Never Linger

By G.S. Bailey

A 400 year old warlock, a 200 year old witch... In the misty, creepy little village of Apple Glen, Anita Morris must face what has risen from the swamp down at the old graveyard. By day, she feels nothing of the wisdom she possesses--the power within her spirit...

• Language: English
• Publisher: G.S. Bailey
• Release date: Jul 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463793381

G.S. Bailey

Aussie author of cold case crime, romance, erotica and light horror.

Book preview

Never Linger

G.S. Bailey

Edited by S.D. Chambers

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real life persons or situations is coincidental and unintended by the author. The places described in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

Copyright © 2014 G.S. Bailey

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, without the written consent of the copyright holder.

The surface of the pond was still and black, the water as thick as treacle with decaying reeds and leaves. It was the last days of October. Chilled air whispered from the age-old willow tree and swirled the thick fog that hung over the pond. The fog crept up onto the muddy bank, and from a mat on the ground, it surged upward into the form of a man.

Alex drew the wet air into lungs that had not expanded with breath in sixty years. It hurt. The pain was acute but the sensation exhilarating. His arms and legs flexed with sinuous muscle forming over bone. Life tingled through his skin as he watched his hands form. He squeezed them into fists then expanded them as blood surged through his fingers. The sensation of touch found his feet cold and his toes digging into the mud. The chill of the night air assailed him, but it meant he was truly alive, and it was good.

Alex had been over four hundred years old when he died on a winter’s night in 1692. He had last walked with the living in 1954. Apple Glen was his home, though, and he knew it well. He walked through the cemetery, rolling his head to stretch the newly formed muscles in his neck. He stopped at the gateway leading out into the village, gripping the rusted iron archway and stretching his back and shoulders.

He could not pass beyond the gateway. In human form, he would not be able to leave and find what he needed until the night of All Hallow’s Eve.

*

Anita Morris was spending her twenty-third birthday at work, the city library. She was in no mood to celebrate, so that was fine. The city library was a huge old masonry building with the intoxicating scent of ages past hanging in the air. Anita abandoned her post, and the popular fiction section, leaving her friend and co-worker, Melinda, to man the desk. She loved to disappear up to the fifth level that housed her favourite historical research books. The books themselves were historical—their accounts of lives lived throughout the generations absolutely thrilled her.

She spent all day destocking, cleaning and restocking shelves of dusty old books, whilst sobbing over Jeffery Harper. Jeffery had been her boyfriend for three years, until a month ago when he announced he had fallen in love with another woman. Not that it was