Shadow of the Witch launches September 30th, but you can read the first chapter now!
Chapter 1
She died at 3:58 AM on a Nevada highway. It was February 2nd—neither a particularly lucky or unlucky day. But it was the day my sister was killed, which makes the date unlucky for me, unluckier for her.
The accident was random. A driver swerved onto the shoulder, over corrected, and plowed head-on into my sister’s pickup.
My sister Sarah always drove the speed limit. Exactly the speed limit. I’d teased her about it.
And I couldn’t stop wondering if she’d gone a mile per hour faster or slower that morning, if she’d spent an extra moment to chat with someone at the gas station, if she’d stopped an extra second at a light, if the accident might have been avoided or not been so deadly.
But none of that happened. Instead, chance took her out with the precision of a trained hitman.
Chance.
Fate.
Luck.
It had become close to an obsession in the months since, and it had brought me here—to a Lake Tahoe highway. I eased up, braking, my SUV following too close behind a slow-moving Cadillac. I was more sensitive to accidents now.
The sapphire lake winked between pines. Distance gathered between the Caddy and my car on the rolling, winding road, and I glanced at the dash clock. I’d be late if the guy in front of me didn’t start hitting the speed limit.
My knuckles whitened on the wheel. If chance could maneuver two people into a single deadly moment, was it possible I could maneuver chance into something good? Something to make up for the awful? Didn’t chance owe me that?
I couldn’t let the idea go.
I’d attended lectures. I’d pored over books by occultists and fringe scientists. I acquired translations of ancient texts. But even the ancients seemed to believe Fortuna was uncontrollable, unbiddable.
I’d even consulted AI. It had returned a bland, unsatisfying response. But I suspected AI would be taking over my Silicon Valley job soon, so maybe I was prejudiced.
Was luck something we created? Was it mere chaos?
I liked the first answer, feared the second, and suspected there was a third I hadn’t yet grasped.
I’d hired a specialist in old books to find out-of-print texts for me. I’d dipped into online occult chatrooms. I’d even succumbed to an ad on social media and joined an email mystery school.
The Caddy’s brake lights flared, and it turned down a road toward the lake. I stepped on the gas and rolled my window down. Though autumn chilled the morning, I wanted to breathe the Tahoe air.
The world had changed, and I hated it. I couldn’t go back, couldn’t tell my baby sister not to get in that pickup, couldn’t say goodbye.
I’d tried to return to my normal routine—the routine before Sarah’s accident. Routines are supposed to be healing.
Routine felt like a betrayal.
I couldn’t stop thinking of things I’d known we’d do together as a matter of course. Trips we’d planned to take. Wine we’d planned to drink. And now, we wouldn’t.
I gave up on rebuilding my routine. The routine was gone. My work had fallen apart—though my company hadn’t realized it. My workaholism had given way to a new obsession: luck. I quit my job before they could find out.
And then I discovered the luck text.
To be accurate, the expert I’d hired discovered it for me—a fragment of scroll that shouldn’t exist. But it did, and another fragment lived in the hands of a collector at Lake Tahoe.
The fragment cost most of what was left of my savings. My grip on the steering wheel tightened. I still wasn’t sure if the scroll was worth it. I hoped I’d soon find out.
A panther slunk along the earthen roadside. I blinked, and it vanished. But my attention had been caught, and I sucked in a breath. An orange kitten trotted ahead, oblivious to the cars roaring past.
I slammed on my brakes and pulled over. Belatedly, I glanced in my rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of my silvering hair, hazel eyes, and a minivan. The minivan swerved and barreled past.
I cursed, stomach tightening, and edged over until my bumper nearly brushed a pine. My SUV tilted on the sloping shoulder. I waited for a pickup to pass, then opened my door.
The door was heavy at this angle. It took me longer than it should have to drag my fifty-something form from the car. My fitness routine had fallen by the wayside, and I’d put on ten pounds of grief.
The afternoon air was chill, the sun lowering between the trees. Blindly, I reached inside and drew out a furry vest.
My heart clenched. My sister’s vest. Fake fur, of course. Sarah may have had the soul of a poet, but she’d been a genius with her money.
Grimacing, I slipped into it. The vest had a hippy vibe, wasn’t my style, and didn’t go with my button-up blouse and khaki slacks. But that didn’t matter on a cat rescue mission.
I hurried to the other side of the SUV. The kitten was gone.
I adjusted my vest and scanned the pines. I’d imagined a panther. If I’d imagined the kitten too, I was really…
The kitten crawled through a stand of manzanita, its belly low to the ground. I exhaled shakily.
“Here kitty.” I moved slowly toward it. Was it feral? I swiped my hand over my bobbed hair. If it was wild, my odds of retrieving the animal were low.
The kitten turned its head and blinked gold-brown eyes.
My heart tightened. They were the same eyes as our childhood cat, Danger. Sarah and I had found him on our doormat at the cabin our family rented every year at Flathead Lake. It had taken a full day of begging, but our parents had let us keep him.
The kitten trotted toward me and bumped the pointy toe of my alligator boots. I squatted to run my finger along his spine.
The cat let me pet him, and I picked him up. He curled against my vest and purred. Not wild then, but there was no collar.
“All right then.” I ran a finger along the top of his striped head. There were bits of dirt and bracken in his fur, but he looked healthy. “I’ll figure out what to do with you later.”
Returning with the kitten to my SUV, I settled him on my lap. His claws dug into my slacks. I winced and started the car. He looked so much like Danger it was uncanny. But the resemblance was a coincidence, no more.
Ten minutes later I drew up to the iron gates of a stone-walled estate. An impersonal electronic eye studied me while I rolled down the window and reached for the intercom.
The gates swung open before I could press the black button. Swallowing down my erratically beating heart, I drove inside.
The driveway was long, sloping, and graveled. Stones pinged off my car’s undercarriage, and I wondered if the gravel was part of the estate’s defenses, an audible warning of intruders. A curving, wooden roofline emerged above the pines.
I stopped a good twenty yards from the house and gaped.
Lake Tahoe has a famous Scandinavian castle called Vikingsholm, built of stone and wood. This house topped it.
Varnished red logs stacked three stories high and shaped into pitched roofs with curving dragons slinking along the eaves. Turrets and towers topped with onion domes and spires. Balustrades and fretwork painted a deep yellow. And the lake spread like a cold, glittering gem behind the mansion.
I’d stepped into a fairytale. An alternate dimension.
The kitten dug his claws deeper into my khakis, bringing me back to myself. I’d read about Wingate Weald and his Scandinavian dragenstil house. But seeing it in person was a very different level of understanding.
Someone rapped on my window. I jumped in my seat.
A man with curling salt and pepper hair and a matching, neatly trimmed beard scowled. Despite his graying hair, he had a young vibe, his tanned face smooth except for the lines spoking from the corners of his brown eyes.
I rolled down the window. “Hi, are—?”
His frown deepened. “Didn’t you hear me honking? You’re blocking me in.” He jerked his chin toward a white Honda Accord, pockmarked from hail damage.
My face heated. “Sorry. I was just so…” I motioned toward the house.
“Stop gawking and move your…” His gaze raked me. “…car.”
“Right. Sorry.” I pulled forward and touched my straight, silvery hair.
Insecurity wriggled in my chest, and I was too damn old for insecurity. But my ten extra pounds of grief weight weren’t exactly confidence-building.
Not that I cared what he thought. I hadn’t been blocking him in that long.
The man stalked to his battered Honda, the movements of his lean figure smooth beneath his parka and baggy jeans. Getting into his Honda, he roared up the drive, scattering gravel in his wake.
I pulled up behind a sleek black Lincoln and a blue Subaru SUV, and I detached the kitten from my slacks. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” I set him on the passenger seat.
The kitten yawned, curled into a tighter ball, and closed his eyes.
I hesitated. I didn’t like leaving animals in cars. The morning was nippy, clouds piled against the snow-topped, eastern Sierras. But I couldn’t exactly bring him inside. According to my research, my host hated cats.
I grabbed my satchel and closed the door carefully so as not to wake the kitten. Then I tugged down the hem of my sister’s furry vest and walked up the mansion’s reddish wooden steps. I looked for a doorbell, couldn’t find it, and raised my hand to knock.
The door opened before I got a chance.
The man inside was well over six-feet tall. Beneath his green Henley, he had the build of a basketball player. He smiled, his teeth white against his dark skin, the skin around his pale-brown eyes crinkling. “Brandy Bounds?”
“That’s me.”
“He’s expecting you.” The man stepped aside.
I stepped over the threshold, my eyes adjusting to the dim light, and I inhaled the ghosts of cut pines. But the scent was just another phantom—another hallucination. The house had been built in the 1930s.
I imagined there would be spirits here—of the original owner, of pets, and perhaps of the odd guest. But imagination was all I had.
I’d been expecting blue-beamed ceilings and more dragon carvings inside. But the mansion’s foyer was Scandinavian modern. Charcoal walls decorated with bleak modern art. Parquet floors and blond wood furniture with beige cushions.
I faced the man. “And you are…?”
“Tobin, the estate manager. Tobin Washington.”
I smiled. “Nice to meet you.”
He turned and walked down the spacious hall. The tips of my ears heated. So far, I was oh-for-two when it came to polite introductions. But what had I expected?
Tobin stopped beside a wide, open doorway. He motioned me inside.
I walked into a chocolate-colored room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lake and Sierras. In the center of the room, a fire burned in a metal, bowl-shaped firepit atop a granite slab. The firepit must have been gas, because the flames leapt between glass stones the color of charcoal. A rounded near-black hood hovered above the fire.
Four rounded beige chairs bracketed a lower granite table beside it. Three of the occupants rose—two men about my age, in their forties or fifties—and a fit, muscular man in his mid-sixties. I would have pegged him for fifty as well if I hadn’t already studied photos of him: Wingate Weald, ostensible investment manager.
The fourth, an auburn-haired woman of indeterminate age, tilted her head. She looked oddly familiar, but I couldn’t place her. The woman’s eyes seemed to gleam purple in the flickering firelight, and then they were brown again.
A silence fell that stripped me bare. I stared back at the four, but didn’t really take in what I was seeing, only getting distorted impressions. The woman a witch. One of the men a funeral director. The youngish blond man had an air of unreality about him. And the older man…
My heartbeat raced, seeking escape. I couldn’t do this.
I had to do this.
“Brandy.” The name, spoken in a rich baritone, broke the spell that held me.
Wingate strode forward, broad hand extended. His thick white hair was slicked back against his head. He pumped my hand enthusiastically, and I smothered a wince at his grip strength. “Glad you could make it.”
Uneasily, I glanced at the others. Was I the only one who saw something feral in Wingate’s green eyes? His civilized charcoal suit, his pristine white shirt open at the throat to expose a gold four-leaf-clover charm, did nothing to bely this impression.
“I didn’t know you had guests,” I managed to say. I’d counted on us being alone. I’d dreaded it, too.
“Everyone, this is Brandy Bounds. She’s the ex-Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer for a rather impressive Silicon Valley tech company.” Wingate met my gaze. “I heard they had to hire two people to replace you, which either makes her a savant or a workaholic. And she did it all as a single mother. I hear he’s a Stanford grad?”
Heat flared at the front of my skull. Don’t talk about my son. I smiled. “I enjoy my work,” I said, heart pumping. I stopped myself from wiping my palms on my slacks.
“And yet you quit your career. But fortune favors the bold, as they say.” Wingate motioned toward a narrow, gray-haired man in a frayed black suit. “This is Ezra Blackthorn, my specialist on occult texts.”
The funeral director. I extended my hand toward the man.
Instead of taking it, he looked down his hooked nose at me. His dark, hooded gaze glowed with intensity. “It’s nice to meet you,” he said in a measured tone.
I dropped my hand. “You have your own occult text specialist?” I asked my host.
Wingate smiled. “I don’t stint on things that matter. And this is Riga Hayworth.”
I started. That was who she looked like, that old silver screen actress, Rita Hayworth. But had he said her name was Riga? Was she a celebrity impersonator?
In a liquid motion, the woman rose. Though she looked like Rita, her clothing was more Katherine Hepburn: wide-legged slacks, a blouse, a brown silk scarf knotted around her slender neck. “I’m a detective of sorts.”
“What sort?” I asked.
“Metaphysical.” Her arms hung loose at her sides.
“I see.” But I didn’t see at all. It didn’t surprise me Wingate had brought in someone like her. But what was a metaphysical detective?
Wingate threw back his silvered head and laughed. “The look on your face, Brandy. Don’t worry, she’s a real private eye. And with her experience with the occult, I thought she might come in handy.”
“In case I’m a fraud?” I asked, mouth dry.
“Exactly,” he purred. “Now, did you bring it?”
I opened my bag and drew out a folded sheet of paper. Wingate snatched it from my hand and opened it. His lined hands trembled.
I looked a question at the third man. He was real all right. How had I thought otherwise, if only for a moment?
“Family,” the young man said briefly. “Name’s Devin.”
“My nephew assists with my private investment firm.” Wingate didn’t bother to look up from the sheet of paper. A muscle jumped in Devin’s jaw.
Devin’s blond hair was thick and close-cropped. His neck was thick and his shoulders broad. What did he really do at Wingate’s “investment” firm, so small and elite that those two were the sole managers and employees?
I glanced toward the door. Tobin had vanished. I suspected he hadn’t gone far.
Wingate looked up and handed the page to Ezra. “This is all of it?”
“Of course not,” I said, “just a copy of the first inch.” My gaze flicked to Ezra. The occult specialist’s fleshy lips moved silently, mouthing the words in the text.
“Where’s the rest?” Wingate demanded.
I shifted my weight, my back suddenly sticky. “Somewhere safe,” I said coolly.
“And the scroll’s condition?”
“Excellent.”
Wingate stared. His square jaw tightened.
This was it. I held my breath. Had I gone too far? Not far enough?
Wingate threw back his head and barked a laugh. “Touché. I presume this is a cash-on-delivery transaction?” He plucked the sheet from Ezra’s long fingers.
“That,” I said, “and, as I mentioned on the phone, I’d like to study your portion of scroll.”
He dropped my sheet of paper into the firepit. The flames leapt to devour it, then retreated, satisfied.
“Do you have your portion on you?” Wingate asked.
Ezra’s long nose twitched. He leaned forward.
“No,” I lied. “Like I said, it’s somewhere safe.”
“Can you get it tomorrow?”
I nodded.
“Then why don’t you spend the night here?” Wingate asked. “I have plenty of room.”
Riga’s expression flickered. “That might not be such a good idea.”
For whom?
Wingate was a notorious game player, and he wasn’t inviting me out of generosity. He was up to something. That was only one of many excellent reasons to decline his invitation, foremost being that my host was probably a killer.
But it was that probably, that sliver of doubt, that swayed me. That, and my sister. Because I was playing a game too. If I was in the house, it would be easier to win it. “That’s a generous offer,” I told the old mobster, my mouth dry.
The mob connection was only a rumor, after all. Though the security at the estate and the suspiciously well-muscled “estate manager,” Tobin, made the rumor seem more believable.
My face tightened. But maybe Wingate was just security conscious.
“I accept,” I said. And then I remembered the kitten in my car. Dammit. What would I do with him?
There was a faint sigh. I thought it might have come from the Rita Hayworth clone.
“Tobin will show you to your room,” Wingate said. “Dinner’s at six sharp.”
Tobin silently materialized beside me. I trailed his tall form into the hallway.
“COO and CFO, huh?” he asked.
He had been listening at the door. I nodded.
“How many hours a week did you work?” Tobin continued.
“Nearly all of them.”
He snorted. “I know the feeling. Got any bags?”
“In the car.” I followed him outside. “Er, how does Mr. Weald feel about cats?” I fumbled the hooks on my vest, snapping it closed. Maybe I’d heard wrong about his anti-cat stance.
“Hates ‘em.”
Terrific. Wingate really did think cats were unlucky. I aimed my key fob at the SUV and opened the hatch.
Tobin retrieved my oversized, lipstick-pink suitcase from the back. I tucked the kitten inside my furry vest and buttoned its clasps. The orange cat purred against my stomach.
Tobin carried my suitcase inside. “Third floor.” He led me up a grand, elaborately carved staircase that wound around itself four times. Pale light filtered through its stained-glass ceiling.
“Wow.” I studied the painted portraits on the staircase walls. They stared back, disapproving.
“The fire department wanted Wingate to take the staircase out,” he said. “They said it forms a chimney if there’s a fire. But the house is historic, so it stays.”
On the third floor, he led me into a modern Scandinavian-style room overlooking the driveway. I guessed I didn’t rate a lake view. But I wasn’t a real guest, and I wasn’t on vacation.
After Tobin departed, I settled the kitten on a fluffy white pillow, set up my electronic notebook on the sleek, narrow desk, and opened my suitcase on the stand for that purpose.
I did not hang my things in the blond-wood wardrobe, the faces in its grain mocking. Tobin would no doubt want to rummage through my suitcase while I was at dinner.
I didn’t know how the estate manager—bodyguard?—would react to the cat, but I’d worry about that later. If Wingate threw me out on my ear, I’d move to a hotel. If I could afford one. Tahoe was no longer the middle-class vacation haven it used to be.
Too paranoid to extract the actual scroll from its hiding place, I studied my sketch of it in my electronic notebook. Re-reading the text didn’t kill much time. Playing with the kitten made a better distraction.
At six sharp, I washed up, brushed the cat hairs off my blouse, and descended the stairs. Firetrap or no, the staircase was gorgeous. A weak beam of silvery light shone through the stained-glass ceiling. The moon?
I was unsurprised to find Riga, Ezra, and Devin were dining with us in the black-walled dining room. I was surprised when Riga dominated the conversation with a dissertation on the connection between ancient Greek philosophy and the New Age movement.
Ezra disputed Riga over the role of beauty in society. Even when arguing hotly, he looked like a mortician. It wasn’t just the worn black suit. The man had an aura of decay.
Facing the picture windows overlooking the unblinking lake, Wingate smiled in his throne-like chair from the end of the blocky wood table. He quizzed his blond-haired nephew, Devin, about a recent meeting with one of their investment clients.
Devin shoveled food into his mouth and gave one-word replies. He glanced repeatedly at the door, as if expecting someone who never arrived.
When Wingate did speak to me, it was to boast about his acquisitions. Wingate, I was soon to learn, liked the best. He also had a passion for feng shui, explaining the placement of the dining table and “flow” of the room, while the metaphysical detective nodded.
“Maybe I should ask you to manage my investments,” Ezra said across the table to Wingate.
“Eh?” Wingate asked.
“I was just complaining about the state of the stock market,” Ezra motioned to Riga. “Perhaps my money would be better in your hands.”
“You couldn’t afford my services.” Wingate adjusted the cuff of his charcoal suit jacket.
“You couldn’t stomach the risk,” Devin muttered, and Wingate shot him a sharp glance.
We lingered over port and a rich chocolate cake. When I figured Tobin had had enough time to satisfy himself that the luck scroll wasn’t in my suitcase, I yawned and retreated to my room.
My suitcase appeared untouched, but I’d used the old hair-in-an-obscure-place trick. The hair had been moved.
The orange kitten had moved as well, to a low, sand-colored couch. An open, half-empty tin of tuna sat on the wood floor beside it.
Tobin. Smiling, I went to the window.
The headlights of two vehicles—Ezra’s and Riga’s, I guessed—glided down the driveway and vanished. I rubbed my damp palms on my khakis. Alone at last, and in a mobster’s house.
Propping a chair beneath the doorknob, I went to bed. I didn’t expect the chair would stop anyone, but it might give me a warning.
I set my alarm, but I didn’t need it. Sleep was impossible, despite the luxury sheets and down-filled duvet.
I stared at the beamed ceiling, checking the phone on the bed stand every thirty minutes. On my final check, I nearly knocked over the water carafe.
But it was three—the witching hour for us over-forties. It was time.
I threw off the duvet and changed in the dark from my nightgown into a pair of sweats. I didn’t put my shoes on.
If I was caught, being barefoot would make it appear more likely I’d just come down for some warm milk. It would have to be milk or a snack, since someone had thoughtfully left that full water carafe.
Shifting the chair beneath the doorknob, I slipped into the hallway. I paused, listening. A clock ticked from somewhere inside the house.
My eyes adjusted to the gloom, but I took my time feeling my way down the wide stairs. Wood creaked, and I froze at the base of the staircase. Silence met my ears—silence and the throbbing of my heart.
I exhaled. The sound must have been the house settling. I moved forward.
Ten years earlier, a home decor magazine had done a photo spread of Dragon House. From its pages, I knew Wingate’s library faced the lake and was on the first floor. Its shelves had been filled with rare texts—only in the best condition, of course. I hoped this was where his portion of the luck text would be.
But I wasn’t to find it.
Not that morning at least. Not when my bare toes caught soft cloth wrapped around a hard mass. Not when I went crashing to the floor. Not when I sat up, looking around wildly to see if anyone had heard.
Not when I felt the body.
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About Shadow of the Witch
Will fortune favor the brave, or the grave?
In the shadow of tragedy, Brandy embarks on a quest for answers that leads to a mobster's mansion in Lake Tahoe. But what she finds within the Dragon House's walls is more than she bargained for: a murdered man and a medieval scroll on the alchemy of luck.
Digging deeper into the mystical world of luck and chance, Brandy becomes trapped in a web of magic and deception that threatens to unravel her reality. Brandy must race against time to solve the murder and decipher the text. And if she can’t confront her deepest fears, she may lose everything.
Will fortune favor the brave, or will the grave claim her?
For fans of Deborah Harkness, Alice Hoffman and Paolo Cuelho comes a tale of magic and transformation amidst a world of shadows and secrets. Shadow of the Witch is an interactive, metaphysical mystery from the Mystery School Series that will leave readers spellbound.
Featuring Riga Hayworth!
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