Free Magical Misfire by Kimberly Frost

definitely, it was the best of times.”

Turn the page for a sneak peek at the next Southern Witch novel
SLIGHTLY SPELLBOUND
Coming from Berkley Sensation in May 2014

1
    No matter how many times people try to kill me, I never seem to get used to it. That goes for spying, too. I’m always startled to find a Peeping Tom . . . or Craig . . . or fire warlock creeping around. The thing is they’d better not let me catch them at it. I’m a redhead. I’m armed. And I don’t take kindly to interruptions when I’m trying out a new cake recipe.
    I didn’t always have a hair-trigger temper, or a hair-trigger weapon tucked in the top kitchen drawer behind the salad tongs, but a couple of months ago, my life changed.
    My name is Tamara Josephine Trask, Tammy Jo to most of my friends. I’m twenty-three years old, and I’m a witch. Or I should say I come from a long line of witches. Until recently, I thought the family magic skipped over me. It turns out that I actually got a double helping of magic and that my two types of magic, like the creatures they come from—witch and faery—don’t get along. It might have stayed that way, with the two magicks canceling each other out, if I hadn’t had a close encounter with a wizard named Bryn whose own magical heritage is also mixed. From the moment my magic met his, it was trouble for us and anyone within a twenty-mile radius.
    Now it was late December, and the supernatural drama had died down. Country music Christmas carols played on the radio, and in my kitchen I was minding my own business as I sometimes do. I wore a white T-shirt, boot-cut Levi’s, and a black apron with a Julia Child quote in white letters that said, If you’re afraid of butter, just use cream .
    I was in the middle of stirring cake batter that had both butter and cream in it when the trees started kicking up a fuss. I don’t speak tree, but after an unfortunate incident involving pixie dust, I’m usually able to get the gist of what they’re trying to tell me.
    Woody limbs scratched the roof and scraped against the kitchen window, making me look up from the bowl. I slid open the window and said through the screen, “I’m not coming out to visit right now. I’m busy being a regular person.”
    The leaves crackled, and I rolled my eyes. A chilly breeze blew in. I shivered and closed the window. When I turned up the radio, Martina McBride drowned out the trees.
    My ocelot, Mercutio, who’d just woken up, strode into the kitchen. It seemed like God couldn’t make up his mind when he painted ocelot fur. There are stripes on their faces and necks like little tigers, but spots on their bodies like leopards. One thing’s certain, they’re the cutest cats of all, big or small, foreign or domestic. A person might say I’m biased and that person would be right, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong about ocelots being extremely cute. Just ask the Internet to show you some pictures.
    “The racket woke you up?” I asked as I dripped a couple of drops of cream on my finger and held it down to him.
    He licked and swallowed. Another scrape against the roof made us look toward the yard.
    “For foliage, that’s pretty pushy,” I said. “I’m not fixin’ to go out there with bare feet. It’s full-on winter and that ground’s cold.”
    Mercutio tipped his head down, touching his nose to the top of my bare foot.
    “I meant I wouldn’t go outside barefoot. In the kitchen with the oven on is fine,” I said. “In here it’s seventy-five degrees. Out there, it’s forty-eight, and rumor has it it’s going down to thirty. By Texas standards, that’s blizzard cold. Now I ask you, would anyone in her right mind go out in a blizzard without socks and boots?”
    Mercutio cocked his head and opened his mouth to answer.
    “I meant that to be rhetorical, Merc.” I leaned over the bowl. I added finely chopped Texas pecans, a dash of chili powder, and another splash of cream to the cocoa cream cake batter.