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BVC Announces A Spoonful of Magic by Irene Radford
Jul. 1st, 2025 06:00 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
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A Spoonful of Magic
Book 1 of Suburban Sorceress
Irene Radford
A witch needs a wand, be it a fountain pen, a wooden spoon, or a chess piece.
Newly divorced baker Daphne Deschants juggles a small business and three active teens. A sudden burst of puberty means this non-witch must teach a crash course in basic wizardry as well. Their philandering father needs to put aside his philandering ways and come home. Now.
Then she finds a pentagram inlaid in the floor of her attic and members of the true magical community, rather than the wannabes that fill the town, start arriving on her doorstep.
Daffy must now embrace her long suppressed powers to discern who is an ally and who represents evil.
The Sheriff for the International Guild of Master Wizards, Gabriel (G) Deschants’ work requires that he travel the world, stopping rogue magicians. He regrets not helping raise his three children. But his criminally insane first wife, D’Acorre, has escaped from Guild Prison and gone rogue.
To restore her magic, she needs the blood of her last remaining relative—her son, Gabriel’s firstborn, the boy Daffy has raised as her own.
G can best protect his family by staying away, but he can’t stay away if he is to recapture his murderous ex-wife.
Daffy and G must reconcile their differences and join with the children to save themselves and defeat the evil woman who threatens everyone they know and love.
“Happy Anniversary, Daffy. And thanks for the last thirteen years, the most wonderful years of my life.” G raised his champagne flute and waited for me to click mine against his.
And waited.
Oh, tell another whopper, you lying S.O.B.
Somehow, I cracked something resembling a smile.
“Gabriel Sebastian Deschants, what is my name?” I knew he hated his full name. He’d been G for so long he probably didn’t remember how he signed our marriage license application. I’d never seen his birth certificate.
He grimaced and I almost rejoiced in causing him a small bit of pain. He deserved it.
Still, we’d been married for an unlucky thirteen years, together nine months before that. That should count for something.
But it didn’t. Not to him anyway.
“Daffy, what is this about?” He set his flute down carefully and speared me with his fabulous royal blue eyes. He knew what he was doing. Used car salesmen melted under that gaze. Bank loan managers lowered interest rates by three points under the scrutiny of that gaze.
Not me. Not any longer anyway. I fell victim to him the first day we met. After that, I’m not sure if any decision I made was mine or his, channeled through my mouth.
“You haven’t used my real name in so long, I just need to know that you remembered.”
“Daphne Rose Wallace,” he ground out each word as if dragging them from the back of his memory, a place he didn’t go very often.
“Daphne Rose Wallace Deschants now.” I lifted my own gaze to him. “Remember the Deschants part?”
“Of course I remember. This is our wedding anniversary. What’s got into you, Daffy?”
Our waiter came over with the bill for our very expensive dinner enclosed in a discreet black folder. He must have sensed the end of our sojourn. “Was the meal prepared satisfactorily, Madame?” he asked hesitantly, staring at the slices of rare prime rib still on my plate, along with half the garlic mashed potatoes and roasted asparagus. And the still full flute of champagne.
“The food was just right.” I smiled at the troubled waiter, genuinely.
“Daffy?” G slapped his credit card into the black folder and handed it to the waiter.
“Eugene, Oregon may look like a thriving metropolis built around a major University and agricultural crossroads, but it is still very much a small town in attitude,” I said hesitantly. As much as I had practiced my speech I still hesitated to say what I needed to say.
Maybe I should just keep quiet.
But I’d never be able to live with myself, live with him, if I didn’t get it out there.
“Everyone knows everyone else and they gossip. A lot.”
Was that the beginning of a blanch on his face? I wanted to make him squirm and he’d given me the ammunition.
“Last week when you were supposed to be in Florida on business, Belle tripped over her own shadow and broke her wrist. She got a black eye to go with the blue and green cast. You didn’t answer your cell. You weren’t registered in the hotel where you said you’d be. And the emergency number of your employer is disconnected.”
He had the grace to look away.
“However, I received an email from one of your email accounts with pictures attached.”
His blanch took on a green tinge.
I held up my phone with the most incriminating photo showing. A naked G with an equally unclothed blonde sprawled upon a mattress. The white sheets and pillow cases looked like an anonymous motel or a dorm room. I couldn’t see enough of the woman’s face to tell if she was jailbait young or old enough to know better. G didn’t have his wedding ring on in the photo.
“Daffy, whatever you have heard…”
“What I see.” I grabbed the phone and flipped to the next photo and the three after that. The time stamp on the pictures, from a high quality digital camera, not a cheap cell phone, showed 02:07 AM. Dated three nights before.
The next morning I’d received a phone call from Flora Chambers, a neighbor who had moved three blocks away to a newer and better house, and fellow officer of the PTA, wondering why G was in old downtown instead of Florida as I’d told her at the last PTA meeting.
“Where? How?” G’s throat worked like his fine dinner was about to come up. “You have to know that photos can be altered. Not everything is at it seems. You know this town…”
“What about this one? It’s a close up. No distortions from window screens or sheer drapes or glass or anything. She’s draped all over you like a tick on a dog’s ear!”
He waved the phone away and tried to fix me with that compelling gaze again.
Had he used it on more young women? I focused on the bridge of his nose rather than let his eyes persuade me away from my course of action.
“You didn’t deny it, G. You just tried to dismiss the evidence.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“No.” I pushed back my chair and stood. Suddenly I was more disappointed than angry. Deep inside me I’d truly hoped he had a logical explanation for his actions. Something weird and unbelievable. In this town not much was too weird and unbelievable to discount. I’d grasp anything he offered at this point.
“This is not what it seems, Daffy.” He gulped. “Parlor trick magic is… This town embraces the weird. Mundane cameras can’t capture magical illusion.”
I’m an English major. I’ve read all of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets (although don’t ask me for details about all those 150 sonnets). And the great truth about those plays? It’s a big mistake to read them. No one was ever meant to read them. The plays were written and designed to be performed. Hamlet on the page is a pale ghost of Hamlet on stage.