Jingle Bell Hell!!!

When the unthinkable happens, Kinsley has to figure out a way to save her best friend. There’s a bad witch on the loose, and Kinsley’s going to have to stop her before the bodies pile up like presents under the Christmas Tree.

“This book sucks.” – Meri

Note: Ignore Meri’s comments, he loves to grump!

As this book opens Thorn has left Kinsley, and she’s pregnant again. The business she was thinking about starting is now on hold. Unfortunately, she forgot to cancel one of the meetings she had set up and now he’s at the Brew Station and pissed.

Kinsley hopes to soothe his ruffled feathers, and while a fresh cup of coffee and a peppermint brownie seems to work a bit, it doesn’t stop him escalating to rude and insulting. This causes Kinsley to make a bit of a scene and she apologizes to Viv. Not the best way to start a day and it ends even worse.

Dahlia, her cousin and employee leaves her wallet at the shop and returns after hours to collect it. When she opens the shop, she finds a body. Kinsley identifies him as Mr. Carlson the man she had the meeting with earlier in the day.

Jeremy is in charge of the case, and he also brings up his concern about Thorn. He say’s something’s off with him, a feeling he gets when he’s around him but can’t put his finger on.

Then Thorn threatens to take Kinsley to court to get custody of Laney. You know that’s not going to go over well.

Then Meri disappears. Kinsley hasn’t seen him since the arrived at the shop. No one has, and she’s really worried about him.

The nice thing about Meri being a familiar is that we get to know what’s going on with him, and it’s most interesting. But, what Thorn does is in the aftermath is unforgivable.

This is a favorite scene.

The mental hospital I was being taken to was out in the middle of nowhere. I saw the lights appear on the horizon after we turned onto a desolate country road, and it looked every bit like a prison.

Not only was it secluded and enclosed by a tall, barbwire-topped fence, but the entire hospital was surrounded by ghosts. Lost souls who had been buried in unmarked fields on all sides of the hospital.

And when I said lost souls, I meant lost in their own sadness, pain, and anger. I could feel them draining all of the energy from the air, and if I got any closer, they’d drain me too. There would be no magic to get me out.

I had to get away before they drove me any closer. While I didn’t want to do anything to hurt the men who were escorting me to the hospital, I didn’t have the same concern for the transport van.

When the driver slowed down to avoid a huge pothole, I did just a little bit of magic to blow out all four tires. The van skidded sideways to a stop, but no one was hurt.

As soon as we weren’t moving anymore, I once again used magic to fling the back doors open. I hopped down out of the van, I’d behaved so they didn’t have me in any kind of restraints, and ran off into the night.

Not that restraints would have stopped me anyway. I had enough magical juice left in me to undo locks or buckles.

Once my feet were on the ground and running, I had to decide which direction to go. I knew if I stuck to the road, I’d be too easy to catch.

I scouted a path through the field in front of me that didn’t come too close to any of the wandering ghosts. I’d stopped the van soon enough that there weren’t that many.

While I didn’t know for sure if I was headed back toward Coventry, it didn’t matter. I just had to lose the orderlies, and then I could find my way home.

I ran until I got to the highway. That was the first time I really got to take a breath and think.

It was then I realized I still had my phone in my hand. The orderlies had put me in the van with me still clutching it.

“You’ll have to turn that in at intake,” one of them said before closing the doors. He’d nodded his head toward my phone.

Apparently, they didn’t see any problem with me keeping it. Had he been trying to give me a hint? I’d been so worried and stressed that I hadn’t even thought about it.

“Mom!” I said when she picked up.

“Kinsley, where are you?” she asked. “Meri said they took you away in a van!”

“Meri! Meri is there?” I said breathlessly.

“Yes, he’s here.”

“Where was he?” I asked more concerned for Meri than for myself. “Is he all right?”

“We’ll… talk about that later, sweetie. Where are you? Where did they take you?”

“Uh, I’m on the side of Highway 17. Looks like I’m close to exit ninety-nine,” I said.

“Meri’s coming, dear. I’ve fed him three packages of bacon and a glazed donut. He’s going to come there and bring you back. If he can’t, call me right away, and we’ll come out there. It will take us a while to drive that far, so call right away, okay?”

“Mom, can you stay on the phone?” I choked out.

“No, sweetie. When Meri comes through, he’s going so far… It might fry the phone. Turn it off now, so he can come through. As soon as he does, you can call me right back, okay?” she asked.

I agreed, and we hung up. A moment later, thunder rolled through the sky, and there was a flash of light behind me like lightning had struck the field near the highway. But I knew it wasn’t lightning.

Meri came sauntering out of the field and plopped down at my feet. “Give me just a second to prepare, and then we’ll go,” he said. “You’ll need to get down on your hands and knees. I’ve only got enough to make a door big enough for you to crawl through.”

“What’s wrong, Meri?” I asked, and for the first time, I noticed how dirty he was. There were leaves and tiny sticks caked into dirt that stuck to his fur in clumps. “Where were you?”

“It’s a long story. We’ve got to get back. Your father is about to murder Thorn.”
Bourgeois, Sara. Yule Be Sorry (Familiar Kitten Mysteries Book 14). Kindle Locations (688-719). Kindle Edition.

Fortunately, Meri is able to let everyone know what’s going on.

The solution is interesting, practical and funny, well not to Meri but you’ll see why.

The murder, well, that gets solved as well and it really was a surprise. I never saw that one coming.

I am already reading the next book in this series!

5 Contented Purrs for Sara!

Sara Bourgeois

Sara Bourgeois is a Midwesterner through and through. She spends her time writing, reading, herding cats, and standing in her driveway during tornado warnings. (You can’t see them from the basement.)

A savage killing makes Kinsley question if Dorian really is who he says he is… Can she clear his name? What truth will the light of the full moon reveal?

Meri found that it was Kinsley who was suppressing the magic in the area and has broken that but it’s different as we saw in the last book when Thorn was injured. Meri is also growing from the kitten size he had been turned into from his wish.

As this book opens Kinsley is getting coffee at the Brew Station when a crow crashes into the window. It’s disturbing and leaves behind a heaviness to the air a dreariness. She kicks the energy away and heads to her shop across the square. There she’s met by the scent of blueberry scone incense her cousin and new employee Dahlia had ordered. Along with Reggie and Dahlia they ate the breakfast Kinsley brought while waiting for the first tour group to come to the store. They’d just finished when Maura Barlow came in looking for wolfsbane.

The conversation about that and then the request for datura had Kinsley questioning her more thoroughly. Those things aren’t used for anything good, and it appears she intended to use them on her cheating husband. It also leads to quite the threat. She accuses Kinsley of being terrified of her witch side and she needs to overcome that or pass on the leadership to someone who cares more than she seems to.

While Kinsley has much to contemplate, she’s also not feeling well. When she picks up pepto bismol at the pharmacy the pregnancy tests catch her eye, she argues with herself and gets those too. After dinner Thorn knocks the bag with the tests off the counter and Kinsley decides to take them then. Results are one positive and one negative and it’s too late to go get another one.

After a restless night she takes Laney with her to the pharmacy and then takes the tests at her parents. She only does three of the five she bought, and they are all positive. She’s most definitely pregnant. It’s early for work so she takes a drive to sort out everything going through her head, when she reaches the forest preserves the woods calls to her she needs to commune with nature. After parking she gets out and Meri scares her when he jumps out of her bag. He’s not going to let her wander in the woods alone especially not now. They’re not that far up the trail when she sees something in the trail, Meri goes closer to investigate and tells her they need to leave right away, the body had been attacked by something large and Meri suspects supernatural.

This is a favorite scene.

“What is that?” I asked. “Please tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

“Stay there,” Meri commanded. “I’ll check it out.”

I stopped in my tracks, something told me that I should listen to him. He trotted up the trail and looked at the dark shape that was lying in front of us. He sniffed a few times and then turned tail and ran back to me.

“It’s a body,” Meri said. “And we need to go.”

“Well, I need to call it in first. I need to tell Thorn. We can’t just… Leave them here,” I said and waved my hands around like it was obvious why we couldn’t leave.

“No,” Meri said. “We need to go right now.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“You are infuriating,” Meri said. “The body was attacked… By a large animal. Something… Something unnatural. If you are pregnant again, then we don’t know how our magic is going to react. So, we need to get out of here.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Suddenly, I noticed a smell in the air. It was dank and musty. It was almost like wet dog mixed with mud mixed with seawater.

As soon as that smell hit my nostrils, and turned my stomach, I whirled around on my heels. Meri and I made a beeline back down the path. I swore the entire time it sounded like something was behind us, but I didn’t want to slow down enough to turn and look. It would’ve been too hazardous to keep running forward while looking back, so we just kept moving. There were a few times, though, that I swore that the scent got stronger.

Back at the car, I took out my phone to call Thorn. Meri was up on his hind legs with his front paws on the window ledge keeping watch. Occasionally, he’d switch and look out the windshield.

I had to call Thorn four times before he finally picked up. The entire time, Meri kept dashing back and forth between the car’s side windows and the windshield. A few times, he told me just to go, but I kept dialing.

Finally, Thorn picked up. “Hey, babe. I got the text, and it’s great news. But they really need me to focus here. I would’ve called you, but I just couldn’t.”

“It’s not that,” I replied. “That’s not why I called. Thorn, I need to listen to me. I stopped by one of the old nature trails off Highway 77, and a few hundred feet… maybe a quarter-mile onto the trail. I found a body. I don’t know how far it was in actually. I don’t know how far we went.”

“Wait,” Thorn said softly. “You found a body?”

“Yeah, I was out walking trying to get some air, and we found it right on the trail.”

“We?” Thorn asked. “Do you have Laney out there with you?”

“No,” I replied. “I dropped Laney off at my parents’ house. It’s just me and Meri. We were out taking a walk in the woods before I went into work, and I found a body on the trail. Thorn it’s bad. Looks like it was some sort of wild animal attack, except bigger. Meri said that it had to be something supernatural. I don’t know. I was out here trying to get my head together. I wasn’t prepared for this, so I don’t know what to think.”

“Kinsley, you need to leave. You need to take Meri and get out of there. I’ll call my deputies and… Maybe the state police can help us. The county can’t help us right now.”

“Not even for murder?” I asked.

“This accident is bad,” Thorn said. “Hey, is your location within Coventry? Maybe I don’t even have to leave. I could just call it in to the state police.”

“I might be outside Coventry,” I said. “I don’t know if I crossed outside the town line or not. You know how it is out here.”

“I do,” Thorn said. “What I also know is that you need to take that cat and you both go home or go into the shop. I don’t like you sitting out there all alone.”

“I’m not alone. And there are several of these little turnoffs along this highway,” I said. “It would be much easier for you and state police to find the right trail if I wait here.”

“Kinsley…” Thorn started to say.

I interrupted, “The sooner we get off the phone, the sooner you can call it in. I’m staying here, and when you get here I’ll leave.” I had no idea why I was digging my heels in, but something made me want to argue back. Maybe I was just afraid that if I left, another unfortunate hiker would come along and stumble on the body. Or on whatever had killed the victim.

Thorn grumbled, and it softened my mood a little. “Fine, woman. You are the most stubborn…”

“Bye, babe, I love you,” I said and hung up the phone.

“You really are an idiot,” Meri said as soon as I hung up

“Like I said to him,” I responded, “it will be easier for him to find which one of these trails the body is on if we wait here. Plus, we can prevent someone else from walking down the trail. Perhaps ruining the crime scene.”

“Text him the coordinates from your satellite position,” Meri said. “The GPS…”

“We are waiting,” I said. “I could text him the coordinates for the location, but that doesn’t prevent someone else from going down that path.”

“It will be like five minutes, Kinsley. Who will come along?” Meri looked up and down the deserted highway.

“You’re right. It will be like five minutes, so we will sit here. You can get in the trunk if you’re afraid of the big bad wolf.”

“Your hormones are affecting your ability to think,” Meri snarked. “And that big bad wolf thing is far less funny than you know.”

“I’m just tired of… I don’t know. I’m tired of being told what to do,” I said and found myself getting way more irritated than I expected. “Here I am, about to have another baby, and my… people keep telling me what to do. It’s got me so messed up that I even doubted my ability to be a mother to this child. Meri, I am already a mother. I know I can do that.”

“Sorry,” Meri said sheepishly.

“No, don’t be like that,” I said. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“Whatever,” he said and went back to looking out the window.

“Yeah, whatever to you too.”
Bourgeois, Sara. Moon Malediction (Familiar Kitten Mysteries Book 13). Kindle Locations (475-527). Kindle Edition.

Once Thorn arrived Kinsley and Meri leave the scene and bring breakfast to Dorian. There’s a scent of something in his house that Kinsley doesn’t like and makes her suspicious of Dorian. After all, he was once a werewolf. While Dorian and Kinsley prepare to head to the crime scene, Meri is already there doing his own investigating. He does find a clue, but it comes with more questions than answers.

Of course, Thorn has plenty to say about her involvement in an investigation, and even more when she’s investigating with Dorian. Seriously Thorn’s got a problem with being overprotective and Kinsley just isn’t going to take it anymore. Once again, he’s off and running.

I really sympathize with Kinsley. She’s got a lot on her plate and Thorn always seems to make it worse. Even though she’s the one who along with Meri and Dorian seem to be solving the murders around here.

There are plenty of ups and downs as the clues slowly come together adding more than a few twists into play. There’s even a small period of time where Meri is a goat.

I am already reading the next book in this series, somehow, I just can’t stop reading these.

5 Contented Purrs for Sara!

Sara Bourgeois

Sara Bourgeois is a Midwesterner through and through. She spends her time writing, reading, herding cats, and standing in her driveway during tornado warnings. (You can’t see them from the basement.)

Kinsley and Thorn finally get the date night they’ve been discussing for months.

Except an unexpected issue sends them home early, where they find a distraught young woman on the porch waiting for Kinsley’s return. She’s afraid to go home and begs Kinsley for help.

The woman’s house was never haunted before, but lately, she’s had strange and unusual things happening. Unseen eyes watch her from dark corners, and invisible fingers scratch at the floorboards when she tries to sleep.

It all culminates in the attack that sends her fleeing to Hangman’s House for help. Kinsley can’t bring herself to leave the poor woman hanging, so she agrees to investigate.

After a thorough search, Kinsley thinks she’s found nothing.

Until…

The specter appears and leads the women to a shallow grave in the basement.

This book is again in two parts. First let’s remember that magic is at a low, even the ley line isn’t putting out as much. As such, the wards everywhere are not as strong as they once were, so ghosts are more frequent as is the darker magic not used by many except for Kinsley’s Aunt Lilith.

Thorn and Kinsley go out on their first date night since Laney was born, it’s a nice quiet evening, at least until the end. A phone call from her mom has them rushing home, to find a young woman crying on the porch steps. The woman Nora hasn’t slept in a long time and can’t really explain why, except that she thinks her house has a ghost or something. She’s not a witch so Kinsley is limited in what she can say, so invites her inside to discuss the problem.

After getting as many facts as she could Kinsley decides the first thing Nora needs is sleep and sends her home with her mom and dad. In the morning they would deal with whatever is in her house.

At the house the next day, it doesn’t seem like anything is going to happen until it does.

This is a favorite scene.

But the ghost drifted past all of that. She made her way to the door that led to the unfinished utility area of the basement.

We went inside and followed her past the furnace and sump pump. On the other side, we found another door.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“It leads to an unfinished part of the basement,” Nora said.

“We’re in the unfinished part of the basement,” I shot back.

“I guess it’s more of a crawlspace,” she said. “I don’t know. I don’t really go in there.”

“Why did you need a crawlspace under your house if you’ve got both finished and unfinished basement?” I asked.

“It was in the plans for the house, and I didn’t really mind it,” Nora said. “I think it’s because the basement isn’t quite as big as the house above.”

I turned the knob and pushed the door open. Light flooded into the crawlspace from the basement, and it illuminated the room enough for me to see a bulb and chain in the middle. I walked into the room and pulled the chain.

The crawlspace was just another section of unfinished basement with a dirt floor. Its presence made zero sense, and I had to wonder if the builder had just done it to cut corners and costs.

“What about the ghost?” Dad asked as I stood there contemplating the crawlspace.

“Right. The reason we’re here. Why are we here?” I asked the specter.

I didn’t want to speak to her in case she was a demon. Acknowledging them was a sure way to let them into your world, but we’d already followed her down to the basement. That ship had sailed already.

The ghost just remained in the same spot staring at me. Finally, a soft, scratchy whisper came from her direction. “Here,” she said. And then she vanished. The ghost had used up every bit of energy she could draw from to utter that word, and I was sure she wasn’t coming back anytime soon. I’d thought she would have been spent from the night before, but at that point, I was sure there was nothing else she could do. Anger, and perhaps I’d seen a hint of fear too, would only get her so far.

“What does she mean?” Nora asked. “What did she mean by here?”

“I don’t know,” I said, but I walked over to the spot where she’d vanished.

Meri joined me, and we stood there studying the floor for a moment. “The dirt’s different here,” I finally said.

“What do you mean?” Dad asked. He and Thorn joined me at the spot. They both stood there staring at the dirt floor beneath our feet.

“She’s right,” Thorn finally said. “See, it’s raised up just a little higher than the dirt around it. Step back,” he said taking on his authoritative sheriff voice.

“Do you have a shovel?” I asked Nora.

“Out in the garage,” she said.

“Could you go get it?” I asked.

“I should… I don’t know. Should I call for backup?” Thorn asked.

“For what?” I asked. “We don’t know what’s down there yet.”

“Can’t be anything good,” Meri snarked since Nora was out of the room grabbing a shovel.

“I’m going to call it in,” Thorn said.

“Call in what?” I asked. “I don’t know. Something isn’t right, though. I can feel it.”

“We can all feel it,” Dad said. “Just give it a few minutes, son.”

Nora returned shortly after that with the shovel. At that point, Thorn stood off to my side suspiciously watching the hole. He wasn’t a witch, but I didn’t for a second doubt his intuition. He’d always been able to see through the veil that covered Coventry, and that meant Thorn could see things others could not.

My father had wandered out to the bigger unfinished area of the basement, but he returned with Nora. She stood there for a moment looking between us, but it didn’t take long for Thorn to reach out and take the shovel.

“I can do that,” Dad said.

“So can I,” I added.

“Let me,” Thorn said calmly. “It will let me feel like I’m contributing.”

Nora looked puzzled by his statement, but she didn’t say anything about it. Instead, she started to play host. “Does anybody need a drink? It will help me feel like I’m contributing something.”

“I’m probably going to need some water,” Thorn said as he scooped up another shovelful of the dirt.

“Some water would be good,” I said.

“You guys don’t think that ghost is going to come back when I’m away from you, do you?” Nora asked. “I felt a bit creeped out when I was in the garage, but I hadn’t turned the light on, so I’m pretty sure that’s why.”

“I don’t think she’s coming back any time soon… if ever,” Dad said. “But I’ll go up with you to get the water if it will make you feel safer.”

Nora nodded to Dad, and they left to get the water. I turned my attention back to Thorn’s digging. Meri sat right at the edge of the hole peering down into it. You’d have thought he was in Thorn’s way, but he’d somehow managed to position himself in just the right spot.

Thorn didn’t have to dig much farther. Nora walked into the room with two bottles of Fiji water, and she gasped.
She also dropped the bottles, and Dad caught them.

My husband stepped away from the hole he’d just dug and took out his phone. “I can’t get any reception in here. I’ll need to go upstairs. You guys should come with me.”
Bourgeois, Sara. Black Arts & Bones (Familiar Kitten Mysteries Book 10). Kindle Locations (473-520). Kindle Edition.

A few more twists and turns here as Kinsley gets sick and the investigation goes on without her. However, she does in fact become the person to solve it.

The second part of this book starts at Lainey’s birthday party. Kinsley has hired a clown to entertain the children, unfortunately the reaction to him is not what she expected, and neither is the clown. He turned up drunk and she has to fire him. Turns out Thorn isn’t a fan either, and his reasoning is interesting.

Then a clown turns up dead at a local playground. It wasn’t the same clown Kinsley had hired, so there is obviously more than one clown in town.

There’s now a report of a machete wielding clown, and Thorn goes to investigate. In the process he ends up attacked and in the hospital. While Kinsley is signing paperwork, another victim is brought in this one has a balloon tied around his wrist.

Kinsley is also finding that healing is draining her life force which had never happened before. More things that need answers to be sure.

Twists, turns, surprises and so much more as this is solved.

I am starting the next book already.

5 Contented Purrs for Sara!

Sara Bourgeois

Sara Bourgeois is a Midwesterner through and through. She spends her time writing, reading, herding cats, and standing in her driveway during tornado warnings. (You can’t see them from the basement.)