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Audio book – out now: 

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Paperback 
Available later in 2012 – check back for details

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Named one of the best books of 2011 at:
CC2K, Goldilox & the Three Weres, Pearls Cast Before a McPig, For What it’s Worth Reviews

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NO EREADER?

I know not everybody has an ereader,  and that can be frustrating when a book is out only in ebook and audio! But if you don’t want to do audio or wait for the paperback, there are a few things you can try. One popular way to read ebooks on phones, ipads, laptops, etc is to download a FREE app (Kindle app from Amazon or Nook from B&N or Kobo app, or Google apps are a few) that let you read ebooks. They make it pretty easy. Some people use pdfs, with adobe reader, though that does not seem preferred. Otherwise, September is just around the corner!

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Excerpt: Chapter One

Simon skids his souped-up Cutlass to a stop on the tire-strewn ridge. Below us, the Midcity impound lot stretches for miles, an ocean of cars enclosed in a razor-wire fence, and beyond that, mountains of gravel and old tires.

“Christ, Simon,” I say, gently shaking my hand, trying to relax it out of the claw position it froze in from gripping the passenger door. “I am never riding with you again.”

“If we find your car, you won’t have to.” Simon passes me a pair of binoculars, and points down at a distant section of cars. “My intelligence says that cars towed in mid-January are in the southeast quadrant.”

“Your intelligence.” I peer through the binoculars, adjusting the focus. “If you had any intelligence, the last half hour wouldn’t have happened.”

“You are such a baby when you don’t zing.”

“Oh, that must be it.”

Getting here involved recklessly eluding my bodyguard through a maze of Midcity side streets, cutting across a mud gulley, sideswiping several concrete barriers, and speeding through a narrow gap in a high-voltage electric fence. At least the legendarily thuggish impound-lot operators haven’t materialized. But hey, it’s still early.

“No bodyguards. Pure freedom. Like old times,” he says. “The days of kebabs and ouzo.”

And with that, Simon evokes everything I’ve been trying to forget, or at least leave behind. Lazy dinners at the restaurant. The camaraderie of our shadowy club. Packard and me in the back booth. The candlelight, the discoveries, the lies. The intensity in Packard’s gaze, as though the emotions inside him burn too hot. The aliveness I felt.

I grip the binoculars hard, willing this train of thought to stop before it hits its destination.

“You know you love this,” Simon says.

“Yeah, Simon, I love this.” My sarcastic tone is a lie—I do love it. It’s been weeks since I’ve been off the radar and free of a bodyguard. Okay, maybe I’m not thrilled to be hanging around in Midcity’s highest-crime sector, but then again, all of Midcity is a high-crime sector these days. In fact, this March is already the city’s most violent month on record, and it’s not even half over.

I scan for gray car tops. The last time I saw my trashed little Jetta was just before everything went to hell, and it was safe and sound in my own parking space behind my apartment building. Where is it? It’s like this mystery nobody can solve—it doesn’t make sense that somebody would steal it, except maybe for a joyride.

A lot doesn’t make sense these days.

Simon cranks open the window and a crisp breeze flows in, carrying the mineral scent of thawing mud. I breathe deeply. A bit of a March warm-up before the blizzard tonight. It’s always warm before a storm.

Simon sighs happily. “I think I’ll have a special suit made, and possibly a top hat. How do you feel about top hats? Maybe all of us bridesmaids can wear top hats, to show we’re a unit.”

“We haven’t found the car yet,” I say.

“Keyword yet. Haven’t found it yet.”

Simon and I have made a bet: if he helps me find my car, he gets to be one of my bridesmaids for my wedding to Otto.

Simon won’t win this one; Otto’s had people checking every impound lot in the tri-state area—including this one—ever since my car went missing this past January. But if Simon loses, he’s promised to make a genuine effort to be friends with Otto. It’s pathetic of me to wager for that, but I want him to get to know Otto better. Simon’s the only disillusionist friend I have left besides Shelby; the rest have disappeared, some with Packard, probably far away by now, and I’ve heard other disillusionists are traveling, calling their own shots on where they go and what they do. A luxury none of us disillusionists had when we were minions.

A rattle. The cassette tape. Simon’s flipping over Johnny Cash. Again.

A flash of red lights in the distance.

“Crap!” I pull away the binoculars and look with my naked eyes, but it’s only a tow truck on the far side, pulling a car around the end of a gravel mountain. They’re so far off, they look like toys.

“I’m on it,” Simon says. “Keep looking.” He’s made this car thing such a priority.

I go back to my scanning, adjusting the focus for maximum crispness, but I can’t tell where I’m looking in relation to the sea of cars as a whole; I’m just lurching around in oversized motions.

Lurching around in oversized motions is like a metaphor for my entire existence right now. In the last two months, I found out I wasn’t a servile minion for life, I got engaged to Mayor Otto Sanchez, my building was condemned because city engineers discovered a mysterious sinkhole under it, and I was forced to move into Otto’s condo because of it. And between the mysterious new wave of violent crime, the sleepwalking cannibals, and Otto’s growing faction of enemies, the entire city is lurching around too. It’s terrible, after Otto worked so hard to clean up the crime problem when he was police chief.

But most devastating of all, I watched Packard shoot a good man, point blank.

I thought I knew people. I thought I knew Packard.

Watching Packard shoot Avery—not only a good man but the man my best friend, Shelby, loved—changed everything. I haven’t trusted the ground beneath me ever since.

I haven’t trusted myself.

My thoughts drift back to the scene. Avery’s frightened eyes. The way his body jerked when Packard shot him in the chest, then a different jerk when he shot him in the face.

A twinge in my head. Damn. I lower the binoculars and take a centering breath. I’ve been getting this stabbing pain behind my eyes whenever I think about the shooting. Shock, no doubt.

Otto says that whenever I catch myself dwelling on the shooting, I should switch my focus to the future. He doesn’t understand why that won’t work. How can I tell my fiancé that every time I think about his enemy Packard shooting a man, it feels like the end of the world?

“Definitely a top hat,” Simon says.

I concentrate on the image of Simon in a top hat. “What color?”

“Black,” Simon says.

“Oh yeah? What else.”

Simon drones on, and I allow my thoughts to be hijacked by his disturbing description of what he’d wear if he gets to stand up for me at my wedding. It involves a shirt constructed from belts and chains, black pants, some sort of cape, and pirate boots. I’m laughing by the end. “Otto will be so thrilled.”

I resume my scanning.

In spite of his potential bridesmaid’s outfit, part of me wouldn’t mind Simon’s winning, because it would mean I’d have my little car back. Yes, it makes a funny noise and has a smashed taillight. And yes, Otto has repeatedly offered to buy me a new car. But having my old one back would be like having a bit of my old life back. Something of the old crimefighter Justine.

The binoculars are irritating my eye sockets. Some of the car tops seem familiar. Am I going over the same area twice? I pull the glasses away from my face. Is this bad for my head? I rub my left temple. “It’s like a kaleidoscope of car tops.”

“Are you being methodical?”

“No.”

“Give me those.” Simon grabs the binoculars, flips a hunk of black hair out of his eyes, and takes over looking. Simon fancies himself a crack investigator, though to me, the first rule of being a good sleuth is that you should not draw attention to yourself, something Simon utterly fails in. Today he’s wearing a shaggy, white fake-fur coat, perfect for creating that bedraggled poodle-bear effect. No shirt of course, all the better to display the dragon tattoos covering his chest. He’s finished his ensemble with black jeans and boots.

“Trashed gray Jetta,” he says. “But you don’t have a parking sticker on your windshield, right?”

“No. And look for the Gumby on the dash.”

“Right. ‘Ol’ Gumby’.”

“The car must be intact and operational,” I remind him. “Otto says that after two months, it’s sure to have been chopped up or junked.”

“We’ll see about that.” This in a tone that’s just a little too casual.

I give him a look. Simon’s definitely up to something. He says he heard through his “PI grapevine” that an impound-lot employee was accidentally transposing license plate numbers, causing some cars to become invisible to the computer, and that this was happening during the stretch of time my car went missing. And he insisted on a bet. Simon can’t pass up a long shot; his specialty as a disillusionist is recklessness. Gambling.

“Oooh, ooh, ooh—Jetta. Rear light smashed. Your license plate start with an H?”

I sit up. “Yeah.”

Simon hands me the binoculars. “See that corner? Red car? Count twenty-four rows down and thirteen over.”

I count down, then I lose my place and have to count some more, going back and forth between normal sight and the binoculars. After the fifth misfire, I take a rest, rubbing my eyes. “This back and forth is straining my vision,” I say. “This is bad for me.”

“You better not wig out.”

“I’m not wigging out. I’m pacing myself. Excuse me if vein star runs in my family.” I lift the heavy binoculars back to my eyes. “Strain on the eyes affects the whole head, you know. It strains the cranial-muscular system.”

“How long has it been?”

How long have I gone without a zing, he means. “Sixty-two days.”

“You’re insane,” he says.

“I’m free.” Sixty-two days ago I zinged Otto’s kidnappers. I petrified them with my fear. My last zing.

“Sixty two days,” he groans.

“Which is amazing, considering all the nursing and anatomy textbooks I’ve been studying. Do you know how much fear that stokes up? But I haven’t zinged any of it out. I couldn’t have lasted this long without Otto.” I feel this wave of gratitude for Otto, the one person who understands my terror, who’s always there with me in my deepest pit of fear, because it’s his pit too. We know the darkness of it, the sharpness of the rocky bottom. We help each other when we’re down there—other people can’t understand it because other people haven’t been there. Nobody else fears vein-star syndrome like we do.

And of course, it doesn’t hurt that Otto’s considered one of the sexiest men in the city, all dusky curls and deep brown eyes. Lush, thick features and the strength of an ox. Local magazines and papers love to run his picture.

Simon says, “Sixty-two chances to feel normal. To feel that peace. Squandered.”

“It’s not peace if it ruins things for somebody else.”

He sighs dramatically.

I give him a hard look above the binoculars. “And I’m not free if I have to zing somebody just to feel good.”

He says, “The thirteen starts at a red truck, I think.”

I get back to searching. Soon enough, a familiar car top. “Whoa!”

“You see it?”

Carefully, I adjust the view. I spot the smashed taillight, and my panda bumper sticker. “Holy crap! That’s it!” I laugh incredulously. “You found it!”

“Good. Let’s handle this. I have to pick out an outfit for your bridesmaids’ dinner tomorrow. And start working on my outfit. Three days to the wedding. Can’t wait!”

“I can’t believe you found it.”

“I am a PI.”

“Oh really? Do you have a PI license?”

“I found your car, didn’t I?” He starts up the engine.

“No bridesmaid of mine is wearing a chain-and-belt shirt.”

“This one is.” Simon makes a U-turn and speeds around a tire pile; ice crusts cling to its shady side like gray moss.

Simon as a bridesmaid. Otto’s going to hate this. I take a deep breath, rubbing the muscles around my eyes. I wish Simon hadn’t reminded me that I haven’t been zinging, because it reminds me of the pain, and now I’m focusing on it again. Is it coming back? But I forgot about it before, didn’t I? That shows it’s not dire. Snap out of it! I tell myself. It’s nothing! You’re just a stupid hypochondriac!

“Look at you,” Simon says. “You are building up way too much goddamned fear.”

“I’m fine.”

“All that potency, going to waste. With how much you have stoked right now, you could dominate anybody. Trump any weapon.” He’s been dying to see me strike fear into a random person, ever since we found out we can psychologically attack whomever we choose.

“Zinging isn’t a superpower,” I say. “It’s a crutch that I don’t need anymore. Because I’m free.”

“I know you remember what it’s like, Justine,” he says smoothly, “when it all rushes out. All that darkness, overtaking them, and how light you feel. Serene, and so goddamned aware. The wind in your fingertips, the bliss. Glory hour—”

”Enough.”

He turns back. “Fine. Let’s talk top hats then.”

We bump down a utility road, rocking over deep, mud ruts. I hang on, hoping the car doesn’t slip down the hillside into the electrified fence.

Yes, zinging would feel good. Beyond good. That doesn’t make it right.

“Of all things, Simon,” I say. “What guy wants to be in a wedding? Most men would consider getting out of a wedding to be the prize. Are you sure you don’t want something else? I bet Otto would pull strings to get you a PI license.”

“Nah, I want to be in your wedding. I think it’ll be fun…in a totally messed up way.”

“Are you just trying to get back with Ez?” I ask.

He gives me a jaundiced look. “It’ll take more than your wedding to pull that one out of the fire.”

“Right,” I say.

He grunts. “We’re better suited for frenemies anyway.”

Ez, one of my other bridesmaids, dated Simon for a few weeks. It seemed to be going well until he zinged her, infusing her with recklessness. She dumped him the day after.

So why the wedding? As he steers his mean machine around garbage and potholes, the two of us on yet another one of our weird outings, the strangest thought occurs to me: because we’re friends. In fact, I might be his best friend in the world. Is that why he wants to be in my wedding?

“So are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asks.

“Doubtful.”

“Got your keys, right?”

“Does this involve crashing through that gate down there?”

He slams on the brakes and turns to me with a glint in his dark blue eyes. “You are thinking what I’m thinking,” he says.

“No. I’m thinking there’s no way in the world I’m stealing my own car.”

He puts a hand on my wrist. “I’ve got something that’ll help with that.”

I jerk away from him. “Don’t you dare.”

“Just a little.”

“Forget it!”

“It’ll counteract your fear.”

He wants to zing me with his recklessness. “It was stupid to do it to Ez, and it’ll be even stupider to do it to me.”

“You sure?”

I say, “The mayor’s fiancée will not be going on a gate-crashing and car-stealing spree today. We’re going to continue on to that little office and explain the circumstances, and they’ll unlock the gate and give me my car.”

“They won’t see it in their system,” he says. “You really think they’ll come out to check?”

“That’s exactly what I think.”

“Because they’ll recognize you?”

I snort. “You think they read the Midcity Eagle’s society section up here?”

This is one of the reasons I like coming to North Midcity—people don’t recognize me, they don’t treat me like the future first lady of Midcity. “They’ll do it because they screwed up and they’ll want to make it right.”

“We’ll see about that, Pollyanna.” Simon peels out, fishtailing around another garbage pile, and then we shoot forward, mud spewing behind us.

The impound office is a small, low concrete building the size of a trailer. There’s a metal door on one end, and on the other is a service window with a cage-like covering. Midcitians don’t take kindly to their cars being towed and being charged to get them back.

We park and go up to the window. The scratched Plexiglas panel behind the cage covering slides to the side and a red-faced fellow glares out at us. He wears a cap with a pesticide logo on it, his lips are pierced in two places, and his shirt says Steve.

He lifts a walkie-talkie to his lips and mumbles into it, then slams the thing down. “What were you doing driving around on the access road? Were you just up on the ridge?”

“Yes we were,” Simon says, managing to make it sound like the ultimate insult.

I kick him and explain to Steve about finding my car.

“No one’s allowed on that ridge.” Steve barks. “That entire side of the complex is restricted. Personnel only.”

Simon grins.

I say. “I’m sorry we did that, but I really do need my car back, and it’s out there.” I push my stolen-car police report through the little slot.

Steve just folds his arms across his chest.“Do you not know the meaning of restricted access? How do we know you’re not a couple of mutant freaks come to attack the place? We would’ve been within our rights to shoot you.”

Simon grins some more.

Just then, a truck squeals up. A burly guy with a droopy moustache jumps out. “What were you doing up on the ridge?” His reflective orange safety vest gleams in the gloom.

”We were looking for my car, that’s all,” I say. “We had a hunch it might be entered into your system wrong, because my friend here heard of a clerical error happening to another car that went missing.” According to Simon’s sources, it was more than one car but I don’t want to insult their operation.

The guy with the moustache looks at me like I’m crazy. “I haven’t heard of any clerical errors.”

I turn to Simon, who’s been unusually quiet, and discover, much to my horror, that he’s aggressively eyeing this new guy, who is twice his size. Eyeing him enough so that, simply put, there’s a thing between them now.

“Look,” I say pleasantly, trying to counteract Simon’s insolence. “You have a little gray Jetta out there that’s mine. When this lot was called, there was no record of it. But it’s out there, and I just want to get it back. I have my ID here, and I know it will match the registration, which I know is in the glove compartment, and I also have the keys that go to it.”

“What is this, Cinderella and her glass slipper?” Steve says from behind the window, not taking his hard-assed gaze off Simon. “If there’s an error, we’ll turn it up. We don’t need civilians in restricted areas.”

“We saw my car.”

Simon crosses his arms, gaze boring even harder now into the guy with the moustache. “I think our friends don’t understand who they’re dealing with, Justine.”

I scowl at Simon. He thinks I’m going to play the mayor’s fiancée card?

Simon doesn’t see my scowl; he’s turned his aggressive gaze to Steve. I’m starting to worry; there’s so much heat among the three of them, it’s like a fight’s already started.

“They don’t get who they are dealing with on any level,” Simon amends mysteriously.

“Who would that be?” Steve disappears from the window. The metal door opens and out he stomps. “Who would that be? That we’re dealing with here?” Steve goes to stand by the man with the moustache. Convenient. Simon can antagonize them both at the same time.

Finally, Simon turns to me. “Don’t you think somebody needs attitude adjustment?”

My mouth falls open. Simon wants me to zing my fear into them.

“Don’t like our attitude?” the one with the moustache asks Simon.

“Oh my God,” I say as I come to understand his plan: he’s going to put himself in danger and force me to zing them. “Ignore my friend!” I command.

Steve and the man with the moustache ignore me instead.

“He’s trying to antagonize you,” I plead. “Don’t fall for it. Look—” I hold up the police report. “This car is out there. How do I get it out? What are the steps? I need your help.”

Steve smirks at Simon. “It’ll be a while.”

“I have an idea, Steve,” Simon says. “How about if I rip off this guy’s moustache and shove it up your ass? Will that expedite things?”

“Stop,” I say to Simon, hand on his chest. I turn to Steve and the other man. “Don’t take the bait.”

The man with the moustache steps forward, orange vest flashing. “Nothing’s stopping you.”

Simon takes a step forward. “The image of you, slobbering like a baby and begging me to lay off is stopping me, actually.” He’s now officially in the man’s face. The men have the fight on; it’s in their eyes. Simon will make them hurt him until I cave. “You’ll be sorry,” I say to Simon under my breath.

“What are you waiting for? You know you want it,” Simon says silkily. Steve and the moustachioed guy think Simon’s talking to them, but he’s talking to me.

Yes. I want it. I want to zing more than anything.

Simon touches two fingers to the man’s orange vest and shoves. “That’s for you, baby.”

“Don’t.” I pull him away.

Too late. The moustachioed man pushes me out of the way and shoves Simon—hard. Simon stumbles and falls backward onto the ground, laughing.

“Stop!” I yell.

“That’s all you got, you pussy?” Simon grabs up a handful of slushy gravel and whips it into the moustachioed man’s face. The man’s vest seems tighter suddenly, like he’s puffed up with rage; I gasp as he lunges for Simon. He yanks Simon up by the collar and punches him square in the nose. The force of the punch sends Simon stumbling backward, back down.

“Don’t!” I grab the man’s arm, but he pulls out of my grip. I could make him back off if I wanted to. One zing from me and he’d run off in fright.

Simon coughs and smiles at the same time, not bothering to wipe away the blood streaming from his nostrils. He’ll let the man hurt him, and he knows I know it. He takes great joy in following through on bluffs. He grins, and then, out of nowhere, he spits at the man.

“Simon!” I say.

The spit doesn’t hit; it doesn’t have to. The moustachioed man’s eyes turn blank. Blind rage. The eyes don’t see, or more, they don’t take in new information.

Steve pipes up now: “Can’t let that shit stand, Hal.”

I grab the moustachioed man’s arm—Hal’s arm—again. His nostrils flare, like he’s readying to attack. I’m touching him now, and automatically—greedily, excitedly—I locate the surface of his energy dimension. All my fear and worry—I could be rid of it. I grip him harder, reminding myself I’ve sworn off zinging.

The man breathes in a snort, like a mad bull.

Simon gazes up at me with velvety blue eyes, nose vivid with red blood. He has the look of a brilliantly-colored tropical bird. A bad bird, staring, waiting, too far gone in recklessness, about to get badly injured. A part of him hates being there, but it’s where he always goes. I know. I do the same thing with fear, careening into the pit of it, over and over.

The man jerks away from me and stalks toward Simon, who starts scrambling backward, laughing, taunting. Simon saw how close I came and he thinks I’ll give in now. He’s the most warped and brilliant student of human nature you will ever see.

Besides Packard.

One second is all I’d need to unload my fear into Hal; I have enough in me to turn both Hal and Steve into quivering bundles of terror. My fabulous skill, taught to me by Packard during his despot days. The fear builds higher in me—hot, jagged. One zing and I’d be free of it.

Hal hauls Simon up by the jacket sleeve. “You think that’s funny? Spitting at me?”

Bad question. I wince.

“No. I think it’s fucking hilarious.” Simon says.

The man cracks Simon on the side of the head.

“Stop it!” I scream.

Simon’s down again, crawling dazedly on all fours, on fire with his recklessness.

“The spit didn’t even hit you, you jerk!” Oh, I want to zing this guy. I hate myself for it, but that doesn’t stop the wanting. I storm over to him.

Steve’s laughing. “Christ, Hal.”

Simon will go to the hospital. Simon. My friend.

Hal pulls Simon up for more hurt.

“No, you don’t,” I say.

Simon turns his gaze to me. I expect to see a look of triumph, but there’s just pain. I start stoking it higher. It will be wonderful, delicious. We’re both sick. And I’m going to help him. I grip Hal’s shoulder. I can get to his energy dimension through fabric as easily as I can through skin.

A loud honk! honk! stops everything, including Hal, who freezes, fist cocked in the air, like a cartoon man.

A big, shiny, black car screeches to a stop. A back door swings open. A big black boot is planted in the mud. Black velvet pants.

Otto.

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