Trapped in a spreading web of darkness, the power of an ancient book might be their only hope.
Mary Sparrow was cursed at birth, and the bawdy house is the only home she’s ever known. Like most of the girls, she dreams of escape. But when an old man drives her friend to madness, she swears she will have her revenge.
Toby Chyrche also hopes for a better future, away from the tailor’s shop where his fate seems set in stone. Then afateful meeting seems to promise freedom, until an ancient book of magic reveals chilling truths.
Ensnared in the spreading web of darkness, they turn to magic to protect themselves. But shadowy forces crave a sacrifice, and the spectre of death is beckoning. Can they wield the power of the book to protect those they love? Or will they pay for their courage with their lives?
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EXCERPT:
He found the place with ease. The ground floor, with its doors flung open to the street, still housed a down-at-heel alehouse as he remembered. Like many another drinking hole it was a widow’s shop, an old lady trying to make a living. A single group of men were playing cards in silence at a table, and they paid him no mind as he walked past them and put his foot upon the stairs, climbing the steep wooden steps that wound through the dark towards the attic, past the closed doors to a dozen rented rooms. At the top of the stairs he paused for a moment on the small wooden landing to regain his breath before he knocked on the single door in front of him.
‘It’s open.’ Alexander’s voice called out from inside. ‘Come in.’
Toby turned the handle and entered, and the quickness of his heartbeat owed nothing to the stairs.
Inside was brightly lit with candles, and the window was open to the night sky where a wan half-moon peeped through shifting clouds. The night breeze set the candles to fluttering, and in the ever-changing shadows they cast it was hard to see the edges of the room around him in any detail. But in the centre a large table was covered in papers and books, and in the far corner was a narrow bed. A large empty space occupied the floor where he stood now, and the old man was seated on a stool at the table with a book open before him, his fingers following the lines of the words. Toby ducked his head to pass beneath the roof beams that crisscrossed above him as he moved further into the room.
‘I thought you had changed your mind,’ Alexander said, lifting his eyes briefly from his study. ‘’Tis late.’
‘There was some trouble at the brothel,’ he said. ‘I stayed to help.’
‘Ah. I see. The six-fingered whore.’
Toby said nothing, not daring to wonder how the old man knew. He waited, senses alert, wary. He was still uncertain what might lie before him, and his throat was dry with nerves.
‘So!’ Alexander closed his book with a snap, and turned on the stool to face his visitor. Toby swallowed. ‘You wish to learn the way to win a woman’s love.’ He tilted his head. ‘Am I right?’
He nodded.
‘And she will not come of her own accord?’
‘My company is forbidden to her. Her mother is Puritan.’
‘But she would be willing otherwise?’
He hesitated. Judith was fervent in her own faith. But he had seen the desire in her eyes when he kissed her, and he knew that she wanted him, in spite of that faith. ‘She desires me,’ he said.
The master nodded. ‘And you are prepared to obey me in my teaching?’
Toby swallowed, unsure what such obedience would mean.
‘Your father was willing.’ He paused as if remembering. ‘And he was an apt and eager pupil, though he was younger than you are now of course, and reckless with his youth … But you have his eyes and his beauty, and you’ve been touched by the spirits as he was.’
‘I will obey,’ he said, but there were slivers of doubt in his thoughts: his father’s willingness had led to his death, and for a heartbeat he thought of running. But the life that waited for him at the tailor’s shop was no life at all: the man he had once called his father had been shrunken, hunched, miserable – all the days of his life bent over a workbench. What, really, did he have to lose?
‘Will you swear in blood?’ The dagger in the old man’s hand was richly wrought: the ruby in the hilt caught the candlelight and glimmered.
For the space of a breath Toby hesitated, afraid to bind his fate to the sorcerer’s. Then he held out his hand and the blade sliced through the flesh on his palm to drip into the cup Alexander was holding.
‘Do you swear to obey me?’
‘I swear.’
The old man cut his own hand, and they watched the blood mingle before they each lifted the cup to their lips and drank. With the first taste of the blood on his lips, he felt the changing quiver of energy inside him, a nascent power, a connection to something beyond himself he did not understand. Alexander gave a small laugh of recognition, and Toby met the laugh with a smile. He was ready for whatever lay ahead.
Author Bio:
S.G. Slade was born and raised in the historic city of Bristol in England, and now lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband, son, and a very small dog called Livvy. She has worked variously as a secretary, a teacher, a shop assistant and a nurse, but lifelong obsessions with books, history, and magic have never waned. When she isn’t reading or writing (which isn’t often), you can find her either doing yoga, going for long walks, or watching old movies. Touch of a Witch is her first historical fantasy book.
She uses the pen name S.G. Slade for her fantasy books, and also writes Historical Fiction under the name Samantha Grosser.
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