Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie We're In Trouble! (The Toad Witch Mysteries Book 2)
Read Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie We're In Trouble! (The Toad Witch Mysteries Book 2) Online
Authors: Christiana Miller
Tags: #Occult, #Horror, #Genre Fiction, #Ghosts, #Literature & Fiction
Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie We’re In Trouble!
Christiana Miller
HekaRose Publishing electronic publication date:
August 2014
Electronic Edition
Copyright © 2014 Christiana Miller
Cover Design by: Deanna Dionne
HekaRose Publishing
All Rights Are Reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Electronic Edition License Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Dedication
To my little muse, whose song of love, wisdom and creativity inspired me to dance,
May your life be filled with music, magick, laughter and love!
Acknowledgements
Big THANK YOUs go to:
To Griffin and Mark, for everything you do.
To my beautiful AR, I’m in awe of your boundless creativity and imagination and I love you so much.
To my grown-up kids, for being so awesome, and to my Mom, who always asks me when the next book will be out.
To Troy and Stephanie, for your unwavering support and for allowing me to immortalize Lord Grundleshanks.
A big thank you to Nicole Brooks for coming up with the title, Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie We’re In Trouble!
To Donna McCue, Karen Ann Coffey, Carrie Wolf, Terry Parrish, Mickey Claus, Debbie Clayton, Tawnya Murphy, Cyndi McCormick, Jennifer Krause, Michele Clement and Karen Ann Sturgen for playing the name game.
But most of all, I want to send a big thank you to the Universe and the Muses for coaxing me onto this path, to my amazing readers, who’ve been so incredibly supportive, and to all the children in the family, for giving me hope for the future.
Also By Christiana Miller
Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She’s Dead
Love and Other Distractions (anthology)
Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie We’re In Trouble!
Mara’s in hell! Neither one of the guys in her life is talking to her. Paul, her ex-boyfriend, is afraid she’s going to give birth to a baby demon—complete with horns and hooves. He wants proof that he’s actually the father. And her best friend, Gus, is so obsessed with his new boyfriend and his plans for the late, great, Lord Grundleshanks the Poisonous Toad, he has no time for anyone else.
After Gus flips the seasons and manages to bring summer into winter, everything starts going weirdly wrong. Summer refuses to leave. Household electronics start going haywire. When J.J., a local boy, vanishes from Mara’s car, Mara begins to suspect he’s been turned into a rat. But it’s such a crazy idea, who could she possibly talk to abut it? Then, her dead Aunt Tillie shows up to warn her that Gus is in trouble—big trouble—and it’s up to Mara to save him.
Before Mara can stop him, Gus opens up a portal to Hell and the Devil comes calling. Now, she’s got her hands full, trying to find out what happened to J.J., assure Paul she’s not going to give birth to a mythological creature, and broker a truce between Gus and the Devil before Gus becomes Hell’s newest resident.
(NOTE: This story takes place after
Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She’s Dead
and before
A Tale of 3 Witches
).
Table of Contents
Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie We’re In Trouble!
Chapter 1
W
hen Gus told me he was going to do the Toad Bone Ritual, I should have cremated the toad and saved us all a whole lot of misery. But it seemed like a perfectly good idea at the time. After all, Grundleshanks wasn’t just any toad. He was something special.
For people who are just tuning in, my name is Mara Stephens and I’m a witch. Not one of those fantasy witches who can wiggle her nose and turn your uncle into a carrot. An actual witch. Which means the Otherworld tends to kick my ass and laugh at me about twice as often as I get to score any wins.
The guy I’m living with currently, is my best friend, Gus. He’s a witch too. (And no, warlock is not the
defacto
term for male witch. A warlock is a witch who’s betrayed their oaths. To be warlocked is to be shunned and cast out. Although there is a guy in England who’s seeking to reclaim the word as a term for male witches. But that’s a whole other story).
Anyway, Gus is... Think Jack Sparrow meets Harry Potter. He’s all attitude, fashion, magick and mischief. Although lately, he’s been a huge pain in the butt. I blame the toad. Lord Grundleshanks. Or, more precisely, Lord Grundleshanks the Second. Apparently, Lord Grundleshanks the First is living with Gus’s childhood friend, Andwyn, out in Utah. Who knew? I only found out when Gus called him, asking about the odds of getting another toad out of the Grundleshanks line.
But our Grundleshanks is currently residing in the spirit world. Or, at least, he was. Until Gus got the bright idea in his head of immortalizing him through the Toad Bone Ritual.
Ha!
I should have stopped him right there. Or tied him up and locked him in the attic until he got over it. But I didn’t think he could possibly get into as much trouble as he did.
I should have known better. Gus is kind of impulsive and the last time I did an impulsive ritual that sounded like a good idea, I wound up accidentally killing my Aunt Tillie, having to fight off an evil-minded ancestral spirit for control of my body and getting knocked up by a demon who had possessed my boyfriend.
I should have realized that this wasn’t going to turn out any better. But like I said, it all started out innocently enough...
* * *