Excerpt: Witchfinder

...“Why did my predecessors have to write so goddamned anally?” Julian muttered, tossing aside another account of the capture of a witch in New Manchester similar in appearance to Eve York, although most definitely now deceased. With a grunt of frustration he leant back in his chair and ran his hands through his hair without fully realising.
His research was getting nowhere; it seems this Eve York was some new Witch, one that had slipped past the Witch-Hunter radar her whole life. Julian shook his head…that was next to impossible considering the very few number of Witches and the dedication of the Hunters.
“Fine, fine,” he said to himself, “Let’s try another approach…” he shifted the pile he was searching through to the side and pondered how to approach this. He’d searched every report made by the Witch-Hunters in recent times of a Witch with red hair and Eve’s age, with no luck.
Then suddenly, it hit him like a ton of bricks…the covens. The Witches had been culled to the point they had no more covens just before his time, but if Eve had belonged to one of them then she might still have been encountered before.
Picking up yet another pile of reports, losing several sheets of aging paper as he did so, Julian began to sort through the reports on the covens.
“Nope, nope…” he rifled through a thick wad and sighed again, then suddenly stopped dead. There it was, a Coven with a member matching the description of Eve York down to the last detail, it said the coven had been executed and there were presumed no survivors…perhaps there had been an error, it wasn’t unheard of.
Then he saw who had written this report, and nearly dropped it in shock. He read it again just to be sure.
He burst out his room, sprinting through the buildings empty corridors with the report clenched in his hand, “Fletcher, Sir! Fletcher!”
Taking the stairs down three at a time Julian headed for the room he knew to be Fletcher’s personal study and brought himself to a screeching halt just outside the door, taking care to enter as quiet and respectfully as he could.
“Sir?” he asked, more quietly this time. He slowly pushed the door open and looked inside. Fletcher was sitting at his own desk, facing away from Julian; he had a scrap of paper clasped in his hands. Julian edged forward quietly, curious despite himself...