“Where is Fifi going to live?” she asked me. “Didn’t you say she gave Lorcan notice?”

  I nodded. “I’m not sure. She said she was looking into a few places in town. She wants to be closer to the Half-Moon, apparently.”

  Speaking of Fifi, after Ophelia’s demise, Fifi had announced her plan to take over the realty office. She was going to rename it Hallowed Homes, and both Poppy and I were very happy for her. Actually, everyone’s mood seemed to have lifted since Ophelia had been removed from our lives.

  The council seat Ophelia had occupied remained open at the moment, and Roy was filling in with the various duties. Poppy explained she hadn’t seen him much because he’d been so busy. With the way she said it, though, it seemed like maybe there was more going on there, but I didn’t want to pry. I figured if Poppy wanted to discuss it, she would.

  At the sound of tires scrunching up the pebble driveway, we both turned around and faced a silver Toyota Prius I didn’t recognize.

  “Who in the bloody heck is,” I started, but my words were stolen from me as soon as the rear door opened and a slim, red-headed woman stepped out. It took me a second to recognize her as my cousin.

  “Astrid?” I asked as she slammed the door closed and then turned around to look at me. She was carrying two overlarge duffel bags and a purse. And she didn’t look happy.

  “Is that your cousin?” Poppy asked.

  I nodded as I started forward and watched the Prius turn around and start back down the driveway, the tires crunching as it did so. I spotted the ‘Uber’ sign in the window and then faced my cousin again. The last time I’d seen her had been right before I’d moved to Haven Hollow months ago.

  “Astrid, what’s going on?” I asked as I approached her.

  “Oh, Wanda, it’s horrible!” she cried out and it was then that I saw how red and puffy her eyes and cheeks were. Clearly, she’d been crying.

  “What’s horrible?”

  She dropped both bags and, running the distance that separated us, threw herself into my arms as her sobs returned in earnest.

  “I’ve been kicked out of the coven!”

  The End

  ~~~~~

  Return to Haven Hollow in:

  Love’s Goddess

  ~~~~~

  Return to the Table of Contents

  LOVE’S GODDESS

  Haven Hollow #5

  (Poppy’s Potions)

  by

  H.P. MALLORY

  &

  J.R. RAIN

  Love’s Goddess

  Published by Rain Press

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

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes 2.0

  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.

  Love’s Goddess

  Chapter One

  I adjusted the roses on my Valentine’s Day display and stood back to admire my handiwork.

  The glass potion bottles looked beautiful with the baby’s breath accenting the deep red of the roses, amid a nest of scrunched white tissue. I’d chosen magenta-tinted bottles for the potions I was highlighting: Courting Oil, Caliph’s Beloved, Circe Oil, and a few other love-related potions, but the display still needed something. Hmm, but just what, I wasn’t sure.

  Ah, yes.

  I rummaged under the counter for a vial of good ol’ Gypsy Magic. I deposited a single drop on each rose. The fragrance wafted through the store and gave the display that special something it was missing.

  I stepped back one more time. Perfect.

  Just then, the bell over the door rang. Wanda Depraysie walked into my store, wearing her usual smug and uninterested expression. Though we’d had a rocky start, I considered us friends now.

  Sort of.

  “Wanda, it’s good to see you! Where have you been hiding?”

  “Under a rock.” She gave me a frown, then exhaled a deep sigh, before she walked over to the love display, throwing her hips into each step she took. Wanda was the epitome of the words ‘femme fatale’—from her drop-dead good looks to her feigned nonchalance and disinterest bordering on disdain for everything around her.

  “Ugh, is it that time of year again?” she asked, shaking her head.

  “Valentine’s Day?” I replied, smiling as she nodded back at me. “Sure is.”

  “At least it should mean lots of sales on lingerie,” she muttered. Wanda ran an enchanted clothing store across the street from my potions store. In fact, she bought quite a few potions from me, which she used to enchant her creations. Even though Wanda was a witch, she wasn’t very good at brewing.

  “What do you think?” I asked, motioning to the display.

  “Looks great,” she muttered with an expression like she’d just smelled rotting fish. “You just have this… gift for all things domestic.”

  “Thanks, I think.” As with all things pertaining to Wanda, I was never sure if her compliments were really that.

  Wanda leaned in and squinted at the large poster-board in the middle of the display. “What is that? I can’t be bothered to read it.”

  I lifted the stiff sheet out of the nest of flowers. “It’s a history of Valentine’s Day,” I answered as I gave her a smile. “Marty made it for me. He thought it would add to the spirit of the holiday.”

  Marty was a man in town who ran a ghost-hunting service in his off-time. During his on-time, he was a marketing freelancer. He also happened to be my best friend.

  “Do you mean the Roman Emperor Claudius beheading the original Valentine or could you possibly be referring to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago when Al Capone slaughtered all those….”

  “Oh, God!” I said, shaking my head as I brought my hands up to cover my ears.

  Wanda laughed and then waved away my response with an unconcerned, manicured hand. “Don’t be so sensitive, Poppy.”

  “I won’t be so sensitive if you try to be more positive… deal?” I stuffed the infographic back into its place. “Valentine’s Day is a big deal for a lot of people.”

  “Including you, apparently.” She sauntered into the next aisle over and started perusing the potions—not the love related ones. “I hope you don’t mind my coming in before you officially open. I have to stock up on a few things before I open my store.”

  “Go ahead,” I answered, wondering why she was even making the point. Wanda had a way of showing up before and after closing hours most times she visited. “Anything for a friend.”

  “Thanks.” She took a few bottles off the shelves and put them in a basket I picked up from the floor at the end of one of the aisles and handed to her.

  “Don’t you have a Valentine’s Day special going on?” I asked.

  “No, but I guess I should.” She then paused as she tapped her chin with one long and mauve fingernail. “Sexual potions on panties and magically expanding jockstraps should sell pretty well.”

  I reached out and grabbed two potions from the rack in front of her. “Fire of Passion Oil is a good one—it basically causes the wearer to become more attractive to the opposite sex. Or Follow Me Boy is a good one for the panties—it’s a really old recipe New Orleans prostitutes used back in the day to ensure they made plenty of money in their… pursuits.”

  “Sold,” Wanda answered with a big smile. “You had me at ‘prostitute’.”

  I laughed. Sometimes she could be pretty funny.

  She exhaled and then narrowed her eyes at the potions around her. “You wouldn’t happen to have anything for people who hate Valentine’s Day?”

  “Why would I stock something like that?”

  She shrugged. “Um, because, Poppy, not everyone is in a perfect relationship with a huge and sexy sasquatch while her human best friend busily drools over her.”

  “I’d hardly call my relationship with Roy ‘perfect’ and Marty doesn’t drool over me,” I started, but Wanda wasn’t paying attention because she was still midstream regarding whatever it was she was going on about.

  “Some of us find ourselves in situations with the most irritating of vampires who won’t leave us alone…”

  She was talking about Lorcan Rowe, the vampire dentist in town who’d accidentally turned her into a Blood Witch after she wrecked her car and lay dying in the street.

  “I think it would do you a world of good to have a little table set up in the corner with hexing potions, or curses,” she continued. “You know—potions for cheating or otherwise useless partners.”

  I smiled up at her. Wanda was a fairly tall woman and her designer heels always gave her another three inches or so. At five-four, I was naturally short to begin with and my ballet flats didn’t do anything to help the cause. “You know I don’t sell those sorts of things, Wanda. Just potions to remove hexes and curses.”

  She looked at me and frowned. Again. “Ugh, when are you going to turn into the Sandy at the end of the movie, when she’s all sassy in that black leather getup?”

  “Um, did you just compare me to Sandy from Grease?”

  She nodded and started forward again, inspecting the potions. “Right. But, the uncool Sandy in the beginning of the movie, when she wears that ghastly yellow outfit. The Sandy with the stick up her butt... before she goes all goth and sexy…”

  “I get it, I get it,” I answered, holding up my hands in a motion of surrender. Not that I could really argue with Wanda because she was right—I was definitely the Sandy at the beginning of the movie. “Well, I guess there’s hope for me then, right?”

  “One can only hope.” Then she seemed to remember something and turned to face me with a big smile. “Just yesterday one of my female customers requested a stuffed animal that would accost and yell insults at any man who came near it, but unfortunately I don’t stock stuffed animals.”

  “Hmm,” I began, frowning as Wanda started forward again. “That sounds a little weird…” Then I shrugged. “Actually, I bet you could make a killing on those for all the anti-Valentine’s Day grinches like yourself.”

  Wanda stopped in her tracks and started nodding quickly. “You’re right! I would make a killing! I could become the Martha Stewart of the Anti-Valentine’s-Day Movement!”

  “You could call yourself Barfa Stewart.”

  But, she wasn’t listening again, which was a shame, because my joke was pretty funny. At least, I thought so.

  “I’ll develop my own holiday with chocolates that give your manipulative ex diarrhea for a week. Or roses that spit a foul-smelling liquid into your cheating girlfriend’s eye.” Her smile grew broader. “Yes, this is exactly what Haven Hollow needs! An F U to all those happy jerkoffs busily celebrating with their loved ones while the rest of us watch sappy Hallmark movies while crying into a pint of Ben and Jerry’s!” She turned to face me then. “Thanks, Poppy. You’re a real friend.”

  “Um… you’re welcome?” I wasn’t sure what I’d just done and how big the ensuing fallout would be.

  Wanda, meanwhile, headed into the next aisle over, scanning through the names of the potions with alacrity.

  “There must be way more people who are stuck hating their a-hole exes than those in happy relationships,” she continued excitedly. “This is exactly what the world has been waiting for—Get Back At Your Ex Day.”

  My smile evaporated. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I started and then heaved a big sigh. “Actually, I think it’s pretty terrible!”

  “Oh, phooey.” She reached the end of the aisle. “You must have something in this store that isn’t all rainbows and unicorns? Something I could use for my anti Valentine’s Day sale?”

  “I mean,” I started and then took a deep breath.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Holly Morton, I know you’re holding out on me.”

  I was surprised to hear her use my real name because as far as I was aware, she didn’t know what it was. It was only last week she’d stopped referring to me as “gypsy”.

  “Wanda, I want you to promise me you will use these responsibly,” I started as I shook my head, feeling like I was having a conversation with my eleven-year-old son, Finn.

  “Cross my heart,” she answered as I sighed and started into the banishing and uncrossing section. I reached for the few vials I kept in stock that were… of a questionable nature. I handed the first one to her.

  “What’s this?”

  “Bend Over Oil.”

  “What’s it do?”

  “Makes other people bend to your will.”

  She immediately started laughing and then plopped the potion into her basket before looking up again. The expression on her face was one of greedy hunger. “How many you got?”

  “Four.”

  “I’ll take them all.”

  “Now, Wanda—”

  “What else?”

  “I have one vial of Bat’s Blood Oil for creating havoc.”

  “Great, I’ll take it. What else?”

  “Conquering Glory Oil,” I answered as I reached for the potion in question and handed it to her.

  “Wow, I haven’t seen this one in a long time,” she said as she looked down at it fondly.

  “I just started carrying it, although I’m still not convinced I should. It’s just… I’m getting more and more customers requesting stuff like this…”

  “It’s for gaining power over others, right?” Wanda asked excitedly as I wondered what was going through that scheming head of hers. Good thing for me that Wanda considered me useful to her because otherwise, she’d be doing her damndest to boot me out of Haven Hollow. As a general rule, gypsies and witches didn’t coexist.

  “At least, that’s what it used to do,” she finished.

  I nodded. “Still does.”

  “Great, I’ll take all those too.”

  “Might I remind you what this holiday is all about?” I started, feeling like I needed to at least try to talk her down from whatever plot she was in the process of devising. “It’s supposed to be about love and… and gratitude and hope… joy.”

  She shot me a grin over her shoulder. “Yawn.” She shook her head. “What do you and Roy have planned? A romantic night watching Bridget Jones one and two over a pot of mac n’ cheese?”

  I rolled my eyes. “The last thing I want to think about at the moment is Roy,” I muttered, before wishing I hadn’t said anything.

  She stopped in her tracks and whirled around to stare at me. If Wanda loved anything, it was gossip. And gossip about me was probably at the top of her list. “What? Why?”

  I shrugged while I walked to the front of the store in order to unload more bottles of potions onto the front counter. I was hoping Wanda would lose interest in the conversation, but she didn’t. In fact, if I’d stopped walking quickly enough, she would have collided with me. “Ever since things went sideways between Roy and me when the faeries kidnapped Finn, those same things have only gone downhill since.”

  “What does that even mean? English, Morton, English.”

  “I mean, I didn’t agree with nor did I like the way Roy handled that whole situation with the missing children.”

  “How did he handle it?”

  “He didn’t handle it! That was the problem. We could have prevented the whole incident if Roy had actually taken the threat seriously. Or if he’d actually tried to convince Ophelia to go to the human authorities.”

  Wanda groaned. “If I never hear the name Ophelia Ponsobby again, it will be too soon.”

  “You should be proud of what you did, Wanda,” I answered, even though I knew this subject was a touchy one for her. A few weeks back, Wanda had done the unthinkable and she’d actually turned Ophelia into a statue (which now sat outside Wanda’s house) when she’d discovered Ophelia was responsible for the murder of one of Haven Hollow’s residents, a werewolf named Waylan Rutledge. “You did this town and all its citizens a huge favor by getting rid of Ophelia.” That was true—Ophelia, a night hag, had been a dictator, and then some.

  “Regardless, I’m as sick of hearing that name as…. well, as you are of Roy’s.”

  “I’m not sick of hearing his name. I just wish he took our relationship as seriously as he takes following the Council’s rules. I just keep thinking that if he really loved me, he would have stood up to Ophelia. He would have thought Finn’s safety was worth the risk. He would have thought I was worth the risk.” I caught her gaping at me, and I cringed. “I shouldn’t be talking to you about this—it’s gossip and I hate gossiping.”

  “I don’t think it’s considered gossip if it’s your own life you’re talking about,” Wanda said as she cocked her head to the side and then started nodding at me.

  “Regardless, it doesn’t change the fact that I shouldn’t be talking about it to anyone—it’s between Roy and me.” I sighed, long and hard. “Forget I said anything.”

  Wanda shut her mouth and then took a deep breath. “Maybe you should talk about it—maybe you should get all your feelings out and all that girly crap all those self-help books go on and on about.”

  Bless her, because she was trying.

  I looked at her and sighed again. “We just can’t seem to stop arguing about the tiniest, stupidest things.”

  “Example.”

  “Um.” I thought about it. Then I looked up at her. “Okay, I was thinking of hiring a sitter so Roy and I could go to that big Valentine’s Day bash the Stompers are throwing for the supernaturals in town.”

  “Hmm, was I invited?” Wanda asked as she frowned.

  “Of course you were.”

  “I don’t recall getting an invitation.”

  “I’m sure you did. When was the last time you checked your mail?”

  “Oh, I don’t check the mail. Libby does. And for all I know, she ate it.”

  Libby was a zombie 1950s housewife Wanda had accidentally raised from the dead, and now Libby was Wanda’s roommate. Libby wasn’t Wanda’s only roommate either—Darla, the ghost who used to haunt my house, also lived with Wanda, owing to the fact that Wanda had somehow managed to make her corporeal.

  “Anyway,” I started. “Now I don’t know if I should even still consider going to the party. I mean, what’s the point if Roy and I are only going to make everyone uncomfortable by bickering with each other—or worse, stewing in silence all night. I’d rather stay home with Finn.” I cracked a grin. “Bridget Jones and a pot of mac n’ cheese sounds pretty good right about now.”