What's a Witch to Do?: A Midnight Magic Mystery by Jennifer Harlow Page A

twenty-two she caught the eye of the richest man in the county, Deaver Fitch III, much to the chagrin of his first wife. Erica and Deaver were only married for three years before he mysteriously died of a stroke at age fifty-two in the middle of sex with his young bride. The entire town suspected she offed him, but there was no proof. She’s been the merry widow since, though her exploits with not only the young blue-collar boys in town but the upper echelon gentlemen in Richmond do tarnish that image.
    She easily could have met Alejandro in Richmond at some point, though why she’d want to become High Priestess is beyond me. Growing up she regularly attended coven meetings, but those tapered off when she got married. Now she comes about once a year, mainly to catch up with old friends. The past month I have seen more of her as she’s on the Founders’ Week committee with me, and what a joy that has been. I do not enjoy high and mighty people putting me and everyone else down once a week. I almost want it to be her just so they can haul her liposuctioned butt away. Maybe she’s just bored and decided, “Hey, maybe that High Priestess job might be fun for a little while. I killed once, what’s one more time?” Possible.
    Finally, there are the twins: Collins and Cheyenne Bell. I personally trained them as aethers when puberty hit. It’s rare to have two High Priestesses in one family, but since they’re identical twins it wasn’t too surprising. We have the same great-grandfather Crowley who, like his alleged father, left multiple bastards in his wake. Three that we know of. Granny and Auntie Sara were the only legitimate children. The Great Ramona forced her wayward son to marry his powerful cousin Camille, the supposed next High Priestess. Great-Grandma Camille died of the Spanish Flu before this came to pass, but Ramona lived until her late nineties, and by then Granny was old enough to take the reins.
    Like most of my second cousins, Collins and Cheyenne come from the illegitimate branch of the family. Not that anyone save their grandmother Maxine cares anymore. Family is family, at least to me. I’d cross Collins off the list even before Shirley. She practically lived at my house growing up, what with those abusive asshole parents of hers. She even stayed with us for a few months just to get away from them. Then Granny died, and I had to send her back to said assholes. She went to live with her grandmother a few days after that. She and Debbie have been best friends since kindergarten. Hell, she’s Debbie’s maid of honor. I’ve known her all her life, and she doesn’t have a malicious bone in her body.
    Now Cheyenne …
    For identical twins, those two could not be more different. Their parents are drunken, abusive, disgusting assholes whose fights are legendary. Collins told me she spent years tending to her parents’ wounds so becoming a nurse was always a foregone conclusion. They never hit the girls though. Granny and I asked. We tried to informally adopt Cheyenne too, but she was a vicious child. Beating up Debbie, stealing, shouting obscenities at us. She hasn’t gotten much better with age. Poaching boyfriends, an arrest for drunk driving, and the inability to hold a job are her claims to fame in this town. She does attend coven meetings regularly but is constantly questioning me and making snide remarks. I have heard on more than one occasion that she’s been dabbling in the gray and even black magic. Anything that takes away a person’s free will, like love potions, is gray. Black is classified as anything that harms another living creature. Both are illegal. If a witch is guilty of either, I’m duty bound to contact the F.R.E.A.K.S. and excommunicate them from the coven. Right now all I have are rumors and a hunch. I was going to start digging more into the rumors after the wedding, but I guess I’ll have to start now. So how?
    The curtain is pulled aside, and Billie pokes her head in.