Snippet

Each of my Muddy River books is on sale for 99 cents for the rest of this month.  This is a snippet from BLACK MAGIC CAN BACKFIRE:

A waxing moon etched tall grasses leading to the tree line with silver. The humid air clung to my skin. Raven was standing behind a line of cars parked at the end of the asphalt, his strong body silhouetted by a few tall, overhead street lights. Not much effort went into making the parking lot safe, but shape shifters and vampires could see in the dark. Only witches needed flashlights to follow the path to the woods.

As I joined him, I noticed thirteen humps that dotted the ground from the asphalt to the forest. Bodies. He nodded at them. “Looks like someone picked them off on their way back to their cars. What can you tell me about them?”

I walked to the nearest girl, stared down at her. “Belladonna, she recently started a new coven of young witches. She was their leader.” The girl’s face and skin were unnaturally pale, her body shriveled. She was only eighteen. Too young to die. She’d just recently graduated from my school of magic.

Raven’s black brows furrowed into a deep V. “I met her, didn’t like her much. She convinced twelve other girls to follow her?”

I hadn’t like her much either, but she was only in her teens. She had centuries ahead of her to grow and mature. “She was smart and vicious. When I taught her, she took pleasure in embarrassing anyone she considered beneath her. If she was halfway nice to someone, they considered themselves lucky and joined her clique.”

He grimaced. “Weaklings. I’ve seen that happen.”

I couldn’t disagree. “A few of the other girls grew to be as nasty as she was.”

He motioned to the other dead bodies. “Would this be her coven?”

I walked to the next girl and the next, then nodded. All pale with sunken cheeks and loose skin hanging from their bones.