Her house was tiny, but it was had been all hers for nearly a year now, and after twenty-three years of living with her mom and three sisters, it felt like a paradise. True, a path connected her house to her mom's, where her younger sisters still lived, but it was across the acre of their shared kitchen garden. Right now, during a lovely late spring in Ohio, the garden was blooming so wildly that travelling between houses was almost like crossing a jungle.
“You aren't much like a jaguar, though, are you, Bob?” she asked her black and white cat as he padded into the room, probably from her bedroom, where he'd been napping earlier.
He meowed at her and jumped up on to the cushioned window seat so he could survey his kingdom. She always thought he must have had a little bit of cat royalty in his background, from his regal carriage and “you may pet me now, peasant” attitude, but he, like the house, was all hers. He'd shown up one night on her porch in a rainstorm, tiny and bedraggled, and he'd been hers ever since. Or she'd been his. You could never tell, with cats.
Her youngest sister burst into the house, slamming the door against the wall.
“Astrid, I asked you not to do that,” Rose said, without any real hope that her bubbly sister would pay any attention this time, either.
“They got Ninja,” Astrid said, wiping tears off her face with the sleeve of her white peasant blouse. Astrid was the only one of them who’d inherited their mother’s sense of style and, at fifteen and long, lanky, and gorgeous, she wore it well.
“We’ll help Ninja, honey,” Rose said soothingly. “We fixed the paperboy. It’s all good.”
She wiped her hands on a towel, retrieved a slender glass vial from its position in the refrigerator next to eleven more just like it, and followed her sister outside to rescue the dog.
She stopped on her porch and took a deep breath, unable to resist the wonderful scents of flowers and herbs coming from the garden. Her mother was a garden witch--derogatorily referred to by some as a kitchen witch--and her powers came from spells and potions made from plants.
Rose and her sisters had inherited the same magic, but each of them had something a little extra, as well. In Rose, it was the ability to discover a person’s deepest desire within five minutes of being in his or her presence.
Not everyone appreciated this gift; especially since she’d often blurted out her magically acquired knowledge in public when she was a child. Plus, sometimes the knowledge was a surprise even to the person whose desire it was.
That usually turned out badly.
“Rose! Are you coming?” Astrid’s voice rang out from behind the small stand of blooming apple trees. “Watch out for the mean one by the tomatoes.”
Rose kept an eye out for any strange movement as she headed for Astrid, but the nasty little beasts had learned to watch out for her after she’d thrown an itching spell at the one chasing Bob.
She rounded the corner of the path and found her sister kneeling on the ground beneath a tree, her arms around a tiny stone statue of a pug.
Astrid turned her tearstained face up to Rose. “You have to help my sweet Ninja.”
Rose grinned at the sight of the dog, frozen in mid-bark, his tiny pug ears standing straight up.
“I’ve got it, Astrid. Now stand back.” She uncorked the vial and shook the sparkling pink liquid on the statue’s head after her sister moved out of the way, and they both watched as Astrid’s black pug puppy transformed from a stone statue back into his roly-poly self, apparently no worse for wear.
“Honey, please keep him out of the garden until we deal with this,” Rose said, trying to be stern but unable to resist smiling as her sister covered the pup’s silky head with kisses.
Astrid promised and ran back to their mother’s house, carrying Ninja. Rose watched her and then sighed and turned around to go back to her kitchen and check on her new conversation potion. Their neighbor’s son Connor, a very sweet computer nerd and recent college grad who wanted to use it for job interviews, would be stopping by at four to pick it up.
When she reached the cottage, she automatically glanced into the window at Bob and then stumbled to a stop. Her cat, frozen in mid-stretch, had been turned into a stone statue.
Damn garden pests. Why couldn’t they get grub beetles or snails, like the typical gardener? Oh, no. Never anything ordinary for the Cardinal witches.
They had to get a freaking basilisk infestation.
Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance by Jennifer Ashley, Alyssa Day, Felicity Heaton, Erin Kellison, Laurie London, Erin Quinn, Bonnie Vanak and Caris Roane