Officer Banks, the security guard from earlier who’d pushed Henry’s wheelchair, stepped into the room, folowed by another person I could not yet see.
Henry squeezed my hand. “She’s almost here…” The officer stepped aside and an impressive man dressed in an impeccable suit stopped before me, the smile wide on his handsome face. He looked very familiar, though I’d never seen him before. His features were so…so Henry.
“Bonjour, mademoisele,” he said, extending his hand. “I am Thibeault Delacroix, and we are in immediate need of leaving this beautiful city, non?”
“She’s here, Gemma. Alicia…she’s here…”
I trembled violently, my body overcome with torrents of emotion. I released my grasp of Henry and threw myself into the surprised arms of Henry’s grandfather, crying in spasms of joy, of pure, unadulterated relief. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the ghostly glow of Henry’s mother. She was smiling.
As relieved as I was to see Thibeault, I wasn’t naïve enough to think that his presence was the end of Lucian’s very immediate, very real threat.
“Thibeault, they’re here. Lucian’s here—his people—they told me we wouldn’t make it out. Please, we have to go!” I begged, puling on his arm.
“My dear girl, you are safe with me. Lucian cannot touch you now.” He placed his hand on my wet cheek and the surge of warmth almost buckled my knees. Like when Henry touched me, only times a hundred. And with the added element of a sudden vision: a plane, a vast blue ocean, fields of green, a house, a woman. A sheath of calm enfolded me.
“C’est bien, Miss Gemma,” he said. Thibeault nodded to the security guard as he broke his physical connection with my face.
The airport police officers mobilized and we were rushed out of the building into a private hangar where another set of guards stood at attention. Four burly men, outfitted for war, two of them strapped with intimidating weapons across their chests. The door to the plane opened and a young woman hurried down the stairway to greet us.
The two lesser-armed guards scooped Henry from the wheelchair and sailed up the metal steps toward the plane’s interior. His head flopped back and I could see he’d passed out.
I scrambled up the stairs, Thibeault close behind, the two heavily armed guards behind him as the plane’s engines roared to life. It was deafening, but not so much as to drown out the sinister warning that assailed my ears as I reached the top of the gangway.
“Have a safe flight, Gemmy-Gems. We’l be seeing you again before you know it.”
I dared not look past Thibeault for the location of the speaker.
The sudden heat of the bronze amulet against my chest coupled with the intense burning of my right palm told me everything I needed to know.
Lucian was folowing us to Rouen.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In case you’ve never done it, writing a book is damn hard.
Getting it published? Even harder. When NYC agents replied to my queries with requests for the manuscript, and then said thanks but no thanks, I wasn’t prepared to let that be the end. This story—
these people—have been too much a part of my life for too long.
Gemma and Henry and Junie and Ted and Marlene and Lucian (yes, even the bad, bad Lucian—isn’t he delicious?) are real to me.
They’re the people I have sacrificed hours with real friends and family to dote upon.
Writing a book is not a solitary endeavor. When Sleight was ready for other eyes, my fantastic crew of beta readers read and ripped. As such, wild thanks go to my biggest fans, Alanna R., Alysha V., Emily H., and of course, Yaunna S. My critique partners helped sculpt and restructure—thank you, Tracy Mueler, for those kiler line edits I looked so forward to every morning for a month; to Sue Ho, for facilitating when I needed it; and to Nicole Settle and Professor Alicia Hal in Alaska for being so honest with feedback.
With their advice and suggestions, I’ve sweated over the minutiae to a degree that would make any Virgo proud.
No acknowledgments page would be complete without recognizing my best-best-best friend-in-the-whole-wide-world, Lauren Albrice, who, between flashes of her own briliance with her mighty paintbrush, read the first (abysmal) draft and then sat through another round once the ink had dried on the fourth rewrite. I edited and rewrote while sharing cup after cup of instant coffee in her kitchen. She paints. I write. It’s what we do, even though the other housewives think we’re up to nothing but gossip and smut TV.
Husband (Gary Young), thanks for tolerating my mania and for yanking me back by the ankles when I was leaning too far over the edge. I wouldn’t believe in myself (or anything), if it weren’t for you.
You rock.
Mom (Kim Norman) and Dad (John Norman), thanks for supporting my research with al the great books (Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Kabbalah, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, among others), the pep talks, and for being my mom and dad when I was acting like a spoiled, whiny brat. And thanks, Mom, for teling me that it’s okay and not at al pompous to write an acknowledgments page because I did work very hard on this project, and I didn’t go it alone.
Thanks to Janey-O, Christine, and Andrea, my writers group friends who inspire me to keep moving forward with their consistent, loving reminders that quitting is not an option. And Miss Rachel, you write the most amazing book reviews ever. Thanks for reading, reviewing, and believing.
If you don’t have mentors, get some: Lynn Henry of Random House Canada, Mary Schendlinger, and Steven Galoway. I learned so much in the brief time I spent under their grand, wise tutelage.
Finaly, thanks to my wee babies:
Blake, Godspeed. Come home from Afghanistan in one piece.
I’m so proud of you. We love you to the ends of the earth and back again.
Yaunna, thank you for reading my stuff and for making sure my slang sounded hip. You did me a solid there. You have always been my rock and wil inspire me until I die.
Brennan, thank you for teling me every day that I’m a beautiful mommy and that you think I’m a terrific writer, even though you haven’t read my book yet because you’re working your way through the Percy Jackson series. You are such a sweet, talented kid.
And baby Kendon, not a baby anymore, thank you for writing me such fantastic emails to tel me how proud you are, for supplying me with an endless stream of smooches and hugs, and for being the comic relief when it didn’t feel like there was anything left to giggle about.
The first draft of this book was written in my car at night, longhand, in a coffee shop parking lot, surrounded by cops and schizophrenics, over the course of six months. If it weren’t for the kind folks inside the building—Melissa, Saly, and Ralph—I wouldn’t have had my nightly peppermint tea, two milk, two sugars, to keep the juices flowing. And about those nights where you were out of peppermint: don’t let it happen again. Earl Grey and green tea are poor substitutes. Plus they make me gassy.
Indie publishing was not the way I saw this book happen, but if a handful of you love it as much as the handful of us here do, wel, then al these months won’t be for naught. If a bigger handful of you love it and share it with your own legion of humans, wel, we might have ourselves a little party.
And I stil have not given up on seeing Mark Strong do his dastardly best to breathe life into Lucian Dmitri.
Thanks, dear reader, for playing your part in The Dream.
Contact:
Web: www.jennifersommersby.com
Blog: http://planet-jenn.blogspot.com
Twitter: @JennSommersby
Facebook: Jennifer Sommersby (fan page)
Playlist:
Regina Spektor The Sword & the Pen
Samuel Barber Adagio for Strings
Death Cab for Cutie I Will Follow You into the Dark The Fray Look After You
Imogen Heap 2-1 and Aha!
Muse Undisclosed Desires
Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp
Paramore Miracle
Chopin Prelude No. 15 i
n D Flat
Metric Blindness, Help I’m Alive, and Gimme Sympathy Arcade Fire In the Backseat
Three Days Grace I Hate Everything About You The White Stripes We’re Going to Be Friends
Mumford & Sons I Gave You All
Paganini Op. 43, Variation 18
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 3, played by David Helfgott Scores from Howard Shore, Alexandre Desplat, Hans Zimmer, James Horner, Carter Burwel, Danny Elfman, James Newton Howard, Rachel Portman, Barrington Pheloung, Michael Nyman, David Julyan, John Debney, Jeff Beal, and Marc Streitenfeld.
So much music, so little time…
Table of Contents
Book One of the AVRA-K
Sleight: Book One of the AVRA-K Page 37