Checking in and Bonus Snippet! (Patreon)

So I've been working on the next story (featuring characters from the Firebug universe) and it's still not done. This is mostly because I've been focusing on getting the Curses manuscript edited (again) for my agent in the hopes that I can get his stamp of approval and send it off to my publisher. I appreciate your patience, for sure, and figure you guys would rather get a new book from me sooner rather than later.

To reward your kindness, I'm offering up a snippet from a book that I wrote with author Martha Brockenbrough (Game of Love and Death) that we're also currently editing to get off to a publisher. It's weird and I love it. So I picked one of my favorite scenes to share with you. We don't have a name for it yet--we've been referring to it as the Kraken book. Hope you love it, too!

(PS I'm not sorry about the 50 Centaur photo.)

*************************************  

There is a reason they call it the dance of war. Your quarry stands across the room. Eyes lock. A challenge is issued. You approach. You circle. You connect. Your pulse slams the ancient rhythm of life, and you question everything that brought you to this moment. You have no concept of anything that might come afterward. There is only now… 

Give me a sword over a corsage any day.

 –Sen Taur’s Big Book of War

  

“Drink up.” Dee shoved a red plastic cup of punch in his hand. “Don’t worry, I fixed it.” 

Fixed meant she’d added vodka. It was the alcoholic equivalent to iocane powder. Odorless, tasteless, and deadly. 

He, Domino, and Dee clinked cups. “Never get in a land war in Asia!” Their standard toast.

“She’s by the ficus,” Dee said, after they’d had enough fixed punch to feel slightly warm and off-balance. 

“What?” Rick said. 

“The girl. The one with the sword. The one you lo-o-o-ve.” Dee stood next to Domino, who’d slung his arm over her shoulder and was looking altogether too happy to be considered sober. 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He felt warmer already from the vodka. “And ficus doesn’t even sound like a real word. Ficus, ficus, ficus. You made it up.” 

“There is one plant in this whole stupid gymnasium,” Dee said. “Don’t be an idiot.” 

“It’s my nature to be an idiot.” Rick drained his cup. “Fine. Whatever. I’m just going to ask if she knows what our P-Squared homework is. I forgot to write it down.”

Dee snorted and Rick chucked his cup over its shoulder, confident he’d hit her in the face. When he heard her protest, “ Orc-hole!” he knew he had. 

He found Isabel leaning against a wall behind the single sad and solitary plant. If it was anyone else, he would say she was hiding. She wore a sky-blue strapless dress, which she kept tugging at, and her usual crown of braids wrapped close to her skull had been turned one notch fancier with baby’s breath and jeweled clips. In the light, which had been run through blue gel filters, her skin looked smooth and mysterious, like the surface of a faraway planet.

“If you make fun of me, I will cut you into tiny pieces and feed you to my cat,” she said, loud enough to be heard over the DJ’s remix of Baby Got Kraken. Rick took a half-step back and held his hands up as if in surrender, but he’d noticed her expression when she saw him, and it was a smile. A real one. 

“Kidding. Mostly, kidding,” she said, her expression now blank. “But still, don’t make fun. I feel like a goon.”

“You don’t look like a goon.” Rick had never been weak-kneed around a girl, but Isabel in a dress was enough to make his legs wobbly.

They stood side by side, listening to the song. Every second that passed, Rick felt worse. At some point, he was either going to have to come up with a good topic of conversation or ask her to dance. 

“Rock and a hard place,” he muttered.

“What?” Isabel put a hand to her ear. “Music’s too loud.” 

“Do you want to…” His throat constricted as he tried to think of a question. Any question. She was staring at him now and his mind had turned to white noise and static. “Did you bring your sword?” Rick wanted to punch his own mouth. What a stupid question. Any weapon outside of the Mantafungus™ Monster Combat Arena was confiscated. Even the rapiers and swords Isabel used for fencing and sword practice had to be checked out, school issued, and instructor supervised. Personal blades and projectiles were to be left at home, or checked in at the office the moment you stepped onto campus. Safety was the job of the Rangers. Rick had received several demerits after the wyvern episode, and he was sure Isabel had received even more.

Isabel grinned and Rick’s heart brimmed with something that made him feel warm and stupider than a unicorn. 

“No one but Louis ever wants to talk about weapons.” She glanced around, as if to ensure they weren’t being watched, and reached into a pocket in her dress, pulling out what looked like a hilt.

“Watch,” she said. She twisted an amethyst embedded into the pommel and a four-foot-long blade slid out.

“May I?” Rick said. He held out his hand. She gave him the sword and he inspected the base of the hilt, just to be sure. Then he smiled and gave it back to her. “Seems like whoever made it knew what they were doing.” 

“Yeah, I like it pretty well.” She twisted the amethyst, retracted the blade, and slipped the whole thing back into her pocket. “Unknown maker, so it’s not worth a lot of money. But the balance is excellent.” She adjusted her dress. “I had to put weights in the other pocket, otherwise the dress hung funny.”

“Wanna dance?” Rick blurted it out like word vomit.

“Dance?” 

“It’s when you move your body to the tempo of music.”

She gave him a death-glare.

“That’s what people do at these things, right?” 

“I’m here strictly to accept my slot on the Monster Meet team,” she said. “Do I look like the sort who’d shake her moneymaker for no reason?”

“You have a very pragmatic moneymaker.” Rick smiled, despite his nerves. “And I could give you a reason. Mrs. Oliver is coming over here. I think she saw your sword.” Mrs. Oliver was headed their way, only to be stopped by Kyle, who was no doubt asking about an extra-credit assignment.

“That’ll do.” Isabel grabbed his elbow and led him to the dance floor. The bouncy dance song ended, and after a moment of awkward blank air, the DJ said, “And here’s a slow dance for our centaurs and dryads.”

Isabel tugged her fingers out of his hand. “Shudder.” She took a step away and Rick felt his chance evaporating.

In a soft and calculated way, he clucked like a chicken.

Isabel frowned at him. “Was that supposed to be a chicken or a cockatrice? I could barely hear you over this wretched din.”

“A chicken. Cockatrices have a slightly reptilian hiss to their cluck.”

Isabel scanned the room, no doubt doing a perimeter check, even at a semi-formal school event. “I know.”

“I was implying that you were being one. A chicken, that is. Not a cockatrice.”

“I’m not stupid, Rick, I just can’t hear you. You do realize that I’m armed and you aren’t, and that I could kill you where you stand?” 

“Not without getting several demerits and filling out your weight in release forms.” 

“I’m not filling those out. You know, again.” Isabel grimaced. “Anyway, I’m not a fan of this song.” 

Rick silently agreed with her. Though very popular, the song, “Dirty Claws,” was crude and lacked the subtle charm of his favorite eight-tracks. Rick held out his hand. Isabel hesitated, shrugged, and took it. 

On the dance floor, she stood close enough to him that he could smell her skin. If someone had asked him his name right then, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to produce it. Isabel had melted his brain. 

He inched closer. He wasn’t totally sure where to put his hands, which was ridiculous, because he wasn’t new at this. He wasn’t a player by any stretch of the imagination, and he didn’t want to be, but he’d grown fairly comfortable with romantic situations. Isabel made him feel like he’d never kissed a girl—his pulse skittered erratically, his palms sweated.  He kind of wanted to throw up. Okay, so he didn’t go out with a lot of girls who could literally kill him. Or one who chose formal wear with pockets so she could bring her sword. But those were two of the things he liked about her. He wondered what other weapons she carried. He was sure that Isabel had more than one trick up her sleeveless dress.

“Just don’t breathe too close to the flowers in my hair,” she said. “They’re a special strain my grandmother developed, Baby Breath of Gorgon.” At his raised one eyebrow, she explained, “At your range, you’re fine, but if you get too close and inhale their perfume, your body will seize up and collapse. Then you’ll vomit, release your bowels and bladder, and possibly die. And this dress is dry clean only.”

He was torn between fear and respect. “Your grandma sounds terrifying.” 

Isabel’s beatific smile told him that she agreed and loved the woman for it.

With that in mind, he was even less sure how to proceed. He let his hands hover for a minute before he decided that the small of her back would do. She rolled her eyes a bit, but put her hands on his shoulders anyway. And so, not quite touching anywhere else, they danced. 

They danced, and Rick felt his molecules realign themselves as the planet shifts its magnetic field: all at once and forever. It just took this one touch for him to know that no matter what, he would love this girl for the rest of his life.

He leaned in, avoiding the flowers. “I like your necklace.”

“It’s a garrote.”

Of course it was. He held her closer.