by A. J. Downey
I wiped a streak in the steam coating my bathroom mirror with my hand and looked at myself. Cornflower blue eyes stared back at me, high cheekbones and a narrow chin bracketed a full mouth above and below. I was pretty by the generally accepted standard but I had never relied on it. I valued brains over looks and didn’t have time for people that wanted to base their opinion of me on my packaging rather than what I had to offer in the intellectual department. Sometimes it got lonely, okay most of the time it got lonely, especially after the black ivy of despair moved in on me. I used my Tuscan honey lotion on my hands, arms, and legs and wrung my hair tightly one last time with the towel before letting it down. It was a tangled mess of snakes and there was no way I could sleep on it this wet, so I brought out the brush and hair dryer.
I shouldn’t have skipped the conditioner. The brush snarled painfully in my locks and the sharp pain in my scalp brought the sting of tears to my eyes and that did it. The floodgates opened, the tide rose, crashed into my careful walls and decimated them with the force of a tsunami. A tsunami that pretty much poured out my eyes.
God damn it, I couldn’t do anything right!
I cried my tears and dried my hair, brushing through the snarls and the pain on autopilot. Once dry I pulled it over my shoulder and braided it quickly to keep it from being a nightmare in the morning. I tossed the towels into the dirty laundry once back in my room and slipped a satin and lace nightgown over my skin. All of my sleepwear is sexy, an indulgence, my underwear is much the same. It was something Roxy had talked me into trying. An attempt to drag me out from beneath my black cloud. At the time it had been a marginal success, but they’d just rolled right back in again.
What was wrong with me?
I crawled into bed beneath my thick down comforter and lay in the fluffy marshmallow softness of my bed. The tears welled hot and immediate and spilled over. I just wanted this to end so badly. I wanted the hurt to stop, I wanted to sleep forever. Nothing helped, not my friend, not my work, not the pills. I felt like I was going mad and the fight, well the fight to just get out of bed in the morning was becoming harder and harder. I just didn’t know how to cope with these feelings, and I didn’t know how much longer I could live like this. So I sobbed into my pillow and hugged another to me, helplessly caught up in the storm of my emotions. I don’t know how long I lay this way, weeping brokenly, alone in my apartment, but eventually, I fell asleep.
About the Authors
A.J. Downey is a born and raised Seattle, WA native. She finds inspiration from her surroundings, through the people she meets and likely as a byproduct of way too much caffeine. She has lived many places and done many things, though mostly through her own imagination. An avid reader all of her life, it’s now her turn to try and give back, entertaining as she has been entertained. She blogs regularly at http://authorajdowney.blogspot.com
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Jeffrey Cook lives in Maple Valley, Washington, with his wife and three large dogs. He was born in Boulder, Colorado, but has lived all over the United States. He’s the author of the Dawn of Steam trilogy of alternate-history/emergent Steampunk epistolary novels, the YA Sci-fi thriller Mina Cortez: From Bouquets to Bullets, and the YA Fantasy novel Foul is Fair. He’s a founding contributing author of Writerpunk Press and has also contributed to a number of role-playing game books for Deep7 Press out of Seattle. When not reading, researching, or writing, Jeffrey enjoys role-playing games and watching football.
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Published 2015 by Jeffrey Cook and A.J. Downey
Formatting by Lia Rees at Free Your Words (www.freeyourwords.com)
Cover art by Clarissa Yeo at Yocla Designs (www.yocladesigns.com)
Text copyright © 2015 Jeffrey Cook, A.J. Downey
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the authors’ imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved
The Angel’s Grace Trilogy
Airs & Graces
There But For The Grace
A Coup De Grace
Table of Contents
Title Page
Book Summary
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Glossary
Preview: Dawn Of Steam: First Light
Preview: Heaven, Hell and the Love In Between
About the Authors
Publishing Information
The Angel’s Grace Trilogy