A Vision of Green (Florence Vaine #2) (40 page)

I try not to panic, because this is probably something to do with Frank's demon coming out of his body to fight against the forest monsters. Just because it's evolving, doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Or maybe because he made the deal with Bune he's somehow more connected to the fallen angel who cursed him. He catches me watching him and his smile takes my breath away. He pushes himself up on one elbow and leans over me. I forget all about his demon.

He bends down and presses a kiss to the skin just below my neck, in the centre of my chest. I shiver all over, my feet pressing down into the grass. It doesn't feel so cold any more. Frank pulls my knees apart and crawls in between them, kissing all the way up my neck until he gets to my lips. There he places a feather light kiss, which quickly deepens and our tongues collide. His hand travels under my top, tracing over my ribs. At first I think it's my imagination, but then I realise I really can hear giggling coming from somewhere nearby.

Pulling away from Frank I peer around, but there isn't anybody there.

“
What's wrong?” Frank asks, a little breathless. I notice I must have been running my hands through his hair because it's all messy. It makes him look even more irresistible.

“
I thought I could hear somebody laughing, did you hear anything?”

“
No, but I wasn't really concentrating on listening,” he says, giving me a searing look.

The giggling comes again, only this time louder.

“
There, did you hear that?”

Frank shakes his head. “I didn't.” He glances around, but obviously comes to the same conclusion that I did. There's nobody here but us. I go to pick up a handful of grapes and pop some in my mouth. That's when I see that some are missing, I'm almost certain we didn't eat so many.

Then my eyes wander to something shiny on the grass just beyond the blanket. It looks silvery, on closer inspection I see that it's some sort of weird glitter. I tip my finger to the stuff and it comes away sparkling.

“
Look,” I say, holding out my finger to Frank, the glitter is right there for him to see.

“
What? What's wrong with your finger?” he asks. It's then that I know not only could he not hear the giggling, but he can't see the glitter either.

I quickly draw my hand away, afraid he'll think I'm going mad. “Um, nothing, it must have been my imagination.”

Frank considers me for a long few moments before he picks up an apple and takes a bite. I lie back down on the blanket and enjoy the warm breeze, trying to forget that I might very well be losing my mind. I look at my finger again, the glitter is still there. I try to rub it off on my trousers, but it just won't go away.

“
We should come here more often,” says Frank, returning to his spot beside me.

“
Yeah, it's good to get away from it all for a while,” I agree.

A gorgeous scent hits my nose, a mixture of jasmine, cloves and old wood. I turn to my side, trailing my hand through the blades of grass. So green and lovely. Something shiny, like the glitter on my hand, flits through the trees and disappears. There's a mischievous air to the movements, like a child playing hide and seek. My eyes land on each tree within my line of sight, only I see nothing but wood and leaves. Wait. I pause at a tree in the distance, it's so far away that I almost missed it.

There's a smiling face peering at me around the brown bark. The face is pale and shimmering, it's a woman. She's tall and elegant with silvery skin and long red hair. I think she might be a ghost. She seems too beautiful and translucent to be real. I'm such a catch. Empath, mind-reader and now add on ghost-seer.

Only it's not a ghost, all of the woman's features add up in my head and I come to the definite conclusion that what I'm seeing is an elf. An elf!

Her green eyes are the exact same colour as my own. She holds out a hand and waves at me, letting out a stream of laughter. The sound of it makes my heart beat with recognition. She's definitely the one who'd been giggling before. Once she's done waving at me she's gone, and I think to myself, she wanted me to see her. One of the few things I've learned about elves is that you can't find them, they have to find you. Why did she come here? The wonderful scent I'd smelled only a moment ago vanishes, and that's when I know she's really gone.

“
You okay Flo?” Frank asks. “You've been staring off into the distance for ages.”

I slant my gaze to him. I should feel shaken, but I don't. I sensed no danger from the woman, the elf. She was too far away for me to get a proper read on her aura, but from what I could see her dominating emotion had been curiosity. There was a splash of playfulness in there too.

“
I'm fine, just enjoying the quiet,” I tell him, deciding to keep the elf sighting to myself. If this is the only time I ever see one then I don't mind. It was magical, and I'll cherish the memory forever.

“
We should pack up and head back,” he says, rolling up the blanket.

When everything has been put away, Frank hauls his bag over his shoulder and I slip my hand into his. We wander through the empty forest toward its outer boundaries. So much has happened in here in the last few weeks, but I have a feeling that's only a blink in the eye of the history of a place that has existed for many human lifetimes. More came before this and so much more will come after.

For now though, I feel a deep connection to it. It's one of the few things I fell in love with in this town when I'd first peered at it through my bedroom window at Gran's. I'm not going to define it by the monsters who were here for a short time, I'm going to view it as the beautiful piece of nature that it is. A grain in the sand of the world's terrain. A piece of natural beauty to get lost in.

We reach the end of the trees and step out into open space beyond which I can see the house. I look over my shoulder one last time,
I'll be back soon
, I think,
I'll be back soon.

END.

A Note From the Author

Dear reader,

The characters that you encountered in Chapter Seven during Flo's visit to Tribane come from my novels in The Ultimate Power Series. Both series are set in the same story world and I thought it would be a fun idea to let them collide for a brief time. This part takes place during
Tegan's Magic
which is due to be released in January 2013. Sorry for the spoiler about Rita's mum! I really enjoyed having my two heroines, Tegan and Flo, meet with one another and I hope you did too.

Warm regards,

L.H. Cosway.

An interview with the author L.H. Cosway, taken from Emma's Ramblings on Supernatural Fiction.

www.emmameade.com

I’m a huge fan of L.H. Cosway’s work. If you don’t know this author, check her out. Her supernatural novels,
Tegan’s Blood
,
Tegan’s Return
and
A Strange Fire
are all gripping. I liked her stories so much, I contacted L.H. to see if she’d be kind enough to answer some questions. Turns out, she was game.

Hello and thanks a million for agreeing to this interview.

Can you introduce yourself and your work to readers who may not be familiar with you?

Sure. Currently I write two series of books, both are in the paranormal romance/ urban fantasy genres. My Florence Vaine series would probably be classified as mature YA, and my Ultimate Power Series is more New Adult. Both series are set in the same fictional story world and are sort of spin-offs of each other, but they also have very different feels to them.
Tegan's Blood
has a dark, gloomy atmosphere and contains lots of action, while
A Strange Fire
has more of an Autumn-ish, dreamy feel, there isn't action at every turn but it's very much a study of Flo as a character and what it's like inside her head.

You are a self-employed writer, editor and proofreader. Can you tell us more about that?

Back when I was still at college I worked part-time as a writer for a small company in Dublin. Then once I finished my MA I tried out a few different things, but none of them suited me as much as writing for a living. That's when I decided to go it alone and set up as self-employed. Obviously writing fiction is my passion, but in my day to day work I edit and proofread news articles and various kinds of web content. Although I admit I have that writer's weakness of being unable to see my own mistakes, I find editing other people's stuff to be very enjoyable. I also have an agent/middle man who gets me different long and short term writing projects so that I don't have to spend lots of time looking for jobs.

I fell in love with the world of Tribane in the Tegan novels. Will there be a third book in The Ultimate Power Series?

Thank you! The third book is in the works, it's called
Tegan's Magic
and I'm hoping to have it out by January next year. In all, I envision there to be at least five Tegan books, although I'm not sure how long it will take for me to complete them. There's a big cast of characters in these books, so I want to be able to give all of them a chance to shine. The third book will feature lots about Tegan and Rita, some about Wolf as his curse has been broken and he's now in his human form. I'll also be focusing again on Tegan's not so healthy love/hate relationship with Ethan.

Of all your characters, who is your favourite ?

That's a difficult question, because some days I'll be really liking one character and the next they'll be getting on my nerves! Lol. I suppose I have two favourites, Finn and Rita, both have quite in your face personalities, meaning I don't have to censor myself when I'm writing their dialogue, which makes for some colourful language. Of course I love my two protagonists Tegan and Flo as well, but it's probably because I'm always writing from their point of view that other characters tend to intrigue me more. Another character that I enjoy writing (but don't exactly “like”) and who you'll see lots of in
A Vision of Green
is Flo's dad, I think I drew influence from every nasty person I've ever known in creating his personality. He's one of those abusers who's hurting on the inside, but still continues hurting others and just doesn't care. So he's a bit of a tragic villain.

I read and raved about A Strange Fire only recently on this blog. Where did you get the idea for Florence's supernatural gift?

I'm trying to remember now. I knew I wanted her to be psychic in some way, I just didn't know which psychic talent she'd have. I found the idea of a girl who could see all of these colours swirling around people's bodies fascinating. I'd never really seen an empath done in detail in another book, I mostly saw characters with the empath talent, but it wasn't described in any deep way. When Flo describes people she picks out colours and tells you what they mean, and I like this because it gives her a unique perspective as the narrator of the story. With Flo, you don't just get to see the expressions on people's faces, you get to see what they're feeling too. It's actually odd that I chose this for her because in real life I couldn't be any more of a sceptic and I don't believe in psychics at all. But for some reason I really love creating a fictional world where these sorts of people with special talents exist.

When did you start writing and when did you know you were going to publish your first book?

When I was a child I would write these funny stories that were more comedy than anything else, I remember one about Santa getting stuck up the chimney. In my teens I never really wrote, just the odd bits of morbid poetry, as you do. I think I was about eighteen when I really started writing again. It took a couple of years before I began writing anything halfway decent. I had my two novels
Tegan's Blood
and
A Strange Fire
written and sitting on my laptop for at least two years before I did anything much with them. Then this year I decided to make a new years resolution to self-publish them, because I haven't got the will-power to just keep sending them to publishers in the hopes of getting noticed. I suppose some people might see that as being lazy, but let me tell you self-publishing is a lot of hard work, it's so much more than simply writing a book and hitting the “publish” button.