Read The Enchanted Writes Book One Online
Authors: Odette C. Bell
The Enchanted Writes Book One (25 page)
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Fantasy adventures by Odette C.
Bell:
Read on for an excerpt from Magical
Influence Book One
I'm a witch. Not your usual kind though. No
fire bolts and brooms for me, just hard work. Work that is about to
get all the harder. When my mad grandmother's behavior brings a
mysterious detective knocking at my door, I find it impossible to
get rid of him. When the evil of forces of the universe start
climbing up my walls and crawling through my windows, I can't get
rid of them either.
Soon I'm embattled, and with nowhere to run
and no one to rely on, I find out exactly what it takes to be a
witch in the modern age.
Magical Influence is a light, humorous urban
fantasy that follows the exploits of Miss Esme Sinclair and her
wayward extended family.
I walked up the front steps, reaching a hand
out to my door. For a moment I glanced up, letting my gaze dart up
the side of my house. It wasn't a mansion, even though it was
indisputably huge. It had 10 rooms, three bathrooms, a vast
kitchen, a massive dining room, and a complete warren of a
basement, not to forget the particularly massive attic. It wasn't a
mansion because it was entirely run down. And I do mean entirely.
Roofing tiles fell off the roof every other day, hardly any of the
windows closed properly, and there were some gaps so large in the
floorboards that rats could fall through.
Still, it was my house, and I was acutely
aware that it was perfectly appropriate for a witch. It had those
old, castle-like turret-type things. It also had a bevy of old oaks
growing by the outer walls, the gnarled branches ready to scratch
the windows in every storm or slight breeze. Neither I nor my
grandmother ever bothered to do anything in the yard, and it was a
collection of junk, branches, and clogged weeds. Needless to say
every single sane child on the block would run a mile before going
anywhere near our gate.
“Aren't you going to welcome me home?” I
asked lightly under my breath as I finally reached the door handle
and tugged it open.
I didn't get a response, or at least not a
verbal one, but that exact moment saw the house creak ominously and
a roofing tile slide off and jettison itself into the yard. It
wasn't close enough that I had to duck or anything, and it brought
a slight smile to my lips.
Now that was a welcome. An entirely
appropriate one considering the day I'd had.
Mumbling under my breath, I walked into my
house. While the outside was entirely run down, at least my
grandmother and I did spend a little bit of time on housework. No,
that wasn't correct;
I
spent
a lot of time on housework. My grandmother spent most of her days
and nights tearing around the place making a fantastic
mess.
Sighing as I flicked my gaze through the
atrium, I saw a pot plant had been turned over, shards of pottery
scattered over the floor and a poor fern lying in a sea of dirt.
Tutting, I walked over to it and picked it up. “Mary? Mary?” I
called out to my grandmother, expecting her to fly down the large
spiral staircase in the center of the house, her wild,
purple-rinsed grey locks flaring around her head as her blue eyes
locked onto me.
It's how she always said hello. I would get
back from work, she would appear from the belly of the basement and
tell me whatever marvelously ridiculous things she’d got up to that
day, then the both of us would sit down for a cup of tea and a chat
about all things magical.
Today there was no response. Raising an
eyebrow slightly, I patted down my black skirt and walked off into
the kitchen. I instantly noticed the mess all over the table. I'd
made a point of cleaning it last night, because the darned thing
had been littered with dirty dishes for almost half a week now.
Somehow the dirty dishes were back. The exact same dirty dishes I
had popped into the dishwasher almost 18 hours ago.
I crinkled my brow. If I weren't a witch,
I’d probably assume I was going mad.
“Mary? What are you getting up to? Mary?”
Slamming my hands on my hips as I turned around in the kitchen, I
searched out any sign of my dear old completely batty
grandmother.
Then I saw her. Or rather I saw a shadow,
outside in the yard.
Now I raised my other eyebrow, tutted very
loudly, and quickly jogged to the large French doors that led out
onto the patio.
I hadn’t always known that I was a witch,
though even as a baby I imagine I would have realized something
wasn't quite right with my family. It wasn't Addams Family-esque,
but it was close. All of my aunts and uncles and grandparents
weren't quite right. For birthdays and Christmas they wouldn't buy
me socks and underpants; they would get me old, tattered books that
looked like they were 300 years old and that were filled with
ghastly, horrifying pictures a child should never look upon. And if
it wasn't books, it would be peculiar potions. Jars that looked
like nothing more than old jam pots filled with bizarre colored
liquids with strange objects in the bottom. Lizards, butterflies,
buttons, dirt, you name it, just a collection of strange junk. Yet
whenever they would hand me such presents, they would do so with a
degree of awe that would suggest they certainly weren’t joking. It
were as if they were passing on a crown or a fortune instead of an
old jam jar filled with rubbish.
Yes, my family had never been quite right,
and soon enough my mother had sat me down and informed me of my
lineage, witches and all.
Now it was simply a fact of life. But
another fact I could appreciate was one my grandmother herself had
been at pains to remind me of whenever she could. Witches must keep
their magic secret. As must all other magical creatures. I lived in
the real world, after all, the same one you live in. Do you see
wizards zipping around with great long beards, chucking fireballs
at each other as they drive down the highway? Do you see witches
heading off to the shops on their brooms, talking cats keeping them
company on the train? Of course you don't. We’re here, but we just
don't let ourselves be known.
Like all of the most powerful forces in the
universe, we keep ourselves secret. When humanity is ready, they
will embrace magic, but for now they are quite content with
football, cups of tea, and world wars.
Despite the importance of our secret,
something was happening to my grandmother as she aged, and that was
general dementia. Okay, not the
general
kind, the magical kind. It seemed I had to watch
her every day to ensure she didn't do anything outrageous that
would finally confirm to all of our already suspicious neighbors
that we were witches.
Flinging open the French doors, I marched
out into the backyard. Fortunately our overgrown garden was so
immense that it blocked off the view over our back fence, still, I
never liked the idea of Granny practicing magic out in the
yard.
“What are you doing?” I marched over to her,
crossing my arms as I did, making sure the move was obvious and
would put across just how peeved I was.
She looked up from the mud pile she had
created. There was a spade leaning next to an overturned table, the
exact same patio table that I often liked to have my breakfast at,
and it was clogged with dirt.
I made a point of raising an eyebrow and
looking up and down my grandmother. She had dug a hole, a fairly
hefty, deep one considering how old she was. She had filled it with
water and mud, and she was now dancing around in it like a woman
trying to crush grapes. Except there were no grapes, just dirt, and
it had covered her pants and top completely. She even had it
splashed across her face, and a couple of clumps dangling from her
purple-rinse curls.
She grinned at me. A very cheeky, somewhat
disassociated grin. “Good morning,” she chimed.
It was very much the afternoon. I ground my
teeth. Sometimes I didn't know if she put it on. If she only said
highly unsettling things and dug holes in the yard so she could
irritate me.
“It's the afternoon,” I conceded as I
cleared my throat, “a fact you are well aware of. And something
else you are well aware of is that you can't bloody well do magic
in the yard,” I dropped my voice low, very low at that point, and I
had no doubt that Mary could still hear me; everything else might
be going, but her hearing was fine. Exceptional even. If I ever
tried to have a secret conversation with someone on the phone and
she was at the other end of the house, I swear she could always
pick up on what I had been saying.
“Magic?” My grandmother's lips wobbled open
as if she were surprised at the mere mention of the word.
“I'm not a trainee witch any more, Grandma,
I know a weather spell when I see one. Now do you want to cover it
up, come inside, wash, and help me prepare some dinner?”
For a moment my grandmother narrowed her
eyes, and it was a move that reminded me so much of how she had
been when I was a child. Strong, impossibly powerful. My role
model. A figure that had taken up so much authority in my life. She
had been the one I would always turn to if I had a problem with
magic, and she would be the one to track me down if I ever did
something wrong. Well now our roles had changed. She was the kid
outside playing in the mud, and I was the one trying to tell her it
just wasn't done.
“A weather spell, ay? Are you sure?”
I was about to turn away, head back inside
to grab a towel and mop in preparation for my muddy grandmother to
track her way to the bathroom, but I paused. I glanced back
carefully. “Yes, that's right, a weather spell.” Was she
challenging me?
“Let me see.” She brought a hand up and
started counting off on her fingers. “All you have seen is a spade,
a hole, mud, and a miraculously well-preserved grandmother dancing
around in it. And you have concluded from this scant evidence that
I am engaged in a weather spell?”
She really was challenging me. Though it
happened less and less these days, occasionally the old bat would
grow lucid enough to remember her training. “Yes,” I kept my arms
crossed. I knew what to do when I was questioned. Hold your ground,
snarl if you had too, but look as deadly as you can. And my years
of growing up with my grandmother had taught me just how one can
narrow their eyes in the right way, stiffen their jaw, and pull
their lips to the side to give off a definite feeling of
concentrated rage and anger.
“Well you are wrong, young girl,” my
grandmother finally pulled herself up and out of the hole, showing
a grace that she simply should not have considering her age.
Bringing up a completely mud-covered hand, she patted at her curls,
raising an eyebrow at me as I still stood there with my arms
crossed firmly in front of my chest. “This is a garden spell,” she
trilled.
Even though I tried to control myself, I
couldn't help but falter. My eyebrows descended in a twitch. “No it
isn't,” I tried petulantly.
This only caused her to laugh, and it wasn't
entirely pleasant; it reminded me acutely of just how much of an
authority my grandmother had once been. “I beg to differ. And if
you feel like challenging me, take that spade, go over to my lovely
little mud pit, dig down, and see what I was dancing over.”
Damn. She had a point.
I wasn't about to go over, pluck up the
spade, and actually bother to dig around in that ridiculous mud pit
though. I would take my grandmother's word for it.
“There is still a lot you must learn about
magic.” As my grandmother passed me, she flicked her curls again,
and headed unashamedly to the patio, splashing mud everywhere as
she did.
I narrowed my eyes at her, stopped short of
shaking my fist, and headed over to the spade to at least cover up
the hole. Even though I was damn sure that no one could see into
the yard, I didn't like the idea of somebody accidentally catching
a glimpse of a deep mud pit. Who knew what they would think.
After I had filled it in, and had grumbled
at every splash I had gotten over my stockings and skirt, I finally
went in to find my grandmother helping herself to a sandwich from
the fridge. She was still covered in mud of course, as was the rest
of the kitchen now.
“You have a lot to learn about the
subtleties of spells and enchantments,” she shoved the massive
sandwich in her mouth and took a hearty bite.
I crumpled up my nose as I watched her eat,
noticing every single time her muddy fingers tracked across the
bread, lettuce, and cheese.
“Influence magic is very, very context
sensitive,” my grandmother brought up her hand and waggled a finger
my way. “The difference of one single ingredient can change the
nature of a spell.”
I knew all of this, I really did. But I was
still kind of right here. Regardless of what kind of spell my
grandmother had been casting, she shouldn’t have been doing it
outside in the yard where everybody could see ... Okay nobody
could see, but it was still outside, and that was too visible for
me.
“Couldn't you have done it in the bath?” I
flopped a hand behind me, indicating one of our many bathrooms.
“And when exactly are you going to clean yourself up?”
She shrugged her shoulders and took another
enormous bite of her sandwich. For an old lady, she still had a
ravenous appetite. She could, and previously had, eaten us
completely out of house and home.