The Strongest Magic

By Jaymie Michaels

Rosalyn Munroe is a full-figured woman who longs for the same things all women want. Love, companionship, a family...but destiny doesn't seem to have that in the cards for her. Or does it? When a speeding SUV nearly runs her over, she finds herself confronted by the most handsome man she's ever seen. He takes her breath away and heats her up in ways she hasn't felt until now.

Jerome Thompson has arrived to save Rosalynn from the Brotherhood, a vicious pack of warlocks who want her dead before her gift can be awakened. When they touch, sparks seem to fly through his body. Is she the one? He sure hopes so because she's the most beautiful woman he's ever met.

Too bad the Brotherhood wants both of them dead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shadowfire Press LLC
• Release date: Oct 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781935650997

Jaymie Michaels

Michael Barnette is an award winning author who has published over 80 books as of this publication all of which are being rereleased. Under his own name, Michael publishes a large number of LGBTQIA romance books, while Jaymie Michaels is his pen name for more traditional romances. Raised in the wilds of Miami, Michael relocated to the beautiful state of Colorado over a decade ago.

Book preview

Dedication

To Bianca Sommerland

Dan Skinner

and

Tarian PS Knock

All of you believed in me and convinced me I could do this again.

You three made a big difference in my life.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

And to my Mother, Kaye Ann Ambrosio

Don’t ever stop writing, Michael.

Those were her words to me.

Mom I’m keeping my promise!

Chapter One

The glory of fall was in full swing, the trees decked in their autumn finery a riot of red, yellow and orange with tints of green and brown for variety. A brisk October wind sent a scattering confetti-leaves racing down the sidewalks. Pumpkins, gourds and colorful Indian corn, along with the other usual trappings of Halloween decorated the houses and businesses along the street. Three more days until Halloween and the beginning of the very busy Holiday Season which would follow.

Rosalynn Munroe normally loved this time of year, but at the moment the upcoming holidays didn’t matter. For the last two hours she’d had a sense of impending disaster hanging over her head and couldn’t shake the feeling that her life might end at any instant. The idea, of course, could be nothing but silly.

She glanced behind her for the second time since she’d closed up her small antique shop, sure that she was being followed. But no one, not the teen aged couple walking with arms around one another, nor the group of children engaged in a game of follow the leader, or the business man waiting for a cab paid her the slightest attention. Everything looked perfectly normal, yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone dogged her steps. An absurd feeling since she couldn’t see anyone who appeared to have the slightest interest in her.

Fear made her heart pound. Who would bother following her? Her shop didn’t take in huge amounts of money which would make her worth mugging. And she had no former boyfriend who’d turned stalker. She hadn’t had a boyfriend since high school, a sad but true fact. Rosalynn didn’t have the sort of figure men seemed to go for, at least not in this decade. She was too short, and facing the stark truth, too fat to attract any man. As her mom said, you couldn’t fight genetics, and after twelve years of diets, Rosalynn had thrown in the towel and learned to live with her body. Too bad she had never found a man who wanted to live with it too.

She glanced over her shoulder, again. The pair of teenagers went up the front steps of a brownstone, vanished inside.

A pang of sadness crept through Rosalynn. She’d never know that sort of happiness with another person. At twenty-six she knew she had many long, lonely years ahead of her. She might be hefty—like all her maternal relatives—but she also had a very good chance of living to a ripe old age. Her great-grandmother was still going on strong at ninety-four and counting, and her grandmother barely looked old enough to be a grandmother though she was sixty-seven years old. Her mom could easily pass for her sister, though there was a twenty-one year difference in their ages.

Despite the longevity of her family, she’d rather be thin.

Across the street the businessman stepped into a cab and children bounded around a corner busy with their game.

Children. That too brought a pang of sadness to Rosalynn. She wanted children but, like marriage, children were nothing more than an unfulfilled wish in her life.

A cold chill swept down her back, the feeling of being watched stronger than ever. She paused, looked around, but there was no one watching. No one at all.

The chill deepened until it felt as if her very bones were filled with ice. It had to be her imagination. It did. Something deep inside her, a sharper sense than sight or hearing warned her of impending danger, nibbled at her psyche the way a mouse nibbled a gumdrop. Of course, she’d never believed in such things. Omens, portents and psychic abilities were things of fantasy, not part of the real world.

Then again, there were stories in her family of women with the gift, whatever that was supposed to mean. She remembered a story her great-grandmother had often told of her own mother, Rhiannan. The tale came back to her, sharp as a knife: Rhiannan had known a flood was coming and convinced her family and some of their neighbors to leave their homes in the middle of a terrible rainstorm. Hours later the river overflowed its banks and swept away their houses. Hundreds of people died, but not Rhiannan, her family or their neighbors. The people she’d saved had denounced her as a witch, blamed her for the flood—not thanked her for saving them—and turned on her like a pack of vicious beasts.

They’d lynched Rhiannan and her husband William, leaving her great-grandmother and her younger siblings orphans.

But it was just an old family story, wasn’t it?

What if it wasn’t? What if some strange sort of power did exist in her family? What it skipped generations? Or only surfaced during some great crisis?

She refused to entertain such a belief, so Rosalynn pushed the story out of her mind and focused her attention on the here and now. She did not believe in the supernatural, aliens, psychic phenomena, ghosts or any other mumbo-jumbo.

Two more blocks to go and I’ll be home.

She hurried along the street, held her coat closer around her against the chill; it didn’t help. The cold came from inside. She shivered and rushed for home eager to get off the street where she wouldn’t feel so exposed. She looked both ways and stepped off the curb to cross.

A car horn blared and she turned to see a black SUV barreling down on her. She opened her mouth to scream, sure that