I hopped onto the bus with music still bouncing through the wires in the back of my head. The hydraulic hiss of the door cut off the cries of the doctors running to catch me. I waved at them as the bus pulled out and joined the flood of neon San Diego traffic under the rose gold sky.
The visual should have been concerning, but, hopped up as I was, the pearl white road and amber horizon seemed more or less normal. People ogled me with dark faces rimmed in blues and reds.
My heart is pounding, a steady reminder that any misstep could destroy everything. There’s nothing for me outside; my value is here now. I can’t tear my eyes from the beautiful people that fill the room. My breath hitches in my chest. I tighten my fist around the drive carrying my invitation. It’s all that keeps me from questioning my presence. Everything around me is the height of popularity.
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“What the hell are you doing here?”
Neal was surprised that Lena, who was staring down his reflection in the vanity’s mirror, hadn’t asked the more obvious question: why was Neal aiming the gun at her back? Or maybe it was the right question; he still hadn’t pulled the trigger.
I phase into the spirit realm, bottled storm in hand. Ethereal mist presses in on me from every direction. Supposedly, ghosts can find their way through it by instinct. Some stay here for decades, unraveling, their fragmented thoughts contributing to the haze.
My Laura wouldn’t do the same. She’ll be at the station,
I’d been studying the atmosphere for years now. Years. All in the hopes of establishing the data to corroborate the impossible.
But I should explain, I suppose. Over forty years ago, I was born under a perfect dragon storm. According to the experts, that happens only once every hundred years. But I knew it happened more often than that.
King Falton stared at his empty banqueting hall. This would be his third midwinter feast since taking the throne. The first had been subdued in honor of his beloved father’s death. The second had been a debacle. Falton’s parents had him late in life, therefore, at the time of his father’s passing,
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“Mr. Everhart, you’re daydreaming again.” Mrs. Crandle taps the screen at the front of the room, her finger poised like a knife, ready to slice through what’s left of my dignity.
At that moment, the heavens smile. “Mrs. Crandle,” Principal Owens’ voice booms through the intercom. “Daniel Everhart is needed in the office.
Lance sat his lanky self on a stool at the end of the outdoor bar and watched the Cadillac parked at the end of the deserted beach. A September breeze pushed off the lake and chilled the air. Perched on the car’s hood, Myrna flirted with one of those no-good Bearfoot boys.
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I wound my way through octahedron-shaped tables occupied by a variety of alien species and approached the only other human in the bar. “Fancy meeting you here, Flynn.”
As soon as his hazel eyes rested on me, I wished I’d dressed cuter than corporate casual. And taken more care with my hair and makeup.
The king sits on a throne of broken bones and watches the girl cross the desert, carrying his death with her.
The air burns Jana’s throat when she inhales, heat wicking the moisture from her mouth. She has walked for an hour, two hours—impossible to tell exactly—with the sun a white, unmoving eye in the bleached sky. The mountain looms over her now, a black mass blotting out the horizon.
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She stood before the back alley wall. Chalk and marker, spray paint and ink splattered the bricks, but all she saw was blood. The entire wall oozed it, out of the alley, down the street, and through the capital city. And she could not do a single thing about it.
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Melvin pulled two ties from his closet and held them up in front of the mirror. He’d been single for so long, it was hard to believe he’d connected with Sophie as well as he had.
“Lexi, search restaurants near me.”
The beauty of a Wednesday night date was that last minute reservations were possible.
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