Witch Creek
Page 27
Petra plodded numbly, the sunset bleeding across the sky behind her and driving her shadow before her. She pulled one arm of the Mermaid, and Nine had the other for this part of the journey. The Mermaid’s scales slipped and skipped over the grass, while the guts and stump of a neck had the tendency to get caught on things. Petra just focused on putting one foot in front of the other and didn’t worry about being gentle with the corpse.
Nine’s stomach growled audibly. Petra gave her some serious side-eye.
Nine shrugged.
It was getting late. The gate finally came into view. Maria took over from Petra, and she and Nine hauled the body a few feet into the cave. Petra heard a heavy thud as they chucked the Mermaid’s body on the sand. No one had been here in years. Maybe she’d rot in place. Whatever. She was Owen’s problem, not theirs.
A faint cawing came from a distance.
Petra looked beyond the gate, to the field above the cave.
An oak tree grew there. The tree was smaller than the Lunaria had been in its full glory. But it had some of that same stateliness about it. Sig loped through the grass to the tree, climbing the hill with his tail up. Petra followed, her muscles aching.
The tree was covered in ravens. They seethed and moved among the oak’s fresh green leaves as if they were shadows. One spied her, and cawed. Perhaps that was its way of saying goodbye. Petra felt a lump in her throat at that sentimentality.
Until, that was, the ravens left the tree and swooped toward her in a cloud. Sig barked, and Petra threw her arms up over her head. They swarmed around her, blotting out the light of the sunset like the debris of a house in a tornado, circling in a deafening cloud. Their wings slapped her head and back, and she thought that for certain the magic of the Rutherford Ranch finally intended to kill her once and for all.
A featherlight touch brushed her hair, and the shrieking abruptly stopped.
Petra lowered her arms an inch.
It was Gabriel. Whole, gazing at her with quizzical amber eyes.
She sucked in her breath and threw her arms around him. One of his hands was tangled in her hair and the other wrapped around her back.
“I thought you were dead,” she whispered.
“I thought you were dying,” he said. His brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “Have I been gone long enough for your hair to grow that long?”
She snorted back tears and snot on his soggy flannel shirt.
“It’s a long story. A very long story.”
He thrust her hair back from her face and kissed her soundly. He tasted like warm sunshine.
She drew back reluctantly. “The tree. What happened?”
“The tree . . . is changing. It has its own purposes now.” His fingers plucked a long strand of hair that stuck to his stubble. He turned it over in his hand, examining it. “It serves another will. I don’t understand why.”
Grasses crunched behind them. Sig growled.
It was Owen, stumbling toward them.
“Has it imprinted on Owen? Jesus Christ.” She pressed her forehead to his chest. Petra was thinking about the tree as if it were a freakishly powerful gosling imprinted on the village idiot.
“No. I don’t think so.”
Owen dug into his pocket and pulled out something shiny. He shook it at Gabriel. “The Mermaid gave me this. Said she found it.”
Gabriel took it from him, and his expression darkened. It was a gold pocket watch that dangled from a short, broken chain. The hands were frozen at twelve, and the crystal was cracked.
“What?” she asked, wanting to know.
“That watch. It belonged to Lascaris.”
Petra’s gaze slipped to the tree. “What does it mean?”
Gabe followed her gaze. “It means . . . we are all in very serious trouble.”
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to the team of literary superheroes who worked on this book with me.
Thank you to David Pomerico for taking on this project, and for your patient and bulletproof edits.
Thanks to Becca Stumpf for all the magic bracelet action. P.S. I have boot envy.
Thank you to Caro Perny for using all the contents of your creative utility belt to help publicize my work.
Thanks to Jason and Marcella, who fight the good fight against dastardly plot bunnies during first reads.
About the Author
LAURA BICKLE grew up in rural Ohio, reading entirely too many comic books out loud to her favorite Wonder Woman doll. After graduating with an MA in Sociology-Criminology from Ohio State University and an MLIS in Library Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she patrolled the stacks at the public library and worked with data systems in criminal justice. She now dreams up stories about the monsters under the stairs. Her work has been included in the ALA’s Amelia Bloomer Project 2013 reading list and the State Library of Ohio’s Choose to Read Ohio reading list for 2015-2016. More information about Laura’s work can be found at www.laurabickle.com.
www.harpervoyagerbooks.com
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Praise for the Novels of Laura Bickle
Nine of Stars
“Bickle does an excellent job of letting her characters speak for themselves and blending realistic, grounded conflicts with her supernatural plot . . . Also of note is Bickle’s respectful treatment of Native American spirituality . . . Bickle is well on her way to establishing her work as a cornerstone of her genre.”
Publishers Weekly (*starred review*)
“Following the prequels Dark Alchemy and Mercury Retrograde, Bickle’s series launch mixes alchemy, folklore, and Native American traditions with a wintry Western landscape that will intrigue fans of the Weird West subgenre.”
Library Journal
“Full marks to Bickle for . . . this . . . consistently engaging series. Our protagonist is as likeable and resourceful as ever . . . The way the series sticks to a single source of the supernatural while still managing to come up with a wide range of manifestations . . . is very compelling.”
RT BOOKreviews
“Readers who like no-nonsense characters, the occult, Native American myths, and the modern Wild West will enjoy this. The writing is fun, compelling, and straight from the hip, with no apologies as to language used.”
Booklist
Mercury Retrograde
“This wonderfully unusual Weird West novel combines the best of contemporary fantasy with metaphysical magic and mayhem, and even a bit of romance. Bickle has a knack for creating atmosphere, and she fills the fast-paced narrative with vivid scenes of wonder and a poignant story of death and rebirth.”
Publishers Weekly (*starred review*)
“Petra’s adventures in a magic-choked version of Yellowstone continue to balance nicely with a sense of fun, well-done and subtle world-building and characterization, plus some serious stakes. The series feels like it’s building splendidly, and there’s certainly room for expansion.”
RT BOOKreviews
“Bickle’s world and characters are enjoyably complex, sinking the reader happily into this contemporary fantasy landscape.”
Omnivoracious
Dark Alchemy
“This fun adventure in modern-day Wyoming introduces Petra Dee, a geologist looking for her missing father and trying to make peace with her past. Bickle (Rogue Oracle) adds a dash of romance to the charming adventure, wrapped up with a perfect ending.”
Publishers Weekly (*starred review*)
“Mix in some Native lore, great characterizations, a gift for bringing a setting to life, and a plot that eschews any hint of the tiredness of too much contemporary fantasy, and Dark Alchemy’s a winner on all fronts for this reader. Bickle writes with an individual clarity and style, leaving the reader to appreciate a dark sense of wonder that’s all her own. Highly recommended.”
Charles de Lint, Fantasy & Science Fiction
“Dark Alchemy reads like a stand-alone work, but Petra is such a likabl
e protagonist and the slightly off-balance world in which the town of Temperance exists is so well drawn that it’s hard not to hope we’ll see more of Petra’s adventures. There are elements here that easily could have shaded into standard tropes, but Bickle is skilled enough to put her own spin on them, and she has a clear, clean sense of plotting that gives the novel a wonderful pace and sense of completeness. More, please.”
RT BOOKreviews
“If Dark Alchemy was a movie, it’d pass the Bechdel Test and more than passes equity tests . . . Dark Alchemy was a compelling read with a satisfying conclusion promising more Petra Dee stories set around Temperance. I’m hooked.”
Dark Matter Zine
By Laura Bickle
Wildlands Novels
Nine of Stars
Witch Creek
Dark Alchemy Prequel Novels
Dark Alchemy
Mercury Retrograde
Anya Kalinczyk Series
Embers
Sparks
Delphic Oracle Series (written as Alayna Williams)
Dark Oracle
Rogue Oracle
For Young Adult Readers
The Hallowed Ones
The Outside
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
witch creek. Copyright © 2018 by Laura Bickle. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Digital Edition MARCH 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-256732-1
Print Edition ISBN: 978-0-06-256731-4
Cover photographs by © Fernando Cortes / Shutterstock; © Hills Outdoors / Shutterstock (river)
Harper Voyager and the Harper Voyager logo are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers in the United States of America and other countries.
HarperCollins is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers in the United States of America and other countries.
first edition
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada
www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com