Onyx Interruptions: Sisterhood of the Stones, #3

By L.A. Boruff, Lacey Carter and Lia Davis

Time stops for no man, but with a little luck and a little onyx, it'll stop for a woman.

Dr. Ember Thorn doesn't have time to drop everything to take a worthless piece of onyx back to some random Caribbean island because her mother broke a hip and can't do it herself. It can wait.

So, it waits. And waits. It waits until Ember's life goes a bit wonky. She loses her boyfriend, her job, and her house ends up full of raw sewage.

Well, okay, then. No reason not to go reset in the Caribbean. She hops the next plane out and ends up seated beside the man who made sure she lost her job.

He had some justification. Ember was the one who sent his very much alive father to the morgue. Don't freak out. It's not like it was intentional, and the man didn't even end up being refrigerated. It was a simple mistake and nobody was injured. Not physically… the not-dead guy may need some therapy.

On island time, things aren't looking up. The airline lost her luggage, then when she gets to the island, she's thrown from the boat by an over-zealous driver—and her pig.

Just as she's about to drink herself into oblivion, she spots Delilah Bradbury, actress, icon, and movie director. Ember strikes up a conversation—she's Delilah's biggest fan, Oh Em Gee!—and her luck finally changes. By some island miracle, Ember ends up with the lead role in the upcoming movie about a pirate, a witch, and a trio of magical jewels.

It's not that easy. Things are never that easy. Nothing is what it seems on Pararey Island. Thanks to Renegade Remington and the love of his life, Ariyah, who are dying—not literally, they're already dead—to tell their story, maybe true love will prevail for all of them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Phantom Pen
• Release date: May 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223883623

L.A. Boruff

L.A. Boruff lives in East Tennessee with her husband, three children, and an ever growing number of cats. She loves reading, watching TV, and procrastinating by browsing Facebook. L.A.’s passions include vampires, food, and listening to heavy metal music. She once won a Harry Potter trivia contest based on the books, and lost one based on the movies. She has two bands on her bucket list that she still hasn’t seen: AC/DC and Alice Cooper. Feel free to send tickets.

Book preview

Chapter One

It’s Not Easy Being A Mom. If It Were, Dads Would Do It.

It had to be the excruciating and exorbitant amount of pain that had my mother thinking this was a good idea. Or maybe it was the morphine drip that was finally cutting through her pain. What it wasn’t, either way, was good sense. Not that it mattered since it wasn’t going to happen.

Mom, I cannot just drop everything and run off to some Caribbean island to drop off a necklace. What I can do is package it, address it to wherever you want to send it, and take it to the post office. I’ll pay the insurance for it. I’ll pay for express shipping. I’ll wrap that bad boy in bubble wrap and a combination lock, then call the… I didn’t even know who the hell she wanted it sent to. Person and tell them the combination, and wait on the phone while they unlock it. What I will not do is get on a plane to a place I have no desire to visit to hand-deliver a necklace that is most definitely not cursed.

Curses don’t exist unless they are of the four-letter variety, and that was where my mother and I differed in opinion.

She believed that falling and breaking one’s hip at the tender age of 71 was a sign from whichever deity she was currently praying to. A sign that the necklace she’d been hanging onto most of her life was ready to go back where it came from, and until then, it would have no mercy on whomever owned it. I didn’t buy it. I’d never bought the line of crap Mom believed in.

She’d always been quirky, but in the last few months, she’d gone so far around the bend, I didn’t think I was going to be able to bring her back. I still hoped I could though. As I gazed down at her, noticing that she seemed to have lost some weight in recent years, my heart ached. When my mom was young, she had blonde hair, the same shade as my own, and bright blue eyes that more than a few fellas seemed to notice. Those days had faded away, and while my mom was still a beautiful woman, her blonde hair had faded to white, and more than a few wrinkles surrounded her blue eyes. Eyes that were now hidden behind glasses.

I guess none of us can escape time. Not me, a woman in my forties, nor my mom, a woman in her seventies. Yes, we were in different places in our lives, but I’d never seen her as… old. If anything, she sometimes seemed more youthful than me. Now, staring down at her thin body draped by a white sheet, it was impossible to ignore the fact that she wasn’t as young as she once was.

Em, I would go, but there’s a reason the ghost of Renegade wants you there. Oh, sweet Jesus. Now she was saying a ghost—the family ghost apparently—was the reason she had fallen over her mostly evil cat, Rufus, and broken her hip so now she was lying in a bed at Mass Gen waiting for a surgery that she wouldn’t agree to. Probably a little bit druggy from the pain meds she had finally agreed to, so I could forgive this lunacy… this time.

To be fair, it wasn’t necessarily all her fault. All of her life, she’d been told we’d come from a long line of witches—the Thornbridge line. She was convinced she had magical power and that she could cast spells. I didn’t doubt that she believed she had skills. Her spells seldom worked and her potions gave the neighbors hives. If witches existed, and she was one of them, she was a really poor witch.

As much as I loved her, she wasn’t psychic either, or she would’ve known that I couldn’t leave my job to go running around the globe, even though I knew how much it meant to her. Ember, what are the chances that on the day I was supposed to fly to Pararey Island, I would fall and break my hip?

With that cat, who seemed possessed by a disagreeable, cantankerous, angry spirit. The chances of a broken hip increased exponentially by the day.

I sighed. She sighed. A moment later, it seemed like the entire room sighed. Suddenly, the vinyl privacy curtain rustled behind me, startling the daylights out of me. It took a second before I realized the AC was running and had caused the curtain to move. My heart raced and my brain went into overdrive. I took a breath and reminded myself it was just the HVAC system, that was all, nothing more. This resulted from years of living with a woman who said everything I touched came alive around me. It was the power of being a Thornbridge. That was her explanation anyway.

Ember, you’re wasting your skills here. If she’d said this once, she’d said some version of it a thousand times. I didn’t believe it any more now than I did then.

My medical skills? I probably should’ve kept my mouth snapped shut, or maybe tried agreeing with her, but nope. I was at the breaking point. The point of no return. The point where reason was gone.

She grimaced, and turned her head away from me, because, as she’d also said before, she didn’t appreciate me mocking or demeaning her belief system because I didn’t share it (although she said I should’ve). Maybe I was, but I’d grown up on the wrong side of my mother being a witch.

You know very well the skills I’m speaking of Ember. She’d taken that tone—the one that meant I’d disappointed her.

As often as I could when dealing with my mother, I refrained from rolling my eyes. This time I couldn’t help it.

She huffed and puffed like a method actor rehearsing for the big bad wolf. I softened my voice. Mom, I’m not going to the Caribbean. Maybe trying a different approach would appease her. You’re hurt. What kind of daughter would I be to run off on vacation—I hadn’t accrued enough PTO, anyway—when you’re going to be fresh out of surgery?

She certainly wouldn’t want to go to a rehab center for recovery, just because she’d shipped me off to an island that she swore was calling the necklace she was holding home.

She shook her head. I’ll have one of the girls—her coven—"come to stay with me. This bad luck… She threw up the air quotes. Certainly, isn’t going to end until that stone is on its way back to Renegade."

Renegade? If someone had been listening in to our conversation, it would have sounded like Mom had herself some big, bad, biker, sugar baby and she was sending me to return his jewelry, but I’d heard the name before, and he wasn’t a biker. Sadly, I almost wished he was. I would’ve known how to deal with a guy like that. No, this was Renegade, a name I’d heard as far back as I could remember. She hadn’t brought him up in a long time, I thought she might’ve realized I’d grown out of my Dread Pirate Roberts phase and forgotten. Now, the red flags waving in my mind were blowing in the breeze. Not this bull… crap again. She liked spells and potions. Hated curse words. I tried to be respectful.

Her face tightened into an expression of stern indignation. Do you ever listen when I talk? Or read the family newsletter? She shook her head, and sighed, her regular exasperation at me on full display now. Renegade was a pirate and the first true love of Ariya, the first known witch in the Thornbridge line. Her glare deepened because I might or might not have been pretending not to know what she was talking about. This is your heritage, Ember. Your history. Shame on you.

Now she was on the high road.

I’d dropped the bridge from Thornbridge right around the time she’d started her magic shop and put an ad in the paper for like-minded women to join her coven. It had been sometime around my second year in college. I didn’t want to be associated with the family history of witches or the craziness that went along with them. I don’t do family history. Mostly because it was full of ridiculous tales of a dead pirate, his witchy women, and the women who cult-worshiped them. My mother included.

Despite all my accomplishments, my mother was disappointed in the fact I wasn’t practicing witchcraft. I had worked hard to become a Doctor, a respected physician. It was because of this medical training that I was legitimately worried about her. Maybe she had done more than break her hip and had a concussion or a bleed.

Sweetheart, the stone is cursed. If I don’t get it back to Renegade, things are going to get worse. She spoke with such certainty that I refrained from rolling my eyes at her, more sad for her than annoyed. It wasn’t her fault. She’d been taught these things since she was young. I’d been taught these things, too, but I’d realized they were nothing but stories a long time ago.

Who tells you this stuff? I was beyond frustrated—dry-eyed but my voice had climbed an entire octave.

She waved me in closer, as if she was going to tell me a secret, and there was nothing I could do but comply, so I leaned in. Renegade. He’s the one who told me.

The ghost of a dead pirate.

He wouldn’t be a ghost if he was alive.

I couldn’t argue with her logic on that statement, but it didn’t make it right. Now, I was beyond disbelief, Mom.

She held up her hand. I know what it sounds like, Ember. She shook her head and I stood straight. I needed to check her pupils to make sure she didn’t have a concussion. Her voice was strong. He came to me in a dream.

Mom, when you fell, did you hit your head?

I used my fingers to palpate her scalp, but I didn’t feel any bumps or lumps. She slapped me away. No. She stilled, then frowned. I don’t know, actually.

My mother had always been eccentric, but now she was talking to a ghost in her dreams. This wasn’t going well. I don’t feel anything. Although, on some rare occasions, there wouldn’t be any external or visible contusions. Maybe I should have them order a CT scan.

Ember. She was using her stern voice. I stopped moving and looked at her. Finally, she sighed. He came to me in a dream, but he’s been with me ever since.

I glanced around the room. Now she was seeing and talking to dead people? Family history or not, I wasn’t buying it. I humored her. Is he here now?

She cocked an eyebrow. No. I haven’t seen him since I woke up. I loved my mother. She’d supported me through all my ups and downs, through broken hearts where she’d given me potions to handle the situation, and when I needed help studying, she’d stayed up late helping me learn the names for every muscle, bone, tendon, and piece of named tissue in the human body. This was getting out of hand.

Mom… I didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound harsh and ugly.

The other stones are already on the island. She tried to sit up, winced, and relaxed back against the pillow. I hated seeing her in pain. Hated it, but she’d only agreed to a very low dose of morphine and nothing else, including refusing to do surgery.

Rest of the stones? I asked her. Ariya and Renegade fell in love.

With frustration came impatience. Mom, I’ve heard the story before. We don’t have time for a retelling of their fairytale love story.

It’s not a fairytale. It happened.

Of course it did. Ariya loved Renegade. Renegade was a pirate. Piracy is a dangerous job.

It was a mutiny. She was exasperated, and it made her voice shrill and loud.

His crew thought he was a thief. Let’s face it, he probably was. He was a pirate. That, by definition, made him a thief. For heaven’s sake, Mom. Have the surgery. Maybe he can come to you again while you’re under anesthesia.

She cocked her head for a moment, as if considering it, then shook her head. Dammit. I’m not going to consent to surgery until I tell the story. This wasn’t her first attempt at bribing me with this surgery.

Do you promise? If I sit and listen again, you’ll sign for the surgery? It would help her. The pain would be manageable. That was all I wanted for her. We had about twenty minutes before she would lose her spot in the OR and have to wait until later. When she nodded, I sighed. Fine. Tell the story.

What other choice did I have? On any other normal day, I didn’t mind the story. In fact, when I was young, I loved it. Now though, I was an adult, I was over fairy tales, and I was so over her craziness.

I realized that letting her bribe me with surgery set a bad precedent in our relationship, but I doubted I would be in this situation with her again. I sincerely hoped not, anyway.

When Renegade died, Ariya was devastated, and she tried to bring him back. She infused the stones with magic. She spoke with passion, and for all the time I’d heard this story, I didn’t remember this part.

Stones?

Mom nodded.