First Chapter Preview: Freelancer
Read the first chapter of my new book! Out next month.
My newest novel, Freelancer, is coming out early May! So, I thought I’d give you all free preview by sharing the first chapter. Hope you like it!
Jen holds her head in her hands. This can’t be happening. It’s all a bad dream and she’ll wake up any moment now, right? Wrong. She wills her legs to get up, to move, to walk out of here and never turn back. But she can’t. She has nowhere else to go.
The heels of her palms press into her eyes. She takes a deep breath and sits up straight. Jen pushes her straight black hair to one side, the ends brush the top of her right shoulder. Her reality becomes clear. She’s still sitting in the staffing agency’s waiting room.
The air ventilation system hums, harmonizing with the soft chatter of the other unfortunate souls waiting their turn. Jen smooths out her black button-up shirt. She wonders if she should tuck the hem into her jeans, the only pair she owns without rips. It doesn’t seem to matter much here. No one else bothered to dress up.
She squirms in her seat. The plastic back of this chair is much too hard, its angle much too harsh to allow for any comfort. No one is meant to sit here for this long. In fact, everything in this room suggests it’s a place to pass through, not somewhere to stay.
The woman sitting across from her has already nodded off to sleep. The woman’s familiar, a green python, is also asleep. It sits in a tight coil in her lap. Were they here before her? Jen can’t remember. She’s been here so long that time feels blurry. Time always gets funny in places like this, even without magic. She wonders if it’s the same in the mortal world. She could go to a mortal agency and find out. They’d be none the wiser. Mortals aren’t as perceptive as they think they are.
Jen stretches her legs. The beige walls melt into the dingy beige carpets. It’s starting to feel cramped. Her head lolls back onto the wall. She stares at the ceiling. Beige. It’s annoying now, the monotony of it all. The sterilization of it all. The lifelessness of it all. It’s the last place she wants to be.
She sighs. She’s lost now that she’s unemployed. Her path was once so clear, but it’s been torn away, leaving her staring at an abyss. But running free through the woods like her goddess won’t fill her bank account. Not yet, anyway.
Her stomach growls. It’s been three whole hours since she last ate. She regrets eating her lunch so early. A witch can’t live like this. She looks to the refreshment table. Empty. A woman with a capuchin monkey in tow takes the last pack of crackers. Jen lets out a sigh and tries to think of anything else but her raging stomach.
“Excuse me,” a woman’s soft voice calls her out of her haze.
She turns to her right.
The woman’s weary brown eyes look as though she’s just awakened from a state of torpor. She wears a denim jacket over a green dandelion print sundress. Dark, tight curls frame her tan face. A Brigid’s cross dangles on the silver chain around her neck, a clear indication of who her goddess is. She tries to smile, but the fatigue of waiting makes it a struggle. A little tabby cat stands patiently at her feet. “Can I sit here?” She points at the seat beside her. “Someone took my seat.”
Jen can’t hold back a smile. She’s exactly her type.
Her own familiar, a colossal white moth, flutters in the chair.
“Of course.” She sits up straight. “Come on, Dana,” she holds out her arm for her familiar.
The moth hops onto her hand, the tip of her wing tickles Jen’s bicep.
The woman covers her mouth as she giggles. “Cute name.”
“It’s because she’s,” Jen angles her arm to show the rather macabre pattern of black splotches splattered across white wings, “Skully.”
She tilts her head and cocks an eyebrow.
“It’s from a mortal show.” Jen feels the heat of embarrassment burning her ears.
“Oh, sorry. I don’t watch mortal shows. That’s still cute!”
Jen wants to say she’s cute, too. But the loss of confidence keeps her quiet. It’s bad enough she’s jobless, she had to make a fool of herself in front of this beautiful woman, too? She lets out a deep breath.
“You don’t normally see moth familiars, do you?” The woman settles into her seat.
She hears that a lot with varying degrees of surprise and disdain. Her Filipino family was the least ecstatic about her choice of familiar. She smiles and shakes her head.
Her moth lands on a nearby lamp. The bulb starts to flicker. Dana starts eating its light. Slowly, she absorbs the energy until it’s extinguished. It makes no difference in this beige void.
The woman’s cat rubs her body against Jen’s boots.
She reaches down to pet her. The shirt’s sleeve slides up her arm, revealing her tattoos. Thorny vines snake down her arms, cradling three arrows crossed over a crescent moon at the wrists.
“You don’t normally see Artemis’ hunters at the staffing agency either,” the woman lets out a heavy sigh. “You know it’s bad when even you guys are out of a job.” She bangs her head against the wall. “Fired or quit?”
“Laid off.”
Her cat jumps into her lap, purring like a tiny engine.
The woman keeps her attention on Jen, waiting for her to offer more details.
“I was search and rescue, mostly. But then the company I was working for said it was cheaper to use the mortal machines, so,” she shrugs, keeping her hands on the happy cat in her lap.
The woman’s face scrunches up in disgust. Then, to Jen’s surprise, sadness softens her face. “I’m sorry. Um,” she points her finger at her.
“Jen,” she offers a hand.
“Haley,” the woman takes it.
Jen lets her fingers linger in Haley’s soft palm before pulling away. Her jaw clenches and she drops her gaze. This is not the time to flirt.
“I don’t know how I feel about search and rescue cutting corners like that. It didn’t always used to be like this for us, right? The mortals sure, but us?”
Jen shakes her head no.
Haley sighs, her shoulders dropping in accepted defeat. “World’s changing I guess.”
Jen nods. How much will she have to change with it? “What about you?”
“Well,” her nose crinkles.
It’s endearing enough to pull Jen’s lips into a smile.
“I need a second job since my boyfriend isn’t working at the moment,” Haley frowns. “He has some expensive hobbies,” she tries to joke but her exasperation is too strong.
Jen’s smile is wiped clean off her face. She leans away from Haley.
“But he’s just working on himself right now!” She’s quick to defend him. “It’s not that he doesn’t want a job, he just can’t find one that’s a good fit for him,” she continues her defense. “He’s more of an entrepreneur, you know?”
Jen tries to nod and smile, but her head is elsewhere. Is she like this man? Her confidence drops even lower.
“Jones, Haley,” an agency worker calls out.
“Oh, that’s me.” She gathers her things and gets to her feet. “Come on, Pip.”
The cat jumps off Jen’s lap and lands with a soft pip. She trots after her witch.
“Good luck!”
“You too,” Jen watches her walk to a cubicle.
“Ah, D. Looks like our bad luck streak continues,” she rubs her face with her hands.
The moth flaps her wings and chirps.
“Luna, Jennylyn,” a woman calls out her name.
Jen gets to her feet. Her familiar perches on her shoulder. She follows the voice trail, faint blue dust lingering in the air, to a cubical nestled in the very back corner of the office. It feels even more dreary back here.
“Good morning,” Jen puts on her best professional smile.
The agent assigned to her does not look up from her screen. Her brown hair is tied back into a neat ponytail. Hazel eyes have dulled from boredom. She looks older than Jen, but it’s impossible to tell a witch’s age. She chews gum like a cow chewing cud, lazily and out of obligation rather than enjoyment. “Morning.” The word comes out of her mouth in a slow English drawl.
Jen’s lips press into a tight smile.
“Preference for full-time, part-time, or contract?” She asks before Jen lands in her seat.
“Preferably full-time,” she looks to the woman’s name tag. “Orla, if that’s possible, please.”
Her fingers glide over her keyboard. “Hunter of Artemis are we?” Her voice is as monotonous as this office.
“Correct.”
“Hm.”
Jen squirms in her seat. Is she being judged?
“Laid off were we?”
“Yes.” That’s certainly not any fault of her own.
“Shame.”
Something tells Jen that the monotony of daily life in this beige nightmare is causing the disdain in her voice.
“And are you willing to travel?”
Jen nods, though Orla is not looking at her. “I have a portal door in my apartment and I’m proficient enough in opening portals if needed.” In all honesty, she’d rather not. The energy needed to open one is immense, never mind having to close it. She’d have to eat half her weight in bacon, egg, and cheeses just to stay standing.
“Hm,” Orla mumbles again.
The sound of keys clacking fills the silence.
Jen’s brow furrows. It’s common for her people to use mortal technology. Many will modify it with magic, then discard the relics of old. Will that be her soon? Just another relic, tossed aside for something newer? She chews on the inside of her cheek.
“Not much use for your kind these days, is there?” Orla says mostly to herself.
Perhaps she’s a relic already. “I don’t know about that,” Jen starts to defend herself. “I can do other things.” She’s not doing a very good job.
“We’ve got nothing for you that’s full-time or even part-time.”
Jen slumps in her seat. What rotten luck.
Dana lays a wing atop her head, a moth’s consolation.
“However,” Orla sighs as though the mere act of existing is a bother. “We have freelance opportunities, many for people with no marketable skills.”
“Gonna pretend I didn’t hear that last bit,” she leans forward. “Does it pay well?”
Orla finally looks at her. “Well enough,” she sighs. “We cannot guarantee steady work. Some work may require close proximity to and/or working with mortals. Duties may include bounties, retrieval or destruction of cursed objects, the slaying of enhanced beasts, and other potentially hazardous tasks. Pay is dependent upon completion of the contracted obligations,” she recites from a mental script.
Her jaw tenses. Setting foot on an uncertain path has to be better than staying where she does not want to be. “No problem. I can do freelance.”
I love it already.