Description:
Bartender and songwriter Kelli Foster had always kept her eyes trained on the dream of stardom as a means to escape her small-town life. That focus blinded her to threat right in front of her: a bar patron who lulls her into a false sense of security and abducts her for a shadowy organization, taking her to a cabin in the middle of nowhere.
Desperate to escape and return to the world she thought she knew, Kelli bides her time, complying with her captors as they force her into a dream world where she must unravel the meaning of a song to free a hostage trapped inside a tree. Failure to free the hostage means only one thing: death, for her and the hostage.
Joined by an important test subject whose sanity unravels almost from the start, Kelli attempts to free them both. When the escape fails, Kelli’s life becomes even more difficult, and she learns that her assumptions about her life – and the world itself – could all be false. As events spiral out of control, Kelli finds herself caught in a battle between godlike beings that hold her fate, and that of the entire Organization, in their hands.
Bartender and songwriter Kelli Foster had always kept her eyes trained on the dream of stardom as a means to escape her small-town life. That focus blinded her to threat right in front of her: a bar patron who lulls her into a false sense of security and abducts her for a shadowy organization, taking her to a cabin in the middle of nowhere.
Desperate to escape and return to the world she thought she knew, Kelli bides her time, complying with her captors as they force her into a dream world where she must unravel the meaning of a song to free a hostage trapped inside a tree. Failure to free the hostage means only one thing: death, for her and the hostage.
Joined by an important test subject whose sanity unravels almost from the start, Kelli attempts to free them both. When the escape fails, Kelli’s life becomes even more difficult, and she learns that her assumptions about her life – and the world itself – could all be false. As events spiral out of control, Kelli finds herself caught in a battle between godlike beings that hold her fate, and that of the entire Organization, in their hands.
Excerpt:
This is the
first time we see one of Kelli’s visions, following a an injection of the
mysterious hallucinogen.
Something
rustled in the corn. I whirled, but I knew who it would be before she even
appeared. She always found me. “Mimi?”
A little girl
appeared from between the rows, pushing the bottoms of the stalks apart. She
had blue eyes, dark brown hair, and a smile that could just melt your heart –
the kind of smile that never, ever survives into adulthood.
She cocked
her head. “How’d you know my name?”
She always
asked me that.
“We’ve met,
but I’ve told you that before, too.”
She put her
hands on her little hips. “How come I don’t remember you?”
“I think it’s
this place. It always makes you forget.”
“I don’t like
that.”
I looked around.
“I don’t like it much, either. But don’t worry about it. I’m here.”
Wheels turned
in her head. “But why are you here?”
No clue how
to answer that one. “You’re looking for something, right?”
She nodded.
I leaned
down, putting my hands on my knees. “What are you looking for, sweetheart?” I
already knew the answer, but this had gone down a certain path forever, and the
show had to go on.
She rubbed
her eyes. “Cici’s gone. I can’t find her.”
Cici. The girl forever searched for
Cici. I had no idea if she even existed. “Now where did you last see your
sister?” I said.
Her eyes
widened, like I’d shown her the secret of the universe. “We did meet, didn’t we, that’s how you know
about Cici?”
I nodded.
“Where did you see her last?” Knew the answer to this one, too.
She pointed
over my shoulder. “There.”
I knew what
I’d see when I turned. I’d seen it so many times that I’d even started to see
it in my dreams. It didn’t matter, though. Every single time I turned to gaze
on it, it knocked me on my proverbial butt: an enormous, gnarled tree, soaring
up into the sky. This wasn’t just any tree, though. Somebody had carved a
wooden organ out of the trunk, with two levels of wooden keys and wooden pipes
rising out of the higher reaches.
The largest
keyhole you’ve ever seen had been connected to that organ, its details carved
right into the trunk, between the keys and the pipes.
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About the author:
e cam ciudatica coperta asta :D
ReplyDeleteYAY! I won the paperback!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm SO glad! Can't wait to read it!
Thank you very much!
:D