CLOAK OF EMBERS brief excerpt
It’s Friday, and I’m about halfway through the first round of edits for CLOAK OF EMBERS.
Let’s close out the week with a short excerpt! In this scene, Nadia is babysitting the daughter of a friend.
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“Good boy!” she called as the dog ran back to her with the ball. Despite spending most of the last two years in the US, she sounded like her father, who spoke with a posh British accent. “Good boy, Monty!”
I had asked Neil why she named the dog Monty, and he had explained that Monty was the name of one of the animal sidekicks of Bob the Adventure Bunny, Emilia’s favorite cartoon.
The dog dropped the ball at Emilia’s feet. Our yard was at a slight incline to the woods, and the ball rolled away and came to a stop a dozen feet from her. Emilia stared after it, lips pursed, and then a deep look of concentration went over her face.
I rolled my eyes…but I waited to see what she would do.
A breeze blew past, and the ball leaped from the ground to land in Emilia’s hand. It wasn’t telekinesis, wasn’t even properly a spell, but an unfocused burst of elemental air.
Huh. Not too bad.
“Emilia!” I said. “No magic when your dad isn’t here!”
Emilia whirled and looked at me with wide blue eyes. Yeah, kid, I might have been looking at my phone, but you’re not getting one past me.
“Sorry, Marshal,” she said. I would have been fine with her calling me Nadia, but her father insisted that she call adults by their proper titles. Thanks to the aurasight, I saw the genuine chagrin in her emotional aura. But Emilia knew she wasn’t supposed to use magic when Neil wasn’t around, but she had done it anyway. Emilia was a good-natured little girl, but she had a devious streak a mile wide and a mile deep.
Probably had gotten that from her father.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Just don’t do it again.”
She nodded and started to turn back to the dog.
“Oh, and Emilia?”
She looked back at me, worried.
“That was a very good effort,” I said.
Emilia beamed a big toothy smile at me and went back to playing with Monty.
-JM