I'm so excited that REACH FOR YOU is finally available! If you'd like a taste of this newly released novel, the first chapter is below.
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 Freemont from her mother—and from Chase, the enigmatic half-ifrit 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 alley 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 . . .
Chapter 1
We journey. Ceaseless and hungry.
Carved into stone
tablet. Tenerife, Spain
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.”
