Owl I Want for Witchmas is Hoo: A Wonky Inn Christmas Cozy Mystery Special by Jeannie Wycherley

Author:Jeannie Wycherley [Wycherley, Jeannie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bark at the Moon Books
Published: 2021-10-28T16:00:00+00:00

I jerked awake.

“You!”

It was daylight. After exhausting myself by pacing backwards and forwards in the dark room, I’d finally curled up into a ball in the corner nearest the door and, cradling my head, had fallen asleep.

I blinked and stared up at the figure towering above me. A large witch, half as wide as she was tall—and she had to be nearly six feet—with an enormous, bulbous nose and eyes the colour of slime, glared down at me. She had one hand wrapped around the handle of a homemade besom, while the other clipped a ring full of keys to her leather belt. She wasn’t a young woman, but not elderly either. Wearing a long black dress that buttoned tightly at the nape of her neck, it flowed over her enormous bosom and fell to the floor. Only the belt gave her any shape at all.

“Where am I?” I asked, sitting up. Every part of me ached, as though I’d spent an afternoon in the attic with Silvan learning how to shoot handkerchiefs out of the air.

Those had been the days.

“Ask no questions, you’ll be told no lies,” the other woman snarled. “Get up.” She poked me with her foot.

“Is Freddie here?” I asked, struggling to my feet.

“What did I just say?” she sniped at me.

“I just want to know he’s—”

I didn’t get any further. She lashed out at me with her broom and caught a glancing blow off my hip.

“Ow!”

“Keep talking and you’ll get another. Now move.”

I considered making a grab for her broom and giving her a taste of her own medicine, but although the thumping in my head had eased, I still felt sluggish. I wasn’t sure my reaction times would be up to much.

She gestured with her broom, indicating I should walk out through the door. I did so and realised, as I’d suspected, I’d been held overnight in a room within a barn. The cows that inhabited the main area had been let out into the fields beyond. The enormous double barn doors stood open, allowing the cool air in and the smelly stench of fresh dung out.

I shivered—my mittens had been misplaced somewhere along the way—and stared out at the blue sky and the green fields. Not far away, a line of trees began. A forest? Wherever we were, it was a long way from London and Tumble Town.

The other witch had secured the door behind her. Now she prodded me onwards, out of the barn doors to turn right. Forty or so feet from the oversized barn was a tiny shack, painted black and decorated with white symbols, like something out of a faery tale, complete with a crooked chimney belching out smoke and turrets not unlike the ones on Whittle Inn.

Whittle Inn!

The thought of home perked me up. We’d missed our train. Everyone would know we were in trouble. Mouse would have returned home from work expecting us to be gone, but our rucksacks—and my wand—were still in her house.

And she knew we were meeting Fleashee.

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