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    The Ninepenny Element
    The Ninepenny Element
    The Ninepenny Element
    Ebook59 pages54 minutes

    The Ninepenny Element

    By K.L. Noone

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    About this ebook

    Verity Friday has been a good witch all her life: good at anticipating her coven’s needs, good at looking out for her little brother, good at helping others. She’s never been the most powerful or the most gifted at magic, but she knows she’s made a difference.

    But now her brother’s moved out and found love, and Verity’s feeling more alone than ever despite her coven family. Meeting her brother’s boyfriend doesn’t help -- they’re so obviously happy, and Verity’s happy for them, but she’s starting to think about what she might want for herself ... and about the gorgeous lawyer she’s just literally run into outside a bookshop.

    Successful lawyer Amelia Burne is having a terrible day. She’d swear someone’s cursed her with bad luck, but magic isn’t, right?

    Except the self-proclaimed witch she’s just run into claims it is ... and Lia actually is cursed. Lia isn’t sure she believes this unlikely story, but Verity seems serious and wants to help, and maybe it’s worth a try. Because when Verity smiles, the whole world gets brighter ... just like magic.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJMS Books LLC
    Release dateJul 13, 2019
    ISBN9781634869812
    The Ninepenny Element
    Author

    K.L. Noone

    K.L. Noone loves fantasy, romance, cats, far too sweet coffee, and happy endings! She is also the author of Port in a Storm and its upcoming sequel, available from Less Than Three Press, and numerous short romances with Ellora’s Cave and Circlet Press; her fantasy fiction has appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies. With her Professor Hat on, she teaches college students about Shakespeare and superhero comics, and has published academic articles and essays on Neil Gaiman’s adaptations of Beowulf, Welsh mythology in modern fantasy, and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.

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      Book preview

      The Ninepenny Element - K.L. Noone

      8

      Chapter 1

      Verity Friday, standing outside her little brother’s boyfriend’s luxury apartment, grumbled, "I know you know I’m here, you’re psychic, Sparkles," and nudged the door with one booted foot. The door, having already refused to answer early-morning knocks and aggrieved sighs and an experimental poke of magical energy, sat solid and dark-painted and did nothing.

      Oh, come on.

      Still nothing.

      If you’re having sex in there—

      Running feet, and her brother’s unmistakable rainbow of magical talent, bounded up to the door. Flung it open. Bounced on tiptoes and excitement. You’re early!

      And you’re too easily distracted, if you can’t tell when someone’s at your door— She gave up because Sterling was hugging her, all pocket-sized whirlwind enthusiasm and a rather guilty pair of pajama pants over what’d clearly been nakedness a minute before. She wrapped arms around her brother in turn, dropping her travel bag to do it. She did love him, after all.

      Across all the hugging, she spotted Sterling’s boyfriend, assuming the title could be applied two weeks into a relationship. Daniel Rose, bestselling author of ridiculously over-the-top action thrillers, emerged from the kitchen, ran a hand through his dark blond hair, and visibly got flustered about being barefoot in boxers and a loose white shirt; he didn’t retreat, though, only exhaled and glanced at Sterling for cues and waited. Dan, Verity decided, was so far a decent guy.

      Sterling let go and grinned at her. "We were totally about to have sex. And don’t call me Sparkles." With that sleepy-morning fluffy brown hair and those wide grey eyes, he might’ve been utterly innocuous, the most harmless person on the planet.

      His mystical tattoos and tiny healed scars argued otherwise, of course. Verity knew. She had her own.

      She glanced at Dan again. Wondered how much he knew, what he saw.

      She and Sterling had always looked fairly similar, clearly family in a way most of the greater East Coast Family of practitioners in fact weren’t. The family was mainly a metaphor, and one designed to reinforce loyalty and ties; the Fridays, though, were related, and powerfully so. None of them were particularly tall, but Verity had two inches of height and six years of age on her brother; her hair tended slightly more to red-brown waves instead of forest-bark, but they had the same eyes, cool pale grey like moonlight on water.

      Nearly the same eyes. She considered Sterling for a second; those sharper silver threads reflected deeper and more double-edged sight as he looked back. Her younger brother was more gifted than anyone in the family, in his own rare and dangerous specialty; he was also startlingly exuberant and generous and self-sacrificial to a fault, the sort of person who’d strip himself bare to give an anguished ghost their peace one moment sooner.

      She wasn’t certain she’d trade. Her own witch-gifts might be smaller—that’d been true all their lives—and more practical and less epic, but she didn’t have to hold the hands of spirits and stand at life-and-death thresholds, either.

      She said, I need coffee if I’m going to have to hear about your sex life, Sparkles, and kicked off her boots. Old and black and worn, they tipped over each other in bestselling author Daniel Rose’s entryway and refused to get shamefaced over the contrast with tidy polished flooring. I would’ve knocked on your door first, but I knew you weren’t home.

      Call me that one more time and I’ll sic a poltergeist on you. Sterling took her bag and tossed it in the direction of the hallway, casual and comfortable in the apartment that wasn’t technically his. Mom’s worried, isn’t she?

      Mom. The family. The usual. Verity shrugged out of her jacket—Dan, still being quiet, possibly intimidated by black leather and chunky boots and the flippant discussion of what was also his sex

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