Truth Seer Book One, page 1
Truth Seer Book One
Odette C. Bell
www.odettecbell.com
Copyright
All characters in this publication are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Truth Seer Book One
Copyright © 2024 Odette C Bell
Cover art stock photos licensed from Depositphotos.
www.odettecbell.com
Truth Seer Book One Blurb
Most folks know that the truth is ugly and painful and hard. They don’t know it bleeds.
Harper doesn’t know magic exists until it kills her client. The normal real estate agent rocks up to a house only to find the occupant dead and pinned to the living room wall. She soon loses any semblance of normality when two powerful men pull her into their orbits and she ends up working as a seer capable of protecting the truth with her blood.
Vince Strathgordon is Epista City’s most powerful vampire. By day, he’s a successful businessman. At night, he heads the supernatural council responsible for controlling every magical race in the city. He personally hunts down creatures who break the rules – from murder to mayhem. But nothing’s worse than revealing magic to the real world.
Which is exactly what Harper will do if he doesn’t watch her like a hawk.
But Vince must vie with Lux, a mysterious demon who rules the city’s dark side. A precarious treaty keeps both sides from all-out war. When Lux demands equal access to Harper’s power, Vince must obey.
Harper has no choice but to spin head-first into their mysterious magical world. She’s forced to use her burgeoning power to track down cases for both sides – and both dangerous men. For mark her words, it doesn’t matter what side they come from, Vince and Lux share the same desire for her: control.
Can Harper survive her powers, the city’s dark forces, and her growing feelings for both men? Or will she die along with the one thing she must protect? The truth.
Truth Seer Book One
Title Page
Copyright
Blurb
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Newsletter
About The Author
Reading Order
Guide
Front Matter
Start of Content
Back Matter
Chapter 1
Most folks know that the truth is ugly, painful, and hard. They don’t know it bleeds.
“If this house doesn’t land me in hot trouble, I don’t know what will.” Tapping my fingers against the steering wheel, I pulled up to the curb. Arching my neck, my inherited pearls sliding over my black silk top, I frowned at the two-story brick building. Inwardly, I sighed. Outwardly, I dragged my butt out of the car.
The wind whipped down the tree-lined street. It slid through the long, unkempt grass at the front of the house, revealing junk – old Styrofoam cups, a few used needles, and discarded half-dismantled toys.
Shoving my hands into the pockets of my most expensive black tailored jacket, I clucked my tongue. “Harper, what have you gotten yourself into this time?” I muttered under my breath. I often talked to myself. I needed to chat, even if no one was around. My excessive, extroverted personality was probably why I made such a good real estate agent. Sorry, I should caveat that. Good? I could talk to my customers till the cows came home. Could I sign on the right houses? Nope.
As my stomach pitched and sank at the sight of this dive, I grunted, “You, girl, have a habit of following the wrong leads. You should’ve come here in person first before signing this place on. Groan.” Yeah, I was the kind of person to say groan aloud. I was also the kind of person to keep going once I got myself in trouble.
I found the latch on the weatherbeaten old white wire fence and tried to touch it as little as possible. I knew full well where tetanus came from. Trouble, too. Squinting past the yard, I thought I saw the front door open a crack.
“Weird. The owner’s meant to be home, but in a wind like this—”
Why finish my sentence? The weather did it for me. I was right. The door was open. A gust grabbed it and smashed it against the hall wall. Even from here, I heard plaster crumbling over the floor. I winced, grabbed a handful of my flame-red hair, and pulled it out of my eyes. “Great. You know what’s harder than selling a dive? Selling one that’s actively crumbling down around people’s ears. Harper, what have you gotten yourself into?”
I reached the small wrap-around porch. Age had worn the old concrete steps into dangerous cracked chunks. My simple white and black pumps crushed fine pieces as I tentatively stepped onto the creaking porch and grabbed the door before it did any more damage.
Silence met me.
With a wind like this rushing through the street, you’d think this old house would creak with every new gust.
It was as silent as the grave.
I slid my fingers down my collar and grabbed my pearls. One by one, I gently pushed my thumbnail around them. They weren’t prayer beads, but to me, they sure were close. A gift from my long-dead grandmother – if there was one person who’d believed in me wholeheartedly, it was her.
But life always conspires to take support away when you need it most. She died when I was halfway through college – and it rocked my world. I’d quit, idled, and found this job. “And that’s why you can’t lose it. For God’s sake, Harper, pull yourself together. The house isn’t creepy. And it can sell. You just have to be careful how you describe it. It will be a real fixer-upper.”
I quickly reminded myself I was having a one-sided conversation in someone else’s house. The owner, Ms. Bethany Partridge, must be home. Otherwise the front door wouldn’t be open. I took one last step, the bare, dusty floorboards creaking beneath my feet. “Ms. Partridge? Bethany?” I called out in my most professional, polite tone.
Only silence replied.
My back itched. I ignored it. I was good at that.
My friends called me laser-focused. I didn’t know if I agreed. Most of the time I kept my head in the sand. But I couldn’t ignore the dancing prickle of heat that spread across my chest and around my back like a burning lasso.
“Ms. Partridge?” I called louder, insistence twanging through my tone.
Nothing.
Unease crumpled my brow. I slid a hand into my pocket and pulled out my phone. I flipped to the right contact and called her.
The insistent ring of a phone echoed from a door down the hall two meters to my left. I waited for Ms. Partridge to answer. She didn’t.
I reached the closed door. “Ms. Partridge?” I called out again, angling my head toward the stairs in case she was in the bathroom on the second floor. I didn’t know who’d shower with the front door wide open in this neighborhood, but she’d seemed eccentric over the phone.
One last ring. “Bethany?” I called out, deciding to get personal. I opened the door.
Death met me.
I screamed, crumpled to my knees, grabbed my pearls, and almost blacked out.
There was a… a body… there was a body….
Bethany was pinned to the wall.
This couldn’t be happening.
She couldn’t be dead—
But she sure couldn’t be alive.
I didn’t believe in magic, didn’t even read science fiction. I was someone firmly rooted in the here and now. If there wasn’t a rational explanation for something, it didn’t exist. So tell me what was pinning Bethany to the wall? She was two meters up, her body limp and dressed in torn blue track pants, old sandals, and a ripped black hoodie. Her salt-and-pepper black curls fanned over her face. They framed her wide-open eyes and gaping mouth. Her skin stuck to her like plastic wrap spread over a craggy mountain, hinting at the bones underneath with no volume to hold it taut.
Trembling so hard I’d break, I grabbed my mouth. Sweat slicked my brow, and a nasty bilious taste climbed my throat. “I must be dreaming. It’s gotta be a nightmare. T-this cannot be happening. She is—”
Her left foot twitched.
Oh God. I couldn’t move, but I had to. I thrust up and lurched over, losing one of my pumps. It slid off, and I almost tumbled into the glass coffee table.
The room was a mess. Guess that happened when you murdered someone and attached them to the wall with… something.
I still didn’t know what held her there. She was simply suspended. There were no nails, no ties, no nothing. Her hollowed-out husk of a body resembled a painting. But the right foot soon twitched, following the left.
“You’re alive, Bethany. I’ll get you down from there. I promise.” I reached her. My fingers touched her clammy skin, and a jolt of fear promised she was dead. I still grabbed her bucking knee and tried to haul her back. I couldn’t even squeeze my fingers behind her torn trousers to grasp her leg. Something shoved me away with an in visible snap.
Yelping, my fingers tingling, I lurched back, but Bethany twitched again. This time it rocked from her legs up to her face. Her chest shot upward, and her mouth opened.
“I’ll get you down from there,” I roared.
My brain went blank. I didn’t understand the scene, but it didn’t matter. She was alive—
Bethany was not alive.
Light rose around her body in a halo. Soft, golden, unforgettable. It shimmered off her hollow skin, lifted several centimeters around her, then coalesced into her throat.
A tiny glowing ball emerged from her gaping mouth like some star giving birth to a planet.
I jolted back, falling against the coffee table. My butt rammed it and broke the glass. It shattered around me, a few shards tumbling down my thighs and shredding my stockings. They left superficial cuts. As blood tumbled down my shaking legs, I watched that ball of light float several centimeters away from Bethany then pause.
God. I couldn’t even think of what was happening, but I couldn’t look away. And neither could the glowing ball.
The light floated a few more centimeters away then paused again. It was a symmetrical orb with no face, but I knew it was looking at me.
“You… Bethany… what… what the hell happened?” I spluttered.
Either the ball reacted to my voice or something else. It floated forward a few more centimeters, ducking like a curious bird investigating something in the bushes.
Violent shakes continued to tear through my form, a gift from adrenaline and plain surprise. At least that’s what I thought.
The orb floated one more centimeter away from Bethany and started to spark.
It wasn’t dangerous. The power discharged through the air but could go nowhere. It started to bounce back on itself. The ball shrank like a once proud heart taking its last few beats.
Real panic surged through me, enough of a fuel source to force me to my feet. It snapped the binds of fear, and I lurched forward. “I don’t know what’s happening, but Bethany, just hold on.”
Hold on? To what? Bethany was dead and pinned against the wall by something I couldn’t see. This… ball, whatever it was, would soon disappear forever.
… Whatever it was?
My grandmother had once regaled me with tales of the soul. She wasn’t Christian herself. She preferred her own unique blend of native traditional spiritualism and modern thought.
But she’d always promised me souls were real. How else could human minds exist in a cold material world? If souls were real, maybe magic was too.
I couldn’t do anything. God knows my tears weren’t helping. But if I really was witnessing the death of Bethany’s soul, I had to try.
“Just hold on. Please,” I begged. I threw myself at the soul. My body screamed don’t do it.
Get too close to that discharging ball, and it’d kill me. But something inside me rose and promised I had to try.
I leapt up, feet crunching through the glass, the skin shredding. I grabbed the soul.
The second it touched my fingers, energy powered into me, but it didn’t break me. For something within me pushed it back.
“What the hell is happening?”
The orb shuddered in my hands as I watched my blood in gobsmacked horror. The smatterings covering my knees soon joined with the puddle beneath my feet. They rose like charmed snakes around my shaking legs then rushed into the orb. Just before it could disappear forever, they somehow bolstered it.
A sharp jolt traveled through me, and I fell onto my butt. I brought the glowing soul with me.
“What… what’s happening?” I screamed. Tears splashed down my cold cheeks. With awe-filled eyes, I watched the last of my blood infusing the orb.
It shuddered once then spoke. “Not dead. Somehow, I’m not dead.”
I jolted, almost dropping it. “Dead?” My eyes traced up to Bethany’s very dead form. “You… you can’t really be Bethany Partridge’s soul, can you?”
“… Soul. Soul scrap. Soul shard. That’s it. I’m Bethany. I’m the last scrap of truth that remains from her soul. Interesting.”
Alarm still blasted through me, but so did fatigue. This heavy, boulder-like weariness descended on my shoulders until my head drooped close to the shard.
“This can’t be happening. I’ve lost a client—”
“You’re the realtor? You must be Harper White. You’ve done more than lose a customer. Harper, you seem to have magic.”
“What…? I….” My brain started to shut down.
“I once taught at a magical school. I know full well what’s happening to you and what you’re about to do. You’re going to deny your powers and run. While I’m sure running will be in order at some point, denying your powers wastes time. You’re magical. Of some description.”
“This isn’t real.” I squeezed my eyes shut, hot tears trailing down my stiff cheeks.
“What’s real?”
“The world.” I couldn’t remove my hands from the soul shard – didn’t trust it not to disappear. I might be denying everything, but a protective urge within me wrapped itself around the shard, anchoring it close. “The world is real.” My voice shook hard.
Bethany laughed. “There are many different versions of real. But you don’t want real. Harper, you want the truth. And I imagine that’s where your power lies. You used your blood to anchor me, didn’t you? Interesting. I wonder if you are a rare truth seer.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I stammered.
She snorted. Yep. A glowing orb of someone’s soul snorted at me like I’d made a joke.
… Was I on drugs? Had I hit my head? Was this psychosis?
“You’ve gone quiet, Harper. You’re questioning everything again, I assume. I suppose that’s natural for a truth seer. But you need to stand and preserve the last few remaining scraps of this crime scene to have a hope of solving my case.”
“Solving your case? You’re dead. I’m not magical—”
“Harper.” Bethany’s voice hardened like a hand scrunching into a fist. “You will stop denying reality now. It’s a waste of time. I fancy I have little left.”
I blinked, staving off more searing hot tears. “Time left? You mean you’re not dead?” I stared at her body again. Grim horror gripped me. Her sightless eyes stared at the room, her head at an uncomfortable angle. Hell, uncomfortable? She was a corpse.
And it really was time to stop denying reality.
“I am dead, Harper. Very much so. But you must preserve the truth of this crime scene. I’m your client. It’s only proper to help me.”
“C-client?” I stuttered. “I can’t sell the house of a dead lady. I can’t stay here. I have to call the cops.” My plans escalated until I struck the most important fact. What do you do when you find a dead person? You call the authorities.
I reluctantly pried my fingers back from Bethany’s soul shard. I’d dropped my phone close to the door. I scooted over to it, but a jolt of power passed through Bethany into my hand like a slap. “You cannot call the human police. This is a magical crime. My body is stuck to the wall by a blood-binding spell. And if there is one crime greater in this world than any other, it’s revealing magic to the mundanes.”
“You mean it’s greater than murder? Someone killed you.” I slowed that down, but not for her. Bethany was clearly aware of her current predicament. I made the words grind through my lips as I finally accepted them. Someone had killed Bethany.
… What if they were still here?
I lurched to my feet, still shaking. It takes a long time to shrug off a real adrenaline blast. But that protective instinct kicked into gear again, and I cradled Bethany against my chest, rolling my shoulders forward like I’d use my whole body to save her.
“Who murdered you, Bethany? Do you remember?”
“No clue. He wore a long green hood. It covered his entire body. He came at me from behind. I didn’t hear him coming to the house. Clever and quick.”
“Did you just compliment your murderer?” I flicked my sweaty hair from my eyes.
My feet still bled, and pain ate up into my ankles. I leaned down, plucked up my pump, yanked the shards of glass from my heel, and slid into the shoe with a wince.
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