Banshees & Boba – PREORDER Signed Paperback

Look Inside (Chapter 1):

I’m the witch who collects bones and molted pixie wings for fun, and sees flickers of futures and other realms in the reflections around me.

I’m the mom whose preteen daughter is a magnet for alarming if adorable magical creatures—one of which lives in our apartment.

Annnd I’m the cubicle-bound lackey who just got ‘let go’ at 2:37 p.m. on a Friday, a week before my benefits kicked in.

Evil corporate bastards.

“Hey, Gemma. Got laid off, huh? Bummer.”

Keith, the resident office brownnoser, hung over the top of my cubicle. He was clearly trying to scrunch his face up like a sad puppy, but his inner delight shone through his amphibifae features just fine.

“Yup.”

I tapped the sigil printed on the flat-pack banker’s box, letting rip with a sizzle of my turquoise magic, and the box popped into shape, every piece folded perfectly.

Nearly taking out Keith’s eye with the violently shifting cardboard was just a bonus.

He scrambled back with a yelp, dropping the fan mister he used constantly, and I hid a smirk. I wouldn’t miss much about this place, least of all him.

The paycheck, though, I would miss.

Not that it had been stellar, but it was enough for me and my daughter, Freddie, to get by okay. I had a little saved, but I’d need to be job-hunting and printing résumés pronto.

Was printing résumés still a thing?

Ugh.

I started tossing my stuff in the banker’s box.

Keith cropped back up like an annoying pimple. “Stealing the office stapler, huh? Petty.”

I gritted my teeth. This was my mint green Swingline SparkTouch stapler—nicknamed Sparky, of course—bought with my hard-earned money, and no way was I going to leave it behind.

It wasn’t my fault these morons hadn’t bothered to buy their own stapler.

Sparky works like a dream—you zap the tiniest bit of magic into it with a tap, and it slams down on whatever papers you’ve inserted. Let me tell you, it really helps with the carpal tunnel when you’ve gotta staple 572 sexual harassment packets for the next company-wide seminar.

Not my problem after today.

A huge weight lifted off my chest, just as another settled over my shoulders—I might not have to worry about the horrible work environment anymore, but now I was a jobless single mom.

Speaking of which… Freddie was getting out of school in about forty-five minutes. If I could ignore Keith long enough to pack up and get out the door, I could make it in time to pick her up and even have a few minutes to search job listings on my phone.

Surprise, kiddo! I’m footloose and fancy free. Better known as unemployed.

Yeah, right.

I could just picture Freddie’s face. Exactly what every twelve-year-old wants—to have Mom show off the junky minivan in front of all her friends, and spring bad news on her.

Eh. She’d deal.

The kid was resilient as all get out.

Not sure where she got it, when her dad took off the second she started screaming as a baby, and I routinely have sobfests over such devastating movies as Ratatouille.

I know, I know.

Ditching the last of my meager cubicle decor into the box, I rustled up the lid from where it’d fallen on the floor, and jammed it on top.

I left Keith in my dust, walking through one last puff of mist on my way out. Joke was on him—I was pretty sure his own one-year mark was coming up in a couple weeks.

Juggling the banker’s box with one hand, I slung my oversize mom-purse over my shoulder as I got on the elevator. No way was I schlepping all this down fifteen flights of stairs.

My gosh darn water bottle began clanking around inside the box as I thudded down the concrete steps out front of the building.

With a sigh, I propped the box against the handrail and fished out the bottle, looping one finger through the carabiner-friendly screwtop. The box lid didn’t want to fit back on properly, so I got one corner stuck down and called it good. I only had to make it to the minivan, after all.

Which really shouldn’t have been a problem.

A rust-colored streak made of wings and teeth erupted out of a tasteful unicorn-shaped topiary thirty feet ahead, and me and my too-high-to-survive-a-horror-movie heels scrambled left toward the parking lot, my lemon yellow minivan beckoning me from the far side.

Yeah, Freddie hates the color too, but you wouldn’t believe the money I saved.

I made it one row of cars deep before the winged menace got close enough to identify.

A blood wyvern.

Squishmallows in a shirt factory.

Look, I trained myself not to swear around the kid, okay? I can’t be held responsible for the nonsense that comes out of my mouth in pursuit of that goal.

I’ve had twelve years of practice—it’s just not a conscious process anymore.

The blood wyvern’s keening shriek homed in on me as I tottered across the parking lot as fast as I could go. No more corporate job meant no more need for killer heels, which, yay, if I survived that long.

Having every drop of my blood drained had not been on the agenda for today.

No way was I gonna make it to the van. I let my box thump down on some sedan’s hood, setting off the car alarm, and whirled around, steel water bottle swinging like a totally nonpokey medieval mace.

I beaned the wyvern right in the face as it swooped down to make a meal out of me—in time with the whoop of the car alarm, too.

Who says I haven’t got rhythm?

Unfortunately, I hadn’t fastened the screwtop real well after my last sip—nobody wants to have to crank one of these open like a muscleman every five minutes. The bottle rebounded and clanged into the distance, rolling under a car, as I stood there, drenched, with only a super useful plastic cap in hand and wet hair plastered to my face.

The blood wyvern almost crash-landed on the windshield of an F150 but recovered just in time to wheel around and make another pass at me, perhaps a bit more wobbly than the first go-round.

Need a weapon, need a weaaapon…

This was why Rapunzel kept a frying pan handy in that movie, but no, I’m too good to learn from my heroes.

Sheer genius, Gemma. Sheer scintillating genius.

I Frisbeed the box lid out of sight in my haste to get it open, and desperately scanned the contents for potential wyvern deterrents.

Sparky the stapler. Several wads of ink-defiled rainbow Post-It notes. Box of brownie cheesecake bites. Fake plant. Aerosol room freshener. Framed photo of Freddie and me. Pair of flip-flops. Notebooks.

Death by a thousand paper cuts wasn’t going to cut it.

Pun sadly not intended.

The blood wyvern lowered its iron claws, getting ready to jab me with the paralyzing poison flowing within them as it flapped the last few feet between us. Why the little hellbeast had decided I was fair game was beyond me, but it was gonna regret that decision.

Hopefully.

I wrenched Sparky the stapler open, brandished it ejector-side out, and channeled a steady stream of my turquoise magic through my fingertips.