by Neha Yazmin
I decided to dress in jeans and a soft, thin sweater, seen as the sun wasn’t out yet and it was much cooler than it had been in recent days.
I gritted my teeth as I made my way to the train station on foot – I couldn’t use magical transportation, in case the police were watching me.
I’d even surveyed the street outside my flat, on the lookout for any cars that might house Carver’s spies.
I didn’t know what I was looking for, so I stopped doing it soon after.
Besides, I wasn’t doing anything wrong in seeing Jax, so Carver’s men could follow me to hell for all I cared.
Of course, once I visit the Hardys and get that out of the way, I’ll be starting up my own investigation into Imogen’s death, and that’s when I don’t want to be tailed by anyone.
Maybe not even Jax.
This case is a lot more dangerous than I’d initially envisioned and the last thing I want to do is put Jax in harm’s way.
Sure, she may be a little hot-headed and impulsive, not to mention the fact that I find it hard to trust her, but it doesn’t mean I’m not going to protect her as best as I can.
“Finally! Thank you!” I say now as Jax opens the front door of her house to me. “I was beginning to think you weren’t home.”
“Don’t look so anxious, Amber,” she says dismissively, leading me to the huge lounge. “If I wasn’t in, it’s not as if you couldn’t have found me with a quick locator spell.”
“Yes, but it would look awfully suspicious of me to find you so easily if you weren’t in the few places I’d expect to see you.”
I sit on the edge of the sofa.
Jax says, “Huh?” as she sits on the couch opposite me.
“I have a sneaky suspicion that DI Carver has his men following me,” I tell her in a low voice. “Therefore, I have to limit the use of magic until I’m sure I’m in the clear.”
“Carver?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “The buff detective guy?”
“Buff?” Handsome yes, but was he buff?
No, not when I think of Callum as the very definition of buff. And hot. And fit.
And Carver is not in the same league as Callum.
“What? He too old for you, Amber?” she teases. “You like them young and murderous, don’t you? Like Callum Dent.” The white-haired witch shakes her head disapprovingly. “God, I hope they find him, that cold-blooded witch-killer. You could do better, Amber. Even if you are a bit boring yourself.”
I’ll ignore that last bit.
And the rest of it, too.
“DI Carver is definitely too old for you, though” I murmur.
“Whatever! It’s not like I’m going to date him or anything.” She shrugs.
“Well, good.”
Jax shakes her head at me, rolls her eyes.
“What’s with the double-makeover this year, Amber?” she asks me, appraising my gold hair.
“Long story,” I sigh. This is not the conversation I want to have with her right now. “For another day,” I promise her when she frowns. “It’s not the most important discussion point at this time.”
“Whatever,” the young witch croons, shrugging. “Anyway, you said something about a… messenger? Something helping you locate Imogen?”
Nodding, I retrieve the A-Z from my bag, open it to the page with the messages and hold it up for Jax to see.
She slips off the couch and kneels on the floor before the marble coffee table between us to get a closer look at the book.
“What? You run out of notebooks, did you, Amber?” Jax asks me, tilting her head to one side. “You had a nice fluffy one when you were “interrogating” Callum.”
She curled her fingers into speech marks when she said the word interrogating.
I’ll ignore that, as well.
“I didn’t use the A-Z as a notebook, Jax,” I say through gritted teeth. “But someone else did.”
Her eyes narrow, confused. “Okay…”
I turn the book so the words are facing me and run my fingers over the text before I let Jax glimpse it again.
“When I got home from the police station last night, I found the first line written on this page.”
“‘She wasn’t the first’?” Jax asks to confirm.
I nod.
“It’s talking about Imogen!” she announces, as though it couldn’t have possibly occurred to me.
“Yes,” I say. “And then, as I started… talking to myself about it, the answers to the questions I was asking out loud just appeared on the page, one after the other. Like magic.”
Jax is silent, staring.
I can’t remember the last time she was speechless in my presence.
Finally, she holds out her hands for me to give her the A-Z.
“Let me see…”
“Take your time,” I tell her as I place the book in her hands.
Immediately, Jax closes her eyes.
Starts breathing deeply.
I wait patiently, yet anxious as to what she’ll discover.
I match my breathing with hers, just to calm my nerves.
It helps, just about.
*
At long last, Jax opens her eyes. It felt like she was in a trance for hours. In reality, it was less than 10 minutes.
“Well?” I prompt her when she slowly pushes the A-Z towards me over the glass top of the coffee table.
Jax takes a deep breath.
“The A-Z hasn’t left your flat since you moved in,” she begins. “And someone has been playing around with it. Flipping it to the page with the map of Soho – which you ignored.”
She glares at me as she finishes speaking.
“I know, that was stupid,” I admit. “I should’ve read more into it…”
“Yes, you should have.” She folds her arms across her chest. “Someone wrote those messages while you were talking to them.” Jax bites her bottom lip to conceal an amused grin.
Yes, I thought it’d look silly – me talking out loud to some creature I couldn’t see, hear or feel.
“But who was it?” I demand. “Who wrote those messages, Jax?”
“I don’t know,” she says with a shrug, but I can see the disappointment in her dark eyes. “I didn’t see anyone. I mean, I saw the writing appear on the page – in fact, I saw it being written, letter by letter.”
“I didn’t see that,” I tell her when I see the suspicion in her eyes.
She thinks I lied about how the writing appeared on the page.
She shrugs again, not believing me.
“Anyway, I saw the messages being written, but not who wrote them.” She narrows her eyes as she adds, “As far as I could tell, someone… invisible was writing the messages with an invisible Sharpie.”
Someone invisible…
Makes me think of–
I stop that thought in its tracks.
It’s not possible.
It has to be a ghost, that’s the only explanation.
“Jax,” I begin in an uncertain tone. “I think it was a ghost.”
“A ghost?” she asks, pursing her lips, squeezing her eyebrows together.
Of course she doesn’t agree, and it’s not just for the sake of contradicting me.
“Yes,” I say with a confident nod. “My flat felt colder than it normally is… ghosts tend to lower the temperature wherever they go, right?
“Spirits suck up the energy around them to do what they do – they suck the energy out of the air. That must be why it was so cool in my flat…”
Her eyes narrow further.
“If you say so, Amber,” she croons in a sarcastic ‘I don’t believe you’ sort of way. “But I know what I believe. Ghosts aren’t the only things that can make themselves invisible. And you know what I’m talking about.”
“I do.” I give her a curt nod. “But you and I both know that’s not possible. So let’s not go there.” I glare at her as I finish.
She glares back so hard I think her eyes begin to shine with moisture
.
Damn! I don’t want to make her cry.
Her bravado makes it easy to forget that she’s an orphan and that her sister’s disappeared, leaving her all alone in this massive house.
“I’m sorry, Jax,” I murmur. “You’ve been a great help this morning.” I mean it.
I know I had my theory about the ghost, but it’s nice to have her confirm it for me.
Quite a handy gift, she has. I don’t know why her ex-employers thought she was a worthless witch.
I’d love to be able to see the past, not just the future.
The future!
With all that’s happened in the last couple of days, I’ve forgotten that I’m a psychic.
Well, not that I always thought about being able to see the future – sometimes the very distant future, sometimes just a minute or so into it – but I’ve never actually forgotten about this incredible ability.
Until recently.
Until I stopped getting premonitions.
I’ve never stopped having visions.
Apart from that period of time at the end of last year… I’d stopped glimpsing the future because of an annoying quirk in my psychic ability.
But that limitation to my power isn’t something I need to worry about anymore.
So, why haven’t I had a vision since… since the day Jax called to tell me about Imogen Hardy going missing and needing my help to find her?
And why on earth hasn’t it occurred to me earlier?
I mean, when I was searching for Imogen, I should have wondered why I wasn’t getting premonitions of her. Of finding her.
Because I did find her.
I should have seen it.
But I didn’t and I’ve only realised it now.
What’s wrong with me?!
What’s wrong with my psychic power? That’s the question.
Yes, I should have noticed the lack of visions earlier, but I did go through a long while at the end of last year without any premonitions, and I guess that’s made me less sensitive to any unusual changes in my ability, but the real concern is this defect in my gift.
Just what I need!
A dead witch, killed in an unfathomable way.
A bloodless murder.
The disappearance of the person that would have been the police’s prime suspect in this investigation. A person that – god help me – I trust, and fancy like mad. Who haunts my dreams and burns me with his touch.
The almost certainty of more killings. More dead witches.
Receiving clues relating to the murder, which could only have been courtesy of a ghost.
And to top it all off, the one thing that could have guided me through this dangerous situation – my ability to see the future – has completely deserted me.
I’m in trouble.
Big trouble.
####
End of Book 1.
Witch’s Blood, Book 2 is available now.
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About the Author
Neha Yazmin graduated from University College London (UCL) with a degree in Psychology and now lives in London. She writes both contemporary and paranormal romance. She is currently working on a number of projects.
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* * *
Books by Neha Yazmin
Books by Neha Yazmin
Paranormal Romance: Magical Bloodlines Universe
Poison Blood, Book 1: Revelation
Poison Blood, Book 2: Absolution
Poison Blood, Book 3: Prophecy
Poison Blood, Book 4: Apocalypse
Witch’s Blood, Book 1: Bloodless
Witch’s Blood, Book 2: Bloodshed
Witch’s Blood, Book 3: Bloodlust (Coming Soon)
~
Contemporary Romance:
Chasing Pavements (Soulmates Saga, Book 1)
Make You Feel My Love (Soulmates Saga, Book 2)
Someone Like You (Soulmates Saga, Book 3)
If I Say Yes (Love & Alternatives #1)
If I Say No (Love & Alternatives #2 ~ Coming Soon)
* * *
Questions with the Author
Q: What was your main inspiration behind this series?
A: Short answer: Amber.
She played a big role in my Poison Blood series, and turned into a great character.
I thought she deserved a series of her own.
For those of you that have read the Poison Blood series, I hope you agree!
Q: So, is this like a spin-off to your Poison Blood series?
A: It’s a follow-on series, from Amber’s point of view.
It takes place after the events of Poison Blood, Book 4, the final book in that series.
However, I’ve written Witch’s Blood, Book 1: Bloodless so that you can read and enjoy it and not feel lost if you haven’t read the Poison Blood books yet. I tried my best not to include too many spoilers for anyone that wants to read the Poison Blood series after reading Bloodless, so I’ve tried not to refer to the events in those books if I didn’t absolutely have to. It wasn’t easy :)
A few things that may not have made sense in this book will do so in Book 2 when I go into spoilery mode, so hopefully a lot of your questions will be answered then.
Before reading the subsequent books in the Witch’s Blood series however, I would highly recommend reading the Poison Blood series first. This is because there will be spoilers for the Poison Blood series in the rest of the books in the Witch’s Blood series, and it will spoil it for you if you decide to read the Poison Blood series afterwards.
Q: Okay, so what’s the Poison Blood series about, then? Will I like it?
A: There’s a sneak peek at the first book in the series, Poison Blood, Book 1: Revelation, after this Q&A so you can find out more about it from that (keep flipping those e-pages!).
If you enjoyed Bloodless then I think you’ll love the Poison Blood series :) Plus, the first two books in that series are free to download, so it couldn’t be easier to catch up.
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Poison Blood Series
Neha Yazmin
I don’t know what blood tastes like to a human. I’d never even licked a tiny drop of it from a pricked finger, let alone suck on a bleeding cut.
Now it’s my only food source.
Meet teenage runaway Ellie. She’s snarky, witty, funny, and has issues with her mother, just like any other 17-year-old girl.
She’s also a vampire.
Days before her 18th birthday, the mysterious and handsome immortal Christian, turned her into a creature that she loathes, forcing her to leave her old life behind forever and move to London. Thrust into the supernatural world, full of magic and danger, Ellie doesn’t want to be a killer.
She doesn’t even like to drink blood.
But Christian wasn’t completely honest about why he’d taken a romantic interest in her, and he wasn’t the only one keeping things from her, either.
Her mother was hiding the same secret.
Ellie was never an ordinary teenager, and now, she’s no ordinary teen vampire. When she discovers why she’s not like others of her kind
, why she protects humans instead of hunting them, she realises that her life is about to change all over again.
And the world as she knows it will never be the same...
Poison Blood, Book 2: Absolution is also free to download and answers some of the questions raised in Book 1, while asking many more...
What Readers Said About the Poison Blood Series:
“Hooked on the Poison Blood series.” 5-stars
“Awesome.” 5-stars
“Loved this series.” 5-stars
“This was great, couldn’t put it down.” 5-stars
“A great book.” 5-stars
“I loved this book.” 5-stars
“Amazingly interesting.” 5-stars
Read on for an extended sneak peek at Book 1 in the series.
Poison Blood, Book 1: Revelation
I would they were, that I might die at once,
For now they kill me with a living death.
– Richard III. Act I, Scene II
William Shakespeare
CHAPTER 1: I AM A VAMPIRE
I don’t know what blood tastes like to a human. I’d never even licked a tiny drop of it from a pricked finger, let alone suck on a bleeding cut. The shedding of blood, my own, or anyone else’s, always made me scream or panic in fear and revulsion.
Now it’s my only food source.
And it smells and tastes so sweet. Feels like warm, liquid-velvet caressing my burning throat. Is that ironic? Is that the right word––ironic? Or is it just plain funny?
Perhaps it would add further comic value if I said I’d been a vegetarian.
But I wasn’t.
Unlike mortals, who need to eat, or at least drink something to stay alive, I can go without any form of nutrition for months on end. Well, for all of eternity really, because I’m not mortal. I’m immortal.