A witch and a rookie detective versus a monster on a killing spree. What could possibly go wrong?
When a string of murders sweeps the country, Gabi Pride notices an alarming similarity to another death. Joy’s mum’s death six years ago. The deeper she digs, the more dangerous the case gets. And worse, the deaths are so precise they’re clearly the component for a dark spell. But Mrs. Mackenzie wasn’t the intended victim. It quickly becomes obvious that Joy was the target.
With a maniac who wants to use Joy’s mysterious blue power, and a wicked creature at his disposal, Gabi has no choice but to track down the killer before they come for her girlfriend.
Bound Powers is the second book in a new urban fantasy series full of magic, murder, and sinister supernaturals.
Get notified when Book 3 releases here: http://eepurl.com/Yn1vn
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Pride
The streets and buildings of Agedale had iced over in the month since Gabriella Pride and Joy Mackenzie had gone into the town hall to confront a witch killer. Gabi was glad when her car finally made it to the sturdy slab of stone that was her Aunt Cheryl’s pub, The Tipsy Witch. A huddle of middle aged men in varying states of shabbiness and inebriation, each with a cig in hand and puffs of smoke around them, gave a round of laughter when Gabi got out of her car and grabbed the brick wall, her boots sliding from under her on the slick ice. God, she hated winter. It was cold and treacherous and generally uncalled for. At least the step to the pub’s entrance had been doused with salt and made a safer path. Inside was blessedly warm. Thanks to her elven environmental magic, Aunt Cheryl always kept the place toasty.
Inside the long rectangular room, Gabi wove in and out of wooden chairs and wobbly tables, snow flicking off her boots and fluttering from her collar to the floorboards.
“Hey, you,” Aunt Cheryl said over the drone of conversations and an enthusiastic argument at the far end of the room. A large huddle had gathered around the flat screen TV showing a repeat of a football game. “Rosé or hot chocolate?”
“Chocolate.” After the freezing walk from the car park around back, anything hotter than room temperature was more than welcome. “Any trouble lately?”
“Nah.” Aunt Cheryl made quick work of frothing milk and boiling water, her thick curls—precisely styled, not natural ringlets—bouncing with every efficient movement. “After what you did for this town? No one dares risk it. They’re scared if they start something in here, my big scary niece will come and kick their ass.”
“She will,” Gabi replied with a smile, leaning against the bar. Within a minute, a large mug was placed before her, tendrils of steam carrying the scent of rich chocolate and … whiskey to her nose. Gabi raised an eyebrow.
“It’s warming,” Aunt Cheryl said with a shameless smile that was identical to Gabi’s dad’s smile. They looked so alike sometimes. “Plus, your ex’s eyes haven’t left you since you entered the room. A little Dutch courage won’t hurt.”
Gabi swallowed a mouthful of chocolate to cover her trill of nerves. She and Joy had been … cordial. Perfectly, ordinarily cordial. No more confessions of feelings, no lingering touches. Gabi would like to report there had been no longing glances either but she couldn’t quite control her eyes. “Not a word,” she told Aunt Cheryl, who only smirked in reply, wiping down the bar. But when Gabi turned to make her way to the table in the back where she’d seen Joy and her coven from the corner of her eye—Joy’s pink hair and Eilidh’s turquoise dip dye much too bright, newly coloured, to miss—Aunt Cheryl stage whispered, “Go get her, tiger.”
Gabi pointedly did not make any kind of response. A glare over her shoulder would only encourage her.
Joy and the others were sat at a table with a banquette along the back wall, Victoriya laid out across the whole thing, looking carefully careless. Gabi skirted a coat hanging off the back of a chair and turned her body sideways to slide through what passed for an aisle—a narrow pass through elbows and outstretched legs and handbags and extra chairs—and tried out a smile as she took a seat at Joy’s table.
“Alright, Gabi?” Gus greeted, looking uncharacteristically tired. When Gabi had first met him, he’d been neatly presented and his eyes had sparkled with amusement. Now his eyes were shadowed, and his formerly artful hair was just untidy, strands falling over his forehead.
Gabi nodded. “Are you?” She didn’t mean to sound so sceptical but one look at him had her worried. He wasn’t exactly her friend but he wasn’t nothing either. They’d gone into that town hall together, fought together, and she’d trusted him to help Joy get out of there. That meant something, forged something between them.
But he waved a lazy hand and said, “Fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Gabi had no response. Not a polite one anyway. Instead she looked to Eilidh, her usual floof of blonde and blue hair flat and her eyes tired, and Maisie who Gabi noticed now sitting upright beside Gus, her red coat of fur ruffled, and Joy. They all looked … grim. Sad. They had ever since Salma had accepted a job offer in Coventry three weeks ago. Five didn’t make for a steady coven, but it was more than that, more than witchcraft. They’d lost their friend, someone as close as family. Gabi didn’t know what to say or do. Luckily the shadow left Joy’s eyes first and she asked, “Did you find the lizard?”
“Yeah.” Gabi smiled, grateful for the break in tension. “It had burrowed through the vents at the school and got into the rabbit’s cage. I found it curled up with Mr. Fluffs.”
“How’d you find it?” Eilidh asked, propping her head on her hand, her pale face partially hidden by a long sweep of blonde and teal hair. She looked ... troubled but that was expected for a girl who’d lost her cousin a month ago. And fought her killer.
Gabi wrinkled her nose. “I followed the trail of …” She struggled for a polite word for shit.
Gus snorted. “Your job is so glamourous, Gabi.”
Actually, this was more the sort of thing she’d expected to be doing when she decided to follow in her mum and dad’s footsteps, and it was better than hunting down a killer, not that she would say that out loud. They’d avoided talking about what happened—Eilidh got upset when they spoke about it and Gus wouldn’t entertain a conversation at all. The only talking Gabi had done about Perchta was with Joy, who needed to vent as badly as Gabi did. So she said, “My next job’s even better.”
“Wait, don’t tell me,” he said, holding up a hand. “You’re tracking down Mrs. Albert’s long-lost parakeet.”
“Didn’t she lose that in the fifties?” Joy asked, brow furrowing in the cutest way. Gabi quickly averted her eyes before they went soft and loving.
Gus shrugged one shoulder, taking a long drink of some pint or other. Cider, lager, something honey coloured.
Gabi shook her head. “No, I’m not finding a parakeet.”
“Did Andy Brewell ask you to spy on his cheating husband?” Victoriya said lazily, still fully horizontal on the padded bench and barely visible over the table.
Gabi blinked. “Actually, yeah. How did you know that?”
Victoriya snorted. “I’m psychic as shit.”
Gabi was silent and highly doubtful, waiting for a second answer.
“Alright fine, he was going on and on and on about it in dance class last Wednesday and to shut him up, I said he should ask you to get a photo of it for a divorce lawsuit or whatever.” A beat. “I give damn good advice.”
Gabi smothered a laugh with her hand, drinking the last of her hot chocolate before it went cold. Or worse—lukewarm. Her eyes drifted, over the old paintings that had been framed on the walls for decades, of fae and elves and witches in various, typical scenes of woods and nature and storms. Gabi had always liked the paintings of fae, of when they used to live in massive, extravagant vessels and sail all around the world. A lot of pirate lore had come from fae history. Big tall ships and brigs were a lot cooler than the sleek, personality-less yachts the fae owned now.
“You should write a column in the paper,” Gus was saying as Gabi’s attention drifted. “Victoriya Stone, Agony Aunt.”
Victoriya snorted loudly.
Aunt Cheryl was flashing Gabi a speaking look from the bar, her eyes slowly sliding to Joy, but Gabi pretended not to see, studying the news on the small, shitty TV behind the bar. Some human politician had said something offensive to queer people, again, a man had just finished his thirtieth marathon for charity—unspecified, just charity—and police were asking for information regarding a suspected murder, last Friday night around eleven P.M. in Bristol. An old lady had died in her sleep but traces of an unnamed drug had been found in her system that suggested suicide, only she’d had a holiday booked for this Wednesday. Gabi watched a friend of the victim speak, using her poor lip-reading ability to pick up every seventh word.
“So,” Joy said when Gus and Victoriya had stopped bickering. “What do we do now? Without Salma?”
Gabi turned her eyes back to the group to find Eilidh frowning at a beer mat, Gus scratching his jaw, and Maisie curling up into a ball to sleep, nose hidden in her bushy tail. It was Victoriya who said, “We do what we’ve always done. We make it up.”
Joy finished, “And hope for the best.”
The streets and buildings of Agedale had iced over in the month since Gabriella Pride and Joy Mackenzie had gone into the town hall to confront a witch killer. Gabi was glad when her car finally made it to the sturdy slab of stone that was her Aunt Cheryl’s pub, The Tipsy Witch. A huddle of middle aged men in varying states of shabbiness and inebriation, each with a cig in hand and puffs of smoke around them, gave a round of laughter when Gabi got out of her car and grabbed the brick wall, her boots sliding from under her on the slick ice. God, she hated winter. It was cold and treacherous and generally uncalled for. At least the step to the pub’s entrance had been doused with salt and made a safer path. Inside was blessedly warm. Thanks to her elven environmental magic, Aunt Cheryl always kept the place toasty.
Inside the long rectangular room, Gabi wove in and out of wooden chairs and wobbly tables, snow flicking off her boots and fluttering from her collar to the floorboards.
“Hey, you,” Aunt Cheryl said over the drone of conversations and an enthusiastic argument at the far end of the room. A large huddle had gathered around the flat screen TV showing a repeat of a football game. “Rosé or hot chocolate?”
“Chocolate.” After the freezing walk from the car park around back, anything hotter than room temperature was more than welcome. “Any trouble lately?”
“Nah.” Aunt Cheryl made quick work of frothing milk and boiling water, her thick curls—precisely styled, not natural ringlets—bouncing with every efficient movement. “After what you did for this town? No one dares risk it. They’re scared if they start something in here, my big scary niece will come and kick their ass.”
“She will,” Gabi replied with a smile, leaning against the bar. Within a minute, a large mug was placed before her, tendrils of steam carrying the scent of rich chocolate and … whiskey to her nose. Gabi raised an eyebrow.
“It’s warming,” Aunt Cheryl said with a shameless smile that was identical to Gabi’s dad’s smile. They looked so alike sometimes. “Plus, your ex’s eyes haven’t left you since you entered the room. A little Dutch courage won’t hurt.”
Gabi swallowed a mouthful of chocolate to cover her trill of nerves. She and Joy had been … cordial. Perfectly, ordinarily cordial. No more confessions of feelings, no lingering touches. Gabi would like to report there had been no longing glances either but she couldn’t quite control her eyes. “Not a word,” she told Aunt Cheryl, who only smirked in reply, wiping down the bar. But when Gabi turned to make her way to the table in the back where she’d seen Joy and her coven from the corner of her eye—Joy’s pink hair and Eilidh’s turquoise dip dye much too bright, newly coloured, to miss—Aunt Cheryl stage whispered, “Go get her, tiger.”
Gabi pointedly did not make any kind of response. A glare over her shoulder would only encourage her.
Joy and the others were sat at a table with a banquette along the back wall, Victoriya laid out across the whole thing, looking carefully careless. Gabi skirted a coat hanging off the back of a chair and turned her body sideways to slide through what passed for an aisle—a narrow pass through elbows and outstretched legs and handbags and extra chairs—and tried out a smile as she took a seat at Joy’s table.
“Alright, Gabi?” Gus greeted, looking uncharacteristically tired. When Gabi had first met him, he’d been neatly presented and his eyes had sparkled with amusement. Now his eyes were shadowed, and his formerly artful hair was just untidy, strands falling over his forehead.
Gabi nodded. “Are you?” She didn’t mean to sound so sceptical but one look at him had her worried. He wasn’t exactly her friend but he wasn’t nothing either. They’d gone into that town hall together, fought together, and she’d trusted him to help Joy get out of there. That meant something, forged something between them.
But he waved a lazy hand and said, “Fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Gabi had no response. Not a polite one anyway. Instead she looked to Eilidh, her usual floof of blonde and blue hair flat and her eyes tired, and Maisie who Gabi noticed now sitting upright beside Gus, her red coat of fur ruffled, and Joy. They all looked … grim. Sad. They had ever since Salma had accepted a job offer in Coventry three weeks ago. Five didn’t make for a steady coven, but it was more than that, more than witchcraft. They’d lost their friend, someone as close as family. Gabi didn’t know what to say or do. Luckily the shadow left Joy’s eyes first and she asked, “Did you find the lizard?”
“Yeah.” Gabi smiled, grateful for the break in tension. “It had burrowed through the vents at the school and got into the rabbit’s cage. I found it curled up with Mr. Fluffs.”
“How’d you find it?” Eilidh asked, propping her head on her hand, her pale face partially hidden by a long sweep of blonde and teal hair. She looked ... troubled but that was expected for a girl who’d lost her cousin a month ago. And fought her killer.
Gabi wrinkled her nose. “I followed the trail of …” She struggled for a polite word for shit.
Gus snorted. “Your job is so glamourous, Gabi.”
Actually, this was more the sort of thing she’d expected to be doing when she decided to follow in her mum and dad’s footsteps, and it was better than hunting down a killer, not that she would say that out loud. They’d avoided talking about what happened—Eilidh got upset when they spoke about it and Gus wouldn’t entertain a conversation at all. The only talking Gabi had done about Perchta was with Joy, who needed to vent as badly as Gabi did. So she said, “My next job’s even better.”
“Wait, don’t tell me,” he said, holding up a hand. “You’re tracking down Mrs. Albert’s long-lost parakeet.”
“Didn’t she lose that in the fifties?” Joy asked, brow furrowing in the cutest way. Gabi quickly averted her eyes before they went soft and loving.
Gus shrugged one shoulder, taking a long drink of some pint or other. Cider, lager, something honey coloured.
Gabi shook her head. “No, I’m not finding a parakeet.”
“Did Andy Brewell ask you to spy on his cheating husband?” Victoriya said lazily, still fully horizontal on the padded bench and barely visible over the table.
Gabi blinked. “Actually, yeah. How did you know that?”
Victoriya snorted. “I’m psychic as shit.”
Gabi was silent and highly doubtful, waiting for a second answer.
“Alright fine, he was going on and on and on about it in dance class last Wednesday and to shut him up, I said he should ask you to get a photo of it for a divorce lawsuit or whatever.” A beat. “I give damn good advice.”
Gabi smothered a laugh with her hand, drinking the last of her hot chocolate before it went cold. Or worse—lukewarm. Her eyes drifted, over the old paintings that had been framed on the walls for decades, of fae and elves and witches in various, typical scenes of woods and nature and storms. Gabi had always liked the paintings of fae, of when they used to live in massive, extravagant vessels and sail all around the world. A lot of pirate lore had come from fae history. Big tall ships and brigs were a lot cooler than the sleek, personality-less yachts the fae owned now.
“You should write a column in the paper,” Gus was saying as Gabi’s attention drifted. “Victoriya Stone, Agony Aunt.”
Victoriya snorted loudly.
Aunt Cheryl was flashing Gabi a speaking look from the bar, her eyes slowly sliding to Joy, but Gabi pretended not to see, studying the news on the small, shitty TV behind the bar. Some human politician had said something offensive to queer people, again, a man had just finished his thirtieth marathon for charity—unspecified, just charity—and police were asking for information regarding a suspected murder, last Friday night around eleven P.M. in Bristol. An old lady had died in her sleep but traces of an unnamed drug had been found in her system that suggested suicide, only she’d had a holiday booked for this Wednesday. Gabi watched a friend of the victim speak, using her poor lip-reading ability to pick up every seventh word.
“So,” Joy said when Gus and Victoriya had stopped bickering. “What do we do now? Without Salma?”
Gabi turned her eyes back to the group to find Eilidh frowning at a beer mat, Gus scratching his jaw, and Maisie curling up into a ball to sleep, nose hidden in her bushy tail. It was Victoriya who said, “We do what we’ve always done. We make it up.”
Joy finished, “And hope for the best.”