Magic Hidden, Magic Found: A Cozy Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (Wyrd Words & Witchcraft Book 1)

Published by Blue Octopus Press www.BlueOctopusPress.com (831) 471-7028 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData Rosenberg, Jessica Magic Hidden, Magic Found / Jessica Rosenberg Copyright © 2023 by Jessica Rosenberg Cover design by Karen Dimmick/Arcane Covers Magic Hidden, Magic Found is a work of fiction. Its characters, scenes, and locales are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to fictional characters to people living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. If you have found this book anywhere other than on Amazon, it has been pirated. I dedicate this book to you, my reader. Thank you for loving this world and these characters as much as I do. Bookstores always remind me that there are good things in this world.~ Vincent Van Gogh 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 Chapter About The Author One From the moment I learned to string letters into words, and words into stories, books were my haven. A single sentence was all it took to whisk me away from a reality where I was a thorn in everyone’s side, including my own. Cocooned inside a book’s welcoming pages, my anxiety and lurking panic attacks faded away, allowing me to become the fearless adventurer I yearned to be. The desperate urge to escape reality had waned since my grandmother had been convicted of attempted murder, along with a few other less savory crimes. My haven these days was my beloved bookstore, Wyrd Words. On days when my life felt too good to be real, all it took was the scent of delectable pastries wafting through the arched opening separating my store from my cousin Cassie’s bakery to remind me that, no, I wasn’t lost in the pages of a book. This was real life, and it was mine. The building that housed both of our stores and our apartments was imbued with transmogrifying magic that defied logic. It had plucked the bookshop of my dreams from the depths of my longings as I watched my previous bookshop burn to the ground. (Arson was only one of the many reasons my grandmother was in jail.) Much to my unmitigated delight, the new shop had come equipped with the ultimate library lover’s dream, an antique rolling ladder that ran the length of the hand-carved bookshelves at the back of the store. "Aunt Juliette! Have you seen my report anywhere?" Aurie, my cousin’s tween daughter, called from her mother’s bakery. She skidded into my shop with Willow, her gangly golden haired puppy, hot on her heels. "The one you were working on yesterday?" I asked, ignoring a jolt of panic. My days of losing schoolwork were long in my past. Aurie's head swiveled wildly as she tried to look everywhere all at once. Her expression made it clear she thought little of my question. "Duh." At her age, if I had ever spoken to an adult with so much sass, I would… I shuddered. My childhood had been the polar opposite of Aurie's. While her colorful life overflowed with people who adored her and watched out for her, mine had been bleak and lonely. My mother, widowed shortly after I was born, had been hampered by the kind of developmental incapacitation that made it hard for her to keep a regular job. She'd struggled to make ends meet, often reduced to working multiple unsavory jobs no one else wanted. Because of her haphazard, unreliable schedule, I had been shuttled around our small town, passed from one set of reluctant hands to another. Mrs. Murphy, the most consistent of the old women who tended to my most basic needs, had been short on tolerance and quick with punishments. She'd had little patience for a child who got so lost in her books she forgot her chores. Catching my horrified expression, the petulant expression on my cousin's precocious tween face morphed into something a little more sheepish and slightly less insolent. "Sorry. I'm gonna be in so much trouble if I don't turn in my report today. Please, don't tell my mom. It was due two days ago. Mrs. Wilkinson said I could hand it in late as long as it was amazing. Whatever that means. I think I did pretty good, so I don't want to redo it." “Pretty well, and I agree. It's a well-thought-out, competently written report.” An unexpected wave of affection washed away the distressing memory sparked by her earlier attitude. "You left it on the small table next to the armchair in the local history section." Aurie slapped her forehead. “Doy! I'm such a dummy.” Before I could call her on her negative self-talk, she was off and running. Not that I was one to throw stones. My thoughts would have undoubtedly kept spiraling if Hugh, my recently discovered uncle and business partner, hadn’t stepped into the bookshop from the bakery cautiously carrying two steaming mugs. “How do you always know where everything is?” he asked with a frown I couldn’t quite interpret. Cassie's previously estranged father, and the oldest of the family members I had unexpectedly found over the last twelve months, was the hardest to read. On the surface, he looked like a run-of-the-mill sixty-something, gray-haired man who'd weathered more than his fair share of hardships. A few months of working together running Wyrd Words had revealed that he was anything but average. We were both adjusting to suddenly having a bustling family, but it was