Got Hope - Couverture souple

Darling, Michael

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1944452729 ISBN 13 : 9781944452728

Editeur : Future House Publishing, 2017

Synopsis

“Michael Darling makes urban fantasy his own in his hilarious Behindbeyond series.”
—Paul Genesse, bestselling author of the Iron Dragon Series

“Michael Darling is quickly securing a place among the rising stars of urban fantasy. Got Hope is an unequivocally gripping sequel.”
—Kevin L. Nielsen, bestselling author of the Sharani Series

Sequel to the #1 Bestseller in Supernatural Mystery, Got Luck.

Private investigator Goethe “Got” Luck saved humankind once already. With one dangerous enemy dead and another in exile for one hundred years, both the mortal realm and the realm of the Fae—the Behindbeyond—seem to be safe. Now Got can go back to nice, normal detective work. Until a beautiful cheerleader lands in front of his house, strapped to a bomb.

Got is more than ready to protect the cheerleader, Hope, but it turns out she’s not just a victim; she’s bait. The realm of the Fae hasn’t forgotten Got, and an ancient secret society from the Behindbeyond wants to use him to seize control of the Fae realm. As their enemies multiply, Got realizes events are set to spiral out of control, and if he can’t stop them, it will mean nothing less than civil war among the Fae.

Accompanied by allies old and new, Got will do anything to end the threat. But the secret society has promised to make Got serve them, either in life or in death, and it looks like no clever strategy, no insulting joke, no magic spell will be enough to stop them.

This time, even with all the Hope in the world, Got may run out of Luck.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Michael Darling has worked as a butcher, a librarian, and a magician. Not all at the same time. He nests in the exquisitely beautiful Rocky Mountains with his equally breathtaking wife and six guinea pigs, one of whom thinks she’s a dog and three of whom claim to be children. Michael’s award-winning short fiction is frequently featured in anthologies. Got Luck is his first novel, which is scheduled for publication in March 2016.

Extrait. © Reproduit sur autorisation. Tous droits réservés.

Chapter 1
Bombshell
Few excuses would get me out of piano practice. A girl about to explode into a million bloody bits was one of them.
Max stepped into the great room and cleared his throat. Notes from Chopin’s Nocturne No. 2, in E Flat Major hung in the air after I paused. It wasn’t a difficult piece but I liked it for warming up. Timing was everything in getting the melody right and timing was everything with Max. Sandretta, my housemaid who was also my piano enforcer, did not complain. We looked at Max expectantly. If Max was interrupting, he had a good reason.
“There’s a young lady in front of the driveway. She appears to be in some distress.”
Max had a gift for understatement.
“You might want to hurry, Prince Luck.”
Yeah. I’m a prince.
The woman at the end of the driveway was bawling. She had a pillowcase over her head but I could hear huge, earth-racking sobs that made it hard for her to stay standing. I hurried to her side, in part to keep her from falling over. She turned her head as she felt my hand on her arm.
“Hey. I’m going to take this pillowcase off, okay?”
She nodded and managed, “Okay.”
The pillowcase had been tied in a knot to keep it tight under her chin. Undoing the knot, I lifted the cloth over her head. Her blond hair was disheveled. Her mascara had run so badly her eyes looked like sapphires swimming in crude oil. She wasn’t Stained, which meant she hadn’t been touched by magic. I was the only person in Creation who would have noticed.
She squinted against the morning light. “Are you—” she interrupted herself with horrible sobs every other word, “—are you Sen-Senator Lima?”
“No. My name’s Goethe. Call me Got.”
She rolled her eyes. “They sa-said Senator Lima live-lives here.”
“He’s a couple of streets over.”
She had a briefcase handcuffed to her wrist. The cuff had left deep, ugly wounds, as if it had been there for a long time or she’d struggled or both. “You’re hurt,” I said.
She looked at me, seeing me for the first time. “I’m going to die. And I’m not—not even in front of the right house.”
My mouth took a vacation in the Sahara as I realized what was going on. A chain had been looped through the other side of the handcuffs and through the handle of the briefcase. The chain was held shut with a padlock. There was also a wire threaded through everything. Red.
“Do you know what’s in the briefcase?” I asked.
She nodded. “Explosives. They said it was enough to kill—kill me and flatten the neighborhood.”
The briefcase was large. I tried to swallow. Didn’t work.
“Who’s ‘they?’”
Another round of sobs overcame her. She shook her head.
I tried to think of a reason somebody would want to blow up a young woman in front of Senator Lima’s house. Lima led the Federal Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security. His views weren’t without controversy.
“Can you set the briefcase down?” She was exhausted.
“N-No. If I set it d-down. It will go off. They t-told me to stand and hold-hold it.”
Disarming bombs wasn’t in my skill set. I’d encountered explosives before, in Afghanistan, but I’d left the handling to the guys with more brains, or fewer brains, depending on how you look at it. “I’m going to help you however I can.”
She looked at the ground. Shook her head. A fresh bout of crying came over her. I wanted to put my arms around her. The sound of her sobbing spoke of misery and resignation. The kind of desperate need that begged for comfort.
“You-you need to leave. The bom-bomb is going to go off. At ten o’clock.”
Four minutes, according to my watch. That information might have been useful earlier. We could have evacuated people from the surrounding homes. Called the bomb squad.
I grabbed her hand. “Come with me.”
She didn’t have strength to resist but she protested. “You need to get away!”
We staggered up the driveway. “What’s your name?”
She laughed. And cried. “Hope.”
Any other day, due credit would go to the gods of irony. Today, there wasn’t time. The red wire had me worried. I could get the cuffs off her and cut the chain. I had everything in the garage. But the red wire ran around her wrist several times. I had a feeling that the wire was a circuit to the bomb and if I cut the wire, the bomb would go off.
In three minutes, it wouldn’t matter.
Max and Sandretta wore grim expressions.
“It’s a bomb. If it goes off here, at least it will be contained to the house,” I said.
They nodded. Hope wouldn’t know there were other forces at work.
My house belonged to my father, the Alder King. He ruled over the Behindbeyond and all her peoples. Max and Sandretta maintained a magical ward around the house that protected it and kept outsiders from seeing anything but a normal home. If the bomb went off in here, it wouldn’t be visible to the outside world and it wouldn’t spread beyond the ward. Of course, the house would be destroyed. And I’d be dead. Minor details.
“Get yourselves to safety,” I said.
Sandretta pressed her lips together, but Max was more practical. He led the way to the front door.
Hope let herself get towed behind me. Someone, sometime, had written, “The way out is through.” I could only think of one thing to do. And it was desperate.
The Mortal realm and the Behindbeyond intersect and there was a room with a secret portal between them. If my plan worked, I’d get rid of the bomb and save both Hope and myself. And the house.
If it worked.
I prayed that the bomb makers were accurate on time. Two minutes.
“I’m going to put the pillowcase back over your head, okay? To protect your eyes.”
Hope accepted my lie. She appeared willing to cooperate, her expression dull. She knew time was running out. I slipped the cloth over her head.
In the portal room, there was a circle of silver embedded in the floor and several silver patterns against the wall. Each pattern represented a different location in the Behindbeyond. One of my favorite places was a barren peak, high in a range of mountains, far away from people. It was beautiful there, and isolated.
Dropping the pattern into the circle and kneeling beside it, I released a glowing blue drop of power from my hand and touched the ring. I said, “Oscailte.”
The circle flashed blue and the pattern faded. A rush of cold air flooded the room with the scent of spruce trees and freshly-fallen snow.
“Hope. I need you to lie on the floor. I’m going to hold the briefcase but I’m not going to put it down. I’ll keep you as safe as I can.”
“What’re you doing?” It was a fair question.
“I’ll explain later. I promise.”
Hope let me take the briefcase, the handle slick with sweat. I gripped it hard. One slip and we’d be goners. She sat on the floor and laid back. She had to feel the cold air and wonder about the light seeping through the fabric of the pillowcase.
I didn’t think anymore. Couldn’t. I let my body take over.
I threw the briefcase into the gate.
I broke the spell.
I dropped on top of Hope.
As I slammed into her, protecting her, the gate closed itself. The light winked out. She grunted under my weight. The briefcase and most of the chain and wire ceased to exist in the mortal realm. I braced myself in case shrapnel erupted through the gate.
Silence.
I hadn’t needed to shield her after all.
Well now it’s just awkward.
Hope pushed me off and scrabbled to remove the bag. She looked around the room. Held her wrist up and traced the path of chain and wire which now weren’t attached to anything but abruptly terminated instead. Sliced through cleanly as if by a scalpel. A piece of the handcuffs was missing, too.
Her blue eyes were supersized. And growing.
With her free hand, she touched the sliced end of chain and wire, fingertips running over the smooth ends. She looked around the room again. I let her. She got to her knees. Kept looking. I wasn’t sure what kind of explanation I was going to give her.
Hope saw that the bomb was gone. She locked eyes with me.
I pointed vaguely in the direction of the floor. “Oh. Sorry about, um, for the—”
She launched herself at me, knocking me back down. She couldn’t be much more than a hundred pounds and spare change but she landed like a hurricane.
She kissed me. On the cheeks. On the chin. On the mouth.
“You wonderful man!” Her eyes were crying again but her lips were smiling. Joy rolled off her like an ocean wave. I tried to ride out the storm for a few seconds longer. Finally, I caught her by the shoulders. Gently pushed.
“Hope,” I said.
She blinked. All smiles for a heartbeat. Then she realized she had me pinned.
“Oh. I don’t even know you.”
She tried to collect herself as we got up off the floor, brushing non-existent wrinkles out of her pants. I tried to ignore the heat in my face. She looked out the window, hiding a blush. The sky outside was cloudless. The river behind the house sparkled in the sun. 10:01 on a Thursday morning.
She took a deep breath. “If it seems like I’m emotional, it’s because I’m emotional,” she whispered. She looked back at me. Tears stood in her eyes. She put her hands over her mouth as the tears spilled out. “I’m not dead.”
This time, her crying wasn’t punctuated by racking sobs. She moved toward me. Put her cheek against mine. She wasn’t seeking comfort but she needed someone to share her relief. I let myself put my arms around her and she folded into me and wept against my chest.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Future House Publishing
• Date d'édition: 2017
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1944452729
• ISBN 13: 9781944452728
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 378
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible