CROSSROADS MAGIC

  BOOK 1 • WITCHTOWN CROSSING

  This is an original publication of Stories Rule Press

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2023 by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Text design by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Cover design by Dar Albert

  http://WickedSmartDesigns

  Edited by Mr. Intensity, Mark Posey

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  FIRST EDITION: December 2023

  Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  Crossroads Magic/Tracy Cooper-Posey—1st Edition

  Romance | Paranormal | Women’s Fiction

  2311

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  Table of Contents

  Half Title Page

  Copyrights

  Get Tracy’s Free Starter Library

  About the Author

  About Crossroads Magic

  Praise for Tracy Cooper-Posey’s paranormal fiction

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

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  Other books by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  This is a Stories Rule Press title

  About the Author

  Tracy Cooper-Posey is the author of the popular Scandalous Scions historical romance series, among others. She writes romantic suspense, historical, paranormal and science fiction romance. She has published over 150 titles since 1999, been nominated for five CAPAs including Favourite Author, and won the Emma Darcy Award.

  She turned to indie publishing in 2011. Her indie titles have been nominated four times for Book Of The Year. Tracy won the award in 2012, and a SFR Galaxy Award in 2016 for “Most Intriguing Philosophical/Social Science Questions in Galaxybuilding” She has been a national magazine editor and for a decade she taught romance writing at MacEwan University.

  She is addicted to Irish Breakfast tea and chocolate, sometimes taken together. In her spare time she enjoys history, Sherlock Holmes, science fiction and ignoring her treadmill. An Australian Canadian, she lives in Edmonton, Canada with her husband, a former professional wrestler, where she moved in 1996 after meeting him on-line.

  About Crossroads Magic

  I’m just an ordinary, middle-aged woman, and my life is falling apart….

  When did I become such a cliché? I’m divorced, working a crappy job, living on next to nothing, and wondering how it all went so wrong.

  Then it goes even more wrong. My grown daughter turns up after not speaking to me for two years, with stunning news of her own, and to cap it off, I’m summoned to a tiny, isolated hamlet in northern New York called Haigton Crossing, where my mother has lived for decades.

  Haigton Crossing looks like a throw back to another time. For such a small place, it is stuffed full of secrets. The people there are different, including the town’s doctor, Benedict Marcus. And Haigton Crossing is way, way too small to host a murder….

  This book is part of the paranormal women’s fiction series, Witchtown Crossing:

  1.0: Crossroads Magic

  …with more to come!

  A Paranormal Women’s Fiction novel.

  Praise for Tracy Cooper-Posey’s paranormal fiction

  I’m rapidly falling in lust with all these characters and stories and can’t wait to read more.—Carrie Reads a Lot

  As always a cracking story– definitely a keeper series—Jeannie Zelos Book reviews.

  Reader reviews:

  Filled with the brilliant imaginings of a master of worldbuilding, and is positively littered with staggering, thought-provoking concepts.

  At times it felt like the main location was a minor character itself.

  I can't tell you how glad I was to find Tracy Cooper-Posey.

  If you like action, adventure, and love this is the book for you. I just couldn't put it down.

  Written flawlessly and the story flowed so effortlessly you could imagine you actually know these people

  What a writer TCP is - she continually surprises and surpasses my expectations.

  Dedication

  For Bunty. Chin up.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you, Marilyn P, for being my local intelligence officer. Your input has been invaluable.

  Crossroads Magic

  BOOK 1 • WITCHTOWN CROSSING

  By

  TRACY COOPER-POSEY

  Stories Rule Press

  Chapter One

  The only thing I was worried about as I headed back to my apartment building was the spot on the back of my hand where hot fat had left a burn the size of a nickel. Small, but mighty, the burn throbbed and ached, reminding me it was there. It was worse when the sun hit it, which it did frequently. It was one of those perfect, mild days in December, when you could actually see the sky over L.A. and it was blue.

  Who am I kidding? The burn spot wasn’t the only thing I was worried about. If you were to ask me, I could rattle off a dozen major and minor problems, including the sumo-sized rat I suspect was trying to take up residence under my kitchen sink. But those were all chronic problems.

  The burn on my hand was new and painful. I didn’t need new problems and was trying my best to ignore it until I could slather aloe vera gel on it. Marjorie, at the diner, had hacked off a leaf from the plant sitting in the pot outside the kitchen door when Deborah, the assistant manager, hadn’t been looking. Marj had wrapped the leaf in plastic. It was in my bag, along with the serving of pecan pie which Deborah had ordered the waitresses to throw out because it was too old. Three days old…there was nothing wrong with it, and it had more calories in it than the egg and toast I had lined up for dinner.

  In this world that wasn’t the one I would voluntarily choose, today was turning out okay. Pecan pie, and Hobgoblin of History in my ears. I had been waiting weeks for book fifteen of M.K. Lint’s fantasy series. The library had doled it out to me yesterday and I was on chapter three. Harry the Hobgoblin was looking for the Fairy Eloise, this book; he’d lost her at the end of the last one, because he hadn’t closed the Doors of Eternal Flame in time and a demon had abducted her.

  I like reading. I like it a lot.

  My building was a white monstrosity that did nothing to enhance the L.A. skyline. The white had long ago turned to a stained, dull grey. Five years ago, a fire had broken out on the top floor and burned out a few apartments. The black smoke had billowed up out of the windows, staining the walls above them. The stains were still there and every time I saw them, I had to remind myself they were smoke stains, not black mold taking over the building. Black mold seemed more appropriate.

  I turned off the audiobook, stashed my phone in my pocket and headed for the front door. I only used the front door when I came home from work. Usually, I used the side door, because it was closer to the bus stop.

  There was another homeless person sitting on the front steps, leaning against the wrought iron banister as if they couldn’t prop themselves up, their jean jacket pulled in tight. It wasn’t that cold, although this late in the afternoon, any warmth in the day was beginning to fade.

  I swung around the homeless person’s worn boots, and up the steps, digging out my key.

  “Mom?” The voice wavered.

  I whirled, my heart rate climbing, to face the woman rising from the steps, a denial on my
lips.

  Blue, short, spiky hair. A nose ring. Black eye makeup that had run…or that she had been wearing for too many days. The black looked like bruises.

  “Ghaliya?” I asked, for the high cheekbones, narrow chin and high forehead were hers. So were the blue eyes—even if they were blood shot. The next question was right there, behind my teeth. What the hell are you doing here?

  Ghaliya pulled the jacket in around her once more. She’d lost weight since the last time I’d seen her…two years, two months and five days ago. And about thirty minutes.

  “The super said you’d be home around now,” Ghaliya said. She bent and picked up a small black backpack that had been sitting under her knees and straightened.

  Was it possible she’d got taller? She’d been an inch shorter than me. I didn’t think she was shorter than me anymore, and I am nearly always the tallest woman in the room.

  I didn’t ask why she was here. That was obvious. She needed help.

  I hefted my keys instead. “You’d better come in.”

  ●

  I live on the fifth floor. Apartments on the fifth floor and top floor got a 4% break in rent because the elevator didn’t work. It hadn’t worked since I had moved in.

  Ghaliya was blowing like a bull by the time we stepped through the fire escape door into the hallway. I stopped, a touch concerned, and she put a hand on the wall, her head hanging down, and sucked in heaving breaths.

  “You’re smoking now?” I asked her.

  She lifted her chin and shook her head, still bellowing.

  The man in the apartment across the hall from mine—late thirties, long hair, trimmed beard and nice teeth—an actor with a day job, I had guessed—strode down the hall toward the fire escape. He stepped around us, nodded at Ghaliya. The corner of his mouth lifted. “Hey.”

  She nodded back.

  I stared at him as he straight-armed the fire escape door and stepped through. I’d been living here for three years and he’d never once said a word to me. Not even a nod. I was invisible to him.

  I’d become invisible not long after turning 40. Anyone scanning the area I was in would see all the younger women, and the men. Me, they’d dismiss as a middle-aged non-entity. After twelve years of not being noticed, I should be used to it. Yet every year it pissed me off just a little bit more.

  Ghaliya straightened up from the wall. “I’m okay,” she told me. It took her two breaths to get it out.

  I headed for the apartment, while selecting the key on my key ring, conscious of Ghaliya trailing behind me. She’d never been here, even though I’d taken the apartment the same month Jasper had announced our marriage was over. Ghaliya had chosen to stay with Jasper…although she had lived to regret the choice.

  I pushed all the bitter old history out of my mind, unlocked the door and moved inside. I couldn’t help but compare the apartment to the house that Ghaliya and her brother, Oscar, had grown up in.

  Ghaliya stepped in behind me, paused in the kitchenette and looked around.

  I did, too, and saw the apartment the way she would see it.

  The kitchenette was directly inside the door, with a miniature fold up table at the end, under the aluminum-framed window. Living area to the left of the door, that a full sized sofa couldn’t fit into. Bedroom off the living area, with a tiny bathroom coming off the bedroom.

  I’d repainted the walls white, because they had been yellow from cigarette smoke when I moved it, and I’d hung cheap posters – I couldn’t afford frames. I’d studied the Ikea website pictures of tiny apartments for days when I’d first moved in. I could have Ikea-rized the guts out of this place and it would have been glorious, only I didn’t have a few thousand dollars to spare to buy all the furniture and bits and pieces it would take to turn the apartment into a tiny oasis.

  I’d stretched to get a love seat and a bed, and had been slowly adding pieces here and there, most of them in a must-have priority order. Like coffee mugs. And a saucepan, as I like to eat hot, cooked food occasionally.

  This morning’s dishes were still in the sink. Everywhere, on the floor, stacked up against the walls, and piled upon any flat surface, were my books, because bookcases were a luxury.

  Ghaliya pulled her jacket in around her again. “Umm….”

  Well, at least she didn’t say it was nice. Or worse, that it was cozy. Which it was, but we both knew that.

  “Sit,” I told her, pointing at the tiny table. There was a second chair folded up and stacked against the wall under the window. I’d only wanted to buy one chair because no one but me ever came here, but there had been a sale, a second chair at half off. I sometimes used it as a step ladder to reach the upper shelves in the kitchen. My chair had my current books on it.

  Ghaliya moved over to the table. She hesitated, then lifted up the leaf on the side where the chair leaned against the wall, bent, and swung the arms out to support it. That made the table about three feet across. Then she unfolded the chair and sat gingerly.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked.

  “Starving,” she admitted.

  There was a note in her voice that made me ask, “How long since you last ate?”

  Ghaliya looked away from me, her gaze settling on the books on my chair. “Umm…breakfast,” she admitted.

  “And what was breakfast?” I asked suspiciously. I moved over to the range and fired up a burner, and put the frypan over it. Then looked back at Ghaliya for her answer.

  “I used the last of my cash for the bus ticket,” she said, her tone defensive.

  “Bus fare is a dollar seventy-five.” I got the eggs out of the bar fridge, and the bread, and dropped two slices into the toaster on the shelf over the sink. “You only had two dollars?”

  “Twenty-four dollars, Mom.”

  I glanced at her, startled. “Where did you come from?”

  Her red-rimmed gaze met mine. “San Francisco.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t think what else to say. In the two years (and two months, five days and forty minutes) since she had told me to go to hell and left, I had always assumed she was somewhere in L.A. Somewhere where her father could help out if she needed it. Somewhere safe, with better appointments than this apartment.

  My gut tightened. My chest squeezed. Where had my daughter been living? What had she been doing? Because she didn’t look as though she had been thriving.

  I opened the half carton of eggs. I had three eggs left. She could have two of them.

  I pulled out the butter, and dropped a tablespoon into the frying pan. It sizzled, a sound I got to hear all day at the diner. The burn on the back of my hand gave out a throb, reminding me it was there. I ignored it, and rinsed off the spatula from this morning. Then I dropped the eggs into the pan, and corralled them with the edge of the spatula.

  As soon as they were behaving themselves, I got two plates down from the shelf and put them on the table in front of Ghaliya. I actually had four sets of utensils, because that was how many the package had held. I pulled two knives and forks out of the scrubbed-out soup tin on the back of the sink, and put them on the table with the plates.

  Ghaliya moved the plates so they were sitting in front of each chair, and arranged the knives and forks on either side.

  The toast popped and I put both slices on Ghaliya’s plate and fed another slice into the toaster for me.

  Then I carefully flipped the eggs. Ghaliya hated runny eggs. So did I. Just call us weird, but if there was any sort of yellow glistening beneath the egg white, neither one of us could eat it. She’d started refusing runny eggs at the tender age of four, declaring them to be “gross” – one of the first words she’d learned.

  And I spent my days cooking eggs sunny side up and watching customers slop their toast in the yellow glop on their plates. Ugh. To each, her own.