Title: Into the Mystic, Volume 2

Author: Elna Holst, Valentine Wheeler, A. Fae, Sita Bethel, CC Bridges, Laura Bailo, Jacqueline Rohrbach, MK Hardy, Lina Langley, TS Porter

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: October 16, 2017

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: Female/Female

Length: 94100

Genre: Paranormal, lesbian, bisexual, romance, short stories, selkies, werewolves, wicthes,

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Synopsis

Ten lesbian/bisexual paranormal short stories…

Green Love – Have you heard about the aspen clone in the heart of Blackwood forest? Some say it’s enchanted, while others…

Dead Letter – Signed, sealed, delivered…or was it?

Seaside Escape – Just because it’s been done for generations doesn’t mean it should be.

Dressed in Wolf Skin – She was never particularly fond of werewolves, but she hated skinwalkers.

Unraveled – Summer can hack their magic, but she can’t hack her own heart.

The Holy Company – On an ancient holy path, they will come face to face with one of the local legends.

Vampire Hours – One’s a vampire. The other is human. One wants forever. The other wants everything to end.

To the Sea – Sometimes you just have to hold your breath and dive in.

Holy Water – She might be the most dangerous being in the world, but Clara is still in love with her.

Lighthouse Five – Is it possible for a mermaid and a human to build a relationship?

Blurbs

Green Love

Elise, a serious-minded environmentalist, hikes into the forbidding forest of Blackwood to find the clonal colony of aspen said to exist at its centre. Her journey is as much a struggle to break free of the overprotectiveness of her older sister and make peace with the loss of their parents as it is a mission to save the woods from the threat of deforestation. Once arrived at the aspen grove, she seems to have stumbled across more than she bargained for. Is someone, or something, out to get her? Will she make it out of Blackwood alive?

Dead Letter

Rosie’s new job as a letter carrier is much harder than she expected. The discovery of a haunted letter box certainly doesn’t make it any easier. For years, Olive has been waiting for the right person to talk to, and it seems Rosie might just be the one.

Seaside Escape

Helping men acquire wives from an ocean of beautiful selkie is a generational thing with Fiona. It’s part of being a witch. Until the day Kinley swims into her world and turns everything she ever knew on its fin. Through Kinley and her selkie sisters, Fiona finds love, a new outlook on her life, and a chance to rectify her past.

Dressed in Wolf Skin

A werewolf with no pack is in danger of becoming the most powerful addition to a skinwalker’s wardrobe. She’s rescued by a witch who lives alone in the desert. Although both are stubborn and independent, they develop feeling for each other while the witch nurses the werewolf back to health. However, the skinwalker still wants his trophy and will do anything to claim it.

Unraveled

Unlike other witches, Summer doesn’t make her own spells. A former foster kid, she learned not to waste anything. She hacks old enchanted items and sells them as good luck charms to poor college students. Her one mistake is in giving a powerful charm to her crush, Imogen, a brilliant biology grad student. That gets Summer noticed by another witch on campus, Imogen’s science professor. Now she must either give in to the professor’s blackmail or risk her wrath. Either way, Imogen’s life hangs in the balance.

The Holy Company

Sophie curses the day she said yes to Anna’s idea of walking Saint James’s Way in Spain. She’s exhausted, and she doesn’t think she can keep her feelings for her a secret for much longer. But a day of rest soon turns into a nightmare when they come face-to-face with one of the local legends, and Sophie’s secret is no longer safe.

Vampire Hours

Janna and Stacy disagree on a lot of things but not on how much they love each other. Realizing that bond isn’t enough, Janna turns Stacy into a vampire, hoping she can be convinced that life is a quirky trip best taken together.

To the Sea

While working with a beach clean-up crew in the aftermath of an oil slick, Kay meets Rose. A reserved and melancholy soul, Kay is utterly enchanted by Rose’s energy and optimism. But everybody has their secrets, even Rose. As the two grow closer, will Kay accept and understand Rose for who she is?

Holy Water

On her eighteen birthday, Clara comes face to face with the spirit that has been calling to her, the one that everyone in her pueblo is afraid of. Despite warnings to stay away from her, the spirit is all that Clara can think about. Soon, she finds herself in an impossible position: stay away from the woman she loves for her own well-being or help her despite the immeasurable risk to her own life.

Lighthouse Five

Chris is happy living a solitary life on her tiny lighthouse island. When she discovers a stranded mermaid named Jewels, and carries her get back to the water, it marks the beginning of a strange new friendship. As they bond over sharing bits of their cultures and finding out their similarities and differences, Chris begins ask herself—how close can a human and a merperson get?

Green Love by Elna Holst

Excerpt

The moss underfoot was soft enough for sleeping on, but also too squishy for the pegs to be securely fastened. Elise’s tent keeled considerably, the roof dipping as the back of a worn-out horse. And, of course, there was the damp. She unfolded the second flooring sheet, the one the sales clerk at the outdoors supply store had sworn by all that was holy would keep her as dry as tinder. The man was obviously a blasphemer. But then, in all fairness, the tinder in the outside pocket of her knapsack was anything but dry.

It would work. It would have to work. It couldn’t keep raining forever.

Undoing the slippery-wet knots on her boots with some difficulty, Elise left them to fend for themselves under the flysheet and pulled her knapsack after her into the inner tent. It was cottony and a yellowish orange, like the one favoured by Buddhist monks. She had thought this would bring her peace. Heat. Resilience.

And it would, Elise decided. Just not tonight. She rolled out her mat and unfurled her sleeping bag from its compressible sack. This ritual had always left her flabbergasted as a child—she couldn’t figure out how all that abundant fluffy goodness, which held the promise of a toasty night to come, could be contained in such a diminutive carrier. Her father, the magician, had flaunted his tricks to the appreciative audience of his two giggling daughters. Or she had been giggling. Betsy, it occurred to her, in hindsight, had mostly looked grim. She hated camping. She hated the discomfort of it, the challenge. She abhorred the midges, the prickliness and sliminess—all the threatening aspects of the natural world. And the damp, certainly.

In her current state of wretchedness, Elise couldn’t fault her sister there. The damp was enough to make anyone miserable. Even so, as she peeled off her jacket and windbreakers, and pulled down the zip of her alluring bag, Elise felt a childish rush of unbridled joy at the prospect before her. “Creature comforts,” their father’s voice echoed back from the past. “You need to be out here to appreciate them fully.”

Didn’t you just. She slipped her aching body between the folds, zipping her sleeping bag all the way up again. Rain pattered against the flysheet. The wind soughed through the trees outside.

“Listen,” her father teased. “They’re whispering their secrets to you.”

“What’s that?” little Elise asked breathlessly. Little Betsy groaned and turned on her mat.

“Now, if I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret, would it?”

Elise frowned. Two years older, Betsy had, of course, heard it all before.

Fifteen odd years later, in her one-woman tent in the woods, shielded from the civilized world by sheets upon sheets of rain, a tear escaped down Elise’s mud-streaked cheek. She could do with a wash. Tomorrow.

“This one’s for you, Dad,” she murmured into the dark and flipped the switch of her torch. “Wherever you are.”