Explosive chemistry, p.1
Explosive Chemistry, page 1
Explosive Chemistry
Paige E. Ewing
EXPLOSIVE CHEMISTRY
By
Paige E. Ewing
Copyright © 2023 Paige Roberts
Edited by Lisa Green.
Cover Design by MiblArt.
All stock photos licensed appropriately.
Published in the United States by City Owl Press.
www.cityowlpress.com
For information on subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher at info@cityowlpress.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent and permission of the publisher.
Contents
1. Lunch With A Rabbit
2. Camp Killer
3. Winter Roses
4. The Spider And The Prince
5. Tea With A Goblin
6. How To Train Your Wolf
7. The Man With The Silver Rose
8. Wings On The Windshield
9. Of Soup And Swords
10. Man Of Science
11. The Cyber-Fae And The Room-Bot
12. Time And Patience
13. King Of Lions
14. Not Favors
15. The Spider, The Wolf, And The Detective
16. Soggy Spider, Bleary Badger, And Livid Lion
17. Race With Death
18. Blankets, Hot Cocoa, And Murder
Sneak Peek of Called to the Deep
Find Your Next Read
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
About the Publisher
Additional Titles
Praise for Paige E. Ewing
“Paige Ewing has written a romp of a book in Precise Oaths. Liliana is an engaging, sympathetic heroine with a striking view of the world. One of the things I enjoyed was the way it made me look at being neurodivergent in a new way without once being preachy. What’s more, Precise Oaths is tremendous fun. Liliana’s quirky worldview is mixed with pure determination and ingenuity, along with a strong moral core. The writing is clean and flowing, with a host of terrific characters and great worldbuilding. It’s hard to write a thought-provoking book that’s also fun to read, but Paige pulled it off in spades.” — Angela Knight, New York Times Bestselling author
“Liliana may not always know how to act with humans, but she has deep knowledge of the ways of the Fae and the Others. Some unlikely alliances and Liliana's abilities give us a rollicking adventure and set the stage for more stories to come. It’s a lovely book and I look forward to reading the sequels. I need to know what happens next!” — Nancy Jane Moore, author of The Weave
“A delightful paranormal fantasy with romantic elements. Precise Oaths takes place in the not-so-distant future, when fae, shifters, and normals coexist in an uneasy reality. Liliana is spider-kin—a neurodivergent loner who tells fortunes and longs for connection with others. Thrust into a murder investigation, she ends up having to work with unexpected allies to find the real killers and keep her new-found friends safe. Liliana is strong and intelligent, but she's not good at peopling. Which makes sense, because she's not human. But she is kind, loyal, and determined to make things right. I was rooting for her right from the start. This is an excellent beginning to a new series by paranormal fantasy author Paige Ewing. Fans will adore Liliana!” — Patrice Sarath, author of The Sisters Mederos
To my husband, Joe, who has always had my back, and encouraged me to chase my dreams, even when it meant I spent far too many hours in front of a keyboard.
Chapter 1
Lunch With A Rabbit
The bloody image of two young women in military uniform being shot in the back of the head jolted Liliana awake. She sat up abruptly, her heart pounding, a pointless “No!” forming on her lips.
Her fourth eyes that saw things in other times and places were already open, the source of the ugly dream.
Who are they?
But her mental question did not elicit any new visions, just a repeat of the same horrors. She needed more information to have any chance of saving the women. Her fourth vision showed her nothing near them but a forest, trees, and grass. There was a pine leaning on an oak tree, and a bush with lovely white flowers beneath it. The oak tree had no leaves, so it must have been winter. The plant life looked like the local forests, but that same kind of forest could be anywhere for hundreds of miles around. North Carolina had a lot of forests, especially since paper, and for the most part, wood, had become obsolete.
The two women both had faces in her vision that shimmered with Otherness. They were not Normal humans, but that was all Liliana could tell about them.
Death overwhelmed her fourth vision under the best of circumstances. When she slept, she didn’t have as much control over her vision as she did when awake. She had no idea why the two women she didn’t even know were suddenly in her mind, or if the vision was of the future or of the past. Oddly, it had a trace of the overbright reflections of the future mixed with the muted color tones of the past.
They can’t die both in the past and in the future.
It made no sense.
She got up, feeling tired and achy, and determined not to let it stop her.
Liliana had taken a sick day after nearly being killed a couple days before. Much to her chagrin, she had been forced to take a second sick day by the inability to open her fourth eyes to see the past and future without waves of dizziness from her head injury. She could not get paid for her job as Madame Anna Sees All when she couldn’t open the large swirly pair of spikder-kin eyes on her forehead to see anything.
The awful dream told the spider-kin seer one important thing: her fourth eyes were once again fully functional.
That meant she could get back to work. Which was good. She hadn’t cancelled the appointments for the day, hoping that would be the case. Spider-kin healed fast and cancelling appointments was bad for business.
Liliana removed all the bandages and examined her injuries in the mirror. When she closed her six spider eyes, leaving only her first, human eyes open, her thick dark hair hid the tiny crinkles where they closed. The image in the mirror looked just like a petite young Normal. It was good camouflage. Normals outnumbered Others a hundred to one and tended toward violence when faced with “monsters.” She nodded at the image. She could pass.
Her face and body still clearly showed that she’d been in a battle recently, though. The gash on her cheek looked particularly ugly. The wide, jagged slice made by a widow spider’s spiked limb was closed but still a livid purple with mottled green and yellow old bruising over that side of her face. At least Doctor Nudd had taped the gash shut. That helped it heal more cleanly and quickly.
All of Liliana’s small cuts from her and Pete’s recent battle had healed to the point that only raised pink welts were visible. The swelling on the back of her head was much reduced. She could rotate her neck and open all eight of her eyes without her head feeling like it would fall off.
The only real pain was from her shoulder wound. She supported one arm with the other as she carefully tested how much she could move it. She closed all her eyes as a wave of sadness came with the pain of moving her arm. Stella, the widow spider, had stabbed clear through her shoulder, and Liliana had used that leverage on her limb to drag the brave warrior to her death over the side of a tall building.
Under other circumstances, she and Stella might have been friends. Liliana mourned the death of a fellow spider-kin doing what she must to protect her nest sisters. But if she had not killed Stella, the widow spider would have killed Liliana, so… She sighed. She killed only when she had to, as all three of her parents taught. As long as that was true, she would still find the image in the mirror acceptable, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be sad about the necessity.
As she dressed, she cheered herself with thoughts of the people she’d met over the last few days. Doctor Peter Teague, a civilian bio scientist with the Criminal Investigation Division for Fort Liberty, and a deadly Celtic wolf-kin, accused her of murder and tried to kill her before becoming the closest friend she’d had in years. Siobhan, the little person and flower sprite who owned the custom weapons shop Emerald Arms, a few doors down from her own shop, had also tried to kill her. Then the sprite helped her and Pete survive their battle with the widow spiders, the real killers Pete mistook her for. The unseelie oak goblin, Doctor Nudd, had also tried to kill her, but he made up for that later by loaning her his homemade warm sweater and healing her injuries after the battle.
She had an odd way of meeting people lately.
On the plus side, she had been getting out more, and her life could no longer be described as either boring or lonely.
Opening her fourth eyes, the swirling opalescent lavender and teal ones set above her eyebrows, she took a quick look forward in time to check the weather like she did every morning. It would get chilly and rainy again later. Winter in Fayetteville tended to be sunshiny one day and cold and wet the next. She added cozy purple tights with her black leotard under her usual flowing, brightly colored, homemade skirt. She chose a blouse made of war
Her shoulder wound would take a week before she could go without a sling. She put the sling on her arm and frowned. The medical sling Doctor Nudd gave her was a plain, dull light blue canvas. It did not go well with the sapphire blue velvet top, and the skirt with glittery silver bead trim that complimented it.
Liliana took the sling off, chose a scarf from her chest of drawers, and tied it around her neck. She slipped her arm into it and looked in the mirror again.
The leafy-green, floral patterned silk scarf held her arm without pulling on her sore shoulder, and it looked much nicer than the plain canvas one. She nodded with satisfaction and walked into the converted dining room that served as her place of business, Madame Anna Sees All. She closed the door that led to the rest of her house and checked that the crystal ball was where it belonged, in the exact center of the round table in the middle of the room.
She had scheduled multiple appointments back-to-back, far more than she normally would in a day, to catch up. The first knock on the business door came only minutes later. She welcomed the pair of young wood nymphs who entered in a cloud of giggles and lilac perfume.
Bowing, she waved her arms to gesture them in, and chanted, “Madame Anna sees all. Pay me what you feel is fair for truth that cannot be seen by other eyes. I see what is, what has been, and what might be. Ask and the truth shall be yours.”
Her first appointments went reasonably well. Everyone insisted on asking what had happened to her shoulder and her face. The gash on her cheek from Stella’s last attack was the first thing everyone noticed. It didn’t particularly bother Liliana until they mentioned it, unlike her shoulder injury that restricted her movements, or the persistent itch from the gash on her ribs.
When she answered, “I was stabbed by a giant spider,” the nymph girls laughed as if she made a joke, even though they were Others. They knew that such things could exist.
Her second client, a Normal human who probably didn’t know such things existed, rolled his eyes and said, “That’s a good story. You’ll have a hard time topping it later.”
When her best client, Janice Willoughby, a rabbit-kin homemaker, came in, she took one look at Liliana, covered her mouth with her hand, and interrupted Liliana’s usual client welcome speech to say, “What happened?”
“I was stabbed by a giant spider helping Pete on that case a few days ago. I am fine, though. The injuries are already healing.”
“Oh, Madame Anna, you could have been killed. I heard on the news about the serial killers in Raleigh targeting soldiers from Fort Liberty. They weren’t Normals, were they? What were they really?”
“A nest of widow spiders.” Liliana shrugged. She looked at the shoulder strap of her client’s purse, a soft-looking blue denim material with appliqued flowers. Liliana wondered if it was Janice’s own handiwork.
Janice gasped and her face blanched. “A whole nest of them! I’d scream and run if I saw even one. It’s a wonder you weren’t killed.”
“I did not die,” Liliana reassured her favorite client. “The widow spiders died. I am fine.”
Janice insisted that Liliana tell her the full story. As talkative as Janice was, Liliana also found her to be an excellent listener. The spider-kin felt an odd relief after she shared the story of Pete, the red wolf-kin, hunting her, how she defeated him in single combat, and later risked her life to save him and his friend, Sergeant Zoe Giovanni. It was as if she had been holding something heavy all by herself, and now Janice Willoughby held one end of it for her.
Apparently, having someone she could talk to honestly about her life was soothing in some way. She had noticed this with her clients—that they would often pay the spider seer to simply listen to them talk about their lives when they had no real questions to ask. That had always seemed odd to her. Now she understood.
Long after her appointment ended, Janice stayed and talked with Liliana. When Liliana started to feel hungry, she did something she had not done in a very long time. She invited Janice Willoughby into her home to share lunch.
After telling the rabbit-kin about the recent events in her life, Liliana had little else to say, but Janice didn’t have any trouble filling up the silence. While they ate grilled cheese sandwiches and drank tea, she kept chatting amiably about her children and her husband, Lou. She also spoke about rapidly becoming close friends with Ben Harper, Pete’s Normal boyfriend who was one of Janice’s son’s teachers.
Liliana was surprised to find that having her best client in her home did not bother her like she’d assumed it would. She enjoyed having the cheerful rabbit-kin sharing her personal space.
In fact, she thought perhaps, once she was fully healed, she should go out on a social visit herself, her first in decades. The thought made her stomach a little queasy with nerves, but Liliana was not a coward. She had promised Doctor Nudd she would return his sweater. She would not let fear stop her from keeping her word to the kind goblin.
In addition, having seen him fight twice now, it was clear to Liliana that Pete needed more training. He had all the raw materials of a great warrior—courage without bounds, an indomitable will, intelligence, and incredible levels of brute power—but he did not know how to use those strengths to best advantage. Beyond training, he needed two other things to survive the attack she’d foreseen from a pack of assassins from the Order of the Wolfhound: something to defeat the protective magic of the crown collars the Wolfhounds wore, and allies.
Liliana picked up their plates and went to her kitchen to fetch more tea for herself and Janice.
Pete would be dead already without his allies. Colonel Bennet, who secretly watched over Pete, was even more secretly an unseelie Fae prince. He was also the only reason the first Wolfhound assassin who came to Fayetteville had not already slain Pete. Well, the Colonel’s abilities plus a little help from Liliana.
The only reason she and Pete had survived their encounter with the widow spiders was the timely aid of Siobhan and her machine gun. The value of good allies was incalculable.
Doctor Nudd, in particular, would be essential to Pete’s survival. If an eight-foot oak goblin stood with Pete when he fought, that would certainly improve his chances. Not to mention the doctor’s healing abilities after the battle.
Liliana opened her fourth eyes and looked along the goblin’s life path.
How can I make sure Doctor Nudd will be there to help when Pete faces the Wolfhounds?
She saw the gentle doctor pierced with a sword, blood bubbling from his lips as he died. The power and clarity of the image meant that it would happen soon and was nearly certain.
Oh.
The tea tray in Liliana’s hands tilted without her noticing, spilling tea and cups all over her woven carpet.
Oh.
Janice jumped up from the chair and grabbed the tray from her hands. “What is it, Madame Anna? What did you see?”
Janice set the tray on the coffee table and gently guided the spider seer to the couch by one elbow.
Liliana would have missed the couch in her distraction without the help. “Doctor Nudd is going to be murdered.”
“Oh! That’s awful.” Janice picked up the mostly unbroken tea cups off the carpet. “He’s the nice goblin who fixed up your injuries, right?”
Liliana nodded. “He is also Pete’s closest friend and mentor. Pete will die if Doctor Nudd is not there to fight beside him the next time he is attacked. And he will mourn if Doctor Nudd dies.” After a moment, she added, “I will mourn too.”
