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  Fried Green Witch

  Bless Your Witch Book Eight

  Amy Boyles

  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

  Epilogue

  20. THANK Y’ALL

  Also by Amy Boyles

  About the Author

  ONE

  “What’s happening?” my sister, Seraphina—Sera for short—yelled.

  “I’m growing, and not in a good way,” Reid screeched. “If I wanted something to get bigger, I’d rather it be my boobs, not my butt, and definitely not my stomach! Ah!”

  I watched as my younger sister, Reid, started to expand. And it was exactly as she claimed—Reid was swelling in all the wrong places.

  Panic fluttered in my chest. “Um, Sera? We might need to do something about this. Like, yesterday.”

  Sera’s jaw fell. “How many pastries did you eat, Reid?”

  Reid extended her hands in front of her. She wiggled fat, sausage-like fingers. I grimaced because they looked painful. I mean, skin was only supposed to get so large. “I don’t know,” she said, exasperated. “Three? It wasn’t that many.” She shot Sera a terrified look. “What’s happening?”

  Sera threaded her fingers through her silky-smooth chin-length brown hair. She crossed to the plate of pastry cups that were piled high with fruit and cheeses. “I don’t know. I’m trying this new recipe, and I wished that whoever ate the food would feel lighter? Better about themselves? I wanted these morsels to make people happy.”

  Reid’s feet lifted off the floor. She scrambled to grab hold of a chair. “I don’t think you have to worry about them making anyone feel lighter. You might as well have given me a shot of helium in my tush. I’m about to float away.”

  Sera threw her arms into the air. “You cannot float away, Reid. The baby shower’s supposed to start any minute.”

  Yeah, because the baby shower was our biggest concern at this point.

  The kitchen door flew open, and there stood my maternal grandmother, Hazel Horton. Silver rings tinkled on her fingers, and her silver hair had been swept off her face and up toward the sky. It looked like she had rows of feathers on both sides of her head. “Girls, how are things going in the kitchen? The ladies are starting to arrive for the shower.”

  Sera worried her hands. “It’s not going well at all. Reid is floating.”

  I glanced at my sister. Her feet hovered a good foot and a half above the floor. She clutched a chair as it teetered to one side. It was only a matter of time before it lifted as well.

  Grandma unwound a pumpkin-colored scarf from her neck. “What did you put in the food, Sera? Helium?”

  Reid dug her nails into the chair. “That’s what I said.”

  Sera shrugged. “I didn’t do anything. I made the recipe like normal, but I thought about the eater feeling lighter—you know, so they wouldn’t be all bloated after their meal.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Because pastries always make someone feel like they’ve just ingested three pounds of Thanksgiving dinner.”

  Sera shot me a dark look. “You know what I mean, Dylan.”

  “Could y’all please stop arguing and start saving me?” Reid said. “I’m not trying to float off and away here. Last I checked, my name was not Mary Poppins.”

  “You more resemble Violet in that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie,” I mused.

  But Reid had absolutely no control over what was happening. A twinge of fear knotted my stomach. I loved my family. Really loved them. As much as I joked with them and got annoyed with their antics, I didn’t want anything to happen to them. In fact, it was kind of this weird fear of mine. I wanted all of us to stay together and be happy forever—or at least as long as we could.

  That was why it had taken me so long to finally accept my boyfriend’s marriage proposal—because I didn’t want to leave my family. For some reason I equated getting married and leaving with losing my connection to them.

  It was silly, I know. But I can be a silly person.

  Grandma circled Reid. Then she studied the pastries. She picked one up and turned it over before placing it back on the tray. She clasped her hands in front of her and said, “Well, it looks like some magic was done on these.”

  I threw up my hands. “Of course magic was performed on the food. We know that. We need to figure out how to help Reid.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Reid shrieked. “I can’t get myself down.”

  I gnawed on my bottom lip for a second before spitting it out. “What if we tied weights to her ankles?”

  Grandma poked the air. “Great idea, Dylan. Let’s tie her down with weights. That’s the ticket.”

  Sera rubbed her palms down her face. “Why did my magic do this? All I wanted was to make some food.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got a baby shower right now and a sister who’s trying to drift away like a hot-air balloon.”

  Grandma opened and closed her hands. “I was afraid of this,” she mumbled. “Just so afraid this would happen to one of my girls. I never thought it would, mind you. But it looks like it has.”

  Sera and I exchanged a glance. I flashed a confused glance at my grandmother. “What are you talking about?”

  The door to the kitchen banged open. “Why is Reid trying to fly away?”

  I smirked and turned to face Roman Bane, chief detective of the Silver Springs, Alabama, police department and my fiancé.

  I smiled widely as his green eyes met my gaze. His shoulder-length blond hair was pulled back, and a dusting of scruff lined his razor-sharp jaw. Roman wore a dark turtleneck sweater that hugged his biceps and chest, revealing the quarterback physique that I admired and had permission to touch.

  You can all be jealous. I don’t blame you. I would be too, if that shoe was on a different pair of feet.

  But anyway, a storm of locusts tornadoed inside my stomach every time I thought the word fiancé, but it fit. It was perfect. We were perfect. Life was perfect.

  Except for Reid’s hot-air-balloon situation, that was.

  “Would you believe that she ate some of Sera’s cooking?” I said.

  Roman crossed to me. He wrapped a hand around my waist and brushed his lips across my forehead. “With all the crazy things that happen in your family, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit.”

  I tried not to be insulted by that remark, but it was true. See, my family and I are witches, and that tends to get us in a whole heap of trouble. Case in point, my sister.

  “Thanks for helping with the chairs, Roman,” Sera said.

  Roman grabbed a stack of folding chairs and headed for the main room of the community center. “No problem.”

  I turned to Grandma. “You said you hoped it wouldn’t happen to us. What’s it?”

  Grandma sniffed Sera’s food. “Smells harmless enough. Looks harmless enough. But definitely isn’t harmless.”

  Sera threaded a lock of hair behind her ear. “Would you please just tell us what’s going on? The suspense is killing me.”

  Grandma clasped her hands together. “A one-third full moon is coming. There are many different moons i
n the witch calendar, but the one-third full is special. Sometimes when it lands on an odd-numbered year and that odd-numbered year also happens to have a total solar eclipse, then what happens is that certain witches—not all witches but some witches—can have problems with their powers.”

  Reid’s feet were now perpendicular to the chair’s height. “All I know is that this needs to stop before I’m touching the ceiling.”

  Sera worried her bottom lip. “What do you mean about the moon?”

  Grandma wiggled her fingers. Her silver rings tinkled and clanked. “I mean, you got the curse, kid. Unfortunately until the moon clears, the stars realign, and Mother Nature goes back to normal, your magic is going to be wickety-wack.”

  I cocked a brow. “Wickety-wack? Is that like some ancient saying that we don’t know about?”

  Grandma offered a feeble smile. “Dylan, I’m just trying to keep up with you young folks and your outlandish colloquialisms.”

  I patted her shoulder. “How about you not try to keep up with us?”

  “Help! Somebody help me.”

  I glanced over at Reid. Her feet were now pointed straight up. As much as it was amusing to see my sister in this predicament—not because I’m a sadist or anything, but only because…well, you know, practical jokes are kind of funny—it was serious.

  “Grandma, can you please save her?” I said.

  Grandma cracked her knuckles. “Well, Sera should technically be the person to do it, but since her magic is not so hot, I shall do the honors.”

  Roman swept into the kitchen. “Probably a good thing because the ladies are walking in.”

  Sera fisted her hands and cringed. “Please, Grandma. We have to hurry. They can’t see her like this. I can’t get blamed for it. I don’t want anyone to know what happened. You’ve got to help me.”

  “Can you please breathe?” I said, rubbing her shoulders. “Just breathe. Everything will be fine.”

  Grandma wiggled her fingers and closed her eyes. A second later Reid started drifting back to the floor.

  “Whew,” she said, obviously relieved. “Thank goodness. I was afraid you were going to let me fly right out the window.”

  “There’s not a window open,” I said.

  Reid’s feet clicked onto the linoleum. She flashed me a wicked smile. “I know, but I can never be too careful around y’all. It would just be my luck that a window would appear and I’d fly right out of it.”

  “Thankfully that didn’t happen,” I said. I clapped my hands together. “Great. Since that crisis was averted, I guess we gotta figure out the next one.”

  Sera twisted her hair around her finger. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, clearly we can’t serve this food. It’s liable to make someone explode,” I said, joking.

  Roman traced a thumb over his straight jaw. “She’s right. What happened to Reid will happen to someone else.”

  Sera’s face crumpled. “Grandma, what am I gonna do?”

  Grandma peeked out the door. “I don’t know, but we may want to go out there and stop them.”

  Sera’s eyes widened. “What you mean?”

  Grandma grimaced. “They’re already starting to eat.”

  TWO

  Sera and I ran into the Normal, Alabama, community center meeting room. We swooped down on the food, and I slapped away hands that were reaching for a bite. “Oh my gosh, I am so sorry, but these are not ready yet.”

  Sera scooped up the tray and wrapped her arms around it tightly, shielding people from the morsels. “There’s a few more touches I need to add.”

  Maisie Trip, the woman who put the entire baby shower together, already had her fingers curled around an hors d’oeuvre.

  I tapped the bottom of her hand. The bite flew skyward, and I snatched it from the air. “So sorry to take that, but like we said, it’s not ready yet.”

  Maisie flashed me a dark look. She had short chestnut hair and piercing eyes. “I’m the one who hired y’all for this. I can hire you, and I can fire you. In fact, maybe you should just go.”

  “No, no,” Sera said, trying to salvage the situation. “It’s all going to be fine.”

  Maisie Trip was nothing if not a nasty person. I knew her from visiting my boutique, Perfect Fit. She was one of those people you hated to see coming but knew they would spend a lot of money once they were inside. So it was definitely a love-hate relationship. She was a witch and had only recently found out about my shop. This was her sister’s baby shower, and from what I gathered, the entire party was composed of witches. The last thing any of us needed was a drove of magical women thinking we wanted to hex or spell them. Talk about bad for business.

  Sera swung the tray of food away. “Just give me a few minutes. I’ll finish these, and they’ll be perfect.”

  The girl beside Maisie, a tall-blonde-haired slip of a thing, pinched her brows together and sneered. “It’s probably not going to be any good anyway. I don’t know why you hired these novice witches, Maisie. They barely know how to work a simple spell, let alone feed us.”

  “Now, now, Tina,” Maisie said, “don’t be mean to the help.”

  Sera’s face burned red. I could practically see the steam erupting from her ears. I quickly intervened. “We might be new at witchcraft, but we’re not novices. Sera just needs to finish up a few things. Give us five minutes. Mingle among yourselves, and before you know it, we’ll be back with enough food to feed you for an entire year. Not that you eat food because clearly you are very thin.”

  Tina’s eyes widened.

  “Maybe you should just go,” Maisie said.

  Tina grabbed her arm. “Let them stay, Maisie. See what they can do.”

  For once the thin line of Maisie’s mouth curled into a frown of worry. I didn’t know what that was about, but I ignored it, yanking Sera back into the kitchen.

  Grandma stood over the counter, magic sprinkling from her fingers onto an aluminum tray. “Since Sera can’t fix any food, I decided to make tiny ham and cheese sandwiches. Just the sort of thing these ladies will love for the baby shower.”

  Sera groaned. “I promised them nice food. Like, really nice food—not hot dogs and sauerkraut.”

  “Hey,” Reid said. “I love hot dogs and sauerkraut. In fact I could eat a bowl right now. Grandma, can you make that happen?”

  Grandma snapped her fingers. “Coming right up!”

  “How did you end up getting hired by these witches again?” I said.

  Sera stared at the aluminum tray filled with ham and cheese finger sandwiches. “They were having a witch baby shower and wanted another witch to make the food. I thought it would be easy. But I didn’t think this would happen.”

  “Well, it looks like you have to come up with something or else Maisie and her blonde friend there will probably start some kind of rumors about us.”

  Roman walked over and stared at the tray. “This looks good. I don’t think you should care what they think anyway. Give them some sandwiches and some punch. They’ll be fine.”

  I snapped my fingers. “That’s a great idea. Sera, tell us the ingredients for the punch and we’ll whip something together super quick.”

  Sera went over everything in the stocked fridge, and we came up with a quick meal of punch, sandwiches, and a cream cheese spread. I mean, who doesn’t love a good cream cheese spread? I know I do. During the holidays Sera always makes this fabulous one, and I could eat the whole container of it. In fact, I probably have before, but I really don’t want to admit it because that would be admitting I have a problem.

  We got all the food together at about the same time as the rest of the guests arrived. Maisie’s sister was the expectant party, and I really didn’t want her to ingest any of Sera’s food. I knew Sera didn’t, either. It was definitely better to be safe than sorry.

  I helped Sera whisk the trays out, and we settled them on a table decorated with little booties and pacifiers. The guests milled about. One mousy-looking woman came over and started
nibbling.

  “This looks good,” she said. “I really don’t know why I’m here. I’m friends with Daisy, the woman who’s expecting, but not with anybody else.”

  I extended my hand. “Well, now you know me. I’m Dylan Apel. This is my sister Sera.”

  We shook hands. “Caroline Applebury. Nice to meet you.”

  Maisie and her entourage sauntered up to the table. “I hope you’re only charging half of what you quoted me, Sera. This is definitely less than what I expected. What you had out here a few minutes ago was a thousand times better than this slop. What happened? Did you eat it yourselves?”

  The gaggle of women behind her snickered. Heat flared in my cheeks. “No. We tried those sandwiches, and they gave us food poisoning. We were trying to keep you from getting it too, but there might be a touch of it already in these sandwiches. Be sure to help yourself.”

  Sera shot me a dark look. “Dylan,” she hissed.

  I shrugged. I didn’t like nasty people, and I didn’t see why Maisie had to be that way. She was the sort of person that got away with saying whatever she wanted. People accepted whatever came out of her mouth. I wasn’t going to be one of the herd on that one.

  Maisie’s lip curled into a snarl. “It looks like I won’t be doing business with either one of you anymore. As far as I’m concerned, the whole witching community will find out about this. You might as well go ahead and leave.”

  Tina butted in front of her. “Maisie, we have to let them stay. They went to all this trouble. I’m sure it’s good enough.”

  Maisie’s mouth did that funny curved thing again. It was as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t.