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  M A G I C B U R N E D

  SHADOW FOREST, BOOK ONE

  ELI CONSTANT WRITING AS

  E L I Z A G R A C E

  The Shadow Forest Series –USA

  The Shadow Forest Series –UK

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Magic Burned (Shadow Forest, #1)

  MAGIC BURNED

  It Starts with Fire

  Through the Glass

  Baby Steps

  Storm Warning

  Darkest Before the Dawn

  An Unsettling Quiet

  Back to Before

  When the Words Fade...

  Holding All the World

  The Witchfinder

  The Vision Painting

  An Unspelling

  The Boy That Wasn’t

  Just a Thing of Silk and Crystal

  Magic Sparks

  Anger Follows This Affection

  Into the Woods

  The Green Mile

  What is Left Behind

  Forever Means Always

  E L I Z A G R A C E

  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by any means, without explicit permission from Eli Constant Books (Eli Grace/Eliza Grace). Eli Constant/Eli Grace/Eliza Grace asserts her right to hold the copyright of this work entitled “Magic Burned” [formally “Sleeping in the Forest of Shadows”]. All Eliza Grace & Eli Grace fall under the ELI CONSTANT BOOKS banner. Significant changes have been made to the plot and editing, justifying this second edition re-release. If you have any questions, please contact- [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Any locations, characters and entities are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously; they should not be construed as real in any capacity. Similarities to actual persons, living or deceased, organizations or locales are purely coincidental.

  Magic Burned

  Shadow Forest Book 1

  2ndEdition Print

  Copyright © 2015, 2019 Eli Constant Books (Eli Grace/Eliza Grace)

  Cover Art © 2018 The Book Brander, Sylvia Frost

  www.thebookbrander.com

  1st Edition Edits: Amy Jackson Editing

  New Edition Dev. Edits: The Editing Soprano

  All rights reserved.

  MAGIC BURNED

  Never do magic.

  Never even think about it.

  Not even once.

  Ever since Matilda’s mother moved them away from their hometown, these are the rules Matilda lives by—given to her through bedtime stories she only half believes. They are rules she thinks she’s mastered. Because... magic isn’t real after all. Then one day, the past returns and everything burns.

  Broken beyond repair and filled with the spark of magic, Matilda goes to live with her aunt in the woods. There she befriends monsters, learns dark spells, and tries to survive high school (plus a massive crush on her physical therapist).

  All the while, the evil that took everything from her promises it can give it back... for a price. But after Matilda’s already lost so much, what more could she have to give? And will she burn her world again, just for a chance to change her fate?

  MAGIC BURNED is the first installment of the ‘Shadow Forest Trilogy’.

  Book 1: MAGIC BURNED

  Book 2: SPELL TRICKED

  Book 3: CURSE KISSED

  DEDICATION

  To every author who gives their characters tragic back stories.

  Then tortures them some more.

  But also tosses in some romance like that’s going to redeem anything.

  You’re my people.

  Also to Sophia. Seal mates for life.

  www.thebookbrander.com

  It Starts with Fire

  I LOVE WHEN EVERYONE is asleep. The house feels netherworld, quiet and different. It’s the only time I feel really comfortable in this new house.

  I STILL MISS THE OLD one, so much. I miss the town I was born in, an hour from where my mother grew up. She’s never explained why we had to move. Her and dad work from home.

  It’s only recently that mom trusts me to close up the house—lock the doors, check the kitchen, and all the other ‘responsible for sleeping human life’ things that she usually does. The first time she told me I could stay up a little later, that she was heading to bed, I felt instantly grown up. I’d leapt off the cliff of childhood in one fell swoop of past ten o’clock and a bowl of ice cream.

  Right now it’s ten-fifteen and even the last of the neighbors have closed up shop and shut their lights off, that’s what it’s like in a small town. Safe, subdued, party animals check themselves at the city limits line. No different than the hometown we left behind.

  I laugh, a little too loudly, and cover my mouth quickly. It’s late enough that all the channels have flipped over to sitcom reruns and older movies. The show I’m watching isn’t even particularly funny, and I’ve seen it half a dozen times, yet every time the tall awkward guy yells ‘pivot!’, it tickles my funny bone. I’ve popped popcorn, and the whole downstairs of the house smells like fake butter, garlic powder, and gardenia candles—my dad’s favorite scent. I’m actually surprised my little brother didn’t wake up to the smell. He’s a popcorn fiend and likes salt way too much. I flip the channel, though I should be going to bed. The movie catches me instantly—action and a good-looking guy.

  Footsteps pad down the stairs and I turn around to find mom smiling at me. “It’s getting pretty late. Don’t take advantage of me letting you stay up longer.”

  “I won’t, I promise. I want to see how this ends,” I point at the television. There’s just been a huge explosion.

  “It doesn’t look like your type,” mom comments, snagging a glass from an upper cabinet and then filling it with tap water. “Your brother, always with the water. And tonight I forgot to take a glass up in anticipation.”

  “You should keep a few water bottles in your room,” I offer sagely.

  “Water bottles are killing the earth,” she responds with a statement she says every time I suggest buying water bottles because tap water is full of gross microbes. Just ask my biology teacher who uses hand sanitizer ten times a class.

  “I know, I know.” I roll my eyes and laugh a little. “You could at least hook up the water purifier Santa gave you for the faucet.”

  “Santa’s handwriting looked suspiciously like yours.” Mom winks.

  “See, if you allowed us to do magic, you could have saved yourself a trip. Just wiggle the nose and conjure a glass.” I press my index finger to my nose and wiggle it...awkwardly.

  Mom’s face goes a little serious, something I’m not expecting. “That’s not how magic works and you know the rules,” she says slowly, and for the first time... I’m not sure if she’s giving me a hard time or if she means it. But she can’t mean it. Magic isn’t real. Though, I realize, even if magic doesn’t exist, I’ve been living by her rules for it all my life—whether I mean to or not. When things feel a little too good, or a little strange... I shy away from it.

  “I know. Never do magic. Not even once,” I say part of the mantra that ends all of her witch bedtime stories.

  “Exactly,” she nods. Smiling now, but it’s sad somehow. “Night, My Little Witch.” I hear her padding up the stairs, glass in hand.

  “Night, Mom.” I’ve already turned back to watch the movie, but I hop up real fast after only a moment. Mom’s a reminder—check the doors, check the kitchen, check the candles.

  When I blow out the wicks, trails of black smoke waft up in rhythmic lines, dancing in the air and weirdly making my eyes feel heavier than they already are. I smile, feeling a weird tingling in my fingers. A part of me I always suppress is humming below my surface—the part
that makes me feel different than everyone else. Because I don’t want to be different. Who does, really?

  And... I have to remember mom’s rules.

  MY MOM HAS ALWAYS TOLD these nighttime tales about girls with magic.

  Bedtime tales—fancies that send me and my brother off to dreamland. Each story, no matter what happens to the characters, ends the same way.

  Never do magic.

  Never even think about it.

  Not even once.

  My brother always falls asleep before the end. And mom kisses him on the forehead, and then comes to my bed—because we still share a room in this too-small, cozy house...my parents could have at least bought a larger place after they ripped us from our childhood home. Mom sits on the edge each time, her hip brushing my hip. I cherish the closeness. She is one of my best friends, and I hope that will never change. I hope I grow old and she grows older and I still call her just to say hello and ask for directions on how to cook my first turkey at Thanksgiving.

  “I love you, my Little Witch.” Mom brushes my hair from my face, and says the words again. This happens every time. After every one of her stories. It is a cornerstone of my childhood.

  “Never do magic.

  Never even think about it.

  Not even once.

  If you feel it, a tingling in your fingertips, a shaking in your bones... you push it down, down into your toes.”

  And I always, always look at her, and I repeat—smiling, because it is a silly game between us. After all this time... the words are almost real to me. I think about them. I follow them. When I feel an imaginary spark of something, I ignore it, even though I know it’s all in my head.

  “I’ll never do magic. I’ll never even think about it. Not even once. If I feel it, a tingling in my fingertips, a shaking in my bones... I’ll push it down, down into my toes.”

  “Night, my love. My Little Witch. Goodnight.”

  So many dreams. A world of wonder, power, spells. I love sleeping after mom’s stories.

  THE CANDLES ARE OUT, the house is checked, and I am so tired. Yet, I want to finish the movie, so I settle back on the couch. I must doze off quickly, because I’m jerked awake by another cinematic explosion.

  It’s funny though, because as I’m falling asleep again, I swear I smell gardenias once more. Strong. Fresh. A garden wafting through the living room. I feel a tingling. I feel a shaking.

  I push it down into my toes.

  I dream that the world is red and hot. I dream of dragons burning cities. I dream of campfires and marshmallows. I dream such a jumble of images that nothing makes sense at all.

  SMOKE EVERYWHERE.

  I sit up, coughing. Blinded by the haze of darkness around me. It must be a dream. I seem to see lights flashing. Oscillating colors. Red and white. Red and white. There’s a hum beneath the roar that’s getting louder... everywhere.

  “Mom!” I scream. “Dad!”

  I lift my arms, hands in front of my face. It looks like my fingers are glowing... glowing embers. Red trimmed in orange licking to ice white. So hot. Burning. I cough again. I can’t stop coughing. “Mom!” I croak out. “Toby!” I scream my brother’s name. I have to find him. I have to find Toby.

  I drop my hands, even though I feel like my fingers are still searing-hot flames. My eyes are stinging and tears are rolling down my face. How long as the house been on fire? Every wall is curtained with fire, pushing upward to block the beautiful wall colors and the paintings from my Aunt, who we didn’t see often for some reason.

  The fire was hiding the life around me, windows closing against the scenery.

  Rolling off the couch, I continue to cough. “Dad,” I sob out. Crawling through the smoke is awful. It looks like it should be thick, hard to push through, but as I move it slides over my body in storm-dark waves. It is light and thin and passable as time.

  Yet it is killing me. It is killing everything around me.

  I keep crawling. I know the stairs must be in this direction; they must be nearby. I run into one of the barstools and realize I’m going the wrong way. I’ve headed towards the kitchen, so I shift and go to the right. I think I see glass ahead. The long window panes to the right of the front door. I blink, trying so hard to see clearly.

  Is there a shape past the glass? Is there a shadow watching me struggle?

  I see eyes... do I see eyes? Beyond the window pane, out in the fresh air that is not choked by flame.

  A loud crack overhead makes my heart jolt. I’ve got to find my parents. I have to find Toby. And I have to keep moving. So I crawl, elbows on the ground, trying to keep my head low to the floor. Another horrendous crack, but this time something breaks. Something is falling. I can hear a soft whoosh.

  I try to look up and see through the noxious fog. I try to see what’s coming.

  I scream as something crashes into me. The pain is unbearable, the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. My entire body tingles. My entire body shakes. I feel something radiate from me, an odd force. Maybe it’s just the realization that I’m dying. Because I must be.

  I can’t feel my legs anymore.

  Through the Glass

  IT CALLS TO ME. It is calling to me now.

  THE THING THAT HAS no face—that thing that is nothing, but is somehow everything—is hiding outside my window, far off across the field, past the fence, cloaked by the forest’s dark shadows. Once, some time ago, before my mother was forced to leave this home, it called to her. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. Now, I am here and I’m like her in so many ways. The same crow-dark hair atop my head, the same olive green eyes with rings of silver that are often obscured by my thick-framed glasses, and the same aristocratic upturn at the end of my nose—a physical trait that is infinitely unattractive in my opinion.

  It thinks I am her. So, it calls to me.

  Again, I don’t know how I know this.

  But my mother was vibrantly alive and healthy and adventurous when she was my age.

  I am not vibrant or healthy or adventurous.

  I am crippled, wheelchair-bound. If I’m honest with myself, the voice that I hear in my head could be nothing more than the imaginings of a girl who has lost so much, a girl who has a great and terrible desire to be wanted. But something inside of me says the thing is real. So very, very real.

  “Never do magic,” I sing out quietly in the melodic haunted tune I’ve added to the words these past months, “never even think about it. Not even once. If you feel it, a tingling in your fingertips, a shaking in your bones... you push it down, down into your toes. Push it down.”

  It’s funny how my mother’s stories and her rules have become more real to me over the last months. My body, though broken and changed, sings with something deep in my marrow. When I close my eyes, I see her face. I hear the words. I remember the way my hands had glowed whilst the fire had destroyed everything.

  AT NEARLY EIGHTEEN, I should be starting my senior year with all of my friends... with my best friend Charlie. Especially her. There’s so much that we’d planned to do together Senior year and now I’ve ruined that along with the laundry list of other things my touch has spoiled. I just could not bring myself to face that life with all its walking, talking, chatting students. The kids who thought life was about parties and books. Because I know the truth now. Life is not fun and games. It’s not about tomorrow. It’s a tragedy in which you inexplicably live when everyone else—all those who are better and kinder people than you are—dies.

  Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t survived, that I’d died along with my mother and father and little brother Toby. But I did not die. I’m very much alive and breathing. And self-pity is an ugly, ugly thing that keeps life at bay. That’s something I have to keep telling myself. Don’t feel sorry for yourself, Tilda. Other people have it worse off, Tilda.

  I only listen to myself sometimes.

  I only believe myself sometimes.

  My life is loneliness, like I am still outside our home hoping the fi
remen will carry my family out and that they will be unscathed. But when they do carry them out, they are burned, blackened, unrecognizable, and they are dead. My eleven-year-old baby brother. I still see him in my nightmares—how his pajamas, several inches too short in the legs, are burned through in places to reveal flaking, charred skin.

  LOOKING THROUGH THE glass, which is bubbled and wavy so that the world outside is always a distortion of reality, I can hear my Aunt Jen yelling my name. Her voice is loud and threatens to ruin my connection with whatever lies beyond the wall of great pines and thick foliage. Real or not, the ever-strengthening threads that connect me with it are something I can cleave to, a tether of security as I stand on the precipice, my childhood behind me and the great chasm of adulthood yawning in front of me. Life isn’t always beautiful. No, sometimes it is a gnarly, thorn-bearing fruit that cuts the throat as you swallow. Reality is bitter and bloody.

  A singular tear, wet and salty, escapes my right eye and crawls down my face. The slowness of its movement is nearly unbearable. I wipe it away with the corner of my shirt and stare at the woods, one part of my brain cataloging the details of the landscape as the rest of my mind wanders away to other things.

  The bright shades of the emerald forest have just started changing, their tips becoming ochre and crimson. I do not look forward to the dull browns that will come after the fleeting and vivid shades of fall. Even though autumn has always been my favorite season, when I can hide my tall frame and thick hips beneath the folds of fuzzy sweaters and patterned scarves, I do not relish in it now. Besides, I am always sitting these days—my hips out of sight and away from scrutinizing peers with slim hips and perfect skin.