Nestled on Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin is a small, secluded town called Bloodmoon Cove with volatile weather, suspicious folk…and newly awakened ghosts.

Don’t close your eyes…

Lost, Book 8:

True self-discovery begins in being lost and then found again.

Damaris Steele wakes up in an unfamiliar stone cottage in the care of a kindly couple with a passel of young children. She remembers nothing of how she came to be at their inherited property, Black Annis’s Bower, nor how she got the massive bump on the back of her head and ended up lost in the middle of nowhere in Bloodmoon Cove with a smashed cell phone, her beloved hamster Stuart Little missing. The large family will contribute nothing toward speeding her on her way. Their words “Time is different in this place” take on a sinister edge when days and nights blend and blur while the Beaumonts’ sole interest seems to be focused on unearthing a tunnel they found in their root cellar. Even as she realizes she’s helpless to resist aiding them in their task, Damaris fears where the underground passage leads and whether their efforts will uncage something they don’t dare set free…

Found, Book 9:

Are the lost and found souls of this world misplaced…or misled?

Wick Adair has spent his life feeling like he didn’t belong anywhere and was forever out of step with everyone else around him. As the son of some of the last Mino-Miskwi Native American descendants, his isolation while the tribe around him dispersed to the four winds was complete. He settled into his quiet position at Bloodmoon Cove’s library and nearly lost himself in his desperate unhappiness. When Renatta Chazen steps into his sanctuary, Wick dares to hope that his lifelong loneliness is at an end. Surely Fate…or something far more sinister…wouldn’t be cruel enough to tear them apart now that they’ve both found everything they’ve ever wanted?

GENRE: Ghost Stories/Romance    ISBN: 978-1-922548-63-4    ISBN PRINT D2D: 9798224152193    ASIN: B0CW6L2G7V    Word Count: 101, 661

(ebooks are available from all sites, and print is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and some from Angus and Robertson)

Continue the series:

     

 

Chapter 1

Damaris Steele woke, instantly alert with recognition at the sound of rummaging nearby. Without pause, she flew swiftly from the full-size bed she’d been asleep in only a moment before to the window nearby. Outside it was the flower box that held her mother’s vibrant and abundant summer blooms.

Almost in a single act, she shoved open the window and shouted, “You get out of there right this instant, Draco Malfoy! Or your winter nuts won’t be the only ones in jeopardy!”

The squirrel both she and her mother were always chasing out of their marigolds bounded away like it could fly. Was she just imagining the so-named villain chittering in glee as it soared through the air, out of reach, in an instant? Damaris had named the nimble rodent (and any of its descendants that resembled the original) after a bully in a series that had dominated her childhood attention. All summer and fall, the squirrels would use the wide window box as convenient winter caches. Neither deterred nor afraid of her fury now, or ever for that matter, she knew Draco would be back sooner rather than later.

In the aftermath of the rascal’s cackling flight, while she checked that the bountiful red, yellow, and orange blossoms hadn’t been uprooted, Damaris realized she must have fallen asleep, despite being certain she wouldn’t or couldn’t.

Unwillingly, she glanced behind her, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling as she recalled why she’d lain so sleepless hours ago, her head under the sheet, hardly daring to breathe. But the small studio apartment was deserted. She exhaled, then returned her scrutiny to the window once more.

When she moved the plastic owl that was supposed to scare away the squirrels to the opposite side of the overflowing box, her thoughts dominoed from one to the other. Draco was no fool. None of the tips and tricks Damaris and her mother had tried over the years to repel him had worked. Yet they kept hoping something would dissuade him. And now none of it matters. Why try to save these flowers? My life as I’ve known it in this place is over. Is it wrong that I feel some solace about that?

Tomorrow, she would officially close her mother’s beloved bookshop after selling as much of the remaining stock as she could. This apartment above the store they’d lived in for most of her life would no longer be hers soon, as her ability to pay rent had ceased long ago. The landlord had been generous in giving her every opportunity to pay him. She couldn’t fault him his actions, especially in light of his sorrow once he finally delivered the final blow.

Would anyone–all of her mother’s most loyal customers–even come? Most of them had already abandoned their once favorite haunt in favor of the massive chain bookstore with its bottomless discounts, used selections of mixed media, along with scrumptious coffee and pastries that had come into the neighborhood in Grimoire four years ago. The manager of the “Greedy Corporation”, as she referred to them, had already offered to buy anything she couldn’t sell–for far less profit than her mother would have ever tolerated. Beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.

Jeryn Èze-Steele had long been separated, but never divorced, from her husband. The bookstore she’d opened when Damaris was still just a “little flutter in her tummy” had given her not only a livelihood but lodging after her estrangement from the cripplingly shy, traumatized man who outwardly denied and silently defined his social phobia in the same instant.

If your death was good for nothing else, Mom, at least you didn’t have to see your legacy fail so spectacularly.

Air stalled in her lungs at the thought, Or can you actually see what became of your dreams, Mom?

Damaris’s mother had died of severe Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) a year before the grand opening of the Greedy Corporation. The decline in business had been so swift after that, Damaris, as a brand-new shop owner, had little chance of, or expertise in, preventing it. Her mother had rarely done anything to advertise. Word of mouth had accomplished the task for her. Those interested in the occult came from near and far. Often her mother commented on their generosity in spending triple what regular readers would for the obscure selection of books she offered.

When Damaris had seen the shocking nosedive in profits, she’d researched ways to boost sales. She’d invested in an online presence and had a website created as well as putting weekly ads in the local papers. Her actions might have secured them a future had they been employed before the Greedy Corp descended. As it was, her efforts had been too little, too late.

Countless times, Damaris had wondered if she should have taken her Aunt Holly’s generous offer to bail out the store she’d been the original investor in…and bail her out of the towering mountain of debt that’d grown each month as a result of her promotional endeavors. Without business coming in, even the basics of purchasing new material and necessary supplies, renting the space, heating and cooling it according to the seasons, and feeding herself had quickly taxed and depleted the savings her mother had left her upon her untimely death. Frantically trying to save the store as she had had plunged Damaris into an abyss where she couldn’t look up and see any light.

How long could I have kept it going if I’d accepted Mom’s mother’s best friend’s generosity? How long would Holly have had to take a hit by giving something that could never be repaid if I hadn’t finally thrown in the towel?

How long will I ask myself if I actually wanted to save all this or if I was just trying to assuage my own guilt at wanting to turn my back on it?

Jeryn had been the daughter of Holly Odwulf’s best friend, Lily-Rose Èze, an exchange student from France the one and only time Bloodmoon Cove had tried the program. Holly’s family had long been one of the richest and most influential families in the area, Scandinavians who’d come over to America from Norway in 1925.

Lily-Rose and Holly had been close friends all through high school. Lily-Rose indulged in many scandalous flings and eventually married a safe, perpetually forgiving man she could never be faithful to but who’d allowed her a secure place to birth her only child, a daughter, Jeryn, who’d been beloved by nearly everyone. Her parents had remained together as a direct result of her influence.

Sweet and flirtatious, fun and fun loving, as outgoing as a butterfly flitting from one flower to the next with impunity, Jeryn had her pick of suitors all her life. She’d off-and-on dated the star athlete at the school. Unfortunately, the vivacious teenager had valued a good time over a good mind, and eventually it’d been her downfall. As her mother had been, she’d been a heavy smoker, drinker, and partier. Lily-Rose had died of chronic COPD while in her fifties. Jeryn had been diagnosed very early with the same condition, but it was pregnancy when she was 17 that had radically changed her bad habits–too late. The father of her child, the star athlete, had abandoned her, denying her claims of paternity. Instead, the boy who’d been at the top of their class all his life, Jack Steele, had married this woman who had drawn him out of his closed shell as no one else ever did or could. Jeryn lost that first child but quickly got pregnant again by her new husband.

Ever in the wings, Holly had remained Lily-Rose’s constant companion throughout her life and promised her dearest friend she would watch over her daughter and any offspring that came after, as long as it was in her power to do so. It’d been Holly, also a bit of a hell-raiser and rebel about town, who encouraged Jeryn to have a back-up plan in case Jack’s social anxiety, coupled with the anguish of being a severely abused child all his life, returned with a vengeance. She’d invested in Jeryn’s dreams of opening an occult bookstore in Grimoire, about an hour from Bloodmoon Cove, where she and Lily-Rose had grown up as the belles of every ball. The charming, unusual shop, Kindred Spirits Occult Bookshop, had been an instant hit and, before long, Jeryn had been able to pay Holly back and continue making a solid profit from lovers of the paranormal.

Jack had never intended to be a father, let alone a husband. Though Jeryn had coaxed him out of hiding within himself while they were in school together and he’d been there for her during her upheaval with the star athlete, he’d quickly reverted to his former state after she found herself pregnant again by him. Jeryn had adopted a healthy lifestyle, quitting her vices, becoming a whole foods vegan, hoping to improve her chances of maintaining a pregnancy and being an active, engaged mother.

Even still, her health had declined through the years that followed. Her absorbed involvement with her daughter and her bookshop had left her husband feeling left out and estranged. He’d never bonded with Damaris, and a gulf eventually sprang up between them as a result. Jeryn had been his sole claim to intimacy with another human being. As so often happened, his parents’ violent alcoholism claimed him as well, causing his wife to feel the need to remove herself and her daughter to a place of safety.

Holly had offered to take them in, but the most logical place in the world for them to go had been the bookstore with its studio apartment above, filled until that point with storage for the shop. Jeryn and Damaris had made a home in the small, simple space, finding it suited them perfectly, as the business below was something they both gave themselves to wholly.

Damaris couldn’t remember a time growing up that the bookery wasn’t stuffed to capacity from the moment it opened in the morning until well past closing time with those who’d already fallen under the charms of the shop and her mother, the magical mistress, as well as strangers soon to become loyal patrons. Her mother had often called Damaris Kindred Spirits’ beloved mascot.

Nothing could have horrified me more. I’m not like my mother was, though, and I’m certainly not enough like her to take her place. Maybe I can tell myself that’s why the store died. Not because I desperately wished to escape the smothering sense of not knowing what was real, what was good or evil, but because Mom was the heart of this place. Without her, there was no life…

Damaris smoothed the soil the squirrel had disrupted far beneath the mass profusion of blooms, abruptly aware that she was an odd mix of both of her parents. Shy, though not debilitatingly so; nevertheless, only able to open up like a flower in the sun with those she’d forged a strong bond. Namely, her mother’s customers who’d remained stalwartly faithful to her even five years after her death, so much so that they’d gone above and beyond in buying more than they would and could have ordinarily in an attempt to help keep the store afloat; the old grocer who brought her weekly supplies; the woman who delivered her mail; her pet hamster Stuart; her Aunt Holly, of course… And Griffin, someone I never expected to meet, never anticipated falling in love with, especially knowing as I do so well that nothing can come of it.

As of the day after tomorrow, I’m out of a job, out of a home, out of luck. I failed you, Mom. You spent most of your life working hard to pass your passion on to me, and I lost it. Couldn’t keep it going. A small, fearful place inside me knew the day I was forced to let go of your hand that it would come to this. If I’d known my terror at letting you go would be a decision I’d come to regret, I would have tried to find closure as I held your cold, lifeless hand in that hospital room. Now not only am I closing your store for good tomorrow, but I’ll have to deny your last wish the day after that.

Her mother’s dying request had been that she not give up on her father. Regardless of what had happened between them, Jeryn would forever love the boy who’d allowed himself to believe for a moment that he could rescue her. “Don’t bail on him,” her mother had said frequently when their efforts to visit him after the estrangement were scorned. “He’s your father, though he’s never been a real father to you. Someday he’ll realize you’re all he has. Someday he’ll make amends for his failures…if you don’t give up on him.”

You can’t lead a horse to water. Can’t convince a leopard to change its spots. Can’t save the unwilling. Damaris had understood there was little she could do when she saw him at her mother’s funeral. He’d barely looked at anyone, avoided even her. If only he knew how close Mom was to him at that moment and maybe countless times before, maybe he could have lifted his head. In her heart, she never really left him.

Damaris had tried calling him since then, but he hadn’t picked up even once nor had he returned her calls at her voicemail requests. He’d been unrecognizable, little more than a shadow that beautiful, bright day so at odds with the sorrow claiming the large gathering. A light had gone out of the world then, yet the sun’s warmth and healing had been a fitting picture of her mother in life, if not in death.

Mom died, and I couldn’t doubt that I’m dead to my own father as well. She wanted me to promise her I’d keep trying to draw him out, but she didn’t give me a choice about it. I would have said, done anything to give her peace in those final moments. How accountable am I to a deathbed pledge given in response to an impossible request? But can I actually close the doors of Mom’s bookshop, leave Grimoire after that, all without even telling my father I’m going and where?

The cruel angry thought, Would he care, even notice?, was almost as shocking and unexpected as the rapidity of her mother’s passing and what had happened to Damaris after that, when she’d forced herself to come home. She’d been so determined not to get on with her life if it meant her mom was gone forever.

Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.

Damaris looked down at the window box she and her mother had cultivated together each and every year until her mom was gone. There was no reason to care or be concerned if the flowers were uprooted by Draco’s countless nuts in preparation for his lean winter months. No way to fight that she couldn’t leave here fast enough…or, more accurately, would feel that sentiment only if she could take Griffin with her.

Following an oddly satisfying, visceral impulse, she put her hands under the edge of the long flower box and heaved so it and all its contents went over the side, plummeting headlong before crashing onto the sidewalk below in front of her cherished mother’s life’s work.

 

***

 

After washing dirt from her hands in the kitchen sink, Damaris crawled back under the light cotton sheet over the bed. For a minute, she considered cracking her book, but Renassaince art history wasn’t the kind of reading anyone needed at this time of the night. Instead, she covered her head, afraid to face the consequences of what she’d done.

Deprived of even the will to cry, she labored to breathe in the stifling heat, her ears pricked up in the ghastly silence of the night that so often was filled with dread. Though her mother had taken great pains to protect the exquisite books in her shop from extreme temperatures, they’d never used air conditioning in the minimalistic and sparse apartment above. Somehow, she and her mother had always been fine with just a fan or two on the hottest summer days and nights. Now only blistering hot air blew around her, making the dry heat worse, especially because she was holding so still.

In the semi darkness, she felt Stuart’s silky fur as he ducked under her hand beneath the thin sheet. Her trepidation eased with a choked little laugh, and she caressed him. As usual, he sensed her anxiety and wanted to soothe her.

Thinking of her mother’s flowers lying there scattered and unearthed on the sidewalk in front of the shop only made her feel worse, though nothing seemed to matter anymore either.

Damaris had been left with a single option, one she’d fought hard to avoid. Her debts had been insurmountable, climbing higher and higher every single month, and six months ago, she’d been hiding from the truth that she was living the beginning of the end. She’d watched her mom’s savings bleed away, first in increments and finally so rapidly, it was gone almost like numbers fading to invisibility in their columns in an ancient ledger. Desperately, she’d tried to hold on. She’d clung relentlessly to what had been left to her. Stupidly. Holly Odwulf, who’d insisted that Damaris call her “Aunt Holly” just as Jeryn was instructed to from the time she could talk, had been trying to get her to see reason about what was already a done deal, even if she didn’t want to face it.

Damaris tried to breathe freely, but her lungs burned, unable to exhale the air trapped inside them. The strains of an old hymn her mother used to hum while deadheading the late autumn marigolds came to her, only the lyrics seemed to reverse themselves as they came. I once was found, but now am lost. Could see, but now am blind…

Hopeless. This is the end, even as it feels like a new beginning. Will I really be happy if every trace of Mom vanishes?

“Your mama was just a slip of a girl, 18, I believe, when she rented this building from me. It’s been hard letting go, I know, for me but mainly for you. Still, you have to understand, Damaris, that I’m losing money, too, and have been for years now–“

The landlord had hemmed and hawed. She’d remembered countless times over the last few years when he came to ask for rent payment only to leave empty-handed with promises that next month would be better. He’d done that to honor the memory of her mother, Damaris knew. Even if he’d felt some bit of kindness toward her, she’d always been aware that his defential treatment stemmed from the remaining great love he held for Jeryn. Hurting Damaris was like hurting her mom personally, and, time and time again, he couldn’t get himself do it. How often had he said wistfully that every time he came to the shop or the apartment above it, Jeryn was still here? He could feel her spirit.

But he’d come to grips with that loss and, as gently as possible at the beginning of this month, he’d told Damaris if she didn’t pay her rent by the end of July, he couldn’t continue to let her rent the building. He must have seen something in Damaris’s eyes–something that told him she wouldn’t be able to do what he asked. “I’m sorry, Damaris, but this is my final word. I have another business lined up to take residence of this space as of August 1st, so…”

He was kicking her out. He couldn’t look her in the face when he murmured, “Best make arrangements immediately. I won’t ask you to repay all that’s owed. I wouldn’t do that. But you’ll have to find yourself another…situation…before the end of the month.”

Damaris had wanted to hide her head in the sand, ignore the eviction altogether. Surely he would relent if she did. But she remembered too poignantly the way he’d said, “I’m losing money, too, and have been for years”, and she knew she couldn’t force him to do that ever again.

No promise could keep me here after that. Please, God…don’t let Mom follow me. Let her stay here, or go. Go where she should have gone long ago, if I hadn’t held her back with my fear of being alone in the world.

What else could she do? Damaris had wondered, even when the end seemed certain. She’d have to call Aunt Holly, beg her to bail her out. But Damaris couldn’t get herself to do that without some dignity. Holly had vowed to care for Lily-Rose and all her offspring for as long as she lived and beyond, sealing the pledge in her will. Damaris couldn’t take advantage of her generosity when Holly had offered to cover her debts without repayment. “I’ll pay you back. I refuse to hear of anything else. Please don’t insist otherwise. I have to do it this way, or I can’t live with myself. I’ll find another job, I’ll save, and I’ll pay you back one way or another–“

When Holly interrupted, Damaris had been certain she’d insist on fulfilling her vow, hell or high water. Instead, Holly had agreed to her terms, but added, “I do have a suggestion if you’re looking for work. Bloodmoon Cove finds itself in dire need of help at the library, doing various things including custodial work to sprucing up the space. Finding someone has been nigh on to impossible these last few years, as the young seem to be driven out of town like we’re harboring the plague. We’re currently on the verge of closing altogether if we can’t get someone to step in and help. You seem perfectly suited. While I can’t promise you anything resembling a large salary, you’ll certainly be able to live on your own with it. Perhaps you’ll allow me to offer you room and board just until you get back on your feet? This old estate and the crochety matriach who runs it could use some company, daffodil. But I expect you may find yourself putting in long hours, getting the library back into shape, and I shall see you even less than I do now.”

Always, it was Holly who came to Grimoire to visit, never the other way around. Jeryn had driven less and less over the years, and, though she’d helped her daughter get her license as a rite of passage, neither of them felt comfortable or confident with the task. The car Jeryn had been so proud of as a teenager hadn’t even run prior to a few weeks ago. Seasons unending, the subcompact had sat in the farthest corner of the bookshop parking lot, gathering rain, scorching sunbeams, colorful leaves, and mountains of snow.

Damaris had made a point to verify Holly’s assessment of the Bloodmoon Cove Public Library and found her to be entirely truthful–and possibly even a bit restrained in describing the ruin it was falling into. From that moment, Damaris had begun to see tiny pinpricks of light on the horizon. For paying the debts she’d accumulated. For starting all over with a clean slate. For leaving behind the echoes that’d keep her in fearful paralysis. For finding something worthwhile to do that was entirely her own thing. She would build on her own merits, rise and fall absent from the shadow of someone else who was larger than life.

But to fully embrace anything new, she had to let go of the past. Even the recent past. Once she’d agreed to Holly’s offer of a new life, she’d made the decision to move out of this building as soon as she possibly could so as not to take advantage of the landlord’s genosity any longer than necessary. She’d made arrangements. Announced the closing of the store. Approached the Greedy Corporation about purchasing her remaining stock. She’d promoted the closing of Kindred Spirits on the website that would be taken down tomorrow as well as including a final proclamation in the free, local community papers. She knew others had picked up the story as well, though she’d declined the few interview requests she’d gotten. Once she closed the bookshop doors tomorrow evening, she and Stuart would get into the old car that had been coaxed into resurrection by a master mechanic, and she would go to meet her new life. She would be free. At the very least, she told herself that was possible, but never quite believed there was a way to escape what continued to haunt her.

Amidst packing up what little possessions she’d accumulated in her life and coming to grips with what she must now do to survive, she’d found herself with loose ends.

Her father. What point in calling? Leaving a message? He never answered, never called back in response to her voicemails. Probably never even listened to her messages. So…yeah…

And Griffin. If only she hadn’t met him– But she couldn’t regret that, even if they were opposites in every possible way. She’d all but resigned herself to being a virgin spinster when he’d swept away her resignation to that kind of lonely existence. A part of her wasn’t even sure how it’d happened. One minute she’d been asking businesses in the community to put up flyers she’d created herself in their windows to save the bookstore from closing, and the next the most beautiful man on the planet had been engaging her, charming her, talking her into things she was helpless to deny him or herself. Not only that, he’d coaxed Stuart into loving him as well. But that wasn’t surprising. Everyone who’d ever come into Kindred Spirits since her mother’s death and Aunt Holly’s bestowal of the hamster on Damaris had been enchanted by the irresistible mascot.

“We’ll find a new place to belong, Stuart,” she whispered, jarred by the sound of her own whisper in the dark. “Just you and me again.” No more ghosts…

The thought resounded harshly, making her wonder what she most feared giving up. Her mother’s legacy and request to keep contact with the male component of their union, or…?

Regardless of her pining heart, there was no leaving behind one indisputable fact: Griffin was the worst possible option for her, romantically or otherwise. From the moment she’d set eyes on him outside the motorcycle retail and repair shop he co-owned–a store she’d barely realized resided in her own neighborhood up until that point–she’d known he was inappropriate. Even his name, Griffin Thostenson, calling to mind a Norse god of old beyond the reach of mere mortals, was unseemly. He was untamed, gorgeous, a spark that could set fire to everything unworthy. And I’m a speck, a mote, a foreign substance that exists necessarily in solitary confinement.

Nevertheless, his spark had ignited, rather than incinerated, something bright and hot inside her. She craved him like warmth in bitter winter. Even as she’d made the decision to cut all ties, leave behind completely everything that marked the place of her failures so she wouldn’t ever have to see the ruins or remnants again, her heart had made a wish her head insisted couldn’t and wouldn’t come true.

Logically, she knew she wasn’t the type of woman a man like Griffin would want for the long run. He was too beautiful. She was too awkward. A beautiful dream. One that I won’t completely lose. I won’t fight him if he wants to continue this once I’ve gone. Maybe he really will come after me…but I won’t let myself invest in blind hope.

Apropos, when the snippet of music assigned to Griffin’s memorable name sounded in the blazing hot darkness, she closed her eyes tightly, even as her hand moved by rote to the bedside table for her phone. His text message was on the screen, all that she’d secretly wanted and told herself to abandon without looking back: Need you.

That she was a novelty to him and would soon wear off was a given. She’d never doubted that. But she couldn’t deny him or herself. Just once more. Then I’ll let go.

She texted back a single word, the only one she’d ever had to in the contradictory too short and too long time they’d been together: Yes.