Shadow Witch (The Witches of Hollow Cove Book 1)

by Richardson, Kim

  I wasn’t laughing. “When did this happen?”

  Ruth put a hand on her hip. “You were there, silly. At the town meeting.”

  “No,” I started again. “I mean, when did Marcus come to you. When did he bring the news?”

  “The morning after the library incident,” answered Ruth. “While you’d gone out to look for Ronin. You let him in, remember?”

  So, that’s why he’d showed up at the house.

  “Girls!”

  I spun around to see Beverly swinging her hips in a red dress that hugged all her curves.

  “What a glorious day to have such a glorious party,” she beamed as she neared. “Here you go, darling,” said Beverly as she handed me a stack of cards.

  “What are these?” I asked, turning them over.

  “Your business cards,” she smiled. “Can’t be a true Merlin without cards.”

  My mouth fell open as I read the inscription:

  MERLIN GROUP

  Magical Enforcement Response League Intelligence Network

  TESSA DAVENPORT

  Davenport House Division, Maine, USA

  The sound of the kitchen’s back door slammed shut, pulling my gaze toward the House.

  Three men stepped off the back porch. They shared the same dazed expression, like they were lost, throwing their heads around like they did not understand where they were or how they got there. I watched as the three men went around the house and disappeared toward the front.

  A light went on in my head. I recognized them. They were the three men Beverly had thrown down the basement and locked the door behind them. I thought I’d never see them alive again.

  I looked at Beverly. “I have to ask. What is it with these men? What happened to them? Why were they in the basement in the first place?”

  Ruth snorted and looked away.

  “Davenport House is a beast. And all beasts need to eat.” Beverly tapped my hand. “Don’t worry, darling. No harm done. And they will never harm anyone ever again. That’s a promise.” She let go of my hand and sashayed her way into the throng of guests, in the direction where males were more dominant.

  I had no idea what to say to that. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to say anything. Maybe they got what they deserved.

  I sighed and looked at Ruth. “I think I’ll go mingle before Dolores spells my face with acne,” I said, making her laugh.

  I’d taken only five steps before I was assaulted.

  Martha bounded into view and hooked her arm around mine. “Tessa. You should have let me do your hair, hon,” said the larger witch, pulling me along. “Every woman needs a little pampering.”

  “I’m not the pampering type. Besides, I do my own hair and makeup.”

  “It shows,” said the witch.

  I frowned at her. “Do I look that bad?”

  Martha flashed her teeth. “You can always look better, hon.”

  Not exactly the answer I was looking for. But I was glad she was steering me away from Marcus and heading toward the bar.

  Martha caught me staring at him. “I know the two of you are at odds with each other, but he’s been a godsend to this town.”

  “I know,” I answered as we stood next to the bar. “I just wished I knew why he hates my mother and me so much. I’m part of this town now. I could make this work if he wasn’t such a dick.”

  “You don’t know?” questioned Martha.

  I wiggled out of her grip. “Know what?”

  Martha let out a dramatic breath of air. “Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” began the witch, which I seriously doubted with that smile on her face. “Two years ago, your mother was here, working with her sisters while you were in New York. I believe your father was on tour somewhere and your mother couldn’t go, for reasons I don’t know.”

  “What does this have to do with Marcus?” I asked, my voice low because I had a feeling he could hear.

  I thought about my mother and Marcus having an affair and quickly dismissed the idea. He was way too young for her. She loved my father too much to even look at another man.

  “Marcus was working a case,” continued the witch. “Very much like what’s happening now. Demons. Deaths. The town was a mess. Your mother was charged to work with Jason, one of Marcus’s deputies. He was also Marcus’s best friend, from the same clan of shifters before they came here.” She paused for a second. “Things happened, I’m not sure of the details, but while they were in the middle of it…”

  My brows rose. “The middle of it?”

  “Yes. Jason and your mother were battling a demon, right on the Hollow Cove Bridge. Something terrifying, I’m sure.”

  “Okay.” I wasn’t getting any vibes why Marcus was such an ass. So far, my mother had had a partner. What was the big deal about that?

  Martha’s expression shifted. “And then your mother got a phone call from your father.”

  The blood left my face.

  Martha sighed. “She left. She left Jason alone with a demon. Marcus found what was left of him hours later.”

  I shook my head. “How do you know any of this is true?”

  “Your mother told her sisters, darling. Unaffected by what she’d done. Didn’t even shed a tear or look guilty. Nothing. A bit of a flake, that one. How can she do something like that?”

  “Because she would,” I whispered, remembering all the times she’d forgotten me in the parking lot at school because she’d been off to see my father. Too many to count. “My mother would do something like that.”

  And then it all clicked into place, why Marcus hated me, why he didn’t want me here. He’d lost someone close to him because of what my mother had done. He had trusted her, and she’d let them down. She’d let his best friend die.

  It all made sense now, why he’d treated me this way. Hell, if that had been my friend who died because of a foolish and selfish witch, I wouldn’t even be talking to him.

  But still, he’d helped me. He’d protected me. He’d carried me all the way out of Devilwood Thicket, held me in his lap while Ronin drove us home, and had put me to bed.

  “Are you okay, dear?” asked Martha. “You look a little pale. I have blush in my bag. You could use some lip gloss. You should never leave the house without lip gloss.” The witch opened her purse.

  “No, thanks.” I forced a smile as she let go of her purse. “Thanks for telling me.”

  “My pleasure, hon.” Martha squeezed my hand and moved to face the bar. “I’ll have a strawberry daiquiri with a bit of…”

  I barely heard what she was telling the waiter as I walked away, my heart heavy with dread.

  Of all the stupid and mindless things my mother had done, this was the clear winner.

  Faces blurred as I walked around them, their voices distant, like hearing them from a radio far away. I stood for a moment, emotions high, as I wiggled my bare feet in the soft grass.

  I turned my gaze on Marcus again, my heart suddenly pounding a lot faster than before. My chest contracted, like my intestines were playing jump rope in my gut. I took him in. All in. My eyes rolled over him, slowly. I saw the confidence, the broad, wide shoulders and muscular arms and that hard chest I’d been lucky enough to feel, to his trim waist and smooth face.

  Marcus’s gaze snapped to mine, as though he felt me staring at him. Our eyes locked, and I found myself incapable of looking away.

  We held each other’s gaze for a moment, my body prickling and reacting to the heat between us.

  Perhaps I’d been wrong about him this whole time. Perhaps he wasn’t the giant dick I thought he was.

  Perhaps he was something else entirely…

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  1

  The demon was fast. Damn fast.

  It had dragged me all through the streets of Upper East Side Manhattan, snaking through the backwoods of Central Park to finally arrive in Hell’s Kitchen.

  Groaning, I forced my legs to keep working, my lungs starving for air as I tried to
ignore the cramp pinching at my side.

  I didn’t get paid enough for this crap.

  This would be my tenth exorcism this month. No, I’m not talking about heads spinning while spewing out fountains of pea soup. That’s Hollywood. This is real life, and demonic possession is very real.

  It happened when a demon hitched a ride inside a person’s body, making them do obscene things and act out of character, all the while sucking on their life force until they eventually dropped dead.

  There had been a sudden influx of demons the past two weeks in New York City. Rumors had it that an unusually large Rift—a tear in the Veil, the dividing line between humans and the Netherworld demons—had opened, and thousands of demons had escaped through it.

  It had been a busy month for the City of New York in terms of demon parasites, but that didn’t mean the city was free of other demons. Hell no. There were a lot of creepier crawlers and things far worse than your average body-snatching demon bastards. Still, tonight I was graced with the presence of yet another demon.

  There was no way in hell a fourteen-year-old human girl could run that fast for so long without having to stop and catch her breath. The demon inside her was running her down, pushing her body to an extreme no human could endure. It had stolen her body and now ran it like a puppet on strings, feeding on her life force. If I didn’t get to her soon, the girl’s body would collapse, and she would die, leaving the demon to consume her soul and then human-hop into another poor bastard. Typically possessions happened when humans were stupid enough to play at summoning demons in exchange for the usual crap—money, fame, sex. Still, I couldn’t let her die.

  Unlike demons or other half-breeds blessed with supernatural speed and endurance, I had to rely on my bursts of sweet adrenaline and my profound hatred for body-snatching demons to fuel my legs. I was fit, but I wasn’t an athlete. My mortal body could only endure so much, and if I didn’t banish the demon soon, I was going to drop dead of exhaustion.

  I’d been hired by the Dark Witch Court to keep tabs on the Veil, mostly on hunting and banishing whatever demon or supernatural baddy came through. The pay wasn’t great, but it took care of the bills and helped me keep my family home, which was all I needed.

  Demons were always tampering with the Veil. They’d pierce it and manage to cross over to our world to feast on a few human souls. Days like the solstice or full moons, when the Veil was at its thinnest, resulted in a larger outpour of demons.

  That’s where I came in.

  I’d blast them back to the Netherworld. Fire usually did the trick. A couple of fireballs later, and the demons were back in their world, leaving the mortal world a little safer.

  I hated nothing more than a body-snatching demon. Okay, maybe two body-snatching demons. The fact remained; I loathed them. There was something utterly disturbing about being trapped in your own body while someone else piloted it around, and you couldn’t do a damn thing about it. I wouldn’t stand for it. I would rip that demon out of her, through her throat if I had to.

  I caught a flicker of movement across the darkened street and turned to see a shadow retreat. Julia, the girl, disappeared through a door at the bottom of a six-story apartment building on West 46th Street. Good. I couldn’t exorcise a demon openly in the streets of New York City, not without getting my ass arrested and my face splattered all over social media.

  I took a deep breath and followed her.

  A few humans blurred past me as I ran up the street. Humans—blissfully ignorant of the paranormal dangers and horrors that surrounded them. The Veil acted like a glamour, changing the way things looked to human eyes and preventing them from seeing the paranormal world and its inhabitants. Must be nice to wake up each morning with only your bills and mortgage and kids to worry about. Not the giant-winged ugnur demon that slipped through a Rift and decided to feast on your brain because, well, that’s what they do.

  Exhaust fumes, hot pavement, and the stench of garbage displaced the night air as I ran across the street. The gathering dark rushed in to fill the spaces where the streetlights couldn’t reach. There were no lights in the windows, which was the perfect breeding grounds for demons who thrived in darkness. In turn, the darkness fed them with power. But that didn’t stop me.

  By the time I reached the apartment building, my heart wanted to explode through my chest to say hello to the concrete slab at my feet. Damn.

  You’d think by now I would have made a charm for endurance and speed. I made a mental note to look into that when I got home. A pair of super legs would have been golden right about now.

  Pinching the cramp at my side, I gulped down buckets of air, feeling slightly dizzy, and pulled open the door. I stepped into the darkened lobby and stopped to listen. The faint whisper of water running through pipes answered back. Then nothing. The dim scent of sulfur lay on the air. I smiled. My demon.

  The lobby led into an equally dark hallway—a recipe for more trouble. But I never followed recipes.

  With my heart pounding in my ears, I stepped forward, and the sound of glass crunching under my boots stopped me dead in my tracks. I looked to the side wall, and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could make out the two adjacent light fixtures, their glass bulbs shattered.

  Not knowing which apartment door the demon had slipped through, I ran to the first door on the first floor and checked the knob. Locked. I hissed in frustration. It would take me hours to check all the doors in this place. Julia didn’t have that long.

  I made my way forward again and then hesitated for a moment at the corner of the hall. The soft click of a metal door opening and then closing reached me.

  Bingo.

  I was running. As I rounded the corner, I saw a door with a faded sticker denoting 6A. Soft, yellow light shone from the gap between the floor and the door. I went to the door and tried the knob. It rolled freely.

  “Gotcha,” I whispered.

  My pulse pounded, and I opened the door as quietly as I could to step inside. The air was filled with the stench of blood. The apartment was of moderate size by New York City standards, lit with nothing more than a few candles on the wood floor. The burning candles lit the walls with dark, vague, and creepy shadows. Great.

  The ceilings were at least ten feet high, and the walls were covered with wallpaper straight out of the eighties. Chairs, tables, and a desk were strewn against the walls, as though to make a larger space in the middle of the apartment. And then I saw why.

  A large stone circle lay in the middle of the room. The stones were small, the size of my thumb, and bone white. Six black chicken heads were spread evenly around the circle, and in the middle was a black lamb’s head above a blood-drawn triangle. Strange runes I’d never seen before were written in fresh blood inside the circle, suggesting more of a pagan ritual than your modern demon summoning. Creepy.

  I took another step forward for a better look.

  A girl stepped into my line of sight. Gone was the healthy, happy girl I’d seen in the photo. Her hair hung limp and greasy over her dirty face. Her body was thin, almost gaunt, and her limbs, what I could see of them through her clothes, were stained and dirty. Her jeans and T-shirt were speckled in blood, but I couldn’t tell if it was her own or someone else’s. The flesh on her face was sunken and the bones sharp, leaving her black eyes feral and unsettling. They watched me with unrelenting rage. She was pissed.

  That made two of us.

  I knew if I didn’t move I was dead. I didn’t have time for small talk. Moving on instinct, I dropped to my knees, pulled out my chalk and began to draw a circle with a seven-point star in the middle—the exorcism sigil.

  Exorcisms were the highest level of hard magic. Deadly, if you didn’t do it right. With an inexperienced priest or witch, more times than not, the human died in a rivulet mess of blood and guts.

  But I’d been doing this for more than a decade now, and I knew my craft. And I was going to kick this demon’s ass back to the Netherworld where it belonged.


  There was power in words, magic words, just like there was power in sigils and seals. If you knew how to use them. Not many witches did, though. You needed to be precise in your drawing of them. One little squiggle out of place could send you to the Netherworld or cause you to end up with your head on backward. Yeah, that happened to a witch down the block before I was born. Since then, witches had grown frightened of the power of sigils. They didn’t trust them, but I trusted them more than I trusted blood magic. Sigils were like math and art. You did your calculations, and then you did your drawing.

  I’d screwed up a few times in the beginning, but I wasn’t stupid enough to try complicated sigils at first. No, I started with the typical easy sigil, like a hovering teacup sigil or paint-your-toenails-blue sigil. My toenails had disappeared completely the first time I’d tried. Oops. Thank God it had been winter so no one had to know or see me, Sam the toenail-less idiot.

  I was now so good at my sigils that I’d scanned them into the computer and printed out copies. Yes. They worked just as well and saved me the time to draw them up when I was in a hurry.

  But I had an advantage over the other witches. My grandpa always said I had a knack for them. I was an artist. I loved to draw and paint, so images came naturally to me just like breathing. My sigils were each a piece of art, and I’d put my energy and time into creating them. They were beautiful. And powerful.

  But I was also lazy.

  When I realized that one sigil was the equivalent in power to hours and hours of spell reciting and reading and then some more conjuring, I opted for the sigils. Why spend hours on a transmutation spell when I could draw the transmutation sigil in thirty seconds flat.

  Hence came my passion for Goetia. I’d already mastered the sigils—the drawing and the energy that came from them—so it was time to turn things up a notch.

  Sweat beaded on my forehead as I drew as quickly as I could without making a mistake. I couldn’t screw up now because a mistake could cost me my life, and Julia’s.