Witch Moon

By Della Moon

A Witch. A Warlock. A Mortal. One Wicked Curse. 

True love shouldn't be on a deadline, but for me, it is. I'm cursed! If I don't find true love by age thirty, I never will. With less than a week to break the spell, I need Jonah to get serious about us. But warlocks are slippery—they like to be free agents. And, there's his mortal best friend, Tommy—they have too much bro time for my liking.

I only have one chance to speed up Jonah's decision. A love potion to break the hex should do the trick. Failure is not an option—because here comes my birthday!

I know Mercury's in retrograde, but it's a simple, heartfelt love potion. What could possibly go wrong?

WITCH MOON is a standalone paranormal romance novel that stars Raven, a sexy, headstrong witch caught between two hunky men: one, a warlock, the other, a mortal.

When she isn't writing paranormal romances, author Della Moon also enjoys ghost hunting, photography and collecting beach glass.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Della Moon
• Release date: Jul 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386399049

Book preview

Chapter 1

MY WARLOCK BOYFRIEND AND I were discussing our relationship. Again.

Jonah, our lives would be even more magical if we lived together.

Raven, please, not this discussion again. Little dagger flames danced in the pupils of his aquamarine eyes. It was a warning that he was losing his cool, but I was running out of time.

Not that he knew it, but I had a curse deadline looming over my head—a love curse. If I didn’t find and secure true love by my thirtieth birthday, the curse would be permanent and the rest of my witchy existence would be loveless.

Because the stakes were that high, I pressed on with my negotiation. Why’s it so hard to understand that I want to be with you more? Isn’t moving in together a positive step?

Jonah scowled at me in an unattractive manner that marred his usually angelic golden-boy looks. We’ve discussed this! It’s not going to happen!

But I want to be with you more, I pleaded.

It’s not just about what you want.

Ouch, Jonah, I replied, realizing that this man really did know how to argue.

I like the way things are now—we have separate lives, he said, as if that settled it.

That hurt even more. Why don’t you want to move in with me? I persisted, though a vein distending from his temple let me know that he was close to the end of his patience. At least I knew him that well.

Enough! he shouted as his left cheek muscle twitched, signaling that he was at his limit for this discussion. I’ve already given you most of my reasons. Except this one: the bottom line is, you want me to break up with my best friend.

I felt a guilty heat rush to my face. Suddenly, I was like the emperor with no clothes. I tried to deny it, but my denial came out at a whispery volume. That’s not true.

It’s obvious. You don’t want to share me with him. I get it that you resent him—you’re trying to make this whole discussion seem like it’s about proving how much we love each other, instead of what it really is: getting Tommy rehomed like he’s my inconvenient pet that you’re tired of, so there will be no loose ends when you sink your claws into me for the final kill.

I almost choked on my own saliva. "For the final what? Just because Tommy’s mortal doesn’t mean I don’t respect his right to exist in the universe. How can you even go there?"

"Because I’m no fool. I know that what you say this is about is actually who you are not saying this is about."

I protested, You’re turning my heartfelt desire to move to the next level in our relationship into a personal attack by me on Tommy.

Isn’t it? This conversation is over, witch! Jonah finally shouted.

Warlock! I blasted back and immediately realized that things had gone too far to be salvageable.

His voice lowered into a menacing tone I’d heard a few times in the last week. Raven K. Silverstone, when you invited me over here to try to ply me with sex and discuss how you wanted more of me, I didn’t expect a near-ultimatum to raise its ugly head, as well as a full-on shouting match.

You used my middle initial and my last name.

Well, I’m angry with you. Shall I pull out your full middle name as well?

No. You know I hate my middle name.

Kathmandu is a beautiful middle name. I don’t know why you hate it.

Because when someone uses your full name including your middle name in a conversation, you’re in deep trouble, that’s why. I pouted as sexily as I could.

The quivering chin doesn’t look cute at your age, Raven.

Fine. I immediately stopped doing it.

That’s better. He paused. This should have been the predictable outcome of even starting a relationship with you. His voice took on a complaining tone. You’re never satisfied. You always want more than I’m willing to yield. You don’t respect my boundaries, not one bit.

I shook my head. There were a lot of smaller arguments scattered about in our months together, but when they added up, it got tiring for me, too. That’s because, to me, your boundaries seem like you’re placing limits on how much I’m allowed to love you.

One golden eyebrow raised in annoyance. "It’s not like that, so don’t twist this discussion into that. I have balance in my life: improving my magic and potion-making skills, exercise, playtime, naps, TV, guy friends... and you. To me, a relationship with a witch is only one facet of who I am. You’re the type of witch who wants to make a physical relationship with a warlock into everything of who she is. And that, Raven, is the cause of the impending demise of our relationship."

I jerked my head as if I’d been slapped. "Well, I love you. I want to give you more of me."

"You want more of me. Let’s be honest about which way the giving flows." He threw up his hands and his graceful warlock fingers flicked a golf ball-size sphere of light at me—bouncing me back a few inches. Just a little magic push, nevertheless, very rude.

Hey! I said. That wasn’t nice at all. I don’t push you away with witch balls.

That’s because you’re not good at them. He didn’t apologize. Instead, he said, I can’t do this anymore.

Please don’t break up with me. I’ll make sure that everything goes better from my end from now on, I promised, though it seemed futile that he would concede at this point.

When you say that, you mean that everything needs to go your way or you’ll throw a hissy fit, complete with sparks coming out of your fingertips and aimed at me.

To be fair, that only happened once and I got some ointment from Grandma Hazel that faded the zigzag scar on your forehead.

Well, I’m glad it eventually faded. Now, I don’t have to walk around like a Harry Potter wannabe.

I pressed my lips together. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt you that one time. I shot my witch ball at a mirror and the reflection bounced out and hit you.

True enough, he conceded.

It’s not fair to say that I’m only happy when things go my way. Things go your way sometimes.

Only when those things also further your agenda of getting me closer to a serious commitment.

I’m sorry you see it that way, instead of seeing how much I love you.

He frowned. "I don’t want to fight about who loves who more. This isn’t fun anymore, Raven. I’m done."

I got scared. Please don’t say that, Jonah.

He shook his head, his rock star-length blonde hair flying back and forth. It’s too hard to tear myself in half, over and over, between my best friend and you. Just so you know, Tommy has never once complained about you. He likes you.

That surprised me. "Good to know. But isn’t there room for a best friend and a witch girlfriend in your life?"

Obviously not. Don’t keep trying to make me choose you exclusively. It smacks of desperation and serious control issues.

I bit back a defensive reply. I had failed in every adult relationship by wanting more than a warlock wanted to give. And now, it appeared that Jonah was going to join the ranks of my many warlock ex-boyfriends. So many that I’d stopped counting them.

I do love you. I wish you could feel just how much. I let the shoulder strap of my tank top fall to bare my shoulder and then, gave him a smoldering do-me look.

Really, Raven? You’re going there? He paused. Excuse me, this can’t wait. Jonah strode down the hall into my bathroom and shut the door behind him. I heard the sink go on.

I followed him down the hall and stood outside the bathroom door, wringing my hands while he whistled a sea chantey and did his thing in there. For all I knew, he was casting a spell instead of relieving himself in one way or another. Yeah, we were to that point in our relationship where I wondered what he did when he was out of my sight—even in the bathroom. Ugh! No wonder he was tired of me. I knew it was unattractive for me to be this clingy, but I had to save myself from a curse. And unbeknownst to him, he was the key to my release from it.

I leaned against the wall and he must have heard that.

Can’t I even use your bathroom by myself? Jonah complained.

I was just passing by. And I wanted to make sure you weren’t casting spells in my bathroom.

Go sit in the living room! came his order from behind the bathroom door.

No! I stubbornly slid down the wall and crouched in the hallway, but not in front of the door.

I couldn’t tell Jonah the true reason for my serious desperation: I’d been cursed in high school by Dahlia Black, another teen witch who’d pegged me as spiteful and selfish after we’d fought over a cute warlock boy and had tested the limits of our blossoming magic. And our friendship. She had lost the boy to me, due to a magic ingredient I’d mixed in with my lip gloss and applied to his lips... with mine. Luckily, I was not that good at potions yet and my naughty lip gloss only had a temporary infatuation effect on the boy.

I supposed I had gotten bored quickly because it had been too easy to land him. After prom, I’d soon broken up with the young warlock, leaving Hawkeye Hartley a confused shell of his former self. All he had tried to do was woo Dahlia Black and instead, he’d ended up as a short-timer on my growing list of warlock ex-boyfriends.

It was a time of my life that I wasn’t proud of because I went through boyfriends like they were fast-food drive-thrus. Just because I could. It was too easy, but then, in high school, I tested my blonde bombshell wiles on all of the available teenage warlocks. Like they were my laboratory. The only guys safe from my attentions were mortals, if only because I found them uninteresting and far too invested in football.

When my rival Dahlia had again tried to hook up with poor Hawkeye while he was on the rebound from my rejection, unwilling to deal with his fear of again being the object of jealousy between two witches, he had fled the city on graduation night straight from a party.

But that wasn’t the end of it. My teenage nemesis, Dahlia Black, had then cast an evil curse on me, saying that if I didn’t secure my one true love by age thirty, I’d never know love with anyone at all. Or something like that. We were both more than a little toasted on an unknown cauldron concoction at that party on the night she’d cursed me.

Unfortunately, Dahlia had never left San Francisco and I’d been way too ashamed to ask my grandmother for help in breaking the curse since I had started the whole mess. As evil spells went, hers wasn’t all that high on the malice scale, not then, anyway, because it had a lead time of 12 years before it was irreversible. At the time, I’d given it a five outta ten on the spite scale. However, fast-forward to the present and I had let things go for so long that the hex had become a nine, if not a ten.

At eighteen, when she’d cursed my love life, I figured that long before thirty, I would have been in love and married off safely. But the years had slipped by quickly as I’d studied herbs under my grandmother and alchemy under my great-aunt, not that all of it stuck because I was so distracted by the fun hunt for true love. Now, with a week to go before it was too late, the thrill of the hunt was gone. And so was the fun of bedding a smorgasbord of prospective warlocks to sample their charms, literally, before I honed in on someone who would become more permanent. By default, Jonah had remained my best chance for beating the curse deadline.

Now, I was almost thirty and things were not looking good for me with a string of fleeing warlock exes and a growing neediness for the validation of love from the opposite sex, namely Jonah. I was pathetic, desperate, and there was no way I could tell Jonah the truth. It was more than humiliating, but I had no idea what the repercussions would be if I did tell him the whole truth about the curse. Sometimes, the truth did not set one free. It just caused a magical backfire of epic proportions.

I heard the toilet flush, then hand-washing sounds and the sink tap turning off. Jonah came out of the bathroom.

You’re still here in the hallway?

I stood up. I don’t want you to go away angry. Work with me, Jonah.

My stars, woman! You’re just making yourself look worse than pathetic. Give it up.

I can’t. We haven’t finished talking about this. I’d just said, ‘I love you’ before you went in there, I replied.

He sighed. "It’s too easy for you to say those three little words to magically fix all that’s wrong with us. The thing is, it’s not just that I’m a warlock and warlocks really don’t embrace monogamy, but beyond that, you’ve complicated our relationship to an infuriating degree that makes me actually... hate love."

I gasped. Things were much worse than I thought. "You hate love?"

Yeah, I do. The idealistic concept of it doesn’t play out in real life, not for a lack of trying.

Thank you for that, at least, I said.

"I meant me. I was trying to make love happen. But