by Jaida Jones
“Am I speaking fucking tongues?” I asked. “Last I checked, I was in fucking Volstov.”
Ginger must’ve known which way the wind was blowing—not in his favor—because he nudged the bonnet sitting next to him out of the way. Damn right, I thought, but I didn’t take her place, just shoved in to stand over him so I could see what the fucking deal was.
In the box was a scale. It’d been pretty badly burned, of course, but one side of it hadn’t taken too much damage, and on top of that, it’d been polished to look like it was pristine. Some of the gilding was worn away because of it, so it caught the light all wrong. Silver, so it wasn’t mine, but I’d seen that color before. I’d know it even if I was asleep.
“Chastity,” I said.
Everybody was looking at me like I’d gone crazy. Maybe I had. But I couldn’t take their gawking for another second. I was going to start knocking heads together, beards and bonnets alike.
“The fuck are you looking at—” I started.
“Rook!” Thom said, from across the common area.
“Rook?” a bonnet said.
That name was starting to be a fucking problem. I didn’t have time to be recognized or sign anything. I didn’t want to tell stories, or answer stupid questions; I didn’t want any of these idiots to know how things really were because unlike some people I didn’t know how to explain it. I didn’t know how to explain anything. The whole mess just was, and it wasn’t for anyone to know about but the people who already knew. It was why I’d left in the first place. Maybe I’d been a hero for this country but now I couldn’t stay here one fucking second longer, and even that was starting to be too much.
Without thinking about how much Ginger paid for it or even how he’d shit his breeches, I elbowed him in the face and grabbed the box from him—everybody else still too dumbfounded to make a move against me or figure out what I was doing before it was too late. Someone in the crowd let out a shout, but I was already turning away.
Thom’s face was blotchy and horrified, with an ink stain under his nose like it was bleeding. I could’ve punched him right then, but I could’ve punched anybody at that point. Who it wasn’t didn’t matter.
“Are you stealing?” Thom demanded.
“Can’t steal something that didn’t belong to a man in the first place,” I snarled. Everyone was shrinking away from me now, but I didn’t care what they were thinking. “Someone’s selling our girls. Piece by fucking piece.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JAIDA JONES is a graduate of Barnard College, where she wrote her thesis on monsters in Japanese literature and film. A poet and native New Yorker, she had her first collection of poetry, Cinquefoil, published by New Babel Books in 2006. She also writes the Shoebox Project—a Harry Potter fan website with over 5,000 subscribed members.
DANIELLE BENNETT is an ex-Starbucks barista from Victoria, British Columbia, where she studied English literature at Camosun College. She has finally seen her first firefly in New York City. Havemercy was her first publication.
Shadow Magic is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett
Excerpt from Dragon Soul copyright 2010 by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett.
All rights reserved
Published in the United States by Spectra,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jones, Jaida.
Shadow magic / Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett.
p. cm.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Dragon Soul. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
eISBN: 978-0-553-90675-2
I. Bennett, Danielle. II. Title.
PS3610.O6256S53 2009
813′.6—dc22
2009013270
www.ballantinebooks.com
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