Praise for Darynda Jones

  “I’ve never read her books because I’m seven-and-a-half and my parents won’t let me, but she seems like she would be a good writer.”

  —THE DAUGHTER OF TWO CONSENTING ADULTS

  "Darynda Jones is amazing! I’ve only read her most recent grocery list, but it was crazy! Strawberry AND chocolate cheesecakes? Bold choices!”

  —CASHIER AT THE QUICKSTOP

  “I do worry about her action-figure fetish. She seems so normal. I guess you never know.”

  —DARYNDA’S FIFTH GRADE TEACHER

  Moonlight and Magic

  BETWIXT AND BETWEEN BOOK 4

  DARYNDA JONES

  LIARS & THIEVES INK

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  MOONLIGHT AND MAGIC:

  A PARANORMAL WOMEN’S FICTION NOVEL

  (BETWIXT & BETWEEN BOOK 4)

  ©2022 by Darynda Jones

  Cover design by Hang Le

  EBook

  ISBN 10: 1-954998-92-9

  ISBN 13: 978-1-954998-92-6

  Print

  ISBN 10: 1-7343852-8-6

  ISBN 13: 978-1-7343852-8-1

  Sadly, all books have typos. Including this one. If you see any and would like to let us know, please email us at writerlyd-books@yahoo.com. THANKS SO MUCH!

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce or transmit this book, or a portion thereof, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author. This book may not be resold or uploaded for distribution to others. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  www.DaryndaJones.com

  Available in ebook, print, and audio editions

  Created with Vellum

  You know who you are.

  You know what you mean to me.

  Thank you all for being in my orbit.

  Contents

  Introduction

  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

  Afterword

  Introduction

  Forty-something Annette Osmund always knew she was psychic. She’s not, but that didn’t stop her from giving those non-existent abilities her all. What she is, however, is a very powerful witch who has just inherited magics she never dreamed possible.

  Starting over in a new town with her BFF has been an adventure. Her BFF’s status as a powerful type of witch called a charmling has kept Annette busy. But while Defiance, a seeker, is still learning to use her magics, to control the power at her fingertips, Annette is overcome with powers of her own. Turns out, her being besties with Defiance was not an accident. They were drawn to each other even before their powers emerged, and Annette learns she is also a charmling, a healer and an alchemist. But how did this even happen?

  Fortunately, there’s one way to find out. She confronts her mother, because the only way she could be a charmling is to inherit the power, and her father, while a wonderful man, is hardly a magical being. But there is someone else who wants to know where she got her powers from as well: a delicious entity who’s following her every move. She can either use her magics to try to shake him or learn to work with him, but working together could cost her the only thing she’s kept safe for years: her heart.

  Chapter One

  I just asked myself if I’m crazy, and we said no.

  —Meme

  I stood on a deserted street and stared at my mother’s front door as though I’d never seen it before. Mostly because I hadn’t. She’d moved since I put Phoenix in my rearview almost seven months ago, and the red monstrosity that loomed like a giant mouth waiting to swallow me whole felt as foreign to me as pole-vaulting. Or shower sex. But it couldn’t be helped. The conversation I needed to have with my mother could not be carried out over the phone.

  I had questions.

  Weighed down by luggage, a parka the size of Nebraska, and a Betsey Johnson handbag I bought with my last dime—because Betsey Johnson—I turned and watched as my Uber driver, my last hope of escape, faded into the distance. Metaphorically speaking. He actually made a left on Elm and disappeared behind a mid-century duplex. Either way, if I’m being completely honest with myself, standing there watching my one and only contingency plan vanish was simply another form of procrastination. One of many I’d employed over the last couple of weeks. But I could no longer delay the inevitable. The time had come. No more dragging my feet. No more stalling. No more puttering or fiddling or—

  “Essscuse me.” A small voice emanating from somewhere on my right interrupted a very tenuous thought process. How many synonyms were there for procrastination?

  I looked down at a kid on a trike, thankful for yet another reason to delay the inevitable discomfort hurtling toward me like a runaway train. The girl had glistening dark skin, two pigtails on the top of her head that stood up like antennae, and the most incredible set of eyes I’d ever seen. Rich amber irises framed in a centuries-old setting, full of curiosity and mischief and a hint of annoyance.

  I was apparently blocking her path.

  Wearing a rainbow tee, pink ruffled shorts, and sparkly cowgirl boots, she rocked her trike back and forth as though unable to sit still, even for a few seconds. Even now. Even with everything that had happened to her.

  Being new to the whole seeing-dead-people thing, her presence startled me at first, especially when I noticed the skin scraped raw on one side of her face and down her left arm. While that gave me a good idea of how she died, a sadness settled in my chest with the knowledge. Aware we were still in the street, out in the open where anyone could see, I knelt down to her, ignored the creak in my knees, and offered her my very best smile. “What’s your name?”

  “Apple Ellen James the First, but Grandma Lou told me not to talk to strangers, so I can’t tell you that.”

  I fought a grin. “The first, huh? That’s quite an honor.”

  She lifted a slim shoulder. “Grandma Lou says I’m the first because I’m the only girl like me in our whole entire family.”

  I didn’t doubt that for a minute. “I bet she thinks the world of you,” I said, my heart melting.

  “She lives in that house.” She extended a tiny finger toward a similarly styled house next to my mom’s. Red brick and multipaned windows, only her front door was a soft shade of sand. “And we used to live here,” Apple added, swinging her arm to my mom’s. “But we had to move, and now a crazy lady lives there with a man who smokes.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust, and I tried not to laugh.

  No wonder my mom could afford the place. She’d hooked up with someone new. Yet again. I could hardly blame the woman for trying to find her OTP, but she’d gone through five divorces in her six decades on Earth. There comes a time to accept defeat and become a cat lady. That was my plan, at least, especially since the man I was currently in love with died more than fifty years ago and was now haunting my BFF’s house in Salem, Massachusetts. C’est la vie.

  That being said, I did spot a hottie at the airport in Boston and then again on the flight over. Thick hair as dark as a starless night. What promised to be an exquisite jawline obscured by the upturned collar of a long black coat. The material, cut clean and clearly expensive, emphasized the massive expanse of his shoulders beautifully. But it was his eyes—a shimmering silvery blue—that made me forget how to breathe. At least during that brief glimpse I got before he disappeared around a corner at the airport or behind a passenger’s seat on the plane. I looked for him almost desperately when we landed, my irises fairly begging for another peek, but with all the bustle of deboarding, I never saw him again. A pity because I couldn’t help a niggling of familiarity in the back of my mind.

  “I like your glasses,” Apple said, pulling me out of my thoughts again, and I had to remember which pair I was wearing. While almost always cat-eyed, my glasses tended to change colors with my mood. Today they were blue to help soothe the anxiety coursing through my veins.

  “Thank you.” Rising to my feet again, I hefted the parka and the Betsey Johnson onto a shoulder and took hold of my suitcase. Whoever invented wheels for these things deserved a Nobel Prize. Or a lifetime supply of frozen lasagna, because who doesn’t love lasagna?

  The minute I stepped out of her path, Apple rushed past me like she had someplace to be.

  I called out to her. “Are you going to be around for a while?”

  “Maybe,” she said over her shoulder, pedaling to her grandmother’s house with a fierce determination.

  “Stay out of the street!” I yelled, though it was clearly too late for such warnings.

  With a deep sigh, I turned back to my mother’s front door and resigned myself to the inevitable. If the issue weren’t so burning, if it weren’t literally a matter of life and death, I wouldn’t even bother. But this was no longer about me only. My BFF was a charmling, too, but at least her new title made sense. She’d been born into a family of witches.

  I, on the other hand, had been born int
o a family similar in consistency and texture to the fruit in fruitcake. I’d never had a magical bone in my body, but suddenly I’m a charmling? Not just a witch, but a very powerful type of witch, one of only three in the world. And this was where it got sticky. This was why I needed my mother’s help. A blood heir can only be born from a carrier of the magical gene. But the man I’d called father my entire life didn’t have a magical bone in his body. Not that I knew of anyway. Depending on how this conversation went, he would be my next stop.

  So many questions, so few steps to the front door. I listened to the rollers bounce in the grooves on the sidewalk as I made my way to Mom’s new entrance. Only one car in the driveway, a brand-new Mercedes, so I hoped her new man wasn’t home. But before I could knock, my phone rang.

  I pulled it out of my bag and breathed another sigh of relief before answering my best friend’s summons. Defiance was still in Salem, enjoying her new sweetheart and a new son she’d brought across from the other side, because apparently charmlings can do shit like that.

  After tapping the green circle, I waited for her face to appear on my screen.

  “Well?” she asked, her dark hair falling prettily around her face. She was sitting in the kitchen of her new, gorgeous mansion. A dilapidated Cape-Cod-esque manor named Percy any witch would be proud of.

  “Well, what?”

  “Did she tell you who knocked her up?”

  I stuffed my coat through the telescopic handle on the suitcase. “I haven’t seen her yet. I’m at her house now.”

  “Dude, you landed two hours ago.”

  “Have you already forgotten what traffic is like here?”

  “Oh,” she said, her tone deflating. “Sorry. Call me the minute you find out who your real dad is. Like that very second.”

  “You act like I’m on some grand adventure.”

  “You are! We talked about this. You’ll always have your dad, and he’ll always love you, but there is no way that man is a carrier of the charmling gene.”

  “I know, I know. I just don’t think this conversation is going to be as easy as you’re making it out to be.”

  “Annette Cheri Osmund. You’ve got this. Just pin those crazy curls to the top of your head and do what we talked about.”

  I took a deep breath and nodded. “Right. Lull her into an innocuous conversation about the weather, then blindside her.”

  “Exactly. And don’t give her a chance to retreat. You have a right to know who your real father is. And how the hell she hooked up with a witch. Or a warlock. Either way.”

  “True, but—” Before I could expound on the plethora of doubts running rampant through my brain, a tiny voice wafted into my ear, and my heart melted at the sweet sound.

  “Hi, Aunt Netters!”

  Defiance adjusted her phone to show the face of a blond-haired, blue-eyed Puritan wearing a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt and a Stay Salty fisherman’s hat. The little guy had officially been baptized in the modern era.

  “Hi, Samuel,” I said, cursing the pang of jealousy that spiked every time I saw the toddler. My best friend had rocketed from bankrupt divorcée to fiancée of the hottest journeyman-slash-werewolf I’d ever seen—not that I’d seen many—and mom seemingly overnight. And I was so happy for her, it hurt. Yet a tiny pang of envy pricked my heart, and I hated it. How could I be jealous of my best friend?

  “Why you in that phone?” he asked, tapping the screen with his index. He may be wearing twenty-first-century garb, but he was still trying to figure out his new reality.

  “I’m out of town,” I said, laughing at the fact that he was essentially poking my face.

  “Why you out of town?”

  “That’s a good question, but I’ll be back—”

  “Ink!” he cried before I could finish the sentiment, wiggling out of his mother’s arms to chase a scruffy housecat named Ink. Poor creature. At least Samuel could no longer chase him through walls, so he did manage to eke out a few moments of peace in his otherwise frantic days.

  “Oh, I saw a hottie in the airport,” I said, changing the subject to something I knew Deph would love.

  She turned the phone back to herself. “Yeah? Did you get his number?”

  “Of course not. I couldn’t just walk up to him and ask for his number.”

  “Why not? You used to do it all the time.”

  “Yes, as a joke. Also, I kept losing him.”

  “Darn.”

  “He looked strangely familiar, though. Like I’ve seen him recently, but I don’t where from. Maybe—”

  The door opened, and I stopped midsentence. Standing exactly half an inch shorter than me—we’d measured—my mother stood across the threshold, her short brown hair only slightly mussed, considering the hour. And she was still wearing a robe. A red one with candy canes on it. I decided not to ask.

  “Annette?” she said, as though not sure it was me.

  Had I changed that much? “Mom.”

  Her wary gaze slid past me, scanning the street for a car. Or my gang. “What are you doing here?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not here to rob you, Mom. Holy cow.” I shoved past her to get out of the heat and came face-to-face with the daughter my mother never had, my cousin Krista.

  Of course she would be here. Where else would she be?

  “I’ll call you back,” I said into the phone.

  “Wait!” Deph yelled as I hit the end call button. She had just enough time to stick out her tongue, and I almost laughed. Almost.

  “What are you doing here?” Krista asked, as though worried she’d catch something.

  My mom closed the door, and I looked between the two of them, suddenly at a loss for what to say. The last thing I wanted on this earth was for my cousin, the super popular one who used to squeeze toothpaste into my hair as I slept, to find out I was questioning my ancestry.

  And why the hell was she here? She and my mother used to do everything together. I thought their close relationship would ebb over the years, but it only seemed to grow stronger. The comparisons—or disappointments—grew stronger as well. Why couldn’t I be more like Krista? Why couldn’t I cheer like Krista? Why couldn’t I paint like Krista? Why wasn’t my hair soft and shiny and blonde like Krista’s?

  I was in my midforties, and that shit still stung like a tarantula wasp. I had to get over it already. Thank the goddesses for my bestie, Defiance. She’d kept me sane. Or at least she’d tried. The jury was still out.

  “Oh,” Krista said, eyeing the silver bracelets I’d woken up with that morning. Literally. I’d gone to bed with bare wrists and woken up with delicate silver vines around them. Not the oddest thing to happen to me in Defiance’s new house, believe it or not. The fact that said bracelets had no clasps for me to take them off only added to their charm. Or creepiness. Either way.

  “You should have called,” my mother said, walking past me toward a kitchen that set off to the left.

  I abandoned my suitcase in the foyer and followed. “I didn’t realize I needed an appointment.”

  She turned to me in a huff. “That’s not what I meant, Annie. I just moved into this house. I don’t have a spare room ready.”

  “It’s nice.” I scanned the open area. White walls accented with soft woods. It was fancy. Especially for my mom.

  “Thank you,” she said, pouring a cup of coffee. “I can’t wait for you to meet Brad.”

  “Pitt?” I asked hopefully.

  Krista released a sound that was part laugh and part scoff. “Same old Annette.”

  “I’ve only been gone seven months, cuz. Did you expect me to change?”