountain and Tiff can leave for school. I’m so proud of her, she’s worked so hard, but I’ll confess I’ve been dreading her graduation day. It means I’m trapped up here for the next four? Five? Who knows how many years. Good times. I wish I had known to travel more before I switched shifts with Tiff. I wish I had eaten more sushi, laid out more at the beach, dipped my toes in the Pacific a couple more times. But I’m here now, so that’s that.

I performed my first spell since I’ve been back yesterday night, out in the woods. I got way too damn high first. Luckily it worked anyway, though I need to be more careful about that, that bitch Jane has a second sense for pulling hard on me when I'm wasted. But I think I got all the rage out all out. I pulled so much anger out I barely made it home, my arms are still aching. I passed out as soon as I got in the door. The anger is festering now in the ground and in three days I’ll go back for it, see if I can put it to some good use or just feed it to destruction. But clearly it wasn’t just anger that was keeping me up, because here I am writing, still unable to sleep. Regret is in me too, but I don't know if I'm strong enough to get it out.

I just wish I had thought of a better excuse to tell him before I left. He’ll always think I left because I didn’t love him. He’ll never know I had no choice.

Mandy set Jessica’s diary down carefully, sitting up at the sound of tires crunching over frozen snow. She looked at her Jessica’s beautiful dog Goliath, who had shot up from her feet and was staring with full attention at the front door. She ran to the front door and double checked that the bolts were all slid into place, then pulled the heavy armchair in front of it, her arms shaking with effort, then went quickly kitchen and grabbed the largest knife on the counter. She padded up the stairs in stocking feet, her heart pounding. From the second floor she could angle herself a little better to see down the wooded driveway that led up to the remote A-frame she had inherited from Jessica. She pulled the black-out curtain back just a sliver. Sure enough, it was Bradley’s truck winding up the long driveway through the tall pines.

Since Clyde had returned to his job site in Santa Barbara two days ago, Bradley had come each night around dark. She knew it wasn’t really Bradley. It was Jane, acting through Bradley, trying to get to her. Well, it was working.

Mandy crouched near the floor, staring out the window, and watched Bradley's body climb out of the cab of his truck. The motion light out front snapped on, throwing the clearing of forest around the cabin into sharp relief against the deepening dark. When Mandy had first met Bradley less than six months ago, he’d been so scrawny and small she’d mistaken him for a high school kid. He looked much larger now, his flannel shirts swollen with hard muscle that now filled out his frame, his facial planes more prominent, his eyes more hollow, the changes wrought in the weeks since Jane had used Bradley’s body to kill Jessica.

Now Jane was using Bradley to get to Mandy. He walked right up to the door and struck it with all the force in his body. Mandy jumped at the sound. Then he walked over to the large windows that ran along the first floor of the a-frame house and started beating on them with his fists, recklessly hammering on the glass. She could hear the window tremble in its frame, the clatter filtering up through the floor.

Mandy bit her lip to keep from crying. She clutched the dull kitchen knife in both hands and focused hard. She knew she had magic inside her. She was a witch, damn it, the most powerful kind: a dark witch. She tried to put all of her concentration on Bradley, staring hard at his from behind the tiny sliver of open curtain. Voice shaking, she cried out: Leave! Leave the door. I feed you to destruction! Leave the door!

Bradley, a grotesque smile on his face, turned his head up, locked eyes with Mandy and screamed up at her,

"YOU THINK YOU CAN HIDE FROM ME FOREVER?! YOU DUMB, DUMB BITCH! YOU FUCKING DUMB BITCH! COME OUT, MANDY! GET OUT HERE AND FACE ME!!!"

He punctuated this with kicks to the door that rattled the frame and sent birds flying out of the trees nearby. Mandy hid her face in her hands and curled up in a ball, listening to Goliath barking, a deep beastly sound that resonated in her chest but didn't seem to deter Bradley at all. The second night this had happened, Mandy had considered letting Goliath out to do his worst to Bradley but she could not bear the thought of anything happening to her dog, and she knew Bradley wasn’t consciously harassing her like this. He didn’t deserve to come to at Big Bear hospital with rows of stitches and no memory of how it had happened just because Jane had used him like a puppet, magically controlling him from the warmth of her log mansion across the lake. It was Jane screaming with Bradley’s voice down there, jeering at her, reminding Mandy that she had no clue how to fight back.

Mandy found herself eying a pick axe at the K-Mart the next day. But after a moment she shivered and pushed her cart away. She’d never have the heart to hurt Bradley's body and Jane knew it. She wasn’t a killer, like Jane.

She continued past the gardening section and into sleepwear, almost walking into Kirstie, who was looking at a Dora the Explorer nightdress in Lilah’s size. At the sight of her, Kirstie’s round face paled under her sparkly blush and adobe-colored foundation and her mouth hardened into a line.

Kirstie... Mandy managed, her cart rolling to a stop. Hi there.

Kirstie put a hand on her hip, mouth jerking with anger as she spoke, her brittle bleached hair quivering with rage. You have a lot of nerve talking to me, Missy.

Well, at least she was being upfront about it. Mandy sighed. Right. Never mind. Bye.

Honestly, what do you expect? Kirstie went on, happy to make a scene in the busy aisle. You stole my best friend’s man while she was in a coma. You expect this community, Jane’s friends and family, to just embrace you with open arms after what you did to her?

Seems like Jane is doing just fine to me. Mandy snapped. Living in Clyde’s house and all.

"While he shacks up with you? I don’t see why she shouldn’t. It’s all she has left of the life they planned together." Kirstie’s eyes were already tearing in sympathy.

And what about Jessica’s life? Mandy shot back, but immediately regretted it. Agnes, the nurse who knew more than she would say about the nature of Jane and Jessica’s relationship, had somehow incorporated Jessica's broken body into the official death count of the victims of the ski lift accident Jane had caused. Since Jane had both magically destroyed the ski lift and ruthlessly killed Jessica in a matter of hours, the hospital had been so overwhelmed it was easy to fudge the records. While Mandy heard Jane's triumphant, hollow cries ring in her ears and remembered Jane's blood-soaked teeth chewing at her arm the few nights she was able to get to sleep, the rest of Big Bear saw Jane as a poor sick woman who got well in time to learn her fiancee had left her for the help. Mandy, the flat-lander housekeeper who Clyde had hired to look out for Jane when she was still in a coma.

"What about Jessica’s life? Kirstie retorted, leaning forward, her head bobbing toward Mandy, her chin quivering with a rage near tears. You did pretty well off her too. I hear you run the Holler now?"

Mandy did own the Holler now, the local bar Jessica had also left to her. She’d kept its doors padlocked the last two weeks, both because she couldn’t bear to see the bar without Jessica there, and because frankly she’d wanted the time to spend with Clyde. Now it was just another of the strange burdens she’d assumed when Jessica fell down those narrow stairs, a memory that made her shudder