Free The Enchanted Writes Book One by Odette C. Bell Page A

“You misunderstand.
Witches will certainly act to destroy both lives and property, but
they will do so from the shadows. They will only make themselves
known to their victims, and never to the general public. They are a
secretive race, and this has always made our war with them a shadow
one.”
    “So what do we do then?”
    “Simple, we find the witch, we fight her,
you contain her, then we go home.” Brick smiled.
    “What happens if someone recognizes me? What
happens if someone comes across me while I'm fighting the witch?
What happens if someone sees my magic? Witches may be secretive,
but what happens if I make a mistake?” It was an important question
considering her track record in life. She was the one who failed at
everything, she was the girl who made every possible mistake, and
she was certainly capable of screwing this up.
    Brick took a moment to think, his eyes
darting up, and his lips crumpling to the side. “Humanity is a
curious race. Even if they see magic, their tendency is to
rationalize it away.”
    It wasn't a good answer. “You aren't
answering my question,” she spat back, her costume making her a
great deal stronger and more forthright than she usually was. “Am I
going to get in trouble if someone sees my magic? Am I going to be
dragged up in front of some kind of Witch-Hunter Council? Is my
wand going to be taken away from me? Is some secret and shadowy
government organization going to swoop in and kidnap me?”
    Brick shrugged. “I'm not sure.”
    His answer made her cheeks burn with anger.
“What do you mean you're not sure? You are meant to be my helper.
You’re a warrior monk, you were given the sacred task of helping me
hunt the witches,” she reeled off the facts she’d learned from him
last night. “So how can you not be sure? You seem to know
everything about the witches and Witch Hunters, and I don't know a
thing.”
    He gave a cough, and it caught Henrietta's
attention, because it was careful.
    He didn't answer her question though, so she
took a breath and got ready to steam roll on. “How many other witch
hunters are there out there? How long have we been fighting the
witches? Is there some kind of organization I now belong to?”
    As she kept pumping out her questions, Brick
looked less and less sure of himself, which was an odd and unusual
expression for the warrior monk to hold.
    She ground to a halt, the heels of her boots
digging into the soft and dry ground. “What aren't you telling
me?”
    Brick cleared his throat, running his tongue
along his lip as he looked up into the sky. “That there kind of
haven't been Witch Hunters for a couple of hundred years,” he
managed to say.
    She scrunched up her nose. “What?”
    He shrugged. “You are kind of on your own.”
He brought his arm up and scratched at his neck uneasily.
    “What do you mean I'm on my own?”
    “You know last night when I told you it took
me a couple of years to find you?” Brick asked through a bizarrely
frozen and stiff smile.
    Henrietta didn't answer.
    “Well, by a couple, I meant a couple of
hundred. I've been looking for you for 350 years.”
    She paled.
    “All of the other Witch Hunters are... to
put it lightly... dead.”
    “Dead?” She jerked back and crammed a hand
on her stomach. Before tonight, she’d never heard of Witch Hunters.
Yet the prospect she was now the only one left made her shoulders
droop and her eyes widen.
    Brick latched his hand onto his neck. “I was
meant to find you before the last war, however, you hadn’t been
born yet. We got the prophecy wrong.” He sighed heavily, and now
didn't so much look awkward as grief stricken. His sadness passed
quickly, but it hinted that under Brick's odd exterior was a real
man.
    “Prophecy?” She kept her hands clamped on
her stomach, the fingers tugging against her bodice.
    Brick nodded. “You were meant to be the
Witch Hunter to put an end to the war.” He didn't look at her. “But
considering you weren't born 350