Chapter One Sneak Peek!

Alright, so I’ve been busy. I went back to school, got a degree, started that career that I’ve actually secretly been pining after for years… and somehow in all of that I wrote a book.

A book that is probably the funniest thing I’ve written a while, just saying. It’s funny, witty, and hits home for me because I am a) divorced b) have sassy teenagers and c) might be dating a vampire. Okay, so I am probabaly not dating a vampire, nor am I a witch… but everything else tracks. Okay, kinda… This is a work of fiction folks. Funny fiction, and I hope you laugh your ass off while reading it.

Best thing about all of this? It’s out in just a few days, and you can preorder, or you can even order the paperback now. So, how is that for a book release! Woot!

I’m excited for it, and even more excited to share this excerpt from Chapter One!
Happy Reading!

Chapter One

Tip #1 
Remember: Not everything sucks. But Vampires always do.

KAT

She had a pig’s nose, by the moon, she had a pig’s nose! 

It was all turned up, with its wrinkly top that blended against a mess of freckles that usually covered her nose. Which, again, was a pig’s. It would have been cute if she was a pig, and not a green-eyed teenage girl.

“How do I look Mom? Do I have freckles on my cheeks now?” Juniper was eager as she tapped her cheeks as though she could feel her freckles. Thankfully, she missed the fact that she had a pig’s nose all together. 

“Yep, June,” I choked on her name to keep from laughing. “You have freckles alright.” I nodded once, still shocked, still staring at the nose as she squealed. It was a sound she had made a million times over the course of her life, but right now the sound took on a whole new meaning. 

By the moon! What had I done? 

Katherine Green, you are a better witch than this. 

Or, I was.

June had wanted to do a spell together. It would have been the first real spell she had seen, since she had grown up away from my coven. It was dangerous to do too much magic when living in a city surrounded by mortals. So, I had kept to small herb based spells, keeping my frog lips and crows feet locked away. 

But now we were back in the small town I had grown up in, and June wanted to see ‘bigger magic’. So we had done a simple spell together, which had clearly gone wrong and now she had a pig’s nose. 

She squealed again, and danced around, dark curly hair flailing as much as her limbs, which were long and lanky even for a fifteen year old girl. She looked just like I had at her age. Now, I was a little more gray and had a bit more sag in my boobs than I’d like, but right then it was like looking in a mirror. Well, except for the pig’s nose.

I had to figure out a way to undo this, preferably before she noticed. 

“I’m gonna go look in the mirror!” Well, that didn’t last long. 

“No!” I practically shrieked, June pausing her near sprint to stare at me. “You can’t.”

“I can’t?” She raised an eyebrow at me. “Why?”

“You can’t… because…” she started tapping her toe as I furiously looked around, trying to find an excuse to keep her here. Anything to keep her away from the mirror.

“Because?”

“It’ll ruin the spell,” I sighed finally, tapping my fingers on the spell book that I had opened on the counter; the spell we had done staring up at me. “It says right here. You have to leave it for at least three hours to let it set. Or the magic will fade.”

“What? Fade?” she nearly shrieked, and I could tell she didn’t quite believe me, so I pointed at the text at the bottom of the page, the scrawly cursive in German. 

“It says so right here?” June leaned over, clearly ready to prove me wrong, only to sag at what I was pointing at. 

“I can’t read that.” I know, thank the moon. 

“But I can.” It was really part of the recipe to help stop indigestion, but she didn’t need to know that. “No mirrors. Just trust the magic.”

She didn’t look like she trusted the magic, or me. She was giving me that look she always did when she was about to call me out on something.

“Why don’t you go unpack some more boxes?” I said before she could fight me. 

She gave me one last glare before turning, just as I heard the front door open and close. It better not be my dad, he was too early for dinner and he would for sure comment on the nose. With mom gone and his only daughter back home, he had already been over at least five times in the day that we’ve been home.

“Okay, Mom!” She rolled her eyes before she began to dance away. “Thanks for helping me with the freckles!” 

I didn’t dare respond, I just pulled over the ancient book and started scanning the pages. The clock was ticking.

The book of magic had been passed down through my family since my Great Great Aunt Jesiba rescued it from the flames in Salem as her sister burned. She was considered one of the bravest witches in our coven’s history, she would be ashamed if she saw what I had just done. 

The marble counter was covered with spell supplies and potion mixtures that had been packed away since I had left home, and June had gone crazy for them. I should have told her to wait on a real spell and just put them away in the black cabinet that every good witch home had for spell supplies, but no… I had been just as excited as she was. The first spell with my daughter, how could I say no?

“Hi Aunt Jessa!” June sang from the hallway that separated the great room and the kitchen and I stiffened. Great, of all the people to show up. She was possibly worse than my dad.

Jessa had been my best friend since childhood. She also happened to be the current Matron of the coven after her mom passed away two years ago. She was sassy, goofy, and would sniff out a bad spell from a mile away. 

“Notice anything different about me?” Oh shit. So much for sniffing, she was currently staring it in the face!

“Hi June!” Jessa returned, I didn’t miss the hint of confusion and concern in her voice. I was already sprinting around the counter. “Did you–”

“Hey Jes!” I panted as I slid into place, trying to look all calm and collected as I leaned against the large decorative frame that separated the kitchen from the entry and the living room. 

“Hey Kat?” she said it like a question as she looked between June and I.

“How are you doing? Long time no see.”

I snapped my fingers at her in a way that should have been cool and collected. If it was 1998. So, I was covering this up really well.

Jessa raised a brow at me as I heaved in a breath, trying to straighten my cotton button up that I was sure I had gotten frog guts on. Jessa just stood there in tight pants and a tank top. We had both clearly thrown on clothes this morning, and yet she made hers look like she was about to walk down the runway.

“Yes, Kat, such a long time, all the way since last night, when I was here helping you unload the truck,” she spoke very slowly, looking at me like I had lost it. Juniper was still staring at Jessa, trying to show off her freckles as she flipped her hair and batted her eyelashes. “Are you aware that your daughter has–”

“Freckles.” I cut her off. “I am. First spell. We just did it.” Dawning spread across her features as she looked from me to June, who was still dancing. 

“Love your freckles, June.” She was clearly trying not to laugh, which officially made it hard for me not to laugh.

“Go unpack some boxes kiddo,” I gestured to a pile still in the corner beside the not fully put together entertainment center. “Aunt Jes and I have some things to discuss.”

“Okay..?” Juniper gave me that ‘what are you up to’ look again, but she made her way over to the boxes regardless. I pulled Jessa into the kitchen and the remnants of the potion June and I had just made. 

“Freckles, huh?” Jes said, leaning over the metal soup pot I had used in lieu of a cauldron. Which I was well aware was probably my first mistake. 

“Yeah, don’t get me started.” I went back to furiously turning pages in the spell book, as if it would point me in the right direction. I mean, it had to. It got me into this mess, after all. Spells and potions flitted by, mostly for banishing old loves and repelling vampires, although that one I knew by heart. Every witch did, to let a vampire get too close was death. Some could never be too careful. 

“I might be a little rusty.”

“A little? Katherine. You’ve never made a mistake like that, ever. Your first spell was turning an oak tree into a peach tree, and it still gives fruit every year.” I hadn’t heard that, I would have been a little more excited about it if I wasn’t dealing with the pig-pocalypse. “You were the best in our year, Kat. Hell, you would probably be the matriarch if you hadn’t left.” 

“Don’t remind me,” I grumbled, still turning pages. I had wanted that. Bad. It was the reason I had the book and not Jessa. We were cousins, and based on power, the line should have gone to me. Jessa never even fought me for it, she knew it would be me. Then I left Cummings Cove, the small safe haven village for witches and shifters. It was nestled against mountains with an oversized lake I was sure had a monster in it. I had been born here, and was raised in my coven with the expectation to grow up, lead them, and help protect our little slice of paradise.

I left for school, and fell in love with a mortal boy with a mortal name, Mike. Everything was perfect, but in the end all I did was throw away my life at Cummings Cove for a man who ended up sleeping with my business partner, effectively blowing up my whole life. I had sworn off magic for a mortal named Mike, and now I was back home trying to figure out how to remove a pig’s nose from my teenage daughter’s face. 

“Just help me figure out how to get it off before she notices that it’s there. You can lecture me later.” I flipped past a section of spells on fruitful gardens as she lifted one ingredient vial after another, eyeing each content skeptically. I turned another page and Jes lifted what was left of the frog’s heart on the plate and sniffed, her delicate little nose curled and her long blond hair instantly turned into green ringlets before she shook it back out with a shake of her head. 

“I think I found your problem, this has turned. Bad ingredients can’t be reversed, Kat. She’s going to have to wait it out.” I gave her one look before going back to my book.

Yeah, that wasn’t going to cut it.

“I know there has to be a spell in here somewhere.” There had to be, I wouldn’t go down in history for giving my child a pig’s nose. How had I missed that the frog’s heart had gone bad?

“You know, you could always tell her that she has a pig’s nose.” She spoke that last part a little too loudly and I hissed, waving at her furiously. She just grinned with that too perfect, too straight nose of hers.

“Tell her she has a pig’s nose? No, thank you.” I flipped through a whole section on animal based hexes. I was getting close.

“She might find it funny,” Jessa said before sticking her tongue out at a vial full of fire bugs who all lit up angrily at her. “Remember when Dawn accidentally turned Mr. Montgomery into a flowering shrub on her first full moon? Hysterical.”

I laughed at that. We had been eight and it was our first full moon after coming into our magic. We had each been tasked to cast a single spell against a plant, Dawn’s had gone haywire and instead turned a teacher into a plant. Poor Dawn had spent the month making sure he got water and sun and singing to him.

“Funny for us, maybe.” I skipped over a whole section on lizards. “But poor Dawn was horrified, as was Mr. Montgomery. I would like to avoid that.” 

“Funny for Dawn, too.” Jessa put down the vial to stare at me only to get distracted by the bubbling mess in my makeshift cauldron. She wrinkled her nose, blue eyes flaring. 

“Now, maybe.” I had reached farm animal related spells. I was getting closer.

“Exactly. It took her time to get there, because she had to learn from mistakes. You guys made this mistake together. Growth is good, for both of you.” I stopped flipping pages to look at her. I had a feeling she wasn’t just talking about pig noses.

“Maybe next time. This time it’s her first real spell, and right after her dad chose some floozy over her, in a town that she really didn’t want to move to. That spell was supposed to help her feel at home here. Now is not the time for pig noses.”

“You’re right, it’s the time for wine, to learn from mistakes, to laugh at pig’s noses, and perhaps to get you a maid.” Jessa waved her hand, producing a bottle of wine before making her way over to the cabinet where she had placed her housewarming gift of wine glasses.

“The pig nose will come off eventually,” Jessa said as she handed me a glass of wine.

“I’m not sure how much I trust that.” Especially not with the way Jes was smiling. Jessa was always a trickster, I could already feel something nefarious brewing. 

“Chill, Kat. Nothing else can go wrong.” She clinked my glass in half a toast before chugging half her glass.

“Hey Mom?” Juniper called from the other room and I froze. “What’s ‘Romance Supp’?” 

Oh, by the moon! Nothing else can go wrong, huh? I was jinxed!

I squealed and set the glass down before launching myself around the counter to sprint towards the living room, and the box, where Juniper was, her hands already wrapped around the cardboard flaps as she prepared to open it.

“No!” I raced, yelling like a banshee before launching myself across the room and landing on top of the box seconds before she opened it. June looked at me wide eyed, pig nose turned up.

“What the hell, Mom?”

“Nothing! It’s nothing!” Clearly it wasn’t nothing, I was currently laying over a cardboard box like I was trying to trap a demon. Which I wasn’t, but I might as well have been. “Why don’t you go… unpack your room.”

I said the first thing I could think of, June was just staring at me like I had lost it. Jes, however, was now leaning against the doorframe, both mine and her wine glasses in hand as she laughed. 

“Okay,” she stretched the word out as she stood, still looking from me to Jes. 

“Cheers, kiddo,” Jes lifted her glass to her. 

“This place is weird,” June mumbled as she made her way up the stairs and I rolled off the box. I ignored her, she had no idea how weird Cummings Cove was, but to me, it was home. 

“What exactly is in the box anyway?” Jessa asked, standing over me, still holding both glasses of wine. She was now sipping from both. 

Laying on the floor, I reached up and pulled back the flap to reveal a mass of sex toys. And not any sex toys, glittery sex toys of every shape and kind, golden dildos of various widths and lengths, vibrators, cuffs, masks, alien toys, anything you could think of was in that box.

Jessa didn’t so much as blink, just stared at the contents of the box with a blank face before sipping her wine. 

“I know Mike cheated on you, Kat, but don’t you think this is a bit excessive? There’s enough vibrators in there to have your own harem.”

I rolled my eyes, “It’s for those parties I hold, remember my livelihood? You are still going to host one, right?”

She sipped her wine again, still staring at the contents of the box. “You are going to sell those to the ladies of the town, while we eat chocolates in my living room?” I nodded, pushing myself to sit against the wall and thankfully relieved Jes of my glass of wine. 

“And talk about healthy sex habits.”

“Oh, you better believe I’m hosting one of those parties.” I really didn’t like the way Jessa was smiling at me, but I didn’t have any more time to think on it, for a second later a blood curdling scream cut through the house followed by a high pitched shriek.

“I’m a pig! You turned me into a pig!” 

June was still screaming, Jessa just laughed and held her glass up to me. 

“Welcome Home to Cummings Cove, Kat.”

I downed my wine.