Lily has her hands full running her vintage clothing store, Aunt Cora's Closet, but she isn't so busy she can't work the occasional protection spell for a few clients. When the incentive is a trunk full of Victorian-era vintage clothing, she's willing to do a bit more.
Something is very wrong at the San Francisco School of Fine Arts, something that will require more than the protection spells Lily has been providing for the spooked students. When the father of one of her customers turns up dead, Lily is sure there's more than a malevolent evil at work. And she's going to need to use all her skills to catch a cold- blooded killer and stop the evil that is more powerful than anything she's ever encountered before the body count grows.
Juliet Blackwell's A CAST-OFF COVEN is the second in the Witchcraft mystery series. Lily is a likable character surrounded by a pleasing cast of supportive friends. Most entertaining is Oscar, her familiar, who assumes the shape of a pot-bellied pig. I enjoyed the story, though I felt it sometimes became bogged down with too much magic and not enough mystery. The ending felt a bit abrupt; one minute Lily was battling demons, the next she and her friends were cleaning up the mess. Still, I recommend A CAST-OFF COVEN as a fun read, especially for those who enjoy a bit of magic with their mystery.
Lily Ivory is not your average witch. She runs a vintage
clothing store called Aunt Cora's Closet and has the magical
ability to sense vibrations of the past from clothing and
jewelry. When students are spooked at the San Francisco
School for the Arts, Lily is called in to search for
paranormal activity. She finds a dead body--and a closet
full of old clothes with some very bad vibes.
EXCERPT
"I need something to guard against ghosts . . . ," whispered
the young woman slouching at the counter. She cast a nervous
glance around my shop floor, empty but for racks upon racks
of vintage clothes, cases of costume jewelry, and shelves
lined with hats. "A protective . . . thingamajig."
"A talisman?" I asked.
"That's it."
"Talismans don't really guard against ghosts, per seโ"
"Whatever." She shrugged. "It's better than nothing."
Her feathery bright pink hair put me in mind of a silly
children's toy, the kind one might win after stuffing ten
dollars' worth of quarters into the mechanical contraption
at the Escape from New York Pizza parlor a few blocks down
from the store on Haight Street. But from the jaded look in
her heavy-lidded amber eyes and the multiple piercings that
marched along her left eyebrow, I suspected the overall
effect she was after was "aggressively alienated youth"
rather than "cuddly stuffed animal."
"You're a student at the San Francisco School of Fine Arts?"
I guessed as I opened the back of the glass display case and
pulled out the black velvet-covered tray that held my
rapidly diminishing collection of hand-carved wooden
medallions. There had been a run on them lately.
"How did you know that?" Her eyes flew up to meet mine.
"Can you read minds?"
"No." I shook my head and stifled a smile. "My assistant,
Maya, goes to the School of Fine Arts. We've had a lot of
students stop by in the last week or so, asking for protection."
"Did I hear my name?" Maya emerged through the classic
brocade curtains that separated the back room from the shop
floor. Petite with delicate, unadorned features, she wore
her hair twisted into thick locks, ending in a series of
beads that clacked pleasantly against the silver rings and
cuffs embellishing each ear. "Oh, hey, Andromeda."
"Um, hey," the customer said to Maya with a nearly
imperceptible lift of her chin. Pink feathers swayed as she
tilted her head in question. "Where do I know you from again?"
"Sculpture class," Maya answered. "We've met a few times."
"Oh, right, my bad. So, you've told her about the ghosts at
the school?" Andromeda asked Maya. "The footsteps out in the
hallways, the heavy breathing, doors opening and closing . . ."
"As a matter of fact, I have."
"It turns out that the main building"โAndromeda leaned
across the counter toward Maya and me, her voice dropping to
a fierce whisperโ"was built on top of an old cemetery."
"That's mostly a movie device," I pointed out. "It doesn't
actually mean there are ghosts lingering."
"I've heard something, too, though, Lily, along with half
the school," Maya put in.
The trepidation in my assistant's serious, dark eyes gave me
pause. Maya rarely asked forโor neededโanyone's help, and
she retained a healthy dose of cynicism about the world of
the paranormal. So I had been more than a little surprised a
few days ago when she asked me for a protective talisman,
and even more so when she brokered an unusual deal with the
school's provost, Dr. Marlene Mueller: If I could calm the
students' fears of ghosts running amok in the campus
hallways, I could help myself to the contents of a recently
discovered storage room chock-full of Victorian-era gowns
and frilly unmentionables.
As a purveyor of vintage clothing, I leapt at the chance.
There was only one fly in this supernatural ointment: I
don't know much about ghosts.
I'm a witch, not a necromancer. Few outside the world of
magick appreciate the difference, but trust me: The two
vocations don't necessarily involve the same skill sets. My
energy attracts spirits like flies to honey, but I can't
understand a cotton-pickin' word they say. Interdimensional
frustration is what I call it.
One thing I do know is that all of us walk over
interred corpses, all the time. People are born; they live;
they die. It's been the same story throughout the millennia,
and the physical remnants of our earthly sojournsโour
bodiesโhave to go somewhere. If simply walking across a
grave incurred a curse from beyond, none of us would live
long enough to graduate from kindergarten, much less college.
"We're supposed to meet Dr. Mueller's daughter, Ginny, at
the school tonight to take a look around," Maya told Andromeda.
"You're trying to see ghosts on purpose?" Andromeda
gaped at both of us for a moment, then shivered as though a
goose had just walked over her grave. "With Ginny Mueller.
Huh. It figures. I hate that biโ" She looked up at me and
stopped herself. "Never mind."
Looking down at the selection of talismans on the counter,
she picked up a medallion, weighing the cool wooden disk in
her hand. Each full moon, I make the talismans from the
branch of a fruit tree, carving ancient symbols of
protection and consecrating them in a ceremony of rebirth.
However, just as in the natural world, there are few
absolutes in the realm of the supernatural. The medallions
are powerful sources of spiritual support, but they can't
stop a determined force of evil on their own. I liken it to
having a big dog at home: It might not chase off every
ne'er-do-well, but your average mischief-makers go elsewhere.
"Does it matter which one I get?" Andromeda asked. "Or are
they all the same, protection-wise?"
"They'reโ," I began.
Andromeda dropped the medallion and screamed, flattening
herself against a stand of frothy wedding gowns. The rack
teetered under the pressure.
"What the eff is that?"
Oscar, my miniature potbellied pigโand wannabe witch's
familiarโsnorted at her feet.
"That's Oscar, the store mascot." Maya smiled. "He sort of
grows on you."
"He won't hurt you, Andromeda," I said to the pink-haired
young woman still cowering against the pure white wall of
silks and satins. Clearly she wasn't a pet person, or maybe
she just wasn't a pet pig person. "Oscar, go on back to your
bed."
Oscar snorted again, looked up at me, rolled his pink piggy
eyes, and finally trotted back to his purple silk pillow.
Andromeda wiped a thin hand across her brow. "I'm a nervous
wreck. Ghosts, now pigs . . . I just wish everything would
get back to normal."
"This should help," I said, holding up a pendant carved with
the ancient symbol of a deerโa powerful sign of support and
protectionโand an inscription in Aramaic. It hung on a cord
made of braided and knotted silk threads in the powerful
colors of red, orange, turquoise, magenta, and black. It
suited her.
When Andromeda bowed her head to allow me to slip the
talisman on, my gaze landed on the pale, vulnerable curve of
her slender neck. Her vibrations were clear as a bell:
Bright and frightened, almost tangible, and though I was
only ten years her senior, I felt a surge of maternal
protectiveness. Like her mythical namesake, who had been
offeredโbound and nakedโas a sacrifice to the sea monster,
this young Andromeda had a whole lot on her mind.
As we used to say back in Texas, she was scareder than a
sinner in a cyclone.
But not only of a ghost, or even a pig.
Andromeda was scared of something altogether human.
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