Most of you know I’ll be including a short story in the Stroke of Midnight anthology that will be available on December 26th. It ended up being a little over 10k words and features Melena and Emily dealing with a werewolf problem. Sable, the shape-shifter kitty, makes an appearance as well. For now, I’m giving you all a snippet from the beginning to tide you over. Hope you enjoy!
***Update- you can now grab a free copy in any format from Smashwords***
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“Hey, Mel?”
I didn’t look up at Emily as I continued doing sit-ups. Just a hundred more to go. “Yeah?”
“I sort of have a problem.”
She was almost sixteen. She seemed to always have some kind of crisis going on—and those were just the ones I found out about. “What’s the problem?”
“I, uh, seduced a werewolf and got him caught in a bear trap,” she rushed out.
Fifty sit-ups would have to do. I sat up and ran my gaze over her. She had scratches on her face and hands as if she’d been running through the woods.
“Maybe you should repeat that.” I rubbed at my ears. “Because I could have sworn you just said you seduced a werewolf.”
She shifted from foot to foot. “It was payback. Hunter broke into my locker at school and did something really embarrassing.”
“What did he do?” I hoped it wasn’t something that would require me to kill him. He wasn’t eighteen yet. I really needed to wait until after he’d reached the legal age to do something that extreme.
“He rigged my locker so that when I opened it a song played loud enough for everyone to hear.”
Well, it could have been worse. He could have filled it with snakes or spiders or something even more horrifying. With a werewolf, the possibilities were endless.
“Which song?” I asked.
She pushed back some of her long, brown hair behind one ear. “Cooler Than Me by Mike Posner.”
Ouch. He must still be upset with her for breaking his nose and kneeing him in the balls back on Valentine’s Day when he’d tried to crash her party. The song was sort of romantic in a weird kind of way, though.
“How did he manage to do that?”
She shrugged. “Not sure. He had his iPod in there with some speakers and I think he had a remote in his hand. That must’ve been how he turned it on.”
“What did you do?”
“Everyone was looking at me and laughing.” Emily’s face turned red. “It was right at the end of school so I shoved everything into my backpack and took off. He’s been calling me ever since wanting his stuff back.”
I wanted to be angry with the guy, but nothing he’d done so far had really hurt her. Just minor pranks like this and sending her badly written poems. Oh, and that time he showed up outside our house on a full moon with a bloody rabbit between his teeth. He’d left that for her as a gift, though Emily hadn’t found it very amusing.
“Is that why you’ve been shutting your cell phone off every time it rings lately?” I lifted my brows.
Emily appeared to be a cheerful and open person, but if you tried to dig too deep she’d put up defensive walls. Life had already damaged her pretty badly by the time I found her and it was taking a while for her to open up. I tried not to push her too hard, hoping she’d learn to trust me and talk things out when she was ready.
“Yeah.” She glanced back at the door. “I don’t know how he got my number.”
“So you decided to seduce him and get him caught in a bear trap? Is he okay?”
Emily looked down and stared at her feet. “That’s sort of the problem. He’s still caught in it and now he’s turned into a wolf so I can’t get him free.”
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You can add this book to your Goodreads TBR list here.
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