Where the Shadows Linger (Gospels & Grimoires #3)

Prologue Welcome to Willow Grove

Welcome to Willow Grove

A TOWN OUTSIDE OF TIME

Willow Grove, Georgia isn’t on most maps. But if you drive far enough past the big-box churches and subdivisions, you’ll find it tucked between the pines: a place where gardens grow in the shape of hearts, where the dead don’t always stay buried, and where the Ward family has lived for generations.

THE STORY THUSFAR

Willow Rhodes came to town looking for quiet—but what she found was Rhett Ward: the eldest of five haunted brothers, the keeper of a crumbling house and a family curse that said no Ward man would ever keep what he loved.

Together, they unearthed the truth: a long-buried legacy of midwives and witches, of whispered magic and grief that bloomed in the soil. And somehow—between garden beds and ghost stories, first kisses and final reckonings—they broke the curse wide open.

Now they’re married, and they have a daughter, Hazel.

But the Wards’ story didn’t end there.

Before the wedding, a visiting seminarian named June Fontenot helped cleanse the house of what lingered—a grief-bound exorcism in prayer, salt, and sunlight.

Silas Ward, the quietest brother, gifted Willow the dress his fiancée never got to wear.

During that wedding—or wexorcism, as the Wards called it—the reverend and the brooding widower found a connection they couldn’t explain.

They tried to ignore it. Pretended it wasn’t real.

But some ghosts don’t stay buried…and neither do some feelings.

June returned to Willow Grove—and this time, Silas made sure she stayed. Together, they faced the darkness of his past, the secrets of hers, and something even stranger stirring beneath the floorboards of the old church. In the end, it wasn’t just the house that needed healing. It was them.

Now they're married too…and it seems inevitable that the middle brother, Beau is next.

NOELLE & BEAU

Beau Ward knows all about fixing things. Cars. Houses. Problems. Other people’s ghosts.

But when a skeptical cryptid podcaster named Noelle Kinney rolls into town for the Gloaming Festival, looking for a story and not much else, he might finally meet something he can’t repair—or walk away from.

And this time, the thing that haunts them doesn’t want to be ignored.