I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the SCHEME by Jennifer Sommersby Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!
SCHEME
AVRA-K, #2
by Jennifer Sommersby
Pub. Date: April 21st 2020
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Formats: Hardcover, eBook
Pages: 456
The key to good is found in truth.
Genevieve may have left the circus behind in Oregon, but there is plenty of show still to come.
When she and Henry land in France, they are whisked away to Croix-Mare, the home of Henry’s grandfather, Nutesh, where they will prepare for a journey they never could’ve imagined. Now that they have all three AVRAKEDAVRA texts—Life, Death, and Memory—the books must be destroyed in the Undoing.
However, it’s not as simple as taking the books to their birthplace in Babylon and setting them alight. Genevieve and Henry must rely on unexpected allies as they embark on a harrowing global search to acquire pieces necessary to complete the Undoing. They’re offered cover and protection by La Vérité, the secret network of followers devoted to the message of the AVRAKEDAVRA, who, not surprisingly, are found under the big top—because no one does underground quite like the circus.
But loyalties among the magical community are fragile. Genevieve, still grieving the loss of her mother, now struggles to control the new AVRAKEDAVRA-bestowed gifts, and with mounting threats to her psyche and body, she clings mightily to the promise of a brighter future once this is over—if they can survive it. And Henry, broken by his father’s treachery but entranced by the heartwarming connection his family’s text has granted him, grapples with the fact that once they succeed in destroying the books, he’ll lose the only family he has left.
Together, our two young heirs will learn that when hope has abandoned us, the overwhelming love of friendship and family is all the magic we need.
EXCERPT
CH2
The door opens behind me, quiet exCept for that tiny squeak when it catches on the plush carpet.
“I come bearing gifts. Hélène made us hot chocolate.” Henry enters, holding a tray with two mugs.
“With whipped cream?” I ask.
“So much whipped cream,” he says, setting down the tray. “Did you sleep in the chair?”
“I wanted to watch the sunrise.”
Henry hands me a cup, pulls the ottoman closer, and then sits next to me in front of the window that overlooks the rolling green hills of the massive estate belonging to Thibault and Hélène Delacroix—his grandparents. This place is a fortress, hospital, and five-star hotel all in one, in the middle of the French countryside. Henry leans in and pushes the springy curls back from my forehead.
“I hate how short it is. And how dark,” I say. The weirdest part—when I look in the mirror, I don’t see my mother’s face staring back at me anymore. Our shared red hair, mine wilder and frizzier than hers, but still—it’s all gone. Not even long enough to make a ponytail anymore. It’s like being naked.
But it’s necessary, to keep us hidden, and alive.
“It makes your green eyes pop.” His smile fades when he runs a hand over his own head. It’s been cut so close I can see his scalp, his messy curls shorn and dyed from his usual blond to dark like mine. His cheeks are pink again, his eyes less purple this morning. He lost so much blood—it wasn’t just the car accident near Boeing Field when Lucian Dmitri and his witchy minion, Mara Dunn, ran us off the road and flipped us like a diner pancake. Mara Dunn, the talented aerialist brought to our circus after my mother, Delia, died, now known by her true identity of Aveline Darrow, my half sister, stabbed him. They wanted the magical AVRAKEDAVRA texts so much—my mother’s and the one Henry stole from his father’s study—they were willing to kill for them.
During the circus’s New Year’s Eve fundraising gala, my mother was pushed from her lyra to the circus floor thirty feet below, murdered by an Etemmu, a vicious Mesopotamian demon made of swirling arms laced with hate and pain, controlled by Lucian Dmitri and his Death text. I tried to save her, but as her life drained into the fine soil, she took with her too many secrets. About the daughter she had long before I was born, about the world’s most powerful magical books, about how, in the wrong hands, they could rewrite everything.
About how all this secrecy and torture by the Etemmu would land firmly upon my shoulders in her absence.
I miss her, fiercely. I see her in every flower stretching out of its vase, in every tree that whispers in the breeze, in every tiny sprout pushing out of the dirt. Mirrors trick me when I pass by, thinking I’m seeing her face when it’s only my own.
But I’m so angry. I’m so angry, I could burn a hole through a granite wall with my bare hands.
I run my hand through what’s left of my hair. “We’re still ourselves,” I say. “Right?”
Henry leans in and kisses the whipped cream off my lip.
“Still ourselves.”
“For now.”
“For always.”
“How do you feel? Since . . .” Since last night, when Thibault Delacroix—aka Nutesh, Henry’s grandfather, one of the three Original Creators of the AVRAKEDAVRA, and our host and chief strategist—sealed his grandson to his book. For something so important, it is such a brief, quiet under-taking. Like he did with me on the plane hurtling away from the carnage left at Boeing Field with Lucian and Mara Dunn, Nutesh pulled on his leather gloves, placed a hand flat on the Memory text, and voilà! Henry was a sealed heir, all ready to be assailed by whatever new magical endowments the text might decide to share.
Henry is in line for two books, though— Memory, through his mother’s family, and Death, the text he stole from his father’s study back in Oregon. Why Henry has only been sealed to one family’s book remains a mystery, but it’s probably better that way, for now. I love Henry—I know this in my heart—but my head tells me that one person sealed to two books? Unwise. It’s only a short walk across the house for him to take the third, and this whole mess starts over again.
“I’m fine. Nothing new or weird yet.”
“The day is young,” I say, wishing I felt as light as my words suggest.
Henry moves to the coffee table, retrieving the TV remote. “So, you might want to see this. New developments . . .” He clicks on the flat screen hugged on either side by whitewashed bookshelves stacked to their limits.
Lucian Dagan Dmitri—Henry’s father and the man now hunting us—fills my room, microphones at his chin. He’s talking to the press.
The red-and-white news banner at the bottom of the screen reads: “Teens kidnapped, on the run after art heist.” Lucian’s at the fairgrounds, the Cinzio Traveling Players Company big top billowing in the background. He’s standing with police, and my heart jumps into my throat when the camera pans left to show a very worried Ted and Cecelia Cinzio.
“It took him thirty-six hours to come up with this?” I ask. We’ve been in Croix-Mare, France, just long enough to have our significant injuries healed, put restorative food in our bellies, and change our appearances for the mission yet to come.
“He’s smart,” Baby says, standing in the doorway, eyes on the TV, ceramic mug dwarfed in his hand. He’s healed—we’re all mostly physically healed from the car accident and subsequent attack by the Etemmu in Washington just a few days ago—but Baby’s color still isn’t right. His black skin lacks its normal vigor and warmth.
“Lucian’s pacing himself. Timing it for maximum impact. He knows we won’t linger here long,” Baby says. He walks into the room and sits on the long, cushioned bench that abuts the end of my bed.
A picture of Bamidele “Baby” Duncan flashes on the screen and includes his full name, height, weight, ethnicity, eye color, and tattoo descriptions. The man who has been my father and guardian my whole life, who kept my mother and me safe from harm, is being danced about on international news like some hardened criminal.
“How . . . how could he say this? How could he lie to everyone?” I ask.
Henry’s face is sad. His father stands as buttoned-up and in control as ever, not a shred of physical damage after our electrical dance the other day, his bald head protected from the elements by an umbrella held aloft by an unfamiliar individual wearing one of the standard-issue black Triad Partners jackets. “We have reason to suspect that my son Henry and his new female friend have gone to Europe in the company of Mr. Duncan. It is our belief that these two young people were coerced into committing the theft, as certainly Henry would have access to my collection. Mr. Duncan was very recently a guest in my home, at which time he would’ve had the opportunity to survey the target of his plot. Given his relationship with young Genevieve Flannery’s late mother, it is presumed that he manipulated his surrogate fatherhood over the girl to convince her to play a part in his scheme. Genevieve, in turn, recognized a soft target in my son and engaged him in a romantic ruse to win his trust and thus gain access to our home’s private collection.”
Henry looks at me for a long moment before turning back to the TV. I don’t have a read on his emotions—his jaw flexes and he’s blinking a little faster than usual.
That’s his dad on the television, lying to the entire world about his own child.
Lucian is still talking. “We will be working with international law enforcement and private agents who specialize in these sorts of cases so we can bring Henry and Genevieve home safely. That is our number one priority.”
“God, the smug, lying bastard. International law enforcement? What, like, Interpol? Scotland Yard?” I ask, moving to the bench to sit nearer to Baby. I take his coffee cup, sipping, shuddering.
“French coffee is strong, a leannan,” he says, his smile tired.
“Baby, Ted and Cece couldn’t possibly think you kidnapped us. Come on. You can’t kidnap someone you’re legally responsible for. And Henry is eighteen. He’s an adult.”
“I’ll find a way to get in touch with the Cinzios. This is all bluster. Dagan wants the world to think he’s the hero, that he’s the wronged party, so now everyone will have eyes out for you two. It’s his way of maximizing visibility.”
“Nothing he’s said is the truth.”
“Welcome to the post-truth age,” Baby says. “The people who count—the people who know how Dagan works and what he’s really talking about—this is like the Bat Signal to them. He’s going to make sure this gets maximum airplay. He’s got eyes everywhere.”
This does not feel good at all. Eyes everywhere?
I scrutinize the screen—Aveline is nowhere in sight.
My stomach drops. Where is she?
And what about Violet and Ash? I can’t even imagine what the twins—my siblings, for all intents and purposes—must think of what’s happening. Violet and Ash Jónás and I have grown up together, done everything together. Baby and I just gone—vanished into thin air—the police involved. A stolen car, a robbery from the esteemed Dmitri estate, a rich philanthropist’s son missing too. It sounds bad. And it is bad—it’s just a different kind of bad than what they’re probably thinking. They don’t know anything about ancient books or heirs or the threat of our lives being erased if Lucian gets his hands on the AVRAKEDAVRA.
And my poor elephants . . . thinking of Gert and Houdini and sweet Othello the lion—actual physical pain forces me to clench the fabric over my chest. God, I hope they’re safe.
I send a quiet plea to Alicia, Henry’s mother—she’s a ghost, one of my mother’s long-time companions only she could see. Delia’s gift of communing with the dead was hers alone—until Alicia showed up in that post office in Cannon Beach, floating and weightless above the sandy floor. It was the first time I’d ever seen a ghost, and since that day, I’ve needed her help more than I ever thought possible.
And I need her now.
Alicia, show me the elephants. Show me they’re okay. Please tell Gertrude I am so, so sorry.
I hold my breath, willing her ethereal shape to appear. Of course, it doesn’t.
I have to find a cell phone. I need to get a message to Vi and Ash that what Lucian is saying is a lie—and that I need them to keep the elephants safe.
“What the hell are we going to do?” I ask.
“We’re going to be leaving a little sooner, ma chère.” Nutesh glides into the room. “Dress, eat, and meet me in the hall in thirty minutes, s’il vous plaît. We have work to do.”
EXCERPT
CH2
The door opens behind me, quiet exCept for that tiny squeak when it catches on the plush carpet.
“I come bearing gifts. Hélène made us hot chocolate.” Henry enters, holding a tray with two mugs.
“With whipped cream?” I ask.
“So much whipped cream,” he says, setting down the tray. “Did you sleep in the chair?”
“I wanted to watch the sunrise.”
Henry hands me a cup, pulls the ottoman closer, and then sits next to me in front of the window that overlooks the rolling green hills of the massive estate belonging to Thibault and Hélène Delacroix—his grandparents. This place is a fortress, hospital, and five-star hotel all in one, in the middle of the French countryside. Henry leans in and pushes the springy curls back from my forehead.
“I hate how short it is. And how dark,” I say. The weirdest part—when I look in the mirror, I don’t see my mother’s face staring back at me anymore. Our shared red hair, mine wilder and frizzier than hers, but still—it’s all gone. Not even long enough to make a ponytail anymore. It’s like being naked.
But it’s necessary, to keep us hidden, and alive.
“It makes your green eyes pop.” His smile fades when he runs a hand over his own head. It’s been cut so close I can see his scalp, his messy curls shorn and dyed from his usual blond to dark like mine. His cheeks are pink again, his eyes less purple this morning. He lost so much blood—it wasn’t just the car accident near Boeing Field when Lucian Dmitri and his witchy minion, Mara Dunn, ran us off the road and flipped us like a diner pancake. Mara Dunn, the talented aerialist brought to our circus after my mother, Delia, died, now known by her true identity of Aveline Darrow, my half sister, stabbed him. They wanted the magical AVRAKEDAVRA texts so much—my mother’s and the one Henry stole from his father’s study—they were willing to kill for them.
During the circus’s New Year’s Eve fundraising gala, my mother was pushed from her lyra to the circus floor thirty feet below, murdered by an Etemmu, a vicious Mesopotamian demon made of swirling arms laced with hate and pain, controlled by Lucian Dmitri and his Death text. I tried to save her, but as her life drained into the fine soil, she took with her too many secrets. About the daughter she had long before I was born, about the world’s most powerful magical books, about how, in the wrong hands, they could rewrite everything.
About how all this secrecy and torture by the Etemmu would land firmly upon my shoulders in her absence.
I miss her, fiercely. I see her in every flower stretching out of its vase, in every tree that whispers in the breeze, in every tiny sprout pushing out of the dirt. Mirrors trick me when I pass by, thinking I’m seeing her face when it’s only my own.
But I’m so angry. I’m so angry, I could burn a hole through a granite wall with my bare hands.
I run my hand through what’s left of my hair. “We’re still ourselves,” I say. “Right?”
Henry leans in and kisses the whipped cream off my lip.
“Still ourselves.”
“For now.”
“For always.”
“How do you feel? Since . . .” Since last night, when Thibault Delacroix—aka Nutesh, Henry’s grandfather, one of the three Original Creators of the AVRAKEDAVRA, and our host and chief strategist—sealed his grandson to his book. For something so important, it is such a brief, quiet under-taking. Like he did with me on the plane hurtling away from the carnage left at Boeing Field with Lucian and Mara Dunn, Nutesh pulled on his leather gloves, placed a hand flat on the Memory text, and voilà! Henry was a sealed heir, all ready to be assailed by whatever new magical endowments the text might decide to share.
Henry is in line for two books, though— Memory, through his mother’s family, and Death, the text he stole from his father’s study back in Oregon. Why Henry has only been sealed to one family’s book remains a mystery, but it’s probably better that way, for now. I love Henry—I know this in my heart—but my head tells me that one person sealed to two books? Unwise. It’s only a short walk across the house for him to take the third, and this whole mess starts over again.
“I’m fine. Nothing new or weird yet.”
“The day is young,” I say, wishing I felt as light as my words suggest.
Henry moves to the coffee table, retrieving the TV remote. “So, you might want to see this. New developments . . .” He clicks on the flat screen hugged on either side by whitewashed bookshelves stacked to their limits.
Lucian Dagan Dmitri—Henry’s father and the man now hunting us—fills my room, microphones at his chin. He’s talking to the press.
The red-and-white news banner at the bottom of the screen reads: “Teens kidnapped, on the run after art heist.” Lucian’s at the fairgrounds, the Cinzio Traveling Players Company big top billowing in the background. He’s standing with police, and my heart jumps into my throat when the camera pans left to show a very worried Ted and Cecelia Cinzio.
“It took him thirty-six hours to come up with this?” I ask. We’ve been in Croix-Mare, France, just long enough to have our significant injuries healed, put restorative food in our bellies, and change our appearances for the mission yet to come.
“He’s smart,” Baby says, standing in the doorway, eyes on the TV, ceramic mug dwarfed in his hand. He’s healed—we’re all mostly physically healed from the car accident and subsequent attack by the Etemmu in Washington just a few days ago—but Baby’s color still isn’t right. His black skin lacks its normal vigor and warmth.
“Lucian’s pacing himself. Timing it for maximum impact. He knows we won’t linger here long,” Baby says. He walks into the room and sits on the long, cushioned bench that abuts the end of my bed.
A picture of Bamidele “Baby” Duncan flashes on the screen and includes his full name, height, weight, ethnicity, eye color, and tattoo descriptions. The man who has been my father and guardian my whole life, who kept my mother and me safe from harm, is being danced about on international news like some hardened criminal.
“How . . . how could he say this? How could he lie to everyone?” I ask.
Henry’s face is sad. His father stands as buttoned-up and in control as ever, not a shred of physical damage after our electrical dance the other day, his bald head protected from the elements by an umbrella held aloft by an unfamiliar individual wearing one of the standard-issue black Triad Partners jackets. “We have reason to suspect that my son Henry and his new female friend have gone to Europe in the company of Mr. Duncan. It is our belief that these two young people were coerced into committing the theft, as certainly Henry would have access to my collection. Mr. Duncan was very recently a guest in my home, at which time he would’ve had the opportunity to survey the target of his plot. Given his relationship with young Genevieve Flannery’s late mother, it is presumed that he manipulated his surrogate fatherhood over the girl to convince her to play a part in his scheme. Genevieve, in turn, recognized a soft target in my son and engaged him in a romantic ruse to win his trust and thus gain access to our home’s private collection.”
Henry looks at me for a long moment before turning back to the TV. I don’t have a read on his emotions—his jaw flexes and he’s blinking a little faster than usual.
That’s his dad on the television, lying to the entire world about his own child.
Lucian is still talking. “We will be working with international law enforcement and private agents who specialize in these sorts of cases so we can bring Henry and Genevieve home safely. That is our number one priority.”
“God, the smug, lying bastard. International law enforcement? What, like, Interpol? Scotland Yard?” I ask, moving to the bench to sit nearer to Baby. I take his coffee cup, sipping, shuddering.
“French coffee is strong, a leannan,” he says, his smile tired.
“Baby, Ted and Cece couldn’t possibly think you kidnapped us. Come on. You can’t kidnap someone you’re legally responsible for. And Henry is eighteen. He’s an adult.”
“I’ll find a way to get in touch with the Cinzios. This is all bluster. Dagan wants the world to think he’s the hero, that he’s the wronged party, so now everyone will have eyes out for you two. It’s his way of maximizing visibility.”
“Nothing he’s said is the truth.”
“Welcome to the post-truth age,” Baby says. “The people who count—the people who know how Dagan works and what he’s really talking about—this is like the Bat Signal to them. He’s going to make sure this gets maximum airplay. He’s got eyes everywhere.”
This does not feel good at all. Eyes everywhere?
I scrutinize the screen—Aveline is nowhere in sight.
My stomach drops. Where is she?
And what about Violet and Ash? I can’t even imagine what the twins—my siblings, for all intents and purposes—must think of what’s happening. Violet and Ash Jónás and I have grown up together, done everything together. Baby and I just gone—vanished into thin air—the police involved. A stolen car, a robbery from the esteemed Dmitri estate, a rich philanthropist’s son missing too. It sounds bad. And it is bad—it’s just a different kind of bad than what they’re probably thinking. They don’t know anything about ancient books or heirs or the threat of our lives being erased if Lucian gets his hands on the AVRAKEDAVRA.
And my poor elephants . . . thinking of Gert and Houdini and sweet Othello the lion—actual physical pain forces me to clench the fabric over my chest. God, I hope they’re safe.
I send a quiet plea to Alicia, Henry’s mother—she’s a ghost, one of my mother’s long-time companions only she could see. Delia’s gift of communing with the dead was hers alone—until Alicia showed up in that post office in Cannon Beach, floating and weightless above the sandy floor. It was the first time I’d ever seen a ghost, and since that day, I’ve needed her help more than I ever thought possible.
And I need her now.
Alicia, show me the elephants. Show me they’re okay. Please tell Gertrude I am so, so sorry.
I hold my breath, willing her ethereal shape to appear. Of course, it doesn’t.
I have to find a cell phone. I need to get a message to Vi and Ash that what Lucian is saying is a lie—and that I need them to keep the elephants safe.
“What the hell are we going to do?” I ask.
“We’re going to be leaving a little sooner, ma chère.” Nutesh glides into the room. “Dress, eat, and meet me in the hall in thirty minutes, s’il vous plaît. We have work to do.”
SLEIGHT (AVRA-K #1)
by Jennifer Sommersby
Pub. Date: April 24th 2018
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Formats: Hardcover, eBook
Pages: 424
BLURB
Delia smiles at the shadow only she sees—
Something slams into her. The lyra whirls like a half-dollar spinning on its edge.
My mother is thrown backward.
And she falls.
Growing up in the Cinzio Traveling Players Company, Genevieve Flannery is accustomed to a life most teenagers could never imagine: daily workouts of extravagant acrobatics; an extended family of clowns; wild animals for pets; and her mother, Delia, whose mind has always been tortured by visions—but whose love Geni never questions. In a world of performers who astonish and amaze on a daily basis, Delia’s ghostly hallucinations never seemed all that strange . . . until the evening Geni and her mother are performing an aerial routine they’ve done hundreds of times, and Delia falls to her death.
That night, a dark curtain in Geni’s life opens. Everything has changed.
Still reeling from the tragedy, the Cinzio Traveling Players are also adjusting to the circus’s new owner: a generous, mysterious man whose connection to the circus—Geni suspects—has a dark and dangerous history. And suddenly Geni is stumbling into a new reality of her own, her life interrupted daily by the terrors only Delia used to be able to see.
As the visions around her grow stronger, Geni isn’t sure who she can trust. Even worse, she’s starting to question whether she can trust her own mind.
Praise for Sleight
“Jennifer Sommersby’s Sleight makes magic from an enthralling premise, wonderfully-drawn characters, and beautiful words. It’s hard to avoid descriptors like entrancing, spell-binding and mystical.” —Michael Grant, New York Times bestselling author of the Gone series
“Fantasy readers will fall in love with Sleight. Like a circus, it’s an intoxicating mix of beauty, humor, magic, and danger that means the reader can’t bear to look away until the final page.” —Eileen Cook, author of With Malice
“Startlingly imaginative and vividly realized.” —Ira Bloom, author of Hearts & Other Body Parts
Author Info
Really, though, who am I? How about a list? We Virgos tend to like lists:
- Writer, copy/line editor (www.plumfieldediting.com)
- I reside in the Great White North, though the webbed feet prove that I originate from Portland, Oregon. Last U.S. address was Los Angeles. No, I do not miss the traffic. (Although Vancouver is #2 in North America for Worst Traffic Ever.) I do miss California's awesome beaches.
- I write under the pen name Eliza Gordon for non-YA titles -- romantic comedies and Happily Ever Afters. (These books are NOT for kids. Mature themes, adult language, super-inappropriate jokes that will make you giggle. Well, I hope.)
- Member of SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators)
- Member of the eight-person fiction cohort of the 2007 Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University
- Studied copy and substantive editing (2005-06) at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. As a writer, I have worked with and studied the practices of some of the best editors in the publishing industry. #luckyJenn
- Studied English, political science, and criminology via Washington State University
- I'm called Mom by three brilliant babies.
- I will never join the PTA or PAC, so please, don't ask. I also don't do candle, jewelry, or clothing parties. Thanks, though. I'm sure the finger sandwiches are delicious.
- I used to do all of my first-draft writing in the car, at night, in the parking lot of my favorite coffee shop. These days I write where it's quietest -- home, or my local coffee shop.
- I buy a lot of books. A LOT. No, seriously. I have a problem.
- I am a soundtrack/movie score JUNKIE. Hans Zimmer and Alexandre Desplat and Sonya Belousova and the Greyson-William brothers and Ramin Djawadi … and HARRY ESCOTT. *swoon* He followed me back on Twitter and I almost died. Almost. If you ever need movie score recommendations, I AM YOUR PERSON.
- I am obsessed with elephants and otters. I'd like to smooch one of each someday.
- Cat person. The household is ruled by an overweight tuxedo cat named Nuit and her very energetic little sister, Rosie Cotton (named after Samwise Gamgee’s wife from Lord of the Rings).
- I love coffee, Shakespeare (!!!), Joan of Arc, most things pastry, MOVIES (oh man I love movies so much), the Golden Rule, and bloody good writing.
- I am Team Superman all the way. I wear the same outfit every day: a Superman T-shirt and jeans, and I have a very cool Superman tattoo inspired by the artwork of comic book artist Jim Lee.
- I adore Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit -- and I ship Kili + Tauriel forever, and I don't care if Tauriel wasn't in original Hobbit story.<3 horin="" ili="" o:p="" ragon="">
Giveaway Details: International
1 winner will receive a $10 Amazon GC, International.
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