Saturday, August 11, 2012

excerpt from The Shifting Price of Prey by Suzanne McLeod


Ms Suzanne McLeod, author of the Spellcrackers.com series was kind enough to send an excerpt (aka extract) of her latest release, The Shifting Price of Prey, my way for the purpose of teasing and posting for readers to enjoy.  If you've never, ever read any of her novels yet take a little time to get a bit of a taste here.  
There is also an excerpt of her third novel here.  Eventually, this current excerpt will be on the excerpt page of my blog.  Enjoy!


Excerpt from Chapter Two 

           I blinked as Tavish suddenly appeared on the other side of the desk, shedding the Invisibility spell he’d been wearing, then did a double take. When he’d gone invisible and piggybacked after me into the gnome’s house, he’d been sporting his usual Sam-Spade-pinstriped-suit-and-Fedora work outfit. Now he was poured into a black unitard, pewter-coloured cobwebs decorating the super-tight Lyrca covering every part of him, including his head, hands and feet. He should’ve looked ridiculous in the costume; instead it left nothing to my libido’s imagination and he looked . . . disturbingly jumpable— Down, girl! Briefly I closed my eyes. How the hell had he even got himself into it, not to mention—

           ‘Tavish, why are you dressed-up as a bad-ass Spider-Man?’

He stripped his hood off and the lacy gills either side of his neck snapped open like black fans. He shook out his green-black dreads; they writhed around his shoulders as if objecting to being contained, beads flashing from cobweb pewter to a clear sun-drenched turquoise.

          ‘Och, doll,’ he said, giving me his shark’s grin, serrated teeth white against the green-black of his skin. ‘The fancy dress shop dinna have a Cat-Man costume, so what else should I be wearing to be all sneaky and stealthy?’

          Having him ‘work’ with/for me was like employing a two-year-old sometimes; still, most of the clients loved his ‘eccentricities’. I shot him an exasperated look. ‘You were invisible. It didn’t matter what you wore.’

          ‘Maybe. But where’s the fun in that? And look.’ Tavish lifted his hand and shot a stream of magic at the high ceiling. It expanded into thin filaments, attached, and then with a leap he was above me, crouched upside down on the ceiling, giving me an excellent view of his, oh, so gorgeous arse.

           Crap! I was as bad as the dirty-minded gnome, or Tavish’s magical pheromones were hitting a new high. I was going to have to find a way of getting rid of the damn side-effect, and soon. I dragged my attention back to the dead fairy then decided that staring at his appendage probably wasn’t the ideal way to cool down my libido.

          I fished a bottle of water out of my backpack, took a long drink. Spidey impersonation aside, at least now Tavish had finished his search I’d find out if he’d dug up any incriminating evidence on Mr Lecherous Lampy.

          ‘Any luck?’ I asked, sitting down.


**Available in the UK August 30, 2012
***More information on the Spellcracker's page

*** 'Mr Lecherous Lampy'  just one of the many reasons I love reading McLeod novels. *g*

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