Teaser Tuesday: Another Snippet

And the countdown continues: five months and four days until ANOTHER KIND OF DEAD releases! In honor of that (and the blog meme called Teaser Tuesday), I have another snippet for you. The first, from Chapter Three, is posted here.

This one is from Chapter Four, is much shorter, and it does contain a plot spoiler. If you don't want any spoilers, skip this one.

Enjoy!

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Giving Amalie my undivided attention, I asked, "What's going on that concerns me so much?"

"Something valuable has gone missing," she said.

"Gone missing?"

"Stolen."

Alarm bells clanged in my head, telling me I really didn't want to know the answer to my next question. "What's been stolen?"

"The crystal in which we sealed the Tainted One."

Wyatt made a soft choking sound. I couldn't tear my attention off Amalie, too mesmerized by what I saw in her face—fear. Never in my life had I thought to see a frightened sprite. They could manipulate so much power because of their direct ties to the Break. It was the reason sprites, and no other race, held the most sway over the Fey Council, and why we needed to keep them as our allies.

But more than that, my ears had filled with a dull roar, and even above the fear I saw in her, I didn't believe what I'd just heard. Heart jackhammering, I asked, "Say that again?"

She didn't. Instead, she started in on a story. "After your initial entrapment, we devised a method to more permanently seal the Tainted One's essence into a crystal. When the spell was cast, we sought a safe place for it elsewhere. We gave it to our brethren in the forest west of here, an expanse of mountains few humans ever hike into. They could cloak the Tainted's draw. I believed it was safe there."

I snorted, red fury creeping into the corners of my vision. "Why the hell did you take it out of First Break?"

"The power of the Tainted affects not only humans, Evangeline, but many of my kind as well. Having its evil so near was…unsettling. I feared its effects on our well-being. One does not allow disease to remain in one's orchard to infect all around it."

"So you let someone steal it?" I seethed, in no mood to understand her reasons. Only one thing was crystal clear to me. "The fucking Tainted is loose?"