Well, mostly.

  “Why didn’t you do it?” I asked him.

  “Do what, my dear?”

  “Turn me. You said you’d do it if it meant saving my life.”

  He grinned even more broadly. “Well, you are quite well now, aren’t you? And last I checked, you weren’t growing fangs.”

  “That’s no answer, Lorcan,” I frowned. “Why didn’t you turn me?,” I repeated, more emphatically this time. “I know you wanted to.”

  “I didn’t want to,” he answered matter-of-factly, shaking his head. “I don’t ever want to do anything to you that you wouldn’t choose of your own free will.” He was quiet for a few seconds. “And, in the case of becoming a vampire, I have decided that if and when that day should ever come, I will make you beg me for it.”

  I burst out laughing—maybe a little too loudly because I suddenly felt tired again. “Beg! You dog!”

  He only stroked my knuckles and smiled. “You know what I mean, Wanda. I want you to do more than just agree to become a vampire. I want you to embrace the change enthusiastically, if that’s what you decide to choose. And if you do, I want you to desire it above all else. I want you to be thrilled to receive my full ‘Kiss’. And, if not, I want you to be happy with whatever choices you do make.”

  I nodded as I grew quiet for a few seconds and thought about it. And as I thought about it, I remembered how both sides of me, my vampire and witch sides, had come together to fight against not only the threat of Mother, but also of Genevieve. And for the first time ever, I was proud to be a Blood Witch. I looked up at Lorcan. “I guess I’m not there yet.”

  “I could never condemn you to a life you didn’t want, Wanda,” he said as his eyes revealed a pain I hadn’t seen in them before. “I suffered such a fate when my sire turned me and I won’t do it to anyone else, least of all you.”

  “I don’t hate the idea,” I answered on a sigh. “I haven’t fully wrapped my mind around it, no, but I can honestly say, I don’t hate it. And if I had the choice between becoming a vampire or dying, I would choose the former.”

  “Well, that’s something.” Lorcan grinned and I smiled back up at him.

  “I can actually kind of see how my becoming a vampire might solve a lot of problems, actually. It would certainly get Rupert and his crew off my back.”

  Lorcan smiled more broadly and then shook his head as he tightened his hold around my hand. “If ever you come to me and ask me, with all your heart and soul, to turn you, then perhaps I’ll think about it.”

  “Oh, could you do that for me?” I asked on a laugh.

  He laughed in response and then we both fell silent.

  He bent forward. I saw him coming in to kiss me and I arched up, as much as I was able, to meet him. I slipped my arms around his neck and drew him down. When his lips touched mine, they were full and I savored the long kiss. Too soon, Lorcan straightened again and pulled away.

  “Now then, my dear, we have some business to discuss.”

  “What business?”

  “Vampire business… Genevieve and Joseph came after you.”

  “They didn’t come on Rupert’s orders though,” I reminded him.

  “True, true,” he answered. “They jumped the gun, but that only means more vampires will be coming for you.”

  “We’ll make another attempt to break the blood bond before the deadline. If we can succeed…”

  “The deadline has come and gone, my dear,” Lorcan murmured on a sigh, shaking his head.

  “What?” I asked, my heart dropping as I shook my head because I didn’t understand how that could be.

  Lorcan nodded. “It came and went while you were unconscious in the hospital.”

  “Oh, no,” I said as my mouth fell open. “How long… how long have I been here?”

  “Long enough,” he answered.

  “Then…”

  He nodded. “Our time is up. And that means the vampires will come. It’s only a matter of time now.”

  I gasped. “Why hasn’t Rupert come for me already? Or… was that whole stunt with Genevieve and Joseph orchestrated by Rupert?”

  Lorcan shook his head. “Rupert is far too direct to have done such a thing. Genevieve spoke the truth when she said she and Joseph acted alone. As to why Rupert hasn’t come for you yet, I don’t know, but he will. Never doubt that.”

  “What should we do then?” I gulped. I didn’t want to say it, but I had to. “Do you think I should leave Haven Hollow?”

  “Not yet. But, it might come to that. Rupert will come—we just don’t know when or where. We can keep trying to break the bond until then. We might succeed, but if he does come after you, we’ll have to leave the Hollow. You understand?”

  I swallowed again and nodded. I understood—we’d have to go on the run. And not just us. We’d also have to take Astrid with us. I was her legal guardian, after all, and she certainly couldn’t go back to the coven.

  Libby and Darla would have to come with us, too. They depended on my magic for their very existence. Neither of them would survive if they separated from me for any length of time.

  “Perhaps you should start making preparations just in case,” Lorcan went on.

  I compressed my lips. “No. I won’t give up on Haven Hollow yet… not when I believe we can still break the blood bond. Just one little tweak to Betanya Tayir’s spell could mean success and then we wouldn’t have to go anywhere.” And I hoped Olga might prove to be the ‘little tweak’ I needed.

  He smiled but his expression seemed sad. “As you wish. I will support you whatever you decide.”

  “Lorcan, if I had to leave Haven Hollow…”

  “I would go with you.”

  I tried to blink back the tears that suddenly stung my eyes. Crying? I was crying? What in the name of Hecuba had gotten into me? It took me a second or more to get myself under control and when I did, I looked up at Lorcan and decided to ask him the question I’d been wondering from the moment he’d rescued me from that car accident. “Why are you going so far out of your way for me?”

  He furrowed his brows. “So far out of my way for you?”

  I nodded. “Everything you’ve done for me… it’s been above and beyond. Any other vampire would have just turned me by now. And yet… you won’t do that. You’re basically doing backflips to try to do things my way… I just… I don’t understand why.”

  He laughed and then looked down at me, his eyes full with an emotion I couldn’t decipher. His smile was the warmest I’d ever seen it.

  “Then you don’t understand love, my dear.”

  The End

  ~~~~~

  To be continued in:

  The Black Cat Cocktail Club

  ~~~~~

  Return to the Table of Contents

  THE BLACK CAT COCKTAIL CLUB

  A Haven Hollow Novella #8

  (Remarkable Remedies)

  by

  H.P. MALLORY

  &

  J.R. RAIN

  The Black Cat Cocktail Club

  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.

  The Black Cat Cocktail Club

  Narrated by Poppy

  Chapter One

  “We are NOT calling ourselves the Haven Hollow Hooch-ies!” I called over my shoulder and almost overturned the delicate assembly of lab equipment balanced on my kitchen counter.

  My witchy neighbor, Wandellmellia Depraysie (otherwise known as Wanda) sat on a barstool behind the counter, inspecting her fingernails. Wanda was what’s known as a Blood Witch—she wasn’t a full-blooded witch. She was half vampire and it was owing to that fact that she’d been kicked out of her coven, ended up in Haven Hollow and was now my neighbor.

  “Well, the repetition of ‘H’ sounds good.”

  I stopped what I was doing to look at her. “Wanda, we aren’t hoochies! Even the word is so… degrading.”

  “Speak for yourself, doll!” Darla called from the other room, where she was sitting on my couch and painting her toe nails. Where she’d gotten the paint, I wasn’t sure, but assumed she must have raided my bathroom. “I ain’t had a romp for way too long. I’d be right happy to be a hoochie—plus, what girl don’t like the hooch?”

  Up until recently, Darla had been a ghost from the 1920s. She’d been haunting my previous house and had moved with me to this most recent one. Then Wanda had managed to make her corporeal… and here we now were.

  “Hooch isn’t the same as being a hoochie,” I answered.

  “Darla, you should keep such comments to yourself!” Libby chided her as she walked into the kitchen. “Otherwise, what will folks think of you?”

  “Pssh!” Darla waved away Libby’s concern. “I don’t give one stuff what people think of me!”

  Tubes, vials, and beakers clinked loudly. Potions swirled inside them, and I hustled to balance everything in place again. I might have decided to do too much at once… as usual. But, orders were orders and it wasn’t like they were going to fill themselves.

  My bottle of lavender essential oil tilted in my hand while I steadied three beakers and an elaborate distillation setup. The lavender almost spilled. I had to put the bottle down in a hurry to grab the condenser and stop it from shaking before it shattered on the floor into a million pieces.

  At last, the glass stopped shuddering and the various liquids settled back to level. “Phew! That was close.”

  Wanda looked up from inspecting her nails and appeared completely unamused. “Why don’t you put all that smelly stuff away and relax for a second? You work too hard—just watching you is making me exhausted.”

  “Yeah, these get-togethers are supposed to be a time to have fun, not to work,” Bailey added. She was a psychic who had worked with me on a couple of ghost-related cases. She also worked for the local psychic agency, Spook Society.

  As to our get-togethers, they usually were just fun and games, but tonight I had work to do. And as to where my twelve-year-old son, Finn, was? He was supposed to be doing homework at Wanda’s house, under the ‘strict’ eye of Astrid, Wanda’s niece. I was more than sure the two of them were curled up on the couch and watching horror movies, though. That seemed to be their favorite pastime whenever I asked Astrid to babysit.

  “I’m almost done with this one, swear,” I answered Wanda and Bailey. “Give me two more seconds…”

  Wanda frowned at me and raised one irritated eyebrow. “How would you like it if I brought over my sewing machine and stitched bikinis and handbags in your kitchen all night?”

  I wouldn’t have minded, but figured that wasn’t the right response, so I didn’t say anything at all. Wanda then put her pencil down long enough to sip her Bombay Dry martini through a straw. The pencil was owing to the fact that she’d been recording every idea given for a name of our impromptu club. So far, I wasn’t a fan of any of them.

  “I’m almost done, promise,” I said with a shrug.

  Wanda ignored me (which wasn’t all that unusual) and picked up the pencil again, nibbling the end of it. Then she tapped it thoughtfully against her notepad. “Poppy, this task is much more important than your potions are at the moment.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” I fired back. Sometimes it was easy to get irritated with Wanda because though she generally meant well, she could be… prickly. “Some of us aren’t as lucky as you are—some of us weren’t born into one of the richest witch families on the West Coast.”

  “If you met my mother, you wouldn’t call me lucky,” she grumbled. “You’d call me the antithesis of lucky.”

  I was more than glad I hadn’t met Celestine Depraysie because I’d recently learned enough about her to be convinced she was a definite bad egg. And after the stunt she’d most recently pulled—trying to ruin Wanda and her business, I was determined not to have anything at all to do with her. And Wanda felt much the same.

  “Regardless,” I continued. “I warned you ahead of time that I was behind on my orders.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Wanda answered. “I figured I could talk you out of it.”

  “Well, this potion is one that can’t wait if I’m going to have it ready in time for Mrs. Abrams to pick up in two days—when I promised she could.”

  “No matter how many potions you brew for Mrs. Abrams, her husband is still going to cheat on her and she’s most likely still going to get hairs growing out of her chin,” Wanda said, not bothering to look up from her notepad where she’d scribbled a list of words.

  “Ew,” Bailey said, making a face. “Hairs in her chin?”

  Wanda looked up at her. “You’ll start getting them too—just give yourself a few more years.” Wanda then sighed as she looked back at me. “Anyway, I should know because I’ve enchanted over three outfits for Estelle Abrams, all to the same end.” Then she sighed as she narrowed her eyes at me and nodded, bobbing the pencil against her lips again. “I’m starting to think that husband of hers is possessed with a sex demon of some sort…” Then she looked up and her eyebrows reached for the ceiling. “Shame he isn’t better looking.”

  “Wanda!” I reprimanded her, sounding like Libby.

  “What’s he look like?” Darla called out from the living room.

  “Oh, foo!” Wanda said as she frowned at me (she was also good at ignoring Darla. And Libby, too, for that matter). “I know you really aren’t as much of a prude as you pretend to be, Poppy.”

  I faced her squarely. “I wasn’t aware anyone thought I was a prude.”

  “Oh, you’re a prude, alright,” Bailey laughed and then hiccupped—clearly having imbibed one margarita too many.

  “Poppy’s a flat tire and then some!” Darla added.

  “And you keep quiet!” I yelled back to her, actually walking around the table in the kitchen so I could give her the full wrath of my angry stare.

  “The truth usually stings,” Wanda said on an exhale.

  “You don’t listen to them, Poppy,” Libby said as she gave me an understanding smile. “There’s nothing wrong with being a prude. It just means you have… standards.”

  “I’m not a prude!” I yelled, throwing my hands in the air as Wanda’s eyes went wide.

  “Wow, I didn’t know she could yell,” Bailey said with a shrug.

  “Regardless,” I responded as I frowned at my friends, “this tincture has to be balanced with clover oil in the next minute or the whole thing is going to blow up in my face and I’ll have to start all over again.”

  “So balance it,” Wanda responded, waving me away with an unconcerned hand. “Although I do have to admit, I wouldn’t mind watching it blow up in your face. Sounds… amusing.”

  “Ha ha.”

  Wanda took another generous sip of her Martini. “And, Poppy, I might have been born into one of the richest families, but I’m not in one now, in case you forgot.” That eyebrow arched even higher. “I work for a living, too, but even I know when to quit. I mean, look at this place!” She waved at the collection of potion bottles, essential oil bottles, bubbling pots and pans, steaming lab equipment, and bundles of dried herbs. “Anyone would think you were the witch in town, not me.”

  “No one would think you’re a witch at all,” I muttered, mostly to myself as I set to balancing the potion with the clover oil. “Because you always come to me for your potions.”

  “What was that?” she called. “’Cause I didn’t quite catch it.”

  “Never mind.” I took a breath. “And I’m not just working on a potion for Mrs. Abrams,” I informed her, although I doubted she cared. “I’m also working on an experimental potion I’ve never attempted before.”

  “Oh yeah?” Wanda asked, seemingly slightly more interested. “And what sort of potion is that?”

  “Hopefully an anti-prude potion,” Bailey laughed and Wanda laughed along with her while I frowned at both of them.

  “Very funny, ladies. And on that topic… if you asked Roy, he would tell you exactly how not a prude I am… or was… or am!” Roy was my ex-boyfriend, who also happened to be a sasquatch.

  “Wait, does that mean you and Roy are still…” Bailey started.

  “Banging?” Wanda finished.

  “Banging, Wanda, really?” I asked, allowing my temper to get the better of me. Usually I was cool, calm and collected but I didn’t do well with stress and between Mrs. Abrams’ potion, the experimental potion and Wanda and Bailey bullying me about being a square, my temper was definitely present and accounted for.

  “Lorcan said ‘banging’ was the hip term for sex these days,” she answered, pursing her lips together. Lorcan was her vampire sire who was also in love with her. And though Wanda would never admit it in a million years, I was fairly sure she had a soft spot for him too.

  “This crude conversation is too much for my delicate sensibilities,” Libby announced as she hobbled out of the kitchen again.

  I looked at Wanda and laughed. “I wouldn’t take any lessons from Lorcan regarding what’s cool and what’s not.”

  Bailey nodded at Wanda. “Prude Poppy has a point.”

  “Prude Poppy,” Wanda repeated. “I like it.” And she scribbled something down on her pad of paper, presumably my new nickname.

  “Well, I don’t like it at all!”

  Wanda looked at Bailey. “PP for short.”

  “Ugh,” I grumbled.

  “So back to your sex life with Roy,” Wanda started.

  “No back to my sex life with Roy because I have no sex life with Roy.”

  “Regardless, inquiring minds would love to know all about the goings on, er the wents on, behind closed doors between you and that… sexy man.”

  “Nope, not going there,” I answered. “Not only are Roy and I history but…”

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t entertain us with stories about his engorged,” Wanda started but there was no way I was going to let her finish that sentence.