A Witching Well of Magic: A Cozy Mystery (Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 2) by Constance Barker Read Free Book Online Page A

about ten pounds, and massive. The pages weren’t regular paper and they weren’t all made of the same stuff. The pages near the front of the book were pressed and grainy, some sort of cotton paper molded from strips that you could still vaguely see the seams of. Later, some pages were made of a substance like papyrus, and some were made of thick hemp. Others were wide, hard sheets of kidskin parchment. Only as the pages got back into the most recent additions did they start to resemble modern paper, but it was still fine, archival quality, the sort that wouldn’t eat itself in a hundred years from acid in the wood pulp.
    Like the writing in the cave walls, much of the book was scrambled to Bailey. She had only taken the first steps on her long journey, Chloe explained, and the book itself was actually tied directly to the magic of the Caves. In a way, the spells were agreements made with the Genius Loci of that place. Words, gestures, herbs—all of this was to some degree arbitrary. The real magic was in the will, and in the Earth, and in the spirit. The Intelligence of the Caves helped draw that magic out, which was why Martha’s magic had failed her when she left town those many years ago.
    Bailey recalled the spell being somewhere around the middle of the volume, and after some frantic flipping and searching she found it. Tearing it out was absolutely out of the question, however. It was simple enough, and she recognized the reagents needed to pull it off. She took her phone out and snapped a picture—when the ink appeared fuzzy, protected by some magic she hadn’t realized was on it, she instead quickly wrote out the details in a note. Whatever ancient magic protected the book appeared to account for photography, but not for simple copying.
    Still, she checked the note against the calligraphy on the page three times, just in case.
    Then, she really did spend about an hour trying to light the candle. Maybe because of everything else on her mind, however, she didn’t even get so much as a puff of smoke this time. The bakery would be closing in just a few minutes, so she tucked her phone away and decided to call it for the night.
    Downstairs, she almost walked right past the last two customers, until one of them said her name.
    “ Bailey Robinson,” a man said. Bailey’s eyes snapped around at him.
    It was Trevor Sullivan. He was there, as Avery had prophesied, with Gloria Olson, Martha’s old assistant, as well as a journalist who now worked for Trevor at the paper, to hear Avery tell it.
    Trevor was handsome as ever—it was the only way he was capable of looking, Bailey imagined—even if he did look a little worse for wear. Running a paper was probably hard work. Getting run by Gloria—she couldn’t imagine the woman letting any man run her—was probably twice as difficult.
    “ Good to see you,” Bailey said stiffly, even though it wasn’t. She wanted to ask him why he’d fired her father, but then, perhaps now wasn’t the time to go stirring pots anymore than they’d already been stirred.
    Trevor, however, wouldn’t let her off that easily. “How’s Ryan doing?” He asked. “I haven’t heard from him in a while.”
    “ We need to get going,” Gloria muttered, rather pointedly.
    Trevor ignored her, and Gloria did not like that one bit. She set her jaw, sipped her coffee, and made an ugly face at Francis when the older woman wasn’t watching.
    “ He’d be better if he was writing,” Bailey said, cooly.
    “ I’d love to have him with us,” Trevor said solemnly. “We’re still working on the follow-up piece about Martha’s murder, but it’s difficult to make a lot of headway without a local writer. Ryan was a great help.”
    That didn’t track. Ryan had been fired, hadn’t he? Or… maybe he hadn’t actually said that precisely. Bailey blinked away her confused. “Oh. I was under the impression the decision was… mutual. Dad leaving the paper, I mean.”
    Gloria snorted, and