We're happy to host the Into the Mystic (Vol. 1) blog tour from NineStar Press and IndiGo Marketing! The lesbian/bisexual fantasy/paranormal anthology features 11 stories from authors: Brooklyn Ray, J.C. Long, Kara Race-Moore, Samantha Kate, Nicole Field, J.P. Jackson, Caitlin Ricci, L.J. Hamlin, Kayla Bashe, Charli Coty, and Tay LaRoi! See our exclusive excerpt from Brooklyn Ray and enter in the NineStar Press giveaway!
Title: Into the Mystic
Series: Volume One
Author: Brooklyn Ray. J.C. Long, Kara Race-Moore, Samantha Kate, Nicole Field, J.P. Jackson, Caitlin Ricci, L.J. Hamlin, Kayla Bashe, Charli Coty, Tay LaRoi
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 7/31/17
Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex
Pairing: Female/Female
Length: 101100
Genre: Paranormal, paranormal, witches, werewolves, lesbian, bisexual, mermaids, fae, zombies, shifters
Synopsis
Eleven lesbian/bisexual paranormal short stories…
Reborn by Brooklyn Ray – Dark magic, mystical bloodlines, a living forest, and two women fighting to reclaim a love they lost.
Zero Hour by J.C. Long – She can’t outrun the full moon.
Dove in the Window by Kara Race-Moore – As if the Great Depression wasn’t bad enough, Cissy’s first love is back from the dead.
Bottom of the River by Samantha Kate – The demon isn’t always the monster.
If You Want to Walk by Nicole Field – Follow Chess into the Underneath and meet the strange creatures she finds there.
A Tended Garden by J.P. Jackson – Immortality or humanity—which one will win out in the end?
Romancing the Healer by Caitlin Ricci – In a deadly snowstorm a werewolf needs all the help she can get, and the werebear coming to her aid is more than she appears to be.
Midnight Kisses by L.J. Hamlin – A local witch, a new-to-town werewolf, and a mystery to be solved.
Like a Bell through the Night by Kayla Bashe – Guarding a faerie princess? All in a day’s work for a werewolf bodyguard. Avoiding falling in love with said princess? The hardest mission of Jaffa’s life.
The Imp in the Rock by Charli Coty – The cure for a bad breakup might be magic.
Smile Like You Mean It by Tay LaRoi – Ingrid meets a terrifying Japanese legend, but the stories are all wrong.
Excerpt
Reborn by Brooklyn Ray
Thalia Darbonne left Port Lewis three years ago with no intention of returning. Despite being a powerful witch, she’s now known as a deserter – an outcast in the magical society. But after her mother’s untimely death, Thalia is called back to her hometown in order to fulfill her duty as matriarch, and take the place as head witch of the Darbonne Clan.
Being back home isn’t easy, especially when Thalia is confronted by a ghost from her past, the beautiful, dangerous necromancer, Jordan Wolfe.
As Thalia tries to cope with the loss of her mother, she’s also faced with her feelings for Jordan, the responsibility of becoming matriarch, and the strange, dark magic lingering between her and her first love. Thalia and Jordan fight through three years of confusion in the forest they grew up in, where trees whisper, the night sky bleeds, and sigils are carved into flesh.
Zero Hour by J.C. Long
After being bitten by her long-time girlfriend Robbin in werewolf form, Simone does the only thing she can think to do—she gets in her car and drives as far away as she can. As the first full moon since she was bitten approaches, Simone is faced with a difficult choice: does she trust Robbin, who wishes to guide her through her first transformation, after being hurt by her? And more importantly, with the full moon drawing near, does she really have a choice?
Dove in the Window by Kara Race-Moore
In 1930’s Appalachia, Cissy McGurk is still mourning the death of Pearl, her first love. However, Pearl shows up one night and crawls into bed with her, bemoaning that she can’t sleep. More and more people from the local cemetery are crawling from their graves because something won’t let them rest. Cissy has to find out how to fix it, even if that means asking Death himself for advice.
Bottom of the River by Samantha Kate
Anja Bauer is the daughter of rich but cruel parents who care little about her happiness. Despite her revulsion toward men, they plan to marry her off to a faraway suitor. But Anja’s discovers a contract they signed with the demon they’d warned her about, and she learns the true extent of their wickedness and the reality of the demon.
If You Want to Walk by Nicole Field
Chess runs into the world of the Fae to try to escape her depression, only to find it comes there with her. When she finds her way back, she knows she will have to leave many things behind. Is leaving worth that price?
A Tended Garden by J.P Jackson
Alyssa is a natural witch whose thoughts have a way of coming true. Her coven is the only one around—well, the only one she’ll practice her beliefs with – but her high priestess, Rachel, is particularly difficult to please.
Rachel has a secret she hasn’t told anyone in her coven—one that her ancestral witches before her kept from their covens too. If Rachel’s to hold on to her traditions and the immortality she’s been promised, she’ll have to keep the women in her coven returning to the sacred grove, and that includes Alyssa.
But secrets have a way of being revealed, and when Alyssa stumbles across Rachel’s violent and horrifying history with the trees of the grove, the pact between the sacred grove and Rachel’s family may have a price too steep to pay.
Romancing the Healer by Caitlin Ricci
When she takes too long to come back to her pack, Aria is caught up in a snowstorm. To make matters worse, she’s twisted her ankle while running. Hurt, freezing, and alone, her best chance for survival is to stay under an evergreen until the storm clears then try to limp back to her pack. Zoe has a better idea. She’s a healer without a pack to call her own, although she’s desperate for the kind of family Aria has with hers. Being trans, Zoe has never felt all that welcome with other shifters, but Aria promises to show her that there is at least one pack who would gladly have her. All they have to do is wait out the storm together.
Midnight Kisses by L.J. Hamlin
A night out in a bar before a big council meeting to relax seems like a good idea, talking to the cute werewolf at the bar seems like a better idea. But when they meet again will sparks get in the way.
Like a Bell through the Night by Kayla Bashe
Rhiannon, faerie princess in exile, has been on the run for her entire life. Hunted by her most dangerous enemy yet, she turns to her childhood crush for help: immortal, smolderingly sexy werewolf Jaffa Volkovitch.
Jaffa’s scars and secrets haunt her, and she doesn’t let anyone get close. She remembers Rhiannon as an optimistic child… not an alluring, resilient young woman whose every touch awakens forgotten feelings. Keeping up her emotional barriers could mean breaking Rhiannon’s heart. What will Jaffa decide?
The Imp in the Rock by Charli Coty
Wendi Tamura turns to her favorite beach to calm her jangled nerves after she’s dumped by her cheating boyfriend. The water near her home on the Oregon Coast is never warm, and no place for a nude woman, so when one appears before her seemingly by magic, Wendi offers her help. It’s been years since she’s been with a woman, but when the beautiful Hanako reveals her true nature, Wendi doesn’t let either detail keep her from the most magical and steamy night she’s ever had.
Smile Like You Mean It by Tay LaRoi
Ingrid Smith, a young American living in Sendai, meets the cursed Slit-Mouthed Woman of Japanese folklore and does her best to rid herself of the woman. When a conflict reveals that Ayame isn’t as terrible as her legend says, she’s embarrassed by the truth and vows to haunt Ingrid until they can figure out how to lift the curse. For weeks Ingrid tries to lift Ayame’s curse, but with each passing day, she’s not sure she wants to.
Exclusive Excerpt
Reborn by Brooklyn Ray
Night skies bleed. She’d known that all her life, from the time she was a girl, climbing onto the roof to look at the stars, to now, walking on cold misty streets in a town she’d never considered coming back to. Thalia’s chin tipped up, dark skin highlighted by streetlamps and the glow of cracked movie theater signs. She studied the November sky, tracing the blurred pinpricks where stars peeked through fog and deep navy collided seamlessly with pitch-black. Everything dripped—moonlight into the nether, starlight into the horizon.
Look, Thalia, watch time cut it open. The sun would sink and Thalia would wait. The night bleeds and we’re reborn. Once the sun was behind the distant mountain range, Thalia and her family would set off into the woods. The stars and moon would bleed white and gold, and the witches of Port Lewis would mirror the act above by spilling blood below.
Thalia’s hands had been clean for three years. She didn’t intend to dirty them again.
A buzz vibrated the front pocket of her black jacket. She stopped to lean against the brick wall of a familiar pizza parlor and pulled out her phone. “Christ,” she bit, wincing when the bright screen flashed in her eyes. Her gaze fell over one message after the next, the first from her brother, the second from her aunt, and the third from her father.
Every message said the same thing in varying tones.
Your mother is dead, Thalia. You’re the next matriarch. Come home.
Thalia had been reading the same texts for a week now. The Darbonne Witches were without a leader, and a clan without a leader would fall apart within a year. But Thalia Darbonne wasn’t any witch—she was a deserter, a stain on the reputable name her family had carried for generations.
Nights like these, when the sky bled and the fog was thick, Thalia remembered magic.
She felt it echo in her veins, a whisper of heat, a weighty soreness that felt brittle under her skin.
Nights like these reminded her that magic was a terrifying, savage thing.
Her thumbs hovered over the screen. She typed a message to her brother, backspaced it, tried again, line after line after line, and backspaced everything she’d written for the second time.
She settled on two words. I’m here.
Thalia hit send. As soon as she saw Luther had read the text, she slid her phone back into her jacket pocket and looked back up at the sky. Magic stirred within her, jostled awake by her hometown, her mother’s untimely death, and by something else. A familiarity. A distinct shift in the air, odd and transparent, like a switch had been flipped and the lights dimmed, water ran the wrong way, things were unmade.
Somehow, the night recognized the collision of energies before she did. The natural magic in the air shuddered and retreated, urging her to do the same.
But Thalia knew this darkness. She’d had it etched into her skin. She’d worn it under her clothes. She’d let it slither down her throat.
“I felt you a mile away.” Her voice hadn’t changed any. It carried the same rasp, the same quiet wisp. “What’s a Darbonne runaway like you doing in a soggy town like this?”
Thalia remembered the shape of Jordan’s lips, too full on the bottom, too bowed on the top. She remembered her small chin, the cliff of her cheekbones, the prominent angles of her face. They hadn’t softened over time, but her brows were thinner now, higher, and there was a ring through her left nostril. Her hair was still shoulder-length and ashy, the blonde people paid to get rid of at a salon, with loose waves created by coastal air.
“My mom died,” Thalia said because small talk was for people who didn’t kill to appease their lineage, or steal magic to raise the dead. “They want me back.”
“They could’ve asked me,” Jordan purred. The uncomfortable truth of her practice made Thalia’s guts twist. “All I need is a body and an invocation.”
Thalia’s head listed to the side; her arms crossed over her chest. The knot low in her abdomen worked in tandem with the heat rising into her cheeks. Nervousness battled with disregard. Desire fractured the eaves in her mind where Jordan’s low voice dusted old memories.
“Why’d you come find me?” Thalia shifted. The click of her ankle boots ricocheted off the alley walls behind the pizza parlor. She felt Jordan’s sharp gaze on her face, the rake of it down her neck, past the silver chain between her collarbones, to her torso. “You know what happened, Jordan. This town’s too small to get something like a Darbonne death past you.”
“Death never gets past me.” Jordan’s dark, slate eyes caught Thalia’s flighty gaze. “You know that.”
Each word stretched open, filled with purpose and warmth. No matter how many years had gone by, Thalia couldn’t shake the soft brush of Jordan’s magic against her own. Unnatural meeting natural, a drop of blood in a clear lake, a clawed hand wrapped around the stem of a flower.
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