Here’s a chapter preview for Fairy Doctor 3. The new book is coming out next year! I’m so excited to finally have something to share! It’s the end of my series. (Amazing! I know! I finally finished it. I promised it was coming.)
The scene you are about to read is one of my favorites.
I think it captures the essence of what makes the Fairy Doctor series fun: quippy lines, ridiculous magical stuff happening, and silly jokes between Lillia and her fairy-like companion. So far the books have featured a different sidekick each time. There was Atomic in the first book, a timid fairy who needed a boost of confidence. There was a kobold in the second book, an artist-in-hiding who needed someone to recognize and encourage his artistic talents. This time we have Jinxy. She’s a troublemaker who needs looking after.
This scene is why this book exists. Please enjoy this chapter preview for Fairy Doctor 3 Rest in Peace, Baron’s Route. (ooh, that title is a mouthful!)
A Preview of Fairy Doctor Rest in Peace, Baron’s Route
“Jinxy!” Lillia exclaimed. “What are you doing?”
“Coming with you.” The small black imp rotated like a top before collapsing into a dizzy puddle. She took a more familiar fairy-like shape, only wingless, and lay flat on her back, black eyes like whirlpools. “Why does everythin’ keep spinning?”
Lillia didn’t have time to worry about the imp.
Set the portal’s destination, Lillia reminded herself. No wait, the destination should be set already. She needed to activate it. Why was it so complicated? It was the blue thing-a-ming-jig, she was guessing.
“Um, Jinxy. Is it the blue magic line that makes portals work?”
“How should I know? I never worked one.”
“Right. I’m nearly positive.” Lillia tried it, tweaking on the leyline of blue squiggly magic.
Nothing happened.
“Must be the red one,” she said.
“Just don’t cut it. I heard that’s dangerous; cutting the red wire,” Jinxy said.
“I’m pretty sure you always cut the red wire.”
Jinxy shot to her feet. “What? No way!”
They felt the floor tilt violently. Cold seeped under the door. She was still on Brimclif Island? Lillia tried again, giving the arrays the biggest mind-shove she could. Not one in particular, because this time she picked all of them and shoved hard.
“That should do it.”
They waited. Lillia tapped her feet. Jinxy imitated her.
“Is it working?”
“I don’t know.”
The floor was still tilted, and a frosty vapor still poured under the doorframe.
“It better not malfunction.”
“Um, what happens if it does?” Jinxy asked.
“We end up in limbo, in between portals.”
“Do you think it’s cold and frosty there too?”
“I dunno. Why does it smell like peppermint?” Lillia said.
Jinxy leaned over and sniffed.
“That can’t be good. I’m going to check. Hold onto something.” Lillia peered into the portal magic again, but it appeared dark this time as if it had already activated and was now resting or deactivated. She crept to the door and braced herself, ready for the biting wind and cold to blow it open again. Jinxy clung to her shoelaces.
The door creaked open, then it felt like someone picked the floor up. She found herself falling forward and crashing onto a hardwood. Jinxy shrieked and transformed herself into a black octopus wrapping around Lillia’s leg. Pain radiated from the wound on Lillia’s other leg and sent spikes of light through her brain.
Footsteps appeared, stomping toward her.
Suddenly, she was surrounded by tall figures in wooly trench coats, their face masks covering their mouths.
“Who’s this?”
“She came out of the portal.”
“Did she activate it?”
“Where’s the Baron?”
“I don’t see him.”
“Good, we’re not ready for him yet. ”
Their words bombarded her.
“Space, please. I need some space. I can’t breathe.” Lillia held her hands out, but they crowded closer. Several of them grabbed her and hauled her to her feet.
She recognized the room. This was the Baron’s London office. There were doors on every single wall, sometimes multiple doors right next to each other and each one was a portal to a different city.
They marched Lilia into the main office, which had panorama windows with an impressive view of London’s skyline from the skyscrapers to glass-covered behemoths, such as The Gherkin, which looked rather like a jeweled pickle, and the distant Shard with its stiletto-like silhouette. She could see the famous London Bridge and all the way to the iconic dome of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. There may have been some magic manipulation on the glass. She could practically see Southwark, where she’d first hidden from the Baron in Kara’s apartment so many weeks ago.
An elegant antique desk sat in the middle of the space with chocolate-colored carpets and buttercream accents.
There was a very distressed-looking secretary named Joel in a disheveled suit. “Oh, Lady Brimclif. They’ve seized everything from my files, and the Baron’s going to be terribly unhappy when he finds out. They ruined the Persian carpet. A gift from Prince Saldid. The Baron will be so angry. I couldn’t stop them. They followed all the protocols. It’s International Magic Law, and I can’t afford to lose my ODE membership. I’ve only just achieved my Tempest level at Midsummer. Will you speak to the Baron? He listens to you. I’ve seen him.” The young man was so upset Lillia could barely keep track of what he was saying. He was some kind of Magus or possibly a Shakespearean scholar. She got that much.
“You’re Lady Brimclif?” The stiff coats didn’t seem to care about anything else the secretary said, but they zeroed in on that fact.
“Well, I won’t be much longer, but—” Lillia hesitated, not sure how much of her private life had been made public. She’d been in hiding, after all.
“Lillia Brimclif?”
“Y-yes.”
“Then you’ll have to come with us. You’re under arrest.”
“What!” She tried to pull away.
“No! They can’t!” Joel exclaimed, nearly in a swoon. “No one said anything about an arrest warrant! Lady Brimclif, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.” He wrung his hands.
“Why am I under arrest? Who are you?”
They just grunted and escorted her from the room.
“They’re IMPS,” the secretary said as he followed closely behind.
“Imps? Like my Jinxy? Where are you, Jinxy?” Lillia asked.
“Here!” The imp had gotten loose and stood to attention in a miniature humanoid shape on top of a filing cabinet. Everyone stared in stunned silence. Lillia had no idea why.
“Actually, IMPS stands for the International Magus Police Society,” Joel said. “I’ve never seen an actual imp before. Heard of them. Studied them in school. Are they really corrupted essence?” He stared fascinated. “A boundless source of energy.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Lillia said as Jinxy continued to preen, growing feathers from her head and a tail.
“Someone catch that creature!” One of the police officers shouted.
They tried to jump at her, but Jinxy was too quick for them, zipping away and bouncing off the ceiling to land against the window, out of reach.
Joel joined in and brought over a stepladder. An officer shoved him aside and tried to climb up, only for Jinxy to jump to another location near the back of the room.
A tall IMPS officer held Lillia’s arm behind her back. “Enough talk. Forget the imp.”
“Are you crazy? Do you know how much it’s worth?”
“We just need to detain Lady Brimclif until the Baron comes to collect.”
Lillia felt a ripple of terror at the woman’s words. “Detain me? What are you arresting me for? Did the Baron put you up to this?”
Joel gasped. “But you seized all those documents? Those were legitimate warrants. I checked the seals myself.” He retreated, fluttering behind Lillia and the IMPS officer who held her. The woman’s face was flat, but her eyes gave her away.
“It was staged. Just for show,” Lillia said and was rewarded with a snarl from the IMPS.
“How did you know!”
“The Baron. He’d just arrived on Brimclif through the portal. He was probably setting up the whole thing, getting an international warrant to find me. He had to step away for a moment, but he wasn’t expecting to find me on Brimclif. When did you arrive, Joel?” She asked the secretary. “Were the IMPS already here?”
“Yes, when I arrived to open the office. I thought it was odd.” His eyes were wide as a peacock’s tail.
Lillia continued, facing the IMPS. “So a secret meeting and secret deals with the Baron. You can’t do this. The only reason you’re trying to keep me here is because of the Baron. You don’t even have a real arrest warrant, do you!” She tried to step on the IMP officer’s foot, but the boot was too heavy for Lillia’s thin athletic shoe. So she tried jamming her toe into the woman’s ankle, taking out the Achilles heel like Helda taught her. It worked, only it tripped them both up, and the officer fell awkwardly, which gave Lillia a chance. Once on her feet, she made a mad sprint for the door, only to have the IMP officer tackle her from behind. They fell in a heap.
Jinxy noticed and catapulted herself in Lillia’s direction, bringing with her the rest of IMPS. They stormed against the front counter and cabinets. Lillia was pinned to the back of the wall. That’s when the portal room exploded
The explosion took them all by surprise. The floor rolled and splintered. The walls buckled as they were forced outward, and windows shattered into a million pieces, which rained down to the street below. The Baron’s office was near the top of the building, but the roof warped as a great gaping hole appeared. The sky bowled above their heads for one instance. The portal room vanished as if swallowed by a void. The sudden emptiness came in a flash, extended up and out, and disintegrated everything in its path. Helda appeared in a sudden burst of light and dense shadow feathers around Lillia. The IMPS and the Baron’s secretary clung to each other inside the glowing orb of safety.
“What’s happening?” Lillia cried.
“I think some buddy cut the red wire!” Jinxy said.
With Helda’s shield around them, they could only watch as the light overcame them. The explosion radiated outward, sending a wave of destruction through the office building. The magic backlash was even more devastating. Lillia had never seen anything like it.
The tsunami of magic did more than just warp the steel and melt the glass, it transformed the walls: one became chocolate pudding, and another turned into lemons that exploded one after the other like lemon bombs. On the floor below, the tiles became a cloud of grasshoppers, which fell into the pudding and got stuck there. The wave of indiscriminate magic continued to swell and spread. The edges of the wave were a piercing bright white but began to flash even hotter toward the ultraviolet spectrum, and suddenly, she could see through the building toward the one behind them and the streets beyond. It was like having x-ray vision, but only for a brief moment before Helda covered Lillia’s eyes with a feathery hand.
Really, Lady Brimclif! You’ll blind yourself! I just saved your life fifteen minutes ago. Now I have saved it again. This cannot continue!
I’ll let you know as soon as the book is ready for preorder. Fairy Doctor Rest in Peace is coming soon! It’s a 2-in-1 romantic fantasy. (Is romantasy really a word we use now?)
Find the Fairy Doctor series available from these indie stores!