Phoenix

By Leslie Claire Walker

A mystery girl appears in the midst of a winter thunderstorm, seeking a witch to break a terrible curse. The problem: banishment from the Faery Realm. The witch: seventeen-year-old Stacy, young to the Craft but rich in power and reputation thanks to her hand in thwarting the last apocalypse. The catch: helping the girl leads to certain death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Secret Fire Press
• Release date: Sep 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311548573

Leslie Claire Walker

I live in the lush (humid and green) and darkly magical (crazy insane) bayou country of southeast Texas with various companions, including a Doggie Ranger and two cats, one older and distinguished and the other young with hellion ambitions. I am a legal secretary by day and a fiction writer at all other times. In my rare spare minutes, I play the lever harp (mostly Irish tunes) and enjoy gluten-free baking adventures. I write in the fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and young adult genres. I love to sit in my writing chair in the early mornings with the world's biggest mug of coffee and have no idea where the story will take me next. My fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Chiaroscuro, Electric Velocipede, GUD Magazine, and DAW Books anthologies.

Book preview

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Smashwords Edition

PHOENIX

Copyright © 2014 Leslie Claire Walker

Published 2014 by Secret Fire Press

Cover and Layout Copyright © 2014 by Secret Fire Press

Cover Design by Secret Fire Press

Cover Art Copyright © Zastavkin | Dreamstime.com - Frozen Fairy Photo

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Start Reading

Table of Contents

About the Author

The Uncollected Anthology

Copyright Information

HUNT UNIVERSE

Hunt

Snakebite

Demon

Breathless

Blood to Blood

Phoenix

Girl in Black

THE THUNDERSTORM AMBUSHED me as I walked out of the main building and into the shadow of the school sign that advertised the unofficial religion of Texas—high school football, Go, Cardinals! One minute, December afternoon sunshine, Houston edition. The next, thick, gray clouds and big, fat drops of icy rain.

I took a single step onto the lawn, brown leather backpack slung over one shoulder, no one and nothing around me except for the crumpled burger wrappers and empty soda cans of my fellow juvenile delinquents, a string of busted Christmas lights, and a single red sneaker like the cheerleaders wore, right foot, no laces. All of it, and me, rapidly becoming soaked through.

Run back into school, or try to make it to the car?

Wind whipped up, riling my blond curls into wet knots. My jean jacket suddenly seemed to weigh ten pounds. A gust lifted the hem of my long, pink skirt so high, I had to hold it down to keep it from blowing up around my waist. Regardless, the whole world could see my purple and black striped tights and purple clogs. Marilyn Monroe, drowned rat edition.

If anyone saw me looking like this, they’d snap a picture and post it like they had a thousand others, in the hopes that it would make me hang my head in shame or slit my wrists. The caption would probably read Witch Bitch. Or something like it. They never used my name anymore, because everyone knew it.

I had a reputation at this school. I ate Black Magic Flakes with sour goat’s milk for breakfast. I summoned Lovecraftian god-monsters for fun on Saturday afternoons. I planned to make my senior prom dress out of spider webs and baby’s blood.

Bullshit, of course. The truth was, I had power.