Meet Madeline, in an excerpt from 'Soul of a Witch'
In many ways, Madeline seemed much
as I expected, yet at the same time, not at all. She was taller, for one, not
the hunchbacked sickly bag of bones that Lilith had me picturing. Her posture
evoked an air of dignity and elegance, though her manner of dress supported my
impression of her in the wild days of Lilith’s youth. Drab, ill-fitted clothes
lacking color and style hung loose off her body. Pleated fabrics layered over
her shoulders and arms draped to the floor, leaving only her head and hands
exposed.
Madeline’s hair, like Lilith’s and
Ursula’s, was long and straight, though tied back in a charcoal gray ponytail hanging
all the way down to her lower back. Loose strands, as fine as spider silk, grew
from her temples, spiraled in thin tufts around her ears and fell to rest on
the curves of her neck.
As she neared the threshold, her face
came into the light. I could see then that the years had not been kind to Madeline.
Her skin appeared leathered through time. Furrows gathered in deep horizontal
folds along her forehead. Shadowed crevices in her chin and cheeks intensified
the impression of cracked earth collapsing like a sinkhole around her withered
mouth. Her eyes, dark oil drop specs of intimidation, peered out through hooded
sockets void of eyebrows and lashes.
Soul of a Witch, book 11 in the Detective Marcella Witch's series, due out April 15th 2015
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