One more week until release!

I am so excited that there is only one more week until Thirteen Days Gone is released out into the world! Woo hoo! Are you as excited as me? It has a bit of everything you could want!

• Hard-nosed detective
• All-seeing psychic
• Opposites attract
• A little bit of grumpy/sunshine
• Witches, vampires, ghosts, and demons
• Edge-of-your-seat suspense
• Small town romance
• Humor
• and so much more…

Do you want a sneak peek? Of course you do! Enjoy the first chapter right here!

Chapter One

Dealing with a dead body should be the worst thing to happen to him. But not even close. Getting a kink in his back threw his entire day off. Dead bodies were easy to deal with. He knew what to do from the moment he arrived at a crime scene to apprehending his suspect. But when an ache hit him, instead of focusing on the tasks in front of him, his mind centered on the pain. He hated being distracted by anything when he worked. Even an annoying discomfort he could’ve prevented.

Detective Holstrom twisted slightly to the right as he picked up the phone sitting on his desk. When it rang, it meant someone wanted to bother him, and he had things to do. One of them was definitely not to be bothered. He preferred to be the one to do the calling, not the other way around.

“Holstrom.”

That’s all he said when he answered the phone. Why add more? The person on the other end knew who they were calling. Since he was a homicide detective, they also had a specific reason for calling. There was no need to be all fancy with his greetings. He got to the point, and he expected the person on the other end to do the same.

“I got a call from downstairs,” his captain started, which was never a good thing.

Downstairs meant the uniformed officer division. The cops that handled the petty shit. Things he didn’t want to be hassled with. Dead bodies were his forte and he liked staying in his little box. When a call came from downstairs, it meant someone wanted to open his box further than he liked. Nothing good ever came from expanding his box. He had learned that early on in life.

“Not my problem.”

“Well, Holstrom, it is now.” His captain sighed, knowing he wouldn’t give in easily. He never did. “It’s Kade Duran’s old house. Someone broke into it. Thought you might want to know.”

He sat up straighter, which tweaked the already painful part of his back giving him problems today. He managed to suppress a groan because he didn’t need his captain thinking he was groaning at him. Of all the calls he’d gotten from downstairs, this one he didn’t mind.

That house had been on his radar since…well, since they had done that weird spell in it.

“Who took the call?”

There was a moment of silence while he assumed his captain looked for the information. “Officer Pine. Are you interested?”

“Yeah. Appreciate the heads-up.”

Then he hung up before his captain could add anything else to his plate. He didn’t fear being reprimanded. His captain was used to his abrupt, stern ways. So was everyone else in the department.

In the beginning, when he first started as a beat cop, he’d been friendly, open to suggestions and help from others. As the years drew on, moving up the ladder, seeing the things he saw daily, he changed. He morphed into someone who liked to work alone, who didn’t want any help, and who trusted no one. Not even his co-workers. He couldn’t even pinpoint a moment in time when his attitude started to shift. It just had.

He stood up, grabbed his black wool jacket from behind his chair, and put it on gingerly. Maybe it was his mattress. Maybe it was the asshole he had to chase yesterday and tackle. Maybe it was as simple as he was getting old. But his back hurt from the moment he crawled out of bed today. Nothing he had done made it better.

But he did what he did with everything in life: he sucked it up and ignored it.

After meeting with Officer Pine and getting the lowdown on what occurred, he headed to Kade’s old house. He sent a quick call to Kade himself to meet him there. No explanation, and Kade knew him well enough not to argue for one.

A neighbor had seen the front door wide open this morning. When Officer Pine arrived, the entire place was in disarray. Officer Pine had thought it prudent to contact Holstrom first instead of Kade. Holstrom had asked to be informed about anything—and he meant any kind of disturbance—with the house. He appreciated the call and that the officer had followed directions. Not everyone liked to play nice with him, especially when he had a hard time playing nice in return.

Ever since that day with the spell Kade and his weird friends had done, Holstrom had one eye on the house at all times. He didn’t like the unknown. Things he couldn’t see. Until he knew everything was back to normal with the house, he wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

When he arrived, the front door was closed but unlocked. Forensics had been called but hadn’t made it to the house yet. An unoccupied house broken into wasn’t as high on the list as the armed robbery, two assaults, and one carjacking that had happened this morning. That Holstrom knew about anyway. The city had too much crime, it was hard to keep up with it all.

He let himself in, wincing at the destruction. The paintings on the walls were slashed, some even lying on the ground. The dishes in the kitchen were everywhere, broken pieces littering the floor. The upstairs showed the same level of destruction in each room.

Twenty minutes or so after touring the house, he walked back outside and waited a few more minutes before Kade pulled into the driveway.

“Detective Holstrom, it’s been a while. I enjoyed the peace and quiet.”

Holstrom chuckled, knowing Kade wasn’t joking. He’d been on his ass every day when he’d been a suspect in his wife’s murder. Kade had seemed like the perfect suspect. He’d been the last to see her alive. Too much time had lapsed between him leaving work and arriving home when he found her body that made it suspicious.

In the end, he’d been cleared, and the real killer had been apprehended. While he never apologized for his in-your-face behavior, they’d ended on decent terms. Walked away from each other with…well, not a lot of hard feelings between them. He was only doing his job, and he wasn’t about to apologize for that.

“Sorry to interrupt it.”

Kade nodded, yet his brows rose as if saying, “Yeah right.” Then he tossed a hand at the house. “So, why are we here? Don’t tell me the city is on the police’s ass that I sell this place or something? Neighbors complaining? What’s going on?”

“Well, someone broke into your house and destroyed everything.”

Kade frowned.

“How about you take a look around and tell me if anything is missing?”

Kade nodded and followed Holstrom inside, pausing in the foyer when his gaze met the destruction. “Why would someone do this?”

“I was hoping you’d have an answer for that.”

A chuckle fell past Kade’s lips. “You always want answers from me that I don’t have.”

“You work with Detective Stewart now. Doing…” Holstrom still had a hard time accepting the things he saw a few months ago. “Odd jobs.”

“Paranormal investigations.” Kade gave him a shit-eating grin as if saying, “Don’t be a pussy, you can say it!”

“You saw for yourself that things that go bump at night exist. Why pretend now that they don’t?”

He wasn’t necessarily pretending. But sometimes saying it out loud made it more real.

“Anyway, maybe someone you worked for didn’t like the job you did.”

Kade rolled his eyes, walking around him toward the kitchen. “Of course, it’s my fault again. It never changes with you. You thought I killed my wife. Now it’s my fault someone broke into my house.”

Holstrom didn’t know how to respond to that, so he remained silent. He did that a lot when the right words wouldn’t come to mind. Most people found he was being purposely rude, refusing to respond. In essence, it was more along the lines of thinking before speaking. He’d always been that way, even as a child. Now in his late thirties, it was impossible to change a habit that had formed early on.

Kade walked through the house, slowly yet thoroughly. Shaking his head at times, groaning at other times. After venturing to every room, they convened in the foyer.

“It’s hard to say if anything is gone. I left a lot here. Susana’s stuff. I didn’t pay complete attention to everything she brought into the marriage.”

Holstrom pulled out his notebook from the inside of his jacket pocket. “Try harder to think.”

Boisterous laughter filled the space. “You say that like it’s going to help my memory. It’s not.”

Holstrom sighed. “I can’t help you if you don’t help me.”

“I wasn’t too concerned about anything in this place before I left, so I can’t say that I’m that concerned it’s gone. If anything is even gone.” Kade sighed. “Good riddance. One less thing I have to deal with.”

Holstrom pocketed his notebook. “So you don’t even care that your house was broken into?”

“I want to forget this part of my life. This house is nothing but a stain on my memory. I can’t sell it yet because…”

Kade looked away as his words died off. Holstrom knew the reason why. Because Mona, the weird witch, never closed whatever portal she had opened the day they tried to contact his dead wife to see who had killed her. Just thinking it sounded insane. He’d never actually voice any of it.

“Yes, when is she going to fix that little problem?”

Kade shrugged. “I don’t think she knows how to yet. Every time Mason asks her about it, she says she’s still working on it.”

“I do hope you haven’t done that…” He would not say the word spell. He wouldn’t! “That thing she did again, have you?”

“No, we haven’t. Mason won’t let her.”

Well, that was a positive in a horrible situation.

“Now what?” Kade asked as if Holstrom had the answers. Which was so far from the truth.

“That’s up to you. It’s your house.”

Kade looked around again, wincing. “I guess I’ll get someone here to clean it up. I mean, do what you have to do, but I’m not going to stress if you don’t find who did this.”

Holstrom nodded, not liking the answer, but who was he to argue. It wasn’t his house, his stuff.

“Why don’t you have your…friend…figure out that…” Nope, he would not say the word spell, or hell, even the word witch out loud. “How to make this place safe. I think it’s been long enough.”

By the look Kade gave him, he agreed wholeheartedly. There was no argument on his end.

* * *

Groaning, she rolled her body to a sitting position. She sat a moment, twisting to and fro, working all the aches out. Sleeping on the couch was never fun, but after being up half the night, she’d given up trying to fall asleep and put a show on TV. Then promptly fell asleep. It was so annoying how that always worked out. But she refused to put a TV in her room. She’d never had one as a child, nor had her parents, and she wasn’t going to start now.

The clock on the wall in the living room said she’d slept longer than she had wanted to. Ten o’clock already and she was behind in her day. Not that she had much planned, but her entire day always felt off when she got a late start.

She put the coffee pot on while she showered, changed, and applied a small amount of makeup to cover the dark rings under her eyes. Anything to portray she wasn’t falling apart.

The first cup of coffee calmed her senses. The second cup had her motivated to leave the house. That was something she always needed an extra jolt for. If she let herself, she could become a recluse. But that wouldn’t solve any of her problems. That solution wouldn’t make her abilities disappear.

She grabbed the bright pink bag from the entryway bench, locked the door, and headed across the street to Bailey and Kade’s house. While the houses around the neighborhood weren’t close to each other, she had managed to make friends with at least one house on the street. The other houses, well, she’d tried once at each place, and most didn’t want anything to do with her. It didn’t matter how friendly she acted. It’s as if they saw behind the mask she portrayed.

But Kade and Bailey…well, they accepted her with open arms because they were as odd as her.

Her smile brightened as she walked down their long driveway, admiring the Halloween decorations Bailey had put up. Skeletons and gravestones littered the driveway. As she got closer to the house, spider webs adorned the entire porch with a big, nasty-looking spider attached to one of them. A few ghosts—made from bedsheets, if she had to guess—hung from the big tree near the house. She giggled at the display, loving Bailey’s imagination. Charly didn’t think Kade was into Halloween as much as Bailey appeared to be.

She knocked once before Bailey swung open the door and gestured her in, but not before eyeing her critically.

“You look tired. Are you having trouble sleeping again?”

“I slept like a rock, thank you.” Charly held out the bag with a cheery smile. “Also, the Halloween decorations are wonderful.”

“Kade thought I went overboard, considering no one is going to see it unless they pull into our driveway, but I love looking at it all.”

Charly was grateful Bailey decided to drop the sleeping subject. Sure, she’d slept great, but not until she hit the couch, and it had been a mere few hours of sleep she’d gotten. No need to go into all of that though. 

Bailey worried about her too much already, and she had more important things to worry about—like her baby coming soon. She was over eight months pregnant, and the baby could come any day. Charly knew Bailey was ready for the little one to arrive. Though Bailey had told her she hoped it wasn’t next week when Halloween arrived. Any day but that day. They already dealt with the paranormal enough as it was, she didn’t want her baby sharing the spooky holiday.

“What’s this?” Bailey asked, taking the bag, careful not to touch any part of Charly’s hand.

She knew the ramifications. Charly was grateful Bailey understood how difficult it was for her to live with a curse. Because she didn’t find it a gift whatsoever.

Being psychic was nothing but a headache.

The last time she’d brushed Bailey’s hand while she’d been holding the envelope with the details hidden inside, she’d seen the sex of the baby before the planned gender reveal. Bailey had noticed her reaction and forced it out of her. Afterward, she had been so disappointed in herself that she hadn’t waited for Kade to be there for the news as well. They’d canceled the gender reveal.

Kade hadn’t been upset, but she knew it had bothered Bailey.

They were having a boy, and she only had three weeks to go until the little guy arrived into the world.

“It’s just a little something. It’s nothing. Don’t make it into a big deal.”

Bailey eyed her, as if pondering to dig deeper, then gave in, tossing out the tissue paper. Then she pulled out the bibs Charly had made this past weekend. Three total. All colorful with different designs on each one. One with airplanes. One with trucks. One with baby zoo animals. She enjoyed creating things with her hands. It reminded her she could do more than just see in the past when she touched something.

“These are beautiful. You didn’t have to get us anything else. You’ve done so much already.”

Yeah, she might’ve gone overboard with the gifts. But it was the first time in her life that she had true friends, and she wanted to show them how much she appreciated them in her life.

“Again, not a big deal. I won’t stay long. I wanted to drop these off and see how you’re feeling.”

Bailey put a hand on her back as she set the bag on the couch. “Everything hurts these days. I’m ready for this little guy to come out.” Then she held out her hand. “Maybe you can tell me what day so I can stop fretting over it.”

Charly took a step back, chuckling. “You know that’s not how my abilities work. I see things in the past when I touch things. I saw the nurse putting the baby’s gender in an envelope for you, which had already occurred, so that’s why I saw it when we touched that day. My visions for the future come out of nowhere. I haven’t had that vision, and if I did, you were mad at yourself when I told you the sex of the baby and Kade wasn’t here. You would be mad at yourself for this too.”

Bailey pouted, then giggled. “You’re so right. I hate it when you do that. Would you like something to drink?”

“No, that’s okay.”

Sometimes, when she touched things in Bailey’s house, she had visions about people. They weren’t always pleasant. Since Bailey and Kade worked on paranormal investigations, the things she saw would make people who had nightmares wish that’s all they suffered. Because their nightmares normally turned true.

“I should go.”

Bailey reached out, then stopped herself before touching her. “You just got here. Sit. Now.”

Charly huffed about being told what to do, then took a seat. “Where’s Kade?”

“Off with Mason helping a client. He doesn’t tell me much these days because he doesn’t want me following them.”

“And he’s right to do so. You work too hard, Bailey. It’s okay to take a break.”

“Says the woman who never takes a break. I know you were in your shed all weekend working too hard.”

Charly wouldn’t dispute it. She’d felt restless the past week. On edge. For good reason. Working out the frustration helped most of the time. Nothing would help her get past this problem she’d landed in. But it had felt good to be in her shed, creating magic with her hands. The good kind of magic. Not the kind that told a sad, somber story.

She couldn’t be around people too long. Especially if they accidentally touched her. She had gotten good at how to avoid touching someone. But there were times when someone still bumped into her.

She’d never use her skill to make a quick buck. The less people who knew she was psychic, the better. But she had to make money somehow, so she built things. She’d gotten good at working with many different kinds of materials—wood, metal, fabric, yarn. Then she sold whatever she made online. The postal service picked the things up from her house. She never needed to leave if she didn’t want to. She even had the grocery store deliver to her house.

“I know something has been bugging you. It’s time you tell me what it is.”

“I’m fine. You know I like to check in on you, make sure the pregnancy is going well.”

Bailey pursed her lips as she rubbed her big belly. “Charly with a Y! You will tell me what has your panties in a twist lately or so help me…”

Charly giggled at her stern expression, not threatened in the least. Bailey would never hurt anyone, even if she could act like she wanted to.

But she meant business when she said her name in such a manner. Charly usually introduced herself as Charly with a Y. She liked people to know how it was spelled from the beginning. Some people even doubted it was her name since it was so masculine sounding. 

Bailey hadn’t liked her in the beginning. Charly only knew that because Bailey had confessed that when she’d been a ghost, she’d mocked Charly and how she had introduced herself. She’d apologized for her rudeness, even though Charly hadn’t been aware of it. She appreciated the gesture. Now, when she said her name with the added Y, Charly knew it wasn’t in a friendly way. Bailey wanted her to listen up and pay attention.

“Talk to me. That’s what friends are for.”

Yeah, and with what she had seen the other day…she’d need her friends more than ever. Charly averted her gaze.

This wasn’t something her friends could help her with. No one could.

“Charly…”

She lifted her gaze to Bailey, soaking up the kindness and concern in them. “I went to the store the other day. You know how overloaded I can get when I venture out. I’m still trying to process everything.”

Bailey eyed her critically as if she didn’t believe her. It wasn’t a total lie. She had gone into town to the hardware store for some materials she needed. But it wasn’t what had been bothering her the past three days.

Charly had visions of the future. They came out of nowhere, giving her a glimpse of what was to come. They always came true. But she also saw things that had happened in the past when she touched something. Both were difficult to live with. At least when she touched something, she knew it was coming. Her visions, on the other hand, knocked her on her ass. The latest one had come while she’d been sleeping, hence the problems she’d been having sleeping at night.

“You don’t have to hold back with me. I can handle whatever you throw my way.”

Charly wanted to reach forward and grasp her hand, express her appreciation. She settled for a nod. “I know. You’re a good friend to me.”

“Best friend. Don’t forget it!”

“Never.” Charly stood up. “I have a lot to do today. I only wanted to drop off the gift.”

Bailey stood up. “Fine. But you should come over later for supper. We’d love to have you.”

Before Charly could bow out, the front door opened and Kade walked in.

“Hey, Charly. How’s it going?”

“Good. I dropped off some bibs I made for the little one.”

Bailey pounced before Kade could respond. “What are you doing home so early? Did something go wrong?”

Knowing the kind of cases he and Mason worked on, the question didn’t need to be specific. So many things could go wrong when working with the paranormal world.

“Well, Detective Holstrom called me. Someone broke into my old house last night. Destroyed everything. I can’t tell if anything is missing, which annoyed him. Nothing new there.”

“That’s terrible.” Bailey rounded the couch, brushing her hands across Kade’s cheeks before kissing him. “He’ll find who did it. He’s a bulldog.”

Charly giggle snorted, then froze, embarrassed she let that slip. “I don’t know why I laughed.”

“Because laughter is good for the soul,” Bailey replied with a silly grin.

For a woman who had been murdered in the 1920s, been a ghost for over a hundred years, and then miraculously turned human again, she had a very positive outlook on life. Charly envied her for that. She wished she could bottle up some of that positivity. She might portray a bubbly persona to people, but she was far from a happy person.

Then Bailey’s expression turned horrified, her eyes widening. “Is it even safe to go inside? After what Mona did there…”

Ah, yes. Charly had heard about the spell to communicate with Susana’s ghost. It had gone awry.

“I wasn’t in there long. Holstrom knows to keep the crime scene crew in there a minimal time. It’ll be fine. I promise.”

Charly saw the concern in Kade’s eyes. If she could see it, then so could Bailey.

“Well, I should go. I’m sorry to hear about your house, Kade.”

Kade smiled as Charly walked by them to the front door. “Appreciate it.”

“Oh, you’re coming later tonight for supper,” Bailey insisted.

“Another time, Bailey. I started working on a chair yesterday and I want to finish it today. I’ll be in my shed all day if you need me.”

Bailey conceded, but she didn’t look happy about it.

As Charly walked back across the street to her house, her mind wandered to Detective Holstrom. The cold, stern man who had thought Kade murdered his wife until she proved otherwise. He hadn’t flinched when she said she was a psychic. He hadn’t even seemed to be bothered that Bailey had turned from ghost to human or that Mona was a witch.

She didn’t feel comfortable telling her friends about her latest vision. She didn’t want them to worry when there was nothing they could do to change the future.

But Holstrom.

Maybe he could help.

At least find the killer to the murder she had witnessed.

(Copyright © 2024 Amanda Siegrist)

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Reserve your copy today right here! It releases next Tuesday, October 15.

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Much ℒℴѵℯ ♡ Amanda Siegrist