Dead Witch on a Bridge Read online

  Dead Witch on a Bridge

  Sonoma Witches #1

  Gretchen Galway

  Eton Field

  DEAD WITCH ON A BRIDGE is the first book in a new paranormal mystery series by USA Today bestselling author Gretchen Galway.

  Is her magic strong enough to stop a killer?

  On her first assignment as a demon-hunting witch, Alma was unable to kill. Now broke and unemployed at twenty-six, she lives in Silverpool, a remote town in a redwood forest north of San Francisco, where she sells magic-infused jewelry and tries to live a drama-free life.

  * * *

  When fairies draw her to the dead body of her ex-boyfriend, she must defend herself and the hidden power in Silverpool from an influx of supernatural trouble. The only way to make peace—and stay alive—is to find the killer.

  * * *

  Drawing upon years of formal magical training she’d rather forget, and using other abilities she’d like to keep secret, Alma goes up against bloodthirsty fae, a dangerously charming demon, her infamous father, and other ambitious witches with agendas of their own.

  * * *

  This time, an inability to kill might be not just the end of her job, but of her life...

  DEAD WITCH ON A BRIDGE

  * * *

  Copyright © 2019 by Gretchen Galway

  * * *

  Eton Field, Publisher

  www.gretchengalway.com

  * * *

  Cover design by Gretchen Galway

  Stock art images: Depositphotos and Shutterstock

  * * *

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author.

  * * *

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  * * *

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-939872-19-7

  Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-939872-41-8

  * * *

  v.20190107

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Also by Gretchen Galway

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  As soon as I saw the body in the middle of the bridge, I knew I was too late.

  Shivering, I rubbed my arms and looked around me. Surrounded by redwoods, my tiny village of Silverpool was usually quiet, remote, even boring.

  Not tonight.

  Edging closer, I aimed the flashlight of my phone on Tristan’s crumpled form and sent out a probing spell to confirm he was dead.

  Yes, very. It looked like a car had hit him. My stomach recoiled, but years of training kicked in. I could keep it together for a few minutes. I had to.

  Tristan’s home was a short distance from the river, and he’d always enjoyed late-night walks. But this couldn’t have been an accident. The fairies wouldn’t be making so much noise if magic hadn’t been involved.

  I had to hurry—whoever had killed him might still be nearby. I could feel a hint of magic, but that might’ve been Tristan’s remaining powers, lingering before they were snuffed out forever.

  Hand shaking, I moved the light to his face. In life, he’d looked like a handsome man in his early forties with curly blond hair. But death had erased that illusion, making it obvious he’d been much older. Even smart people like Tristan had their vanities. And a lucky few, like Tristan, had the power to indulge them.

  When I’d dated him last year, he’d accused me of being overly emotional. Too softhearted. Would he say that now, given that I was staring at his dead body without shedding a tear?

  Maybe. I would be crying soon enough when the shock wore off.

  Poor Tristan. Run over and left for dead. And he was going to be left twice—I couldn’t stay either. Silverpool was in a small, remote corner of Sonoma County, but this was the only road into town. Somebody would be driving by any minute.

  I wanted to call the police, but how could I explain why I’d run out of my house in the middle of the night in my pajamas? I had no information I could give them. None they could use, anyway. And it was too late to help Tristan.

  The frenzied fae voices that had woken me from sleep and led me to the river were louder than ever. The fairy under the bridge wasn’t the only one sending up an alarm, but his voice was the loudest, the one that had made me run out of my house as if it had been on fire.

  Maybe he would talk to me. As much as I wanted to hide, I needed to know if the bridge fairy had seen anything—for Tristan’s sake and my own. I hurried to the far side and crept through the grass and bushes to the path that snaked down to the riverbank. The Vago River was low after months without rain, and the dirt path was dry and rocky.

  Even though he was calling for help, the creature was hostile. I could sense his bad mood from ten feet away. Brownish-green sparks sizzled above his hiding spot under the concrete approach span.

  I put my hand on my beaded necklace and called out to him, “Are you all right?”

  He stopped screaming. Without his high-pitched whine, the night suddenly seemed peaceful.

  I ducked under the bridge and lowered my voice. “Were you here when the Protector was attacked?” The fae in this area would only know Tristan by his official title. Tristan had been the local agent for the Protectorate, the international body of witches that protected fae and humans alike from supernatural dangers.

  The fairy didn’t respond to my question. He probably assumed I wouldn’t be able to hear him. Most people couldn’t. Not even other witches.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked.

  Lit by its own fairy light, a narrow face the color of a Granny Smith apple appeared. He looked unharmed. When he saw me, he scowled but relaxed, as if recognizing I was no threat to him.

  “I’m a friend of the Protector’s,” I said. “Did you call for me?”

  He shook his head. “You are child.”

  “I’m twenty-six,” I said.

  “Child.” The fairy pinched his face together until his chin nearly touched the tip of his pointy nose.

  “Did he say who did this? Did you see the car? Anything?”

  “His spirit,” the fairy said. “Didn’t want to go.”

  A chill went through me. “Was there magic?”

  “Everywhere is magic,” the fairy said.
/>   “Did you see a witch?” Talking to most fairies was useless, but I had to try. “Maybe a demon?”

  “Help!” He opened his mouth, revealing pointy yellow teeth, and began to wail again.

  Although the sound wasn’t real, I slapped my hands over my ears. “Please stop. Nobody can hear you but me.”

  “Help. Coming.” He looked up.

  Overhead was the sound of a large vehicle approaching. “That’s probably a nonmag.”

  “Nonmag?”

  “Just people. Not witches. The first of many,” I said.

  “Help.”

  “They’ll see the body and call others. More humans will come. You might be safer with them around.”

  Shooting bright green sparks, he retreated into the shadows just as the vehicle rumbled onto the bridge above.

  I was stuck. It would look suspicious to be seen hiding near the scene of a hit-and-run. In my haste, I’d put on running shoes but no pants. I wore a long T-shirt and shorts, but no underwear. And I’d run down the hill from my house on foot instead of taking my car because I couldn’t protect myself with magic while I was driving.

  With a hand on the beads around my neck, I cast a darkness spell about me. It wouldn’t be powerful enough under close scrutiny, but hopefully nobody would be looking down in the river. They’d be distracted by the body.

  Had Tristan been distracted when the car hit him? Had that been how one of the most powerful witches in Sonoma County had been struck down and left for dead?

  When a second car arrived and I heard people running and shouting for somebody to call 911, I crept into the river, glad the water level was low at late summer, and began my wet hike home.

  Chapter Two

  “Willy, are you around?” I whispered, twisting the water out of my shirt. Although my house was less than a mile from the bridge, I’d had to cross the river and hike downstream to the gravel beach behind Cypress Hardware to get back up to the road.

  A small voice—small but deep—spoke from the base of the biggest redwood tree in my backyard. “Where else would I be?”

  I’d begun to shiver in the cold, and my teeth chattered. “I-I m-might be having company.”

  Willy lit a candle and held it up in the air. Since he was only about as tall as a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke, his candle failed to illuminate anything other than the redwood sorrel around his feet. “Human?”

  “All kinds.” I squatted down to address him eye to eye, or at least eye to elbow. He’d become my friend over the couple of years I’d lived here, and I wanted to warn him to be extra careful with Tristan gone. “Willy, the Protector is dead.”

  “I heard the mourning songs,” he said. “Did you kill him?”

  “Of course I didn’t kill him!” I sat on the ground and plucked a stem of the sorrel, twirling it between my fingers until the three leaves of the shamrock turned to four. “Why would— How could you think—”

  “I know females,” Willy said. “Females never forgive.”

  “Forgive him for what? Being annoying?”

  Willy nodded, gazing at me solemnly over the tiny flame. “When he was your husband, you spoke often of killing him.”

  “He was never my husband. We were only—” I rolled my eyes. Gnomes were very old-fashioned. “Courting. It wasn’t serious. I never really got involved.” Tristan had dated every available woman in a ten-mile radius. And most of the unavailable ones too.

  “He was your husband,” Willy insisted. “And you his wife. Just as I had a wife who is now dead.”

  I stopped twirling the stem. “What you had with your wife was very different, Willy.” Before he could light the pipe he was taking from his red velvet coat—and then launch into a two-day poem about his departed beloved, a creature I suspected had died in the Old Country centuries before—I handed him the shamrock. “Keep your eyes open over the next few days, will you? With Tristan gone, anybody and anything might come to Silverpool.”

  Silverpool held a hidden magical power that would cause supernatural trouble if it wasn’t safeguarded. The Protectorate had done what it could to hide Silverpool’s secret, but the fae knew it was here and congregated in large numbers. Demons were drawn to the fae, so a Protector was assigned to prevent any from getting too close. It was like a watering hole in the desert—it attracted prey and predator alike.

  Willy’s brown eyes widened with joy at my sorrel offering. “Oh no, I couldn’t accept such a gift.”

  I tucked it under the lapel of his tiny jacket. The stem was as thick around as his pipe. “Get it in some water before it wilts.”

  “You are too generous, Alma Bellrose. Four leaves. Such a gift.” His eyes filled with tears. “How can I repay you?”

  “Hide deep in your”—I almost said “hole” before I remembered he found that insulting—“home, and don’t come out until it’s safe.”

  Nodding, Willy kissed the edge of the leaf, his ruddy face flushing darker. “As you say. I have no interest in trouble.”

  “Squeeze a little lemon juice in the vase,” I said. “It’ll last longer that way.”

  Willy saluted me with the shamrock and then clambered up the root to a rectangular gap in the trunk, the entrance to the underground dwelling he’d been living in when I moved in. Probably since the Gold Rush, given his fashion choices. Young or indigenous gnomes thought red velvet coats were ridiculous, especially for creatures who lived under the earth. Impossible to clean properly, apparently. Only the oldest immigrant gnomes still wore them.

  He snuffed out the candle and left me in the dark.

  With Willy warned, I was ready to go inside. I got to my feet, brushing the bark chips off my knees, and tiptoed to the kitchen door that opened out onto a short step to my flagstone patio.

  I pressed my nose to the window, letting it steam with my breath. It was dark inside, but that didn’t mean anything. A good spell could hide an elephant juggling blowtorches.

  Putting my left hand on the bead necklace around my throat, I opened the door with my right, leaned over the threshold, sensing nothing, and stepped inside.

  A blast of hot wind knocked me to the floor. Cursing, I rolled to one side. My own house! I’d been cautious, but not cautious enough. Heart pounding, I scrambled to my hands and knees but was struck down again. Face pressing into the tile floor, gasping for breath, I clutched my necklace and sent out a stilling spell. I was working on overcoming my reliance on props, but I wasn’t there yet, especially under stress.

  Like when I was pinned to the kitchen floor in my pajamas and a dragon was dripping foamy spittle on my temple. Obviously not a real dragon, because that would be ridiculous.

  I sucked in another breath and sent out a second stilling spell to the creature on my back. The dragon, its claws loosening over my shoulders, went limp. Pushing up to a plank position, I toppled over the miniature dragon to the floor and grabbed the rough-hewn staff next to my kitchen door. That I aimed at the source of power, a large man crouching next to the fridge.

  With a yelp, the man fell to his side. Then silence.

  I regarded his limp form with satisfaction. My abilities inside my house were exponentially greater than they were elsewhere, especially when I was upset. Never underestimate a witch in her own kitchen.

  “Lights,” I said. The overhead fixture flickered on. That nifty gadget had come from a hardware store. New magic could be as good as old.

  When I saw the man’s face, I became angrier than ever. I resisted the urge to kick him.

  “Wake up,” I said loudly, releasing my necklace. Then I used a word I usually avoided. “Dad.”

  No wonder my spell had been so effective. Blood had greater power over blood.

  His eyes popped open as if he’d been faking, which I knew he hadn’t. “Hello, darling. I ate a slice of leftover pepperoni, hope you don’t mind.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Blinking, he looked past me at the dragon. “Who hurt Ethan?”

  “I didn�
��t hurt him,” I said, glancing at his pet. “He’s sleeping. Just like you were. It’s already wearing off.” To maintain the spell, I would have to expend more energy than I had at the moment.

  “I wasn’t sleeping. I was— You don’t have the power to put me to sleep.”

  I rubbed my face with both hands. My father had always underestimated me. “What brings you to Silverpool?”

  The dragon sat up and began licking its front paws. I edged closer to the door so I could sweep my father and his pet outside if things got ugly. Uglier.

  “You invited me,” he said.

  “When?”

  “Well, you should invite me. Your own father.”

  “Technically,” I said.

  “That’s all that matters, my dear.” With the grace of a ballroom dancer, he bounced effortlessly to his feet.

  “Why did you attack me?” I’d expected at least one magical being to make an appearance, but not my own father, and not inside the walls of my bewitched home.