Unsure if she's drowning or being saved, all Marlow wants to do is run away. Ensnared in a haunting love triangle, she realizes both boys have holes in their hearts—scars from loving the same girl, a girl who managed to stay dead. Now she is being hunted for what she has become and what she never asked to be. Even as a Skeleton Marlow isn’t the worst thing in the night—she isn’t even close.
EXCERPT FROM SKELETON LAKE
My mouth was no longer the worst of it. Dryness tore further at my cracked lips with every haggard puff puff, with every jagged breath I forced out of it. But now, that feeling seemed to travel from the ends of my dark tangled hair, to the tips of my snow covered bare feet. I ran without direction, without a goal. I liked the feeling of the escape. I like pretending I could.
Deep foot prints and tiny droplets of red ruined the winter landscape behind me as I darted past the tree line. Terrible blotches that looked black in the moonless night were all that was left of the tops of my hands. I had unconsciously torn away at the flesh with my own finger nails. I imagined what those bones would look like, peeking through the bloody mass of my clenched fists. I didn't dare look.
My heart continued to beat, even though I knew it had already given up. Broken, but not silenced, it seemed determined to win a race against the pounding of my steps. Sometimes one rhythm would play ahead, but the other would be right behind. There would never be a winner, neither of them would cease before the other and my weary legs refused to give out until I was wherever they needed me to go.
That was when I saw it, practically glowing with the reflection of a million different universes. It was a large still mass, yet everything seemed to move around it. Tendrils of steam rose from all the edges and danced across the top of the lake. I couldn't remember hearing of anything like it.
I found myself wondering what it would be like to drown. Did it hurt? How would it feel floating there, weightless, until my very life drained away?
Solve a murder, save her mother, and stop the apocalypse? No problem. She has a foul-mouthed troll on her side. For Austin homicide detective Leira Berens, happy is running down bad guys and solving crimes. And she’s damn good at it. Which is why when the Light Elf prince is murdered, the king breaks a centuries old treaty and crosses between worlds to seek her help. Wait a min...
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