Once a month, a bunch of authors get together and post excerpts from published books, contracted work or works in progress, and link to each other. You don’t have to be published to participate–just an writer with an excerpt you’d like to share. For more info on how to participate, head over to the Excerpt Monday site! or click on the banner above.
This month, I’m sharing the first chapter of Blood and Roses, which will be available at Samhain tomorrow!
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I was not the only man in the parlor that night, but I was one of the few not looking for a whore.
The girls sat about, mostly, combing their hair or bent in gossip with one another. There was little else to do; it had been a slow night, and patrons came in a discouraging trickle. Occasionally a girl would spy someone she fancied, rise, stretch, and amble over so as not to betray her interest too readily. I sat by a window where the breeze might reach me and played draughts with Elise. There were too many of us in the parlor, crowded and overheated, not enough patrons culling our ranks to keep the numbers at a reasonable level. The chair put my back to the door, and Elise was to spy over my shoulder and give a signal if any patrons seemed to be the sort who might find me a more suitable companion than one of the girls.
I was bent over the board studying my next move when a collective shiver seemed to overtake us all as one. I straightened and saw Elise staring over my shoulder, leaning to get a better view. The other girls, those who I could see, were already scrambling to their feet, idle pursuits cast aside, tripping over their skirts as they rushed to greet this newcomer.
I rose from our table, one of only a handful not already flinging myself at this newest patron, and cast a brief glance behind me, wondering who it was this time the women were making fools of themselves over.
I did not have to wonder what it was. Only one thing turned these working women to sycophants at a mere glance.
Vampire. The king himself might have walked through our doors and not received such a welcome.
