Entangled Secrets by Pat Esden Blitz & Giveaway

Entangled Secrets

Pat Esden

(Northern Circle Coven #3)

Published by: Lyrical Press

Publication date: July 7th 2020

Genres: Adult, Paranormal

A searing battle of hearts, minds, and magic . . .

The Northern Circle coven’s future is in question once again. But this time, hearts and souls are on the line, making the stakes higher, the magic more crucial, and the battle more fateful than ever before . . .

Pregnant and alone at twenty-one, Chandler Parrish sought refuge within the Northern Circle coven’s secluded complex. Never revealing the identity of her child’s father, Chandler has raised her now eight-year-old son, Peregrine, in peace, and used her talent as an artist and welder to become a renowned metal sculptor. But her world is shaken to the core when Peregrine shows signs of natural faerie sight—a rare and dangerous gift to see through faerie glamour and disguises that could only have come from his father’s genes. Worse yet, the boy has seen a monstrous faerie creature trailing Lionel Parker, a magic-obsessed journalist determined to expose the witching world.

But the very man who threatens the witches’ anonymity may also be key to healing Chandler’s long broken heart. As dangerous desires and shocking secrets entangle, new faerie threats and demonic foes close in on the coven and High Council. Loyalties will be tested. Fierce magics will be called upon. And Chandler will have to face her past to save all she holds dear: her coven, her child—and perhaps even her own soul.

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EXCERPT:

Burlington’s flying monkeys. The originals were crafted out of steel decades ago.

I created mine out of car parts and garden tools as a gift to my son on his third birthday.

Truly, if I could have made them fly, I would have.

—WPZI interview with artist Chandler Parrish

Chandler set the hand grinder aside and flipped up the visor of her welding helmet. She studied the fist-size heart on the workbench in front of her and smiled, pleased with the results. If she could just find the perfect strands of wire to use for the arteries and veins, the heart would be ready to install.

She glanced across the workshop to where her latest flying monkey sculpture crouched on a rusty oil drum. It was crafted from scrap metal like its predecessors. But this one was going to be an updated model with a trapdoor in its chest and a heart—a cross between the Tin Man and the flying monkeys of Oz fame.

“Mama?” Her son’s voice came from behind her.

“Yeah?” She turned to see what he wanted.

Peregrine stood in the workshop’s open doorway, silhouetted against the autumn-orange leaves of maple that sheltered the entry. Dirt smeared his jeans. His wild blond hair was tangled. Her chest swelled with joy. If she could ask the Gods and Goddesses for anything, it would be for his life to remain as carefree as that of the eight-year-old he was right now.

“Devlin sent me to get you. Some guy’s waiting in the main house.”

“Who is it?” Chandler asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. The guy saw a shapeshifter turn into a loup-garou. Wish I’d seen it.”

Chandler pulled off her welding helmet and thumped it down on the workbench. Damn it. Their mystery visitor had to be the journalist. His spotting a shapeshifter transforming in public—illegally, of course—wasn’t that recent of news, but his dogged interest in the event, and his intrusion into the Northern Circle coven’s ongoing issues in general, was proving to be a major pain. Actually, she was shocked he’d showed up here at the coven’s complex. A couple of days ago, two coven members had paid him a not-so-friendly visit at the fleabag motel where he’d been staying to discover if he truly was a threat to the witching world’s anonymity, or if he’d only come across as crazy to the average person.

“Devlin thinks the guy’s lying,” Peregrine added.

“Even if Devlin did believe him, he couldn’t tell the journalist what he saw was real, right?”

“I don’t think Devlin likes him.”

“That’s because the journalist is a troublemaker.” She walked over to Peregrine and smoothed her hand down his cheek. At twenty-five, Devlin was younger than she by almost four years, but that made him no less wise. He was Ivy League smart, a powerful witch with polished good looks and a kind heart that made him perfect for the Circle’s high priest position. She gentled her voice. “Do you know where Brooklyn is?”

Peregrine nodded. “She and Midas are making dinner.”

“I need you to go help them until the visitor leaves. Okay?”

Peregrine stuck out his bottom lip in a pout. “Can’t I just listen? I wanna hear about the loup-garou. Please?”

“Not this time.” She crouched, looked him in the eyes, and turned on her mama-dragon voice. “You need to stay away from this man. He’s dangerous. Understand?”

“He didn’t look dangerous to me. He just talked kinda funny.”

“No arguing. I want you to hang out with Brooklyn and Midas. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

Peregrine glanced over his shoulder toward the yard, then his gaze whipped back to her. “What do redcaps really look like?”

Chandler shook her head. Peregrine’s ability to shift seamlessly from one topic to another never ceased to amaze her. “Where in the Goddesses’ name did that question come from?”

He tucked his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “Just wonderin’.” He stole another glance behind him. His voice trembled a little. “Do they really dip their hats in blood?”

Chandler straightened to her full height. Hands on her hips, she followed his gaze. There was nothing unfamiliar or strange in their yard or in the parking lot beyond it, except for an old, lime-green Volkswagen Beetle in front of the main house, undoubtedly the journalist’s ride.

A spark of fear flickered to life inside her, a fear she’d prayed she’d never have to face. “Did you see something strange?”

“There was this creepy person-thing next to that guy’s car.”

In two swift motions, she pulled him all the way inside and slammed the door shut. Heat and the thrum of protective magic blazed up the dragon and monkey tattoos on her arms and across her shoulders. She studied the yard again through the door’s window, hoping to spot a fox or a mangy raccoon. Something. Anything.

Peregrine wriggled in beside her, his breath fogging the windowpane. “It kinda looked like the drawings of redcaps I’ve seen in books.”

She scrubbed her fingers over the soft bristle of her close-cropped hair. Shit. Shit. Shit. Not this. Anything but this. Peregrine was the age when most witches’ abilities manifested. And—though she rarely thought of him—Peregrine’s biological father possessed the gift of faery sight, an ability to see through the glamour faeries used to make themselves invisible; fae such as redcaps. The gift was rare nowadays because the gene pool of witches with the ability had shrunk to a handful, after eons of them being murdered or blinded by the fae, who preferred to remain concealed. It was an extraordinarily dangerous gift for the few adults who possessed it. But for an eight-year-old boy? For her boy?

She wrapped an arm around Peregrine’s shoulder, snugging him closer. “Are you a hundred percent sure you saw something?”

“Yeah. Uh—maybe.”

Maybe? Her tension eased a fraction. In truth, it could have been nothing more than wishful thinking on Peregrine’s part, combined with an imagination as active as hers. Even if he had seen a faery, it could have been a benign and unglamoured one that Brooklyn had invited into the complex to help with her herbs and concoctions.

A movement caught Chandler’s eye. Something coyote-size and hunched low to the ground was creeping out from behind the Volkswagen. It slunk along, dragging something—

Chandler shrieked. A body! A child.

She pushed Peregrine behind her, then eased the door open just far enough to get a better view. She had to have been mistaken. It couldn’t be carrying a child.

The creature swiveled to look at her. It dropped the body. Tufts of straw trailed from where the child was missing an arm.

Chandler let out a relieved breath. She recognized the child and the creature now. “There’s nothing to worry about,” she said. “It’s just Henry with Brooklyn’s scarecrow.” Well, there wasn’t anything to worry about as long as Brooklyn didn’t see Henry, Devlin’s golden retriever, making off with her straw man. If she did, there’d be hell to pay.

Peregrine wiggled past her to look. “I wasn’t afraid of nothin’. And that isn’t what I saw. What I saw was bigger. A lot bigger.” He fanned his arms, indicating something twice as tall and large as the scrap-metal rhinoceros that she’d sold to a client last month, impossibly larger than a redcap.

She gave him a side-eye look. Now he was fibbing, except…

A chill traveled up her arms, prickling against the magic in her tattoos. But what if—other than the size—it wasn’t a fib? What if he did have the sight like his father?

Author Bio:

Pat Esden would love to say she spent her childhood in intellectual pursuits. The truth is she was fonder of exploring abandoned houses and old cemeteries. When not out on her own adventures, she can be found in her northern Vermont home writing stories about brave, smart women and the men who capture their hearts.

She is the author of the contemporary fantasy Dark Heart series from Kensington Books, and the Northern Circle Coven series. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of publications, including Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, the Mythopoeic Society's Mythic Circle, George Scither's Cat Tales Anthology, and the Fragments of Darkness anthology.

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Reach for You by Pat Esden Book Blitz & Giveaway

Reach for You

Pat Esden

(The Dark Heart #3)

Published by: Kensington Publishing Corp.

Publication date: June 27th 2017

Genres: New Adult, Paranormal, Romance

Her passion is her greatest weakness.

His legacy is his prison.

To reunite, both must fight the demons within.

A world of deception and danger separates Annie Fremont from her mother—and from Chase, the enigmatic groundskeeper with whom Annie’s fallen in love. But she vows to find her way back to them, before Chase succumbs to the madness that threatens his freedom. The only person who can help is the magical seductress, Lotli, a beautiful, manipulative woman . . . a woman who has disappeared.

Annie must stay strong, even as the future she imagined is slipping away. With the help of family and friends, she discovers that Lotli is being held against her will, by those who want to exploit her powers. But though weakened, Lotli remains a powerful ally and adversary. A bargain is struck. And now Annie’s only chance to rescue Chase could also tear them apart . . .

Loyalties will be tested, walls will be breached, and enemies will be fought, yet Annie’s greatest battle lies within her own heart—to trust her love for Chase to overcome its greatest enemy, and to save those she holds most dear from the terrifying realm of the djinn. For all of their lives depend on it.

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Previous books in the series:

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CHAPTER ONE:

We journey. Ceaseless and hungry.

Carved into stone tablet. Tenerife, Spain

The campsite was ominously silent. Then a breeze lifted and my ear caught the faint clank and rattle of the bones and knives hanging in the pine trees behind us.

“You don’t think they’re both dead, do you?” Selena whispered.

I scanned the dilapidated camper ahead of us, a do-it-yourself RV created out of an old bread truck. Despite the midafternoon warmth, the doors were shut tight. The tent behind it, barely visible from our angle, bowed under the weight of rain that had pooled in its canopy. There was no campfire smoke. No trampled grass. In comparison to when we’d come here last week, the place looked deserted.

Goose bumps pebbled my skin. I gave the camper another once-over. “Zea was really old and sickly. He could have died—or if the kidnappers came here first looking for Lotli, they could have found him. They might have—”

Selena cut me off with a glower. “You mean, supposed kidnappers.”

My jaw clenched. Yeah, that was exactly what I meant. I understood why my cousin didn’t like that everything we’d discovered pointed to her boyfriend, Newt, being involved in Lotli’s disappearance, and perhaps Zea’s as well. But I thought we’d gotten past that, like a bunch of times already.

I swiveled toward where we’d parked our Land Rover. The Professor stood rooted next to it, a mixture of disgust and apprehension crinkling his face. From his scholarly glasses and sandy brown hair all the way down to his polished loafers, he looked anything but ready for our reconnaissance trip out here on the back roads of Down East Maine. An afternoon of research at Oxford University would have been more appropriate. “You want to check inside the tent while we look in the camper?”

His gaze flicked to the soggy tarps. He cleared his throat, then—as posh as ever—said, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally against the idea. But the thought of discovering a rotting corpse is a teensy bit abhorrent.”

“Would you rather discover one in a closed-up camper?” I snapped. It was lucky we’d driven into the campsite from the main road instead of walking like we’d done the last time. I’d assumed the Professor had an adventuresome spirit to go with his young Indiana Jones good looks. Especially since he was an archaeologist, though this summer he was tutoring Selena’s eleven-year-old brother as a favor. Still, and despite how eager he’d seemed to come with us, the Professor had freaked the second we started past the creepy stuff Zea and Lotli hung in the trees to scare people off: the knives and bones, pieces of copper pipe, broken mirrors, and doll parts. Frankly, I was surprised he’d even gotten out of the Land Rover at all.

I pasted on a smile. “Sorry. I don’t much care for the idea myself. Let’s just hope he’s napping or something.”

The Professor wiped his hands down the sides of his chinos. “I truly hope you’re right.”

As he headed for the tent, I tramped toward the camper with Selena close behind. If only Chase were here now. The creepy stuff hadn’t bothered him at all, and the fear of Zea being dead would have only driven him forward faster.

My chest tightened, my longing for Chase aching inside me, raw and unrelenting. If it weren’t for me, he would be here now. Instead, both he and my mother were trapped in the djinn realm, prisoners of his father, Malphic. If it weren’t for me, Lotli wouldn’t be missing either.

“Well?” Selena jerked her head at the camper door. “Are you going to just stand there?”

I raised my hand and knocked. One second passed. Two seconds. I rapped harder. Nothing. I tried the doorknob. It turned beneath my grip. I opened the door a crack, hesitated, and took a deep breath before pushing it open all the way.

A wave of hot, musty air rushed past me as if the camper had been closed up for days.

“Hello?” I said, sticking my head inside. I gave the air a cautious sniff. No dangerous odors, like a leaky gas stove, permeated the air. No rotting-trash smell—or decomp.

Selena nudged my shoulder. “What are you waiting for?”

I swallowed hard and stepped forward.

The place was cramped, a gypsy wagon on steroids. Tassels and prisms curtained the windows, letting only faint streaks of light inside. Miles of fuchsia and turquoise fabric draped the ceiling and walls. Animal skulls, feathers, and nubby candles clustered inside miniature altars. The fridge, table, and chairs, every surface that wasn’t fabric covered, was painted purple or black. Stars decorated the ceiling. An antique bed piled with crimson quilts and an avalanche of pillows took up the camper’s entire backend. It was cozy enough, I supposed. But I couldn’t begin to imagine what life had been like for Lotli, apprenticed to Zea as a child because of her magic abilities, essentially indentured. Not that I thought a devout shaman like Zea would have been cruel to her. It was just so different from anything I’d experienced.

“Zea, are you here?” I called out. “We need to talk to you about Lotli.”

I minced my way deeper into the cramped space, working my way toward the back of the camper. Cold sweat carved a trail down my spine. I crept past a tiny kitchen and dining nook, then the bathroom—one toothbrush in the holder, a washcloth draped over the edge of a yellowed sink.

I returned to the front of the camper and pulled aside the curtain that divided the living area from the bread truck’s cab. Seats for the driver and a passenger, seashells glued to the dash, insulated coffee cups in the holders—

Something brushed the back of my neck.

I yelped and jumped sideways, whipping around to see what it was and smacking my elbow against the wall. Pain zinged up my arm. I glared at Selena, standing barely an inch behind me.

“Shit,” I said, rubbing the sting from my arm. “You scared the hell out of me.”

She gave me a sheepish pout. “Sorry. I thought you knew I was there.”

“I didn’t think you were that close.” It wouldn’t have hurt half as bad, except I was already sore and bruised from being thrown out of the djinn realm earlier in the day.

Her pout transformed into a smug smile and she flipped her blond hair over one shoulder. “Looks to me like Zea and Lotli might have pulled a vanishing act after all. Huh?”

I stopped rubbing. “Or the Professor’s about to find something disgusting in the tent.”

“Want to bet?”

I closed my eyes, struggling to regain my composure. We couldn’t afford to waste time discussing the same thing over and over again, any more than I could have afforded the luxury of staying home to nurse my aches and pains. Chase and Mother were in danger. And I couldn’t go back to the realm and rescue them until we found Lotli. Without her and her flute-magic, it would be too risky, perhaps even impossible to enter or escape from the realm.

I shoved past Selena and strode to the tiny bathroom. “While we’re here, we should find something personal of Lotli’s that you can use to scry and see where they’re holding her.”

Glancing around, I spotted a scruffy hairbrush. You couldn’t get much more personal than that. I grabbed it and brandished it toward Selena.

She stood just inside the bathroom doorway, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed. “Cut it out, Annie, I’ve had enough of you talking like Newt kidnapped Lotli, the innuendos and little jabs. Maybe his family’s hiding something, but Newt doesn’t have anything to do with it. So quit acting like he’s evil, okay?”

I mirrored her stance. “He told you his dad was a stockbroker, that they owned their summer home. Those were lies. His brother is a registered creep. No matter what you want to think: Newt’s not innocent.”

She turned her back on me, her voice bordering on hysteria. “I don’t know why I bothered coming. You’re so, so . . . You always have to be right—” Her voice died and she slowly faced me. Angry red blotches mottled her face. But tears rimmed her eyes.

My anger drained. She didn’t look pissed. She was trembling like she was about to fall apart. Earlier today, when we’d first heard about the lies Newt and his family had been telling, I’d seen something in Selena’s eyes, something beneath her disbelief.

“What is it? Tell me,” I asked gently.

She raked her hands over her face. “Nothing. You just need to trust me. I know Newt couldn’t be involved. And he wouldn’t have let his brother do it either.”

I leveled my gaze with hers and toughened my voice. “What makes you so certain? Tell me the truth, Selena.”

Her chin quivered. “I just know.”

Tucking the hairbrush handle first into my hip pocket, I stepped closer. I pushed her hair back from her face. “You’re my cousin. Please. Tell me.”

“Nothing. He just wouldn’t do it. He loves me.”

“I get that. But—”

She shoved my hand away. “No, you don’t get it. I know he loves me. Like forever.” Her eyes pleaded for me to understand what she couldn’t bring herself to say.

A possibility seeped into my head. My hands went to my mouth, covering a horrified gasp. She couldn’t mean. She couldn’t have. “What did you do?”

“I kind of—I put a . . .” Her voice faded and she looked down at the floor.

“A spell?” A month ago, the idea of witchcraft being involved would never have occurred to me. Now it seemed more than likely.

“You can’t tell anyone. Mom, Dad, Grandfather—they’d kill me.” She curled her arms over her head, her shoulders shaking as she crumpled down against the wall.

I crouched and put my arms around her. “Whatever it is, it’ll be fine. It can’t be that bad.”

“It is,” she sobbed.

Author Bio:

PAT ESDEN would love to say she spent her childhood in intellectual pursuits. The truth is she was fonder of exploring abandoned houses and old cemeteries. When not out on her own adventures, she can be found in her northern Vermont home writing stories about brave, smart women and the men who capture their hearts. An antique-dealing florist by trade, she’s also a member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, and the League of Vermont Writers. Her short stories have appeared in a number of publications, including Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, the Mythopoeic Society’s Mythic Circle literary magazine, and George H. Scither’s anthology Cat Tales.

Website / Goodreads / Facebok / Twitter

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