Paranormal Tendencies: Foster an Author Wednesday: Shades of Gray excerpt

Are you back for more? I hope you've gotten nice and excited about Shades of Gray and the Aramarinthe series. Today I'm going to share with you an excerpt from the book. I hope you enjoy it and then go skip on over and one click this book!

Shades of Gray

Joleene Naylor

Book 1 of the Amaranthine series

Excerpt:

Her eyes strayed from the bag to Jorick. He leaned casually against the phone’s rusty metal shroud, his face enveloped in darkness. Multiple shadows stretched out behind him, long and black. It reminded her of the multiple complications she was facing; shadowy wraiths of half memories and weird stories.

The idea was unsettling so she reached into her bag of treasures and soon had a smoking cigarette between her lips. A feeling of calm and peace spread through her as she inhaled and then exhaled slowly. Now she felt she could deal with anything that life threw at her, including monsters from her worst nightmares.

She took another puff and imagined Sarah’s lecture. The guilt was instant, but she didn’t put the cigarette out. Sure, Sarah would be disappointed, but maybe she’d understand. After all, it was vampires! God, could she even tell Sarah about all of this? Would she believe her or just think she’d cracked?

“She’ll send me to the damn therapist for sure,” Katelina muttered to herself. How would that look in her work file? That she was seeing a shrink – “Work!”

Jorick seemed to materialize in front of her, a questioning look on his face. “What?”

“I missed work. And I didn’t even call in!” She looked at the payphone. “Maybe I could leave a message…”

Jorick shrugged. “We’ll have a ride in a couple of hours.”

She felt a small measure of relief at his words. “Good. I guess I can wait until I get home, though I don’t know what I’m going to tell them.”

“If you need to tell them anything then I suggest you do it now.”

“It’ll be easier from home–” she cut herself off. “Why?”

He spoke with exaggerated emphasis. “I told you last night, going home after dark isn’t a good idea.”

“I have to go home. I need to change and get things sorted out – I have a job! I have a life!”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “I told you things would change once you found out the truth. I gave you a chance to turn and run from it, and you chose not to. You can’t just go back to being what you were before; not now. You’re involved. Claudius will want your blood as much as mine.” He dropped to the curb next to her and leaned his elbows on his knees.

“But.... I’ll tell him it’s a mistake! If I explain it...” she trailed off, sure it wasn’t true. The kind of people that could make you tear out your brother’s throat didn’t understand the word ‘mistake’. “Shit!”

“I’m sorry,” Jorick said simply. He met her eyes and shrugged. “I did give you a chance, though.” He plucked the cigarette from her fingers and took a long drag off of it, exhaling a thin stream of smoke that writhed towards the sky like a white, ethereal ladder to heaven.

He handed it back and she puffed on it numbly. Her mind worked overtime, trying to think of a way out of this. The best thing to do was assume Jorick was telling the truth and that he wasn’t just deranged and insane. After all, she’d seen the thing in the basement and she had a weird bite mark on her shoulder. Both of those things were real, so there had to be truth in his story. In that case his advice was probably sound, whether she wanted to follow it or not.
She sighed heavily and wished that the smoke truly was a ladder to some celestial utopia. But, even if it was, she wouldn’t know how to climb it. No, she told herself, she needed to think about practical things. If ‘they’ knew where she lived, she’d have to get a new apartment. Okay, she could do that. She hated to, but she could. As for the job, if she didn’t show up she’d find herself unemployed, and that would be a big problem.