The Coffee-Shop Ghost

By DeAnna Knippling

Pink-haired goth Tiff Cordero isn't a witch.  She's a clairaliant, someone who smells spirits. And she's been hired to sniff out a ghost who has recently started to give migraines to the patrons of a local coffee shop.

Only problem:  nobody's died anywhere near the building recently, no one has cursed the place, and the only odor Tiff can pick up is the smell of burnt plastic.

If she can't solve the case, all the cool patrons will ditch the coffee shop—and it's already in a neighborhood getting updated and plasticized out of existence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wonderland Press
• Release date: Jul 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393316169

DeAnna Knippling

DeAnna Knippling is a freelance writer, editor, and book designer living in Colorado.  She started out as a farm girl in the middle of South Dakota, went to school in Vermillion, SD, then gravitated through Iowa to Colorado, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She now writes science fiction, fantasy, horror, crime, and mystery for adults under her own name; adventurous and weird fiction for middle-grade (8-12 year old) kids under the pseudonym De Kenyon; and various thriller and suspense fiction for her ghostwriting clients under various and non-disclosable names. Her latest book, Alice’s Adventures in Underland:  The Queen of Stilled Hearts, combines two of her favorite topics–zombies and Lewis Carroll. Her short fiction has appeared in Black Static, Penumbra, Crossed Genres, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and more. Her website and blog are at www.WonderlandPress.com.  You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter.

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Copyright Information

Silver Linings

Copyright © 2019 by DeAnna Knippling

Cover image copyright © zabelin | depositphotos

Cover design copyright © 2019 by DeAnna Knippling

Interior design copyright © 2019 by DeAnna Knippling

Published by Wonderland Press

All rights reserved. This books, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the author. Discover more by this author at www.Wonderlandpress.com.

The Coffee-Shop Ghost

It was supposed to be a simple cleansing at the Red Eye Coffee and Breakfast Bar. I had planned to come in, take off my shoes, open all the doors and the windows, sweep the floor with a bristle broom, clean everything with vinegar and/or baking powder and/or decalcifers and/or salt, burn some sage, ring a bell, leave old copper pennies and pieces of selenite on the windowsills, and then get down to my real work.

Look.

Magic exists and it pervades the world. But I’m not a witch; I just pretend to be one. I dress in long, diaphanous black dresses, wear my long, flamingo-colored hair in a witchy bun, enchain myself with oodles of silver skull jewelry, appear in public only with a pair of killer eye-wings, and speak in a low and seductive voice.

But I don’t do it because I’m a witch. I just like wearing that stuff. I’m a goth, that’s all. One of the night folk.

I do have a power, though.

A cup of coffee, some swirling steam, a few choice words under my breath to focus my energy—and then I close my eyes and inhale.

And suddenly I can taste the room.

My sense of taste includes but is not limited to: ghosts; spirits; devils; demons; the fae; vampires; werewolves (but who can’t taste a fucking werewolf inside an enclosed space, though?); different types of cigarette, marijuana, wood, and