From Fear to Eternity (A Moonstone Bay Cozy Mystery #17)

Chapter 1

ONE

“Isn’t it gauche for me to wear white?”

I looked at my fiancé Galen Blackwood, who was tucked in at my side on a patio lounger despite the heat. He’d carried a box fan from inside and placed it on the pavement so we could get a bit of air, and I was comfortable even though I was sweating through my tank top.

The heat on Moonstone Bay, our paranormal utopia in the middle of nowhere, was no joke.

It had taken me a long time to adjust to the heat and even now Galen made fun of how red my face got on hot days.

He called me a “mainlander at heart” and even though he didn’t mean it as an insult, I took it as one.

I, Hadley Hunter, had embraced Moonstone Bay as my home.

I’d made friends — the best of my life — and fallen in love.

I was going to get married on the island.

I was going to live here forever. I wanted to belong.

Being reminded that I often forgot to drink enough water and refused to leave the couch when the temperature got into triple digits irritated me.

Today wasn’t about the heat, though. Today was about planning our wedding. We were six weeks out and today had been earmarked for making decisions.

Galen, his five o’clock shadow firmly in place at two o’clock, made a face. “What?”

He was handsome, criminally so, and even though he ran hot because he was a shifter, he wasn’t sweating in the shade like me. It was so unfair.

“White signifies purity,” I explained. “Last time I checked, that thing you made me do last night proves I’m not pure.”

He didn’t smile. More often than not he found me funny. Apparently I’d missed the mark with that joke. “I didn’t make you do anything. Don’t phrase it like that. People will think I’m a deviant.”

That made me laugh. “People already think we’re deviants. Didn’t you hear what Cheryl Wood said about us when we were leaving dinner last night?”

Galen’s lips spread into a lazy smile. “That thing about me being a sex god? I heard.”

My forehead creased. “Um … that was the woman with her, and she didn’t mean it the way you think.”

“Oh, she meant it.” Galen bobbed his head. “She said, and I quote ‘I would sleep with him ten times a day too. Look at that butt.’”

I rolled my eyes. “Cheryl said that we had sex written on our faces, and she didn’t mean it as a compliment. She said we always had sex written all over our faces and then she ventured things were wrong with my lady parts because I wasn’t pregnant yet.”

Galen poked my sweaty side. “I like your lady parts. There’s nothing wrong with them.”

“Of course not. I’m on birth control. We agreed on that.” I gave him a severe look. Shifters were notorious for procreating. I’d heard so many wild stories about shifter couples popping out entire baseball teams I was still scandalized. And a little terrified.

Galen laughed at my discomfort. “I don’t want a kid just yet,” he assured me. “I’m perfectly fine waiting.”

Waiting was good. We had a lot on our plates of late and adding a baby to the mix would be …

well, that would be too much. Not only am I a witch learning her trade, I am also the interim mayor.

I was still uncertain how that had happened.

I had no desire to be mayor. When the previous form of government — an out-of-control Development District Authority with nefarious designs for the island — had been ousted, I’d somehow been volunteered for the leadership position.

I still hadn’t come to grips with it.

I’d only learned I was a witch upon moving to the island in the wake of my maternal grandmother’s death — I’d never known her growing up, but she’d left her lighthouse to me in her will — I’d been understandably surprised at what I found on Moonstone Bay.

I’d grown up in a very human home thanks to my mother dying in childbirth.

My father raised me as “normal” and I’d had no idea the paranormal world existed.

Then I’d landed in Moonstone Bay and my entire world view had been shattered.

Not only were witches real — and I was one — but my grandmother’s ghost was still running around offering advice.

The first friend I’d met had been swimming naked in the ocean.

Aurora was a siren, or a water elemental I’d later learned.

The guy who drove me from the airport to the lighthouse was a cupid, or an air elemental.

The sheriff, who was called to help me after a scary incident, was a wolf shifter and now I was engaged to him.

Then there was Lilac Meadows, my best friend.

She was a half-demon, or a fire elemental.

Together, we’d done a lot of fantastical things the past year and a half.

We were a tight unit. And now I was getting married and planting my roots on this island forever.

If I thought too hard about everything that had happened, my heart clenched and my mind began to spin.

“Hey.” Galen snapped his fingers in front of my face to get my attention.

I jerked up my chin, surprised he’d interrupted my reverie. “What?”

“Where did your head just go?” He was no longer smiling. He looked worried.

“I was just thinking that two years ago I was on the mainland in a dead-end job with no idea I was a witch,” I said. “I didn’t know you … or Lilac. I had no idea that cupids were a thing. Or that they could be as hot as they are.”

Galen’s expression darkened. “Booker is not better looking than me.”

I adopted an air of innocence. Booker — no other name because the dude thought he was Cher or something — was an air elemental who had a way with the ladies.

He and Galen had grown up together and claimed to hate one another.

Every story I heard, every catastrophe we survived, made me realize they were idiots if they believed that.

They were best friends, although both would die before admitting it.

“I didn’t say he was better looking.” I patted Galen’s forearm. “I said he was hot. You’re obviously hotter.”

“That’s right.” Galen bobbed his head. “I am hotter.” He fell silent a moment before speaking again. “On a scale of one to ten, how much hotter am I?”

I was used to questions like this. Galen and Booker were locked in constant competition. When trouble came calling, they banded together to fight it, but they never stopped messing with one another.

“Ten,” I answered without hesitation. I knew what was expected of me. “Definitely ten.”

“Good answer.” He kissed the corner of my mouth. Ever since deciding two weeks ago that we were going forward with the wedding sooner he’d been a lovey-dovey dude. It made me smile. “Let’s go back to the dress.”

He tapped the magazine we were scanning. “Why don’t you think you can wear white?”

“I told you.” This question made me itchy.

It was likely Catholic guilt. My father had taken me to church until I was about eight and I still remembered some of the sermons.

Sex before marriage was bad. That one stuck with me because my father brought it up constantly when I dated as a teenager.

Sure, I understood now — through the lens of adulthood — that he was trying to protect me, but I couldn’t let it go.

“Brides wear white,” Galen insisted.

I had no idea why he was so fixated on this one detail. “Tell me why,” I ordered. “I don’t want to hear about tradition or how it’s supposed to be that way. Tell me why you’re so insistent.”

Galen’s sigh was long and drawn out. I’d trapped him in a conversation he didn’t want to have and there was no escaping. “Because when I picture you saying your vows, you’re wearing white,” he admitted.

My heart did a little lurch.

“I don’t picture a specific dress,” he continued. “I see a moonlight ceremony with you in white kind of glowing,” His cheeks colored slightly. “I know it’s your dress and you get the final say, but I don’t want some antiquated belief keeping you from a white dress.”

I angled my head as I regarded him. “I can wear white.”

He grinned, then sobered. “Are you doing that for me or you?”

“For both of us.”

“Good.” He leaned in to kiss me in an absolutely perfect Moonstone Bay moment. Unfortunately, it didn’t last.

“There’s a banana in the fruit salad,” a voice squawked amidst a flutter of feathers.

I jolted in Galen’s arms. Overhead, Carlos the parrot swooped above the patio — thankfully he didn’t crap as he was flying for a change — and landed in a palm tree not far away.

The parrot stared at us balefully.

“Making the bacon,” he added for good measure.

Carlos had been on the loose for months.

He was a pet — or had been — and had made his escape despite his owner’s best efforts.

His vocabulary consisted only of sex euphemisms, which had me side eyeing the woman who still cried at regular intervals when she saw him and he refused to fly to her.

We lived on a tropical island so Carlos was in no danger of going hungry or succumbing to cold, but storm season wasn’t far off.

I was thinking of using my magic to trap him before that.

I didn’t want anything to happen to the bird though. I was a softie at heart.

“I’m going to turn you into teeny-tiny drumettes,” Galen threatened Carlos. “You ruined my chance to get freaky on the patio.”

Carlos didn’t look bothered by the threat. “Stuff that muffin.”

Galen growled and I stifled a laugh.

“We were not going to get freaky out here,” I supplied. “You know I don’t do public displays of nudity.”

“You wouldn’t have had to be nude. I could’ve managed to get freaky with you and not removed a single item of clothing.”

That seemed unlikely. Intriguing, but unlikely. “Your brother will be here in about twenty minutes.”

Galen stiffened at my use of the word brother. Julian Nichols, a Florida shifter alpha, was moving to the island. Actually, he was temporarily moving in. He’d committed to two months to determine if he could acclimate to island life. After that, he would decide if he wanted to stay.