Teaser Tuesday #4

Another spoiler free excerpt from Chiaroscuro. This one is for the setting:

Ari was positive she heard wrong, yet Lee was the one looking disturbed by the eye contact. Maybe she hadn’t said it loud enough. It had been a while since someone had commentated on the level of her voice.The bottle of water crinkled between Lee’s fingers. “What?”Ari cleared her throat. “Should I say it a little louder?”“Do I look like I need a hearing aid?”“Um, then, why aren’t you freaking out?”Lee lowered the bottle and smiled. The expression made Ari want to jump a little, but the presence behind her was too acute for her to even step back. “Well, if you wanted me to freak out about this, then maybe I should freak out about the fact that your boyfriend can somehow tear the heart out of a human body. Or maybe I should freak out about the fact that there are zombies running around my countryside, powered by high levels of energy coursing under my feet. Or - or - maybe I should freak out about the fact that the world’s ended, Britain’s infrastructure shot, and I’ve had to decapitate people in ways Henry the eighth would be proud of to survive.” Her grin glittered against her dark skin. “Where do you want me to start?”Clearing her throat a second time, Ari said, “Considering that you’ve had much more time to adjust to all that, Aza aside, I don’t see how you can correlate learning about the existence of magic with—”Enough disgust soaked Lee’s expression to shut Ari up without her speaking. “Never mind. Just get cleaned so we can get out of here. And preferably to find some more alcohol.”

Happy Tuesday!

Teaser Tuesday #3

Taking a break from my usual excerpts of Dance Macabre, here's one from the first draft of Chiaroscuro. Ari and Lee, my co-protagonists, have just stopped fighting - or sparring, as Lee would call it - because Ari suddenly started coughing like someone dying:


“So that’s your cost, then?” 
Even with Lee’s face cast partly in shadows, Ari could still see the little cut her one and only strike had made at the corner of Lee’s mouth. What she couldn’t make out was her expression, and Lee did have a track recording of saying one thing and feeling another thing.
“The cost of my magic?” Ari said carefully. 
“No, the cost of the car we’re driving in. Stop staring.” 
She switched hands on the bottle, keeping from the urge to clear her throat. “Sorry. No. The cost isn’t torture.” 
“Oh.” The disappointment in Lee’s voice had the plastic under Ari’s fingers crinkling. “Then what the hell was that just now?” 
“Part of it.” 
“There’s more?” 
Ari licked her lips. The water hadn’t washed away the sharpness of blood at all. “I don’t really feel comfortable talking about it.” 
“That’s nice. Wish I could feel comfortable about the fact that I'm traveling with a demon and a witch across post-apocalypse England.”


Happy Tuesday!

Teaser Tuesday #2

Continuing from my teaser (two weeks ago, I think?), here's another tidbit from Danse Macabre. Just like the other, it's spoiler free:

Cerek minimized the lacrosse picture and brought up an article. Before he could start, Rose giggled. Because it was creepier than the sound of the devil’s laughter, Cerek waited until she was finished to look at her.

Her legs were drawn up to her chest. The half-finished loaf balanced across her knees. “Do you suffer from obsessive compartmentalization?” 

Cerek felt the back of his neck heat up. “What? Why?” 

“You’re giving me a debriefing.” Rose gestured to the screen. “Enlargements, comparisons and now a newspaper article? Are you aiming for Quantico standards?” 

“You said to explain what I thought!” 

The creepy giggling returned. “Since when do explanations require side-by-side photographs?”  

If her objective was to entertain herself with Cerek’s embarrassment, then it had been achieved. He slammed the laptop lid down, and Rose all but jumped out of her seat, amusement gone. “Don’t take out your insecurities on my baby.”

Happy Tuesday!

Teaser Tuesday

New meme! I'm going to be teasing excerpts from my male-POV WIP every Tuesday after Top Ten. A quick pitch of my WIP would be a YA Sherlock Holmes meets American Gods. No spoilers, of course.

If Cerek ever saw a tube of lipstick, it would be a hundred years too soon.

“Oh, stop with the sulking. You got your prize in the end, didn’t you?”

He stared at Rose. “It took me half an hour to convince her that thing wasn’t for me.”

She straightened up from under the hood of the car and wiped at her nose with the crook of her elbow. “And now we both have confirmation that you won’t run away screaming whenever I ask you to do something questionable. It’s win-win. Get me a beer from the back.”

Cerek threw his hands up and climbed out of the passenger seat. Of course she had stolen beer. When he popped open the trunk, he wasn’t the least bit surprised to see his dad’s favorite cooler sitting beside his duffal bag and Rose’s backpack.

He still hesitated before opening the cooler. “We’re on the side of the road.”

“A road off the highway in mid-state Kansas. You think anyone’s going to care if two eighteen year olds knock a few?”

Cerek took out two bottles and shut the trunk with his elbow. Rose popped open them with a twist of his dad’s wrench. He had yet to say anything about the tools too, but at least she had taken the spare box. On top of stealing the Skylark, the cooler, the beer, maxing out the emergency credit card twice and kidnapping him, the spare toolbox should be considered the cherry on top.

“Even better, you didn’t phone your dad when you had the chance. You're starting to trust me.”

He ignored her amused tone and thought carefully. Cerek had checked the motel’s phone when Rose had gone to the bathroom. How she managed to talk her way into getting the phone blocked was well beyond anything he wanted to know. Then Cerek remembered the saleswoman eyeing the phone at her side and resisted the urge to slap his palm against his forehead. 

Despite his excellent self-control, Rose laughed. “Man, I bet you get itchy at the thought of lying to a falling star.”