Witch on the Case: La Fay Chronicles 3 Read online

  Witch on the Case

  La Fay Chronicles 3

  Mina Carter

  New York Times & USA TODAY Bestselling Author

  Copyright © 2020 by Mina Carte

  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.

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is coincidental.

  * * *

  This book contains content that may not be suitable for young readers 17 and under.

  * * *

  The Author of this Book has been granted permission by Robyn Peterman to use the copyrighted characters and/or worlds created by Robyn Peterman in this book. All copyright protection to the original characters and/or worlds of the Magic and Mayhem series is retained by Robyn Peterman.

  Foreword

  Blast Off with us into the Magic and Mayhem Universe!

  * * *

  I’m Robyn Peterman, the creator of the Magic and Mayhem Series and I’d like to invite you to my Magic and Mayhem Universe.

  * * *

  What is the Magic and Mayhem Universe, you may ask?

  * * *

  Well, let me explain…

  * * *

  It’s basically authorized fan fiction written by some amazing authors that I stalked and blackmailed! KIDDING! I was lucky and blessed to have some brilliant authors say yes! They have written brand new stories using my world and some of my characters. And let me tell you…the results are hilarious!

  * * *

  So here it is! Blast off with us into the hilarious Magic and Mayhem Universe. Side splitting books by fantabulous authors! Check out each and every one. You will laugh your way to a magical HEA!

  * * *

  For all the stories, go to https://magicandmayhemuniverse.com/. Grab your copy today!

  And if you would like to read the book that started all the madness, Switching Hour is FREE!

  https://robynpeterman.com/switching-hour/

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  Also by Mina Carter

  About the Author

  1

  “If you would just learn to say no, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

  Garlick the cat strutted ahead as Daffi, Daffodil McGee to those not her friends, negotiated the busy rush-hour streets with a loaded tote bag and a coffee. Negotiated was a very loose term. Currently, most of the negotiation could be considered hostile, and Daffi was definitely on the losing side.

  “Sorry... so sorry... if I could just squeeze through that g... Oh, I do beg your pardon. No, please, after you...”

  She finally emerged from the mass just in front of the entrance to the tube station to find Garlick, her familiar, sitting and waiting for her. If he’d been human, he would have been tapping his fingers on his arms.

  “You cannot blame me for rush hour traffic,” she told him as they descended into the bowels of the earth, otherwise known as the tube network.

  Even though the day hadn’t yet heated up, the wash of pungent, sticky air from below was enough to make her start sweating in sympathy. It never truly got cold down here, the heat actually increasing as the two descended. Garlick’s tail waved like a banner above him. The normals whittered about braking waste heat from the trains and the mass of people who used it every day. Personally, Daffi thought it had more to do with the dragons. But whatevs. Norms never saw what was right in front of their noses, with or without magic, so she wasn’t surprised they hadn’t noticed the nesting beasties in the abandoned side tunnels. Probably thought they’d stumbled across some kind of subterranean weather balloon storage.

  “I can blame you for being out half the night because you just ‘couldn’t say no’ to Daisy Bannerton,” the cat retorted smartly, flicking her a look over his shoulder as he somehow managed to navigate a path through the throng of office workers, students, and tourists. Quickly she tucked in behind him as they crowded onto the escalator down.

  Rush hour was the worst time to travel in London, but she had no choice. She’d already been late for her job at the Unnatural History Museum twice this month and her boss, Ms. Whipsnide? Well, Daffi was sure the woman slept with a clock and a staff agenda. Probably a stick up her ass too.

  A commuter in a smart suit almost trod on Garlick, but a deep, dangerous growl made the man look around quickly and skitter away, his gaze sliding over the pair of them. Norms didn’t see witches and their familiars. Not unless they wanted to be seen anyway. And even for a witch’s familiar, Garlick was unusual.

  He claimed to be demon-possessed. She thought he was making it up so he could call himself Lord Mephistopheles of the third circle. When he’d first been assigned to her, all fat kitten belly and big paws, he’d insisted she call him “his lordship.” She’d booped him on the nose and fed him treats instead.

  “Don’t scare the norms,” she hissed as they followed the crush down onto the platform. The museum was five stops down the line. “Remember the last time? They shut three tube stations because they thought there was an escaped panther from the zoo.”

  Garlick flicked an ear, unconcerned. “Not my fault stupid humans can’t tell the difference between a domestic cat and a feline of the larger classes.”

  “You were six feet at the shoulder!” Daffi hissed, just as she collided with a commuter.

  It was like slamming into a brick wall as her hand closed around her coffee mug. Made of the thinnest paper possible before either burning her fingers to the bone from the lava-heat of the fluid within or simply disintegrating, it didn’t have the structural integrity to stand up to a claw-like grip. The lid popped off, shooting up into the air, and was eagerly followed by her triple expresso shot, mocha-choco-latte.

  Which then ended up decorating the front of Mr. Big City’s very expensive looking suit.

  “Oh my goddess, I am so, so sorry!” she stammered as he turned and fixed her with an irritated glare. Mostly norms couldn’t see a witch, unless of course, said witch threw hot coffee all over them. Her hand waved ineffectually at the brown mess all down the front of his suit and dribbling down his leg. “You’re soaked… I am really sorry!”

  “Good job it wasn’t the back,” Garlick muttered. “If he’d taken off his jacket, it would’a looked like he’d sh—”

  She trod on the cat’s tail to shut him up.

  “You clumsy oaf!” Mr. Big City hissed, yanking a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at the stain. It resisted all attempts at cleanup. Instead, it merrily smeared itself around some more.

  “Do you know how expensive this suit was?” he demanded, his handkerchief sopping wet now.

  “It’s rags now. I wouldn’t give two hairballs for it.”

  She ignored the cat in favor of offering a very apologetic smile. She was clumsy. She knew that. She always had been. When her sisters, all lithe and graceful compared to her short, dumpy form, had been the apple of the teacher’s eye at ballet, she�
�d barely mastered the basic movements. Anything more complicated and let’s just say… Swan lake had more drowning victims than a tsunami. She’d been banned from the end-of-year show. And every show. Ever.

  “No.” She winced, biting her lip. “I’m sorry. It looks very expensive.”

  Casting a quick look around, she wriggled her fingers unobtrusively and muttered quickly under her breath.

  “Maiden, mother and crone, hear my plea,

  Cleanse and clean, I think you’ll agree,

  Is best to bring this suit back to its former glory,

  And bring an end to this sorry story.”

  White sparkles, the color of her magic, flew from the ends of her fingers and wrapped around the commuter, still dabbing at himself in irritation.

  “This will need proper cleaning, and I don’t have time to go home. I have a big meeting at eleven and I’m going to need to order out for a new suit because of this…”

  He blinked as the stain on his jacket grew smaller with each swipe of the now-clean handkerchief before disappearing altogether. “Oh… perhaps it wasn’t so bad after all.”

  “See? You can barely see it.” She smiled. Norms rarely saw what was right in front of their noses, especially if it didn’t fit with their rigid view of the world.

  Daffi waved her hand again.

  “Maiden, mother and crone, aid me here,

  his memory of coffee and me clear,

  And set him on his merry way,

  No thoughts to let him stray…”

  “I could have sworn…” He looked confused and then glanced down at his watch. “Shit. Gonna be late.”

  He turned and disappeared into the crowds, pushing his way toward the train just arriving without a backward glance. It was a norm one, and the crowds on the platform surged forward as all the suited and booted office-y peeps tried to get on at once. Now clean of coffee, Mr. Big City collided with another suit as they both tried to get through the gap at the same time.

  Garlick hopped up onto her shoulder. “I wonder if they’re like walruses… they should drop it like it’s hot and fight for dominance right there.”

  “You’re bloodthirsty,” she told him. “It’s a very distressing quality in a kitchen witch’s familiar, you know.”

  “Pfft,” Garlick blew a raspberry in her ear.

  His breath stank of tuna, the closest he deigned to come to sourcing his own food, with a vague odor of something that could have been brimstone. It could also have been something unmentionable out of next door’s bin. It was best not to know the answer to some questions.

  “I keep telling you… you’re not a kitchen witch. Why would I, the great Lord Mephistopheles, shackle myself to a mere kitchen witch?”

  She shrugged, ignoring the fact he’d pronounced the word kitchen in the same tones as one would “cockroach.” Mr. Big City had won the confrontation and boarded the train before the other suited norm. Perhaps there really was a pecking order between them?

  “I don’t know, your lordship…” she murmured, looking up.

  Above the milling crowds and the illuminated boards the norms used to signal when the next train was due sat a wrought-iron balcony. Crouched on it, his knees up by his ears and the top of his smart uniform hat almost scraping the ceiling, was the biggest gargoyle she’d ever seen. He saw her looking and acknowledged her with a nod, writing something on the tiny clipboard in his gargantuan hands.

  She sighed in relief and watched the board beneath his clawed feet. It was the old-fashioned kind like the sort used to mark sports scores in days gone past, each number flipping over the last. It marked the time until the next train was due in. Currently it read zero zero point three zero.

  Thirty seconds…

  Almost before she’d finished the thought, the train rolled into the station.

  “Excellent,” Garlick muttered in her ear. “Early. We might just make it before Whippy’s rounds.”

  She nodded as the train pulled to a stop. Unlike the norms’ train in its modern metal and plastic glory, the trains of the Paranormal Transportation Company were straight out of the last century. Gleaming brass and painted metal, it chuffed into the station with all the noise and ambience of a steam train… but with no smoke to choke everyone on the platform half to death.

  “This is us,” she trilled, checking her watch. They might just make it to the museum on time… or at least before Ms. Whipsnide started her rounds.

  She pushed her way through the unmoving crowd of norms still filling the platform. None of them could see the ghost train, standing staring into space or looking at the tiny little screens on their phones. Several muttered in annoyance as Daffi passed by, her magic interfering with their devices. It was the reason most witches didn’t carry phones. The magic-blocking spells that enabled them to work were generally cheap and crap, either not working at all or working so well they blocked the witches’ magic as well. Others worked properly but were so expensive you’d need a mortgage and possibly an inheritance from the Merlin family as well.

  Reaching the door, her gaze fixed on the panel on the side. Sign-written with an ad for some magical malady cure, the letters were moving. Nothing unusual, the magic that drove the advertisement was spelled to do so. But then familiar words resolved right in front of her…

  “Remember who you were before you forgot.”

  “No thank you,” she said smartly, yanking open the door and hopping aboard with Garlick still on her shoulder. Those words had haunted her childhood, sometimes literally, and she wanted nothing at all to do with them. “I know exactly who I am, thank you very much.”

  She was Daffodil McGee from a long line of McGee kitchen witches—a very modest, but honest, lineage. Nothing close to the upper classes like the Rhegeads or one of her coworkers, Sybil Bulcock, whose blood was bluer than a field of cornflowers.

  “You should listen to them,” Garlick commented, settling himself around her shoulders like a furry stole. “They know what they’re talking about.”

  “Oh, do they now?” she quipped, moving along the corridor and looking for a free compartment as the train pulled off. Or even a free armchair. But all of the ones she looked in were occupied, each small compartment stuffed to bursting with large, comfortable-looking armchairs. Every single one was occupied, witches and warlocks looking up at her as she poked her head in the door.

  “Crone’s tits,” she hissed in defeat and reached for an overhead handle. “Looks like the cheap seats for us.”

  Garlick chuckled.

  “Talk for yourself. Familiars get to ride, baby, ride.”

  2

  “See? This is what happens when you don’t say no to people!” Garlick trilled as they raced down the street. Delays on the line had meant the train was late, and they were now dangerously pushed for time. The moment the big clock on the front of the main museum building chimed nine, she would be late. And since Ms. Whipsnide had spelled all the doors to report any staff late arrivals, she couldn’t even sneak in. Not unless she climbed in through a window, but she wouldn’t have put it past the woman to have spelled those as well.

  “Shut up,” she told him and then groaned as a woman with seventeen dozen chihuahuas blocked the street ahead. Most norm pets couldn’t see witches… or, in the case of cats, completely ignored them… but chihuahuas were an exception. Daffi grabbed Garlick and skipped onto the road to get past them.

  Each furry domed doggy head followed them, buggy eyes glittering with barely contained malevolence. Daffi shuddered. They were utter demonic little land-sharks just looking for their next kill. She was convinced their collars were actually control devices stopping them from going on a rampaging feeding frenzy through the streets of London.

  Garlick sniggered and somehow managed to flip them off even though he technically didn’t have a middle finger.

  “Would you stop that?” she huffed as the street behind them erupted into doggy chaos. Each rage-filled dog tried to reach the cat at the same time, but the
n the red mist took over and several attacked each other instead. Then it became a free-for-all that took up the entire sidewalk and half the road. Black cabs swerved, and a bus nearly ended up in a coffee shop.

  All the while a high-pitched woman’s voice called out,, “No no, Mr. Snufflepoo, please don’t bite Mrs. Cottoncuddles… Mister Wufflebottom, don’t you dare! Oh my… you are all bad doggies! Bad doggies, I say!”

  Garlick huffed. “She went for the bad doggy switch early. Dammit!”

  Daffi cast a look over her shoulder to see all the demonic little puffs of fluff doing their best to look innocent and contrite.

  “Shit-stirrer,” she hissed at Garlick, who had made his way up to her shoulder again. Why she was so out of breath when she hauled his furry ass around all the time, she did not know. She’d need cupcakes at break for sure now. A mountain of them. Like most witches, she burned through calories like no one’s business.

  “Oh, thank the crone, just in time,” she huffed as she ran up the steps at the front of the museum, stepping into the revolving door just as the clock began to chime nine. Her heart pounding, she waved to Dave, the flirty weredog who ran the ticket booth and gift shop.

  She didn’t get to talk to him much, but he was a hit with female visitors with his good looks and cute, long blond hair in a man-bun. She was fairly sure he got a lot of women’s numbers written on tickets shoved down the back of his pants. She didn’t blame them. If she wasn’t so homely, she might have tried to chat him up herself. At least he’d never seen her with her freaky real hair, the pure white covered up with a red dye.