Excerpt 1:
I stabbed a stupid crepe, trying not to think about Kyle and Berk back in Vel. I was sure they were okay. I just wasn’t sure I’d ever see them again. Who was I kidding? They, and everyone else in the pub, would’ve written me off, and they’d be right to. I told you, getting snagged by a fae had a survival rate of zero. At least, nobody I’d ever heard of had come back to tell the tale.

Despite my cheery thoughts, I won’t lie, the crepes were just about the best thing I’d ever eaten. I figured I could die happy with them in my stomach. The imp seemed pleased when I said so and asked for seconds. As soon as I’d finished, the daemon tucked away his paper and lit a long, gold-filtered cigarette. The imp came back with espresso. I was feeling fancy and had mine with a twist.

“Thanks for that with the golem… I mean, it was a golem…?”

He blew out a long stream of smoke. It was a gross habit, but he made it look worth taking up. “Yes, and you’re welcome.”

“Uh, any idea why it was there?”

“For you, otherwise it wouldn’t have revealed itself.”

He didn’t seem particularly concerned, but my mouth went dry. Had he been watching me? Did he have anything to do with the dae Calista had been screwing? And more importantly:

“Are you going to eat me?”

He took another drag and raised a gorgeous eyebrow at me. “Would you like me to?”

Yeah, I just about died. That totally wasn’t what I meant.

Excerpt 2:
I scrabbled at the pitted metal. How was it even possible? It had no keyhole, just two thin lines like the halves had been snapped together and the ring for his leash. 

I started hyperventilating.

“Pet…” The sing-song whisper almost made me piss myself it was so close. I jammed my fist in my mouth, keeping still. A twig snapped to my right, and I screwed my eyes shut.

A massive crash followed it, and I took off. In retrospect, that was my first mistake. I mean, my first mistake since I’d tried to knee him in the nuts. I was racking them up like student loans otherwise.

The forest floor quickly smoothed out and become easier to navigate, but the trees here were spiky, twisty things crowded close together. They didn’t look, I don’t know, earthly. I had a bad feeling that I’d somehow wandered into Fae.

It doesn’t happen often, but there are some places where the veil is thin enough to walk right across. Usually it corrects itself, but I’d told you this whole thing with Mica felt scripted. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was holding a way open, funneling me exactly where he wanted me to go. I thought about it, but stopping and waiting for him to show up with his rifle seemed worse.

I stayed on the stupid path. Through narrow gaps in the trees I could see patches of mire and bracken, some clusters of stone, but getting to them would be a bitch. Mica ’s howl in the not-so-distant distance took that off the table.

I kept running.