Hi lovelies! It gives me
great pleasure today to host Cristelle Comby and her new book, “Evil Embers”! For other stops on her Goddess Fish
Promotions Book Tour, please click on the banner above or any of the images in
this post.
Be sure to make it to the end of this post to enter to win a $50
Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card!!! Also,
come back daily to interact with Cristelle and to increase your chances of
winning!
Thanks for stopping by!
Wishing you lots of luck in this fabulous giveaway!
Evil Embers
(Vale Investigation, Book
2)
by Cristelle Comby
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: Urban Fantasy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
After
narrowly preventing the destruction of Cold City, PI Bellamy Vale needs a rest.
Or rather, he needs a plain and simple vanilla case—no monsters or otherworldly
creatures involved!
When
foreign businessman Eli Smith shows up at his doorstep with a thick wallet and
a request to find his missing sister, Vale doesn’t think twice before agreeing.
If
he’d known body-hopping demons and smoke monsters came attached to this job,
however, he might have.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EXCERPT TWO:
So
what if it was mid-February? The way I was feeling that morning, I planned to
sleep until New Year came around again. Hells, as far as I was concerned, I
earned it ten times over. I put an end to a string of gruesome killings,
prevented the apocalypse our former mayor intended for us, and I’d stuck around
long enough to clean up the mess she and her minions left behind. All that
thinking took out the last bit of energy I had. I closed my eyes, found a way
to lie down that didn’t hurt too much, and let sleep throw its soothing blanket
over me.
And
then someone knocked at the door.
I
groaned at the wrong timing but kept my eyes shut. There was no way in Tartarus
that I was getting back up again so soon. Whoever it was could get lost.
The
knocking came again.
It
was more insistent this time. I could hear a sense of urgency to the motion. I
forced one eye open and frowned. The sunlight streaming in from the window was
too bright for it to be morning and the angle it bounced off the floorboards
was all wrong. I opened my second eye and glanced at the clock on the bedside
table…Three in the afternoon.
“The
hells?” I muttered, wondering where the day went while I shook my head to clear
out the cobwebs.
The
knock came a third time and I got up, grumbling all the way to the door. I
didn’t bother to put clothes on or to tidy myself up before opening it. I was
clad only in an old pair of sweatpants with a variety of cuts, bruises, and
bandages on full display throughout my upper body. I hadn’t shaved in a week, and
I was sure my hair was a sweaty mess of brown locks and dried blood.
Who
knows, I thought, maybe the sight of me will convince my uninvited guest to let
me get back to my coma.
If
the man in the hallway took notice of my state, he didn’t let it show. He was
tall and sickly thin under his rumbled three-piece suit. His pale skin provided
some severe contrast with the purple bags under his brown eyes. He was
somewhere between forty and forty-five. His angular face wasn’t familiar, and
my frown deepened.
He
looked like a potential client, the I-want-to-know-who-my-wife-is-banging type,
but they rarely showed up to my private address unannounced. I made a lot of
enemies in my professional career, not all of them on this side of the border,
so my business card only listed my cell number.
The
suit he wore appeared brand new, but I frowned more as I realized something
didn’t add up. I was no fashion expert, but the matching of colors between the
vest and shirt was off, brownish orange shirt covered by a purple jacket. Oh,
and he wore a tie that matched his jacket…ugh. The light brown shoes were also
at odds with the indigo blue pants. And there was the smell on the guy. It
wasn’t a garbage smell—I’d been around enough of that over the last month to
know it at first whiff—but there was a smoky quality about it that stood out.
I
filed the information away for later and looked the man squarely in the eye.
“What?” I croaked, my tongue feeling too thick and my mouth too dry.
“Bellamy
Vale?” he asked, with an accent that wasn’t from around here…Middle Eastern,
maybe?
I
jerked my thumb at the bell next to the door. It had my name on it.
The
man peered down at it perplexed, then pressed the round button. A shrill
ringing shot out of the tiny plastic box above the door, and the sound sent
sharp needles dancing through my brain. I winced in pain.
“Yeah—yeah,
that’s me.” I rushed the words out, eager to make the noise stop. Damn, but my
head was killing me. My odd gentleman caller took his finger off the button to
look at me again.
“I
need your help,” he said, “to find my sister.”
I
needed help too, preferably in the form of another round of painkillers. But
that was going to have to wait. I waved my potential new client inside.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GUEST POST:
Character Interview: Bellamy Vale
I’ll admit, I have no idea what a
‘character interview’ is supposed to be like. I apologize, if this isn’t quite
what you intended.
One of the main characters in the Vale
Investigation series is a nosy journalist, so this short vignette is the first
thing that sprung to mind.
Sincerely, Cristelle.
***
Candice Kennedy sat
crossed-legged and perfectly still. Her posture revealed ankle-high leather
cowboy boots beneath her blue jeans. Though she kept her mouth shut, you could
tell from a mile away that she was gloating on the inside. It just showed in
her smirk and in her sparkling blue eyes.
She’d tricked me into this
fair and square, so I allowed her her little victory and sat down with a cup of
tea in my hand.
“Fine,” I muttered, over the
rim. “Let’s get this over with.”
Her smile grew; she was
positively beaming at me now. Hells, I’d
always known becoming friends with a journo was gonna bite me in the ass
someday—guess today was the day.
“Mister Vale,” she started,
and I frowned at the formal greeting. I caught myself and remembered this was a
professional interview after all, not two friends having a chat. “You are a
licensed private investigator here in Cold City.”
I nodded into my tea.
Kennedy kicked me in the
chin, underneath the coffee table. She repeated the motion until I stammered,
“Yeah—yeah, I am. Been doing that for a couple of years now.”
“You’ve been hired by several
companies to investigate insurance fraud and by divorce attorneys to add water
to the mill, so to speak.”
I nodded again, and added for
the sake of my ankles, “Yeah, that’s common legwork for a PI.”
“You’ve also worked for the
CCPD on some cases…” she let her sentence go unfinished, forcing me to do the
rest of the work for her. I glanced up, unsure if I should look at her, or at
the camera she’d set up on a tripod next to the couch. I went for the blonde.
“We’ve crossed path on some
investigations,” I told her, not wanting to get into more details.
“That’s not all you did?”
Kennedy said, her smile turning somewhat predatory.
Hells, just last week I’d
faced an angry golem, so a simple question like that shouldn’t make me
squeamish, but it did. My relationship with the men in blue was complicated, or
rather it was complicated with one woman in blue in particular.
I gave Kennedy a look which
clearly spelled “drop it,” and prayed the Texan got the message.
“I mean, just a little over a
year ago, you did help them with a kidnapping. Finding, and bringing home our
Mayor’s daughter, isn’t this right?” Kennedy said.
“Well, yeah...” I was
surprised to realize that was what
she’d been aiming for. Guess this was more sensational than a PI having a love
affair with an homicide sergeant.
“Townsend wasn’t Mayor back
then though,” I felt the need to clarify.
“Right, but he was Cold
City’s most successful entrepreneur. And Mr. Townsend isn’t even the most
illustrious client you’ve had,” she continued. “Sources tell me, someone put
you on cases like the Galas Incident and the Ali Pasha Debacle…”
She let her words hang in the
air again, and I struggled for an answer. This time I knew full well what she
was fishing for.
In this matter, Kennedy was
her own source and she knew what everyone had dubbed the ‘Galatas Incident’ was
actually our former Mayor Jacinta Galatas leveling half of downtown as she
tried to open a gate to the Underworld. And the mayhem at Ali Pasha wasn’t due
to some experimental drugs, but rather to an evil jinn possessing the club’s
patrons. I intervened in both cases, saving as many lives as I could.
“I’m not sure what you want
me to say here, Ms. Kennedy.”
“The cases you worked were
linked to these incidents,” she said. “That is the truth, isn’t it?”
The
truth—that
was what I’d promised Kennedy. I grounded my teeth and forced myself to say,
“Yes. It’s true.”
“And in both cases, you were
hired by the same person.”
“Hired is a big word,” I
sniggered—wasn’t like I was getting paid for these jobs.
“Required,” Kennedy amended.
“Yeah. You could say that.”
It wasn’t like my boss was someone you could say ‘no’ to, not if you wanted to
keep on breathing. But that’s what happens when you sign a compact with Death
herself.
“Two major incidents which
cost many citizens’ lives. Apparently unrelated, and yet,” she waved a hand at
me, “a common denominator—a link. What can you tell our viewers about that?”
I
looked up, caught her gaze and held on. Kennedy was determined, like a dog with
a bone. She was a good journalist and I knew she wouldn’t let go. None of what
we’d faced had scarred her into giving up yet, and sometimes I feared nothing
would. But I knew better than her what was going on in the shadows and beyond.
There was another world out there, and trust me when I say no-one in their
right mind should want to know. When dealing with certain entities, knowledge
is dangerous. And Kennedy had made a name for herself outside of the journalism
realm… hells, she’d made a name outside of this realm, period. And every time
she dug deeper, she put herself in more danger.
“Client confidentiality,” I
said, without averting my gaze.
“Really?” she said. “That’s
what you’re going with?” The Texan accent she toned down during interviews
crept back into her voice. A sign she wasn’t pleased by my answer.
“Yes, Ms. Kennedy,” I said.
“I’m afraid I cannot name my client any more than you can name your source.”
That was a low blow, but it
was all I had. It was dangerous enough for her to know Alterum Mundum even
existed, I couldn’t let her spread the word about it. If the news ever got out,
none of us would survive the backlash.
But Kennedy wouldn’t be a
good journalist if she couldn’t spin this to her advantage. And spin this, she
did. Turning to face the camera, she said, “And this concludes our interview
with private investigator Bellamy Vale, who kindly confirmed there is an entity
in the dark who knew about the Galatas Incident and what went down at Ali
Pasha. Stay tuned for more…”
She sat up and started
packing the camera. I waited until it was tucked away in her bag to say, “I’m
sorry Kennedy, but you had to know it’d go down that way.”
“Don’t worry, hoss.” She gave
me a smirk over her shoulder. “I got more than I expected.”
I laughed, before sitting up
and biding her farewell.
***
Once Kennedy had left, I
fished my phone out of my pocket and sent a text to my best friend. “Hey, Z.
you *can* hack into Candice’s agency servers, right?”
There’d be hell to pay for
this, I knew. But if the price for keeping the journalist alive was her being
angry with me—well, I called it a bargain.
“Remind me whose family
*owns* the Internet?” was all the reply I got.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR BIO:
Cristelle Comby was
born and raised in the French-speaking area of Switzerland, on the shores of
Lake Geneva, where she still resides.
She
attributes to her origins her ever-peaceful nature and her undying love for
chocolate. She has a passion for art, which also includes an interest in
drawing and acting.
She
is the author of the Neve & Egan Cases series, which features an unlikely
duo of private detectives in London: Ashford Egan, a blind History professor,
and Alexandra Neve, one of his students.
Currently,
she is hard at work on her Urban Fantasy series Vale Investigation which
chronicles the exploits of Death’s only envoy on Earth, PI Bellamy Vale, in the
fictitious town of Cold City, USA.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CONNECT WITH CRISTELLE:
Website:
Blog:
Email:
Twitter:
BookBub Author Page:
BookBub Book Page:
Goodreads Author Page:
Goodreads Book Page:
Amazon Author Page:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BOOK BUY LINKS:
Amazon Kindle eBook:
Amazon Paperback:
The Book Depository Paperback:
BAM! Books-A-Million Paperback:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GIVEAWAY INFO:
Cristelle will be awarding a $50 Amazon or B/N
GC to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.
**This post contains affiliate links and if clicked and a
purchase is made, I may receive a small commission to help support this
blog. This does not cost you anything,
it just helps pay for all those awesome giveaways on here.**
