Witch's Bell Book One

Chapter One
    E bony opened the door, her car keys banging softly against the chipped wood of the frame. She rubbed gingerly at the scratched paintwork, hoping to smooth out the imperfections. Instead, all she managed was a splinter.
    'You need a paint job,' she mentioned to the store as she walked in, dumping her bag on the counter. She bit at her thumb, removing the shard of wood with little effort and spitting it onto the ground. 'And I need manners,' she replied to herself with a satisfied grunt.
    She didn't have much to do today, in the way of store business that was. She had to stack some shelves, move some books out from the back, and post a couple of rare tomes overseas. Apart from that, this would be a quiet day.
    Ebony abruptly stopped short, half way through flipping the closed-sign to open. This should be a quiet day, she corrected herself. You should never tell the universe what to do. Giving it a categorical order only ever made it tetchy.
    Ebony kicked several dusty books out of her path as she made her way over to the window. She intended to yank open her ancient blinds and throw some much-needed morning light over this shemozzle. As the old wooden slats parted with a creak, perfect stripes of light moved across her face and into the room behind. It lit up the dust motes drifting through the air, like seed pods on the wind, and played against the dark mahogany of her loose, touseled hair.
    Ebony took a moment to stare through the windows, fixing her eyes on the blue skies above. It should be a beautiful, warm summer's day.
    Should be, she repeated to herself as she turned from the view.
    Her long hair trickled over a shoulder as she turned. Though trickle was not usually a word you associated with dead, lifeless hair, you had to widen your vocabulary when it came to Ebony. Not only did her curled strands store up the light like a handful of diamonds glinting in the sun, but the hair itself seemed to have a mind of its own. It sometimes swayed from side to side, like wind over long grass. It sometimes danced between her shoulders, like a bird hopping from branch to branch. And sometimes it just sat there like a storm: eddying, brewing, each tassel a wild concentrated wave.
    No, Ebony's hair was not every day, normal, humdrum, or ordinary. Nothing about Ebony was ordinary: not her appearance, not her life, not her store, not her job.
    Ebony Bell was -
    The bell over the front door gave a light tinkle as someone carefully pushed it open. Ebony cocked her head to the side, long-neck straining until she got a full view of the door and the two men that cautiously walked in.
    One was tallish, the other stout. Both were dressed in apparently cheap, but well-made, gray suits. Both had the same starched white shirts, their collars so stiff and neat that they could have been carved out of stone. The tall man wore a simple black tie, which sat straight all the way down his front. The short man didn't wear a tie, and his top button had popped all the way open.
    Detectives, Ebony thought immediately.
    How Ebony could deduce who these men were based simply on the appearance of their clothes was not important. She had many gifts, many useful, unusual gifts. She also knew the stout man, which helped.
    'Ben,' she curled her lips into a smile, flicking her hair over her shoulders, and moving out into the center of the store, 'I thought I told you never to come here without food?'
    Ben, a middle-aged man with a balding patch so perfectly circular it looked like a mushroom ring, grinned. His grins were half-cheeky, half-erratic, and mostly chin. He delved a hand into a pocket and produced a brown paper bag.
    'Ohh,' Ebony pursed her lips and cocked an eyebrow, 'I have you trained.'
    Ben nodded in a humble but thoroughly fake way, and threw her the packet. Ebony could see the grease glistening off it as it spiraled through the air. When it came to Detective Benjamin Tate and food, salt, sugar, and grease were a dead on guarantee.
    She caught the packet without shifting her eyes. One long, elegant hand simply snatching it out of the air with a snap.
    Ebony let her gaze be drawn to the man with Ben: the tall, silent, brooding man that looked like he belonged in a classical painting of a knight. It wasn't just the way he stood with his chest puffed out, his feet planted, and his hands rounding into soft fists. It was the way his jaw was set with an edge of righteous defiance. The way his short, brown hair lengthened the shadows