A Harvest of Bones Read online

  The storm broke, startling us from our reverie as a rumble of thunder shook the ground.

  “Let’s get Sammy home,” I shouted over the noise. We raced for the house and had just cleared the lot when a huge bolt of lightning split the air.

  “The tree! The lightning hit the tree!” Joe yelled. I didn’t look back, but instead took the porch steps two at a time, Samantha digging into my shoulder with the most wonderful pain I’d felt in days. I burst in on an anxious party.

  “Sammy!” Randa and Kip rushed me but I ran into the spare bedroom and shut the door. I didn’t want her to bolt.

  They knocked and I carefully let them in. “She’s scared and hungry,” I said. “Stay in here with her for now, and whatever you do, don’t let her out of this room. Get her some food and water and a cat box.”

  “Mom, can we keep the cats inside all the time?” Kip asked, his voice muffled as he buried his face in her fur. “I’ve been reading up on it and… they live longer.”

  I smiled. Just what I’d been thinking. “That’s a good idea, hon. We’ll figure it all out tomorrow. For now, just keep an eye on her and we’ll take her to the vet on Monday to make sure she’s okay.”

  I stood up and headed for the living room but Randa stopped me with a plaintive, “Mom?”

  “What is it?”

  “Joe said… did you…”

  “She’s trying to ask if you said ‘yes’ when Joe asked you to marry him,” Kip broke in, grinning like a crazed jack-o’-lantern.

  I threw back my head and laughed. “Yes, I said yes. Is that okay with you guys?” They waved me off like I was a moron and I knew there’d be no objections from their quarter.

  Everyone in the living room was talking at once. I skirted the mayhem until I found Joe, who was standing on the front porch. A fire engine had blasted its way up the street to stop next door. After a few minutes, we headed down to the sidewalk to meet a fireman walking our way. He told us that although they were checking for hot spots, it looked like the strike had just split the tree and toppled it. There didn’t seem to be any flames.

  After he headed back to the lot, I snuggled against Joe, the rain dousing us, plastering our hair and clothes close to our bodies.

  “Brigit doesn’t need her grave anymore. She and Brent are together. The cycle is over and they’re off on whatever adventure awaits them next. Do you mind if we uproot that yew once and for all?”

  “It seems as though the lightning had the same idea,” he said, sliding his arm around my shoulders. “You know, don’t you, that I’ll love you forever? That if anything ever happens to me, I’ll come back with Nanna and watch over you and the kids.”

  And right then, I realized—on a gut level—that we were both in this for good. That Joe was the only person I could imagine spending my life with. Life would never be the same, and I welcomed the change. Come ghosts and goblins, harvests filled with old bones, Joe and I would see the adventures through together, day by day, year by year, side by side.

  And when the time came, maybe we’d be lucky enough to walk through the veil together. But that day was a long way off, and right now, I felt like celebrating. I looked at my ring and broke into a stupid grin.

  “Let’s go inside. It’s my birthday, and our friends and family are waiting. I want cake and ice cream and lots of espresso and I want to show off this gorgeous hunk of rock!”

  Joe laughed. “You caffeine freak, you. Come on, Ms. O’Brien. Your party awaits.”

  We had a lot to celebrate. Samantha was safe, Brigit and Brent were at peace, and I was going to marry the man of my dreams. I took his hand as we walked up the sidewalk to the house.

  “Come on Files,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

  And we did.

  Each Chintz ‘n China book contains a charm for you to safely do. Turn the page to read on! And if you want to read the Behind-the-Scenes story on this book, just continue reading beyond the Charm.

  If you liked A HARVEST OF BONES, don’t miss the rest of the Chintz ‘n China series:

  GHOST OF A CHANCE, LEGEND OF THE JADE DRAGON, MURDER UNDER A MYSTIC MOON, ONE HEX OF A WEDDING, and the wrap up novella, HOLIDAY SPIRITS.

  Meet the wild and magical residents of Bedlam in my Bewitching Bedlam Series. Fun-loving witch Maddy Gallowglass, her smoking-hot vampire lover Aegis, and their crazed cjinn Bubba (part djinn, all cat) rock it out in Bedlam, a magical town on a magical island. BLOOD MUSIC, BEWITCHING BEDLAM, and MAUDLIN’S MAYHEM are currently available, and BLOOD VENGEANCE and TIGER TAILS are available for preorder. And more are on the way!

  If you prefer a grittier series, try my post-apocalyptic romance—the Fury Unbound Series: FURY RISING, FURY’S MAGIC, FURY AWAKENED, and FURY CALLING.

  The newest Otherworld book—MOON SHIMMERS—is available now, and the next, HARVEST SONG, will be available in May 2018.

  For information about all of my work, including upcoming releases, see the Bibliography at the end of this book, or check out my website at Galenorn.com and be sure and sign up for my newsletter to receive news about all my new releases.

  Charm to Call a Lost Pet Home

  When a valued family pet disappears, many people don’t understand that it’s one of the most traumatic experiences that you can undergo. But there are many things you can do on a practical level, and I recommend all of them in addition to this magical charm—remember, if you don’t do the work on the mundane, the magic won’t help.

  Make color fliers of your pet and post them all over the neighborhood for several blocks.

  Give fliers to veterinarians in your area just in case someone brings in your cat or dog—vets do pay attention to these.

  Offer a reward, but don’t specify how much in the flier. There are people who will try to take advantage of grieving owners.

  Check the local animal shelters to see if your pet is there. Don’t rely on a phone call. Check every day that they’re open.

  You might also want to call your city’s street department to ask if they found any animals on the side of the road—a gruesome thought, but it can at least put to rest some disappearances. Closure is always better than wondering what happened.

  Rent or borrow a humane trap from your local ASPCA or local pet rescue organization and learn how to use it. It may seem heartless to try and trap your own cat, but it does work for a lot of people, and it won’t hurt them.

  If you use perfume, spray it around your yard in a trail leading up to your door. This will be a familiar scent for them to follow.

  Engage the neighborhood kids in trying to find your pet. Children are notoriously good at searching out lost animals and understand your worry more than some adults might.

  Search every hidey-hole, no matter how small. Cats are experts at sneaking into tight places.

  Remember: Your pet may be so scared that he or she won’t come when you call. Be patient: Sit out in your yard and talk to them as if they were there next to you. Use gentle tones.

  Visit the ASPCA’s Web site online for more tips and hints (www.aspca.org).

  And lastly: Don’t give up. Two of our indoor-only girls were missing last summer and I fell apart—totally went to pieces. They got out accidentally and Samwise and I were worried sick. Two days later, Luna showed up in the backyard, dazed and hungry. But for a while, it felt like Meerclar had been swallowed up by the faeries—she showed up at the door a couple of times but when I ran to let her in, she vanished back into the night. Two weeks later, our neighbor caught her and brought her home to us. I am forever grateful for his kindness.

  For the charm, you will need:

  A picture of your pet

  A statue or figurine of a cat or dog (match it to your pet’s species)

  A can of cat or dog food

  Six quartz crystal spikes—small or large, but approximately the same size as one another

  1 oz. catnip (for both cat and dog)

  A piece of blank paper and a
red ink pen

  A brown or green pouch with a red ribbon

  On the piece of paper, write your pet’s name in firm, bold letters across the top. Beneath this, print your name, address, and the words:

  Return you home now, safe from harm,

  By the workings of this charm,

  Hear my call, come home this day,

  Safe the passage, safe the way.

  My love protects you while you roam,

  And keeps you safe for your trip home.

  Fold the paper and hold it, concentrating on your pet. Visualize your pet walking through the yard, up to the door, and into the house. Send this energy out to your pet, then place the paper in the pouch and add the catnip. Tie the ribbon firmly and place the pouch on top of your pet’s picture.

  Set the can of food next to the picture, along with the statue, then circle everything with the quartz, pointy ends facing out (like sunbeams). Each day your pet is gone, come to this altar and visualize it coming home, while you repeat the charm.

  Hold hope in your heart, and do everything you can on a practical level to find your friend. I wish you well with this—it helped our girls find their way home, I’m positive of it.

  Bright Blessings,

  The Painted Panther

  Yasmine Galenorn

  The Back Story of A Harvest of Bones

  Remember that old saw about necessity being the mother of invention? Well, it’s true, at least in my case.

  Back in 2008, as I was gearing up to start a new book, two of our four indoor-only cats disappeared. The two who managed to pull a Houdini act were both eleven years old at the time, seniors with no concept of how to handle themselves in the big, bad world out there.

  My husband and I spent two weeks in absolute hell, searching for Meerclar (Luna made it home after two days and I managed to catch her), setting out humane traps and checking them every hour on the hour all night long, every night, to no avail. One night—two weeks to the day she’d vanished—the doorbell rang. Samwise looked at me sadly and said, “Maybe it’s Meerclar.” I was on the phone at the time so he went to answer the door. The next thing I knew, he was yelling, “I think it’s Meerclar!”

  Well, he wouldn’t joke about something like that so I promptly hung up on my friend and raced to the front door. There stood our neighbor, holding a large dog carrier. I glanced inside and there was one thin, scared looking black kitty. Could it be Meerclar? We’d learned all too well that all black cats really *do* look alike. Then, she warbled out a meow and I knew it was her—I recognized that scratchy voice. Bless his heart, our neighbor had seen me running up and down the street over and over again, sobbing as I called for her, and when he caught sight of a black cat that seemed a little too skittish, he and his friend managed to catch her.

  We took Meerclar to the emergency clinic and she was fine. She needed sub-q fluids and a lot of food, love, and care, but they scanned and her microchip proved it was really her, though she was five pounds skinnier, and we brought her home for a big happy reunion. End of story. Or so I thought.

  By that time, my editor was expecting a synopsis on her desk within a couple of days. I’d put off writing it while falling apart over the cats and I had to scramble to make up for lost time. The only thing I knew about the impending book was that I wanted the action to take place in the remains of a house hidden beneath a field of brambles. Years ago I lived in another city where there was a corner lot filled with blackberry vines that had totally taken over. They were so thick and tall that it would be suicide to try and wade through them, and I remember the day when someone bought the land and started clearing them out. Lo and behold, a house emerged from beneath the berry patch—a small house, but a house nonetheless. I was amazed and the image of the hidden house had stayed with me for all those years. So when I first started thinking about writing A Harvest of Bones, I kept coming back to that image.

  I knew my basic setting, but I still needed the story to go along with it. My mind kept coming back to our cats who had gone missing, and I started to think about my main character—Emerald—and how she and her family would feel if their beloved cat Samantha disappeared. So—missing cat, house under brambles, what would I use to tie them together?

  The night before the synopsis was due, as I sat there frantically trying to think up the actual storyline, I found myself staring at a beautiful print I’d purchased. A print of a painting called Autumn Leaves by Diane Romanello, it’s a mystical scene depicting an leaf cluttered path across a still pond, leading to an autumn woodland beyond. As I sat there, looking at the painting, the words to Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott began to run through my head.

  “There she weaves by night and day

  A magic web with colours gay.

  She has heard a whisper say,

  A curse is on her if she stay

  To look down to Camelot.”

  And the autumn path, the bramble covered house, the poem, the missing cat, all began to merge into a kaleidoscope in my mind as the story began to unfold.

  As I watched the film playing in my head, I saw that the story would surround a tragic, ghostly love story that ended in a mysterious death fifty years in the past. As the brambles were torn aside on the lot next to Emerald’s house, a basement would emerge from a house long ago burned down. The reveal of the basement began to play itself out in the bigger concepts of uncovering hidden secrets, of dislodging the dead from an uneasy slumber. And what better time of year to have this happen than autumn—specifically Halloween, which happened to be Emerald’s birthday?

  I also knew that the ghost of a cat would be involved too but never Emerald’s missing Samantha—I couldn’t do that to my characters. No, it would be Mab, a calico who had belonged to the long dead but never resting Brigit, whose skeleton Emerald finds lodged inside an ancient yew tree.

  However, I still needed something more to tie the events of the past to those of the present. I laid out the synopsis for my husband and he suggested that I bind the destiny of the two cats together. One’s fate would rest on the other’s…Mab’s ghost from fifty years ago and Samantha, her mirror from the present.

  While Emerald searched for Samantha, Brigit would search for her missing Mab. The two women—one in the mortal realm, the other in the spirit—would be facing the same loss, even as Emerald was trying to solve the riddle of Brigit’s mysterious death so long ago.

  Throw in legends from Brigit’s family involving will o’ the wisps and faeries that make their way to the present, add in Emerald’s fears about her own love life, and the discovery of who Brigit’s mysterious lover from the past had been, and in the space of an hour, I had created a rich, gothic mystery that compelled me like no other book I’ve written. Something clicked, and I knew this one would be special.

  At midnight, I wrote up the synopsis and emailed it to my editor. The next morning, she called and we tweaked the ending just a bit, and bingo—I was ready to go. My fear and panic from when our cats had been missing, the glimpse of a bramble shrouded house, a painting of an autumn path, and a classic poem all wove together to form the foundation for A Harvest of Bones.

  Although I love all the books I’ve written, A Harvest of Bones remains one of my favorites. It still haunts me, and it marked a turning point in my writing for me on an internal level.

  Biography

  New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today bestselling author Yasmine Galenorn writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance, and is the author of almost fifty books, including the Otherworld Series, the Whisper Hollow Series, the new Fury Unbound Series, and many more. She’s also written nonfiction metaphysical books. She is the 2011 Career Achievement Award Winner in Urban Fantasy, given by RT Magazine.

  Yasmine has been in the Craft since 1980, is a shamanic witch and High Priestess. She describes her life as a blend of teacups and tattoos. She lives in Kirkland WA with her husband Samwise and their cats. Yasmine can be reached via her web
site at Galenorn.com.

  Indie Releases Currently Available:

  Bewitching Bedlam Series:

  Bewitching Bedlam

  Maudlin’s Mayhem

  Blood Music

  Blood Vengeance

  Tiger Tails

  Fury Unbound Series:

  Fury Rising

  Fury’s Magic

  Fury Awakened

  Fury Calling

  Otherworld Series:

  Moon Shimmers

  Earthbound

  Otherworld Tales: Volume One

  Tales From Otherworld: Collection One

  Men of Otherworld: Collection One

  Men of Otherworld: Collection Two

  Moon Swept: Otherworld Tales of First Love

  For the rest of the Otherworld Series, see Website

  Chintz ‘n China Series:

  Ghost of a Chance

  Legend of the Jade Dragon

  Murder Under a Mystic Moon

  A Harvest of Bones

  One Hex of a Wedding

  Holiday Spirits

  Bath and Body Series (originally under the name India Ink):

  Scent to Her Grave

  A Blush With Death

  Glossed and Found

  Misc. Short Stories/Anthologies:

  Mist and Shadows: Short Tales From Dark Haunts

  Once Upon a Kiss (short story: Princess Charming)

  Silver Belles (short story: The Longest Night)