Mid Week Tease - The Bone Flute - Love is Love

Welcome to the Weird, the Wild, & the Wicked for a new year of Mid Week Tease hosted by Sandra Bunino.

Authors: this is a great opportunity to spotlight a few lines or even a paragraph or two from a new release or backlisted title. Readers: you get to sample some delicious snippets! We’ll do our best to tease, titillate and tantalize you into the weekend.

I suddenly realized I hadn't read my own post. LOL So this will be the last snippet from my new paranormal romantic suspense set in Las Vegas, entitled The Bone Flute. Next week I'll have something from Queen Bitch of the Callowwood Pack. But I can't just cut you off cold turkey, so in this unedited snippet, Rain is trying to figure out the nature of Jozsef's curse so they can figure out how to dismantle it.

She let that one go for a moment. “Okay, so you met up with a ‘magic user’ each time. Always in the same place?”

He shook his head slowly. “I don’t believe so. The first man appeared to be wealthy and lived in an ornate house on the water. He had a wife and children, but he also saw another woman most intimately. His mistress, I think. She was unhappy with his refusal to buy her better dresses than his wife and poisoned him for it.”

“Damn. You watched him die? Why didn’t you warn him?”

Jozsef shrugged. “What could I do? I was a ghost with no ability to communicate. Besides, he was a pig like Horváth. I had little interest in helping him.”

Rain sighed. “Who did you meet next?”

“A gypsy woman who told fortunes at all the villages along their route.”

“A fortune teller?” Rain snorted with derision. “Was she accurate?”

“Most of the time. Unfortunately, she told a ruling prince something he didn’t want to hear, no matter how true it might have been, and they stoned her for her ‘lies.’”

Rain gaped at his cavalier response. “Where were you then?”

He frowned in concentration and ran a fingernail over the edge of her table. “Rus, I think.”

“And you didn’t help her, either?”

“Rain, I was a ghost. How was I to help her?”

“You could’ve warned her or even distracted those who captured her. I assume you just watched her die, too.”

Jozsef opened his mouth to say something, but just gestured helplessly.

“Sheesh. Who’s next in the execution lineup?”

He told her about a rich Norwegian Prince whose half-brother wanted the crown on his head and took it, with the head still attached. Jozsef had learned how to make coherent sounds at by then, but hadn’t used them to help the Prince. The next time he awoke, he’d found himself in the hands of a handsome, young English painter. The young man had been lucky to find a wealthy patron, who had also been his lover. Unfortunately, the wealthy lover was jealous of the painter’s talent and attentions. He killed him one night when he thought the painter had accepted a tryst with another man.

Rain scowled. “Why did you let the painter die?”

“He was unnatural.” Jozsef shifted uneasily in his seat.

“He was not unnatural.” She slapped her hand on the table, frustration rising. “Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality. Love is love.”

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