Feathers, Tails & Broomsticks

by Dionnara Dawson

  Feathers, Tails & Broomsticks

  The Promised Witch Series Book One

  Dionnara Dawson

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  FEATHERS, TAILS & BROOMSTICKS

  Copyright © 2019 Dionnara Dawson.

  All rights reserved.

  Written by Dionnara Dawson.

  Copyeditor: Todd Herzman

  Proofreader: April Bennett

  For Todd, the love of my life. Thank you for your endless support.

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  Prologue

  Tessa

  Teresa Mea sat with her knees tucked up to her chest, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs, even though the motion made the metal chains on her wrists bite into her skin. Her wrists and ankles were ringed raw where the metal had worn through; dark indigo blood leaked onto the links of the dull chain.

  She had long since stopped crying. There was no use, and it only seemed to spur her captors on. As they had dragged her into the cell, tears on her cheeks, they laughed and shoved her, cursing in her ear. Now, Tessa held tight to her legs, keeping herself as small as possible, though she was already slim and short for an eleven-year-old girl. She kept herself firmly in human form, careful not to shimmer into her faerie-self. Tessa prolonged the inevitable for as long as possible; if the angels saw her delicate indigo wings, they would rush to tend to the removal of them. Either way, the angels would hang them on a wall somewhere here in Camden Haven’s Captor’s Point. Or else the angels would sell them.

  Though she was done with crying, Tessa was still very much afraid. It had come true, her worst fear—any Cambion’s nightmare—being captured by bloodthirsty angels who had ignorantly mistaken her kind for pure demons millennia ago and now hunted them for sport rather than righteous, heavenly justice.

  Tessa put her head on her knees, wishing she could sleep. It was dark in her cell; there were no windows and only one door, through which spilled only a semblance of light from the hallway outside. Undoubtedly angels were patrolling or on guard just beyond her view. She wished her faerie telepathy had developed. It might be of some use now to escape, but she was too young.

  Painfully, Tessa lay on the cold, hard ground. When the angels made time to pay her a visit—there were many Cambions here to keep them busy, if all the scary stories were true—Tessa’s wings would be ripped away forever. She wondered how many others were here and felt a twist of sympathy for her kin—the warlocks and other fae in these cells, and, though they were distasteful, she even pitied the bloodsucking vampires whose fangs would be removed, and the territorial, feral werewolves whose claws would be taken as trophies.

  Chapter One

  Hella

  Some would consider reading a book while walking and avoiding running into people in the hallways quite a talent. Avoiding an unexpectedly open locker, however, was another matter. Hella Corvime’s forehead smacked into the metal locker with a clang. She clapped a hand to her head, dropped the book and swore all at once.

  A resounding laugh filled the halls of Mill Valley High. ‘What a klutz!’ a voice called. Students stopped to stare as Hella felt a warm flush creep over her cheeks. She glared over at the school princess and bully, Valerie Winter, whose long blonde hair swished down her back as she turned and, with a fish-hook in her mouth, pulled an unattractive smirk.

  Hella rubbed her forehead, hoping it wasn’t marked. She bent to retrieve the book on the tiled white floor. As she stood, a girl rounded the corner. With a sympathetic smile, the girl’s blue eyes softened.

  ‘I guess you can’t read and walk.’ Alexa Graham’s dark figure slinked up to Hella and took her by the arm. She nodded to Valerie’s retreating figure. ‘I see Queen Bitch is as much of a jerk this semester as last?’

  Hella twisted the end of her long red braid nervously. ‘It would seem so.’ Overhead, a bell rang, signalling the start of first period. Hella adjusted the messenger bag on her shoulder and stuffed the book inside. ‘Come on,’ she said to her friend. ‘I don’t want to be late on our first day back.’

  Alexa gave a dramatic puff of her cheeks, though that did nothing to hide how slender her face was. She tucked short black hair behind one ear, revealing a myriad of silver piercings. ‘Fine. But you have to help me with French this year. I have a feeling I’m going to suck at it.’

  ‘Then why are you taking it?’ The girls walked quickly through the emptying corridors.

  ‘My mum is on my case. She did French, so she wants me to as well.’ Alexa rolled her heavily made-up eyes, though she smiled. The girls at least got to take the class together.

  They stepped through the open door into their classroom and took two seats up the back as the rest of the students settled in. She opened her French textbook with a frown, wondering just how practical this class would be. The teacher up the front wrote her name on the chalkboard as if it weren’t 2016 and they really should have smartboards, or at least whiteboards.

  The lesson flew by, the constantly chatty students still readjusting to paying attention and taking notes after the long Christmas and New Year holiday. Hella scribbled down the last of her conjugations and recorded the verbs she had to practice for homework. Alexa’s page was mostly drawings of ideas for new tattoos or piercings, but Hella was pleased to see some work on there too. Another bell rang out from the corridor, and the girls sighed in relief. After a summer vacation, the classroom was stiflingly confined. Hella longed to be outside again, preferably with a cup of coffee and a book. As the students filed out into the hallway, Hella bumped into a tall someone with short blond hair.

  ‘Oops, excuse me,’ she murmured.

  ‘Hellhound!’ The someone gathered her up in a big hug.

  ‘James!’ Hella grinned, hugging him back.

  James Wilson’s lip twisted into a devilish smirk. Hella couldn’t help but notice that his tan had deepened over the summer. Christmas spent with his family had one upside. He smiled at her and Alexa. ‘I can think of much better things to be doing than going to second period, you know.’

  Hella looked down at the timetable of classes on her phone and was dismayed to find that she had Science now. Looking over at Alexa, she knew her friend had the same class.

  ‘Come on, Hell, I won’t ever need to know how to clean a beaker.’ Alexa’s blue eyes grew wide. ‘Let’s go to the café. I know you’re hanging out for a latte as much as I am.’

  Hella laughed. ‘You know me too well. Let’s go.’

  James smiled, putting one arm around each girl. ‘Oh, is that a new piercing? Hella, why is your forehead red?’

  At the same time, Hella and Alexa both elbowed him in the ribs from each side. ‘Shut up, James.’ Alexa giggled.

  The three teenagers snuck out the back exit of the school, the corridors now empty. It felt like a daredevil thing to do, skipping on her first day. But it was so easy. No one tried to stop them, and they didn’t see another soul on their way outside. Even at the end of the Australian summer, it was still almost thirty degrees in the burning sunshine. For the last three years the trio had trekked the same path down to the familiar café.

  They walked through cooler patches of shade, down the block, heading for Café au Lait. Hella knew enough French for that. Together, they walked through the near-abandoned streets of Mill Valley, New South Wales. There weren’t many people out and about t
his time of day. The town was small, and this area was home only to a few businesses: an old Chinese restaurant only open at night, a corner store and a post office. Hella watched as an old lady with a walking stick shuffled unsteadily along, her fluffy white poodle on a leash.

  An older man, perhaps fifty, walked nearly side by side with the three of them, not looking at them, likely headed to the café too. A blanket of silence fell over the street. Clouds overhead began to crawl across the sky. Alexa and James chatted softly. And the man beside Hella began to whistle. There was something oddly casual about him. The three students and the old man veered over to the pedestrian crossing. As they walked, narrowing their path, the man and Hella stood almost shoulder to shoulder. She looked up at him, prepared to smile politely, when the man, just a few centimetres taller, looked down at her. Hella stifled a shriek, clapping a hand over her mouth.

  The man looked perfectly ordinary. He had dark hair, greying at the temples. He wore a fine suit and tie. And his eyes were a bright, glowing yellow. They stared down at her with a feral, otherworldly glint. The man gave a silent chuckle at her reaction, then crossed the road, steering away from the café and vanishing down the next alleyway.

  Alexa and James walked ahead as Hella stood frozen. Her friends glanced back at her. Alexa called, ‘Hella, come on!’

  Hella shook herself, checked either side of the road, then jogged across the street. They stood out the front, waiting for her under the battered awning of the café.

  ‘What were you waiting for?’ James arched his brow.

  ‘Did you see him?’ Hella asked, peering into the sunshine.

  Alexa and James looked around. There was no one else in the street. ‘See who?’ They both asked.

  Alexa shrugged and nodded inside. ‘Let’s go in.’

  Hella swallowed against the fear catching in her throat. Those yellow eyes. Had she imagined it?

  Inside the café, air conditioning swam through the room, spreading the overpowering smell of pastries and wafting the deliciously familiar aroma of ground coffee beans through the air. Hella inhaled deeply, her eyes half-closing. She recognised several other students hiding in the corners, desperately trying to avoid their inevitable education. The three of them sat in their regular corner booth and ordered coffees. The waitress smiled at them. ‘Coming up, guys!’ she called, waving a cloth in their direction.

  Alexa narrowed her eyes at Hella. Her make up still looked perfect after the sweat-inducing walk. ‘What was that about?’ Alexa asked as they all dumped their bags under the table.

  Hella twisted the end of her braid. She frowned. ‘Didn’t you see that older guy next to me, as we were crossing the street, in the suit?’

  James furrowed his brow. ‘There was no one else around us, Hellhound. Except that old lady with the dog.’ James looked at her with concern. ‘Are you okay?’

  As Hella opened her mouth the waitress came over with their drinks. Hella wrapped her hands around the latte, wondering if she had really imagined her strange encounter. The others hadn’t seen the man. Had they been too busy chatting to notice? Were they messing with her?

  ‘What a strange day this is,’ Hella muttered into her steaming mug.

  ‘Hmm?’ Alexa sipped her own drink.

  ‘Oh, nothing. I just…’

  ‘Tell us.’ James smiled over the rim of his mug.

  ‘It’s just that, this morning, when I was getting ready to leave, I overheard my mum speaking on the phone about something weird.’

  Alexa and James looked like hilarious cartoons, Hella thought, peering over their mugs, their eyes wide with rapt attention. Hella smiled. ‘My mum said something about me “not being ready” for something, and that she will “get me to the shop soon,” and that she was waiting to hear back from someone.’

  James’s mouth quirked. ‘That is a little weird, I guess. But how do you know she was talking about you?’

  ‘She said, “Meele, I know you need her soon, but she’s my little girl, I don’t care about your prophecy!”’ Hella held on tight to her mug. ‘A prophecy!’ She rolled her eyes as Alexa and James burst out laughing.

  ‘To be fair, Hella, we all know that your mum is kind of into some weird Pagan stuff. Who knows what she’s on about?’ Alexa cackled again, finally smudging her eyeliner.

  James nodded. ‘Your mum is awesome, Hellhound, but the first time I went to your house, remember—what when I was like ten, when we moved in—she got me to walk through a pentagram she had painted on the floor. I wouldn’t take it too seriously.’

  Chapter Two

  Meele

  Meele Scire brought her legs up onto the couch to sit crossed-legged as she stared into the glowing amethyst crystal ball. She had long ago imbued several of her possessions with her powers. Her Family, the Scires, possessed the ability to see into the future and the past. But the reality was that her abilities were not readily passed down well. She was the most powerful Faerie Scire in generations. In this ball, with her magic—and years of practice—she could glimpse shards of the future, like pieces of broken glass; she could only see fragments.

  In her vacation house, Meele’s office was a grand room. There were dozens of framed photographs on the painted yellow-golden walls, Meele in most of them, pictured with her friends from her work. An ebony wooden desk took up the west corner, research and papers stacked neatly. The desk looked out onto the sprawling view; one wall was entirely floor to ceiling glass. Rolling out beneath her was the glittering landscape of Paris, the iron of the Eiffel Tower sparkling in the sunlight.

  Meele gazed into the shining crystal, her breathing uneven. The future she feared most became more of a reality every day. Everything was lining up with the prophecy. It was all going to come true.

  She stood up swiftly, pacing the room. The rest of the office was decorated with elegant bookshelves, home to an array of books. Some were modern novels, others were magical grimoires containing spells and potions, legacies from her Family. Others were notebooks of her own research. One large, leather-bound book was an original of her own making. On the front of the large book was inscribed, in Latin, Deus ex Machina. It was there to remind Meele the importance of her decisions; to interfere, or not to interfere.

  She gathered up the heavy book and took it back to the couch to lay it in her lap. On the pages were hand-written notes, in Meele’s own pen, of all the possible futures she had foreseen. And the prophecy.

  Meele kept notes on everything she foresaw, as she was taught. Some prophecies may outlive her, and they would be there for future Scires. Every minute detail was important. For the last sixteen years, she had seen the same prophecy again and again. The same images. Sixteen years ago, Meele had found the woman responsible for her visions, and warned her. Little did that woman know just how important this was all going to be. It’s all going to happen, soon. Meele thought about the child’s mother, just for a moment, with a pang.

  It all came down to one little witch. She was so powerful; she would change the world. A name had been etched at the top of the page, the only part of the prophecy to change since Meele had first seen it. When the baby had been born, Meele saw the girl’s name and scribbled it at the top, above her prophecy. Meele had known the name of the child before the mother had. The faerie ran her fingers over the old ink, over the name she had written sixteen years ago.

  Hellora Corvime.

  Chapter Three

  Hella

  Hella spent the rest of the afternoon in the café with her friends. She remembered James’s advice not to take her mum’s words too seriously, but they still lingered in her mind. Trying to push them and the strange man’s yellow eyes out of her head, she sipped her latte and let her friends chat.

  Alexa yabbered on about wanting a new tattoo, though Hella could hardly believe that, at sixteen, she had two already. Hella watched as her friend traced her finger up her arm, indicating a pattern she wanted. Hella felt herself nodding along, but
she wasn’t really listening. James nodded in approval, and even asked what Alexa thought of him getting his eyebrow pierced.

  Hella wanted to pull the book out of her bag and bury her head in between the pages, but she had since been told that was anti-social. At which she often rolled her eyes. So is being on your phone constantly, she thought, but everyone did that too.

  She glanced through the window of the café, looking out onto the quiet street. Hella half-hoped that she would see the older man in the suit again, just to be sure he was real. Instead, she saw an old rusted Toyota pull up out the front of a run-down building. An old woman climbed out of the driver’s seat, dressed from head to toe in deep blue; a long skirt and matching bandana, she almost blended in with the vast azure sky. Hella watched as she manually opened the old car’s boot and tried in vain to lift out what must have been a heavy box. She huffed, resting her hands on her hips. Hella imagined that she was frowning.

  Hella blinked as Alexa clicked her fingers too close to her face. ‘Hey, Miss Spaced, where’d you go? Did you hear him?’ Alexa stuck a thumb toward James, who shrugged.

  ‘What? I mean it this time. I’m totally going to quit smoking.’

  Alexa’s delicate eyebrows pulled together.

  ‘On the weekend,’ he amended.

  ‘Hmm-hmm,’ Hella said between pursed lips. ‘That stuff will kill you.’

  ‘I’ll totally quit. In the semester break. Come on, it’s too stressful to do it during school.’

  Alexa rolled her darkly made-up eyes at him as Hella shook her head with the ghost of a smile. She nodded out the window. ‘Who’s that?’ Hella asked, half-wondering if her friends would turn to her again and say, ‘Who?’

  Instead, they shrugged simultaneously. James grinned mischievously. ‘Time to go and help the elderly. Come on, gang.’