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    Carniepunk: The Inside Man
    Carniepunk: The Inside Man
    Carniepunk: The Inside Man
    Ebook45 pages39 minutes

    Carniepunk: The Inside Man

    By Nicole Peeler

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    About this ebook

    Award-winning author Nicole Peeler brings the supernatural adventure from Tempest Rising and Tempest Reborn to this urban fantasy short story in the spellbinding Carniepunk anthology.

    The ladies of Triptych—Capitola, Shar, and Moo—are hardly impressed when a scared halfling approaches them with tales of his tiny Illinois hamlet having gone “ultra boring” after a visit from a traveling circus. But when more stories begin circulating of towns gone “walking dead” they decide to investigate. What they discover is a ringmaster bent on entertaining you…for the price of your soul.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPocket Star
    Release dateJan 12, 2015
    ISBN9781476793627
    Carniepunk: The Inside Man
    Author

    Nicole Peeler

    Nicole Peeler does not have any cats, kids, or husbands. Instead, she vexes literature in her new role as an assistant professor of English Literature at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. Although she's excited to call Louisiana "home," she has previously set up shop in her native Illinois, Boston, Spain and Scotland. Nicole is ashamed of her dreadful potty mouth and fervently wishes that she were taller.

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      Book preview

      Carniepunk - Nicole Peeler

      titleflower

      The Inside Man

      A Jane True Short Story

      Nicole Peeler

      When someone comes into your office and tells you that small towns in the Midwest have gone dull, you don’t rush out with the cavalry.

      But when the biggest, meanest supernatural boss in Chicago knocks at your office door, with the same complaint . . .

      Well, then you take notice. It’s either that or risk losing an appendage.

      Which is how I, Capitola Jones, found myself in a football field in the middle of nowhere, fighting for my soul and the souls of those I loved.

      And here I thought the worst thing to be found out in the country were cow pies and rednecks.

      They don’t tell you about the killer clowns.

      —

      EARLIER IN THE week, the assignment had sounded like a joke, even though the guy asking us to do him a favor was the least funny person I could imagine.

      So we’re supposed to drive south and find out what makes country towns so boring?

      The man across from me tore his gaze from my breasts to stare at my Afro, then looked back at my breasts, only to return to my Afro. Once again, the hair won. I wear it natural, and as big as I can make it. It’s sort of my trademark.

      If you want to put it like that, sure, said Vince the Shark, pulling on his goatee with one of his small hands. Those hands were attached to short arms, which were attached to a lion’s body. His face, however, was human enough to leer at me.

      But while Vince the Shark looked like something from Dungeons & Dragons and talked like a mobster off The Simpsons, he was no cartoon character. A pureblooded manticore with tremendous power, he had tiny arms that hadn’t stopped him from carving out for himself a large chunk of one of our most lawless cities, Chicago, using brutal force and extreme cunning.

      I stayed well off his grid for a lot of reasons, the main one being that Vince was a psychopath. So to say I was displeased at his sitting in my office with me and my business partners, Moo and Shar, was the understatement of the year.

      So you believe some external force has made your sister . . . dull? Moo’s voice was calm, as always. The daughter of a human woman and an Alfar who’d set himself up as an Egyptian god, Moo had been trained from birth to be his goddess-consort.

      Which meant she had lots of daddy issues but great comportment.

      My sister was never a firecracker, but she was never like this. Something changed her. Vince’s lion shoulders shrugged like a Mafia heavy, his jowly human face giving me a What are ya gonna do? look.

      Is she like you? Powerful? Shar asked, her usually lush voice uncommonly monotone. Half succubus, my friend had tuned her mojo to zero. Vince had that effect on the ladies.

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