by J. R. Rain
Everything about the room was dusty and old and creaking. And spooky.
“Well, don’t look so worried, this stupid job is all yours.” Farah kept her iPhone in her left hand at all times, even while they’d been in Crawley’s office, glancing down at it every few minutes to check her messages. Now she stabbed it with a scarlet-tipped finger. “I am so outta here. I’m calling my Placement Officer.”
One of the modern Federal employee recruitment system’s many peculiarities includes the assignment of a Placement Officer to prospective applicants once they pass their basic qualification tests. This person’s job is to ‘broker’ the new recruits into various departments. An applicant can hope for a career in Commerce or Transportation downtown, for example, but might be shunted around until they end up in a satellite agency of Health and Human Services buried far off in the Virginia or Maryland suburbs. In any case, applicants get stuck with a PO no matter what.
“Mind giving me a little privacy here?” she snapped at Di Angelo.
He got up and waited in the hall outside for five minutes. When he came back in, she was still on the phone but set it aside long enough to tell him, “That bitch of a PO said no,” before resuming her conversation. This ended with a “Love you, too”, then she got off. “My fiancé.”
“Lucky guy,” he said drily. “When’s the wedding?”
“June. In Atlanta.”
He did the math; that was about five months from now, which meant the job was probably his then anyway. He didn’t see Jasmine Farah ever coming back from the honeymoon.
An antique-grilled speaker mounted high on the wall beside the transom suddenly squawked to life, startling them both, and Crawley’s voice blared from it. “Just a reminder that it’s now noon and therefore legally lunch hour. May I recommend the inter-departmental cafeteria across the street in the State Department Annex?”
“Jesus, you don’t think he’s been listening to us the whole time?” Farah muttered when the crackling stopped.
Di Angelo shrugged again.
When he made this gesture, even his eyebrows seemed to shrug, too. Which made him the stupidest and most irritating person she’d ever been around. At least since she’d moved to DC. She abruptly stood and picked up her bag. A Prada.
“Fuck this! I’ll grab a cab and go eat someplace with real food. That is my chair, so don’t even think about it!” Her voice sounded just like Scarlett O’Hara’s in Gone With the Wind; she’d even made two syllables out of the word “fuck.”
“That is mah chay-yuh,” he said out loud after she left, and laughed. Then he started digging through the stacks of books on the floor.
She was an hour late coming back from lunch. Crawley, who’d departed around the time she had, didn’t come back at all.
Firmly ensconced in her chair, Jasmine Farah had wiled the next five hours texting and checking messages on her iPhone, playing games, and occasionally answering a call. In passing, she mentioned to Di Angelo the exact language her Placement Officer had used to tell Farah she wasn’t getting out of the department unless her candidacy was formally rejected in writing by Crawley.
“She said this position was on a ‘‘terminal track’.’”
“That sounds kind of…ominous,” said Di Angelo, but she didn’t laugh.
J.R. Rain is an ex-private investigator who now writes full-time in the Pacific Northwest. He lives in a small house on a small island with his small dog, Sadie.
Please visit him at www.jrrain.com.
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Rod Kierkegaard, Jr. is a writer and cartoonist best known in the US for his comic strip, “Rock Opera”, which ran as a regular feature in Heavy Metal Magazine during the 1980s.
He is the author of two French graphic novel collections, “Stars Massacre”, (released in the US as “Shooting Stars”) and “Rock Monstres”, both published by Editions Albin Michel, Paris. His first novel, “Obama Jones & The Logic Bomb”, is published by Dogma Press.
“The Department of Magic” and “Family Cursemas (Megamilionnaire Murders, Vol. 1)” are Rod’s first published works through Curiosity Quills Press during the 2011 Holiday season, followed by “The God Particle” in early 2012.
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Ghosts of Christmas Present, by Rod Kierkegaard, Jr. & J.R. Rain
(http://j.mp/1sWVDle)
Richelle Dadd is feeling an emptiness in her heart this holiday season. And not just because said heart is as cold and dead as the icy cityscape in her window. The undead have feelings, too - and in the time for family and presents and friendship, this lost soul is feeling… lost. Backstabbed by those she considered her allies, neglected by the only ghost that understood her, and with her best friend murdered before her very eyes, Richelle doesn’t have a ton to celebrate this year. But the “Christmas miracle” isn’t just something that goes on a greeting card..
The Department of Magic, by Rod Kierkegaard, Jr.
(http://j.mp/16xQgna)
Magic is nothing like it seems in children’s books. It’s dark and bloody and sexual—and requires its own semi-mythical branch of the US Federal Government to safeguard citizens against ever present supernatural threats.
Join Jasmine Farah and Rocco di Angelo—a pair of wet-behind-the-ears recruits of The Department of Magic—on a nightmare gallop through a world of ghosts, spooks, vampires, and demons, and the minions of South American and Voodoo god shell-bent on destroying all humanity in the year 2012.
Division Zero, by Matt Cox
(http://j.mp/1ggujIv)
Most cops get to deal with living criminals, but Agent Kirsten Wren is not most cops. Shunned by a society that does not understand psionics and feared by those who know what she can do, Kirsten feels alone in a city of millions.
Unexplained killings by human-like androids known as dolls leave the Division 1 police baffled, causing them to punt the case to Division 0. She tries to hold on to the belief that no one is beyond redemption as she pursues a killer desperate to claim at least one more innocent soul – that might just be hers.
Nefertiti's Heart, by A.W. Exley
(http://j.mp/HeSkp0)
NEFERTITI’S HEART is a historical adventure with a light steampunk twist that consistently ranks in the Amazon bestseller lists.
London, 1861. Cara Devon has always suffered curiosity and impetuousness, but tangling with a serial killer might cure that. Permanently.
After the death of her father, Cara searches for his collection of priceless artifacts. Meanwhile a killer stalks among the nobility. Cara crosses paths with the murderer, both of them in pursuit of Nefertiti’s Heart, a fabled mechanical diamond said to hold the key to immortality. Cara needs to find the artifact, before she becomes the mad man’s last victim.
The Curse Merchant, by J.P. Sloan
(http://bit.ly/1pRNMH7)
Baltimore socialite Dorian Lake makes his living crafting hexes and charms, manipulating karma for those the system has failed. His business has been poached lately by corrupt soul monger Neil Osterhaus, who wouldn’t be such a problem were it not for Carmen, Dorian’s captivating ex-lover. She has sold her soul to Osterhaus, and needs Dorian’s help to find a new soul to take her place. Hoping to win back her affections, Dorian must navigate Baltimore’s occult underworld and decide how low he is willing to stoop in order to save Carmen from eternal damnation.
Exacting Essence, by James Wymore
(http://j.mp/1qAIGgM)
Megan’s nightmares aren’t normal; normal nightmares don’t leave cuts and bruises on waking. Desperate, Megan’s mother accepts a referral to a new therapist; a doctor dealing with the business of dreams—real
dreams. The carnival of terrors that torments Megan nightly is all just a part of the Dreamworld, a separate reality experienced only by those aware enough to realize it. On her quest to destroy the Nightmares feeding from her fear, Megan encounters Intershroud, the governing entity of the Dreamworld, and must work with her new friends to stop the agency from continuing its evil agenda, and to destroy her own Nightmares for good.
Appetizer:
Book Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Quote
Main Course:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Dessert:
A Taste of The Department of Magic, by Rod Kierkegaard, Jr.
Closing
About J.R. Rain
About Rod Kierkegaard, Jr.
Copyright & Publisher
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