Crone of thorns, p.1
Crone of Thorns, page 1
Copyright © 2026 by Amanda M. Lee
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CRONE OF THORNS
A SPELLS ANGELS COZY MYSTERY BOOK FIFTEEN
AMANDA M. LEE
WINCHESTERSHAW PUBLICATIONS
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
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About the Author
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1
ONE
“On your left.”
I called out the warning a split-second too late and Marissa Martin jumped in the wrong direction, right into the path of the jackalope.
I threw a spell at the creature — it might look harmless enough but they’re never harmless — and it exploded. Marissa saw what I was about to do and made a frantic dive into the bushes. Only a hint of scruff hit her instead of the entrails, yet the screech she let out was straight out of a horror movie kill scene.
“You did that on purpose!”
I managed to school my features. One of my favorite pastimes was terrorizing Marissa. She’d asked on more than one occasion to be paired with someone else for our outings. She’d been denied so far. That was like a Christmas gift in late May.
I, Scout Randall, have always appreciated torturing my coworkers. It’s just one of my little quirks.
“I told you to look on your left,” I said. Marissa was still in the bushes and showed no sign of climbing out. “Sorry.”
I wasn’t sorry. Not even a little. Playing the game, the one where I push Marissa to the point of derangement, was part of the fun.
“Scout.” Andrea, another co-worker and also my mother, fixed me with a pointed look. “Give it a rest.”
I eyed her, debating if I should let it go. Her and my father Rick, who was also on this excursion with us, had been adamant that they didn’t want to be treated differently. They believed I was purposely keeping them at arm’s length because I didn’t want to embrace them. I was still debating that.
Okay, it was probably true. They made me nervous. I hadn’t been introduced to them until recently because they’d abandoned me as a child. You might think I would hate them for life but I don’t. I understood why they’d done what they had.
“I’m going to keep doing what I do,” I said to Andrea, offering up a bright smile to offset her scowl. “Thanks for the advice, though.” I shot her a sarcastic thumbs-up, then winked at Rick for good measure. “I’ll keep hunting.”
“Of course you will,” Andrea muttered.
I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know that she and Rick were exchanging those looks. The ones that indicated wondering where they went wrong as parents. That was a trail they couldn’t traverse. I’d been raised in a series of foster homes before I extricated myself from the system as a teenager.
I used to feel bitterness where they were concerned. You don’t abandon your child, right? I understood better now why they’d made the decision.
In a nutshell, I was part of a prophecy. I would be the key player in a big battle involving innumerable paranormals. The people who didn’t want me fighting in that battle had tried to take me out when I was a kid. They were willing to take out my parents and my extended family to get to me. It was a concerted effort, and since I was a very rare witch — a pixie witch to be exact — they’d tried a variety of methods to kill me. Members of my extended family had died in the process.
To save the family — and hopefully me — my parents had hidden me in the system. I’d grown up wondering who I belonged to, and whether my magic was a reason for my abandonment. It turned out the magic was behind it all, but not for the reasons I’d assumed.
Yeah, it was a convoluted mess.
Now my parents were back, trying to get to know me, and the battle that everybody feared wasn’t far off. I wasn’t afraid to fight, but it felt weird to root for a battle that would likely result in the deaths of innocent people. For now, I was riding the wave … and wondering. When would everything fall on my shoulders?
“Hey.” Rick appeared at my side. I’d been getting lost in thought a lot these days. What with an ancient goddess taking up real estate in town and my sworn enemy set to return any day, there was a lot to think about.
“Hey.” I cast him a sidelong look and waited.
“How many more jackalopes are out here?”
That wasn’t the question he wanted to ask. He was easing me into what he likely assumed would be a difficult conversation. I was no stranger to difficult conversations, but I appreciated the subterfuge. If I could push something off, especially if it was “deep and meaningful,” I would.
“A fair number,” I replied, scanning the field. There was a solid forest line about two-hundred yards away. “I thought I got most of them last year.” I rolled my neck and looked to the west. I couldn’t see the little buggers but I could feel them. “Apparently not.”
“They’re like rabbits,” Rick noted. “That means they mate like … well, rabbits.”
“Mate?” My grin was sly as I aimed it at him. “They are vigorous little humpers.”
“Ugh.” Rick slapped his hand over his face, refusing to look at me. “You’re going to take this to a weird place, aren’t you?”
“If you have to ask, you don’t know me at all.” Seriously, how could he even pretend it was an option? “Is Andrea making Marissa feel better about her tumble into the bushes?”
“Would that bother you?”
I barked out a short laugh. “Why would it?”
“Maybe because we were never around to pull you out of bushes or put Band-Aids on your scrapes.” He swallowed hard. “Or soothe you when you had nightmares.”
I studied his profile. “Is this the parental guilt thing we’ve talked about?”
“Are you suggesting we shouldn’t feel guilty?”
I shrugged. “At this point in my life it’s wasted. If it makes you feel better, I don’t remember anyone bandaging my scraped knees or soothing me after nightmares.”
Despair — or something very close — rolled across his face. “Why would that make me feel better?”
A shrug was the only response I could come up with.
“Thinking of my child, in pain and terror, and no one to help her does not fill me with joy.” He almost sounded as if he were lecturing me.
“I didn’t sit around bleeding and crying from nightmares. I don’t actually remember ever having a scraped knee.” That was weird, right? “We ran around on playgrounds all the time yet I never fell.”
“I’m sure you fell.”
“I don’t think I did.” I turned my blue eyes on him. “Maybe I was such a superior physical specimen, even back then, that I never fell.” I liked that idea.
“You’re not exactly a physical specimen now,” Marissa said. “You use other people as cannon fodder.”
I leaned around Rick and offered her an exaggerated wink. “You know me so well, bunny bear.”
“Don’t call me that,” Marissa growled. She was on her feet and eyeing the bushes with distrust. I didn’t blame her. We were surrounded by jackalopes. If she knew how many, she would run.
“How about pumpkin?” I asked.
“I prefer you never talk to me again.”
“That’s not nearly as much fun.” I made fish lips at her to ratchet up her temper, then turned back to Rick. “Seriously. I don’t remember falling and I’m pretty sure I didn’t have nightmares.” I slapped his shoulder, maybe a little harder than necessary. “Don’t pout about it.”
Rick made an exasperated sound. “I know you’re trying to make me feel better —”
I cut off his melancholy nonsense. “Dude, I’m not blowing sunshine up your butt. I really don’t remember those things. I’m not saying bouncing around from house to house was a dream, but I swear I was never hurt. Not even a little … and I was a rambunctious kid.”
Rick folded his arms across his chest. “Did you just call me dude?”
Of course that’s what he would glom onto. “Gunner has been on a 1980s movie kick. He has a whole list he wants to get through.”
Gunner Stratton was my live-in love. I’d never intended to settle down with someone, not for more than a few months, but Gunner and I had been going strong for a year. I didn’t get schmaltzy over thoughts of “the one” or poofy wedding dresses, but I couldn’t see beyond him. When I imagined my future, he was always there. He wasn’t the whole of it because I wasn t that sort of witch, but he was a big part of it, and for the first time in my life the thought of home, of family, didn’t make me break out in hives.
“What sort of movies?” Rick asked, switching topics. He wasn’t great at transitions, and I sensed a trap. I was much happier talking about movies than feelings, though, so I jumped on the opportunity.
“I’ve been making him watch horror movies after the whole Hecate thing,” I started, briefly allowing my mind to land on the goddess. She’d set up an obstacle course of sorts for me weeks ago, then dropped the bomb that she was here to train me for the aforementioned battle. Then she had disappeared again. She was still around — I could feel her — but she wasn’t interacting with me.
Not that I was bitter about it or anything.
“You do have a one-track mind when it comes to entertainment,” Rick agreed dryly.
“Says the guy who picked his name from a zombie show,” I shot back.
His lips quirked. “Comic books. We picked the names from the comic books,” he corrected. “The Andrea on the show wasn’t nearly as good as the Andrea in the comic books.”
“So you’ve told me--repeatedly. I still haven’t read the comics and don’t see myself doing so. I don’t like turning pages. I prefer lying in bed naked, eating greasy chicken, and making fun of ’80s hairstyles with my boo.”
Rick blinked. “I didn’t need to know that you eat chicken in bed.” He swallowed hard. “Naked.”
It took everything I had not to burst out laughing. “I thought we were all about the honesty. That’s what you and Andrea have been pushing.”
“Not when it involves nudity and chicken.”
“Who’s getting nude and eating chicken?” Marissa demanded. She gave me a wide berth as she moved closer, her inner gossip warring with her survival skills. She would always err on the side of gossip.
“No one,” Rick answered quickly, averting his eyes again.
“I made the mistake of telling him that Gunner and I prefer eating chicken naked and watching ’80s movies to reading,” I replied. “He’s traumatized.”
Andrea laughed at her husband. She sidled closer to him, her smile as bright as her eyes. “That’s no different from us eating McDonald’s in bed naked while watching Dark Shadows.”
The smugness that had been pulsing through me dissipated in an instant. “Oh, gross!”
Andrea fixed me with an even stare. “Why is it okay for you to tell us about your nude television watching but we can’t do the same?”
She was trying to teach me a lesson. I should have seen that coming. Well, I would handle this with the level of grace and aplomb for which I was known. “It wasn’t about the nudity. It was about the soap opera. I’ve seen clips from that show. It was terrible. You can’t watch it and not shrivel up.” I cast Rick a significant look, but he refused to meet my gaze.
“It was not good,” Andrea readily agreed. “I wasn’t referring to the original soap, though. In the ’90s there was a reboot and the production values were high. It only lasted like half a season, but it was amazing.”
I was thrown. She was giving it right back to me. “I guess I’ll have to look it up,” I said.
The jackalopes were starting to surround us. I could feel them, telepathically communicating with each other, believing they had the upper hand. I’d decided to let them believe that right up until the moment they attacked. It would be easier to take them out that way than to track them down individually. I was all about the path of least resistance.
“How did you get on this topic?” Andrea asked.
“She called me ‘dude,’” Rick complained.
Andrea snorted. “You used to call everyone ‘dude’ back in the day.”
“But I grew up in a time when it was okay because it was commonplace. She’s stealing it from movies when she doesn’t understand the culture.”
“There’s a dude culture?” I laughed.
Rick bobbed his head. “You haven’t earned the right to ‘dude’ people.”
“I see.” My eyes flicked to Andrea. “When do I earn the right to ‘dude’ people?”
“Who knows.” Andrea waved off the question as if swatting at a pesky gnat. “I want to know what ‘dude’ movies you’ve been watching.”
I shrugged. “I’ve been making Gunner watch 1980s horror movies. The whole Hecate thing got me in the mood.”
“I can see that.” Andrea’s smile was encouraging.
“Gunner’s payback is that I watch 1980s movies. Some of them I’ve already seen, like The Goonies and Gremlins.” Weirdly, Gremlins made me think of the jackalopes, although the latter weren’t nearly as cute … in both their furry and scaly varieties.
“Both classics,” Andrea encouraged.
“He made me watch something called Heathers a few days ago,” I continued. “It was odd and yet fun.”
“Definitely a fun movie.”
“I like Christian Slater, which inspired him to show me Gleaming the Cube, which I found ridiculous but entertaining. Then we watched The Lost Boys and it made me sad because I really liked the two Coreys. I went down a rabbit hole to learn what happened to them.”
“It’s a pretty terrible story,” Andrea agreed.
“We watched a lot of their movies, and some with just one or the other,” I offered. “I really like The ’Burbs. That was amazing.”
“It sounds as if you and Gunner are becoming cultured,” Andrea, grinning, said.
“Naked chicken eating,” Rick muttered.
“Let it go.” Andrea patted his arm. “You know, if you like old movies, maybe we should arrange a family movie night. Your father and I could show you some of our favorites.”
Rick perked up. “I was considering suggesting just that before she distracted me.”
It wasn’t as if I hadn’t known he was laying the groundwork for a trap. I’d just walked into it thanks to an assist from Andrea. “Well … .”
“Sounds fabulous,” Andrea interjected, her smile wide. “You can show us one of your horror movies and we’ll show you one of our favorites. It will be a bonding exercise.”
“Yes, who doesn’t want to bond?” I drawled.
Marissa’s hand shot into the air, reminding us all that she was still present. “Me. I don’t want to bond with you people. In fact, I hate you. I have no idea why Rooster keeps sending me out with you despite my requests to switch partners.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s your karma, dear,” Andrea replied.
Marissa ignored her. “I don’t want to be here all day. The longer we’re here, the more likely I am to get covered in guts or jackalope bits. Can’t we just end this?”
“There’s no reason for impatience,” Rick protested. “It’s been a nice afternoon.”
Translation: He wasn’t ready to say goodbye to this conversation, as it was going relatively well for a change.
I had bad news for him. The jackalopes were mere seconds from mounting their attack.
“Actually … .” Before I could finish, or even decide what I was going to say, screeches rang out from the bushes. The jackalopes had decided to warn us about their impending attack.
Marissa paled ten shades. “Oh, no!” She started backing up.
“Wait!” I took a step toward her. She was going to ruin my plan, and for once I had no intention of terrorizing her. I had other things to worry about.
It was too late. Marissa didn’t trust me, and she turned to run.
I responded on instinct, throwing up a shield that protected Rick, Andrea, and me. Marissa was too far away to cover, especially if I wanted to take out all the jackalopes at once.
Marissa screamed as the jackalopes came out of the woodwork. I stopped worrying about her and instead focused on our enemy. She would be fine. Messy, but fine. I would never hear the end of it of course, but I was used to that.
“Congelo,” I hissed, my magic flaring to life as the jackalopes launched themselves into the air. My spell caught them midair, froze them in place, and then exploded them in every direction.
It was a very gross scene and I was glad it happened away from the more populated areas of town because there would be no explaining it.
The jackalope bits bounced harmlessly off the shield I’d erected and I dropped it when we were in the clear.
