Coming from Solstice Shadows
Publishing on February 4, 2014: Fairy,
Texas. Here’s the blurb:
Fairy, Texas, is a small town like
any other, and Laney Harris didn't want to live there. When her mother remarried
and moved to Fairy, where a date meant hanging out at the Sonic, Laney figured
that "boring" would have a whole new meaning. A new stepsister who
despised her and a high school where she was the only topic of gossip were bad
enough but, when she met the school counselor (and his terminal bad breath),
she grew suspicious—he had wings only she could see. Josh and Mason also piqued
her interest, two gorgeous, glimmering-eyed classmates whose interest in her
might not be for the reasons she hoped. Even more, she could not begin to
explain the dead guy she tripped during gym class. Perhaps Fairy, Texas, wouldn’t
be so boring after all.
Excerpt 1:
“Counselor’s office,” I muttered to myself.
At least I wasn’t starting in the middle of a term—though given the fact that
there were fewer than 500 students in the entire high school, I didn’t think I
was going to be able to go unnoticed, even in the general bustle of the first
day back from summer vacation.
I walked through the door marked “Men’s
Entrance,” just be contrary, and faced a long hallway lined with heavy wooden
doors. The spaces in between the doors were filled with lockers and marble
staircases with ornate hand-rails flanked each end of the long hallway.
Students poured in behind me, calling out greetings to each other and jostling
me off to the side while I tried to get my bearings. None of the doors
obviously led to a main office; I was going to have to walk the entire length
of the hallway. And people were already starting to stare and whisper.
God. I hated being the new kid.
I took a deep breath and stepped forward. I
made it halfway down the hall without seeing anything informative—all the doors
had numbers over them and many of them had name plaques, but neither of those
things did me any good since I didn’t know the name or office number for the
counselor. I was almost getting desperate enough to ask Kayla, but of course
she was nowhere to be seen.
I turned back from scanning the halls for her
and caught sight of the first adult I’d seen—and almost screamed. As it was, I
gasped loudly enough for a guy walking past me to do a double take. The man
standing in the open doorway was tall, over six feet, and way skinny—so
emaciated that it looked like you ought to be able to see his ribs through his
shirt, if his shirt didn’t hang so loosely on him. He had white hair that stuck
out in tufts, thin lips, a sharp nose, and pale blue eyes that narrowed as he
watched the kids walk past—and all the kids gave him a wide berth without even
seeming to notice that they did so. He stood in an empty circle while students
streamed around him in the crowded hallway.
But none of that was what made me almost
scream.
For a moment, just as I’d turned toward him,
I could have sworn that I’d seen the shadow of two huge, black, leathery wings
stretched out behind him.
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Excerpt 2:
“Okay, girls,” Coach Spencer yelled above the
chatter around me. “We’re going to get warmed up for this year with a little
run around the outer track.” She gestured toward a field off to the right of
the building. I could see a dirt track wending its way along the edge,
disappearing into a copse of stubby trees and scrub brush at the far end. “Four
laps,” Spencer added. A general groan went up, and I was glad that the
discussion at lunch had distracted me from eating too much. Late August in
Texas is hot.
“Well?” the coach said. “Get going!”
We started off at a trot toward the field,
many of the girls around me still complaining. For a moment, I considered
hanging back with the crowd, but Andrew had told me that Spencer coached the
girls’ track team. I wanted to impress her. So I stretched my legs out as I hit
the track and settled in to a long stride, my breathing still easy.
The afternoon sun beat down on my head. I
watched the small grove grow closer, anxious for some shade. By the time I hit
the bend in the track that led into the thicket, I was yards ahead of the rest
of the runners—so when I rounded the curve and tripped over the body, I was all
alone.
It didn’t take long for everyone else to
catch up, but it seemed like an eternity as I scrambled back, crab-like. It
took a moment for my brain to translate the messages my eyes were sending
it—the images coalesced slowly, like one of those magic pictures with the 3D
images inside.
He had been stretched out spread-eagle across
the trail, head and feet half-concealed in the brush on either side. Blood
pooled around him, sticky and half-dried at the edges. His shirt had been
ripped open and a slash opened him from his throat to his stomach.
As the other girls rounded the bend, I
realized that the high, keening noise in the background was the sound of my own
screaming. As soon as I realized it, I stopped, but several of my classmates
picked up where I left off.
My hands and knees were coated with blood
where I had landed; my skin was tacky with it. I crawled over to the nearest
bush and vomited.
Coach Spencer shoved her way through the
girls and stuttered to a stop, her hand to her mouth. “Oh, God,” she said.
“It’s Cody Murphy.”
Excerpt 3:
I was partnered with Mason
Collier, the infamous football-playing, cute, but possibly black-magicky
friend-of-Bartlef I’d heard about at lunch. I looked around and saw a guy
waving at me from across the room. He was looking at me kind of like he was
hungry and maybe I was breakfast. It worried me.
Still, at least I hadn’t been paired up with Kayla. It
could have been much worse.
“Okay,” Carlson said. “Go ahead and meet with your partner
and plan your strategy.”
Mason and I stood up at the same time and walked toward
each other. I was so busy making sure I didn’t trip over any desks that I
didn’t see Kayla headed toward me until she was right in front of me. And then
she leaned in close to my face and hissed at me. “Don’t get too cozy. He’s way
out of your league.”
I rolled my eyes and moved around her without responding.
Three days. Three days I’d been in Fairy, and already I had an enemy. And I
lived in her house. My life kept getting better and better.
Mason and I met in the middle of the room. Kayla and her
friends huddled nearby, watching us.
“Hey,” Mason said.
“Hey.” Nice, neutral word, hey. Can mean almost anything. Or nothing.
“So,” he said, “where do you want to start?”
He was asking me? Where I wanted to start was away from
here, where there weren’t any dead boys to trip over.
So much for that option.
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About the Author
Margo Bond Collins is the author of a number of novels, including Waking Up Dead, Fairy, Texas, and Legally
Undead (forthcoming in 2014). She lives in Texas with her husband, their
daughter, and several spoiled pets. She teaches college-level English courses
online, though writing fiction is her first love. She enjoys reading urban
fantasy and paranormal fiction of any genre and spends most of her free time
daydreaming about vampires, ghosts, zombies, werewolves, and other monsters.
_____________________________________________
Connect with Margo
Amazon Author
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