Halfway Dead
(Halfway Witchy Series #1)
by Terry Maggert
Blurb:
Carlie McEwan loves many things.
She loves being a witch. She loves her town of Halfway, NY—a tourist destination nestled on the shores of an Adirondack lake. Carlie loves her enormous familiar, Gus, who is twenty-five pounds of judgmental Maine Coon cat, and she positively worships her Grandmother, a witch of incredible power and wisdom. Carlie spends her days cooking at the finest—and only—real diner in town, and her life is a balance between magic and the mundane, just as she likes it.
When a blonde stranger sits at the diner counter and calls her by name, that balance is gone. Major Pickford asks Carlie to lead him into the deepest shadows of the forest to find a mythical circle of chestnut trees, thought lost forever to mankind. There are ghosts in the forest, and one of them cries out to Carlie across the years. Come find me.
Danger, like the shadowed pools of the forest, can run deep. The danger is real, but Carlie’s magic is born of a pure spirit. With the help of Gus, and Gran, and a rugged cop who really does want to save the world, she’ll fight to bring a ghost home, and deliver justice to a murderer who hides in the cool, mysterious green of a forest gone mad with magic.
Excerpt
I speak four languages. English, naturally, then Latin,
and the Lingua Arcana. The language of magic is not my most unusual language
skill. That honor goes to my fourth tongue, the curious shorthand diner pidgin
that has evolved in the Hawthorn since before I was born. Our waitresses speak
it; so does Louis, and both of the other cooks, and all of the former
waitresses, too. We don’t have waiters; the ladies who wait tables would sooner
die than allow their jobs to go elsewhere, which is usually the way a position
opens up. My mom told me that nearly every job goes from family member, to
daughter, cousin, or niece. I know one thing; they handle the front of the
diner like a finely-tuned engine, so whatever system they have for finding new
staff once every five years, works.
The diner seats about forty if they know each other, and
twenty-five if they don’t. It’s a basic rectangle, with the kitchen in the
back, tables to both sides, and a middle counter where the serious caffeine
addicts like to park when they read their phones or newspapers. To the left is
a small bakery case standing next to the cash register. Bathrooms are along the
far right wall, and our décor is so Adirondack that you expect a moose to come
walking out of the hallways at any moment. Every single thing in the diner is
locally made, and there are panels on the wall where people can leave a
business card, or something declaring that they were here to visit. The layer
of cards is five deep in some places, and I’ve seen names in over fifty
languages. What can I say? People love diners.
This morning, I was joined by Louis, as I suspected, who
spent the bulk of his morning baking furiously to produce over a hundred
pusties in both chocolate and vanilla varieties. Before you ask, of course I
tested the custard. I care too much not to, and you’ll simply have to accept
the fact that my sacrifice to quality knows no bounds.
Mallory and Pat were waiting tables and making chaos into
order, usually by the simple act of refilling coffee cups. Before Pat could
hang her ticket in the window, she squawked an order while pouring chocolate
milk and refilling a jelly caddy. She was in her late forties, rail thin, and
pretty if you ignored a long nose that gave her a faintly sad expression until
she smiled. Her dyed-blonde hair was in the requisite net, and she had the
hands of a pianist, which she was at her church on Sundays.
“Rasher dasher and a Carlie, you stay here,” Pat said
before pinning the ticket to the stainless steel wheel and whirling back to the
front. For people other than the fifteen or so who speak Hawthorn Diner, that
was a bacon sandwich wrapped in foil and a half stack of waffles. Yes, we stack
our waffles; it’s sort of our thing, and my recipe is stellar because it was a
gift from my Gran. Upon retiring from home waffle preparation some years
earlier, it was generally known that she was a ninja with anything that
required batter. The half stack is in honor of my lack of height; it seems that
whoever is the shortest staff member gets the honor of having a small portion
of waffles named after them. Until we hire someone under five feet tall, three
waffles on a plate will forever be known as a Carlie. I can live with that.
Waffles are amazing. I looked out to see who ordered it, and met the eyes of a
tourist who’d eaten the same thing every day for the past week. I gave him a
friendly nod and bent to the griddle; even short timers in Halfway sometimes
learn that routine can be beautiful.
Looking out from the diner, I can see the main road in
town, and it’s usually clogged with traffic that alternates between cautiously
optimistic and the border of open revolt. If a moose or deer comes wandering
along the road, which they do almost every day, people love to slow down, take
pictures, and generally back traffic up to the border of Pennsylvania. It
doesn’t really matter what day of the week it is; tourists are the lifeblood of
my little town, and they’re present seven days a week. This morning was no
different. I glanced out at the slow procession of family cars and SUVs,
wondering if any of the drivers would get off the main road and really see what
they were passing by. I hoped so. It was too beautiful to miss.
The honking was what drew my attention, and I felt a
chill that had nothing to do with scooping ice into a bin that held pats of
butter. Outside, a low-level buzz was building as people began to walk off the
sidewalks toward a forgettable silver sedan that may as well have been
emblazoned with a sign that read rental car. The driver, a man of middle years,
was slumped over the steering wheel, causing the stoppage of traffic. As I saw
this detail, one of our patrons leapt to his feet and ran outside; he had the
build and haircut of a firefighter. A woman reached in and put the car into
park, then opened the door, and in seconds the crowd was laying the man gently
onto the sidewalk mere feet from our door.
He was dead. I could tell at a glance that he was
completely, spectacularly dead. Whatever killed him had been instantaneous. His
eyebrows were furrowed slightly in concentration, and his brown eyes stared up
and beyond the shoulders of the people circling him. We have one police officer
who works our town; he’s a sheriff with the county, and I saw his lean frame
wedge through the group of onlookers to take control of the situation. He spoke
quickly to the man who’d left our diner in such a rush. An older woman who
oozed competence knelt by the body, too, placing her fingers expertly to verify
that there was no pulse. I saw her give a short, definitive shake of her head,
wipe something from the man’s mouth, and then slowly stand. She never took her
eyes from the man’s face. The sheriff, Hugh, searched the body and produced a
wallet, then flipped it open while speaking into his radio. This all transpired
in a matter of moments; the eggs I’d been cooking weren’t even finished when
Hugh began waving people along. I looked down at the cheerful yolks and
wondered what the man’s name was. It was incredibly sad, and I felt a tear slip
down my cheek without permission. I’ve seen death, and I prefer life. I flipped
the eggs and plated them on golden toast, marveling at the normality of people
returning to their coffee and breakfast. I hope that when I die, people can go
on as quickly. The nameless man had just slipped beneath the waves like a
mortally-wounded ship, leaving nothing but ripples soon to be consumed by the
winds.
The firefighter type returned to his seat after a few
more minutes, and I heard his terse, professional report as he told the men
sitting around him at the counter. “Aneurysm or something like it.
Instantaneous. He’s not a tourist, his ID reads Department of Forestry; he’s a
fed of some sort.”
Eventually, the excitement faded and I was caught up in
the bustle of my shift. Before I knew it, it was three in the afternoon and I
was walking home in the sun, alive but more than a little sad, and not entirely
sure why.
Halfway Witchy Series
Halfway Bitten (Halfway Witchy Series #2)
Available for purchase at
About The Author
Born in 1968, I discovered fishing shortly after walking, a boon, considering I lived in South Florida. After a brief move to Kentucky, my family trekked back to the Sunshine State. I had the good fortune to attend high school in idyllic upstate New York, where I learned about a mythical substance known as "Seasons". After two or three failed attempts at college, I bought a bar. That was fun because I love beer, but, then, I eventually met someone smarter than me (a common event), and, in this case, she married me and convinced me to go back to school--which I did, with enthusiasm. I earned a Master's Degree in History and rediscovered my love for writing. My novels explore dark fantasy, immortality, and the nature of love as we know it. I live near Nashville, Tennessee, with the aforementioned wife, son, and herd, and, when I'm not writing, I teach history, grow wildly enthusiastic tomato plants, and restore my 1967 Mustang.
You can find Terry at
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