Tour Stop, Exclusive Excerpt & Giveaway: The Musician and the Monster

Title: The Musician and the Monster by Jenya Keefe
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Genre: Gay, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Romance, Urban Fantasy/Paranormal
Length: 300 pages/Word Count: 80,000

Summary:

Hatred is a spell only true love can break.

Ángel Cruz is a dedicated session musician, until loyalty to his estranged family forces him to work for Oberon: the feared and hated envoy from the Otherworld. Overnight, Ángel is taken from his life, his friends, his work, and trapped in a hideous mansion in the middle of nowhere, under constant surveillance, and with only the frightening fae for company.

Oberon’s poor understanding of humans combined with Ángel’s resentment and loneliness threaten to cause real harm to the pair. Then a long winter together in the mansion unites them in their love of music. Slowly, Ángel’s anger thaws, and he begins to realize that Oberon feels alone too.

Gradually, these two souls from different worlds form a connection like none other. But hate and prejudice are powerful things, and it’ll take all the magic of their love to stop the wider world from forcing them apart.

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Purchase Link: Riptide Publishing

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Exclusive Excerpt

He hesitated in the doorway.

The fae was perched on a stool at the granite-topped kitchen island, dressed in his black shirt and pants, eating with chopsticks. Under the electric lights of the kitchen, his face was white—not the white of a white man, but the white of fresh cream, faintly golden on his lips and under his huge, tilted eyes. His skin was poreless and faintly lustrous, more like extremely high-quality suede than human skin. His hair—translucent, fine as corn silk, streaked in shades of wheat-blond, ivory, and pale green, was shoulder-length and tucked behind ears that came to an infinitesimal point.

Oberon looked up and regarded Ángel. His eyes were large, shining, green as leaves beneath winged green brows, and utterly without expression.

Wordlessly, he gestured to a stool.

For a moment, Ángel remembered the legend: don’t eat their food or you’ll be trapped. Well, he was already trapped, and he would need to eat. Ángel climbed onto a stool. Not the one right next to Oberon. Lily handed him a bowl and a pair of chopsticks: brown rice, stir-fried vegetables, some kind of white fish. A goblet of ice water. Clumsily, Ángel managed to pick up a snow pea and bring it to his mouth. He tasted ginger, garlic, the crisp greenness of the pea pod. Lily folded a dishtowel, gave him an encouraging nod, and left the room.

He picked at his food, studying the envoy with a kind of horrified fascination. In general outline, Oberon was human: the structure of his body, the arrangement of his limbs. It was the little details that disconcerted: his hands seemed extra long, perhaps because the fingers were all the same length, straight across, pointer to pinkie. And, of course, there was that strange white skin.

The more he looked at the differences, the more his heart thumped. His skin felt tight and cold, and his stomach fluttered.

“You are shivering,” said the envoy.

After a moment, Ángel managed to reply in a shaking voice, “Sorry about that.”

The expressionless voice was polite. “Did you hurt your head when you fell?”

“No, no,” he said. “The rug is thick. So’s my skull.”

“I upset you,” said Oberon.

It was an observation, not a question. Unnerved, Ángel said, “Do you think I could use a fork? I’m not actually very good at eating with these.”

“In that drawer.” He waved a white hand, a gesture so impossibly elegant for such a mundane situation that Ángel wondered if it was some kind of mockery.

Ángel hopped down from the stool and went around the island to find a fork. Then he found himself unable to go back to his seat. He remained where he was, hands braced on the cool stone counter, the island between himself and Oberon, eyes lowered with humiliation.

“Will you accept my apology?” asked Oberon.

Surprised, Ángel looked up and met the fae’s eyes for the first time. They were luminous green shot through with gold and amber, fringed with straight, sweeping gold lashes.

He nodded. “It’s fine.”

“Why do you say it is fine when it is not fine?” asked Oberon calmly. “Right now I think that you’re either about to attack me or run away.”

“No, I—” Ángel consciously relaxed his grip on the countertop, stepped back from the island. “No.”

“This afternoon, as I was showing you to your room, your heart rate was elevated, as was your breathing. You were emitting a signal that I misinterpreted. I thought you were . . . happy. Excited. I was plainly quite mistaken, and you might have been injured because of it. I am sorry.”

What did emitting a signal mean? “Can you read my mind?” asked Ángel.

“Obviously not.”

Part of what was most disconcerting about Oberon was the lack of expression on his face, the stillness of his body as he spoke. His voice, however, was flexible; its timbre changed on words like happy, changed again on sorry. It wasn’t quite an accent, just a subtle shifting in the color of his voice.

Oberon said, “Are you going to eat your dinner?”

“Yeah.” Ángel pulled his dish of stir-fry toward him and speared a piece of fish with the fork. It was good, but his stomach ached with tension.

Courtesy. Courtesy was a performance, as much as playing a concert. It had its rules, its proper moves. Ángel couldn’t bring his heart to this performance, the way he should, but he could follow the rules.

He said, carefully, “Of course I accept your apology. You have been very kind. Thank you for making me feel at home.”

“You are welcome,” said Oberon, in the exact polite tone that Ángel had used. As if he, too, were just following the rules of courtesy.

Or mocking him.

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Author Bio

Jenya Keefe was born in the South. She has an advanced degree in European history, and has spent much of her life working the kinds of jobs a history degree qualifies you for: gift shop employee, lumber grader, classifieds clerk, hot glass artist. She currently lives in the Seattle area, where she works at a library. She has always written stories.

Author Links: Website * Twitter * Goodreads

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Giveaway

To celebrate this release, Jenya is giving away a $15 gift card to Powell’s City of Books! Powell’s is an independent bookseller located in Portland, but those not in Portland can still shop online. Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on October 4, 2019. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following along, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!