Nothing except a pained wince on Ray's face, and tension in his shoulder. Could it be that her attempt to see the black cords in his body hurt him? Was his web hidden?
"Not this time." Ray took something from his pocket, and Carly could suddenly smell it strongly. It was just a piece of laminated paper, but the incredible alluring scent of sharpness came from it. It was like some kind of magic… no, it was like magic designed to cut things apart. Carly could not help feeling a sudden longing for the edge of it. She was a creature made to split apart what had once been joined, and the concentrated power in that tiny sheet of paper called to her. It was as if she was a goldfish whose bowl had been placed within sight of the ocean.
"I didn't do anything wrong," she heard herself say. She understood then that Ray and this other woman had been hunting her, and she almost wanted them to succeed.
"Of course not," Ray said, then he threw the laminated paper at her like a playing card. When it touched her, she came apart as easily as a tower made of a child's building blocks. All of her memories of Carly's life--and of Bill's before that, and a dozen more beside--popped like bubbles in a rainstorm. She fell free of the world around her, of all thought, all memory, all sense, all life, until she had nothing left but a peaceful oblivion that belonged to no one but her.
Author bio
Child of Fire, Harry Connolly's debut novel and the first in the Twenty Palaces series, was named to Publishers Weekly's Best 100 Novels of 2009. The sequel, Game of Cages, was released in 2010 and the third book, Circle of Enemies, came out in 2011, as did a prequel (cleverly) titled Twenty Palaces.
King Khan, a pulp adventure novel based on the role-playing game Spirit of the Century, was released in the fall of 2013 by game company Evil Hat.
In the summer of 2014, he will also release his epic fantasy trilogy called The Great Way. In the fall of the same year, he will release the pacifist urban fantasy A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark.
Harry Connolly lives in Seattle with his beloved wife, his beloved son, and his beloved library system. You can find him online at: http://www.harryjconnolly.com
Praise for the Twenty Palaces novels:
"[Child of Fire] is excellent reading and has a lot of things I love in a book: a truly dark and sinister world, delicious tension and suspense, violence so gritty you'll get something in your eye just reading it, and a gorgeously flawed protagonist. Take this one to the checkout counter. Seriously." -- Jim Butcher
"Connolly doesn't shy away from tackling big philosophical issues . . . amid gory action scenes and plenty of rapid-fire sardonic dialogue."--Publishers Weekly (starred review), on Game of Cages
"An edge-of-the-seat read! Ray Lilly is the new high-water mark of paranormal noir." -- Charles Stross
Bad Little Girls Die Horrible Deaths: And Other Tales Of Dark Fantasy Page 20
