Madison Avery 01once Dead, Twice Shy

Dappled sun shifted upon my bare shoulder as I leaned against a rough boulder bigger than my long-absent car. Frustrated, I unclenched my teeth before I gave myself a headache. The sound of people swimming at the nearby lake was loud, but the happy shrieks only tightened my gut. Leave it to Barnabas to try to shift four months of practice into success in a mere twenty minutes.

“No pressure,” I muttered, glancing across the sneaker-flattened dirt path to the reaper leaning against a pine tree with his eyes shut. Barnabas was probably older than fire, but appearing the age of the person you’re trying to save helped light reapers blend in. And Barnabas blended in nicely with his jeans, black T-shirt, and his lanky physique. I couldn’t see the wings we’d flown in on, but they were there, making him an angel of death with frizzy hair, brown eyes, and in a pair of holey sneakers. Would that make them holy holey-sneakers? I wondered, as I nervously rolled the pinecone in my hand back and forth.
Feeling my attention on him, Barnabas opened his eyes. “What’s so funny, Madison?” he asked, and I sighed.
“Nothing.” My gaze dropped to my punky sneakers. Yellow with purple laces and sculls and crossbones on the toes. They matched my hair, not that anyone had ever made the connection between them and the purple dyed tips of my blond bangs. “Maybe if I wasn’t so hot I could do this.”

I'm Kim Harrison, best known for penning the Hollows series though I've tried my hand at YA, traditional fantasy, graphic novels, and a one-of-a-kind world book. I grew up reading science fiction and fairytales, which means my fairy garden has Daleks in it. Recently, I've moved back to my home state of Michigan after a ten year stint down in South Carolina, and it feels good to be home--even with the snow and cold. I've been writing for over twenty years, more than half of that published, and a good day is still one where there is nothing to distract me from my keyboard.