Grave Mistake by Christine Pope

When you pull up stakes, make sure you don’t get stabbed in the back. Self-taught in the arcane arts, hedgewitch Selena Marx is comfortable doing divination for West Los Angeles’ anxiety-ridden housewives, lawyers, and aspiring actresses. Her biggest challenge? Avoiding Lucien Dumond, leader of the Greater Los Angeles Necromancers’ Guild, who views her as fresh meat to add to his harem of slavishly devoted groupies. Selena’s not interested in the slimy, celebrity-schmoozing sorcerer, but nobody turns Lucien down without consequences. When he threatens to fit her with magical cement shoes and drop her off the Santa Monica Pier, Selena’s Tarot cards point her to Globe, Arizona, for a new home, a new shop, and a cursed pet cat. Just as she’s settling in and meeting the locals — including Calvin Standingbear, hunky chief of the San Ramon Apache tribal police — Lucien tracks her down…and promptly disappears. When his body turns up on tribal lands, it’s up to Calvin to investigate. Starting with Selena. And when one of Lucien’s acolytes is killed, traces of dark magic and cryptic warnings from the spirits send Selena and Calvin in a race against time — before a too-close-for-comfort evil cuts her own life short. The Hedgewitch for Hire series will continue with book 2, Social Medium, releasing on March 31, 2021. The romance subplot will stretch over the entire series, while each novel will be a self-contained mystery without a cliffhanger.