The Witch of Bohemia
Pearl Goodfellow
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Coming Soon
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
About the Author
Also by Pearl Goodfellow
Copyright © 2017 by Pearl Goodfellow
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Foreword
Dear readers,
I’ve crafted this series so that you can read each offering as a stand-alone. However, because I truly love the world of Hattie Jenkins & The Infiniti, I have also created a back-story that will build throughout the series, along with deeper character developments, more in-depth world building, and evolving romantic relationships.
For this reason, it would be my recommendation that you read the series in the order they’re written. I wouldn’t want you to miss out on some read-worthy background story arc. If you do jump about the series in no particular order, I’m convinced you will still thoroughly enjoy the chronicles, and dare I say, you might want to know more about this zany, spirited world.
All this said, I do hope you enjoy the chronicles. I’ve never had so much fun writing before, and I have formed a deep and long lasting relationship with my characters, I swear. I wish they were my friends in real life! :)
Pearl
Introduction
Hello!
I’m on Facebook, if you’d ever like to join me there?
https://www.facebook.com/PearlGoodfellowbooks/
I’d also like to invite you to join my mailing list. In return for signing up I’m giving away this fabulous book straight from The Angel Apothecary; The Handbook for Healthy Living and Healing.
100 all natural, make-at-home recipes for all aspiring witches of any level. Bring on the lotions and potions!
See below for what you’ll receive. Click the pretty book cover and get your cauldron ready!
Coming Soon
The Black Diamond Curse. Coming to pre-order 28th March.
The picture postcard landscape of Cathedral Isle is ruined. How could it not be when the fried remains of celebrity eco-warrior, Millicent Pond, lies sprawled on its sandy shores?
Hattie and the cats are on the case, but there are far more layers to this investigation than meets the eye. Throw in Gideon Shields, the gorgeous Warlock Governor of Cathedral, and the mystery only deepens. No surprise that Hattie's head is in a spin.
But, will our herbalist witch keep her wits about her while she unravels the clues? Moreover, will her potent magical gifts finally bring the reluctant witch onto center stage?
Find out what happens when chaos hits the Coven Isles once more, in this supernatural cozy comedy!
Book 4 of an eight-part series: Hattie Jenkins & The Infiniti chronicles.
To you, my dear readers.
If you don’t spread the magic, who will?
Keep up the sorcery.
Love, Pearl
Chapter One
Gless Inlet has its fair share of architectural marvels and Midnight Hill Asylum is one of them. Despite the darkly-quiet desperation that filled its rooms and stark corridors, the edifice was a true, ornate beauty. I was heading there at the behest of my oldest friend on all of Glessie, Chief Para Inspector Trew. While I admired the facade of the building, I wondered why he wanted my attendance here at all.
From the outside, you’d swear the place was an out-of-the-way seaside hotel that had gotten lost on its way to the sea proper. It was a grand pseudo-Edwardian mansion house painted all in a creamy, ivory white. The only exception was the gray gabled roof, but even that seemed to have a pearlescent shimmer to it. If you were an Unawakened, maybe the simple cream shade would be all you would see. A flat, lifeless color, nothing more than regular house paint. But when you’re a witch like yours truly, you can see — as well as feel — that the exterior was charmed.
The ivory-colored facade was just one part of a binding enchantment, similar to the Seal of Solomon in concept. The charm itself had a deeply soothing effect on the patient’s mental faculties. After a week of being inside the asylum’s walls, nearly all patients grew calmer as the spell filled their minds with the soft, weightless aura of clouds. Most (but, not all) of the inmates succumbed to it, and even a few were given the space to heal because of it. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
I know the spell was designed to make all the wounded souls inside want to stay there, (in a relatively warm and wooly peace) but I wondered if the charm made them feel too safe or too comfortable for their own good. I mean, what if it actually hampered the recovery so many of them still lacked? I know the residents of Gless Inlet wouldn’t agree with me; they only wanted to feel safe themselves. So anyone with a mental imbalance was best off secured safely inside one of their lovely, local heritage buildings. Light on the outside, dark on the inside.
David was able to keep the paperwork of checking-in minimized. Being the chief of police for the entire six island area does have its perks. In less than five minutes, I had a visitor’s badge clipped onto the lapel of my coat and was following David through the halls. Of course, I would be having flashbacks to Silence of the Lambs as I walked through the line of transparent-doored cells on either side of us. A large, bald man with bulging eyes and hedgerows for eyebrows let out a loud moan as we walked by. He muttered something in an urgent and fevered voice as he shuffled with alarming speed toward the glass that separated us.
Wait, did he just say he’d enjoy my liver with a nice chianti? No, no, no. Calm down, Hattie; you’re acting just like Fraidy!
Still, the shivers that traveled down my spine had no trouble making their way up again to the nape of my neck, forcing the hair on my head to stand on end. We continued walking past the clear-doored cells, David’s pace brisk and efficient, mine brisk and freaked out.
Some of the inmates just stared at us as we passed. Some were so wrapped up with their psyches they didn’t see us at all. Some were noisy, some were quiet, some…look, you get the idea. All I’ll add is that anybody who says that mental illness all looks the same has never been inside Midnight Hill Asylum.
I happened to spot Cressida Dreddock in the next to last cell on the right. Maybe it was because I knew her saner, less-than-lovely twin sister better, but I never got over the sight of her looking twice as aged as Nebula. Wraithsgourd does wonders for your looks if you can avoid the toxic side effects.
Cressida spotted me through the door and smiled dreamily. She even gave me a clumsy, slow motion wave. I waved back a little uncertainly. It wasn’t hard to detect the sadness in her eyes, even though her drug hazed smile hid the pain quite well. David continued his stride, and I rushed to keep u
p.
“Who we’re here to see is upstairs,” he explained, pointing to the cage mesh in front of the stairwell just ahead of us.
A flash of his badge later and the guard on the other side waved us through without comment. Up the narrow stairs we went. I could see where a grand stairway was still in place on the right. But an ugly, out of place cinderblock wall (painted white, to go with the rest of the décor) blocked it off halfway with an even more hideous steel door barring the way. Was that for the staff? Or the inmates? I shrugged inwardly.
By contrast, the stairwell we climbed now was downright claustrophobic in the way the walls pressed in on us. Another mesh cage met us at the top and, with another display of David’s badge, we were granted wordless access. No individual rooms on this floor; this was just one big wide-open space full of hospital beds, with patients bound to them by restraints and straitjackets. The din inside the room was psychotic; an overlapping, relentless babbling of disturbed minds. I could barely make out the bizarre utterances but they hinted at evil entities that only come out on dark nights; things no person should ever face alone. God, I hoped whatever it was we were doing here was over with quickly.
“Believe it or not, this part of the asylum was nearly empty a few weeks ago,” David said as we walked among the occupied beds. “Typically, this is where new patients are held for evaluation over the course of a week or two to determine which ward they belong in. Before now, they were lucky to fill up one row of beds on any given week.”
“So, what changed?” I asked, feeling a sticky tendril of dread creep into my heart and stomach from the display of madness that surrounded me.
“Why don’t we let Orville explain that one?” David answered, waving me over to a bed on the left.
I gasped at the sight of Orville Nugget twisting his body in frenzied contortions on the cot. His once bright eyes were now clouded with opaque misery. He looked utterly lost in his own terrors. His sensuous mouth, (my assistant Millie Midge’s words, not mine - she had once declared them perfect for kissing) was constantly moving, spitting out words in varying volumes that the warped acoustics of the room wouldn’t allow me to hear. His hair, originally a bright ginger, was downright technicolor, changing hues with the regularity and bold color schemes of the Northern Lights.
I wondered briefly if Violet Mulberry, from Glessie’s Glamour Emporium, had anything to do with this riot of color. Orville writhed against the straitjacket and restraints that bound him, undulating in a manner that reminded me of a snake. My heart went out to him. Son of the prestigious alchemist, Aurel Nugget, the boy was just twenty-one years old and had been following in the footsteps of his dad. Orville had just recently graduated from the Alchemic Studies Program on Talisman. He had a bright future ahead of him. Not anymore, it seemed. I bent down closer to his mouth to try to determine what he was saying.
“It’s okay, Orville. You’re safe, you’re being looked after,” I cooed gently to the lost soul before me, while tenderly brushing back his damp, technicolored hair from his forehead.
He was muttering the same thing, over and over: “Get out. Get out of me. Get out. Get out of me.”
Orville had always had an ear for music. If he were lucid, I wonder if he would have recognized the sick irony of his rants keeping such a perfect rhythm. That’s when I noticed the state of his nose; scorched and degraded around the septum area. His skin was also exuding a particular odor that was reminiscent of a certain desert flower that bloomed only after the rare rainfall of the Arabian Lands. A quick check of his dilated pupils and I knew what I was looking at.
“He’s been Stranded,” I gasped at Orville’s tortured features.
David sighed and nodded unhappily.
“Are all of them—”
“Not all,” David said. “But most…way too many.”
I looked around the room at all the tortured inmates; all in varying degrees of Stranded distress. The Strands of Araby were no joke when it came to side effects from overuse.
The Strands had been known since at least the times of the Umayyad Caliphate on the Mainland. A highly addictive and even more highly hallucinogenic drug, nobody has ever figured out from which secret desert plant the Strands were derived. All that was known was that they came after the rains on the sirocco winds, which blew the fine, golden botanical threads across the dusty Arabian Peninsula.
And the Strands of Araby were fast becoming an epidemic across the Coven Isles. When heated and sniffed (usually off glass plates that resembled microscope slides), the effects of the Strands were extremely hallucinogenic, giving anyone who ingested them intense visions, similar to those you might experience in a sweat lodge ritual. Add in their rareness and the persistent rumor that they could tell magical secrets and the Strands were highly sought after. The trouble was, if abused too often, the drug left its users “Stranded,” their host mentally incapable for an indefinite period of time.
“I thought the whole ‘War on Strands’ campaign Talisman pushed wound up getting a handle on all this,” I said, finding it easier to look at CPI Trew than the agonized man before me.
“It made a minor dent at best, despite all the expense,” David scoffed. “What really got things back under control was the lack of supply. After the Besnick cartel was busted, there haven’t been any serious suppliers of the stuff outside of a few minor operators.”
“So what changed?” I asked, crossing my arms, mainly to control the shuddering in my body.
“Events on the Mainland,” David explained, leaning against the wall. “The civil war in Yemen is permitting the drugs to pour through unsecured borders. So massive amounts of the drug are being imported here right now. An opportunistic market for rogue, independent suppliers.”
Waving a hand at the entire ward, he added, “Not so great for the poor addicts who wind up overdoing it, though.”
I shook my head. “Not everybody who does this stuff gets Stranded, though. I’m sure you’ve got more than a few Strand addicts in prison who aren’t in this … this … mess.” I gestured at Orville’s twisting frame.
“Sure, but that’s a separate issue,” David conceded with a shrug. “The administration here tells me that, at the rate in which new Stranded victims are showing up, they are eventually going to run out of space at the end of this year.”
My eyes widened. “No…”
“Yes,” David said, pushing off the wall. “I don’t need to tell you what kind of a problem that could be if we ever get to that point, do I?”
I uncrossed my arms and did some thinking of my own. “This can’t be the only facility affected by the Stranded flood.”
“It’s not,” David confirmed, steering us back towards the stairs. “Prisons, medical wards, facilities like this, holding cells all over the Isles…it’s getting out of hand pretty much everywhere I’ve checked. Steeltrap Penitentiary is reopening its solitary confinement ward so that they can provide space for more beds.”
I took one last look at poor Orville before I followed David from the ward. “So where do I come in, exactly?” I asked as the guard opened the door for us to go back downstairs. “I’m just a small town herbalist. Surely you’ve got—“
“—people who keep telling me that breaking through the psychosis of the Stranded is an impossible task? Yep, got plenty of them.” David said, his irritation showing in counterpoint to his steps. “The Talisman suits have declared that an unacceptable answer and are pressuring us to double down on finding a solution. So…I got to thinking about this cute little apothecary owner I know who might know some herbal remedies that none of my people would have even thought of.”
I squeezed my lips together. “Orville had just stepped into the full arena of alchemy…did you know that?”
“Sure. I’m aware that his father is very proud of him too,” David replied while the second cage mesh door swung open.
“Aurel had secured Orville a modest paying apprenticeship in the metallurgy lab in Coven’s Cauldrons R&D depa
rtment,” I added, reciting Millie’s update of local gossip while we were tidying the shelves in the apothecary last week. “Apparently, Orville had come up with some kind of new and improved alloy that was to be used extensively in Coven’s new line: Futura. The finish on Futura is so advanced that you can apparently wipe the slime from the Godmarsh Toad from the surface with just a damp cloth. Now…”
I let that last word hang a bit as we walked towards the blessed front door that none of the wretches on either side of us were likely to see anytime soon.
“Let me dig through Grandma Chimera’s old journal and books to see what I can find,” I finally said just before we got back to the front desk. “Meet me at the library tomorrow to see if we can supplement whatever I might find?”
“Sounds good to me,” David said. “I appreciate this, Hat…really.”
I gave him a wan smile and a shrug. But inside, my head was already running through the location of every book on herbs and spells that Grandma had left me. I really hoped I could find a solution to this sad epidemic.
Chapter Two
If I hadn’t lost my temper at the library, I wonder if what happened next would have played out differently.
The library we have on Glessie is officially called the Keziah Mason Memorial Library by the suits in Talisman. Unofficially, most of the locals just call it “The Mason.” Anyone who calls it by the full name is either from out of town or they haven't lived here that long.
It’s not a particularly large or grand building. No one would mistake it for, say, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. It’s just a single floor building; art gallery and restrooms to the right after you get past the first set of doors, the library proper ahead after the second round of doors.
The Witch of Bohemia: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery (Hattie Jenkins & The Infiniti Chronicles Book 3) Page 1