you can have a whole bouquet! 💐
A bouquet ^_^ For your kindness, a nice-sized excerpt from my non-secret but only lightly promoted Glass Arrows spinoff. I'm proud of the progress I've been making on this one . . .
Glass Arrows
Book 1 of 3
Chapter 1 - When Angels Fall
Last time I’d been here, this was commercial property. Stuff had been crammed into every foot of available space. Boxes and pallets and eerie blue light through dusty warehouse windows.
In a cleared area, in the very centre of the room, there had been a wide steel basin filled with ice water. My throat burned at the memory of that basin.
Now, the main room could have doubled as a bowling alley.
Just acres of clean maple-wood flooring and the sweet smell of varnish.
“Hel-lo,” I crooned, voice echoing in the cavernous loft. “Someone order the extra-large double-cheese, or can I have it?”
Conditioning had me hugging the wall – sense propelled me forward. I followed the discrete sounds of someone moving around to a bathroom set just off from the main living area.
Clean white light spilled out onto the glossy floor. A shadow moved in that light, punching the air from my lungs and I felt an almost giddy surge of panic.
Enter freely, and of your own will.
The bathroom was gray marble throughout. White light diffused through frosted glass; the smoky soft glow shining off chrome fixtures, delicately ornate. Leather-padded stools at the vanity – . . . and the smell of rot, of putrid flesh, overwhelming in the wide, well-ventilated space.
I had seen bodies before. I was no stranger to death.
That smell hits you like a slap.
“You called me here,” I drawled “for this?”
Leon knelt by the sunken marble bath, peeling off a pair of blue latex gloves. A liquid trail of decomposition dribbling into the drain –
“Seemed as good a reason as any,” he said. “It’s your city, if not your business. Consider this a courtesy call.”
“There’s a body in the bathtub,” I stated, solely for the benefit of the people eavesdropping through the transmitter in my ear. I asked, “Do we know who she is?”
“Isobel Heron.” A muscle feathered in his jaw. “Codename: Bobcat.”
She was an asset. Because of course she was; Syndicate Captains weren’t in the habit of investigating deaths for kicks. A stringy tendril of black hair slid forward, slithering over Isobel’s decaying shoulder.
Leon glanced up. Brown eyes in a strong, handsome face.
I looked again at the body in the bath. She was young though I, myself, wasn’t much older. That could have been Thea lying there. In some other universe, in another life, that might have been me.
Being no stranger to death had never numbed me to it. That absence of person. Of a soul. Call it what you want – I saw void in the dead, and that void scared me.
