Witch's Bell Book One (52 page)

Ebony stood her ground, and pushed
again. She furled her fingers back into fists, then pushed them out
again. The dressing table behind the man fell towards him, the
chandelier fell from above.

The man dodged both, slashing at her
again.

Ebony didn't move. She just
pushed.

The blade came up, close to her face,
close to her eyes. She could make out her own blood still crusted
on the metal.

It didn't move her.

She pushed one last time.

The man fell back.

Did the sky give way? Did the ground
fall away from beneath him? Did fire consume him? Did he drown in
an ocean appearing from nowhere?

No, he simply fell back.

Magic didn't have to be showy; it just
had to be effective.

Around Ebony, reality returned. There
was Nate, with the dragon defeated by his feet. There was Cecilia,
cowering by the door.

And there was the man, with the blade
still in his hand.

Ebony walked forward, knelt down, and
picked up the blade.

She wiped the old blood against her
skirt.

What had remained of the spell was now
spent.

Ebony's story, for now, was
safe.

Epilogue

“
You just disappeared,” Nate
said, smiling at her from over the top of his coffee. The steam
played against his face.

Ebony shifted in her chair, taking the
chance to stare out Nate's kitchen windows at the mountains beyond.
Clouds were receding on the horizon, allowing the sun to flow back
into the valley.

“
One minute you were standing
there, facing off against that man,” Nate continued, taking a sip
of his coffee, “the next you were just gone. It didn't take me long
to deal with the dragon. But I had no idea where you'd gotten to.
Then you just popped back. Where on Earth did you get
to?”

Ebony smiled back at
him.
“I'm
not even sure it was on Earth,” she chewed at her lip, holding her
own cup of tea close to her chest. “It felt like I was in a pocket
of ... some other reality. Like it was a world occupied by just
that man and me.”

Nate shrugged his shoulders and
took a breath. Then he looked up above Ebony, at the sizable hole
in his ceiling.
“It's been a wild couple of days.”

She laughed gently.
“Yeah.
Wild.”

“
Harry really managed to
go-to-town on my house,” Nate sighed, scratching his hair. “Lucky
it's still standing. Mostly.”

“
Now you listened to me,” Harry
said from somewhere on the floor, the traveling case giving an
ominous rattle, “I had to fight off a hoard of wizards. A hoard,
mind you.”

Nate's eyes continued to survey
the damage.
“And I'm going to have to fight off a hoard of bills before
I get this place back to normal.”

“
Won't your Round Table pay for
the repairs?” Ebony tapped her finger against the rim of her mug.
“Or at least give you a noble loan?”

Nate raised an eyebrow and
frowned.
“They're too busy saving the planet. Plus, I kind of feel
you should help out – considering you caused this whole
mess.”

Ebony faked a shocked
expression.
“I caused all of this? You were the one who used me as
bait, Mr Knight. Which is hardly very chivalrous, I'd like to point
out.”

Nate put his hands up,
pretending to surrender.
“You make a fair point, my lady,” he offered her a
devilish grin.

“
Now don't you go getting any
ideas. I,” she said haughtily, “am not a damsel.”

“
Nothing would have given me
that idea. I know you, Ebony.”

“
Not as well as you'd like to
think. There's a lot you need to learn about me,” she pointed at
him and shook her finger.

“
Well, I might just have the
time to learn it. We have a lead, but I certainly haven't solved
the Portal case yet.”

Ebony clutched tighter at her
mug.
“So it
wasn't the man, then? He was powerful, Nate, really powerful. All
this time he was playing us ....”

“
No, Eb, I checked with the
Round Table. It wasn't him. I mean, I'd definitely say he was
involved.”

“
It certainly seemed as if he
wanted me to surrender to some force,” Ebony gave a shiver, “or
some creature.”

Nate nodded.
“It's over now. The
Knights have him; he's not going to bother you anymore. And we have
our lead.”

“
The Treasure? What does that
even mean?” Ebony blinked at him.

“
I don't know,” Nate ran a hand
over his face, “but I think we should find out.”

“
We?”

“
What do you say? The spell over
you has been completely reversed. Your life should return to
normal. Which means you are still the witch consultant to the Vale
Police. I'm on the police force,” Nate patted at his chest, “and
you are obligated to help me solve magical crime. And this, Ebony,”
he smiled as he said her name, “is a magical crime.”

Ebony pushed her hair behind
her ears, and thought for a moment.
“Fine. I'll help you find out who's
manipulating the Portal, Nathan Wall.”

“
At what cost?” he
laughed.

“
Oh, I think we can negotiate
that later.”

Thank you for reading Witch’s Bell
Book One

Book Two is currently available.

This series is complete
and consists of seven books. Each book is available separately, or
you can purchase Witch’s Bell the Complete Series for a reduced
price.

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Did you like this book? There’s plenty more
where that came from.

Fantasy adventures by Odette C.
Bell:

Anna’s Hope

The Captain’s Witch

The Witch
and the
Commander

Magical Influence

Enchanted Writes

Agent
of Light

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.