Torrent Witches Box Set #1 Books 1-3 (Butter Witch, Treasure Witch, Hidden Witch)
Page 1
Contents
Copyright
Butter Witch
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Treasure Witch
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Hidden Witch
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
More Titles
Copyright
Butter Witch Copyright 2015, Treasure Witch Copyright 2016, Hidden Witch Copyright 2016 Tess Lake. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.
Tess Lake
Tesslake.com
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This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogs in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
Butter Witch
Chapter 1
“C’mon, buddy, I believe in you!”
I whispered sweet nothings to my car as it chugged up the hill, the engine groaning. I could almost hear it talking back to me in every pained rumble.
I’m doing my best, Harlow! I’m a good car! Don’t get rid of me!
I switched off the air conditioning and the radio—anything for more power—but we kept slowing. It immediately got warm in the car, but that wasn’t unusual. The local weather was more than a little screwy.
It wasn’t even a steep hill, and that’s what worried me. Nine years ago, I’d bought my car and escaped the city of Harlot Bay—more on that name in a moment. A year ago, I’d returned in the same car, for reasons I won’t go into right now—let’s just say they involved the end of a job, the end of a relationship and a fire—and my car had been with me through thick and thin. In this constantly changing world, it had been my rock.
Now it was at risk of seizing up and becoming a rock on the side of the road. I hoped not. I didn’t have the money for repairs or a tow truck. There’d be a lot of walking past it, seeing it sitting dead in the grass every day.
It’d break my heart.
If only magic worked on car engines, but that’s not my thing—right now, that is.
We were at a crawl when we made it to the top of the hill. The city of Harlot Bay appeared before me.
Yes, Harlot Bay, North Carolina, a dying seaside town. Once a favorite destination of pirates who arrived for only one reason (ahem), the tiny town grew into a city on the back of commerce, and then it went the other way as commerce went elsewhere. What was once a somewhat thriving seaport is now a confused tourist trap that desperately struggles to stay alive. The townsfolk would do anything to keep it going.
Hence the weeklong International Butter Carving Festival, which was due to start in two days.
Double-hence me, aforementioned poor townsfolk, doing anything to survive by running the Harlot Bay Reader, an online newspaper/history/recipes/whatever-I-can-think-of website.
Triple-hence me, Harlow Torrent, driving to town to work with a client, and then reporting on the council meeting, and then helping out my cousins at their store (“help” being a relative term), and then probably getting roped into some work at Big Pie, the bakery my mom and her two sisters own.
Yes, Torrent. We were those Torrents. The ones the rumors swirled about who lived up the hill in our decrepit mansion. The givers of the evil eye, the wild, wicked women.
The witches.
Nice to meet you. Mwah ha ha, evil cackle, all that.
I drove down the hill, picking up speed as I went. I didn’t want too much speed, because frankly, the brakes were shot too, and stopping for a red light needed a lot of advance notice. I’d have fixed them if I had the money, but living in a dying seaside town and having money didn’t go together.
So why were the Torrents here? I was here because a year ago, the small publishing company I was working at collapsed in spectacular fashion, due to some light embezzling by the accountant, and we all lost our jobs. My boyfriend at the time, Max, which is short for complete-stuck-up-shallow-braindead-moron, decided my sudden bout of unemployment was reason enough to dump me. The night he dumped me, I went to bed crying myself to sleep, with my cat, Adams, by my side. I woke up at midnight to fire alarms and our apartment complex fully ablaze.
Eight apartments burned to the ground. No one was hurt, but everyone lost everything they owned. I was reduced to my laptop, the clothes I was wearing, Adams and my car.
Once the police completed their preliminary investigation and determined it was a wiring fault (it wasn’t), I packed my nonexistent bags and drove home.
Home being Harlot Bay. Home being a swirling confluence of magical energy which disrupts the weather in our part of the world—we had snow on the beach once—and attracts witches and other supernaturals and nourishes our souls.
We, the Torrent family, have been here for centuries. The magical energy attracts us, comforts us, and generally makes us feel wonderful and calm.
I’m a Slip witch, so staying calm is especially important.
Enough about witches and magical energy and our dying town. It’s my home, I love it most of the time, and my family is here. If my car is a rock, they are my heart.
My annoying, frustrating, bickering, slightly mad, sometimes bad, witchy family.
I hit the bottom of the hill just in time to see my client, John, fling himself off the top of the radio tower that sits smack bang in t
he middle of town. Down he went, hitting the sidewalk face-first.
I coasted to a stop outside my office space and got out of the car. The engine ticked and cooled. I patted it and promised a servicing in the near future.
As soon as I had some money, of course.
I locked the car and then my heart sank when I saw Hattie Stern striding down the street. Please, please do not be coming to talk to me about something I’ve published on my website.
She marched by, giving me her customary look of disapproval, and continued on her way.
Yes, Hattie, I’m wearing a skirt and calf-high, dark leather boots that look amazing and match my hair and—shut up!
But still: phew.
“She really doesn’t like you, does she?”
John had peeled himself up off the sidewalk. I gave a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching. There were enough rumors about our family in town, and appearing to talk to myself in the street certainly wouldn’t help matters.
“She hates us. Ready for your session?”
John followed me inside.
The Harlot Bay Reader had been running for just under a year and had quickly grown to be an important source of news and information for the townsfolk.
Ah, who was I kidding? Sometimes I swore I was the only one who read it, which was sad, given I was the one who wrote it, did the photography, and published it. It was a one-woman show.
I operated out of free office space in a three-story building granted by the city council. In one of the mayor’s better ideas—and he had many, many bad ideas—he proposed giving new businesses free office space to operate. It was better than letting the buildings fall into ruin. There were many bored teenagers in Harlot Bay, and some of them vandalized when they got tired of underage drinking. I was the only one in this building at the moment, which was quite handy because, in addition to running the newspaper (without actual paper), I was also working as a post-life resolution therapist.
I made up the title myself. I helped ghosts move on. Well, I was trying to help one particular ghost move on.
John followed me up the stairs and into my office. There was already a fresh twenty-dollar bill sitting on the table. I didn’t know where John got them, but he assured me they weren’t stolen. He sat down on the battered leather sofa with a sigh.
“That was attempt number three hundred. I thought it might work this time,” he told me.
“Hmm.” I hummed noncommittally as I pulled out my laptop and got myself settled in. Considering John had told me he was on attempt number three hundred about six months ago and he threw himself off any high place he could find multiple times a week, he was most likely on attempt one thousand or more.
I opened my laptop and brought up my notes.
“This week we’re going to go through television shows to see if we can pin you to any specific point in time,” I said.
“Oh, I love television! I really like those shows where they have a crime and then the people have to solve it.”
About a million shows.
“You’ve been watching television?”
“Yes, on Mondays I go to Mrs. Tucker’s, Tuesdays is the Fergusons’, Wednesday through Friday is the McKays’ and their huge cinema screen, and then for the weekend, I pop in on whoever looks like they’re doing something interesting.”
Now it was my turn to sigh. Ghosts and their memories are a tricky thing. Some ghosts are obsessed over one particular thing and can remember it in hyper detail, but they can’t tell you their name. Others seem to block out anything painful (like their death). Some, like John, remember general things about their life, but they readily weave in new events. My big plan to reveal that he watched, say, 1970s television, was going to fall in a heap. Back to square one again.
Nevertheless, we started going through the list. He’d paid his twenty bucks and bought his hour, and I was determined to do my best to help him.
The problem with John was that he was John Smith. He didn’t remember where he lived. He didn’t remember children, a wife, parents, a job . . . nothing useful. He remembered going to a baseball game, but he couldn’t tell me the teams, the score, or even the weather that day. He didn’t know how he’d died. To me, he looked like he was in his midforties, and he was friendly enough, if sometimes a little uptight. We had two sessions per week, and I kept hoping I’d stumble upon something to help him move on. John was hopeful too, but given that I was pretty much the only one who could see or hear him, he didn’t have much choice in the matter.
Moving on is another mysterious problem, although it constantly happens.
Why just ghost people? There is ghost everything. Grass grows and is cut down, and for a moment there is a ghostly piece of grass. Then it dissipates. I guess grass doesn’t have a lot of unfinished business.
I saw a ghost fly once. This fly was coming straight for my sandwich when Adams smacked it right out of the air. Its dead body bounced against the wall. Then a shimmery ghost fly coalesced out of its body, fluttered for a moment, and headed straight for my sandwich again. Adams swiped again but missed. The ghost fly landed on my bread, walked two steps and wisped away, having fulfilled its destiny.
I did not eat that sandwich.
The hour passed quickly, but as usual it was a complete waste of time. He remembered all kinds of shows up to and including what he was watching yesterday. My egg timer buzzed and the session was done.
“Time is up. I’ll see you on Thursday.”
“Do you think if I stowed away on a rocket going to outer space, I could slip out and maybe throw myself into the sun? Would that kill me?”
“Um . . . I don’t know. I know magic, I know ghosts. I don’t know about space.”
“Oh well.”
He walked through the front wall and fell face-first onto the sidewalk below. I quickly packed up my stuff and got out of there. I had what promised to be a very entertaining council meeting to report on.
A ghost in space throwing himself into the sun? I’d have to ask Aunt Cass about that one.
On second thought, I’d see what kind of mood she was in and then think about asking her.
No reason to risk getting myself cursed.
Chapter 2
Carter Wilkins was glaring at me from the other side of the council chamber. He was the editor, writer, publisher, designer, marketer, and sole owner of the Harlot Bay Times (The Only True News Source in Harlot Bay!).
He kept moving his eyebrows up and down as though to really enforce his disdain for me and my website. Each twitch was like Morse code.
Twitch-twitch-twiiiiiitch. Twi-twi-twitch.
I am the only true news in Harlot Bay! You have what? A little “website” on the “Internet”? Who ever heard of such a thing? No one will trust your digital bits as much as my physical paper, girlie.
I focused back on the council members droning away and ignored Carter, but it was truly boring stuff and my mind drifted.
Today was actually one year to the day since I had driven back into town, much to the delight of my family. That meant they were sure to hold some sort of celebration. That meant cake and wine. That meant an extravagant family dinner with a lot of attention on me.
That meant annoyed cousins and an even more annoyed Great-Aunt Cass, who did not enjoy not being the center of attention. That meant acting out.
Yes, we all love each other fiercely, but take triplet witch sisters—my mom, Dalila, Aunt Freya, and Aunt Rohana—who work all day together in their bakery, two witch cousins, Molly and Luce, who work all day together, and Great-Aunt Cass (we usually drop the Great because who has time for that?), who is somewhere above eighty and a Slip witch like me who delights in tormenting her family, and you get a very special mixture that could kill you if you weren’t careful.
A bickering broth of big-britches witches.
There was no getting out of it, though. It was supposed to be a surprise, but Mom and my aunts had been whispering and giggling that morning in betw
een bickering and sniping, so I knew it was on and there was nothing I could do to get out of it.
The food would be delicious. The company . . . well, let’s just say I was glad there was wine served at every meal.
Being that it was the one-year anniversary of my returning to town, it was also almost the one-year anniversary of our guest house burning down and our forced move back into the decaying Torrent Mansion.
I pushed the memory out of my mind. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault.
I tuned back into the councilwoman and back out again just as quickly. The main event wasn’t close yet.
Seeing as there’s time right now:
Slip Witches.
Hi, my name is Harlow Torrent and I’m a Slip witch.
My cousins are nature witches, my mom and aunts are general all-arounders, and me and Aunt Cass? We’re Slips.
Yep, it gets a capital S right there at the start. A Slip witch is one whose powers are pretty much random.
Imagine a roulette wheel on a roller coaster. Spin! What do we land on today, Chet? (Chet is my imaginary TV show host.) Well, we have garden magic, specifically flowers, and wow, the power is crazy high!
That was a week after my sixteenth birthday. Every flower within two miles of our house bloomed. The ones closest to me got a little snarky and started snapping at people.
Being a Slip witch is awesuck. See what I did there? Awesome and suck together. Bam! Writer! Sometimes I can see the dead as clearly as real people. Other times they’re nothing more than a glimmer and a disembodied voice. Sometimes I can kitchen-witch a spectacular roast, vegetables and all. Other times I accidentally turn soup into dirt. Sometimes I start fires in my sleep.
Then there’s the whole good witch versus evil witch thing. Actually, it’s more like crazy-good-trying-to-save-the-universe-but-causing-a-lot-of-problems witch versus wow-that’s-way-way-way-totally-evil-dude witch. Pretty much every mega good/bad witch was/is a Slip. It’s like being the really clever kid in your family. The pressure is on to go to college and then do amazing things. At the same time, everyone is just a little worried that you’re going to become the mad genius cackling in a lab somewhere, stitching together dead bodies and attempting to hold the sun hostage.