The Firsty
Freebie story for July 1 is FRAGMAR, THE BOOKISH DRAGON.
All she wants
is to be left alone to study, but the world's problems, and a pesky,
bad-tempered unicorn, keep banging on her door.
Fragmar, the
Bookish Dragon
Ebook: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/w7zw6bp7vt
Audiobook: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/y7vjoy5dxb
“Now,” Demetrius said
with a sigh. “Tell us about those flying people you saw in Neighborlee.”
He had taught all his
students how to tell a story. A spark of interest and new energy came back to
the eyes of both elderly men when she described flying over Neighborlee and
seeing the trio park and get out of the truck, link arms, and rise up in the
air. And the tingle of energy, the visible-but-not-visible shimmer, that were
clear signs of a Gift in use.
"Adults, you think?
So they developed or were already using their Gifts around the time you
did." Beau thumped his fist on the table. "We missed them. How could
we have missed them?"
"We're set in
our ways." Demetrius smiled as he interlaced his fingers over his belly
and slouched in his chair. "Haven't we been using literature to teach our
students how real superheroes should act, how to hide their talents, how to
live double lives? Who's to say that these three didn't discover similar
stories before they found out what they could do, and were clever enough to
apply those principles when their Gifts emerged?"
"You don't think
that book thief you tussled with, fifty-some years ago..." Beau shook his
head. Jane caught the tail end of a glare Demetrius shot him.
"What book
thief?" She followed gut instinct. "You ran into someone in
Neighborlee who might have had a Gift, and you got in trouble, so you left him
there?"
"Too old,"
he muttered, frowning at a spot on the table. A sure sign he was lost in
memories or thinking up some new theory.
"Too old?"
She turned to Demetrius.
"Too hard
nowadays to swoop in with falsified paperwork and whisk young ones like you
away anymore," Demetrius said. His relaxed posture looked rock hard now.
“We have to do
something to protect Neighborlee. Why do the Rivals always go back there? Why
do you think they’re going to focus there and not somewhere else?”
"Neighborlee, my
dear child, is unique in one specific aspect: an unusually high ratio of lost,
unclaimed children found within the town's boundaries. And, if you think about
it, an inexplicable tendency for all of them to end up in the orphanage there,
instead of being snatched up by other child welfare agencies throughout the
county or even the state. Yet, out of every ten such children, nine display not
a smidgen of anything unusual."
"Who says?"
She grinned when both old men cocked an eyebrow at her in almost perfect
synchronization. "If those three I found stayed hidden from you, and from
the Rivals, what if there are others, with much smaller, less noticeable Gifts?
What if Neighborlee stays safe because … I don’t know … they work together, to
protect each other? Only a fraction of us have visible Gifts. The rest could
still have the genetics for something amazing. How many grow up and stay
in Neighborlee, and marry others like them, and maybe produce Gifted kids?"
“Other than hope for
a nice, tidy explosion to wipe the whole moronic town of Fendersburg off the
map and set you free?" Beauregard winked. Demetrius snorted.
"You have no
legal responsibility. They can't force it on you," Beau insisted, patting
Jane's shoulder. "As the Ghost, you are there to handle large accidents
and emergencies. Floods and tornadoes, water main breaks, fires, that sort of
things. Not to retrieve improperly disciplined boys from trees twenty times in
a day and protect idiots from their own stupidity." He folded the newspaper
in half and slapped it on the desk in front of him for emphasis, tumbling
several scones off the pile with the force of the blow.
Beauregard might have
been white-haired and paunchy and wrinkled, but he still had a lot of oomph
left in him.
"However..."
Jane sagged, knowing
she was in trouble when Beau used "however." She had overlooked
something, and he had seen it. The fine print, so to speak, in her unwritten
superhero contract with the town of Fendersburg.
"Well, part of
this problem, you brought on yourself," he said, softening his voice.
"Kick the girl
while she's down, why don't you?" Demetrius grumbled. “We did it to
her, sending her there to bait the Rivals. The same stupidity that lets these
half-wits shift all responsibility to her is what we depended on to keep our
enemies stymied.”
Jane sighed. She knew
he was right. She also knew she was stuck in Fendersburg until the Rivals got
so frustrated they carelessly left clues for Hoax to track them to their
headquarters. If that ever happened, they could at long last settle the problem
and the war the Rivals had declared with their actions, if not words.
"If she wouldn't
wear herself to a frazzle pulling their nuts out of the fire, day in and day
out, if she'd just let them fall down and bloody their noses a few times, they
might learn to stand on their own two feet and not sit around on their fat backsides,
expecting her to come to their rescue." Beau gestured with his scone.
"You have to admit I'm right, Janie-gal."
"Yeah, you're
right." She sank into a chair. "But honestly, it's easier to take
care of the mess right away, instead of listening to them scream and whine and
make it even worse."
"You're stuck, Cookie,"
Demetrius growled, twisting around in his overstuffed chair to turn it without
actually getting out of it. "I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.”
“Is she?” Beau said.
“Every lead generated from her acting as bait has evaporated. No suspected
Rivals have come back, and no newcomers have been spotted in town in nearly
four months. I’m inclined to think they’ve given up.”
“Or?” Jane said,
hearing the unspoken qualifiers.
He sighed and seemed
to deflate a little. “Or they’ve moved on to more fruitful hunting grounds.”
“Neighborlee?” she
whispered.
“Who can be sure? None
of the other potential arrival spots for Gifted have panned out. You were the
last one from Neighborlee.”
Beau smoothed it out
on the desk the size of a small swimming pool while Demetrius settled down in
his easy chair in front of the massive fireplace big enough to roast an entire
cow. One drawback to their Gifted longevity was feeling chilled even in the
muggy warmth of summer. Jane used just enough Ghost field to let her get close
to the roaring fire without dripping in sweat.
The headline read:
"Fendersburg Uses Samaritan Law to Sue Ghost." Jane snorted as she
glanced over the big, black letters in slightly runny ink. The complaints
lodged against the Ghost, her alternate persona, were printed in fourteen-point
font instead of the standard ten, and took up the bottom half of the front page
and most of the second page. Mrs. Crookins must have been furious when her
society column got pushed to page three.
"I'm sorry, my
dear. Obviously these..." Beau scowled, searching for a better word.
"Throwbacks?
Inbred morons? Hicks?" Jane suggested.
The proper old
gentleman glared at her, but a few seconds later the look dissolved into
merriment. He sighed and shook his head. "Obviously, these benighted folks
have chosen to ignore your regular warnings, posted in this very newspaper, stating
you are not responsible for the everyday incidents and accidents in their lives.
You are one person and therefore cannot be everywhere at once. No lawyer in the
land will agree to take the lawsuit."
Legal action against
the Ghost? The nerve of those lazy, self-righteous—
"Hey, did you
hear?" Sylvia Daystrom squealed as she bombed through the propped open
door into the spa.
Jane stopped in
mid-crumple, her hands shaking.
"Yeah, I guess
you did." Shaking her head, Sylvia made her way across the large main room
to the nook where she had her manicure and pedicure station set up, open for
business four days a week. "Can you believe the nerve of those morons?"
"Nothing about
this town surprises me anymore." Jane managed a smile. Sylvia was one of
the more commonsense people in Fendersburg. Knowing she was disgusted by the
story on the bottom half of the page helped release some of the pressure that
threatened to take off the top of her head.
The Old Poops need to
see this.
The town was abuzz
with the story. Jane's spa sat in the middle of the tiny business district. She
kept her door open all day in the summer and the biggest gossips in town always
sat on the benches in front of her store, so she heard everything. All day.
Speculations and reminiscences and laughter and criticism. Every time someone
agreed with her assessment of the irresponsible, immature twits in Fendersburg,
someone else came along to dump everything back into the Ghost's lap. Jane
watched the clock as the hour hand inched around, until she could finally close
her shop.
She mentioned to half
a dozen people, including one of the gossips out front, that she was tired, had
a headache, and was going to take a sleeping pill and take her phone off the
hook. That would ensure everyone in town knew by nightfall that no matter how
many times they called or knocked, no one was going to get through to her. People
who ignored posted store hours would just have to wait to get their detox cream
or a new lipstick tomorrow.
Jane went to her apartment and made a sandwich. She needed the energy even if she wasn't hungry. While eating, she tucked the newspaper into her backpack, then phased into Ghost mode and went up through the roof. She took her last bite of sandwich while hovering in the air, looking down at Fendersburg and wishing it could be as quiet and friendly as Neighborlee. At eighty feet higher than the tallest building in town, she headed west and north for the Sanctum.
Thank goodness for secret identities. None of those idiots can follow through on their threat to sue the Ghost, because they can't find me. Jane snorted and grinned into the setting sun. Not to mention they think I'm a guy.
Time for the quiz for this month's featured book in the Visitors Guide to Neighborlee:
QUITTING THE HERO BIZ
How do you play?
Points add up
to get a free ebook or audiobook or print book in the Neighborlee series.
All month, the
featured book is at a discounted price, if you need to fill in the holes in
your collection. I mean, there are 13 books altogether. If you have all 13
already, THANK YOU!! But chances are good you don’t have all of them.
Yet.
This is your
chance to get more and catch up on the weirdness that is Neighborlee, Ohio.
Nobody in Fendersburg
had gained any common sense while Jane was away. The usual routine had gone on
without the Ghost to remedy problems a little common sense could have
prevented. Joe Conrad had run out of gas while picking up milk from the cooperative’s
four small dairy farms. He sat for half an hour, yelling for the Ghost to help
him, before he used his cell phone to call his brother to come with the gas
can. Georgie Tupper decided he could fly with just a blanket tied to his
shoulders for a cape. When he climbed up the tallest tree in the center of
town, the blanket got tangled on a branch. He hung there, kicking and
screaming, while his mother sat on a park bench a few dozen feet away, working
on her nails. Someone finally got tired of hearing her complain about the Ghost
taking so long to show up, and they called the fire department. When the fire
department presented Mrs. Tupper with a bill for rescuing her son, she told
them to charge the Ghost, since he was "shirking his responsibility."
Various assorted
other foolishness happened. People ignored stop signs and ate food from swollen
cans. When the Ghost didn't show up to stop them, they dented their cars or
rushed to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped. Jane got to her spa in
time to open the doors for business at 10am, and by 2pm she had heard about
every incident in the two days since she had gone to visit Neighborlee.
The newspaper the
next morning listed all the minor disasters on the front page and the
complaints from the people who expected the Ghost to do their thinking for
them. Same old stupidity. Jane supposed the incredulous fascination of people
who rubbernecked at traffic accidents kept her reading. When she unfolded the
newspaper, to continue reading down the double-wide column, the headline on the
bottom half of the front page stopped her cold. She stared, blinked, shook her
head, and balled up the newspaper.
Amelia Quinn and Theo
Brickman were the only ones home, when Jane drove up the long, gravel drive
through the woods to the old mansion of the Sanctum. Demetrius and Beau were meeting
with some friends at a think tank that monitored world events. Amelia sent Theo
to contact the Sanctum’s leaders, then herded Jane into the kitchen for a late
breakfast.
“Something has you
rattled, lovey, and that’s rare enough to be worrisome,” the dainty, elderly
woman said, just before plunking down a huge cast iron skillet on the stove,
big enough to cook a dozen eggs at once. “You had the Neighborlee evaluation.
What happened?”
Jane told her in the
time it took to crack and scramble the eggs. Amelia nodded and pursed her lips,
and her eyes went vague with thought for a few moments. Then she sent Jane to
get ingredients for brunch for the three of them. Theo joined them in time to
help set the table, and Jane had to repeat her story. She had new doubts. Had
she fled too soon? Should she have investigated, and risked being caught?
“You did the right
thing,” Theo said. “Get out of there, avoid notice. Let the professional
worriers chew on the questions and send out feelers.” He winked. “My personal
theory is that some Gifted got overlooked. They’ve dug in and know how to stay
safe. Neighborlee has its own means of defense. You don’t want to run afoul of
those who belong there, do you?”
“Of course she
doesn’t. She’s a good, smart one.” Amelia reached across the table to pat
Jane’s hand.
Jane wrote up her
report before she left. Amelia loaded her down with treats members of Hoax brought
back from their world travels. Jane was glad she had driven there instead of
flying in. She had never tested the limits of how much weight she could carry
while flying, but a dozen boxes and bags and tins could be awkward. She could
just imagine losing her grip while flying over heavy traffic and dropping some
decadent treats. As the youngest member of the family, she felt like she had
several dozen aunts and uncles, all intent on spoiling her.
If so, I hope to see you in Xenia this weekend!
It's a BOOK FAIR!! Gonna be great, lots to choose from.
And some of those authors have books I edited, so I can
guarantee they're good!
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The truck stopped
just within the edge of the park, among clumps of bushes. That was a bad sign,
no matter where it took place. Jane dropped a little closer, enough to see
three people in the truck when a door opened and the inside light came on. The
driver got out, and two people slid out of the passenger door. The three linked
arms. Her fingertips tingled faintly, and a soft rainbow-tinted shimmering
hovered in the air around the trio.
"Oh heck heck
heck," Jane muttered, and threw herself backward as the trio rose straight
up in the air. She knew they couldn’t see her, but logic said if she could
sense the vibrations of Gifted energy in use, someone else might be sensitive
enough to sense her using her Gift. Shivering, she flew straight back to
town, glancing over her shoulder, ready to change course if those three
followed her. Being invisible might be no help at all.
Oddly, she felt
vaguely disappointed when she got back to the airspace above the Neighborlee
Arms and there was no one within sight or sensing. She sank down through the
roof, down through an empty room, into her hotel room. Distracted, she almost
didn't phase back into solidity before changing back into her pajamas.
"Get a
grip," she scolded herself, and laughed a little when she realized she had
forgotten to go check out the Spindelmutter building.
She stayed up until
nearly 3am, curled up on the chaise lounge in front of the balcony door, searching
to feel the presence of the flying trio. Whoever they were, wherever they were,
she didn't feel any Gifted energy being used. When she finally climbed into
bed, Jane knew what she had to do. This wasn’t something to report over the
phone.
Which side of the
decades-old battle were those three strangers on? Agents of the Rivals. Allies
of the Gifted old man whose family ran Sheridan Communications? Residents of
Neighborlee who had escaped the notice of Hoax and the Rivals?
The Firsty Freebie
story for June 1 is CLASS REUNION, a short story set in the AFV Defender
universe. This provides some back story to M'kar, Thyal and Dulit's
relationship and history before the events of FRIENDLY FIRE.
For the entire month of June, save $2 off the price of ALL the AFV Defender novels and $1 off short stories, in print, ebook, and audio, on the Ye Olde Dragon Books website.
Class Reunion:
Ebook: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/fqutnp38ks
Audio: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/pe4opgh2w6
