So you think youve marri.., p.1
So You Think You've Married a Warlock? (The Time Witch Series Book 1), page 1
So You Think You’ve Married a Warlock?
THE TIME WITCH SERIES
BOOK ONE
A.A. ALBRIGHT
Contents
1. Losing My Marbles
2. Imaginary Amazonians
3. Under-Bed Rules
4. A Hole in the World
5. New Girl
6. Falling
7. Moments in my Mind
8. The Vanishing Captain
9. Not-So-New Girl
10. A Man of Many Squeezes
11. Secrets and Spies
12. The Truth Will Out
13. The Morning After
14. The Night Before
15. In Vino Veritas
16. Words of Warning
17. Your Motorcar Awaits
18. Kim’s Curse
19. Hero of the Day
20. So You Think You’ve Married a Warlock?
21. On the Run
22. Survivors’ Guilt
23. Next-Level Negging
24. Time Witch
25. Safe House
26. The Scary Theory
27. Breakfast at Pendulay
28. Trapped
29. Finding My Marbles
30. When the Clock Strikes Midnight
31. The First Son
32. Love, Lies and Longing
33. Urban Legend
34. Sebastian’s Secret
35. Where My Marbles Went…
Extract from the Compendium of Supernatural Beings
Other Books by A.A. Albright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places, events and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
Text Copyright © A.A. Albright 2023
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
Website: https://aaalbright.com
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Chapter 1
Losing My Marbles
On the day I discovered the body, I’d lost my Marbles. He’d been gone for an entire week, and I wasn’t sure he’d ever return.
He takes huffs, you see, so when I served up the cheaper variety of food for his breakfast the Sunday before, what was he to do but prance out through the window, slink down the outside staircase and disappear off into the city?
Oh, I should probably clarify something: Marbles is my cat. He’s a large, fluffy tomcat. He looks midnight black in some lights, and smoky-grey or silver in others. He’s terribly attractive, and he knows it.
The point is, although I called out after him, promising him chicken thighs for dinner, he didn’t return that evening, or the next. And so, by the following Sunday morning, I was worried.
‘You shouldn’t worry about him, Essie,’ said Uncle Rick, wiping his face with a towel as he reached the end of his morning workout. He was on a health kick, getting up at the crack of ridiculous for some sort of … interval training? Don’t ask me to give you the details, because I’ll only get them wrong, but Uncle Rick assured me that the combination of aerobics and strengthening exercises was exactly what he needed. I thought he liked it because it was one of those nineties’ workouts, in which the exercises were performed by a supermodel in Lycra.
‘He’s just off on one of his huffs,’ Rick continued. ‘He’s famous for them.’
‘But a whole week? When has he ever stayed away this long?’ I argued.
Uncle Rick raised a sweaty brow (to be fair to his brow, the rest of him was sweaty too). ‘Well, there was the time you bought him that weird toy, remember? The one where the fake little mouse ran around a circuit? You thought he’d love catching it, but it scared the life out of him. He was gone for a few days after that.’
I thought back to the incident. Christmas of two thousand and seventeen. Marbles had been gone for a few days that time, it was true. But once he was well and truly over the trauma of my terrible present, he had returned to sleeping at the bottom of my bed.
‘Well, I’m going to go and buy some sausages and rashers,’ I said. ‘He’ll smell them cooking and come home.’
‘None for me.’ Uncle Rick patted his squidgy tummy. ‘Okay, maybe one or two sausages. And just one rasher. Oh, and how about a bit of pudding and some fried eggs, while you’re at it?’
I took the building’s back steps instead of going out through our shop, hoping I’d spot Marbles somewhere along the way. Paula, the butcher, received her morning deliveries through the back entrance, and Marbles liked to ensure he was around for those, in case anything happened to fall off the back of the truck.
The delivery vehicle was speeding away by the time I reached the bottom step, and I didn’t hear a single satisfied smack of the lips from my cat. Sighing miserably, I wound my way past the bins, through the side alley, and out to the front of our building.
Uncle Rick and I lived in a large building called Teach Dearg. It meant Red House, and the name was apt – for as long as I could remember, we spent the hottest days of summer touching up the façade’s deep red paint.
We were smack bang in the middle of Moore Street, with its market stalls and its hustle and bustle. A lot of people asked me how I could stand living somewhere so noisy, but I loved this place. I’d grown up here, with the cries of the stallholders as my childhood lullabies.
There were four businesses in all in Teach Dearg, plus some flats which were inhabited by the business owners. There was Ashton’s Butchery, which had been run by Paula Ashton for as long as I could remember. Directly above that shop, a doctor called Dillis ran a general practice.
Next to Ashton’s there was Bly’s Haberdashery, run by Jolene Bly, also for as long as I could remember. Jolene did some dressmaking work out of her shop, too. And on the other side of Bly’s Haberdashery was the place I worked, Uncle Rick’s shop. I smiled up at the sign as I walked by:
Rickety Tock’s, New and Pre-Loved Timepieces
We Craft the Finest Clocks and Watches, and Also Do Repairs
The sign was a bit misleading, because there was no we involved. I didn’t do repairs, or any of the watch- and clockmaking. All of that was up to Uncle Rick. I served customers, did our accounts and marketing and, well, all of the stuff that Rick would forget if he didn’t have me to do it for him.
I’d worked there part-time while I was growing up, and since leaving school ten years ago, it had been my full-time job. Now, though, there wasn’t enough work for me to stay there full-time, and I was looking for something else. In fact, I had an interview lined up for the next morning.
Uncle Rick didn’t know about the interview, and I didn’t plan on telling him unless I actually got the job. Somehow, despite the fact that we were clearly struggling to stay afloat, Rick remained oblivious to our reality.
I was walking past Bly’s when someone ran into me – literally ran into me, almost knocking me to the ground. I realised, as I struggled to stay upright, that I knew him. It was Neil Bly, Jolene’s son. I’d dated him ten years earlier, when we were both eighteen, but I never saw him around here anymore.
‘Nice to see you too, Neil,’ I grumbled, straightening up.
He glanced at me with fear in his eyes, and then began to run, clutching onto a large, brown-leather bag. I’d only ever seen him move that fast once before, just after I caught him kissing my friend and he had ever so bravely decided to leg it.
An uneasy feeling began to settle in my stomach. The shop door was ajar, no doubt left that way by Neil. Had he argued with his mother? Jolene had always been so good to me, making me lunches and after-dinner snacks when I was a kid. She deserved a far better son than a creep like Neil.
I pushed softly at the door, calling out, ‘Jolene, it’s just Essie. I saw Neil running off. Is everything okay?’
She didn’t answer, and I stood still for a moment, staring around the shop. Neil had left the place in a total mess. Shelves and stands had been knocked over, sending thread spools, buttons and fasteners spilling out over the linoleum floor.
Mrs Bly’s record player was on upstairs in her flat, playing Mozart; maybe she was up there, upset, and hadn’t heard me call out. I made my way towards the counter – there was a door behind it which led up to the flat; like the shop’s front door, it was ajar.
My steps were slow and cautious as I made my way around the mess. I was about halfway there when my neighbours, Dillis and Paula, arrived.
They rushed in through the shop’s entrance. Paula was wearing her butcher’s uniform, and Dillis was in her pyjamas. Both women shouted out to me at the same time. Dillis cried, ‘Oh Essie, love, wait a minute,’ while Paula shouted, ‘Don’t look behind that counter on your own, chicken.’
Paula always called me chicken. It was her pet word. She and Dillis, like Jolene, had often looked after me when I was little.
I stared at them both for a moment. ‘Why?’ I asked, noticing that both women had flared nostrils, as though they were sniffing the air. ‘What do you think is behind there?’
They said nothing, and so I carried on walking with the two of them a few steps behind me, all of us shaking with worry. When I finally reached the counter, I sto
Jolene Bly was lying there, on the ground behind her cash register, and she was most definitely dead.
Chapter 2
Imaginary Amazonians
I stood outside Bly’s Haberdashery, looking in at the scene. I didn’t know how long I’d been standing that way. Probably ever since we’d rushed out of the shop and phoned An Garda Síochána. The gardaí were here now, doing whatever it was they did at scenes like this, while I simply stood a short distance away, watching it all.
Uncle Rick had placed a blanket around me, Dillis had brought me a cup of tea, and Paula was waving a freshly made sausage sandwich in front of me, saying, ‘You need to eat, chicken. You need to sit down, drink your tea and eat your sandwich.’
‘But the guards …’ I pointed limply towards the gardaí examining the crime scene. ‘They’ll want to talk to us about it. We have to stay here. I …’ Words left me, as Mrs Bly’s body was wheeled out into the ambulance. She was covered up, of course, but I could still see her in my mind’s eye. I wished I was seeing her as she usually was – warm, smiling, full of life – but instead, all I could think about was how she’d looked when I found her.
The cash register had been forced open, the drawer wrenched out and thrown onto the ground. Mrs Bly’s purse had been raided, too, not a cent left behind. Even her watch – a beautiful one, gold and shining, made by Uncle Rick – had been roughly snatched from her wrist, leaving a nasty-looking mark behind. There’d been a gash on her forehead, and judging by the blood I had seen in her hair, there was an even worse gash at the back of her head.
If Neil had done that … I shuddered. Could Neil have done that? He’d been so nice when we were kids. Other than cheating on me, of course.
Paula was struggling to hold back her tears, while Dillis and my uncle were letting theirs fall freely. I knew that this must be even harder on them than it was on me. To me, these women were as much my family as my uncle was, but they’d all known each other long before I came on the scene.
I’d moved in with Rick as a four-year-old, after my parents’ deaths, and he and the neighbours in Teach Dearg were already well-acquainted by then. The women were all around the same age as my uncle – fifty-one – but Dillis and Paula looked younger.
Paula was short, a sturdy and fit-looking woman who usually wore her blonde hair in a ponytail. Dillis was a little taller and more slender, with tightly-cut black hair and lips which were a striking colour – though she never painted them, her lips were a naturally vivid shade of red.
Going by the way they talked after a couple of drinks, Teach Dearg’s business-owners had been friends for a very long time.
And yet … they all remained more concerned about me than they were about themselves. Annoyed with myself for wallowing at their expense, I took the tea and the sandwich. ‘Thank you both,’ I said.
It was only as I drank the tea that I realised how cold I had been. It was February, and I had come down here without a coat or gloves, thinking I was only heading out for a few minutes. Now, I gratefully ate the warm sandwich and slurped down the tea, snuggling the blanket around me when I’d finished.
I must’ve been in shock, I guessed, and the food and the tea were slowly bringing me out of it, because my mind was suddenly alert and curious.
Looking at Paula and Dillis, I said, ‘You both seemed to know. Did you see Neil running away too? Is that why you rushed down to the shop?’
They exchanged a glance, and then Dillis said, ‘Neil? You’re sure? You saw Neil Bly running away?’
‘You didn’t?’ I stared at both women, and knew without a doubt that they hadn’t seen Neil’s great escape. ‘So what made you rush down? And what …’ I let my voice trail off, feeling suddenly just as uneasy as I had when I’d seen the look of fear in Neil’s eyes. Had Dillis and Paula been sniffing? They had, hadn’t they? Their nostrils had been flared, as though they could smell the body, as though they were scenting the air.
I was about to ask them about it – because I knew what I saw – when my attention was diverted by Uncle Rick, his voice low and angry, saying, ‘Bloody vultures, look at them!’
Paula, Dillis and I followed my uncle’s gaze. Three suited men had arrived, all of them tall and well-built. I would have said they were handsome, but I’d met these men before, and knowing them had taught me something: a pretty face soon seems far less pretty once you learn there’s nothing but a whole lot of ugly beneath.
These men worked for Chronos, and their company was the whole reason I was so desperate to do well in my job interview tomorrow. Our costs at Rickety Tock’s had gone up, while at the same time our sales had gone down. It was a similar story for many businesses these days, but I’d be far less worried about it if it weren’t for Chronos. They’d recently bought our building, and they now owned our leases. They couldn’t change our incredibly favourable terms, but they could sit by and wait for us to void our contracts in any way. If we were late with our rent by even a day, I knew they’d kick us out of Teach Dearg and onto the kerb.
We might just manage to scrape enough for the next rent cheque, but if I didn’t come up with another income source soon, we’d be in trouble.
One of the three, a guy with chestnut brown hair and mesmerizing gold-coloured eyes, looked my way and smiled. ‘Rent’s due next Monday, Estelle,’ he said, using my full name.
‘We’ll have it,’ I growled back.
‘You’d better,’ he said. ‘Or else.’
I would have said more – perhaps even slung a rude gesture or two his way – but he’d stopped looking at me to concentrate on the gardaí. From what I could hear, he and his two cronies were demanding to know how soon they could go in and measure up for new shop fittings.
‘Measure up,’ Dillis spat. ‘Sure, what are they on about. The lease doesn’t go to them. It goes to Neil.’
‘Not if he’s guilty,’ said Uncle Rick. ‘All of our contracts are very clear. Any criminal activity, and our lease is voided – Neil won’t be able to inherit the lease if he killed his mother. And Essie saw Neil running away which … well … which might just make him a suspect, at the very least.’
‘Yeah, but …’ I shrugged. ‘He wouldn’t have killed her. There must be some other reason he was legging it. He …’ I let my voice trail off, as I realised we weren’t the only ones eyeing the suited men.
I had no idea how I hadn’t immediately noticed the arrival of the woman – seeing as she was on a freaking horse of all things, I should have heard her trotting onto the street. But somehow, she’d snuck right in without a sound.
She sat there now, beside the betting shop, astride a large black horse. The woman was just as graceful as her mount, sitting in a way which made her look both assured and strong. She had a pretty, confident face, and wore her dark hair in countless small, neat braids. Her outfit was unusual, a kind of tight black jumpsuit with a silver breastplate on top. She looked like some sort of Amazonian warrior or something. Her eyes were narrowed as she glared at the three Chronos employees.
‘How did I not hear that horse arrive?’ I muttered.
‘What horse?’ asked Uncle Rick. ‘There’s no horse.’ He gazed at me with concern. ‘Essie, are you sure you’re all right? Maybe the shock is getting to you.’
‘I’m not in shock.’ Not anymore, anyway, thanks to tea and a sausage sandwich. ‘She’s right over there.’ I pointed to the horse-riding woman, but she was already gone. Somehow, she’d vanished as soundlessly as she’d arrived. ‘Well … she was there. I didn’t imagine her.’
