“Maybe he would be the better choice. Yes?”
“Don’t you dare,” Quinn growled through clenched teeth.
“You don’t even know him. You secretly wished he didn’t exist.”
“Get out of my head.” Quinn shoved the thoughts of her brother into a mental box.
“Good. You are learning already.”
“Will they leave him alone if I say yes?” The world blinked to black and back again as the cracks widened.
“Yes. But I don’t know what will happen if you say no.” Water tumbled, waterfalls from the edge of the world, churning the once glassy surface of the stilled river.
Quinn stood, shaking in frustration. Her heart felt as if it had been shattered in a million different pieces, and she didn’t know how to put it back together again without getting cut. Saying yes meant going back to face every mistake, it meant facing her demons, her despair. Yes filled her future with the unknown. But saying no? Choosing the pretty dark nothing of death? She knelt on the rock, eyes closed, searching her heart for an answer.
Images of Ami, Marcus, Reese, all her friends, filed past her coffin. Each placed a rose on her casket. Aaron. Would he even come after the way she had treated him? Quinn felt his lips on hers, the squeeze of his hand. She pictured the long, winding scars that snaked up his arms. He had told her he felt as if he had been sent back for a reason, and in that moment she almost believed he had been sent for her. Tears streamed down Quinn’s face. If he would forgive her, they might have a chance. With him, she could get through this. She longed to see him one more time, to tell him she was sorry, that she did love him.
A sudden rush of magnetic wind pulled at her.
“It is done.” The earth shuddered with a loud boom. And with a rush of wind, Azrael unfurled his onyx wings and ascended into the dark sky.
“Wait!” she screamed. “I still have questions.”
“And when those are answered, you will have more.”
“What do I do now?” A tsunami of dark water came at her like a speeding truck and washed her away as the façade crumbled around her.
“Live.” The voice echoed through her mind, reverberating through the nothingness until her head exploded in pain. That same, indescribable pain filled her chest, burning its way up through her throat, followed by an overwhelming need to vomit.
Her head spun as she leaned to the side, water spewing from her mouth. With a sputtering gasp, she inhaled like a baby filling its lungs for the first time. Her chest ached as the air forced its way into her lungs. The foreign liquid exploded outward. Her stomach rolled as she vomited with no control until nothing, liquid or solid, was left inside her.
“Thank you, God.” She relaxed with the sound of Reese’s familiar voice, her hand rubbing her back, comforting her.
“Reese,” she croaked, but didn’t have the strength to turn and look at her.
“Shhh, just lie still until the ambulance gets here.”
Quinn felt her hand on her face, stroking the sodden hair from her forehead. In the distance, Quinn heard the whine of the sirens. Her call to life, to a second chance, to destiny.
Acknowledgements
Pretty Dark Nothing would not have been possible without the hard work of the entire Month9Books team. From cover design, to editing, to marketing, you guys are amazing.
A special thank you to Courtney Koschel and Georgia McBride for taking a chance on my debut and helping me bring Quinn and Aaron to life on the page. I am truly grateful.
Thank you to family and friends who supported me every step of the way. Especially my parents, Rocky and Sherry Reid, for teaching me that anything is possible if you work hard enough. Thank you to my sisters, Kristal Seid and Beth Allen, for being my biggest cheerleaders, and to Preston, Olivia, and Victoria for being awesome and inspiring in every way. A big thank you to my BFF, JaneAnn Morrison, for thirty-three years of friendship, for a lifetime of fights, misunderstandings, love and support that comes from growing up together. Thanks for sticking with me.
Thank you to all of my Scottish family. You welcomed me with open arms and loved me like one of your own. A special thanks to my wonderful in-laws Linda and Drew Innes who let us live in their house, brought me chocolate when I had a bad writing day, and always supported me in my passion. I couldn’t be more blessed to be a part of your clan.
Thank you to my beta readers and critique partners for taking the time to read Pretty Dark Nothing in its early stages and give me feedback. Olivia Allen, Rebecca Niven, Stormie Brown, Dondi Markham, Brian and Marie Cordell, Teresa Hill Berting, Lucy Filmore, Christine Innes, Gillian Caitens, Rocky Hatley, Kim Free, Kortnee Byrd, Vaughn Roycroft, Tonia Marie Harris, and Trey Walpole.
Thank you to all the members of the Writer Unboxed Facebook group who took time to engage in amazing writerly conversation, to Writer Unboxed blog mamas Therese Walsh and Kathleen Bolton for providing an amazing community and space for learning about the craft of writing, and to my fellow Mod Squad members Vaughn Roycroft, Kim Downs Bullock and Valerie P. Chandler for picking up the ball when life got busy.
Thank you to my fellow Hugs and Chocolate founders and co-founders, Tonia M. Harris, Courtney Koschel, Jani Gray, Jamie Raintree, and Rebecca Fields for inspiring and encouraging me every day.
I wouldn’t be here if not for my very first critique group, Dreamcatchers. Each of you helped lay the foundations and for that you will always have a place in my heart.
And last but certainly not least, a special thank you to my loving husband, David Innes, my strength and calm in a storm. I love and appreciate you more than words can say.
Heather L. Reid
Heather L. Reid is both American and British and has called six different cities in three different countries home. Her strong sense of wanderlust and craving for a new adventure mean you might find her wandering the moors of her beloved Scotland, exploring haunted castles, or hiking through a magical forest in search of fairies and sprites. When she’s not venturing into the unknown in her real life, she loves getting lost in the worlds of video games or curling up by the fire with a good story. For now, this native Texan is back in the Lone Star State, settling down with her Scottish husband and dreaming up new novels to write.
Praefatio
Available in print and eBook from Month9Books in
May 2013
www.month9books.com
And now, a sample from the exciting new novel, PRAEFATIO, coming from Month9Books in May 2013!
After everything I’d been through, I couldn’t believe this was how it was going to end. The training, the bloodshed, the kisses—oh my God the kisses—and death, nullified by ten minutes in a police car.
It was hard to talk, let alone think, with the nonstop pounding in my head. It hurt to blink through swollen eyelids, and the dim overhead lights seemed brighter than they were. Incessant buzzing from a fly sitting defiantly atop the fluorescent beam threatened to make my eardrums explode.
Everything was amplified, larger than life, and nothing made any sense at all. I suppose I deserved it.
I watched him, the fly, as he flitted back and forth, struggling to find freedom in the enclosed space of the interrogation room. I wondered if he knew he was going to die here.
The cop stared like I was a freak straight out of a science fiction movie, tentacles and all. I’d been mumbling incoherently since they’d found me and hadn’t volunteered much more since arriving at the station late last night. My mind was jumbled, scrambled as if it were trying to tune to the correct radio frequency, but couldn’t. Flashes, memories from my past, of what I was and what I had done, were returning, but they were all out of order. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to remain in my own skin much longer, and all I could do was shake.
Hours spent waiting for my “paperwork” to be processed didn’t help. How much paperwork could one runaway have?
When I spoke, it came out like gibberish, or maybe like an auctioneer on crack. The visual made me giggle. My voice
was high-pitched and nervous. And then a thought stopped me mid-giggle: Stockholm’s Auktionsverk is the oldest auction house in the world. Not-so-random, but useless information like that flooded my head for no reason at all, or maybe because it simply had no place else to go.
They wanted to know what I was doing on Gavin Vault’s estate, running and screaming, “HELP!” That I was barely dressed from the waist up, another mystery. I would tell them, but in my own words. I refused to lie or say something that could send Gavin to prison. And the statement they’d written FOR me? I was about to tell them where they could shove it when the cop shot me a “you’d better start talking or we’re gonna start the torture” look.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” I said as I sipped hot, institutional-tasting liquid, realizing what I’d said made absolutely no sense to the officer. There’s no way she could have known what she’d gotten herself into. Sadly, she was about to find out. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but you won’t believe a word of it.” Those were the most coherent words I’d spoken since I’d arrived.
The cop seemed confused, like she was surprised I was capable of forming articulate sentences. She watched as I pulled at the sleeves of the oversized sweater on loan from one of the male cops. Then I grabbed my head in my hands. Vivid images raced through my mind, before leaving as quickly as they’d appeared. They were memories that would free me from this stagnant mental prison if only I could set them in the proper order.
The fly whizzed past me. I was a volcano of turmoil and angst and sat, leg-shaking and squirming in the metal chair, attempting to calm the impending eruption. The officer just stared as if I were a nut that needed cracking, only she didn’t have the right tool.
“I’ll tell you everything as soon as my mother arrives,” I offered, sitting back in the steel chair.
The officer looked at me, then down at her blank pad, then back at me and said, “Miss Miller, do you need a doctor? Were you harmed in any … way?” She leaned over the table, lowering her head and voice conspiratorially.
But she was out of her mind if she thought Gavin would harm me. She wasn’t even asking the right questions. Like, “what’s someone like you doing here and how did this happen?” I had to get out of there. I needed to find my brother Remi. I needed to know what was going on with Gavin and what they had done to him. What was taking Mom so long to arrive? It should not have surprised me. She’s always been unreliable. I tapped the table to keep from picking up my chair and throwing it at the two-way mirror. I needed to keep my anger in check, but I didn’t know how long I could. How had Gavin and I ended up in a police station, he accused of an unspeakable crime and me his supposed accuser?
“How did you find me? How did you know where to find me?” I reluctantly asked. I should have been able to get the answer on my own, to read her mind.
“We received an anonymous tip,” she offered, raising her eyebrows, her tone secretive. And then I saw something, a fuzzy vision. I tilted my head sharply to the side and cringed. The intrusion of my brain hurt like heck. A man, talking, then handing over an envelope with pictures of me looking like something the cat dragged in, then gone—the man and the vision. I gasped as the pounding in my head kicked into overdrive. Evidence? How? Gavin had never hit me. It’s a lie.
“What do you want from me? You seem to have all the evidence you need.”
Officer Bladen looked away from me when she replied, “You’re at the very least a witness to a crime, Miss Miller. Has no one explained to you what’s going on?” Then she leaned forward again, cautiously, and opened the folder on the table, my case file. Just like in my vision, pictures of me beat to a pulp and … Gavin seemingly raising a hand to strike me.
I refused to look at her or the photos and stopped rocking.
“Don’t you want to know what happened to you, Miss Miller?” She asked in a soft voice, pushing the folder closer to me. She sounded almost compassionate.
“I already know what happened to me!” I shouted. “I was there, remember?” I couldn’t stop the tears that pushed their way out of my eyes in a race down my cheeks. Gavin and I were being set up. Couldn’t she tell? Wasn’t she trained in these things? I felt like an animal that had been tricked into leaving a small cage only to be locked in an even smaller one.
I lurched forward and tried to grab the folder, to rip it to shreds. Instead, I caught Officer Bladen’s sleeve and a tiny piece of her hand. She snatched it away as abruptly as if I’d burned her. I fell back into my chair, hitting it harder than I’d intended.
Something was terribly wrong.
Officer Bladen shifted in her chair as she checked her watch, then cell phone, then pager. It was as if she were expecting the Governor’s pardon.
“Just tell us what happened, Ms. Miller,” she said and checked her watch again, then looked toward the open door. I pushed away thoughts I couldn’t possibly share.
“You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.” I knew then what I had to do.
“You can trust us, Grace.”
“I’ll just wait for my mom, if that’s OK.”
I know what I am. Memories came flooding back, not all of them good.
Tonight, news broke of the biggest story Peak, Missouri, had ever seen: The arrest of a rock star for unspeakable things. A statement from the alleged victim of Gavin Vault, lead singer of Venus Unearthed, would put our little town on the map even more so than when Mom’s Broadway career took off. Poor Officer Bladen had been sent to babysit me. If successful in getting me to talk, she could finally make detective—the first female on the force to achieve that rank—and make her Army vet dad proud.
Sarah Bladen’s life flashed before my mind’s eye. Wow.
“It’s not gonna happen, your promotion,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. Officer Bladen quickly scribbled “psych eval” on her little pad. I didn’t actually see the words. I just knew it, the same way I knew about the Auktionsverk auction house. News about her relationship with a married officer on the force was about to surface. But that scandal would have to wait until this one died down.
Officer Sarah Bladen sighed heavily.
“When you’re ready to talk, let me know. In the meantime, I’ll go see if your mom’s here.” She threw the newspaper she’d been holding on the table in front of me and left the room. I grabbed it before it hit the tabletop microphone. I flipped the paper around to find Gavin’s photo under the headline: ROCK STAR ARRESTED IN DISAPPEARANCE OF MISSING PEAK GIRL
Gavin Vault, lead singer of Venus Unearthed, was arrested on Christmas Day for the kidnapping and attempted assault of Grace Miller, daughter of Broadway actress Vivienne Miller. Miss Miller, seventeen, was reported as a runaway two months ago by her legal guardians, Victoria and Kenneth Larson, with whom she’d been living since her father, Gabriel Miller, died in a motor vehicular accident. Mr. Vault is considered a person of interest in the disappearance of Miss Miller’s brother Remiel, fifteen, and the Larsons’ daughter Jennifer, also fifteen. The two teens were reported missing three weeks ago. At the time of Mr. Vault’s arrest, Miss Miller was found on the Vault estate in questionable physical condition. She is believed to be suffering from a condition similar to Stockholm Syndrome.
Something in the article triggered a flood of coherent thoughts and memories. When I tell them, when I finally answer their questions, it’s not gonna be good. They thought I was protecting Gavin, that I was his victim somehow. What were they going to say when I told them what really happened? What was Mom going to think?
My stomach churned as I took the last sip of the liquid they proudly called “coffee.” The door to the interrogation room swung open. I stood to throw the coffee cup away and saw Gavin leaning against the wall in the hallway across from me. My stomach churned again, and a great sadness followed.
Every bit the rock star and not a hair out of place, he looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Gavin laughed with the same officers who’d arrested him, and
I noticed he was in the clothes he’d been wearing when they took him away in handcuffs. I wish I’d told him how good he looked earlier. I wish I’d done so many things differently.
Can you hear me? I tried speaking to him telepathically. He didn’t answer or even acknowledge that I’d spoken, so I opened my mouth to call to him.
Our eyes met, and my mouth clamped shut. I was suddenly at a loss for words. One of the officers began leading him down the hall. I wanted to run to him, but my legs were jerked back into place by what felt like shackles, though there weren’t any on me. I tried again, but could only move about a foot from where I stood before being yanked back into place.
“Gavin!” I yelled. My voice echoed off the walls of the interrogation room and out into the hall, making me sound way more desperate than I’d intended.
Gavin lowered his head as if the sight was too much for him. Hot tears streamed down my face, stinging my skin. “Please, Gavin, wait!” He kept walking, as if he didn’t know me at all.
Officer Bladen reentered the room and closed the door.
Still, I heard them laughing and talking outside; it surprised me that I could hear them through the walls. Or was I just hearing voices again?
“You really make a lasting impression, huh, Vault?” One of the cops joked, followed by laughter from the others. By his tone, they seemed like they could have been old high school buddies.
Rage and humiliation got the best of me. I lunged forward, only to be pulled backward by the invisible shackles around my feet.
My landing wasn’t as graceful as I would have liked. Refusing help from a rather amused Officer Bladen, I stood, dusted off my knees, and took a seat.
***
We sat in silence, occasionally staring at one another, listening for anything at all. The only interruptions were Officer Bladen rubbing her arm at seemingly timed intervals and the dings of her cell phone. The fly was gone. He caught the flight out when Bladen opened the door. Smart fly. I found myself missing his flitting and buzzing.
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