Magical Influence Book One (28 page)

He was going to move behind me, latch
his hands around my middle, and knock me out.

I could sense his intensions so
clearly, they might as well have been my own.

I heard him shift, felt a puff of air
against my cheek, and smelt the subtle scent of his
cologne.

I fell to my knees deliberately,
kicking out behind me.

I didn’t connect with
anything.

Again I felt air push against my hair
and cheek. I fell back, lashing out with my arms.

Nothing.

He had to be in front, or just behind,
I knew it. But I could not land a blow.

I lashed out again, as I did,
desperation set it. Sweat covered my brow, my heartbeat
reverberated through my tensed neck and jaw. But no matter what I
did, I could not reach him. He was always just out of
reach.

Then he moved. As soon as the
frustration and panic set in, he pounced.

I felt his arms snaking around my
back.

I could have screamed. I could have
pitched back.

I didn’t.

I didn’t give into the fear. I didn’t
let it influence me, render me to the spot, turn me into a bucking,
wild witch swallowed up by desperation. Instead I used
it.

Influence, don’t be influenced, and
you will carve the future you want. A creed I could have repeated,
but not understood until now.

I rewrote my fear. The sensations I
felt were not a sign of my body giving up, they were a sign of
attention spreading out, my mind snatching at any opportunity it
could find.

That was true influence. Changing the
perceptions of the mind over the body. The foundation of all
magic.

Jacob latched hold of me and pulled me
back.

I pulled forward, against his grip.
And I broke his hold.

He was physically stronger, but in
that moment as my magic surged it sort out every opportunity he
gave me. As he shifted his weight, I pushed against him. As he
sucked in a breath, I jammed my shoulder into his torso. As he
stumbled, I pushed.

Even the strongest things have
weaknesses. True strength often lies in stopping others from seeing
where that weakness lies.

I heard Jacob fall to the
ground.

He reached for something.

The table. His gun was on
it.

His gun was what made Jacob strong; it
summed up the mysterious Agent perfectly.

I got there first.

I plucked it up and I held it in front
of me. It didn’t make me feel strong, but as I took it from him I
knew it made him feel weak.

He made a noise, a frustrated,
desperate breath. He pushed forward, intending to ram into me,
probably to steal back his gun and finally knock me out.

I got there first.

I did something I had never done
before, and no, I didn’t shot him. I did however kick at the table
and send it flying in front of him.

He tripped, fell over it, and knocked
his head against the corner of the couch.

I heard a dull thump.

Somewhere, a clock chimed midnight.
Don’t ask me how I knew; it was dark, after all. But I was a witch,
and if you could not dabble in the unexplained and unexpected,
there was no point to your existence.

The fire suddenly roared back into
life. With it, the light returned to the room.

I saw Jacob knocked out by my
feet.

I knew he wasn’t dead, I also knew
that unlike most other soft-fleshed people, he would be fine. The
smack to his noggin would keep him down for now. That was
all.

I stared down at him.

I’d done that. Okay, no, I hadn’t
technically done that; the table and his own velocity had. Yet I
had brought those two things into contact; I had altered the
situation subtly until my desired result had arisen. I had
practiced influence magic, and I’d used it to win a fight, of all
things. There hadn’t been any fireballs or explosions, but the
result was still the same.

I knelt down to him and placed my hand
flat on his back.

I still had no idea who he was, and I
really didn’t understand why he had done any of this. But it was
over for now.

I leaned over to his pocket and
plucked out his phone. Then I did the one thing I could think of, I
called my grandmother, who called my Aunt Tessa, who called my
Uncle Frank, who called the rest of the family.

Then I got in my monster truck and
drove away.

It was a new day, and I had a feeling
it would be a sunny one.

Chapter 20

I was sitting at the kitchen table,
glaring at the dirty dishes stacked all over it.

“You were lucky to get out alive,” Aunt
Tessa handed me a plate of biscuits.

“Lucky, she wasn’t lucky – she was a
powerhouse of a fierce witch who kicked and screamed until reality
gave her what she wanted,” my grandmother replied as she made a
fist and shook it in the air.

It made me smile. Despite the fact the
wild and demented look was back, and I was certain she’d spent the
morning digging mud pies in the yard between the charred remains of
tentacles and swords, I was happy.

It was over.

I had won.

“Don’t just sit there and hold those
biscuits – eat them, that’s what they’re for, you know,” my
grandmother snatched one up.

I raised an eyebrow.

My house, in many ways, was back to
normal. I however was not.

I had a monster truck, a new job, and
new sense of self.

I also had something I needed
to clarify. I cleared my throat and the move somehow commanded
everyone’s attention, just like the blast of a foghorn or a
whistle
.
“Uncle Frank, are you sure everything is sorted out with...
Jacob?”

I didn’t like to say his name, because
I still had no idea how I felt about the situation.

“I have turned over his case to the
Magical Disciplinary Board. They will hand down their judgment
within the week, I’m told.”

My grandmother
snorted
. “If
that blasted family of his doesn’t intervene. The Fairweathers
won’t be taking this lightly.”

At the mention of that family name, I
swear a cloud passed over the sun.

In the past few days since my little
incident, I’d learnt all about dear Jacob Fairweather.

I’d been right about him; he was most
definitely an influence witch. A terribly powerful one, who came
from a long line of particularly influential witches. A little bit
like my family, but kind of on the other side of the magical
divide. The dark side.

“He won’t be trying something like this
again,” Tessa flicked her hand at Frank. “He’ll know the Sinclairs
can take him on.”

“Legally speaking, I cannot comment,”
Frank went back to icing a cake.

“To think they tried to get to me through
my granddaughter, and I did not once understand what they were
doing,” Granny shook her head and sighed heavily.

I had to snort at
that
. “I
don’t get it, didn’t the fact he was called Fairweather ring any
bells, Gran?”

She fobbed me
off
. “Oh he
was such a nice man, it never occurred to me that he was part of a
clan of powerful witches who have an historic grudge to settle with
the Sinclairs. Plus he popped up on our doorstep just when you
needed a man. He looked like the perfect match.”

My eyes
boggled
.
“He’s trying to ruin our family,” I gave a confused
laugh.

“Oh, I think he’s a far more complicated
man than that. Plus, he has such a nice jaw.”

“Gran, you sound like you’re still trying
to hook us up. Need I remind you he kidnapped me and tried to
destroy our house with you in it? Need I remind you he comes from a
long line of people who want to erase our name from magical
history?”

She shrugged her shoulders,
batting a hand at her wild curls
. “You’re a complicated woman, and you
logically need a complicated man.”

I stood up
suddenly
.
“You are mad,” I began.

Then I stopped.

It was my choice to rise to her bait,
to accept her opinion, to let her voice into my head.

In other words, it was my choice how
to react. I could spend my life running after my crazy family,
complaining at my lot in life, or I could do something about
it.

And what I did was smile.

Whether I would ever get together with
the crazy Jacob Fairweather was up to me. Whether I pulled my hair
out every time I came home to a muddy, dirty house was up to me.
Whether I allowed the hijinks of the Sinclair clan to pull me down
was up to me.

And right now all I wanted to do was
finish off my biscuits and stack the dishwasher. Everything else
could wait.

Thank you for reading Magical Influence Book
One.

Book Two
is currently available.

Other quirky fantasies by Odette C.
Bell:

The Enchanted Writes

Witch’s Bell

Anna’s Hope

Read on
for an excerpt from The Enchanted Writes Book One

Henrietta is painfully boring. She is uncoordinated,
unsuccessful, and entirely unlucky in love. That all changes when a
strange man walks into her life talking of witches, magic, and
warriors. Soon she finds her life turned upside down, and any
semblance of normality banished for good.
Enchanted Writes is a light-hearted
urban fantasy series, with plenty of humour, action, and
romance.

The Enchanted Writes Book
One

Chapter One

It took Henrietta far too long to open
her eyes that morning. There seemed to be a great weight pressing
down on them. She managed it, then she shot out of bed like a
bullet, ripping her duvet off her stomach and arms so fast that it
fell off the bed and tumbled to the floor.

Her room was trashed. Totally trashed.
The curtains she had lovingly handmade out of old Japanese kimonos
had been ripped from the rails. The boxes of trinkets, necklaces,
bracelets, and rings that she kept on her dressing table were
scattered over the floor, some of them broken, their glass and
plastic beads everywhere. That wasn't to mention the state of her
wardrobe: the door was hanging off and all of the clothes had
fallen off their coat hangers.

As the words “what the hell” were
preparing to erupt from her mouth, Henrietta stopped.

She remembered.

Breath sharp, hands shaking, she
pressed her fingers into her mouth, her eyes widening in surprise
and shock.

Good god, what had happened to her
last night?

She sat back down on her bed, eyes
never blinking as she surveyed the mess around her. A cold, sickly
feeling was gathering deep in her belly and it washed over her skin
in regular waves. She had to lean down, grab up the duvet and bring
it around herself to cut out the fiendish chill and
shock.

Henrietta Gosling closed her eyes. She
brought her hand up and rubbed it over her face, but try as she
might, she couldn’t erase the memory of last night.

Last night Henrietta, the
mild-mannered cafe waitress, had undergone a transformation, and
she had trashed her room in the process.

To think yesterday had started off so
innocently. In fact, apart from being late in the morning, she’d
almost had a good day. Almost, because around midday things had
started to go pear shaped.

For a good long while, as her
grandfather clock ticked in the background, she sat there huddled
on the edge of her bed. After a bit she poked her hands out from
under the duvet and looked them over. She turned them around,
staring at the fingers, the palms, the nails. Her hands were
undamaged. Which was a fantastic fact considering what she'd been
through last night.

As she sat there, she gave a huge
shudder, even letting out a gasp. She let her gaze shift across the
room until she caught sight of the grandfather clock.

“Dammit,” she spat as she jumped to
her feet. She was late for work. Again.

Before she could lean down and grab
the simple black skirt and white shirt she always wore to wait
tables, she stopped. Seriously, she couldn't consider going to work
right now after what she'd gone through. So Henrietta Gosling
called in late that day. Instead of waiting tables at the cafe
squeezed between the central police station and the fire station
along the main road of town, she sat on the edge of her bed or
walked around her room waving a hand at her face and
swearing.

Yesterday

Henrietta was late. She was running
down one of the side alleys that cut across town and led to Sizzle
Cafe where she worked. Her handbag jostled around on her shoulder
as she ran, and her worn ballet slippers kept coming undone and
almost falling off her feet. Suffice to say, she was in a bad
mood.