Wish You Were Here

By J. Lynn Carr

A rookie agent searches for her estranged sister in this paranormal procedural for fans of Practical Magic and The Dresden Files.

Harvest Rosenbloom is a trainee agent at the Bureau, an organization that specializes in investigating crimes of a supernatural nature. 

As a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Thirteen Press
• Release date: Oct 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088273838

J. Lynn Carr

J. Lynn Carr is an emerging author recognized for her cozy fantasy tales with endearing misfit characters and fantastical settings. She has three novellas published by Page Thirteen Press, including the quaint fantasy-romance A Werewolf In Mims, which has been called "a hug of a book" by reviewers. She lives in Austin, TX with her spouse and their two dogs, Freddie Coco and Mildred Cuddlefoot.

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J. Lynn Carr

Wish You Were Here

A Rosenbloom & Quinn Mystery

First published by Page Thirteen Press 2023

Copyright © 2023 by J. Lynn Carr

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

First edition

ISBN: 978-1-0882-7383-8

This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

Find out more at reedsy.com

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This book is dedicated to Mildred Cuddlefoot and Freddie Spaghetti.

And to my reluctant editor, Paul.

Contents

Mischief

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Epilogue

About the Author

Also by J. Lynn Carr

Mischief

A genetic predisposition, a condition spread through toxins, or a capability bestowed upon an individual that can manifest as several supernatural abilities and skills.

See also: Magic

Chapter 1

When Hazel Rosenbloom went missing, everyone assumed it was because her fiancé cheated on her with her sister. And for quite some time, Hazel’s sister, Harvest Rosenbloom, assumed the same thing.

She lived guiltily with this knowledge for two years, feeling it root in her heart and grow around her chest, squeezing her so tightly that she sometimes felt like she couldn’t breathe. She woke up every morning, feeling it twist beneath her rib cage. She made her coffee and went to work every day, feeling it right behind her sternum. She was forever out of breath with its weight, as she smiled at Ezra, the controversial ex-fiancé. She felt it rise in the back of her throat when she told him, I love you, even though the words were sure and true.

Because they were sure and true.

Yet, as she pushes open the door to Tabitha’s Diner, she can feel the weight lifting, her breath returning to her lungs. She has found a goal—something to accomplish that will wipe her heart clean of her egregious actions.

The early morning light fills the diner with a fug of yellow, which has more to do with the thirty years it’s been in business than any particular energy or aura of the place. It shares its home with a dentist’s office and a used bookstore. The building itself used to be a bank—one of the first in the area designed by an architect and constructed with limestone and marble.

Perhaps, one day, its hallways will again find themselves with such a singular role, but for now, it is divided into sections and dedicated to the three businesses, which are alike only in the type of clientele they serve. In each entryway, there is a symbol carved into the doorframe that marks each one as a safe place for those who are born or bred with mischief in their blood—ancient magic passed down by birth, bite, or curse.

No human illusions are necessary, which is why on any given day you may see an elf drinking coffee at Tabitha’s. You might see a ghoul rushing to their appointment with Dr. Berkovich. You may even see a troll browsing the language section of Between Bookends, intent on finding a French/Trollish dictionary. Its high arched windows and pillars are adorned with gargoyles, who have been known to respond favorably to the occasional knock-knock joke. The walls sag with ghosts, and pixies live in the rafters.

Tabitha’s Diner is owned by the Rosenbloom family and named after Harvest’s mother, who died when Harvest was still young. She doesn’t have as many memories of the diner as she would have liked, though. When Tabitha passed away, Harvest’s father, Theodore, handed the day-to-day operations of the diner to an employee. He packed up his daughters and moved to the Rosenbloom Estate on an island just off the coast.

Harvest grew up in a house that precariously jutted out into the sea on a cliff that never seemed to crumble. The hallways overflowed with lush plant life and seemed impossibly long. There always seemed to be an extra shelf in the library, just as in the pantry.

She learned magic from her aunts, Trixie and Bea, dutifully repeating phrases in foreign languages she wasn’t even sure were real but that she now knows were variations of Latin, French, and Arabic, twisted together by mischief-born witches long ago.

Still, the diner is familiar, and she takes comfort in the smell of food cooking, coffee being brewed, and the light lemon scent of cleaner. The sound of the bell hanging over the door washes over her, and she can just about hear her mother singing a made-up song, stretching the definition of rhyming to its limit.

It’s as if her mother’s mischief lives on in the metal of the bell.

It probably does, Harvest thinks. Her mother was a strong witch, only taken from this world because of a senseless accident.

The hostess stand is a chipped wood podium that Harvest carved her initials into when she was thirteen, the day before they moved away. That was twenty years ago.

Kipp, a twenty-something fae with slightly pointed ears and greenish skin, is leaning on the podium, reading a magazine. She looks up and waves in the general direction of the only occupied booth in the diner. He’s over there, she mumbles before turning her attention back to the magazine.

Harvest’s boots click against the tile floor as she makes her way to the far corner of the diner. She slides into the booth opposite Agent Julian Quinn. The diner is in the front of the building and has a large window that overlooks the park across the street. The building faces north-east, and so, despite the early hour, Quinn is sitting in a chunky block of shadow, making this meeting feel much more clandestine than it really is.

Quinn’s golden brown hair is tousled, but in the purposeful way of a man who has spent centuries on this earth. He’s wearing a dark purple shirt with a charcoal waistcoat and tie. The shirt is pressed, and his sleeves are buttoned. A charcoal suit jacket rests on the back of the booth, the smooth leather wallet holding his badge just peeking out of the inside pocket.

Quinn is an agent with the Bureau, a purposefully glib name for the organization that investigates crimes involving supernatural phenomena and people. With headquarters around the world, their jurisdiction extends to all magical races and every agent is sworn to protect those who are mischief-born or mischief-bred.

While Harvest is a trainee in the Missing Persons Unit, Quinn is an Agent for the Serious Crimes Division, heading up a team that focuses solely on suspicious deaths. Their work occasionally overlaps, though they would prefer it didn’t.

It’s always a dark day when a missing person’s case becomes a murder investigation.

Thanks for meeting me, she says, fingering the corner of a menu. I’m sorry for calling so late last night.

He shrugs. It’s fine. Though I was surprised to see your name come up.

I’m surprised you answered, she says, which isn’t quite true. I was expecting voicemail.

Well, I must admit that I assumed the content of the phone call wouldn’t be so work-related. He smirks, revealing a canine tooth that is just a little too long to be human, reminding her that the mug sitting in front of him is not filled with coffee—but blood.

Let’s see it, he says, taking a sip.

She extracts a plastic bag from her purse and places it on the chipped Formica table. Inside the bag is a postcard with a faded picture of Valkaria Bay Boardwalk, a tourist destination not too far from the diner. The image should be sunny and happy, but there is an ominous stain in the center that looks like storm clouds rolling in. In the right-hand corner, the cardboard is singed in the form of a kiss, as if a fire sprite had pressed their lips to the postcard in lieu of postage. Text in big looping lines proclaims Wish you were here.

And this was sent to you yesterday? asks Quinn. He flips it over and reads the message on the back. Help, signed H. And you think this is from Hazel?

Yes. It was on the doorstep when I got home last night. It’s not the full story, but she doesn’t elaborate.

Her history is no secret to the Bureau, who rushed to investigate Hazel’s disappearance until a plausible explanation revealed itself in the form of Ezra’s infidelity. More so, Quinn and Ezra are friends. She’s sure he already knows about how, one breezy October evening a year ago, Ezra, drenched with loneliness and booze, decided to stumble up the steps to Harvest’s front door and present her with a ring.

She’s sure Quinn knows that their relationship has been slowly descending into the twisted, rotting thing it was always destined to be since that fateful night.

But what Quinn doesn’t know—and probably doesn’t need to know—is how she slid on the postcard and almost tossed it in the trash can.

He doesn’t need to know that she’s still not sure what made her turn it over. But she did, and the rotting thing in her chest roared its ugly, misshapen head. It turned her tongue sour and sharp, and she lashed out at Ezra, who had only been trying to ask her about her day.

And Quinn definitely doesn’t need to know that, although the argument that followed was not a new topic for them—Hazel’s name forever hanging on the edge of their lips—the way it ended was new, with Harvest’s engagement ring hitting Ezra’s forehead.

She admits that this was a childish thing to do, though she doesn’t yet regret it.

Anyone could have written this, though, he says, letting the postcard fall back onto the tabletop.

Harvest’s fingers are tangled in her necklace, the H charm dangling between her thumb and forefinger. It’s a nervous habit that developed in the days after Hazel disappeared, perhaps because, as a Rosenbloom family tradition, Hazel had a matching one and Harvest always had the vague hope that her sister could feel her regret through the gold.

With a steadying breath, she untangles her fingers and closes her eyes. When her eyelids flutter open a second later, her eyes are far from her normal shade of light brown but completely white and glowing slightly.

It takes her some seconds to sort through the bright blooms of colors that fog her vision. They are the energies that people unknowingly give off—the remnants of those who have come through the diner recently. Seeing auras is a specialty of hers; she’s the only one in her family gifted with such a second-sight.

Harvest sees Kipp, a serene cornflower blue. She sees the left-over aura of one of the diner regulars who sits in the same corner booth, a warm gray hovering by the window. He probably just left. She sees a trail of darker blue that reminds her of night skies, purple flowers in the moonlight, and dew-covered grass lined with stardust. That’ll be Ronan, the werewolf who recently took over as manager when the previous manager retired. She realizes with a slight shock that he has worked at Tabitha’s for almost twenty years now. He’s only a few years older than her.

The color is light and airy, fading to a mere wisp of what it should be. He must not be working this shift. There is a competing lime weaving its way around the blue—a third employee that Harvest isn’t familiar with.

Conspicuously absent is Quinn’s aura, though this doesn’t surprise her. She has never met a vampire with an aura.

She looks down at the table. The postcard is shrouded in viridian green, so deep that it reminds Harvest of the ocean just before sunrise. Hazel’s aura was always so true and solid, as if she was born knowing herself entirely, the truest of greenish pigments.

Harvest’s own aura is occasionally this shade of green, though she tends to lean more towards an olive and has always envied what she considers to be Hazel’s colorfastness.

This remnant of Hazel should have started to fade by now, but slipping it into the bag has kept this remnant close to the fibers of the paper. The aura could be visible for days, maybe even months. She reaches for it, feeling the sharp corner of the card stock through the plastic bag. With an exhale of breath, her fluttering eyelids chase away the fog. She held this. Recently.

There’s no postage, Quinn observes. How was it delivered?

It’s a spell, says Harvest. The kiss where the stamp should be.

He angles the card so that the fluorescent lights overhead catch the finer details of the scorched impression of a kiss. Magic—the true magic that is wielded by witches like Harvest—is a foreign entity to him, denied by the mischief-laced bite that altered his body so many centuries ago.

Vampires like him are always made, never born, and it is nature’s rebuke to deny them its secrets.

He will have to trust Harvest’s word that this mark is a spell.

What does she need help with? he asks.

I don’t know. But I’m worried. Isn’t that enough? she says, biting her lower lip. It’s not enough, she knows, and if the excuse seems paltry to her, it will seem even more so to Quinn.

He doesn’t seem to take in her answer at first, though. What do you want me to do?

I want to find her. I’m worried about her welfare. I need a senior agent who is willing to take this seriously.

He arches an eyebrow at her. You’d be willing to go over Herman’s head for this one?

She grimaces briefly at the image of Herman that pops into her head. Herman is a classic Bureau agent, a balding witch nearing retirement age who still talks about the good ol’ days before forensics and that Magi-Tech lot who get uppity about things like the chain of evidence. He always says the phrase chain of evidence in a falsetto voice, as if his disdain wasn’t obvious.

Herman is far from subtle.

I know I’m just a trainee, she says honestly. Herman barely listens to me on a good day. He thinks I haven’t earned my place at the Bureau. He thinks I’m only here because my aunt’s on the Council. He doesn’t take me seriously, and he definitely wouldn’t take this postcard seriously.

"Why are you at the Bureau?" he asks.

She blinks. I don’t know. Same as anyone who works there. Same as you.

I highly doubt that, he mumbles, twisting a gold signet ring on his pinky finger.

I want to help people, she supplies after a beat of silence. She’s painfully aware of how naive she sounds. I want to do something worthwhile. She leans closer, her elbows propped up on the table, and pauses, choosing her words carefully. You were there when Hazel went missing, when everyone thought something bad had happened to her, and before we knew what really happened. I know you’re the one who opened the investigation. And you’re Ezra’s friend. You had drinks with him last night, right? That’s where you were when I called? She pauses again, her fingers returning to her necklace absentmindedly. And you’re my friend, too.

Work acquaintances, he corrects.

Who text each other at three in the morning asking if they want to come over for a drink?

That was one time, and I apologized.

When?

I bought you a pint at that work thing.

She remembers that work thing—a get-together to celebrate the capture of a serial killer vampire with a taste for fae blood. It had begun as an MPU case, though Herman had been adamant that the victim was an adult, and there was nothing fishy about their disappearance.

When it became obvious that the case was connected to a death that SCD was investigating at the time, MPU passed it