Olivia woke face down in the slush of dead brown leaves. The slats of grey light filtering through the bare trunks of the trees suggested mid-morning at that time of year. As she sat up, shivering, every muscle in her body stiff and aching, she realised w...
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Werewolf Stories
As the full moon approached, the second tea party came and went, with Olivia putting in a perfunctory appearance. Grace had been absent, and Olivia had been preoccupied with her work on the house. She'd started the week with good intentions, picking up wh...
The following day, Olivia woke up just enough to call in sick: flu, so sorry. She wanted to lie down and die. Instead she padded to the bathroom, grumbling and berating herself for allowing Verity to lead her off to the vampires' den and forcing her to ch...
Grace had assured Olivia she'd be no more than twenty minutes away by train, but the house was lonelier for knowing she wouldn't be coming back. Olivia listened to it echo every step she took as she paced up and down the hallway. More than once she though...
There was one place Olivia hadn't even considered when choosing a bedroom to call her own. Late the evening of the secret funeral, she stood before the door at the far end of the first floor hallway. She knew the house reasonably well from her childhood v...
Up at the top of the graveyard, close to the woods, a low wooden fence marked off a corner of pitifully small plots with far more flowers and messages, bright and jarring in contrast to the sombre graves on the lower slopes. A small procession headed towa...
Even though Auntie Imogen had initially promised to stay out of the way of the clearing, she appeared several times a day 'to see how things are going' and it slowed the process considerably. Finishing clearing the first room was a cause for celebration,...
The following morning Olivia woke before dawn, readying herself for another run, looking forward to it in spite of herself. By eight o'clock, though, she was beginning to wonder what had become of Grace. She had to give up the idea and get ready for work,...
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Olivia's burst of enthusiasm quickly faded again. She'd planned to finish decorating the guest bedroom (her own bedroom, as she ought to start thinking of it) but that prospect became daunting when she looked more closely at the full extent of the damage....
On the Monday, Olivia started her job at the library as planned. She might have been apprehensive but after the turbulence of recent events the library gave her a rock to cling to. Olivia spent the day dealing with pleasantly dull people and things she co...
Getting everyone into one room was like herding cats. Grace had disappeared into the kitchen to chat with Auntie Imogen and clean up the mess Verity had made, and Siobhan had followed. Hoping for scraps. Siobhan had the dirty, hungry look of a stray, and...
Imogen was flitting from room to room, chatting giddily with Lizzy and the other household ghosts, when she encountered the first of her guests. She found him snoring in a chair in the corner of the drawing room, where he'd been for who knew how long. "Oh...
The hour of the tea party loomed large on the horizon. Olivia had contemplated hiding in her room for the duration of the event, but she ventured downstairs to see how the preparations were coming along, at least. Auntie Imogen had worked herself up into...
Cutting through the churchyard on her way back to the house, Olivia stumbled upon Verity's plan to make everything better: she'd arranged a picnic. The day might be overcast but the air was still and dry, probably no colder outside the house than in it. O...
Olivia wallowed in the rapidly cooling bathwater, slipping slowly back towards sleep, knowing that she shouldn't sleep in the tub but too tired to care. Her thoughts tumbled like autumn leaves, in gusts and drifts of vivid-coloured dreamlike images. Downs...