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    Sometimes Strange Magic Casts the Best Spell
    Sometimes Strange Magic Casts the Best Spell
    Sometimes Strange Magic Casts the Best Spell
    Ebook34 pages24 minutes

    Sometimes Strange Magic Casts the Best Spell

    By Kari Kilgore

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A Sweet End to an Odd Year
    Jordan loves her job at the new spa in town, and her unusual feline companion.
    But the new year looms full of loneliness.
    Heather needs recovery after long years of fighting the Y2K bug.
    But the loss of a beloved trinket hits hard.
    Will the magic of the Hidden Springs Inn and Spa bring the fresh start they need?

    Originally appeared in A Weird Holiday Season: A Holiday Anthology

    An excerpt from Sometimes Strange Magic Casts the Best Spell:

    Sweet Surprises in Unusual Packages


    "AJ showed up like that," Suzy said, "a couple of months before our last sweet kitty left us. The vet said he might have been born with his special design. I think it makes him extra sensitive to whatever we poor humans need. Speaking of which, are you all set? Got someone to kiss at midnight? That nice Sandy who came to the Thanksgiving party, maybe?"


    Jordan gently set AJ down, muttering apologies the whole time. He let out his usual high-pitched two-part meow—meeee waaaah—before he thumped toward the open door to the spa. The Fletchers swore he was a great mouser, but Jordan remained unconvinced.


    This was not a cat who moved on silent little feet.


    Jordan wanted to follow him instead of answering Suzie's friendly and entirely reasonable question. She was eager to send her recent dating life off to the dustbin of history exactly like this year, this century, and this thousand years. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSpiral Publishing, Ltd
    Release dateDec 1, 2024
    ISBN9798224487691
    Sometimes Strange Magic Casts the Best Spell
    Author

    Kari Kilgore

    Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

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      Book preview

      Sometimes Strange Magic Casts the Best Spell - Kari Kilgore

      Sometimes Strange Magic Casts the Best Spell

      For AJ and his love of sleeping under Gossamer the Redbone hound’s extra-snuggly ears.

      SOMETIMES STRANGE MAGIC CASTS THE BEST SPELL

      KARI KILGORE

      SPIRAL PUBLISHING, LTD.

      CHAPTER 1

      Jordan Mitchell tried to prepare herself to step into the lobby at the Hidden Springs Inn and Spa, but she couldn’t stop a goofy holiday-induced grin every time. After the subdued peace and quiet of her domain in the spa, the lobby was a spectacular sensory explosion.

      Even weeks after the main tree was set up and a week after Christmas, Jordan paused to breathe in the sharp, sweet aroma of Fraser fir. The perfectly cone-shaped tree with soft, silvery green needles held pride of place in front of the row of windows facing the street. A dizzying array of matte globes, ovals, and teardrops in muted blue, burgundy, gray, and every color besides cheery red and green covered the sturdy branches.

      There was even a cute little carved wooden sign explaining how the tree grew up on a farm only a couple of miles away in their mountainous little Appalachian town in Virginia.

      Pretty as those modern ornaments bought especially to see out 1999 and celebrate the arrival of the new millennium were, Jordan had a nostalgic fondness for the older versions. Luckily the inn’s owners, Suzy and Lloyd Fletcher, provided enough nostalgia to induce flashbacks, even in people too young to have the memories to flash back to.

      On one side of the big tree stood a sweet model from sometime in the 1970s, much more like the ones Jordan loved from her childhood. Fake as the frosted, towering hairdos she remembered from back then, and smelling more of musty storage than the fresh outdoorsy pine, sure.

      But the ornaments were shiny and red and green and silver and gold. And the twinkling lights that looked like tiny multicolored candles reflected a thousand times over. A swarm of fireflies all prettied

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