Infused

By Amanda Heit

Olivia

It was a vacation gone bad. The small comforts of home that Olivia would have enjoyed got snatched away from her by a manacle and chain that dragged her away from her home toward an uncertain fate. Unpaid debt was the cause. Her life was the fee.

Sold to the devilish Jay Wilder, Olivia plans to be as resistant as she can until Jay shows her to a colorful new world full of light and life and gem power. Olivia has the energy that Jay is after, only her goal is to use it to rescue her family and let the darkness seep into the Glory Lands.

Jay

In a land full of people hungry for power, Jay has had enough. He distances himself from gem energy that has been turning his thoughts ragged. What he seeks is something better, something cleaner, something brighter. Jay ends up finding his purity in the most unlikely of places—The Barrens. It's a land where criminals are tossed. Nothing good has ever come out of that place until Jay saves Olivia. However, his one good deed is about to unravel everything, because Jay must protect the very thing Olivia wants to destroy. Or does he?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amanda Heit
• Release date: Apr 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9781949858396

Amanda Heit

Finding meaning in life—feeling like you’re contributing to all of humanity in a good way—is a large undertaking. When I write, it’s the task I take on. Sometimes, that task is daunting. Sometimes, it’s full of laughter, joy, and fear. Reaching the end of a book can put me on top of the world or cause me endless frustration. But I can’t stop myself from trying. I can’t stop the inner clock that ticks and tells me that writing is something I enjoy the heck out of and there is nothing that will stop me from writing for long. As one of the quiet people in the universe, my best joy and flow in life comes when I’m creating new worlds and exploring characters. For me, each book I create finds new friends that share with me the intimate tangles of their lives. They cheer and I cheer. They succeed and I rejoice. They fall and I’m there hoping for that happy ending right along with them. I hope that you can find something in the stories I create that will bring you the same type of thrill. Thanks for sticking to the end!- Amanda Heit

Book preview

Dedication

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To those who have foggy days and even darker nights, the sun will shine again.

Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter One

Olivia

Bad. Bad. Bad. There wasn’t another word to describe the dark doorway, the chain on my arm, the odd smell, or the debt collector who pulled me unless the words very bad could be used. However, my last language teacher had despised the word very and claimed it couldn’t be used as an adequate descriptor. So, what about atrociously bad? Extremely bad. Ginormously catastrophic.

No way.

That was my voice as the debt collector opened the black door with crossbones nailed into the wood. Even more disturbing was that the handle was another set of bones. Yeah. They looked to be human femurs.

My voice went ignored, and as hard as I dug in my heels and tried to keep myself from being pushed forward, there wasn’t anything I could do to avoid coming with the debt collector. Forcing away thoughts on how I had ended up in this predicament, I tried to figure out an escape strategy.

The collector was four times my size all around. Tall, strong, mean, he didn’t care what anybody else thought. His job was to make sure he got enough money to pay back the people who employed him so he could get a cut, and he would sell anything that other people had. Today he was into selling people. Me.

I looked down at the blood coming from my half-bare legs, a testament of how my last escape plan had failed. My parents had been screaming and everyone wailing—even the neighbors—for this man to take someone else. Justin, one of the neighbor boys, had run after us, offering himself up over and over again. Nope. This brute didn’t care. He was taking the person he thought he could get the most money for and that was me. For a moment, I wondered if my family would drag this guy down and beat him, but even they knew that if he didn’t report back, the rest of our livelihood would be destroyed.

When I was taken, I sort of pictured myself ending up as some servant for a richer family waiting on them and their kids. That was until the rich family realized what I had been trained to do and then I’d be forced to make them even richer. My paycheck fed my family of nine. Without me... My stomach roiled. I was going to be sick. I rushed my paycheck home this time, but it was too late. The debts were too high.

When was I going to meet who was purchasing me? A rich family I could handle, despite the resentment I was sure to feel. I didn’t think I could handle being sold to a devil heart. My family would be dead to me. I would be dead to myself, passed around to people who starved me, beat me, and abused me. This terrifying door covered in splintering wood and human parts was leading toward that worst-case scenario, and it was only getting creepier.

Skulls were hanging from the ceiling, jars of eyeballs sat on shelves along with other things I tried not to look at. I resisted the impulse to gag as I spotted some rather unsanitary weapons hanging from a hook. I wondered how this place had existed in my town without me ever hearing anything about it. It was cringeworthy. Surely if anyone in my family had ever come in here, they would have written to me about the new scary shop on the street.

I think I’m worth more alive, I mumbled.

What was this place? All the walls were dark, every surface covered in something disgusting. The smell was making my eyes water. With a sharp tug, the collector yanked me into the room making me trip. I could either smash my face on a pair of skeleton hands clinging to a golden stick or enter. I caught my step and entered.

As promised, the collector said, holding me out like a prize.

I was valuable, but not indispensable. Other people could keep the cities running. Other people who would spark life back into old gems. Other people could produce power for the population to thrive.

I moved my eyes around the room, feeling defiant. My heart entered panic mode, beating so fast that I couldn’t stop my uneven, high-paced breathing even if I tried. There was a woman dressed in black robes sitting on the top of her desk tying a set of skinny bones together into a breastplate. I hoped those were not more human bones. I hoped I didn’t end up as a breastplate.

Please, I will work for whatever the cost—

The slap spread across my face. It surprised me how the force on the top of me caused my feet to collapse at the bottom. Down I went with my left arm hanging in the air where the chain was hooked to the collector’s belt. I had failed to twist my wrist free of the metal brace earlier, and I could feel the chaffing of my skin worsen as I fell. However, my focus went to my buzzing ears. I couldn’t hear! Terror rippled through my chest.  

When sound miraculously came back to me, and I stumbled back to my feet, the collector and the witch were deep in a discussion about the price of me. It kept going up and the only positive I could take from the conversation was that it had to be enough to clear my family of my dad’s debt before these people subjugated me to being chopped up. The thought of turning into a hanging decoration with my parts all over this room had my knees giving out and down I went again.

That is my final offer for your services. All you did was go over there and grab her. You’ll take this or you’ll get nothing at all, the witch declared.

I’ll be taking fifteen tokens more, the collector heckled. "When Trent realizes that it was you who paid off his debt and then stole his child, he’ll be coming after me to get her back. I need enough to get far away."

Trent was my dad. It sounded wrong to my ears to hear these people talking about him in such familiar terms. This was all the witch’s fault. We would barely have managed if the witch hadn’t interfered. We had a bad growing season with little rain and poor sunshine. Everything was cloudy, so the crops didn’t grow, and my dad had tried to switch over to crops that didn’t need much sun like truffles. Nothing had come up, but I had worked relentlessly infusing gems so they held power again. Why was this witch lady getting into our business?

Olivia won’t be a problem for long. I am very good at making people disappear.

My right hand went down to the floor to steady me. I was horse meat. If I wasn’t chopped soon, I could very well contact some contagious disease from the filth of the floor that would destroy me before my head got cut off. Oh gosh. I could not get up anymore. I couldn’t move. If my arm wasn’t hanging in the air, I would have been in a fetal position, giving the witch great access to stabbing me in the back.

Just get it over with, I heard myself whisper, as if I was waiting for my mother to pull a splinter from my finger. This would hurt worse. Way, way worse, but then it would be over.

You are disgusting, the collector told the woman.

I glanced at the guy's shoes as my arm dangled, hoping that he had a soft heart beneath the brutality I had already experienced at his hand. He didn’t, because he didn’t offer reassurance that I would live through his transaction. He was probably one of the devil hearts: people filled with hatred and malice. Born who knew where, they stole, murdered, and cheated their way through anything they pleased. I avoided them. They arrived wearing rich clothes and looked shaken until they discovered ways to cheat everyone. Some of them weren’t too bad, but most of them were ferocious. The debt collector wiggled his fingers for the tokens, and the witch woman plopped them into his hand.

Good riddance.

He was free of the woman, but I wasn’t. The lock at the top of my chain disconnected from the collector’s belt and connected to something else nearby in the room. I wasn’t sure what, but I guessed that it had bones attached. The man left, leaving me in my rolled-up position at the mercy of the witch’s schemes.

She at least had some mercy. She got straight to the point.

You will bring me power gems if you want your family to stay alive this year.

I was so startled that I glanced up at her, trying to pick out her own devil heart.

Power gems are a myth!

We were all going to die.

The witch laughed at me, and I returned my gaze to the floor, unable to make out her features while she wore that black-hooded robe. I pictured her with curly black hair tinted with white, tossing her head backward as she cackled. Her eyes would be as black as her soul and her lips as red as blood. Nope. I couldn’t do this. Except that I had to.

It’s a myth. Gems don’t generate their own power. They must be lit up.

That was my job, which was why I had been the person my family depended on because I had been born with the ability to reignite gems. They were not power gems though.

Olivia, I am sending you to a place where you can locate power gems. You need to bring back six different colors of gems to save your family or they won’t survive. 

The lady stalked away from me, letting me know that I would live a few more days, but what she was asking was impossible. Maybe where she came from she hadn’t ever been taught that power gems were stories told to children to make them dream. It would be lovely to not have to exhaust myself restoring the energy to gems all day long. If there were gems that would hold their own power, and make more of it by absorbing it from the air themselves, I would be out of a job. It was up to me to give the gems energy.

Silence filled the room. There was nothing good about the silence. I was too scared to look to see if a weapon was coming at my back. Too scared to move. I couldn’t think. It could have been hours or minutes where my heart pounded. I felt the doom as keenly as I felt the soot on the floor. The woman was messing with my mind before she came in for the attack. It felt like several years before the front door opened and footsteps echoed.  

The entering head above those live feet grunted over the smell. Ring! The sound of the bell on the counter couldn’t startle me as numb as I felt. I pictured the witch in the back constructing the contraption of my death. Beheading sounded good. It was fast, right? Although the process leading up to it was enough to make anyone die of fright. I tried to not think too hard because to know the device of my demise would only make me feel the pain.

Woah, hey! You alive over there? What are you doing?

The feet shuffled. The bell on the counter rang again.

Yo! You dead? I didn’t think Yola decorated with the living. She’s something, huh? A real nutter, although you realize that she’s harmless. You know those delicious rainbow lollipops as large as your hand in the general store? She makes those.

What? I had eaten one of those just two days ago. My brother had begged me to get him one too because they were beautiful creations so vibrant and happy against the gloom of everything else. I couldn’t help the short gag that came up, wondering what I had been eating and enjoying.

And those mint balls! Delicious. I can’t help myself around those. They are the best. She also crochets all those dish scrubbies in various colors. Hers was the winning dress in the pageant this year. She’s a crafting genius, so she hides it behind an entryway like this. Non-locals stay well clear.

I liked that idea. I would stay clear of this place too.

That smell is burned broccoli and rotten eggs. She keeps it in that jar by the front door. I threw it out the last time I was here. It looks like she discovered my evil deeds because the smell is back. It’s one reason she stays so far away from her counter.

The bell went off a few more times followed by a shout. I wasn’t sure what it was about the guy’s voice, but his calm presence soothed me just enough to warrant a glance. He looked strong as if he took pleasure in working out. His hardened arms were tan as if they had seen a lot of the sun. Sun! Where had he found the sun?! I felt like staring at his color but didn’t dare.

His wrist had a silver bracelet as if he had money to throw around for something extravagant like that. Rich. He had to be rich. His face had stubble, as if he had been on the road and didn’t care to shave the brown hairs. Gray-blue eyes looked out from inside a handsome face.

His dress was peculiar for a rich guy with tight woven blue pants, a gray shirt, and leather shoulder pads. Gold stitching outlined each pad. He must be a devil heart—conniving and devilish.

What are you doing down there? he asked me again.

I followed the chain on my left arm up to a coatrack. I could pick it up! I scooted myself over to the base—devoid of bones—to shove at it.

You’re bleeding. Are you okay? What are you doing here? Was this someone’s idea of a bad joke?

The coatrack was heavier than I expected and made from lead. I could get part of it up, but to move all of it would take more effort than tipping. I jumped to my feet with my gaze traveling to the door and my hands on the pole ready to spring for it.

Think you’ll get it through the door? Here. I can pick the lock on that chain. That’s nicer all around.

Yes, it was. The nice man moved toward me with his hand reaching out to help, but my escape wasn’t going to be that easy.

You let her out, you’ll regret it. I need you to take her out the back door and far away from here.

A girl? No way, Yola. You told me I was picking up something like a dog. A pair of good hunting dogs.

I promised you something hungry.

I can’t.

The guy stepped away from me, also glancing at the front door as if he wanted to run. Well, if he wasn’t going to, I sure was. My time was ticking. I tilted the coatrack to the side and jumped for the door. Thwarted! The guy who wanted hunting dogs and got stuck with me grabbed the end of the coatrack, and the combined force of heavy lead and manpower wasn’t something I could get away from. This guy was strong. I yanked on that poll with everything I had and went nowhere. My newest captor didn’t grunt at all.

You will, Yola the witch declared to the rich guy.

I’m more prone to setting her free and watching her run back home.

She’ll starve. They don’t have the food. Just look at her, Jay. She can’t stand up as it is.

I was standing just fine. It was running chained to a coatrack which was my current problem. I gave the evil device a sharp tug which only made the begrudging man grab at the pole with two hands. I tried to break free at a closer source again. My wrist. The skin was red and swollen from all my previous pulling, but I would take a bloody wrist over a missing head.

Her feet look okay, Jay commented.

You promised, the witch yapped. "This is Olivia and her family has six boys to feed along with livestock. Their crops didn’t come up this year. You’ll be saving her."

I glanced over at the witch lady who didn’t have curly hair or even black eyes. Her hair was auburn and her eyes a honey brown. There was no way she cared about me. She had her secret agenda to get nonexistent power gems.

When I hear you say six boys, I think of angry brothers, angry dads, mobs of people running me down for the honor of the only girl in that family.

Then be fast. Out the back. Go on. Please save her, Jay. She’s so hungry. Besides, her family is too weak to run you much of anywhere.

You know what will happen to me if people find out where she’s from? Jay hissed back.

He dropped the coatrack, and I tried to make a run for it again. Yola jumped across the room and grabbed at the pole herself. How did these people get so strong!? I couldn’t break free of her either, and she didn’t look that much larger than myself.

So don’t tell anyone. It’s only for a little while until her family gets back on their feet. Then I’ll write and you can send her back. Please help. I want to save one family. Only one, Jay. Help me save them!

Was I making this up or was the witch lady tearing up? How did she do that? How could she act so well that she could fool everyone around her? I had to get out!

Save us? She was trying to destroy us! I shouted.

Jay looked at me, rolled his eyes, and picked the lock on the chain so that I was free of the coatrack. I held out my wrist for him to free me from the manacle, but he didn’t. He turned his back on me as if he couldn’t look at what he would do and started to walk toward the backroom chain in hand. I tried digging in my feet again, only to grunt in surprise when it worked. Feeling the yank, Jay stopped and looked between me and Yola. She opened her backroom door, pointed, and told him to hurry again.

What am I supposed to do with her? Jay complained. She won’t know anything!

Put her in a museum exhibit for exotic specimens. Yola shrugged. And take my mail. Hold on. I need to add one thing.

Really. Jay gripped. You realize that I’ve already stuck my neck on the line for you. What are you getting at, Yola?

I was just about to say, but Yola gave me a sharp look and started detailing the pains of crops not coming up as if she had any idea at all. She collected a stack of letters that she gave to Jay. Then she leaned in whispering for me to keep my mouth shut or she would start slaughtering my family long before I got back. My eyes went wide and my mouth got small. Still holding the chain, Jay started to walk out the back. 

You can let me go outside, I whispered when I got close. I won’t cause you any trouble and you won’t have to do anything with me. No feeding or housing or putting up with my bad habits.

Jay winced. He mumbled that he hated bad habits as he grabbed a hold of my right arm, the one that used to be free, and used both my arms to pull me after him toward the open back door. I considered going limp, but I didn’t think it would do me much good. Jay could pick all of me up.

I wondered if I had stepped into a haunted dream until I made it through the door behind the counter and everything changed on me. From horrible to sweet, the smells were enough to drag my feet again. Colorful candies sat on open pans. A machine was whirling producing more treats. No wonder Yola wanted power gems. She was making flawless candy. Her cost of production had to be quite high. There was a sewing corner too with both drab and colorful dresses. Some of them looked so fancy that I wondered if they were made for a princess.

Jay led me into another room: a bedroom filled with glass baubles. Some had trinkets inside, others had pictures of family and friends. I tried to figure out what this witch lady was by glancing at her four-poster bed. She had way too many complicated sides to her. I had decided that she was insane by the time Jay had me out of that room and back into the normal air I was used to.

Coming out of the strange princess room, the world I lived in of gray mud and tan dead grasses, looked like the creepy place suddenly. In the back of Yola’s unsettling shop was an unadorned wooden wagon filled with boxes from the general store. Another man was there loading the next box, and when I looked behind the box loader at a standing figure, my hope reignited.

Dad!

He had found me! He had followed me from the farm into the town. His face was flushed and red. His skin was clammy. He looked shabby dressed in pants with rips and holes and a shirt that was getting too short so it showed the top of his pants. I hadn’t felt ashamed of my family in a very long time, but today, I felt rather ashamed that we didn’t have the means to do better. My dad’s first name was Trent, and he had scraggly cut blond hair because he let my brothers practice giving haircuts on his head. They didn’t do a very good job most of the time, but it kept the hair out of his eyes while he worked with the animals and ground. He looked skinny. I wondered if I looked the same way because I didn’t eat much. I ate enough to get by and saved what I could.

Is that the last box? Jay asked, reaching over to scoop me into the wagon securing me to the closest thing he could find which was a box handle. What happened to the setting me free part?! I gave the box a tug—heavy.

What is that? the box loader asked pointing to me.

That is an Olivia, Jay replied.

He looked around as if he would much rather run than face off with anyone. I looked around too noticing that Yola had stepped outside after us. Maybe once she was out of sight, I could get free.

Apart from my dad, the neighbor boy, Justin, had come. Unfortunately, they were the only ones that had shown up to set me free so there wasn’t much of a force for Jay to contend with. Both my dad and Justin looked like skinny sticks compared to the muscles Jay and his friend had. I struggled against the weight of the box, and then realizing that I couldn’t budge it, tried to open it up so I could dump the contents and run with the empty crate.

Hello, Jay spoke to my dad. I’m sorry for how this looks. Thing is, I made a promise to take back what got unloaded to me, and this was it.

I can pay you back, my dad declared.

He must have brought with him the full collection of my paycheck. They needed that, but they needed me far more. I found the latch on the box and banged it open. Inside I made out tons of rusty nails. There was no way I could move all the nails before Jay and his friend told the horse to trot, but I tried grabbing a handful and dumping it onto the floor of the wagon.

Hey! The friend jumped into the wagon, shoved the lid back down as he shoved me out of the way, and then sat on the box.

Let me go! I screamed.

I heard that you’re having a hard time with food and resources, Jay said, ignoring everything that was going on in the wagon behind him. She will be fed and cared for. No harm will come to her. That’s better than leaving her here, where she could die of starvation. Think of it as going away to boarding school. When you get back on your feet, all you have to do is let me know and I’ll bring her back.

Take me instead. I’m stronger and less fussy. Anything you say, I’ll do it, my dad volunteered. Olivia will give you all kinds of trouble.

You need to stay to provide for the rest of your family, Jay soothed.

I tried to hear his evilness behind a voice like that. He had a wonderful voice, calm, mellow, and sincere. The demon shouldn’t have such a lovely voice for his act was treacherous.

But Olivia provides for us, my dad mumbled.

Take me. Justin jumped into the conversation. I have no one to provide for if Olivia’s gone. I’ll pay off the debt.

Err... What did Justin mean that he wouldn’t need to provide resources if I left? Was there some secret agreement going on here that said I would marry Justin in a year or two? Eck. I had never heard of this. Sure, I spent a lot of time with him as I played with my brothers, but I hadn’t realized that Justin liked me.

I gave him a confused look. Then I put the oddity of Justin out of my mind in favor of getting free. I picked a nail off the wagon floor, which I shoved into the lock of the manacle. I was useless at picking locks with a rusted nail, but that didn’t stop my attempt.

It’s not about money, Jay said. I don’t need your money. Here’s some paper. Jay held it out as my dad stared at the silver bracelet on his wrist. It wasn’t cold, but my dad shivered at the sight of the band. Why? Did it have some sort of significance that was lost on me? Justin sure seemed to think so. He glanced between my dad and Jay, his hands balling into fists. I felt betrayed when my dad took the paper.

Have some envelopes. Pass any message you like to Yola and she’ll see that I get it. Olivia will write back. It will be fine. I can’t take anyone else. This is about a promise and I can’t break my promise.

Yes, you can! I said, throwing the nail onto the ground.

He didn’t want me. I didn’t want him. My only consolation was that I wasn’t left with Yola and her double-sided scariness. However, my dad, mom, and brothers were still in the nearness of her clutches. I looked at my dad to warn him to run, but his muttered cowardly word stopped me cold.

Okay, my dad agreed.

It was not okay! Not at all!

You will take me, Justin insisted as his dark black hair fell into his wounded eyes. His hands shot upward. One was still in a hard fist; the other one was splayed open as if he could cast some sort of devilish spell onto Jay. Jay raised both his hands in a bracing action as he stumbled backward and then laughed lightly at his own instinctual reaction.

You can’t compete against that! My dad yelled as Justin rushed forward, prepared to tunnel into Jay's stomach or something.

Watch me! Justin yelled full of bravado.

I admired Justin’s courage, but I was with my dad. I braced myself for the sight of Justin being ripped apart by stronger hands.

Jay cast my hero a taunting smile and then dashed to the wagon as his friend yapped at the horses to move. No one was holding the reins, but the horses pulled against their heavy load and prevailed. Faster and faster. My dad and Justin ran behind. I cried, and then they were out of sight. The last thing I heard my dad say was for