Shadow witch the complet.., p.1
Shadow Witch: The Complete Series, page 1
Shadow Witch: The Complete Series
Odette C. Bell
All characters in this publication are fictitious, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Shadow Witch
The Complete Series
Copyright © 2020 Odette C Bell
All rights reserved.
Cover art stock photos licensed from Depositphotos.
www.odettecbell.com
Contents
Shadow Witch Episode One
Shadow Witch Episode One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Shadow Witch Episode Two
Shadow Witch Episode Two
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Shadow Witch Episode Three
Shadow Witch Episode Three
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Better off Dead - Sample
www.odettecbell.com
More Fantasy Series by Odette C. Bell
Shadow Witch Episode One
Shadow Witch Episode One
Penelope has dreamed of nothing her whole life, for that way, death lies.
One day, she wakes up normal. She ends the day knowing she’s the daughter of Death. When he disappears, she must fight for his return. But there’s only one man who can help her. A god of ages, a force of destruction, and the harbinger of doom – it’s Hades, Lord of the Underworld. He will agree to assist her, but his price will be high. Her.
Penelope is thrust into a world of dark desire, revenge, prophecy, and death. She won’t survive. But she was never meant to.
…
Shadow Witch is a sprawling dark urban fantasy set against the backdrop of the shadowy land of death. It’s sure to please fans of Odette C. Bell’s The Demon’s Witch.
1
I leaned over the corpse, makeup brush in hand. With swift, gentle strokes, I applied the concealer to the slightly graying flesh.
The young woman didn’t move – she couldn’t. She’d been dead for four days.
“At least you get to sleep for the rest of your life,” I muttered to her as I rammed the makeup brush further into my tub of concealer. I needed a new one, but I couldn’t be bothered grabbing one from the compartment under the steel bench to my side.
I applied more, really getting into the cracks around her nose and eyes – the places where her graying flesh had started to decay.
I bit my lip. I chuckled. “Me,” I continued the one-sided conversation, “I’ve barely been able to sleep my whole life. I guess that’s what happens when your only friends are corpses just like you.”
I scooted back in my chair. I reached the sink and dumped the makeup brush into a little bowl of alcohol I’d already prepared.
Looking up, I caught the sound of a procession through the half-open window above the sink. Carlson’s Funeral Home was located right up against the largest graveyard in the city. Pushing up and leaning a hand on the glimmering stainless steel, I inclined my head until I could see the hill of the graveyard. I watched as the gates were opened and a long black Hurst, glinting under the midmorning sunshine, wound its way into the mazelike cemetery. It was one of the oldest pieces of infrastructure in town. It had been there for 250 years. Carlson’s Funeral Home, in some fashion, had been here that entire time, too.
I spent too long watching the procession. My eyes darted back and forth as if I was looking for something – something other than the mourners in black carrying white lilies, their somber faces turned to the ground. Something other than the autumn leaves scattering over the long winding pathway that led up to the graveyard. Something other than the granite headstones and concrete angels with open hands.
Sighing, I leaned back and scratched my head. It didn’t matter that I was wearing latex gloves and I’d just been touching a corpse. “Pull yourself together.” I turned. I faced the woman. She was standing.
I thought nothing of this.
She looked at me. She stared down at her dress. It was white. It appeared to be some kind of debutante gown. I was sure I’d seen one or two like it in one of the dress shops on Eastside.
She smiled at me, touched her makeup, then turned.
I got up and followed.
She walked through the winding back halls of Carlson’s. She reached the open door that led out into the staff car park and wandered through. The whole while, I was behind her. I’d grabbed up the makeup brush again. It was dangling in my hand, dripping alcohol and chunks of concealer onto my black shoes.
She walked across the road that led up to the graveyard.
I was behind her for every step as a great big wind gust scattered its way through the elms and oaks that lined the road. Autumn leaves were ripped off. They flew around me, catching the ends of my short hair, alighting on my shoulders, and crunching under my feet.
As the woman walked, I watched blood drip down from a wound in the back of her head. She’d been killed by slipping over when drunk.
She turned to me as we reached the gates. She smiled, her lips cracking ever so slightly around the move. With no circulation left to her skin, her body was no longer capable of the movements of the living.
I stopped at the gates. I stared up at the graveyard. It seemed darker. I thought I saw crows descending on it – they were all through it, too. They were landing on the outstretched arms of those angels. They were up on the tall wall that separated the cemetery and the land of the living from everyone else. They were even descending on the cars parked all around me. They made no noise, no caws, no chattering. They didn’t even scratch their claws up and down or flap their wings. They just watched.
The young woman stopped at the gates, one foot in, one foot out. She turned to me, more blood oozing down from the wound in the back of her head. She smiled and flicked a hand forward, beckoning me onward into the graveyard.
I took a step toward her, but something held me to the spot.
I wasn’t dead. Not yet. And that, that was a fact I’d had to remind myself of every damn day since I’d been born.
I, Penelope Hope, had to hold on to the fact I was still breathing. For now.
2
I awoke with a jolt. Though it was generous to say that I woke up. What I had just fallen into was a daydream – a particularly detailed one.
I was still in the mortuary room, still applying makeup to the new corpse. She was just in front of me. I was crunched forward on my chair, my arms crumpled on the glistening stainless steel bench, my hair brushing right up against the corpse’s dress.
Pushing back, not scared by the fact I’d been sleeping next to a corpse – but angry at myself for falling into another reverie – I rolled my eyes.
“Really, Penelope?” I scratched the back of my neck, my latex gloves squeaking over my nails. “Another daydream?” I slapped my cheek. My hand smelled ever so slightly, but it wouldn’t kill me.
Standing up, I dumped the applicator by the sink, turned around, found a small mirror, and stared at it.
My cheeks were a little sallow. My skin was gray, too, but it sure as heck wasn’t because I was dead. I was just tired.
What I’d told that corpse in my reverie was correct. I barely slept. I never dreamed, too. And no, you couldn’t call what I’d just experienced a dream. It was a waking reverie. Now I paused to think about it, I’d been awake the entire time. A part of me had known that I’d been pressed right up against the metal bed. I’d felt the makeup brush in my hand. And I’d known the corpse was right there, right in front of me.
I slapped my cheek again. Then I rubbed my eyes.
I finally dropped my hands. I was pretty much done here, anyway. I pulled off the gloves and dumped them in the bin underneath the sink. I caught a glimpse of my reflection once more. I almost thought I could see a crow in the room, but I knew that couldn’t possibly be true. Turning around, I glimpsed one flying past the window.
It took my attention for a fleeting second before there was a knock on the door. “You done?” In walked Stanley, the funeral home director. He was in an old tweed jacket with an equally old tweed vest underneath. He always wore the same clothes. They’d been the same clothes his father had worn. This was a family business, after all.
I nodded, gesturing at the corpse.
“Cindy looks great,” he said. “The family will be thrilled.” He walked over and tilted his head to the side as he obviously tried to see if the injury to the back of her head was visible.
“I cleaned off the blood. It’ll be fine. There’ll be no marks on the pillow.”
He nodded, clapped his hands together, and gestured with a shrug of his shoulder toward the door. “In which case, why aren’t you ready?”
I frowned and scratched my head. “For what?”
“It’s 6 o’clock. It’s time for drinks. It’s Friday,” he reminded me.
I instantly turned over to the window. I even brought my hand up, ready to gesture to the fact it was midmorning, but I froze. It had been mid-morning in
I let my hand drop and tapped it on my leg. “I’ll get ready in a second. I’ll meet you all there.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I could use the walk.”
Stanley didn’t say another word. With an affable smile, he left.
My lips tugged down into a frown. I stared at the cemetery. I thought I could see a crow or two. Before I could let my imagination get the better of me, I turned swiftly. I washed my hands thoroughly. Then I grabbed my jacket from over the back of the door and pulled it on.
I made it out of the back door to the staff car park. The whole while, I found myself unconsciously retracing the steps of the corpse. Yeah, I could call her Cindy, but there was no point, was there? She had ceased to be Cindy when she’d died. She was now nothing more than a decomposing body. Stanley obviously didn’t think that way. But Stanley had a lot more to do with screaming family members. I never saw anyone but the corpses themselves. And I knew they didn’t mind what I referred to them as.
Cramming my hands into my pockets, I walked right past my car. It wasn’t that much of a slog to the bar we always went to, anyway. Sheltering under my collar as a quick wind raced in and rustled the leaves of the trees all around me, I tried not to look at the gates of the graveyard. They’d be closed in an hour or two. Then Barney, the security guard, would start doing the rounds. The cemetery hadn’t always had security, but these days there were a lot of break-ins – a lot of vandalism, if you could believe it. When there were thousands of walls in town to tag, why come to a graveyard and mark someone’s final resting place?
I knew the answer. For thrills. To a lot of people, death was still a taboo – a lingering curiosity and fear they never got to deal with. Maybe to those young kids, sneaking into the graveyard at night and tagging gravestones proved to everyone else they weren’t scared of death. I knew better.
Shivering again, I decided not to follow that thought. I kicked off down one of the paths that cut through an overflow car park for the graveyard. That’s when I saw a car. It was hardly remarkable. Though most of the traffic to the cemetery occurred during the day, occasionally people came after work hours. It was likely the only time they could get during the entire week. That’s why it didn’t close till seven. This car was different. It caught my attention because it was a lot fancier than the rest. It was low, shiny, and black. Inexplicably as I caught sight of the number plate, I realized it just had a symbol. Not that I was an expert, but it looked like omega – the final letter of the Greek alphabet.
I frowned at it as I moved on quickly. It didn’t take much longer to reach the bar. By the time I walked in, it was to the sight of everyone from the funeral home flocking around our favorite table. There weren’t that many of us – just 10 in total. From Stanley to some of the other morticians, to the receptionist, to Stella, the old lady who did the flowers – this was still very much a family affair, and everyone but me was a Carlson.
“You’re here,” Stanley said with a booming voice as he reached his arms out and opened them wide.
I nodded at everyone and offered a subdued smile. I was usually good at shrugging off my daily reveries. I’d had them my whole life, so it was simple to ignore them. Today, for whatever reason, this one lingered. It hadn’t even been that involved. Compared to the ordinary daydreams I got sucked into like a leaf being swallowed by a whirlpool, having a corpse gesture at me to follow her into a cemetery was child’s play.
Ever since I was a child, for as long as I could remember, I’d been dreaming of this great gleaming castle made of bone. Yeah, I get it – creepy. Maybe that’s why I’d gone into the mortuary business right after high school. I’d always known what I wanted to do – because I’d always only been comfortable doing one thing. I wasn’t good with people. I hated socializing. But the dead… the dead made me comfortable.
As for that castle of skulls and bones and rib cages? That inexplicably made me comfortable, too. Whenever I woke up from one of those dreams, I would always get this sense that I belonged somewhere. Which was ironic, because my entire life had proven to me that I belonged nowhere. I’d barely had a single friend during high school. I’d been the odd one out growing up at the orphanage. I’d never even been fostered once.
“Come sit by me,” Stella said as she pulled the chair out, a wide smile on her face.
I noted there was an empty chair right by the one she was gesturing to. I frowned at it as I sat down. “Who else is coming?”
Stanley coughed uncomfortably. Stella grabbed me by the shoulders. “Oh, I’ve invited my nephew. I’ve told you about him, haven’t I?”
My stomach sank. Yeah, she had. This wasn’t the first time Stella had tried to set me up.
“Don’t look so embarrassed,” she chided. “A pretty girl like you should be out there, enjoying life—”
She continued, but I tuned out. Enjoying life? Who’s to say I wasn’t? I was just more comfortable hanging out with the dead than the living.
Stanley quickly cleared his throat and turned the conversation onto something else. Again I tuned out. I dipped back into the conversation occasionally, just to prove to them that I wasn’t ignoring them completely. But most of the time, I let my mind wander. You might think that was a dangerous thing, considering where my mind could take me when it was unsupervised. I only ever daydreamed when I was on my own, thankfully. If I had such sharp waking reveries around other people, I would’ve booked myself into a psychiatric clinic years ago. As it was, not a single person on the face of the planet knew what my imagination could do.
That being said, the reveries I had were always geared toward one topic. Death. I never imagined myself as some kind of superhero or anything. I never daydreamed about romantic trysts. It was always the dead – the ghosts of the recently deceased, to be specific. Or it was that castle, empty and waiting for me.
I rubbed my face. This quick prickle spiked its way across the back of my neck. I shivered. I pushed up just in time to see over Stella’s shoulder that she’d just gotten a text from her nephew. It read something along the lines of ‘stop trying to set me up with the creepy girl from your work.’
I stifled a laugh. Some might read that as a kick in the guts, but I was relieved. “I’m just heading to the bathroom,” I said quietly as I left the group and wound my way through the bar. You wouldn’t think it, but it was a seriously popular place. We only got the prime table because Carlson’s had been coming here on a Friday night for years – ever since the pub had opened a century ago, in fact. We were as much of an institution as it was, so we were given pride of place.
The bar was sprawling. It was in an old sandstone building. It had these beautiful intricate Art Deco tiles over the walls, carved architraves, and a warren of back rooms that were a massive headache for the staff. This place didn’t just serve alcohol but had pretty decent food, too. The staff were always darting around like rabbits.
I knew my way to the bathroom. It was a practiced route. There were several ways to get to it, and I always took the longest one. As I shoved my hands harder into my pockets, I strode past the end of the bar. There was a man sitting in one of the booths. He was on his own. He was sipping at some kind of golden liquor. All these details were completely irrelevant. He had… this energy about him. It was something I’d never felt before. It made me stop on the spot. I couldn’t see his face. It was obscured by the carved side of his booth. I watched his hand as it pushed forward and he settled his drink on the table. He was wearing a ring. It had the Greek symbol omega on it. I hadn’t forgotten that odd car I’d seen earlier. I frowned.
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