"This was well written and very much anticipated. [...]
Pat Esden gave me a read that I will love to read again. The entire series now available will be one that I start with one book one day then move on to the next book the next day. I would read this again." - The Book JunkieReads, Goodreads
Description:
Release Date: June 27th, 2017
Her passion is her greatest weakness.
His legacy is his prison.
To reunite, both must fight the demons within.
A world of deception and danger separates Annie Fremont from her mother—and from Chase, the enigmatic groundskeeper with whom Annie’s fallen in love. But she vows to find her way back to them, before Chase succumbs to the madness that threatens his freedom. The only person who can help is the magical seductress, Lotli, a beautiful, manipulative woman . . . a woman who has disappeared.
Annie must stay strong, even as the future she imagined is slipping away. With the help of family and friends, she discovers that Lotli is being held against her will, by those who want to exploit her powers. But though weakened, Lotli remains a powerful ally and adversary. A bargain is struck. And now Annie’s only chance to rescue Chase could also tear them apart . . .
Loyalties will be tested, walls will be breached, and enemies will be fought, yet Annie’s greatest battle lies within her own heart—to trust her love for Chase to overcome its greatest enemy, and to save those she holds most dear from the terrifying realm of the djinn. For all of their lives depend on it.
EXCERPT
Chapter 1
We journey. Ceaseless and hungry.
The campsite
was ominously silent. Then a breeze lifted and my ear caught the faint clank
and rattle of the bones and knives hanging in the pine trees behind us.
“You don’t
think they’re both dead, do you?” Selena whispered.
I scanned
the dilapidated camper ahead of us, a do-it-yourself RV created out of an old
bread truck. Despite the midafternoon warmth, the doors were shut tight. The
tent behind it, barely visible from our angle, bowed under the weight of rain
that had pooled in its canopy. There was no campfire smoke. No trampled grass.
In comparison to when we’d come here last week, the place looked deserted.
Goose bumps
pebbled my skin. I gave the camper another once-over. “Zea was really old and
sickly. He could have died—or if the kidnappers came here first looking for
Lotli, they could have found him. They might have—”
Selena cut
me off with a glower. “You mean, supposed kidnappers.”
My jaw
clenched. Yeah, that was exactly what I
meant. I understood why my cousin didn’t like that everything we’d
discovered pointed to her boyfriend, Newt, being involved in Lotli’s
disappearance, and perhaps Zea’s as well. But I thought we’d gotten past that,
like a bunch of times already.
I swiveled
toward where we’d parked our Land Rover. The Professor stood rooted next to it,
a mixture of disgust and apprehension crinkling his face. From his scholarly glasses and sandy brown hair all the way down
to his polished loafers, he looked anything but ready for our reconnaissance
trip out here on the back roads of Down East Maine. An afternoon of research at
Oxford University would have been more appropriate. “You want to check inside
the tent while we look in the camper?”
His gaze
flicked to the soggy tarps. He cleared his throat, then—as posh as ever—said,
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally against the idea. But the thought of
discovering a rotting corpse is a teensy bit abhorrent.”
“Would you
rather discover one in a closed-up camper?” I snapped. It was lucky we’d driven
into the campsite from the main road instead of walking like we’d done the last
time. I’d assumed the Professor had an
adventuresome spirit to go with his young Indiana Jones good looks. Especially since he was an
archaeologist, though this summer he was tutoring Selena’s eleven-year-old
brother as a favor. Still, and
despite how eager he’d seemed to come with us, the Professor had freaked the
second we started past the creepy stuff Zea and Lotli hung in the trees to
scare people off: the knives and bones, pieces of copper pipe, broken mirrors,
and doll parts. Frankly, I was surprised he’d even gotten out of the Land Rover
at all.
I pasted on
a smile. “Sorry. I don’t much care for the idea myself. Let’s just hope he’s
napping or something.”
The
Professor wiped his hands down the sides of his chinos. “I truly hope you’re
right.”
As he headed
for the tent, I tramped toward the camper with Selena close behind. If only
Chase were here now. The creepy stuff hadn’t bothered him at all, and the fear
of Zea being dead would have only driven him forward faster.
My chest
tightened, my longing for Chase aching inside me, raw and unrelenting. If it
weren’t for me, he would be here now. Instead, both he and my mother were trapped
in the djinn realm, prisoners of his father, Malphic. If it weren’t for me,
Lotli wouldn’t be missing either.
“Well?”
Selena jerked her head at the camper door. “Are you going to just stand there?”
I raised my
hand and knocked. One second passed. Two seconds. I rapped harder. Nothing. I
tried the doorknob. It turned beneath my grip. I opened the door a crack,
hesitated, and took a deep breath before pushing it open all the way.
A wave of
hot, musty air rushed past me as if the camper had been closed up for days.
“Hello?” I
said, sticking my head inside. I gave the air a cautious sniff. No dangerous
odors, like a leaky gas stove, permeated the air. No rotting-trash smell—or decomp.
Selena
nudged my shoulder. “What are you waiting for?”
I swallowed
hard and stepped forward.
The place
was cramped, a gypsy wagon on steroids. Tassels and prisms curtained the
windows, letting only faint streaks of light inside. Miles of fuchsia and
turquoise fabric draped the ceiling and walls. Animal skulls, feathers, and
nubby candles clustered inside miniature altars. The fridge, table, and chairs,
every surface that wasn’t fabric covered, was painted purple or black. Stars
decorated the ceiling. An antique bed piled with crimson quilts and an
avalanche of pillows took up the camper’s entire backend. It was cozy enough, I
supposed. But I couldn’t begin to imagine what life had been like for Lotli,
apprenticed to Zea as a child because of her magic abilities, essentially
indentured. Not that I thought a devout shaman like Zea would have been cruel
to her. It was just so different from anything I’d experienced.
“Zea, are
you here?” I called out. “We need to talk to you about Lotli.”
I minced my
way deeper into the cramped space, working my way toward the back of the
camper. Cold sweat carved a trail down my spine. I crept past a tiny kitchen
and dining nook, then the bathroom—one toothbrush in the holder, a washcloth
draped over the edge of a yellowed sink.
I returned
to the front of the camper and pulled aside the curtain that divided the living
area from the bread truck’s cab. Seats for the driver and a passenger,
seashells glued to the dash, insulated coffee cups in the holders—
Something
brushed the back of my neck.
I yelped and
jumped sideways, whipping around to see what it was and smacking my elbow
against the wall. Pain zinged up my arm. I glared at Selena, standing barely an
inch behind me.
“Shit,” I
said, rubbing the sting from my arm. “You scared the hell out of me.”
She gave me
a sheepish pout. “Sorry. I thought you knew I was there.”
“I didn’t
think you were that close.” It
wouldn’t have hurt half as bad, except I was already sore and bruised from
being thrown out of the djinn realm earlier in the day.
Her pout
transformed into a smug smile and she flipped her blond hair over one
shoulder. “Looks to me like Zea and
Lotli might have pulled a vanishing act after all. Huh?”
I stopped
rubbing. “Or the Professor’s about to find something disgusting in the tent.”
“Want to
bet?”
I closed my eyes, struggling to regain my composure. We
couldn’t afford to waste time discussing the same thing over and over again,
any more than I could have afforded the luxury of staying home to nurse my
aches and pains. Chase and Mother were in danger. And I couldn’t go back to the
realm and rescue them until we found Lotli. Without her and her flute-magic, it
would be too risky, perhaps even impossible to enter or escape from the realm.
I shoved
past Selena and strode to the tiny bathroom. “While we’re here, we should find
something personal of Lotli’s that you can use to scry and see where they’re
holding her.”
Glancing
around, I spotted a scruffy hairbrush. You couldn’t get much more personal than
that. I grabbed it and brandished it toward Selena.
She stood
just inside the bathroom doorway, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed. “Cut it
out, Annie, I’ve had enough of you talking like Newt kidnapped Lotli, the
innuendos and little jabs. Maybe his family’s hiding something, but Newt
doesn’t have anything to do with it. So quit acting like he’s evil, okay?”
I mirrored
her stance. “He told you his dad was a stockbroker, that they owned their
summer home. Those were lies. His brother is a registered creep. No matter what
you want to think: Newt’s not innocent.”
She turned
her back on me, her voice bordering on hysteria. “I don’t know why I bothered
coming. You’re so, so . . . You always have to be right—” Her voice died and
she slowly faced me. Angry red blotches mottled her face. But tears rimmed her
eyes.
My anger
drained. She didn’t look pissed. She was trembling like she was about to fall
apart. Earlier today, when we’d first heard about the lies Newt and his family
had been telling, I’d seen something in Selena’s eyes, something beneath her
disbelief.
“What is it?
Tell me,” I asked gently.
She raked
her hands over her face. “Nothing. You just need to trust me. I know Newt
couldn’t be involved. And he wouldn’t have let his brother do it either.”
I leveled my
gaze with hers and toughened my voice. “What makes you so certain? Tell me the
truth, Selena.”
Her chin
quivered. “I just know.”
Tucking the
hairbrush handle first into my hip pocket, I stepped closer. I pushed her hair
back from her face. “You’re my cousin. Please. Tell me.”
“Nothing. He just wouldn’t do it. He loves
me.”
“I get that. But—”
She shoved
my hand away. “No, you don’t get it. I know
he loves me. Like forever.” Her eyes
pleaded for me to understand what she couldn’t bring herself to say.
A
possibility seeped into my head. My
hands went to my mouth, covering a horrified gasp. She couldn’t mean. She
couldn’t have. “What did you do?”
“I kind of—I
put a . . .” Her voice faded and she looked down at the floor.
“A spell?” A
month ago, the idea of witchcraft being involved would never have occurred to
me. Now it seemed more than likely.
“You can’t tell anyone. Mom, Dad,
Grandfather—they’d kill me.” She curled her arms over her head, her shoulders
shaking as she crumpled down against the wall.
I crouched
and put my arms around her. “Whatever it is, it’ll be fine. It can’t be that
bad.”
“It is,” she
sobbed.
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About the author:
PAT ESDEN would love to say she spent her childhood in intellectual pursuits. The truth is she was fonder of exploring abandoned houses and old cemeteries. When not out on her own adventures, she can be found in her northern Vermont home writing stories about brave, smart women and the men who capture their hearts. An antique-dealing florist by trade, she’s also a member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, and the League of Vermont Writers. Her short stories have appeared in a number of publications, including Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, the Mythopoeic Society’s Mythic Circle literary magazine, and George H. Scither’s anthology Cat Tales.
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