HAVEN HOLLOW

  Books 11-20

  Mystic Veil

  The Yule Log

  The Broken Mirror

  Art Deco Apparitions

  The Vampires Grave

  Herringbone Hexes

  Raising Cain

  Druid’s Curse

  Colonial Corpses

  Angora Alchemy

  by

  J.R. RAIN

  &

  H.P. MALLORY

  The Haven Hollow Series

  Gypsy Magic

  Cashmere Curses

  Faerie Enchantment

  Spandex Sorcery

  Love’s Goddess

  Demon in Denim

  Taffeta Trickery

  The Black Cat Cocktail Club

  French Country Frights

  All Hallow’s Eve

  Mystic Veil

  The Yule Log

  The Broken Mirror

  Art Deco Apparitions

  The Vampires Grave

  Herringbone Hexes

  Raising Cain

  Druid’s Curse

  Colonial Corpses

  Angora Alchemy

  Day Dream

  Ritzy Business

  Pan’s Delight

  Armed & Charmed

  The Christmas Spirit

  Blood Rose

  Blood Bond

  Georgian Ghouls

  Velvet Voodoo

  Dead Ringer

  Summer Solstice

  Lace Laments

  Enchanted Emporium

  Gypsy Gold

  Newlywed and Pixie-Led

  Cold Blood

  Hexes and Hoarfrost

  Satin Superstition

  Memento Mori

  Silk Skullduggery

  Blood & Ice

  Royal Ransom

  Nightmares and Numerology

  Other Books by J.R. Rain

  VAMPIRE FOR HIRE®

  New Moon Rising

  Moon Mourning

  Haunted Moon

  Moon Dance

  Vampire Moon

  American Vampire

  Moon Child

  Christmas Moon

  Vampire Dawn

  Vampire Games

  Moon Island

  Moon River

  Moon Tales

  Vampire Sun

  Moon Dragon

  Moon Bayou

  Blood Moon

  Parallel Moon

  Moon Shadow

  Vampire Fire

  Midnight Moon

  Moon Angel

  Vampire Sire

  Moon Master

  Dead Moon

  Lost Moon

  Moon Vacation

  Vampire Destiny

  Infinite Moon

  Vampire Empress

  Moon Elder

  Wicked Moon

  Moon Shots

  Winter Moon

  Moon Blade

  Sasquatch Moon

  Moon Cases

  Wild Moon

  Moon Magic

  Moon World

  Vampire Deep

  Moon Matador

  Latin Moon

  Sun Dance

  Unicorn Moon

  Missing Moon

  Other Books by H.P. Mallory

  PARANORMAL WOMEN’S FICTION:

  Midlife Mysteries

  Midlife Spirits

  Haven Hollow

  Misty Hollow

  Trailer Park Vampire

  Gwen’s Ghosts

  PARANORMAL ROMANCE:

  Witch, Warlock & Vampire

  Lily Harper

  Dulcie O’Neil

  Gates of the Underworld

  PARANORMAL REVERSE HAREM:

  Happily Never After

  My Five Kings

  Haven Hollow: Books 11-20

  Published by J.R. Rain and H.P. Mallory

  Copyright © 2024 by J.R. Rain and H.P. Mallory

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Mystic Veil

  The Yule Log

  The Broken Mirror

  Art Deco Apparitions

  The Vampires Grave

  Herringbone Hexes

  Raising Cain

  Druid’s Curse

  Colonial Corpses

  Angora Alchemy

  Reading Sample: Dance With the Dead

  About J.R. Rain

  About H.P. Mallory

  MYSTIC VEIL

  Haven Hollow #11

  (Poppy’s Potions)

  by

  H.P. MALLORY

  &

  J.R. RAIN

  Mystic Veil

  Published by Rain Press

  Copyright © 2021 by J.R. Rain & H.P. Mallory

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Mystic Veil

  Prologue

  “She’s crashing!” someone shouted in my ear. “We’re losing her!”

  “Another twenty milligrams of epinephrine IV push! Get the crash cart over here now!”

  The noise and confusion swirled in one ear, turned a lazy revolution in my brain, and drifted out the other ear. I swayed on the edge of consciousness as the stretcher veered around a sharp corner and careened down yet another hospital hallway.

  All I knew—all I could comprehend—was pain lancing through me. It was a dull, reverberating ache in some places and a fast, spontaneous knifing sear in others.

  The fluorescent lights streaming past my face blurred as a third wave of shivering agony seized me. I started to float away, but slammed back onto the stretcher when it lurched to a sudden halt.

  “Her blood pressure is tanking,” someone said, sounding detached.

  “She’s going into atrial fibrillation!”

  “Where are those two units of blood I ordered?”

  I swam through a hazy cloud of hurt mixed with jumbled memories about what had happened to end with me here and in this condition. But, I had no answers for myself.

  Someone shone a flashlight into my eyes before my head lolled to one side.

  I’d never experienced this kind of pain before and, suddenly, I didn’t want to fight it any longer. I wanted to give in to the sea of calm that existed just beyond the pain—a sea that promised no more agony, no more fear. Just peace.

  You need to fight, Poppy, a voice sounded in my head. I didn’t recognize the deep cadence, but the sound was masculine. And the accent was… English?

  I can’t fight… it… it hurts too much, I thought back, because I was more than sure my voice wouldn’t work.

  It’s not your time, the voice insisted.

  Not my time.

  Not my time.

  Not my time.

  It feels like it’s my time, I insisted.

  No. Think of your son.

  My son.

  Finn.

  Yes, I would fight.

  All at once, a flood of heat rushed into my veins. The pain spiked until it was unbearable, and then everything went black.

  Chapter One

  A deafening blast exploded in my face.

  I lunged backward, just as the shockwave caught me under the chin. The raw power hurled me against the wall and knocked out every window in the room.

  The high-pitched sound of breaking glass tinkled in my ears and I choked on the smoke filling my lungs. Seconds later, a hot knife of pain pierced my brain, and I flinched at the sudden horrid pain. Cramming my hand to my forehead, I tried to rub the pain away, but it wasn’t any use. Coughing like my life depended on it, I squinted through the murk.

  “Astrid!” I bellowed. “What did you just do?”

  “I did what you said! I added the fenugreek seeds to the…”

  I pushed myself off the wall and staggered to the kitchen counter, having to part the seas of smoke that were currently choking my kitchen. The pounding in my head had reached major proportions, and I had to half-pinch one eye against it.

  “You didn’t add the fenugreek seeds! You added the nigella seeds the way I told you not to! You were supposed to add the nigella last. Remember?”

  “Oh, you’re right… I did add the nigella seeds.” Then she sighed, long and hard, before getting captured by a coughing fit of her own. “I’m sorry, Poppy.”

  The smoke started to clear and I could actually see her again. That was when my twelve-year-old son, Finn, entered the room, his eyes wide as he waved the smoke away.

  “Mom? What happened?”

  “I messed up a potion,” Astrid answered on a sigh.

  “Is everyone okay?” Finn continued.

  “Other than the windows blowing to Kingdom Come, I think we’re all fine,” I answered on a groan as I got caught by another coughing fit. Once I could catch my breath again, I waved away the smoke and faced Astrid just to make sure we were all okay.

  “Are you hurt?”

  She coughed a few more times. “No, I’m fine. Are you…?” Her face came into view as the smoke drifted through the broken windows and out into the fresh air beyond. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve got a splitting headache, which is ironic considering this…” I waved at the pile of shattered glass, bent cooking pots, and i
ngredient bottles on what used to be my kitchen counter. “This potion was supposed to cure headaches!”

  “Can we try again?” Astrid asked, looking at me with a sheepish and hopeful smile.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “But… but we should try to take your headache away, right? I’ll make sure to add the correct seeds this time, I promise.”

  “Um, I think we’ve done enough for today.”

  Astrid seemed disappointed and sighed. “How am I supposed to get the potion right if I don’t try to fix my mistake?”

  I took the dustpan and broom out from under the sink and started to sweep up the broken glass on the floor, but I kept gasping because my head felt like it weighed a ton and the constant knifing pain through my ears was getting hard to ignore. I really needed to take a swig of my Headache Draught and then lie down. This was proving to be one doozy of a headache and the idea of Astrid attempting to set it right… needless to say, I wasn’t up for round two.

  Astrid worried her lower lip as she faced me with concern. “Please don’t say you don’t want to continue teaching me?” Before I could answer and put her mind at ease, she continued. “You’re my only chance to become a real witch, Poppy, and I promise I’ll get the next potion right!”

  “First of all, Astrid, you’re already a ‘real witch’ and that has nothing to do with me.”

  “Right, but no one knows potions like you do.”

  “I’m not going to stop giving you lessons,” I responded, wanting to eliminate the concern in her eyes. “I just think we’d better call it a day… for today. That’s all.”

  “Can we please try to reverse whatever I messed up?” Now her voice was spiking into the shrill range. It made my head pound worse than before.

  I heaved a sigh. “Listen, sweetie, I’m done for the day. You go on home and we’ll pick up our lessons tomorrow, okay? I need to clean this mess up and…”

  “I’ll clean it up!” She lunged at me and snatched the dustpan out of my hand before I could stop her. “The explosion was my fault, so cleaning up is really the least I can do...”

  “As long as I don’t have to clean up,” Finn answered as he waved us both away and returned to his video game in the living room.

  “It’s okay, Astrid.” I slowly and deliberately removed the dustpan from her possession, and that was when she lost the battle with her tears.

  “I’m abysmal at making potions!” she cried. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to become a talented witch when… when that just happened!”

  “Astrid,” I started as I reached out and pulled her into a hug. Since Astrid was a witch, she wasn’t exactly used to physical affection, but she was warming up to it and significantly faster than was Wanda, her cousin with whom she lived. “That’s not true.”

  “It is true,” she sobbed as she wrapped her arms around me and cried into my chest while I crooned words of positivity into her ear and tried to ignore the pounding in my head.

  “You’re very talented with potions,” I offered. “But, some potions are more difficult to learn than others. We’ll try again tomorrow after school and you’ll be back to impressing us all with what a prodigy you are.”

  She pulled away and nodded while drying up the rest of her tears on the cuff of her sweatshirt. Poor Astrid had really had a tough go of things lately—after trusting her brother and poisoning Wanda with a hex potion, Astrid had found herself grounded for the month. But, she wasn’t grounded from her lessons with me, which was just as well because I enjoyed her visits (when she wasn’t destroying my kitchen) and so did Finn.

  Once Astrid begrudgingly agreed to leave me to my solitude, I walked into the living room and sank onto the couch, my head still pounding. I wasn’t sure how she’d managed it, but instead of creating a headache cure, she’d hexed me with the worst headache I’d ever had. I shut my eyes, but even that hurt.

  “Hey, Mom, watch me kill this Volatile with my sledge hammer,” Finn said, not bothering to look up from his game where it appeared he was attacking zombies.

  “I feel like a volatile hit me with a sledge hammer,” I grunted.

  Prying myself off the couch just long enough to rummage through my purse, I took out a bottle of Headache Draught I’d brewed a month or so ago, and uncorking it, downed the whole thing in one go. The draught had the sharp aftertaste of licorice. Before I could resume my spot on the couch, someone knocked on my front door.

  Dragging myself down the hall, I opened the door to find Wanda standing on my front porch, dressed to the nines as usual. Wanda was tall—maybe five-eight, and she was a definite looker with her waist-length black hair, curvy figure and beautiful face. Even though she was a witch and we were supposed to be sworn enemies, we’d become good friends. Though I couldn’t say I was happy to see her at the moment.

  She raised her eyebrows at me. “Is something wrong, Poppy? You look more… casual than usual.”

  That was her way of saying she didn’t approve of my customary uniform of sweatshirt and yoga pants.

  I didn’t respond, other than to sigh as I turned around and teetered back to the couch, leaving the door open so she could follow me. Keeping my hand on my head, I could only hope the pressure might relieve some of the pain. It didn’t. Good thing the Headache Draught would start working in the next ten minutes or so. I groaned again when I sat down and massaged my temples.

  “Hi, Wanda,” Finn called from where he was sitting on the floor in front of the TV.

  “Hi, Finn. How’s Piggy?”

  “Oh, he’s just great.”

  A while ago, Wanda had magicked to life Finn’s favorite stuffed animal—a pig aptly named, ‘Piggy’. Aside from giving me a heart attack every now and then with his high-pitched voice, Piggy was harmless.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Wanda repeated as she trooped in behind me.

  “Astrid.”

  Wanda’s eyebrows shot up. “Balls,” she swore.

  Finn laughed and Wanda gave me a ‘sorry’ expression, to which I just shook my head. Wanda and her vocabulary weren’t concerning me at the moment.

  “What did Astrid do?” she continued.

  “Destroyed my kitchen and gave me the worst headache I’ve ever had.”

  She looked around, frowning, “Where is she?”

  “I sent her home maybe ten minutes ago—you didn’t see her?”

  Wanda shrugged. “I haven’t been home yet. I just closed up the store and drove straight here.”

  “Oh.”

  “So what exactly did Astrid do? Hopefully not poisoned you with one of her awful brother’s potions?”

  I tried to smile, but failed. “She mixed the wrong ingredient in a headache tonic and instead of taking the headache away, it gave me a serious one.”

  “Well, it looks like her magic must really be something… you look like you got hit by a truck.”

  I snorted under my breath. “I feel like I got hit by a truck.”

  The headache was already starting to ease, but I lay down again, anyway.

  “Did you take anything for it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm,” she grumbled. “Well, whatever you did take for it… you might want to take something that will kick in… faster.”

  “Faster?”

  Wanda nodded. “You forgot, didn’t you?”

  I looked at her, not in the mood to figure out what in the world she was talking about. “Forgot what?”

  “That Henner invited Marty, you and me to dinner at the Half-Moon tonight.”

  I covered my eyes and groaned again. Dinner with the guys was the last thing I wanted to think about at the moment. “Ugh, I totally forgot.”

  “You sure you’re okay, Poppy?” Wanda continued, narrowing one eye at me suspiciously. “Usually you’re the one who’s on top of everything and I’m the forgetful one.”

  “I just… got a little overwhelmed.”

  “Is the dinner for Henner’s birthday?” Finn asked, still not bothering to look up from the zombie facing him on the screen.

  “No, why is it Henner’s birthday?” Wanda asked.

  “Yeah! It’s November sixth and RJ’s is the thirteenth!” Finn answered.

  “Well, regardless, this dinner doesn’t have anything to do with birthdays,” Wanda said as she faced me. “At least, I don’t think it does.”

  Henner had asked us to dinner because he wanted help to clear the rest of his grandmother’s furniture out of the basement. The dinner was just a thank-you in advance. I shook my head as she faced me, and that concerned yet judgmental expression was back on her face.

  “Darla keeps a bottle of gin under her pillow and they say alcohol helps headaches. Do you want me to...?” she started.