Night & Day
The 19th Year, #3.5
by Emi Gayle
Release Date: February 10, 2014
Target Reader: Young Adult
Keywords: Paranormal Romance
Paperback 978-1-937744-55-7
EPUB 978-1-937744-56-4
Description
Something is wrong with Suze. His memory, his magic, even his muscles have all gone mental. If he’s not careful, the underworld’s version of the loony bin may be his next stop.
Not ready to give up the goat yet—if he had one he didn’t eat that is—Suze sets out to stop the mystical mayhem. Unfortunately, this isn’t a fairy tale, and Suze isn’t Snow White felled by an apple waiting for a kiss. Nor is he Prince Charming.
Nope, he’s just Suze. A destroyer demon stuck without the one person who probably kept him sane for the last eighteen years. Mackenzie Thorne. Or, maybe, just maybe, Mac made him insane, and what was once wrong is now right.
The only thing Suze is sure of—maybe—is that he needs to find the cure. However, with boy wonder memory-less and Mac in California, he’s not even sure where to start.
Of course, once he does figure it out, everything will fall into place like a well designed set of dominoes. Where the path leads, though, is a place Suze never would have expected.
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Excerpt
Chapter 1
Three teenagers barging in to my personal space should annoy the bejesus out of me. Especially given how old I am. Or how old I should be. Today, though, having them here brings a smile to my face, and me up from my cross-legged position on my make-believe grass.
Standing shorter than each of them—how did that happen?—I want to hug them and squeeze them and remember this moment. All of the moments we’ve had, really. But I won’t. Not after this one. Today, I’m saying goodbye.
Mara comes to me first, hands extended, palms up, just like she has since the first time she came to me. She lifts the little blue creature I’ve dropped there up to her nose. “I love it.” Taller than me, by at least four inches now, she’s grown into an awesome thirteen year old girl, as pretty as her mom and as spritely as her dad. Her soft red hair brushes my hand as she leans in and hugs me. Big green eyes stare down at me. “What is it?”
The girl would love dirt if I gave it to her. Haven’t done that, but if I was, say, my sister, I might have done it just to test the theory out. “I think a better question is who is it?, right?” I ask.
Mara holds up the little blue creature by its wing. I place him back on her palm. The miniature demon does a little jig on her opened hand. “Ooh! That’s so cute! But, no. I don’t get it.”
“You don’t recognize him?”
She shakes her head.
“That’s actually good. I’ll get to him in a little while.”
Michael is second to reach me, and another of my traditional gifts goes into his hand. “Um . . .” From a thirteen year old, that seems just right. Though, a poker chip should at least generate some sort of question, right? Perhaps . . . ‘why?’ or ‘what is this for?’ Then again, he is his mother’s son, so I should have known.
Stephen, on the other hand, stands back, and I go to him and deposit one single item into his open hand. Pushing his wireframe glasses up his nose, he cocks his head and points a finger at the metal key I’ve placed there. “I recognize this.”
He should. “You do?” I ask, a knowing smile flitting across my face.
Stephen steps closer, so much innocence and supreme curiosity in his thirteen year old self. “I know I’ve seen this before. Something . . . I don’t know. I just do.” He follows Mara and Michael to a trio of pillows I’ve imagined onto the ground around where I’d been sitting. “So, what do a blue toy, a poker chip and a key have in common?” Stephen asks as he sits.
Mara and Michael plop down as well.
“And a box of dominoes.” I point to a set of black and white pieces in organized rows inside small red container in the center of our space.
With a feigned indifference, Michael hitches a leg up and drapes his arm across his knee, the circular game piece I gave him hidden in his closed fist.
“Okay . . .” Stephen starts, “… a demon, a poker chip, a key and a box of dominoes. That’s four different things today. Normally, when we come here, you give us one thing which and a moral.”
A clue and story are exactly how we begin our visits every single year and have for the last ten. I hold back the sigh, reminding myself that this is the last visit for a reason.
“Okay … so … today’s gifts are to prove to you that happily ever afters’ exist.”
“Like Cinderella?” Mara asks. “Because . . . you know that’s for three year olds, right?”
“Of course I know that,” I say. “Which is why this is so not a fairy tale. But it does start with once upon a time . . .”
All three groan.
“. . . way more than a few miles away from here . . . a demon bought a car . . .”
[snip!]