It’s been a busy week for me! I completed my NaNoWriMo challenge when I hit my 50,000th word just after midnight last Sunday, but I didn’t slow down after that. Now over 70K, Witch Hunt is entering into the final stretch. 25 chapters and counting are available to read for free on Wattpad. In order to help new readers of the series follow along and catch up on the events from the first book, I added a new prologue today. The following excerpt is from this scene when Rosa goes back to her old house and looks at the ruins of her mother’s garden.

I’d spent weeks chasing down the source of the spell and traced it, finally, to the garden that surrounded this very house. I could not see most of the signs of the fire I used to destroy it; snow covered the scorched earth, and the blackened plum trees in the front yard were starting to fall down under the weight of the winter storms. Yet when I stood there, I could smell the smoke and feel the heat of the flames on Halloween night, crackling as they consumed the source of my mother’s most powerful magic.

There were no clues left for me here anymore, no comfort in remembering a childhood built on lies. I looked up at the house a final time, first up at my old bedroom window on the second floor, then up to the attic where Mom had kept her witchcraft tools and supplies. I still had a key for the door, and I could go inside if I wanted, but I knew what I would find: everything of hers gone, strange symbols scrawled on the wall, all signs pointing toward a dangerous group of magikin that had been banished from the mortal world almost a hundred and fifty years ago.