CHAOS AND ASH
FIRE WITCHES OF SALEM
BOOK ONE
CARRIE PULKINEN
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Chaos and Ash
COPYRIGHT © 2023 by Carrie Pulkinen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Cover by Glowing Moon Designs
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Also by Carrie Pulkinen
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
People loved to claim they were descendants of the witches they couldn’t burn. We actually were. Our ancestors literally could not be set on fire. Neither could we. My sisters and I were elemental witches, and fire was ours to command. The veil between worlds was thin in Salem, and we belonged to the order of witches duty-bound to keep the monsters at bay.
We were the Veil Keepers.
Yep, the witches were the ones that kept Salem safe. Ironic, right? It had always been that way too. Good thing my ancestors couldn’t burn, or this town—and everything around it—would’ve been screwed six ways to Sunday a long, long time ago.
Of course, they didn’t burn witches in Salem. Everyone knew that. They hanged them here, pressed one of them to death, but my family originated in England. Back in the sixteen hundreds, my great-great-who-knows-how-many-greats-grandma was tied to a stake and set on fire. Well, the wood around her was set ablaze. The flames incinerated her clothes, and when the inferno extinguished, Granny stood there naked and unscathed, laughing at the astonished looks on their faces.
Man, I would’ve loved to have seen that. She might or might not have set the village on fire to make her escape. The details didn’t matter. The important thing was that we were here in our little shop on the edge of downtown, preparing to take out yet another horde of monsters to keep safe the very people who would have murdered us four hundred years ago.
Fun times.
My sister Ember laid her forearm across the table, and I dipped my needle into the enchanted ink. Closing my eyes, I focused my energy, drawing from the goddess and infusing the sigil I was about to create with my vim.
“You’re raiding a vampire nest, right? So, speed and strength?” With my fingers wrapped firmly around the grip, I pressed the tip of the needle against her skin and drew the first line.
