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

years ago....”
    She swallowed, closing her eyes and
squeezing them tightly shut.
    “But I finally found you.” The light
returned to Brick's gaze. “And, who knows, the prophecy may now
turn out to be true. You may be the witch hunter to finally end the
war. Or at least we can hope you will be... because you are the
last witch hunter, and when you die, well, there will be no
stopping them.”
    She wanted to throw up. Her saga of finding
a magical hairpin and transforming into a witch hunter had taken a
turn from the fabulous to the serious.
    “So, to answer your question, I don't know
what will happen if people see you doing magic; you are the first
witch hunter to exist in modern times. Although, obviously, it
would be preferable that no one ever saw you, we will have to see
what happens if they do.”
    She locked her teeth together and grimaced.
What happened if all of those books and fantasy movies were right?
What if the government came and kidnapped her and did all sorts of
experiments on her?
    “We must press on.” Brick sliced a hand
forward. “That witch is near.”
    Far in the distance, something began to
cry.
    It pushed a familiar flutter of fear through
her stomach.
    She still had a lot of questions for Brick,
such as if he’d been looking for her for 350 years, why hadn’t he
found the time to update his wardrobe?
    Before she could point that out, she caught
a whiff of acrid smoke curling through the trees.
    “Drat.” Brick clicked his fingers.
    She was about to pull him up on saying drat
and clicking his fingers like a ‘50s cartoon character when a wind
sliced through the air. It brought with it the sizzling and
crackling of dry wood.
    On instinct, she flattened herself onto the
ground. Her face and nose pressed into the dirt, and she sucked in
a chunk of dry dust. She spluttered, but she moved. A fireball
whizzed over her head and slammed into the ground beside her.
    Instantly the dry leaves and wood littering
the forest floor burst into flame.
    Henrietta had served firemen for long enough
to appreciate how dangerous forest fires were. When it was summer,
when it was windy, when the ground was dry, the forest behind the
city could go up like a tinderbox. All it would take was a smoking
cigarette for the entire place to burst into flame.
    She pushed to her feet, flicking her wand
forward.
    Brick had dodged the fireball too, and
sprung to his feet, whipping out his crossbow and pointing it at
the fire. He fired, and the familiar blue spark erupted from the
crossbow’s tip. It slammed into the flames, pushing them out and
fanning them forward with its force. Then a symbol began to grow,
and the crackling flames began to die.
    “Hurry, contain the witch; I can fight the
fire, but not very effectively.” Brick shunted to the left and shot
at a different patch of fire that curled up the side of a tree.
    She locked her knees, braced her shoulders,
and twisted her head. She tried to listen to the witch, tried to
figure out where it was. As she did, she snapped her wand up and
wrote water.
    A unique, blue, flickering symbol that
reminded her of the ocean depths appeared at her feet. Water rushed
and furled out of it, shooting up and around her, until it reached
a zenith that equaled the height of the tallest tree. With a pop,
it flopped down to the earth in a thundering splash. It soaked
everything around her, including Brick, and extinguished the fire
instantly.
    He stood there, rivulets rushing off his hat
and down his face.
    She wanted to giggle, but now wasn’t the
time.
    She planted her hand into the ground and
flipped to the side, somersaulting high over a fireball as it
swooshed past her.
    She landed and pulled up her wand.
    Blizzard.
    A rush of cold wind and snowflakes whirled
from a symbol beneath her feet. They pushed her jacket and skirt
up, revealing way too much underpant real estate.
    The blizzard whipped up and twisted around
and around her, sending the freezing snowflakes left right