Haunted Magic: The Colbana Files

Witches, especially healers like Colleen Antrim, weren’t made to be warriors. Only a select few were born with the aggressive mentality and the offensive magic needed to protect others. This never struck her as a lack—Colleen was born to heal and nurture.

That was her nature.

Until it wasn’t...

When the man she’s loved for years is used as a weapon against her, something within her shatters, a fundamental shift that changes the very foundation of who she is. Forced to use her powerful gifts in ways they were never meant to be used, the very core of who she is shatters.

Magic made her. Then it broke her. Now it haunts her...and she doesn’t know if she can find her back.

Copyright

Haunted Magic © 2020 Shiloh Walker

Cover Design © Shiloh Walker

Image from Andrii Afanasiev via 123RF.com

THIS BOOK IS A WORK of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Several characters are tuckerizations. Reference. The personas, representations, etc of these characters are entirely fictitious and should not be construed as real.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people.

Please note that if you purchased this from an auction site or blog, it’s stolen property. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Your support is what makes it possible for authors to continue to provide the stories you enjoy.

Special Thanks

It’s 2020—election year in America.

Your vote is your voice but some people encounter roadblocks on their way to the election booth because they lack appropriate ID.

This year, I donated a prize to the VoteRiders Auction, who, per the website, helps eligible voters with reliable and up-to-date information about voter ID rules in their state.

My prize was simple—the winning bidder got a character named after them in the upcoming J.C. Daniels books.

My thanks go out to Annaya for her generous bid.

Thanks to Annaya & VoteRiders!

Patreon Supporters

I’d like to offer a special thank you to my Patreon Supporters.

Without your help, this novella wouldn’t be possible.

Samantha Anne Karp Hauser

Dawn

Natalie H.

EvilE ∙ Michaela ∙ Sarah M. ∙ Carla

Cecilia R. ∙ Larry Omans ∙ Serena

Ashley Morrison ∙ Tantris Hernandez

Maggie Walker ∙ Michelle B. ∙ Heather

Elizabeth R. ∙ Holly C. ∙ S. Kayne

Debbie L. ∙  Sarah B. ∙ Diana S.

Roger S. ∙ Noelle A. ∙ Teresa R.

Suzanne C. ∙ Tammy A. ∙ Clare

Farah ∙ Monica ∙ Reenie ∙ Julie Stranburg

Diana Simons ∙ Nicole Amentas

A.j. Morrison ∙ Candice ∙ Kathy Donald

Martin Nicolay ∙ Julia F ∙ Kerry Ebanks

Elaine Young  ∙ Caitlin Steppan  ∙ Anna Mae Naef

Tracy Fernandes ∙ Kate Friday

A Special Thanks To My Top Tier Supporters

Dawn & Samantha Anne

Every patron-funded book will have a random name drawn from my list of patrons to be used as a character within the story.

This time around...it’s Serena, aka Reenie.

Congratulations

To Serena.

Author Note

I must beg your apologies, readers.

In the weeks prior to getting this book finalized, edited and formatted, my life sort of turned upside down.

A family member passed away and the week of his funeral,

my father had a heart attack.

This was in the first week of October.

I was determined to get this book finished and uploaded, even while I was at the hospital with my dad and taking the phone calls from my brothers and mother so I could keep them updated as to how Dad was doing—COVID is such a nightmare, affecting everything, from how we mourn to how we visit family in the hospital. While my father was able to come home within a week, there was still so much to do and sadly, I’m not organized even when I’m not worrying about family.

Somehow, I ended up with two versions I was ‘finalizing’ for formatting and I ended up formatting the one that still had a multitude of errors.

I know it’s frustrating to buy a book and sit down to read, then find the author and editor hadn’t done due diligence.

Please accept my apology.

Shiloh/J.C.

Chapter One

IT HURT.

Every morning, Colleen Antrim woke to feel her nerve endings alight with pain, her skin stretched too small as it worked to hold in a power she’d never been meant to carry.

No.

Actually, that wasn’t how it worked.

It was the pain in her nerve endings that woke her, usually after maybe four hours of sleep. Sometimes, she was lucky and managed to get five or six, but it wasn’t often.

Not that she really needed any more than sleep than that—physically. Emotionally, mentally, that was a different story, but she’d stopped letting herself think about her emotional needs, her mental health months earlier.

Gritting her teeth as she went through the slow process of controlling the wild power that now marked her as one of the most powerful witches in the world, she lay in her bed.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

You own the power.

It doesn’t own you.

Breathe in. Breathe out...

Like a lullaby, she could hear his voice as he murmured the mantra to her, as if he was here right that moment. It had been months since he’d first sat across from her and started working on the very basics of training.

Training.

At her age.

She was forty-two years old, had glided through all the basic shit at Green Road when her mother had brought her to the local House to be tested, then asked the House to take over her training. She’d been six years old when she started studying magic, just under seven when they’d told her she’d be a healer, and a strong one, not even ten when she started learning the advanced magic that would define who she was for the rest of her life.

Or so she’d thought. That life was no longer open to her. That was her life before. Back when she’d been a healer.

She didn’t trust herself to even try to use those abilities now.

She made things burst into flame on her touch, had loosed so much raw energy that some of her most precious possessions had crumbled into dust under her fingers.

She’d asked some friends from the Road to come and pack up what mattered the most, protecting pictures of her daughter, her friends, and the few pictures she had of her parents. They were tucked safely away in storage at the local Green Road House, just a few miles outside East Orlando.

She’d walked away from the House at one point. Colleen’s daughter had been born without magic. Once Mandy had hit the age of ten without manifesting even a drop of witch power in her veins, the former head of the school told Colleen they couldn’t afford to keep housing or educating a human child. Even if the mother was a skilled witch.

Naturally, Colleen was still welcome, she’d been told.

She’d walked away. There was no rule claiming a House had to turn out non-magical offspring. The school within their walls was legitimate and had offered a stellar education.

If her child wasn’t welcome, then neither was Colleen.

The former leader had been dispatched several years earlier and when the new leader, the Father, as male leaders were called—or a Mother, had the leader been female, had reached out to her, she’d accepted his invitation for a meal.

Slowly, she’d rebuilt the bonds with old friends, forged new ones and they’d been there for her when her world turned upside down earlier that year.

They tried to understand.

But they couldn’t understand this.

How could anybody understand what it was to be unmade? Unless you’d been through it, it wasn’t possible.

Harsh voices rang in her mind, echoing in her memory like a death knell.

Stop, please! Her own voice, so raw and broken from pleading.

A lurid, loud laugh as one of the men, a hulking behemoth stroked Justin’s limp body from nape to hip. When he lifted his hand, there was blood. So much blood. Colleen had never seen such brutality rendered upon any being, and that they’d done it to Justin—

The crack of a whip had her cringing.

Don’t, she whispered, backing into the wall, shifting her gaze to the face that remained mostly in shadow, although she had no problem making out the whip. They were going to use it on him again.

No? The second man spoke now and his voice was soft. So soft, almost gentle.

It made her want to cover her ears and scream, scream, scream because nothing good ever came when his voice sounded like that. 

He approached, the long, thin tails of the whip dragging through muck and gore on the floor. He came to a stop in front of her and used the butt of the whip’s handle to lift her chin to his.

You don’t want me to whip him?

No. She didn’t want to even speak to him, but there was no winning with him. If she spoke, he’d do something. If she didn’t, he’d done something. And she never knew which was worse, begging him not to whip Justin...or staying silent.

A low, pained grunt from the bed, followed by a series of muffled sounds that gouged deep grooves into her. But she didn’t let herself look away from the man in front of her. If she showed any more weakness, it wouldn’t help. It would only make things worse.

’Eal ‘im up a bit, witch, the first man said. She’d pegged him as Twitchy because that’s what he was. It was like he had a tic or something—or an addiction. He couldn’t be still for anything. After unceremoniously dumping Justin’s limp, broken body on the ground next to her, he gave her an expectant look. That’s what you do, right? You ‘eal people, as you keep sayin’.

I... She swallowed, suddenly more nervous now. Why do you want me to heal him?

I’m feelin’ merciful. He grinned, showing teeth gone yellow and marked with brown stains in between, evidence of the nasty tobacco habit he indulged. 

She wore several stains that were also evidence of that habit—he liked to spit on her. She’d long since stopped showing her disgust. It had only encouraged him.

Darting another look at the man in front of her, Colleen hesitated. Mentally, she’d been calling him Black. Black, like his eyes. Black like the darkness she felt when he touched her. Black, like death.

Whatever this particular thug was up to, it had nothing to do with mercy. But her other captor only showed mild interest. Grasping her shoulder, he shoved her toward Justin. Go on. Impress me. Maybe if you do, we’ll be nice. We can always use somebody who has a knack for healing.

She didn’t let the shudder escape. The last