Well, now I'm feeling generous, so here: have some misc passages from this novel. People need to piss me off more often so I share more. 👀 Not line-edited yet, but this is the final manuscript.
SCENE 1
Her pen scratched the paper over and over again as she wrote out question after question, giving each a few lines of space between them. Then she scribbled two out for every one she kept, and started again.
It had been a week and a half since her encounter with the ghost, but whenever she was home, she could feel its presence in the background. It was waiting, watching, and though there was a tension that told her base animal self to flee, some yet unknown part of her held it at bay. Told her to wait and let this all play out, despite how scary it seemed. So, she did.
Ila picked up her pen and the notebook in the waning hours after work on a Friday, sat cross-legged on her bed with the soft glow of her bedside lamp illuminating the page, and she wrote. Wrote out questions in the notebook that, she hoped, would fill up fast with words that weren’t her own.
Finally, after four and a half mangled sheets of notebook paper, Ila settled on a basic list of questions on the fifth page. She drummed her fingers on the back of it, and stared into the middle distance. It felt like the ghost was waiting for her to finish, and as she set the notebook down in front of her, her hands shaking, there was a soft crackle of energy that unfurled in the half-dark of her bedroom.
It came close, slowly, and she scooted back on her bed. To give it more room, she told herself. Never mind that her heart beat so fast it was like a bird fluttering in alarm, never mind that her mouth had gone dry and her breath became shallow.
On the paper in front of her, “What are you?” was the first and most obvious question she could think to write. The answer was almost instantaneous, and she wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that the letters popped into reality on the page, fully formed and without delay in the milliseconds she didn’t stare directly at them.
“A swer dif icult. Hard o write pr perly for n w.”
She frowned, leaned forward, then jumped as her eyes flicked and skimmed over a string of words that hadn’t been there a second before, below the first.
“I can ot desc be wh t I am. I am not h man. I m a man.”
Ila was tentatively surprised at it—at his—articulation in spite of the missing letters that made her read out the answers two or three times before she understood what they said. It was still a frustrating effort though, and when she blinked again he’d answered the next question jotted down on the page.
“A summ ns. It i my way to your wo ld.”
Before he could answer any other questions on the page, Ila blurted out, “What is your name?”
There was a pause from him, from the ghost that had inched himself so cautiously up to her bed while she had her back pressed flat to the wall. She stared at where she thought it—where she thought his—eyes might be, waiting. The silence between them swallowed up all of her focus, and in the absence of anything but her heartbeat she thought she heard a quiet whine of static. Static, and for a split second, what sounded like a pen scrawling on a piece of paper.
When she looked down the pen hadn’t moved, but words had been added.
“My na e is Idris.”
SCENE 2
“You summoned me, and in doing so you made me real here. By your hand, I am real.”
“Is that what this was for?” Her hands clenched into fists, and she took a slower breath than she’d managed before. Her heart pounded in her chest and she felt like she was going to pass out. “What the fuck have I done?”
Idris was silent for several moments as he watched her. His eyes were darker than she’d ever seen, so pitch that she could not discern between iris and pupil. They captivated her, and because of them it took her longer than it would otherwise to study the rest of his gaunt, angular features. To study the way the light bounced off of blood, flesh, and bone.
His silver, coiling hair was tied back from his severe widow’s peak into dozens of braids, which were themselves tied back into a plaited ponytail. Some hung down over his broad shoulders like thick vines, and the contrast of gray with black at his temples that ran down his jaw through most of his beard only highlighted his dark, weathered skin.
She didn’t think something that claimed to be immortal, inhuman, would look so…so perfectly human. Every pockmark and scar, every wrinkle and pore, the flashes of yellowed, crooked teeth every time his lips parted all spoke of someone so mortal.
He licked his lips. Movement caught her eye, and her gaze flicked down to watch his hands move as he spoke. He had all manner of rings on both of his hands from simple bands to extravagant set pieces for beautifully polished stones, all in gleaming silver. “You have done exactly what I needed you to—what you needed me to. You wanted to communicate better, and what you have done will allow us to do that.”
SCENE 3
He shifted in his seat, turning toward her. “But I am trying to help you understand, and so I am trying to learn to speak. Forgive me if I still have trouble finding the right words.”
“You’re right—sorry.” She pulled her legs up, wrapped her arms around them, and laid the side of her head on her bent knees.
“I do not expect you to have much patience with me. It is okay.” He cleared his throat. “When you are awake, that barrier is back. I see the spaces you occupy as…as if they overlay my realm. Not always, and I can walk away from them at any time, but I can access them. In my home, my bedroom, the forest…”
He spread his hands and let one of his long, lean legs stretch out in front of him. “You look like starlight. Everything you touch glows white-hot with your energy, even after you stop touching it. Your spaces are like bright shadows. It is mesmerizing to look at—I will sometimes stand in a space you do not occupy for long periods of time, experiencing how it might feel for you to be there.”
If Ila thought she’d been flustered before, the way he talked made her breath catch and made her skin fuzz like soft static. Heat flushed and colored her face and her chest, and it took her several tries to ask, “And what do I look like now?”
Idris cocked his head. There again was that smile in his voice. “You look like you. And you are still like starlight to me.”
She blurted, “If you’re trying to get me to kiss you again, all you had to do was ask.”
He laughed and it was a low, guttural thing that made her shiver. “If I wanted that, I would have kissed you and saved pretty words for much later.”
She wet her lips and watched him. There was something he wasn’t saying, woven into the polite formality of his speech. She’d never been kissed before—Tim’s kiss on her cheek notwithstanding. She’d craved carnality for most of her life, and she’d never had the opportunity to indulge in it. Maybe this clash between her world and his meant that she could indulge, just a little.
“What if I wanted you to kiss me, Idris?”
Idris froze. He wasn’t moving much to begin with, but all the subtle, dim light that played off his form ceased entirely and gave him away. He was a flat, black void in the shape of a man—a man that seemed very desperate to do exactly what she wanted.
He sighed. “I want to try something first. Before I do what you—what I—want.” He turned to lean his head back against the wall, exposing the arch of his throat.
With the dark between them and her inhibitions already running away from her, Ila could admit to herself—and only herself—that she wanted to bite him there. Bite him and see what sounds he could make with his beautiful voice that weren’t words at all.
“Tell me,” Ila said. She coughed as though that might clear the huskiness of it, and heat fluttered anew beneath her skin.
“I would like to…to play with you, while you are awake. To test the boundaries of the bond magic—and as an…idle curiosity.”
Her heart was in her throat, and she still somehow let out a soft laugh around it. “Just an idle curiosity?”
His gaze bored into her, and he said nothing in reply. The air shifted to an electrified charge with Idris at it’s epicenter, promising more than curiosity that neither of them were willing to admit to.
~~~
If you made it this far, then perhaps these excerpts have piqued your curiosity enough to preorder Her Fire? ♥
