A Witchy Business (Harper Grant Mystery Series Book 1) Read online

  A Witchy Business

  Harper Grant Mystery Series Book One

  D S Butler

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  A note from D. S. Butler

  Also by D S Butler

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright © 2016 D. S. Butler

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  http://www.dsbutlerbooks.com

  For Chris

  Chapter 1

  “If he were my son, I would tell him to pull up his britches and stop making such a fuss.”

  I looked up and paused in my wiping down of table fifteen. I was working the morning shift in Archie’s Diner and had been run off my feet all morning.

  “No one says britches these days, Loretta,” I said, and then followed her gaze to look at the young boy she’d been referring to.

  Tommy Breton was six years old and a bundle of trouble. His mother was tapping something out on her cell phone, completely ignoring Tommy as he whined about wanting another donut and smeared his jelly-covered face all over the window pane I had cleaned earlier that morning.

  “And just look at the state of that table! Honestly, I hate to think what their home looks like.” Loretta pursed her lips in a firm line.

  I had to agree with her. As Tommy and his mother got up from their seats, the devastation they’d left behind was clear to see. The table was covered with bits of food, and the floor hadn’t escaped unscathed either.

  I squirted the top of the table with cleaning solution and quickly wiped away the crumbs and sticky fingermarks that Tommy had left behind.

  Loretta peered over my shoulder, inspecting the damage.

  I walked across the diner to get the broom. Fortunately, we still had a little while before the lunchtime rush hit, so I had a chance to clear up after Tommy.

  He and his mother came in for breakfast nearly every day. I couldn’t say I blamed her. She must’ve enjoyed the rest from cleaning up after him.

  “Well, aren’t you going to say something?” Loretta asked sharply as I began to sweep under the table.

  Tommy and his mother were now outside. His mother was still engrossed with her cell phone, and Tommy had now started hammering on the outside of the glass window. He really was full of mischief.

  I didn’t want to say anything to upset Archie’s customers, though. I had enough trouble fitting in around here as it was, and I didn’t want to give anyone more reasons to treat me like an outsider.

  I opened my mouth to reply to Loretta but closed it again quickly when I heard Archie’s footsteps as he walked towards us.

  “How are we getting on out here?” Archie asked cheerfully.

  The smile dropped from his face as he looked in disapproval at the state of the floor.

  “Almost finished here,” I said as I swept around his feet.

  Archie waved his hand at Tommy, trying to get him to stop pounding on the window. His mother was still standing next to him, tapping away on her cell phone.

  “Honestly, that child is impossible,” Archie grumbled under his breath.

  Archie is my boss, and the diner is named after him. I had been working there for five years, and the job was a pretty good one. Archie was a sweet guy and an easygoing boss. He was only a couple of years older than me, but from the way he acted sometimes, you might guess he was nearer my Grandma’s age.

  As Grandma Grant would say, Archie was definitely set in his ways.

  Of course, he wasn’t quite as set in his ways as Loretta.

  I finished sweeping up the mess under the table and put the broom back in the closet just as the first patrons started arriving for lunch.

  Archie wandered over to greet them, and when he was just out of earshot, I turned around to find Loretta directly behind me.

  “I think Archie’s sweet on you,” Loretta said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I muttered, hoping that Archie and the new arrivals wouldn’t notice.

  I hoped he wasn’t sweet on me. Archie wasn’t my type, but he was a nice guy, and I wouldn’t want to hurt him.

  I wasn’t looking for a relationship. It isn’t easy to form connections with people when you live the kind of life I do.

  I don’t want to make you think I’m a freak. Most of the time, I’m pretty normal. In fact, until my sixteenth birthday, I was the textbook example of a normal girl.

  I was an A-grade student most of the time, except when it came to Math. I’ve always hated Math.

  I grew up with my parents in New York City, along with my two sisters, Jess and Lily. My father was a bank manager, and my mother was an elementary school teacher. We holidayed in Cape Cod every year and lived comfortably. I had a happy, secure childhood.

  Things didn’t turn weird until after my sixteenth birthday.

  Until then, we were pretty much the poster family for typical, ordinary American life. I can’t emphasize that enough. We were one hundred percent average. That’s why it made what happened next so much harder to deal with.

  When I turned sixteen, slightly odd things started happening to me.

  It wasn’t an easy thing to cope with, especially as my mother and father seemed determined to ignore it. They thought if they brushed it under the carpet and carried on as normal, the problem would go away.

  It wasn’t until my Grandma came to visit us that summer, I finally understood what was happening to me. She explained things to me in a way that made sense.

  Okay, so I didn’t exactly take it well when she first told me. I mean, how would you take it if someone told you you were a witch?

  But that’s what Grandma Grant had told me. She sat me down one evening at the scrubbed pine table, in the kitchen of my parent’s New York home, and as she handed me a mug of her special cocoa, she told me why these strange things had been happening.

  I was very surprised to learn that I, Harper Grant, was one of a long line of witches. I’d been assuming there was something seriously wrong with me — maybe some medical problem was causing me to hallucinate, or I was just plain losing my mind, but witchcraft? That hadn’t been a possibility I’d considered.

  Grandma Grant told me the Grant family of witches were part of an ancient coven. As our witch powers were hereditary, she’d been waiting for me to show the signs.

  But there was something that didn’t seem to make sense: My parents were Mr. and Mrs. Normal.

  Grandma Grant explained that away by saying sometimes the magic could skip a generation, and it seemed that my father had never shown any magical abilities at all.

  My parents were very agitated every time I
brought the subject up. They’d hoped all three of their girls would be just as normal as they were, and they had a hard time accepting that I was different.

  As the oldest girl, I was the first one to experience the changes, but a year later, my sister Jess went through a very similar transformation.

  It was tough going, that first couple of years. With our parents deliberately avoiding any conversations about our abilities, we felt awkward and alone.

  It’s not easy to go through something like that and not be able to talk about it, so we ended up moving down here to live with Grandma Grant in the small town of Abbott Cove.

  That had been five years ago. Archie had given me a job at the diner, and I hadn’t looked back.

  I sometimes missed the anonymity of city life, but I loved the atmosphere of the small town, although I wasn’t so keen on the gossiping and everybody knowing each other’s business.

  “Earth to Harper,” Loretta said hovering beside me.

  Loretta nodded at the table.

  I’d been refilling the salt containers, and I’d let them overflow. I cursed under my breath and grabbed a cloth. I’d been feeling distracted today. Almost as if I was expecting something major to happen, but so far today had been a typical one with nothing exciting or out of the usual occurring at all.

  I sometimes thought my distraction was all part of my powers, perhaps a sign something was about to happen, but Grandma Grant said it wasn’t a power. She told me I was just scatterbrained. She could be a little blunt at times.

  But despite what Grandma Grant said, when I felt out of sorts and distracted like this, it usually meant something important was about to happen.

  Most of the time I kept the feeling under control, but for some reason, today, I felt very nervous.

  “Archie is talking to you,” Loretta said, and I looked over to the corner of the diner, and saw she was right.

  Archie was looking at me with his eyebrows raised expectantly.

  I quickly finished tidying up the mess I’d made, and then walked over. Archie was talking to Chief Wickham, our chief of police, who was fast approaching retirement age.

  “Hi, Harper,” the chief said with a broad smile. He was a good man and had always been kind to me, my sister and my Grandma.

  Sometimes, I got the feeling he suspected that we might be a little different from other families, but he had never said anything or asked any awkward questions.

  “Hello, Chief Wickham. What can I get you? Your usual?”

  “Aha, I’m getting predictable,” Chief Wickham said. He always had the clam chowder when he stopped for lunch at the diner.

  “I don’t blame you, Chief,” Archie said. “Sarah makes the finest clam chowder in the county.” He turned to me. “Why don’t you take your break after you’ve given Sarah the order, Harper? I’ll hold the fort until you get back.”

  I smiled and thanked him and took the order through into the kitchen to give to Sarah, the cook.

  “Let me guess,” Sarah said as I walked into the kitchen. “The chief is having clam chowder?”

  I grinned at Sarah. “Right first time,” I said, pinning the order to the board. “I’m heading out to lunch now. I’m going to pop over to the library to see Jess, but I won’t be long.”

  Sarah pointed at the counter next to me. “I’ve prepared your lunch over there. There’s a container of leek and potato soup, some crusty rolls and a couple of slices of cherry pie.”

  I gave Sarah a broad smile. “Thanks. You’re an angel.”

  There were definite benefits to working at the diner, and getting to sample Sarah’s cooking for free was high on the list.

  “What have you got there?” Loretta asked me, peering into the basket over my arm just before I left the diner.

  “Lunch,” I whispered. “Leek and potato soup and cherry pie.”

  Loretta’s eyes widened slightly, and her face took on a dreamy look. “Cherry pie. That used to be my favorite. What I wouldn’t give for a slice of that right now.”

  I bowed my head as I spoke to Loretta, and used my hand to cover my mouth. It wouldn’t do for Archie or Chief Wickham to see me apparently talking to myself. The town thought I was kooky enough as it was.

  “I think that’s the worst thing about being a ghost. Life without dessert,” Loretta said and then floated off back through the wall towards the kitchen.

  Chapter 2

  I watched Loretta float off and then headed out of the diner, turning down Main Street.

  The seagulls were squawking out in the harbor as old man Jackson had just brought in his fishing boat.

  He called out, and I waved back, hurrying along the street towards the town library where my sister Jess worked.

  Abbott Cove is on the coast of Maine. It’s a small dot on the map, and you can walk through the entire town in fifteen minutes. But despite its size, it feels like home to me now, and I’ve grown to love it.

  There’s not much to do in town, though. There’s Archie’s Diner, of course, a seafood restaurant and a bar near the harbor, and on Main Street, there is a grocery shop along with a couple of smaller shops, selling things like fridge magnets and decorative mugs — the usual tourist stuff.

  About twice a week, we get a busload of tourists visiting, and they stroll about the town, eating ice creams and buying knickknacks.

  On those days, the diner is fit to burst, and I don’t get to take breaks any longer than five minutes at a time, but I can’t complain as it pays my wages.

  Jess was sorting through some books from Mrs. Lyttleton as I entered the library, and scanning the barcodes to return them to the system.

  My sister is perfectly suited to working in the library. She’d always had her nose buried in a book as a child, and was never happier than when she was surrounded by storybooks.

  When she was finished, I waved the cherry pie under her nose.

  “Oh, yum, Sarah’s cherry pie. It’s my favorite.”

  Jess lifted the lid off the carton of soup and breathed in the steamy vapor. “The soup smells amazing, too. I’m starving. Did I tell you how much I like you working at the diner?”

  “You say that every single time I bring you a sample of Sarah’s cooking.”

  As it was only Jess who manned the library front desk, when we took our lunch through to the staff area at the back, Jess sat near the doorway, so she could see if anyone came in and needed assistance.

  The soup was still hot, so I poured it into bowls and added a little black pepper to mine, and we both dug in.

  “Do you think you’ll be home for dinner tonight?” Jess asked. “We’re supposed to be eating dinner at Grandma’s.”

  I nodded, and between sips of hot soup, I said, “Yes, I’ll be there. I’m not working late tonight.”

  Grandma Grant lived in the ancestral Grant family home, a huge house at the edge of town, set on a large plot of land where she grew a variety of plants and ran a small nursery business.

  Jess and I tended to eat there at least twice a week, and it was a nice way to spend time with each other without actually living in the same house as Grandma.

  I love my Grandma dearly, but she can be a little odd at times.

  I live with Jess in a small cottage about a minutes’ walk from Grandma’s house. It has three bedrooms, a large kitchen-diner, and a cozy lounge. It’s the perfect size for us.

  Grandma, on the other hand, rattled around the large ancestral house, but she liked it that way. My grandfather had died forty years ago, and she’d lived alone ever since and was very set in her ways.

  “Good,” Jess said, putting her empty bowl on the counter. “Because I think you should talk to her.”

  I frowned. “Who?”

  “Grandma, of course,” Jess said impatiently. “I think she’s up to something. I saw her this morning, and she was acting very strangely.”

  “How is that any different from usual?”

  “I’m telling you she’s up to something. She was ever so se
cretive.”

  Uh oh. That didn’t sound good. The last time Grandma Grant had been up to something, she cast a spell on Old Captain Bryant’s car. He’d cut her off at the lights, and Grandma had cast a spell that made his car bunny hop all the way home.

  Of course, no one could prove that it was actually her, but Jess and I knew.

  “I’ve got a new book,” Jess said as she put both our bowls in the sink and started washing up.

  She pointed towards the counter, and I saw a large red and gold, leather-bound book, wrapped in white tissue paper.

  I stood up and took a closer look. The writing on the front looked like old English.

  “It’s a book of spells,” Jess said, her eyes gleaming with excitement.

  I smiled at her enthusiasm, but I didn’t share it. Jess was a traditional witch, like Grandma Grant. She was quite brilliant at spells and especially skilled in protection spells.

  I’d never been very good at them. I’d always found it a bit like studying. A pinch of this and a sprinkle of that, and then having to say all the words in the right order. It really wasn’t for me. That wasn’t where my abilities lay.

  I had a different talent.

  My witchy ability was being able to see ghosts like Loretta.

  It was quite disconcerting at first. The first time it happened had been just after my sixteenth birthday. I’d been to the theater with a friend, and we’d just left the cinema and rounded the corner when we saw a group of people gathered on the road and heard approaching sirens.

  We were jostled forward, closer to the crowd, and that’s when I saw the old lady lying on the floor.

  She’d been hit by a car, and it looked pretty bad. My friend covered her eyes, and I’d wanted to do the same, but something made me keep looking. To my astonishment, I saw the ghost of the little old lady float upward, look down at her prone body on the floor and give a little shrug.

  I stared as she spun in a circle and spiraled upwards into the sky until she disappeared.

  I blinked a couple of times and put the vision down to the fact I’d just watched a horror movie, but that incident had turned out to be the first of many.