THORN QUEEN
Chapter One
Sad fact: lots of kids know how to use knives and guns.
I'd been one of them, but instead of pursuing a life of
crime, I'd trained to be a shamanic mercenary. This meant that
while my friends were at dances and football games, I'd been
out banishing spirits and wrestling down monsters with my
stepfather. On the upside, I grew up never fearing muggers or
any other assailants. On the downside, an adolescence like
that really screws with your social development.
It meant I'd never really been like other kids. I'd had some
friends, but compared to their world, mine had been terribly
stark and terribly deadly. Their dramas and concerns had
seemed so petty next to mine, and I could never fully relate.
As an adult now, I still couldn't really connect to kids because
I had no shared experiences to draw on.
Which made my job today that much more difficult.
"Go ahead, Polly," crooned the girl's mother, smiling with
overplump lips. Too much collagen, I suspected. "Tell her
about the ghost."
Polly Hall was thirteen but wore enough makeup to rival a
forty-year-old whore. She ... read full excerpt from: Thorn Queen ebook
