Touch of Shadow Read online

  Table of Contents

  Epilogue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Also by April Aasheim

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise for April Aasheim

  If I could give it ten stars, I would.

  Boundless Book Reviews - The Witches of Dark Root

  My favorite series of all time!

  Amazon Reviewer - The Daughters of Dark Root Series

  Charming and Imaginative!

  Goodreads Reviewer - Baylee Scott: Touch of Light

  Touch of Shadow

  A Baylee Scott Paranormal Mystery

  April Aasheim

  Dark Root Press

  Copyright © 2018 by April Aasheim [email protected]

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  This book is dedicated to Krissy and Dymon.

  A family that has touched my heart.

  Contents

  1. One

  2. Two

  3. Three

  4. Four

  5. Five

  6. Six

  7. Seven

  8. Eight

  9. Nine

  10. Ten

  11. Eleven

  12. Twelve

  13. Thirteen

  14. Fourteen

  15. Fifteen

  16. Sixteen

  17. Seventeen

  18. Eighteen

  19. Nineteen

  20. Twenty

  21. Twenty-One

  22. Twenty-Two

  23. Twenty-Three

  24. Twenty-Four

  25. Twenty-Five

  26. Twenty-Six

  27. Twenty-Seven

  28. Twenty-Eight

  29. Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Also by April Aasheim

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  One

  Reed Hollow: A Typical New England Town

  October

  (Baylee)

  I stared at the words in the thick spell book for so long that my eyes began to water. The chapter title read: Manifest True Love by the Next Full Moon Cycle. It was a bold claim, even for a Book of Shadows, but an enticing one nevertheless.

  True Love.

  The two words, spoken together, were butter on my tongue. Not just love but True Love, attainable within just one full lunar cycle.

  I sat up straight at my desk, the book draped across my lap, and lifted the chain I wore around my neck – the chain on which I kept my wedding ring. Ryan had been gone nearly three years now, but it felt as if no time had passed at all. I had few memories after my husband’s disappearance. In fact, I could barely remember the time between the terrible day I got the news and the day I returned to Reed Hollow nearly a year ago, to help with the family business.

  “Oh, Ryan,” I said, feeling the pull of betrayal as I studied the love spell on my lap. If I were a proper widow, this might be easier. I fell back into the patched-up chair my brother Alex had planted in front of my desk. True widowhood was a definitive line – a marker separating one chapter of life from another. But my husband was only missing, technically, and until a body was found I was in perpetual limbo.

  Still, in limbo there resided hope, however fleeting and foolish.

  I tapped my white-gloved finger against the plate on a set of aged brass scales that had come in earlier in the week. So many interesting artifacts found their way into our antique store, though most held little more than brief fascination for me. The scales, however, were another matter. They represented my sun sign, Libra, and the overriding need for balance and stability – two things that were in short supply in my life at the moment. I considered keeping the scales for myself, despite the three hundred dollars they would probably fetch.

  Glancing down at the book once more, I sighed dreamily. True Love. Was it possible that I might have it again? I was already given that gift with Ryan, and as much as I desired it again, it seemed unfair to ask for it twice.

  I squeezed my ring, tucking it into my vintage 1940s polka dot blouse, and closed my eyes.

  What would Ryan want me to do?

  He chased life and love with abandon. He said that everything of great importance ever done had been done out of love. But did that philosophy extend to me loving someone who wasn’t him?

  He had never been the jealous type, but I had never given him reason to be. I had been smitten from the moment I first heard him lecturing on paranormal investigation at college. We became inseparable, our energies blending smoothly. And now all I had was a void.

  Perhaps I didn’t need a spell as powerful as this one? I could tweak it a bit, alter it here and there, and manifest something like Satisfactory Love. Friendship. Companionship. An occasional shared grilled cheese sandwich. Something to get me through this life, without the complications and pain that accompanied True Love.

  Except for a sleeping semi-feral cat, I was alone in the attic. If I wanted to try my hand at spell casting, now was the time. Solitude was a rare luxury in this 19th century farmhouse, despite its considerable size. I read the list of ingredients aloud, wondering where I might find such things. “A drop of dragon’s blood…three sprigs of mistletoe…the fingernail of a blushing bride.”

  There were other ingredients, each more bizarre than the last, like oil from a mole’s gland and a chicken egg laid during a new moon. After combining the ingredients, I would need to bury the mixture beneath a rose bush and return every night for 28 days to recite an incantation. At the end of the cycle, my true love would show himself.

  No wonder there were so few witches left in Reed Hollow these days - the craft took an excessive amount of time and an impressive attention span.

  Since I was tweaking the recipe anyway, maybe I could substitute yarrow for mistletoe. And I doubted that a cage-free egg from our refrigerator would alter the spell too much.

  “Whatcha doing?”

  I started at the voice behind me, the book jumping from my lap to the floor. I bent over to pick it up, but not before my cousin Kela could snatch it away. It was still open to the page, and I felt my face burn with embarrassment.

  Kela’s lips corkscrewed to the side, her cat-eyes appraising me. “Practicing magick, huh? I always thought you were more an academic than a practitioner. I’m impressed, Baylee.”

  I scrambled from my chair and lunged at the book, missing. Kela backed up, grinning and waving the book higher than I could reach. “Remember when you used to be taller than me?”

  “When you were twelve. You’ve shot up since then. Now, can I have my book back please? I was just doing research.”

  “Interesting research.” Kela raised a sleek eyebrow and laughed, her dark bob bouncing around her elven features. “Baylee, honey, when you have a rack like yours, you don’t need magick. Trust me, these
babies are far more powerful than any spell.” Kela shimmied, and though her ‘rack’ was less noticeable than mine, I could never reproduce its mesmerizing effect.

  “Really, I was doing research,” I repeated, smoothing my pencil skirt as I tried to regain my dignity. “I’m thinking of starting my paranormal blog up again. What better topic to start with than the never-ending quest for love and the lengths people will go to find it?” I tilted my head and folded my arms, glancing over at the scales. Lying in their presence made me feel like a perjurer.

  “Uh-huh.” Kela clicked her tongue as she flipped through several pages before handing it back. “This spell book that Aunt Vivi left you is cool. I wish I would have known your mom when she was young, before she became all domestic and stuff. But cousin – you’re a bookworm, not a witch.”

  I puckered my lips and contemplated her words. She was right. I was a psychometrist – a psychic who got impressions, mostly through touch. In my case, these impressions were other people’s memories, which didn’t exactly make me the Homecoming Queen of our small town. As to Kela’s assertion that I was a bookworm, I could live with that. I felt more comfortable studying magick than applying it.

  “I suppose you’re right. I just wanted to feel the excitement of love again. Or something close to it. No offense to you or Alex or Mom… but I’m feeling a little lonely these days.”

  My younger cousin stretched her arms overhead, lifting her crocheted yellow sweater to reveal a glimpse of her slim white torso. How she ate so much, yet retained her svelte figure, was a mystery that even I couldn’t solve.

  Kela put one hand on her hip and the other on her chin, then tapped her forefinger thoughtfully on her cheek. Her eyes searched the room as she devised her plan. “Let’s ditch the spells for now and focus on real-world solutions. You need someone to show you the ropes. A lot has changed in the dating world since you became a spinster. For one thing, you don’t need a dowry anymore.”

  “Let me remind you again that I’m only five years older than you,” I said.

  “That’s five years of your eggs just sitting around, not doing anything useful.”

  Kela began adjusting me. She lifted my chin, pushed back my shoulders, and tightened the straps of my bra to hike up “the girls.”

  I acquiesced to her instruction, mortified that I was allowing myself to be subjected to such assessment. Yet I knew that if anyone could help me attract a man, it was Kela.

  Love pumped through Kela’s veins like molten lava, and whether she was falling in or out of it, she was always connected to it by some essential cord that was intrinsic to her very being. Both the pursuit and destruction of love fueled her, and I envied her ability to live on the edge, even if it was not something I was comfortable doing myself.

  My cousin continued her examination. “We can work with this, but we’ll have to see about that. And, I don’t even know what that is.”

  “Kela, I’m not a heifer at the state fair. If a man is more interested in my appearance than who I am as a person, he’s not for me.”

  “As a person?” Kela’s eyes watered as she slapped her thigh.

  “A man isn’t looking for a person, Baylee. Not initially, anyway. There are persons everywhere. Men are looking for a fantasy. So let’s make you that fantasy.”

  Kela pointed over to a long stretch of sunbeam coming through the window, where the angled walls met in a high arch. “Walk there and back, like you own this attic.”

  “Well, I do, technically.”

  “Just walk. And shake what your mama gave you when you do it.”

  “Please don’t mention my mother, Kela,” I said, lowering my voice. My parents had been in a terrible car wreck last year; a wreck in which my mother had lost her life, and my father’s body disappeared. Though Mom had physically passed on, her spirit was still with us – and she now spent the greater part of her afterlife doling out her maternal wisdom and commenting on my weight. “I don’t need Mom getting involved in my love life, as well.”

  “Don’t you mean your lack of a love life?”

  “I had one, remember? A great one. One worthy of a storybook, if I was ever inclined to write it. And Ryan never treated me like a fantasy figure,” I rebutted, drawing myself up to my full height, which only brought me up to Kela’s chin. “He liked me for me.”

  Kela leaned against the desk and folded her arms. The dimple in her chin deepened as her smugness set in. “So those baby blue eyes and pink pufferfish lips didn’t have anything to do with Ryan’s interest in you? And not your enviable rack either?”

  “I would like to point out that I didn’t have this… rack, when I met Ryan. They grew in later. But to your point, perhaps my looks did catch Ryan’s interest, initially.” I paused, remembering the way he’d first looked at me. “I admit that I’ve been told I have nice coloring and that my facial proportions are mostly symmetrical. And my hip-to-waist ratio was still well within the range of pleasing, in those days. So yes, I suppose Ryan responded biologically. But that’s not why he stayed.”

  “That’s right. It’s all about biology. You’ve got to lure them in with the right bait before you can set the hook.” She threw an imaginary cast and reeled in the line. “This Mary Tyler Moore thing you have going will only draw in the weirdos. But the right bait will get you the right date! I should be writing this down for Slam Poetry night at The Little Tea Pot.”

  Perhaps Kela was right. Although I was considered attractive by modern cultural standards, I had never been the belle of any ball. And time was moving forward. In fact, I’d be thirty in…

  “Oh, crap!” I said, then covered my mouth with my hand.

  Kela laughed so hard she snorted. “You said crap! I’m telling Aunt Vivi.”

  When I didn’t respond, she softened her voice and laid a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, hon. I only laugh because I never hear you cuss. In fact, anything other than my stars or mercy sounds downright dirty coming from that angelic face of yours.”

  It was a shame that angels didn’t get dates. “I’m not upset that you laughed,” I reluctantly admitted. “It’s just… I just realized my birthday is in a few days. I’m going to be thirty.”

  “Oh, crap!” Kela agreed.

  She manifested a box of tissue out of thin air and jiggled it in front of me. “There, there,” she commiserated, pulling tissues from the box and handing them to me one by one. “Let it all out. I still have enough youthful vitality for the both of us.”

  “I’m thirty, not an invalid,” I said, pushing away the Kleenex. I never cried, as Kela well knew, but perhaps she thought this was an occasion worthy of shedding tears.

  “I promised myself I would never turn thirty,” Kela said, solemnly. She turned her face upwards towards the window, not a hint of a wrinkle on her fair face. If anyone could walk the earth for a hundred years and not change at all, in either body or personality, it was Kela.

  She turned to me, new resolve in her eyes. “Thirty is just a number. A big number, but a number…and…” she stepped back to frame me with her hands. “Thirty looks great on you.”

  “I thought you said I needed a lot of work.”

  “That was when you were twenty-nine. The good news is that the bar is set much lower for those in your decade. Now, let’s list your assets, so to speak.”

  “I do have a stellar wardrobe,” I pointed out. “Most of my pieces are classics. They’ll age with me.”

  Kela offered only a look of condolence, sighing as she contemplated the enormity of the work ahead of her. She had a project, that much was clear in her eyes, and that project was me.

  While she inwardly formulated her plan, I wrapped my arms around my chest and made my way to the window. The pane was fogged up and I used one of Kela’s tissues to clear the glass.

  Outside, Reed Hollow was coming alive as stores began opening their doors and mothers rushed their kids along towards school. As usual, there were few cars on Main Street, but pedestrian traffic swelled,
thick with out-of-towners gathering to view our famed autumn foliage. Famed it may have been, but the jewel-toned leaves were short-lived. In just a few weeks, the vibrant trees would succumb to the cold rain and bitter winds of late October, their leaves becoming nothing more than sludge beneath our shoes. Still, it was wonderful while it lasted.

  I could see almost all the way down Main Street from my vantage point. The mile-long avenue was draped in orange and black decorative foils, rising up from either side and forming a high arch over the roadway, like giant octopi swimming over the festivities. It was 1940s gaudy, but it was so ingrained in the collective memory of the town that it could never be replaced. Relinquishing the past was something the residents of Reed Hollow were not very good at. It was even rumored that some terrible fate befell those who attempted real progress. Tradition and superstition went hand in hand in our small town, bringing comfort to the locals, even as the rest of the world changed.

  Below the foil canopy were pumpkin carts, armies of dime-store scarecrows, and suspended plastic ghosts billowing in the wind. The scene was a strange celebration of both life and death, as people hurried down the sidewalks while the spirits looked on quietly.

  I was about to leave my position at the window when I spotted a man in khaki slacks on the sidewalk below. He wore a button-down denim shirt, and a leather messenger bag was draped across his chest. A gray knitted cap came down over his ears, and wisps of brown wavy hair poked out around the edges He was walking with a woman pushing a baby stroller.