Title: The Hunt

Series: Psychic Underground, Book Two

Author: Sarah Elkins

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: December 30, 2019

Heat Level: 1 – No Sex

Pairing: No Romance

Length: 82100

Genre: Paranormal, LGBT, psychic ability, shifters, captivity, law enforcement/FBI, fantasy, medical personnel, shifters, paranormal

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Synopsis

The Facility is undergoing repairs after a chaotic failed escape attempt by several psychic test subjects some months ago. Neila and Henry’s mission is to locate potential psychics for the scientists at the Facility to study, but they have other ideas.

Neila can’t shake the idea of Nikola Tesla from her mind, and it’s getting worse as bizarre things start happening to herself and Henry. As they hunt for more about Neila’s possible past life, they aren’t sure if they will find answers or if they will become the hunted.

Things are not peaceful back at the Facility as troubling secrets come to light, and the Psychic Underground may never be the same.

Excerpt

The Hunt
Sarah Elkins © 2019
All Rights Reserved

The repair work on the Facility was slow going, but the director refused to forego using her office. The ceiling was still missing. New modern cameras, a phone, and internet were being installed: the works.

Director Lianne McClaine sat behind her desk with her elbows on several paper files while she read the results from her last checkup with her oncologist on her tablet. The cancer had vanished. Out of nowhere. Gone. Her doctor was sure there had to be some sort of error with her previous tests. Cancer didn’t just go away.

Not the type she had.

The newly installed landline phone rang on her desk.

“Director McClaine,” she said, leaving her answer vague. A director could be in charge of all sorts of things. No need to out their secret operation because of a wrong number.

“Director, you wanted to see us?” Agent Henry Anderson replied. She remembered him saving her life. The painful feeling of them being temporarily linked; her bullet wounds healing at his beckoning. He had hijacked her body with his shapeshifting ability, but it had saved her life. She wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Despite being grateful to be alive, she also felt violated. The director tried to put the latter feeling out of her mind.

“Yes. You and Blackbird report to my office.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The call ended.

The director glanced over the two paper files once more before she put them back in the bottom drawer of her desk. Agent Henry Anderson’s blood work and DNA tests had the same error the other shapeshifters at the Facility had. The results read as if he had just had a minor blood transfusion from multiple donors. There were traces from more than one blood type. The sort of errors that are normally attributed to contaminated samples. She should have noticed the pattern, even if the doctors hadn’t made the connection. They still hadn’t, but no denying it, he was a shapeshifter.

Henry’s results weren’t the only ones with the error. Besides the known shapeshifters, there were two others with the same anomaly: the pyrokinetic, Wallace, who had been killed by Shorty four and a half months before and “Blackbird” Neila Roddenberry, who had killed Shorty after he had almost succeeded in killing everyone in the Facility.

The whole incident had been a complete clusterfuck. Shorty, a telekinetic ex-con who, sick of being a prisoner and test subject in the Facility, rallied the rest of his test group of four men, Blue Team, to lead an escape attempt. The only reason anyone survived was because Henry had joined forces with several other test subjects.

Three members of Green Team, the shapeshifters, used their powers to help the perpetually disoriented group of telepaths and several doctors escape, bypassing the Facility’s biometric scans by copying Lianne’s own DNA. Green Team’s efforts weren’t what put an end to the assault though. Shorty had his eyes on another test subject, the only other one down on paper as an agent, Neila Roddenberry. The woman had more than one ability and the skill to use them.

After a vicious fight between members of Shorty’s Blue Team and the Facility’s surviving pyrokinetic, a nonbinary person named Lor, that wrecked the hallway leading to the Facility’s solitary holding cell, Henry managed to free Neila from the holding cell. Lianne wasn’t entirely clear on what happened afterward, but the two men Shorty sent to reach the Hole were soon very dead.

Not long after, Shorty and his remaining team member found the director, killed her guards, and almost killed Lianne just before he brutally broke Neila’s leg and dragged the small woman away by her hair.

Director McClaine was surprised she hadn’t been handed her ass on a platter by her superiors. They wanted an excuse to privatize the work the Facility was doing. The vultures circling the Facility had only grown in number since the incident. Defense contractors were interested in taking over where the clandestine government agency had continually failed. Private companies like White Rook and HUGO Defense had personnel trained to use the abilities most people assumed were utter bullshit, such as psychic powers like telekinesis, telepathy, pyrokinesis, shapeshifting, and God knew what else. The federal government was behind the private sector and had been for years. All Director McClaine had left was one more strike, just one more mistake, and she’d disappear into another dark hole somewhere. And even God wouldn’t have a clue what would happen to everyone else at the Facility.

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Meet the Author

Sarah Elkins is a comic artist and writer who nearly had to give up art entirely due to a form of ossifying tennis elbow that forced her to be unable to use her dominate hand for nearly a year. She spent much of that time writing novels with her left hand as a means to deal with the pain and stress of possibly never drawing again. Thanks to a treatment regimen she is able to draw again albeit not as easily or quickly as she once did.

Sarah enjoys reading science fiction, horror, fantasy, weird stories, comics of every sort, as well as any biographical material about Nikola Tesla she can get her hands on (that doesn’t suggest he was from Venus.) She has worked in the comics industry since 2008 as a flatter (colorist assistant,) penciler, inker, and colorist. She contributed a comic to the massive anthology project Womanthology. Currently she (slowly) produces a webcomic called Magic Remains while writing as much as her body will allow.

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Title: Testament

Author: Jose Nateras

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: December 30, 2019

Heat Level: 2 – Fade to Black Sex

Pairing: No Romance

Length: 51400

Genre: Paranormal, LGBT, Chicago, paranormal, supernatural, thriller, Latinx, #ownvoices

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Synopsis

Gabe Espinosa, is trying to dig himself out of the darkness. Struggling with the emotional fallout of a breakup with his ex-boyfriend, Gabe returns to his job at The Rosebriar Room; the fine dining restaurant at the historic Sentinel Club Chicago Hotel. Already haunted by the ghosts of his severed relationship, he’s drastically unprepared for the ghosts of The Sentinel Club to focus their attentions on him as well.

When a hotel guest violently attacks Gabe, he finds himself the target of a dark entity’s rage; a rage built upon ages of racial tension and toxic masculinity. Desperate to escape the dark spiral he’s found himself in, Gabe flees across the city of Chicago and dives into the history of the hotel itself. Now, Gabe must push himself to confront the sort of evil that transcends relationships and time, the sort of evil that causes damage that ripples across lives for generations.

Gabe must fight to break free from the dark legacy of the past; both his own and that of the hotel he works in.

Excerpt

Testament
Jose Nateras © 2019
All Rights Reserved

I pulled out my phone and checked the time. I needed to be at work at six thirty, and unless the train started moving within the next five seconds, I would be late. A commute that usually took thirty minutes, door to door, was stretching closer and closer to taking forty minutes. Still, the train sat there, idle in its dark underground tunnel. There’s nothing worse than being late and getting stuck on a delayed train car at six fifteen in the morning. Fuck.

I rocked back and forth impatiently, a loose rivet in my seat clicking arrhythmically in its socket. Most of the Chicago Transit Authority’s train cars were in some state of disrepair. This car in particular had maps of the train lines missing overhead, cracked lighting fixtures, fractured chrome, and unsecured hardware. The homeless man stretched out asleep across the seats at the other end of the car didn’t seem to care. Neither did the middle-aged nurse sitting kitty-corner from me, listening to music on her phone through bright-pink earbuds.

I took a deep breath to stop my agitated rocking. The thick smell of synthetic flowers wafted along the length of the train car. An otherwise pleasant smell, in the enclosed space of the train car the scent was overwhelming, almost sickening. It had to be coming from the nurse. How’d I not notice the strength of her perfume sooner?

It occurred to me, if I puked on the ‘L’ right then and there, I’d have no excuse but to call in sick. It wouldn’t be the first time someone threw up on the Blue Line. I wouldn’t even have to actually vomit. I could just call in, hop off the train at the next stop, and grab the next one headed back toward my apartment. Tempting, but I could practically hear the voice of my manager Leslie. “Really, Gabe? What the fuck? Aren’t you just coming back from an extended leave of absence, Mr. Espinosa?”

With the sound of metal grinding on metal, the train started to move. I closed my eyes, allowing the momentum to build and hurdle me toward the misery of employment in the service industry.

Maybe misery was an exaggeration. As the train came to an abrupt stop at the Monroe station, I tried to remind myself there were worse fields to work in. Six blocks stretched between the train platform and the Sentinel Club Hotel. More specifically, six blocks stretched between me and the hotel’s restaurant, the Rosebriar Room, where I worked as a host. Walking so far would typically take around nine minutes, and at 6:25 a.m., I only had five minutes to do so. Officially late, I somehow found the energy to hustle up the stairs from the underground train platform and race out into the November chill.

I found myself caught behind a herd of Chicago commuters: business-bros and cubicle drones trotting to their respective jobs scattered across the Loop. Dodging between the office workers drowsily heading to work, I sprinted through the concrete canyon of downtown skyscrapers.

It was still dark. Only after I made it to Michigan Avenue, across from the green expanse of Millennium Park, could I see the first streaks of orange in the dark-gray sky. I pulled out my phone again. 6:31 a.m. “Shit.”

Speeding through the front doors of the hotel, I hurried to the service elevator. With no time to stop at the staff locker room down in the basement, I headed straight up to the thirteenth floor.

People often say hotels are naturally creepy places. I hadn’t really thought about it one way or another until I started working in one. It was true. The Sentinel Club Chicago was creepy, and being one of the oldest buildings in the city only made it all the more eerie. Before becoming a boutique hotel, the SCC was a historied private men’s club, and the Rosebriar Room, now the hotel’s wood-paneled fine-dining restaurant, once served as the private dining room for the club’s most elite members.

I’d been working there for a year and a half or so, and things I hadn’t noticed at first had started to weigh on my mind. More and more I found myself aware of the creepiness of the place. A laugh echoing in quiet, empty rooms. A flicker of movement out of the corner of an eye. A shadow on a wall with no one there to cast it. The feeling of being watched.

The prospect of spending my morning in such a place sounded pretty miserable. Perhaps I hadn’t been so far off in describing my job as a “misery” after all.

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Meet the Author

Jose Nateras is a Chicago based Actor, Writer, and Director who’s worked extensively on stage and screen. Having trained at The Second City, The British American Drama Academy (Midsummer at Oxford ’09), Jose is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago. Having graduated with his MFA in Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), he’s a resident playwright with ALTA Chicago’s ‘El Semillero’ (residing at Victory Gardens). Jose has written a number of shorts, pilots, and full length films, and is a contributor for The A.V. Club and elsewhere. He’s also been known to play the role of adjunct professor and teaching artist around town from time to time as well.

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Title: Forbidden Bond

Series: They Bite, Book One

Author: Lee Colgin

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: December 23, 2019

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 54100

Genre: Paranormal, LGBT, vampire, werewolf, paranormal, supernatural, slow burn, alpha, college, interspecies

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Synopsis

Vampires and werewolves are historical enemies. When the Peace Accord that imposes an uncomfortable armistice between the species is threatened, the entire supernatural community must respond.

Young vampire heir Sinclair Davis successfully petitions the council for permission to attend a werewolf dominated university. Surrounded by a pack of unwelcoming wolves, Sinclair’s first meeting with their alpha doesn’t go well. The handsome wolf hates him.

Alpha wolf Mitchel Edgehill is furious when the university sends a vampire to be housed among his pack, even if he is cute. But there’s nothing he can do since the paperwork has been signed. They’ll have to find a way to coexist.

As tension rises within supernatural society and violence escalates between vampires and werewolves, an uneasy truce develops between Sinclair and Mitchel. The pair attend a peace conference in hopes of preventing war, but when a rogue group of humans attacks, Sinclair is kidnapped and held for ransom. Can the alpha wolf work with vampires to save Sinclair, or will war break out after all?

Excerpt

Forbidden Bond
Lee Colgin © 2019
All Rights Reserved

SINCLAIR

Sinclair stood outside his father’s door, collecting his thoughts. This wouldn’t be easy. To get what he wanted, he’d have to remain calm and focus on the part of his plan most likely to benefit the Vampire Council, over which his father, Luther Davis, presided. Sinclair could do this; he just had to stand his ground. One last deep breath, a polite knock, and he stepped inside.

“Hello, Dad.”

“Sinclair.” His father welcomed him with a nod. Seated behind a large desk cluttered with papers, he looked busy as usual. Having been Turned and preserved at the young age of twenty-two, the fair-haired, sharp-featured vampire could be mistaken for Sinclair’s younger brother, not his father. Sinclair was twenty-six, but only twenty-six. His father had centuries on him, not that you could tell by looking. “What brings you by this evening?”

Okay, here it goes. You can do this. “Dad, I’ve decided to attend Borson University for my PhD this semester,” he said in a rush. Slow down, Sinclair. “I know you weren’t expecting this, but Borson is the best school for Historical Supernatural Studies. I was accepted last fall and I’ve already registered. No other vampire in the council has this degree; I would be the first.”

Sinclair prepared to continue, but his father spoke first. “Son, that’s a werewolf school.” His golden brows drew together. “It’s too dangerous. What’s the degree even worth, coming from Borson?” His stern voice matched his expression.

“I understand your concern, but it’s safer than you realize. I’ll be part of an exchange program. It’ll be good for the council to have a delegate at Borson. It’s a quality academy with a fine reputation, werewolves notwithstanding.” Sinclair talked to fast when he felt nervous.

Luther stood. At nearly six feet, he stood taller than his son by several inches. “The answer is no, Sinclair.” His father approached. “You’ll attend Moore as planned, and I do not appreciate you addressing this at the last minute either. Did you think that by waiting until now, you’d stand a better chance?”

“Um, yes, actually,” Sinclair responded, a stubborn edge to his voice. “Dad, I’m an adult; I don’t need your permission. I need the council’s permission, and I think they’ll grant it. I told you first as a courtesy, the petition has already been submitted, so the discussion will happen at tonight’s meeting. Moore doesn’t offer the courses I require, and the council doesn’t need another finance major; it needs a historian.” His point made, some of the tension drained away.

With an irritated sigh, his father’s gaze drifted to the window. “You’d do this to your mother? You know she will worry. At least accept the transition first, so you won’t be vulnerable. Let us Turn you. You’ve delayed too long. There are no other Living vampires your age.”

Their eyes met. Sinclair felt both guilty and defensive. Guilty because he didn’t want to worry his mother. Defensive because he wasn’t ready to die for immortality. He liked his living, breathing body, eating food, and little things like not burning to ash in the sunlight. He’d hold on to it as long as he could, thank you very much. Being a Living vampire had its advantages, even if his father was too ancient to grasp them.

Sinclair ignored the tired issue. “I’ll keep in close touch with Mom, I promise. I won’t let her worry. Look, Dad, this is a rare opportunity. Vampires don’t get accepted to Borson. Think of how much I’ll learn. It would be impossible without the exchange program. Only four students are selected. It’s an honor.”

When his dad didn’t respond, he continued, “I have to go. I’ve already accepted. There’s no alternate to take my place, and it would be rude to refuse now.”

“So you have me in a corner then, don’t you?” His dad’s gaze settled on him. Sinclair fought not to flinch. His father was not a harsh man, but everyone had their limits, and the head of the Vampire Council didn’t tolerate werewolves lightly. “Why bother to ask at all?”

“I was hoping you’d come to a different conclusion. I thought maybe you’d be proud.” Sinclair’s gaze dropped to his feet.

His dad came closer and took Sinclair by the shoulders, giving him a small shake. “You frustrating boy, of course I’m proud, but this is an unnecessary risk. I wish you’d reconsider.”

“I’m going to go, and it’s going to be fine. I promise.” Sinclair accepted the cool embrace with relief.

“We’ll see what the council has to say,” his dad conceded and ruffled his hair.

Some hours later, the Vampire Council voted unanimously to let Sinclair attend Borson.

Sinclair knew that, in the end, this meant even his father approved. Ultimately, a Doctor of Philosophy in Historical Supernatural Studies would be beneficial to the species. In a society full of forward thinkers and finance managers, Sinclair alone would be studying the past. He’d learn what had brought them to war, what mistakes had been made, and he’d prevent them from repeating those blunders.

There were supernaturals, even now, whispering the beginnings of another war. Sinclair’s work among the werewolves would be crucial.

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Meet the Author

Lee Colgin has loved vampires since she read Dracula on a hot sunny beach at 13 years old. She lives in North Carolina with lots of dogs and her husband. No, he’s not a vampire, but she loves him anyway. Lee likes to workout so she can eat the maximum amount of cookies with her pizza. Ask her how much she can bench press.

If you enjoyed this book, pick up Lee’s debut novel Slay My Love to find out what happens when you’re attracted to the very person who want to kill you an enemies to lovers 56,000k novel available now.

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Title: Wild Bells

Series: Tinsel and Spruce Needles, Book Three

Author: Elna Holst

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: December 16, 2019

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: Female/Female

Length: 14800

Genre: Contemporary, LGBT, holiday, romance, lesbian, disabilities, college student, silversmith

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Synopsis

Lund, Sweden, 1998

Mia Andersson is not a nice person. She is a sharp, sensational-looking, aloof lawyer-to-be, and the busiest sapphic player in town. Mia Andersson takes no prisoners, tells no tales, and if you gave her your number, chances are she won’t call. But this holiday season, at age twenty-seven, wheels that are out of her control have been set in motion, and it looks like she might just get caught in the spin.

Excerpt

Wild Bells
Elna Holst © 2019
All Rights Reserved

Lund, Sweden, 1998

Linda Ling was all that. From the moment Mia had first set eyes on her, at the band’s premiere gig at Blekingska back in October, she hadn’t been able to not see her: Linda Ling turned up in her dreams at night, in her thoughts by day, in casual conversation between classes, in the distance along the streets of late-autumn, early-winter Lund. She was on posters, in clubs, in the air, and—God help her—in Mia Andersson’s masturbatory fantasies. The spiky, jet-black hair, the punk-goth pallor, her slight, androgynous build, the calculated raggedness of her clothing: black netting, torn edges, charcoal and purple stripes. The ankh tattoo at the nape of her neck, which Mia had glimpsed, teasingly, only once at the university library, where she had happened to spot Linda embroiled with a gaggle of friends-cum-admirers, her hair gathered in a messy I’ve-got-brains-too bun to mark the occasion. She had a piercing, as well: a stud below her full, pouty bottom lip, and each and every finger of her hands was adorned with at least two fancy, industrial-sized silver rings. Her eyes were an intense shade of violet, which Mia suspected must be the product of tinted contacts, but it didn’t matter, or rather, it merely added to her attractions—because Linda Ling was so attractive it was unreal.

And Mia Andersson was not in the habit of not having got her leg over that already.

True, Linda was four years her junior, but Mia wasn’t usually squeamish about that sort of thing: she was twenty-seven, not eighty-three. And she’d bet her favourite, well-worn Ramones tee Linda Ling wouldn’t mind a slightly older, a lot more experienced lover.

This wasn’t so much bragging as a statement of facts; Mia Andersson had been a player of, more or less, the exclusive sapphic variety since she had turned fifteen. She had been sexually active for well over a decade, and she had turned her fair share of blushing bi-curious virgins into raging rug munchers. Her gaydar was impeccable. If there was even the slightest possibility, the most infinitesimal potential of queer in a girl, Mia brought it out and honed it to glimmering perfection, before releasing her back out into the wild. Mia Andersson was a dykemaker. It was just her thing.

There was only one problem—one which, despite her being closer to her cool thirties than her red-hot twenties, Mia couldn’t recall ever having run up against before. She was miffed. She was stunted. She was flabbergasted.

Linda Ling was, to all appearances and in spite of her heavy, enticing, smouldering andro vibe, completely, irredeemably, one hundred per cent and counting, straight.

The mere thought caused Mia’s upper lip to curl in distaste, her hand gripping the neck of her beer bottle spasmodically. She just couldn’t accept it, and the non-acceptance had turned into a minor obsession—to the point where Mia Andersson, the Malmö-Lund region’s busiest lesbian lay, had gone a full thirty days (an entire month!) without getting any action. Her frustration was verging on palpable. She needed another drink.

Turning abruptly away from the low stage where Linda and her band members droned out their latest dour-faced dirge—the Raven Choir they called themselves, or something along those lines; to be honest, Mia wouldn’t have given them a second glance, much less paid the price of a ticket, if it hadn’t been for the fact that their lead singer was, well, all that—Mia made for the bar. Or, that was the plan; in reality, she ran crotch first into a froth-tipped pint of lager.

“Oh, for fuck’s—”

Eyes of an indeterminate colour regarded her, from out of a tan face shaded by the stiff peak of a light-blue football cap.

“Unexpected move.” The person to whom these iconoclastic features belonged cocked her head, and a devilish glint came into those previously oh-so-innocent eyes right before she added: “Bet I got your knickers wet in record time, though.”

Mia ‘the Dykemaker’ Andersson was at a loss for words. Slack-jawed with disbelief, she simply stared down at the woman seated—of course, it had to be, this close to the stage—in a sleek purple wheelchair, a now half-empty glass of beer in hand. Or half full, depending on your outlook on life, etc. There was something oddly, disturbingly familiar about her.

The woman switched her glass over to her left and held out her right hand.

“Sandra Ling,” she drawled, and everything came together, all at once, as Mia darted a look back up at Linda, who was, mercifully, not turned in their direction.

“That’s right,” Sandra nodded as she shook Mia’s limp hand vigorously. She had some grip on her; that was for sure. “Twins. I know. I know. It’s not fair; how come I got all the looks and talent?”

Mia snorted, half in shock, half in amusement.

“How is that—” She stopped, not really certain where she was going, what she was saying. Besides, her jeans and—yes, her underwear, too—really were soaking. In a non-sexual, not comfortable at all way. “Fuck, I’m wet!”

Sandra sucked her lips in over her teeth, giving her a frog-like appearance. Kind of—no, not kind of, just cute, actually.

“Yeah, jokes aside, I’m sorry about that. I was just about to—well, never mind.”

Mia shuffled her feet. There was a puddle on the floor, starting to give off that classic old-drunk reek, and she felt about as fresh and alluring as if she had pissed herself. And here she was, chatting to a stranger. A girl in a wheelchair. Linda’s sister. Her twin.

“I should go wash off.”

Sandra sat back in her seat, lifting herself up a little on her forearms. Her torso was—square, almost a perfect square, there was no other way of putting it.

“I’ll keep a look out for you. When you get back, I mean. I think I owe you a drink or something. What did you say your name was?”

“Mia. Mia Andersson. I’m—I’m really wet.”

Sandra’s lips twisted into the subtlest smirk Mia could recollect ever having seen, except—well, except when she happened to catch sight of her own reflection.

She actually, honest-to-God blushed.

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Meet the Author

Often quirky, always queer, Elna Holst is an unapologetic genre-bender who writes anything from stories of sapphic lust and love to the odd existentialist horror piece, reads Tolstoy, and plays contract bridge. Find her on Instagram or Goodreads.

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Title: In The Cards
Series: Mysterious Charm (Book 5)
Author: Celia Lake
Publisher: Celia Lake
Release Date: November 22, 2019
Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Female
Length: 80,000
Genre: Historical fantasy romance. Locked room murder mystery. Tarot cards. House party. 1920s.

Blurb
The Mysterious Charm series explores the magical community of Great Britain (also known as Albion) in the 1920s, particularly those associated in some way with one Lord Geoffrey Carillon. In The Cards is the story of his new sister-in-law, Laura Penhallow, as she attempts to rebuild her life after surviving tuberculosis, a dangerous magical drink, and planning her sister’s society wedding. She has accepted an invitation to the Amberly’s home on a remote island off Cornwall in hopes of making a few new connections – and possibly even making a match herself.

Excerpt In this excerpt of chapter two, Laura meets Galen (and his best friend, Martin) for the first time after arriving on the island. You can read the entire first chapter through the buy links pages, and the series can be read in any order. Happy reading, whatever that is!

***

“Ahoy, the traveller!” Laura heard a voice calling down, someone coming down the path. Two someones. One was tow-headed, one of the shining blondes, sharply dressed in a jacket and slacks and a deep purple vest. The other was dark-haired, trailing behind, wearing rather scruffier clothing. It wasn’t the cut or the fit, precisely, but a sense of wear around the knees and elbows. Despite their differences, they came rushing down as if they were a pair of horses pulling as a team, wheeling and moving together.

“Beg pardon, we didn’t realise the portal had started up. Galen Amberley, of course, in case you’ve forgotten. This is Martin Taylor. We’ve been friends since school. He’s here to fill out the numbers a bit.” He had the upper class drawl Laura had gotten used to from her brother-in-law. It was a voice that assumed the world lay before him, ready to be taken up, or at least provide him all the amusements he might want.

“And because Galen gets tremendously bored at these things. Can’t do without supervision.” Martin’s voice was a bright tenor, somehow sharper. Well-educated, but like his clothes, not quite of the same cut. There was a twinkle in his eyes that Laura thought promised good humour, at least.

“Is this your trunk? Do you mind a charm on it? Martin’s quite good with that one that makes the thing not so blasted heavy.”

Laura nodded. To her surprise, Martin didn’t make a move to do the charm, but stuck his hands in his pockets, as if waiting for something.

Galen glanced over, then laughed. “Martin insists I play fair, even if Mother won’t.” He didn’t continue, however.

Laura let the silence draw out for a good fifteen seconds, then said, amused, “I presume there is more to it than that rather opaque sentence?”

Martin grinned at her. “See, I said she’d prefer it.”

Laura just raised her eyebrow. “I can stand here all day. Your mother might worry though.”

“Oh, it’s Mother who’s the complication. And Father. They’re looking to marry me off, and Martin insists you be warned before you’re thrown into the fray. Have the walk up to collect yourself for the challenge ahead.”

Laura blinked. “That’s rather bold.”

“He’s the bold one.” Galen gestured at Martin. “He was a Boar, at school. He is supposed to charge boldly.”

Laura snorted. “I’ve never thought the house selections were all that.” She eyed him up and down. “I suppose you’re Fox?”

“A hit, a very palpable hit!” Martin crowed.

Galen looked amused. “Well, I make it easy.” He had a deep amethyst ring, matching his vest. “At your service for charismatic plotting, yes.”

“So long as it’s charismatic.” Laura felt a bit off balance, and she was retreating to the silly pleasantries that had kept her safe for long enough. She did not like the undertow here, being thrown into the water with no idea what Galen or his parents were plotting. But there was nothing for it now but seeing if they’d tell her, unless she wanted to storm off in a snit to an empty house.

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Author bio:
Celia Lake spends her days as a librarian in the Boston (MA) metro area, and her nights and weekends at home happily writing, reading, and researching.

Born and raised in Massachusetts to British parents, she naturally embraced British spelling, classic mysteries, and the Oxford comma before she learned there were any other options.