Magic For Nothing (InCryptid, Band 6) - Softcover

Buch 6 von 15: InCryptid

McGuire, Seanan

 
9780756410391: Magic For Nothing (InCryptid, Band 6)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0756410398 ISBN 13: 9780756410391
Verlag: DAW, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

The sixth book in New York Times-bestselling Seanan McGuire's witty urban fantasy InCryptid series about a family of cryptozoologists who act as a buffer between humans and the magical creatures living in secret around us.

"The only thing more fun than an October Daye book is an InCryptid book." —Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Sookie Stackhouse series

Improbable, adjective:
                1. Not very likely to happen; not probable.
                2. Probably not a very good idea anyway.
                3. See also “bad plan.”

As the youngest of the three Price children, Antimony is used to people not expecting much from her. She’s been happy playing roller derby and hanging out with her cousins, leaving the globe-trotting to her older siblings while she stays at home and tries to decide what she wants to do with her life. She always knew that one day, things would have to change. She didn’t think they’d change so fast.

Annie’s expectations keep getting shattered. She didn’t expect Verity to declare war on the Covenant of St. George on live television. She didn’t expect the Covenant to take her sister’s threat seriously. And she definitely didn’t expect to be packed off to London to infiltrate the Covenant from the inside…but as the only Price in her generation without a strong resemblance to the rest of the family, she’s the perfect choice to play spy. They need to know what’s coming. Their lives may depend on it.

But Annie has some secrets of her own, like the fact that she’s started setting things on fire when she touches them, and has no idea how to control it. Now she’s headed halfway around the world, into the den of the enemy, where blowing her cover could get her killed. She’s pretty sure things can’t get much worse.

Antimony Price is about to learn just how wrong it’s possible for one cryptozoologist to be.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Seanan McGuire is a Washington State-based author with a strong penchant for travel and can regularly be found just about anyplace capable of supporting human life (as well as a few places that probably aren’t). Early exposure to a vast number of books left her with a lifelong affection for the written word, and led, perhaps inevitably, to her writing books of her own, starting somewhere around the age of eleven. The October Daye novels are her first urban fantasy series, and the InCryptid novels are her second series, both published by DAW and both of which have put her in the New York Times bestseller list. Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer; Rosemary and Rue, the first novel in the October Daye series, was named one of the Top 20 Paranormal Fantasy Novels of the Past Decade; and her novel Feed, written under the name Mira Grant, was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010. She also won a Hugo for her podcast, and is the first person to be nominated for five Hugo Awards in a single year. You can visit her at www.seananmcguire.com.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One

“It’s better to act than it is to react. Acting gets you in trouble. Reacting all too frequently gets you dead.” —Alice Healy

A deserted house on the outskirts of Salem, Oregon

Now

Don’t get me wrong. Poltergeists have a place in a healthy spectral ecosystem. They wouldn’t exist if they didn’t. Everything evolves for a reason, even the different sorts of ghost people become after they die. Nothing in this or any other dimension is inherently evil.

And none of that was really a comfort with the ghost of an eleven-year-old boy doing his level best to drop an entire house on my head.

“Tyler! I’m here to help you!” I shouted, ducking around the nearest corner. A waterlogged dresser flew past overhead, shattering when it hit an exposed support beam. Either it had been full of beetles—eww—or Tyler was somehow creating them. When the dresser gave way, the bugs came flowing out, so plentiful that it seemed impossible they could have fit inside there. I squeaked and plastered myself against the wall, trying not to hyperventilate. I don’t have a specific problem with bugs, but there’s a big difference between seeing a single beetle and having a wave of them flowing toward your feet.

Mary sighed, stepping in front of me and drawing an arc across the floor with her toe. The beetles parted as they ran up against it, running in either direction, never crossing the line. After they had gone about three feet, they popped, becoming clouds of green mist that rose into the air and dissipated.

“Okay, this is officially the grossest ghostbusting job I have ever been on,” I said, as calmly as I could. It wasn’t all that calm. “Where the hell is Artie?”

“I can check, but it means leaving you alone with Tyler,” cautioned Mary. A splintering sound from the other side of the wall confirmed that Tyler’s tantrum was still in full force. “Are you sure you’re down for that?”

“If it means finding out where my so-called backup is, yes,” I said.

Mary vanished. A microwave flew through the doorway and slammed into the wall next to the dresser. Unlike the dresser, it didn’t burst into spectral cockroaches or break into a pile of splinters. Also, it could have crushed my skull, which I am fond of leaving uncrushed. I swallowed a yelp and moved farther down the hall, trying to keep my exits in view. With the way this had been going so far, I was going to need to run again before much longer.

The trouble with going up against ghosts is that most of them aren’t bad, just confused. They don’t get why I’m alive and they’re not. Sometimes that’s a fair question, like with Tyler, who died when he was eleven. He’d been riding his bike, following all the rules of the road—even wearing a helmet—when a drunk driver blasted around a corner and slammed into him, not giving him a chance to swerve. If there was any mercy in the situation, it was that Tyler had died instantly.

But maybe that wasn’t actually merciful. Because he’d died instantly, he hadn’t had any time to process what was happening. One moment he was there. The next moment he was gone. The moment after that, he was back, spectral, confused, and coming home to haunt his family. They’d only lasted six months before they moved away; who could live in a house that shook and groaned and sometimes cried in the voice of your dead son in the middle of the night?

That all happened four years ago. Tyler had been alone ever since, growing stronger, angrier, and more confused. It was a terrible situation for a kid to be in, alive or dead.

I would have had a lot more sympathy if he hadn’t insisted on throwing things at my head, but hey. Nobody’s perfect.

“Tyler, dammit, could you calm down?” I stayed pressed against the wall, hoping that by shouting at the kid without giving him an immediate target, I could get him to chill out—or at least to stop throwing things. “We’re not here to hurt you!”

The air in front of me shimmered, and a spectral preteen boy appeared. He looked more like a ghost than either of our family phantoms: Rose and Mary both tended to manifest as fairly normal-looking teenage girls. Sure, Mary had white hair and terrifying babysitter eyes that could make me confess to damn near anything, but fashion hair dyes and cosplay contacts exist. You know what doesn’t exist? Makeup that can make a living person transparent and faintly blue, that’s what. Tyler looked like a really good CGI effect, the sort of thing I had exactly zero interest in getting up close and personal with.

“Liar,” he hissed. “Exorcist. Liar.”

“If I were an exorcist, would I have a ghost with me?” It seemed like a reasonable question.

Apparently not. Tyler scowled. “You’re trying to trick me,” he accused. Behind him—well, technically, through him—I saw the busted remains of the dresser start to pull themselves together. He was getting ready for another volley.

Swell. That was just what I needed. “I am not trying to trick you, Tyler,” I said firmly. “If I were trying to trick you, I’d have brought . . . shit, I don’t even know. I have no idea how to trick a kid your age. I don’t even like kids. I never have.”

He blinked. I had apparently gone far enough off-script to confuse him. “You were a kid once.”

“And when I was a kid, I was not my own biggest fan,” I said. “Kids are sticky by default, and annoying almost all the damn time. I am not the person you choose to trick a kid. Look, I’m running out of novel ways to say this, but I’m here because I want to help you. That starts with you helping me. You help me by not throwing that damn dresser at my head again. I am mortal, I am breakable, I do not want to be broken.”

Tyler scowled. “If you want to help me, where are my parents?”

“They’re gone. You died and they moved away, because they couldn’t handle the pain of living here and knowing you weren’t ever going to grow up, or come back, or be their little boy again.” They’d also moved away because he’d scared the pants off them when he started haunting the place, but saying that seemed a little impolitic. Tyler had just been doing what his new instincts told him to do. It wasn’t his fault that those instincts sort of sucked.

“You’re lying!” he howled, face distorting until it was less that of a preteen boy and more that of an unspeakable nightmare. I prepared to brace for impact.

Artie burst in through the front door and thrust a rectangular object at Tyler.

“Hey,” he said, panting slightly. “You wanna play RoboRally?”

The nightmare bled back out of Tyler’s face, replaced by an expression of deep, profound confusion. I could sort of understand where he was coming from. This wasn’t exactly normal procedure.

I put a hand over my face and groaned. “I asked for backup, not a comedy routine, Artie.”

“This is backup,” he said, sounding stung. “I was an eleven-year-old boy and you weren’t, and I’m telling you, this is backup. C’mon, Tyler. When’s the last time you sat down and played a game?”

My cousin is an enormous nerd—and when I’m the one saying that, it means something. After all, I’m the girl who shares her...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
DAW
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0756410398
ISBN 13 
9780756410391
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
368
Kontakt zum Hersteller
DAW
https://www.aeuln.top/

Kl?nenfeldstr. 22
Muttenz
4132
Schweiz
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

Lengericher Landstr. 19
Osnabrück
49078
Deutschland

Weitere beliebte Ausgaben desselben Titels

9780756420345: Magic for Nothing (InCryptid, Band 6)

Vorgestellte Ausgabe

ISBN 10:  0756420342 ISBN 13:  9780756420345
Verlag: DAW, 2025
Softcover