Suffer a Witch
By Claudia
Hall Christian
Genre: Paranormal Suspense Romance
Released September 22, 2015
They call her “Em.”
Em for Martha. Em for “Emogene Peres” the name she received in Boston less than
a day after she’d been hanged in Salem Village in September 1692. Em and most
of those hanged as Salem Witches were transformed into immortal witches only a
few hours after they were deemed Salem Witches. Three hundred and twenty-two
years later, they live, work, and love in modern day Boston, Massachusetts
where Em runs a spiritual store called the Mystic Divine, just off the Boston
Commons.
On the anniversary
of the first hanging, June 10, 2014, Em learns that a young man and a team of
ghost hunters have dedicated themselves to finding the crevice where the Salem
Twenty’s bodies were stuffed after hanging. The problem is that Em and the rest
of the Salem Twenty are making full use of those skeletons. What starts with a
young man with big ideas brings the Salem Witches face to face with their
demons.
In Suffer a
Witch, you will meet the Salem Witches as you’ve never seen them. Through their
eyes, you get a sense of what happened all those years ago. Their stories will
move you to tears and make you laugh out loud. Join them as they face a battle
they have prepared for their entire lives.
“You’re a witch!”
A man’s voice laced
with vitriol echoed off the storefront. Several people walking on the sidewalk
stopped to stare at him. Em glanced to her left to see a homeless man wearing
ragged, dirty clothing, long greasy, grey hair, and a filthy beard leaning
against a pillar of the building next door to the Mystic Divine, Em’s
metaphysical shop.
“Repent!” the man
screamed and pointed at her. His finger turned to point toward the heavens.
“Repent or feel the wrath! The hangman is not far away!”
Em scowled at the
man. He lifted a shoulder in a shrug.
“Old habits die hard,”
the man said with a grin. “Plus, the acoustics are great here.”
Shaking her head at
him, Em shifted her paper coffee cup to her left hand and dug around in her
purse for her keys. The man walked toward her.
“Ye be a witch!”
The man’s voice came like a thunderbolt from a pulpit.
Em yelped with
surprise. The plastic lid of her coffee cup dislodged, and her coffee spilled
on the ground.
“George!” Em said.
“You made me spill my coffee.”
“Sorry, Em,”
Reverend George Burroughs said.
“You should be,” Em
said. “God, you smell awful!”
George gave her a
gap-toothed smile.
“That is not a
compliment,” Em said.
George laughed. He
leaned in to hug her, and she waved him away.
“Get inside,” Em
said.
George slunk into
the shop. He stopped near the door and turned to hug her. Em shook her head.
She gave him a key and waved her hands toward the stairs in the back of the
shop. Whistling an ancient hymn, George went through the shop like a pungent
parade. He took the stairs in the back and disappeared upstairs.
Em’s eyes lingered
on the door to her apartment a moment longer than she’d have liked. Shaking her
head at herself, she started opening the small shop. She turned on Tiffany
floor lamps and put away the few things left out the night before. The Mystic
Divine specialized in all forms of spirituality. The most ardent evangelical
Christian and the Wiccan could both find the tools and education they needed to
live their spiritual life. The store was laid out in such a way that there were
nooks for reading, small private rooms for spiritual readings, and two larger
group rooms in the loft upstairs. Em picked up a microfiber cloth and dusted
the section on Gurdieff’s The Fourth Way. The shop made most of its income off
of religious counseling and psychic readings. George was a particularly popular
tarot reader.
She glanced at the
door to her apartment and wondered if he was reading tonight. Longing welled up
inside of her. In her mind’s eye, she saw him standing under a stream of warm
water in his shower. Feeling her presence, he smiled and gestured for her to join
him.
“No,” Em said out
loud.
She forced herself
to get out her laptop and read her email. The next time she looked up, George
was holding a cup of coffee in front of her nose. His long, grey hair was wet
and tied back. He’d shaved. He was wearing clean clothes from his side of the
closet. She took the mug from him, and he rewarded her with a soft smile. They
drank coffee in hungry silence.
“What are you
caught up in?” George asked.
“Some kids are into
the whole Salem thing,” Em said. “I was watching their videos. They’ve found
Gallow’s Hill, you know — the real one, not the park.”
“Oh, yeah?” George
asked
“They say they’ve
caught Bridget’s ghost on camera.”
“How is that
possible?” George asked.
“Who knows?” Em
shrugged. “Maybe we lost our souls when we were hanged.”
George
instinctively rubbed his neck. Em smiled at his gesture.
“How did this
morning go?” George asked.
“Bridget was on the
hill,” Em said.
“What?” George
squinted with surprised.
“She was even
wearing a reproduction of the dress she was hanged in. Shoes, too.”
“She can’t be
there!” George said.
“I told her, but
you know how she is,” Em said. “What’s the point of . . .”
“ . . .being
immortal if you can’t do what you want,” George joined Em in quoting Bridget.
“Exactly,” Em said.
“She told me about these kids. You know, Bridget’s convinced that there was an
actual specter which tormented our accusers.”
“Bridget,” George
gave a sad shake of his head.
“You know, I never
thought of it,” Em said.
“Of what?” George
asked.
“I never gave even
one thought to the idea that there might have actually been an entity that
tortured those girls,” Em said. “I always thought they were . . .”
“Full of shit,”
George said in unison with her.
“But this morning,”
Em nodded, “I mean, Bridget was so sure that I wondered if she was onto
something. Let’s say there was an entity. It presented to the girls in our
likeness. And . . .”
Em shook her head.
“And?” George
raised his eyebrows. “Disappeared for the last three hundred and twenty-two
years?”
“And nothing,” Em
said with a shrug. “That’s as far as I got. Do you think it’s possible?”
“No,” George said.
Claudia Hall Christian
is a consummate storyteller. Whether she’s writing the long running Denver
Cereal or a short blurb for her neighborhood newsletter, she tells heartwarming
stories that leaves people longing for more. These skills make writing
traditional serial fiction — long-form stories that are published as they are
written — a natural for Claudia. Her lifelong writing goal is to write a serial
fiction set in every state in the United States. So far, she’s brought her
brand of addictive, heartwarming fiction to Fort Worth, Texas, in the Queen of
Cool, to Denver for the Denver Cereal, and now to Boston for Suffer a Witch.
Last year, Claudia released the first of the Jornada del Muerto novellas set in
Santa Fe.
A prolific author,
Claudia also writes the Amazon bestselling the Alex the Fey thrillers, as well
as the Seth and Ava Mysteries. She currently has 22 published works. In order
to keep up with her storytelling capacity, she co-founded a publishing house,
Cook Street Publishing, with a group of friends.
Thank you so much for joining the book tour! Good luck to everyone who enters!
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