Slow Twitch - Реинхардт Лиз (читать книги онлайн без сокращений TXT) 📗
An expletive-laced thank you to my lovely FP friends, who know exactly what to say during my darkest and lightest hours, and every one in between. I love everyone of you to your bones, and wish so much success heaped on all of your heads, you faint from the deliriously amazing weight of it all.
If I could list and love every blogger and reader who helped by beta reading, interviewing, reviewing, and just morally supporting me and being rad, I would, but this book would be 7,000 pages long. That’s how many totally cool, amazing readers and bloggers there are out there. Hey, I read a lot. A ton. There’s awesome, amazing stuff to be read in this wide world, and if you chose to read my books out of the lot, I’m so in love, even my wordiness can’t encompass it. My hat is off to the readers who have so much passion for what they read, they just want to spread the goodness around. Your encouragement, love, and sometimes scary demands about when the next book is coming have warmed me, hair follicle to toenail, and the love in my heart for you is explosive. Or, at least, it’s definitely bubbly and frothy…explosive sounds dangerous!
Big, huge, incredible, mind-blowing thank yous all around.
Biography
Liz Reinhardt, author of Double Clutch: A Brenna Blixen Novel, Junk Miles: Brenna Blixen Book 2,and Forgiving Trinity, was born and raised in the idyllic beauty of northwest NJ. A move to the subtropics of coastal Georgia with her daughter and husband left her with a newly realized taste for the beach and a bloated sunscreen budget. Right alongside these new loves is her old, steadfast affection for bagels and the fast-talking, foul mouths of her youth. She loves Raisinettes, even if they aren’t really candy, the Oxford comma, movies that are hilarious or feature zombies, any and all books, but especially romance (the smarter and hotter, the better), the sound of her daughter’s incessantly wise and entertaining chatter, and watching her husband work on cars in the driveway. You can read her blog at www.elizabethreinhardt.blogspot.com, like her on Facebook, or email her at [email protected]
ARC Excerpt from
Inherit
By Liz Reinhardt
A Mature YA Paranormal
Coming Summer 2012
Chapter One
When the box passes from the airport customs clerk’s hands to mine, the weight shifts so suddenly, I have to throw one hip out to offset it.
“It moved.” I address the statement to the man, sour as a bag of lemons and dull as a turnip, behind the scarred counter. He is a feast of unpleasantness, and he clearly wants me to leave quickly and without a fuss.
“It has air holes.” He waggles his pen at me and sighs. “Watch out for urine.”
“Excuse me?” I hold the squirming box far out in front of me and my arms shake from the effort.
“Urine.” He stretches the word out so it bounces and echoes off of the gray walls and dirty blue chipped laminate counters and nasty pens that don’t work, but are attached by chains like you might bother to steal them. “If it has air holes, it urinates. It will go right through that cardboard.”
“Thanks.” I back away fast and we exchange smiles. It’s the first and last time he or I smiled during our brief meeting. Parting is such sweet pleasure! Good-bye grouchy airport employees, dismal, rundown airport desk and pacing, grumbling passengers!
The air outside is wonderful, cool and fresh on my face, a tall, icy glass of water after the gritty desert of that abysmal, stuffy interior. I clip quickly to my truck, shivering in black leggings, a red off-the-shoulder tunic with skulls on it and a fantastic silver scarf. I should have worn a coat, but I didn’t have one that matched, and this outfit would be a sin to cover!
I check the box for pee, and then shake it gently, side to side. No pee, only the sound of scratching, like tiny nails scraping the cardboard. I kick the door shut, shimmy to the driver’s seat, and call my best friend. One hand on the phone, one on the wheel, I back up and pull out carefully, praying my truck won’t break down before I make it home.
“Nevaeh!” I can hardly hear her on the other end. “Nevaeh, is that you?” A voice pops through and I feel the low citric burn of jealousy that I’m working on curbing. “Oh. Hi Zivalus.”
My best friend Nevaeh is my rock, the serious, smart, motivated person I anchor myself to when I feel like a kite about to break its string and float away to my tree-top and electrical-wire doom. She pulls me in. Talks me down. Keeps me away from high branches and bodies of water and birds…and whatever else kites need keeping away from.
Well, she used to do all those things. Until Zivalus.
He’s nice. So nice. He plays the trumpet like Louis Armstrong, has a 3.75 GPA, manipulates a soccer ball like he was born without arms and dotes on Nevaeh. A better friend would be happy for them. I’m working on it.
“Hey Wren! Where’ve you been lately? Nevaeh’s missing you. Did you get our message about the movie last night?” His voice is cheery and sweet; Zivalus sounds like a trumpet even when he’s nowhere near a horn.
“Uh, sorry, Zivalus. I was busy. I had night shift tutoring. I told Nevaeh that.” Why does he have to be my best friend’s mouthpiece? Why do I get a message from ‘them’ instead of ‘her’? I’m being a spoiled brat, but these things irritate me!
“She must’ve forgot.” He sounds honestly upset. “Maybe tonight?”
“Can’t. Gotta watch Bestemor.” Bestemor is what I call my mother’s mother, my grandmother. She’s a little wicked, a lot funny, and losing her mind fast. My fingers curl tight on the steering wheel when I think about her pouring dishsoap into her tea, depositing the crossword puzzle at the bank, and leaving all the plants in the shower with the water running for eight hours while I was at school. In the end, all it amounted to was some diarrhea, a confused but entertained bank teller, some soggy plants, and a fat water bill. But these kinds of things were happening more and more often, and it ate at my heart.
“Maybe we can drop by?” Zivalus presses.
I grit my teeth. Maybe you can stop answering Neveah’s phone.“Not tonight. Bestemor’s been really confused lately.” Last time Zivalus pulled up to take us out, Bestemor wanted to know when we got a driver. I know she didn’t mean it, but it made my ears burn to remember, and I don’t want him to get offended by something my lovably loony grandmother says.
“We definitely need to hang soon. Well, I’ll tell Nevaeh you called, Wren!”
Zivalus clicks off before I can tell him I need to speak to her. Not him, her. And that there is a mysterious box from Ageo, Japan sitting next to me in my truck, silent but alive. I can feel the vibrations of life coming from it, and I imagine I can even sense a heartbeat and breathing.
