Halfway Bitten (Halfway Witchy #2) by Terry Maggert
Blurb:
The circus came to Halfway, and they brought the weird.
When clowns, vampires, and corpses start piling up in town, Carlie has to break away from her boyfriend, Wulfric, to bring her witchy skills to the table- or grill, as the case may be.
When the body of a young woman washes up in the lake, it unleashes a spiral of mystery that will bring Carlie, Gran, and Wulfric into a storm of magical warfare. Spells will fly. Curses will rain. Amidst it all, Carlie will make waffles, protect her town, and find out if a man from the distant past can join her in happy ever after.
With love and honor at stake, Carlie has no peer.
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Excerpt:
If I ride my bike to work, it takes three minutes;
walking takes ten.
I chose to walk.
The sun broke over the lake in a fury of gemlike flames.
Halfway is a lake made in heaven, and the town curls around it like a jealous
lover. At five in the morning, it’s sleepy and quiet, with only the
occasionally rowdy goose or loon breaking the silence. The only humans moving
around other than me and a few bakers are fisherman; they have the excellent
sense to limit their noise and speech under the auspices of not scaring their
prey. I applaud that kind of dedication to avoiding human contact before you’re
fully caffeinated.
I unlocked the diner’s side door and slipped into the
quiet cool. This was the magic hour before any other employees were around, and
the entire space was mine. Three days a week Louis would be waiting to greet
me—he started baking at two in the morning, but not today. There was no aroma
of flour or sweets and coffee, just the welcoming stillness and a lingering
hint of something fried and delicious. Glynna and Pat would arrive later;
between the two of them they could organize the invasion of a modest country.
They’re both seasoned veterans who know that coffee comes first, chit chat is
second, and smiles are constant. It’s no surprise that getting a job here is
rare, but keeping it is common.
I set coffee to brew, wrapped a snow white apron around
me, and slid easily into the kitchen to begin the dance of preparing for an
onslaught of bustling customers who came to eat, relax, and gaze out at the
brightening surface of the lake. There are some mornings that I lose time; it’s
as if the muscle memory of my job takes over and bliss descends to move my
hands in a familiar pattern of cooking, and plating, and smiling at the general
joyous chaos that erupts from the moment we open our doors. Most of the time, I
love my job. Other days I tolerate it, but this was not one of those days. This
day was going to be interesting.
I looked up from the grill and froze. Usually, the
diner—that’s the Hawthorn Diner, known to everyone in town simply as The
Diner-- is filled with a nice mix of tourists and locals. You know the types.
There are tourists wearing all manner of vacation uniforms with the occasional
sunburn mixed in for good measure. Dads wear khaki shorts, white sneakers, and
an expression of relief when their kids start eating. Tourist moms wear
anything that’s clean, drink coffee like their lives depend on it, and always
seem the smallest bit worried. Our locals wear baseball caps and an air of
infinite patience, waiting for me to cook their waffles just so without a hint
of hurry.
So, when I looked up and saw six clowns sitting at the
counter, I took a moment. Okay, if you want to get technical, I froze. Don’t
get me wrong, I’m not scared of clowns. As a witch, I actually find them sort
of relaxing when compared to the paranormal nasties I deal with now and again;
a little face paint and red noses don’t frighten me. But still, I just took a
moment.
Glynna smirked at me while she filled a row of coffee
cups; apparently even clowns enjoy a hot cup of joe. I nodded politely, looking
down at my current batch of home fries that were happily sizzling away, then
turned to add onions and mushrooms to an omelet that was nearly done. Despite
my, ah, stature, I can cover a lot of ground in the kitchen. I may not be tall,
but I’m really busy, and that goes a long way towards making me efficient. I
like that. So do our customers.
“Circus in town?” I asked Glynna, who began to hang
tickets in the window with a robotic efficiency. You’ve probably seen someone
like her before in a diner somewhere. Glynna is fifty, slender, has hair color
that changes like the weather, and brown eyes that are cheery and bright. She’s
an inveterate coffee and sugar addict, and she avoids vegetables, meat, and
milk like one would a dodge a radioactive badger. Glynna is fueled by caffeine
and sweets. I really need to look into her diet someday, if she’ll ever stand
still long enough to let me take notes about her eating habits outside work.
She pointed at the array of clowns and nodded sagely. “It
is. Rolled in overnight. They’ve set up near the park, although I’d say it was
more like a carnival. They’re nice guys; they were giving away tickets at the
lakeshore before they came in here to tank up on waffles.”
The lakeshore meant the walkway that followed a rough
outline of our park, which snugs up to the water. We’re are exactly halfway
between the beginning and the end of the Adirondack chain of lakes, hence our
name, and the park is your basic giant green lawn that acted as a picnic spot,
music venue, and general meeting place for friends, lovers, and the occasional
dog who wanted to stretch it out and run for a bit. My town is compact,
idyllic, vibrant during the summer, as all touristy places are, and frigid for
the winter.
It’s also lousy with magic.
Now, clowns aren’t from the Everafter, they just dress
that way. Trust me, if you’ve ever seen an actual Faerie Queen, you’d think she
got her wardrobe at yard sales held during the disco era. Just because you’ve
got royal fae blood doesn’t mean you have taste. I know this from experience,
and I’ve only just stopped laughing at a printed pantsuit that a fae court
member wore during a fight with a rogue Werebear. If it hadn’t been dangerous,
I would have been too busy taking pictures for posterity. I don’t care if your
beauty is magically enhanced; when you combine stripes and spots, I’m going to
laugh at you.
I breezed through the remainder of my shift in a happy
fugue, stepping out of the door at just past two in the afternoon. Actually, I
took two steps, because I’m just brushing five feet tall and my legs are
appropriately long; that is to say they reach the ground. Barely. My eyes are
gray, my hair is black, and I love my Doc Martens as much as any inanimate
object on the planet save my charm bracelet, which acts as a sort of repository
for my excess magic. I’ve got a hidden witchmark behind my right ear; from it
springs hair of every human color you can imagine, and a couple that I’ve only
seen on really unusual cats. I use the hair for spells, on occasion, and the
witchmark as a sort of early warning system for everything nasty that find
witches to be delicious or interesting. I couldn’t blame the beasties, since my
hair smelled of the grill, my clothes were speckled with waffle batter and I
needed a shower in that welcome sort of way you get if you love your job. I do.
I’m lucky like that.
So, I’m a witch, and I come from a long line of witches.
My Gran is sort of the de facto leader of all things magical in our area; her
decades of experience make her the go-to for all questions about the arcane. I
seem to be the designated hitter in terms of pest control; I don’t know whether
I should be flattered or angry that I spend so many of my days off traipsing
around the woods hunting down errant demons, ghouls, or undead tax accountants.
The spread of evil knows no bounds, it would seem, so until you’ve had to cast
spells at a guy with blue skin, a pocket protector, and fangs, don’t you dare
judge me.
Part of being a witch means having a familiar. Mine is a
cat named Gus. He’s of the Maine Coon variety, which means that his size rivals
mine, and his favorite hobbies include giving me the stinkeye, complaining, and
trying to smother me with his tail when I take naps. In other words, he’s your
basic cat, just three times larger and more attuned to my magical needs. Gus is
the only other occupant in my home; it’s a small bungalow that’s close to the
diner, and it once belonged to my parents. They’ve retired and headed for the
sunsets of New Mexico, leaving me my childhood home.
I love everything about my house. I love the deep cool of
the cellar where I perfect my magic; I love the green expanse of the lawn, and
the lonely apple tree that marks the eastern corner of my yard. Its branches
are few but heavy with fruit each September, and I pick each apple with a
reverent memory that stretches back to the first years of my life. I’m
twenty-one years old, and I’ve never known another place. I belong here, and I
love that fact, too. All of these things push together in my heart and leave me
full and happy, a fact which naturally irritates the rare cynic I’m forced to
deal with. Those people are inevitably customers who are cursed with real or
imagined special dietary needs. Egg white omelets make me sad, but the people
who order them make me angry.
I stepped through my door and tossed the keys on a tall
table that hugs the left hand wall. Gus waited to greet me from his usual perch
on the fireplace mantel; I refer to it as The Dais of Judgement due to his
unblinking stare and haughty bearing.
Then again, he’s a cat. They’re built for that kind of
subtle insult, so maybe I’m just overly sensitive since he’s so confident. I
admire that kind of moxie in an animal who is frightened of my sneakers if I
dare to leave them in a different position. He’s a creature of habit, as am I,
but you won’t see me shedding like a cheap sweater when I get upset. Big
difference.
Gus interrupted my thoughts with a single deep
mroooowwwt.
“Yeah, yeah. You
big galoot. I’ll get it.” I moved unerringly to the fridge and pulled out a
pitcher of actual cream— my snobby cat won’t drink anything but the good stuff.
After I filled a dish large enough to swim in, I started peeling off clothes
and heading towards the bathroom. I took an experimental sniff as I passed my
bedroom, sensing the lingering essence of Wulfric, my boyfriend. He’d left just
before dawn to go on what amounted to a patrol of his lands. I should probably
explain why I have a boyfriend who needs to patrol anything, so here goes.
Wulfric is a thousand year old half-vampire, half- Viking
who guards a section of the forest so that mortal hikers don’t get turned into
undead monsters by an evil spring that we sometimes call the Fountain of
Youth. He also has a daughter, Emilia,
with a no-good skank named Anna who is actually a Werepanther, hula-hoop addict,
litterer, and general malcontent. Anna’s also really hot, which means that for
the most part she got away with all manner of anti-social behavior, but
absconding with my boyfriend’s kid puts her squarely on my shit list, and I’ve
got news for that trampy little kitten.
I’m not scared of any kind of cat. I live with Gus.
Halfway Witchy Series:
Halfway Dead (Halfway Witchy Series #1)
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About The Author:
Born in 1968, I discovered fishing shortly after walking, a boon, considering I lived in South Florida. After a brief move to Kentucky, my family trekked back to the Sunshine State. I had the good fortune to attend high school in idyllic upstate New York, where I learned about a mythical substance known as "Seasons".
After two or three failed attempts at college, I bought a bar. That was fun because I love beer, but, then, I eventually met someone smarter than me (a common event), and, in this case, she married me and convinced me to go back to school--which I did, with enthusiasm. I earned a Master's Degree in History and rediscovered my love for writing. My novels explore dark fantasy, immortality, and the nature of love as we know it. I live near Nashville, Tennessee, with the aforementioned wife, son, and herd, and, when I'm not writing, I teach history, grow wildly enthusiastic tomato plants, and restore my 1967 Mustang.
You can find Terry at:
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