Stuck with a Spell

(The Stuck with a Series -
Book 2)

By D. D. Scott & David
Slegg

Copyright © 2012 by D. D. Scott. All
rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are either products of the
author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the
author or publisher.

First Electronic Edition: October
2012

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords License Statement

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For all of you fabulous peeps wondering
about the explosion that finished off The Stuck with a Series Book
One - STUCK WITH A STIFF, here’s the scoop...

STUCK WITH A STIFF

Welcome Back to our Stuck with a
Series World.

Happy Reading!

CHAPTER ONE
|
CHAPTER TWO
|
CHAPTER
THREE
|
CHAPTER FOUR
|
CHAPTER FIVE
|
CHAPTER SIX
|
CHAPTER
SEVEN
|
CHAPTER EIGHT
|
CHAPTER NINE
|
CHAPTER TEN
|
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
|
CHAPTER TWELVE
|
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
|
CHAPTER FOURTEEN

NOTE FROM D. D.
SCOTT

ABOUT D. D.
SCOTT

BOOKS BY D. D.
SCOTT

NOTE FROM DAVID
SLEGG

EXCERPT FROM STUCK WITH
SLEIGH BELLS

CHAPTER ONE

H
oly hellfire!

I scrambled out of the kitchen with the
rest of my guests to see what new calamity Aunt Liza had conjured
up.

One would think the bestselling police
procedurals I write would provide enough excitement in my life. But
the fictional antics I dream up are nothing compared to living the
next farm over from my crazy Aunt Liza.

No one would believe my award-winning
fiction, written under the nom de plume Nicky Blane, could be based
on the real-life shenanigans my Aunt Liza cooks up next
door.

We found her standing next to a heap of
twisted metal in the center of a circle of charred ground. Quite
the contrast to the blanket of snow that covered everything else in
sight.

“
What the hell do you think
you’re doing?!”

Liza said nothing just blinked. Okay,
she tried to blink, which must have been difficult and rather
uncomfortable being as she had singed eyebrows and only a
smattering of eyelashes left. Her plaid hunter’s cap smoked and
sizzled right along with her apocalyptic mess.

Despite my yelling, she still wasn’t
focusing on me or the question I’d barked at her. Apparently, she
was still dazed by her latest blow-up.

It took a second for my mind to
register what the metal had once been. No. She didn’t, I thought,
certain she wasn’t that far over the total nutjob line.

But then I caught what was left of the
manufacturer’s label on one piece of smoking metal. It was the
wreckage of the two rusting gasoline tanks that had been on our
land since long before I was born.

Damn. She truly had lost all of her
marbles.

Thankfully, Captain Allen, a
thirty-year veteran of our Sheriff’s Department and now my Editor’s
significant other, hadn’t yet felt the need to take out his
handcuffs or unholster his duty weapon, though his hand was resting
on its stock. I had a feeling that when it came to my Aunt Liza, he
would always be duty ready.

“
Well?” I continued, not
about to let her weasel her way out of an explanation.

“
I was just usin’ the
support structure of the tanks to hang up a couple of dolls. I
didn’t count on there being anything left in them rusty old
things.”

“
Uh...Hello, Genius!
Gasoline is extremely explosive! Why would you even consider firing
that cannon of yours at a gas tank?! Wait a minute. Did you say
dolls?!”

“
So what? Yes, they were
dolls. I’m trying out a new spell on a couple of folks.”

She said this as though it were a
perfectly reasonable thing to do.

“
Let me get this straight.
As far as you’re concerned, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with
hanging Voodoo dolls on a gas tank and then annihilating ‘em with a
10-gauge shotgun?”

She cocked her head as if she were
thinking about it really hard.

There wasn’t a single one of us
standing there who didn’t know all kinds of major trouble resulted
when her wheels were crankin’ that fast and furious.

“
Yeah. I don’t see anything
wrong with that,” she said, taking off her cap, dropping it to the
ground, and snuffing out the last remnants of burning material with
her pink rubber boots.

“
What y’all should be
concerned about, however, is that I think my spell may have gone a
wee bit awry.”

W
ell, hot damn! Now we were getting somewhere! A spell! I was
privy to a for-real spell coming from a for-real witch!

Okay...for the record, I’m not sure
Nicky’s Aunt Liza is actually a witch. But she definitely tries and
takes her attempts at becoming one to rather extreme but fabulous
levels.

Totally good with me!

I’d been waiting on an opportunity like
this forever! And I was over the moon to finally have the chance to
see it! Oooo...speaking of the moon, I wonder if the fact that it’s
going to be a full moon tonight figured into her planning and
preparation?

There’s just so much about all of this
witchcraft that I can’t wait to explore. It’s not every day that a
fiction editor like me experiences more interesting action in real
life than on the page. Come to think of it, I’m no longer just
Samantha Aldredge, Editor Extraordinaire. I’m about to become a
witch’s protege.

Well...if you’re allowed to job shadow
a witch. Maybe I could be an apprentice of sorts. Kind of like
on-the-job training. In the name of research of course. I mean,
think about it this way...all great editors do their research. And
they do everything possible to make sure their authors’ stories are
authentic. It doesn’t get much more authentic than this,
right?!

“
So, tell us about these
dolls, Liza. They’re actually Voodoo dolls? Or
were
Voodoo dolls?” I asked, thinking
perhaps I should pull out my iPhone and record this so as not to
forget one detail of awesomeness.

“
Yes, that’s right. Voodoo
dolls,” she said, sitting down on a wrought iron bench covered with
snow.

She must have still been so damn dazed
from the explosion that she didn’t care whether or not she was
sitting on an ice cold seat. ‘Course, being as she was in the hot
seat with Nicky and probably my Captain too, maybe the cold chill
was a relief.

I followed her glassy stare, which was
focused on what remained of the two Voodoo dolls.

Then it hit me. And oh my God did it
hit me!

One of those extra-crispy dolls had to
be representing my ex, Hank Aldredge!

What have I
done
?!

It wasn’t that I really believed Liza’s
spells would work. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have given her Hank’s
wedding band. But now that I saw his partially melted ring around
one of the doll’s smoldering necks, what if her witchcraft was
real? And what if it did work?

There was no mistaking that Hank was a
total asshole, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to see him seriously
injured or worse yet, dead. And isn’t that the kind of energy
that’s spread using Voodoo rituals?

But she’d just said something with this
spell had gone awry.

Oh shit! I didn’t know what the hell to
think, let alone do.

A few days earlier, I’d had a
conversation with her about our less-than-stellar ex-husbands.
Her’s was a real doozy of a hot mess. Mine? Well, let’s just say
there are princes and there are frogs. And he was the biggest frog
of ‘em all.

Liza said she was planning to have a
little fun with her former hubby, and she’d be more than happy to
make it a two-for-one spell...if I was interested. Hell yeah, I was
interested!

She asked me if I had any objects that
belonged to or were associated with Hank. And I had just the thing.
I’d kept his wedding ring. The bastard threw it at me right before
storming out of our condo. I’d hung onto the absurdly expensive
piece of broken promises with the intention of pawning
it.

What could it hurt to let Liza play
with it for a little while? So, I’d given her the ring.

Of course I thought she was more than a
little off kilter, but what the hell. It wasn’t like I thought she
was going to actually be able to do anything to harm Hank. Mostly,
I just wanted to watch her at work. Who knew what kind of craziness
she had up the sleeve of that hunting jacket.

As it looks now...she had quite a lot
of crazy packed up in there. More than I ever imagined.

I don’t know much about Voodoo, but
what I do know is giving me a sinking feeling in the pit of my
stomach.

Okay. What to do...What to
do...

First, I had to get Liza alone so I
could figure out what had happened versus what was supposed to have
happened. I needed the details of what she was trying to do to our
ex-husbands with her latest spell. And then, how exactly she’d
screwed up the hexes on our exes.

The implications sent shivers through
my already quivering body. I couldn’t imagine what the answers
would do to me or to my nerves. Or...worse yet...what they’d done
to our exes.