THREEFOLD:
A POOKA IN HIGHCROSS HALL
Harrowmere Academy Book 1
By Stephanie Ayers

Excerpt

Chapter One: The Invitation

The wind shifted in sudden, impossible currents, its icy fingers playing with Gwenna’s hair and lifting the edges of the rolled parchment that had appeared on her doorstep. As she watched, the letters “G” and “M” burned magically into existence like it had been branded just for her. She knew what it was. No human hand had delivered it. Not that it mattered. Invitations to Harrowmere Academy rarely arrived by ordinary means. She frowned, one eyebrow tilting.

“Well, this was unexpected.” 

Gwenna wrapped her cloak around herself and bent down instinctively, half-expecting it to vanish into nothingness. But it didn’t. She reached out tentatively, and the moment her fingers brushed the parchment, it darted away, like a startled rabbit, and landed neatly on the top step again. Gwenna grinned. Finally, something that understood her. 

“Trying to test me, huh?” she said, circling it, feeling the faint hum of magic in the air. She shifted her weight, her tail flicking instinctively. 

The letter quivered, heavy with an old magic, and the ink glowed into existence as if lightning chased it. 

“Gwenna Meadows,” it read out loud, its deep voice rumbling and curling slightly as if it had a sense of humor. “You’ve been accepted. Come.”

Gwenna snorted. “A talking letter? Amazing, but I’ve seen better.” 

She flicked a strand of hair from her face, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Why would such an elite school as Harrowmere invite someone like her? She was a nobody—a pooka-born shape-shifter who couldn’t control her abilities, and definitely not someone important enough for acceptance into the most famous shifter academy in the Otherworld. It had to be a mistake.

The wind twirled around her again, teasing, tugging at the hem of her coat. Something within it laughed with her, a whisper only she could hear.

“Gwenna Meadows,” the letter repeated, urgent and authoritative. “You’ve been accepted. Come.”

A white stag blinked into existence along the crossroads, tail swishing, eyes bright and cunning.

Gwenna’s lips curved into a mischievous smile. “Alright then,” she said, stepping toward the stag. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Somewhere, in the folds of the crossroads, in the bowing of the trees, and in the sighing of the wind, magic stirred. The academy—a monstrous medieval castle wrapped in fog—shimmered behind the stag. A doorway flickered. The entrance waited. All Gwenna Meadows—pooka, unicorn, human, and chaos unbound—had to do was walk through it.

About Author Stephanie Ayers…

Stephanie Ayers, word whisperer
Where horror & fantasy collide

A creative ninja with a dark mind and quirky nature, Stephanie Ayers writes all the words and spins twisted tales full of horror, fantasy, suspense, and anything in between. An international bestselling author with a trunk full of tricks thanks to a checkered past, she haunts Irish castles and snowy mountaintops in her dreams while living the unicorn life in Ohio disguised as a human. When she isn’t listening to the voices in her head, she spends her days as a mom, Gigi, cat mom,  and Netflix binger, while avoiding housework at all costs.

With ink in her blood, an absence of fear, and a passion for telling stories, she isn’t afraid to dip her pen in the inkwell of many genres, and even has four successful series in her name—the stand-alone horror volumes of The 13 Series, the amateur witch detectives of the Coven Cozy Mysteries, the individual displaced characters in the Portal to Madness series, and her epic five book fantasy series, Destiny Defined.

When she isn’t lost in her overactive imagination or entertaining her mini-unicorns, you can find her all over social media and find a full listing of her works on her Amazon author page. Her favorite wandering place is her readers’ group on Facebook. Join the herd now!

Her favorite quote is: “The blank page is a canvas on which the writer paints a story.”-Stephanie Ayers