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Informationen zum Autor Kalyn Josephson is a fantasy author living in the California Bay Area. She loves books, cats, books with cats, and making up other worlds to live in for a while. She is the author of Ravenfall and the Storm Crow duology. Klappentext When a demon from Jewish lore threatens the Tree of Life, a source of untold power and immortality, Anna Ballinkay and Colin Pierce enter the Otherworld to stop him, where they discover that the true danger is closer than they think. Leseprobe Chapter 1 Anna Everything has a story. Some things are just more forthcoming than others. Take the worn silver coin Mr. Andrade brought me to read that morning—it wouldn’t pipe down about jingling around in pockets or how it had spent a week wedged under the Andrades’ kitchen table to even out a leg. I’d been able to tell Mr. Andrade four separate stories about the psychic uncle who’d owned it. Four! My latest object hasn’t made a peep. Made of smooth, polished oak with a gold clasp, the chest is about the size of a small shoebox. There’s an engraving of a patterned hand with the center three fingers straight up in a scout’s salute, the thumb and pinky curving outward like petals at the base. In the middle of the palm is a wide, knowing eye that Colin said gave him the creeps. Something about it following him as he moved. I found it in my dad’s study among his cluttered collection of magical objects and have been trying and failing to read it for nearly half an hour. “Relax, Anna,” Nora says from beside me. My mother and I are sitting at the kitchen table, a plate of gingerbread cookies and a freshly poured cup of Earl Grey before each of us, courtesy of the house. I’d asked for Irish Breakfast, but there’s no arguing when a four-story ancient inn puts its foot down. “This sort of magic needs to flow naturally,” Nora continues as she twists her blond curls up into a bun. “If you try to force it, you’ll only stop it up.” Easy for her to say. She’s been using her psychic powers for decades now; I’ve had my psychometry abilities for less than a year. But I try to do as she says and relax, to let my magic flow naturally to the chest. Nora told me to picture it like a bridge between me and the object, and then to cross that bridge to find information. But my magic only sloughs off the engraved chest like melted snow. I relinquish my white-knuckled grip on it and slump into my seat with a groan. “People are so much easier to read. Objects are the worst.” “People give their stories much more freely,” Nora says reassuringly. “You’ll get the hang of it eventually, like you did everything else.” I want to believe her, but I feel like I’ve come to a standstill. I made so much progress after Samhain thanks to Nora’s lessons. Before, if I touched someone who’d seen death, I got a vision of it too. Now I can control whether I get a vision when I touch someone, and I’ve begun to see other memories besides just people’s deaths. But it’s nearly mid-December now, and the only objects I’ve been able to read have been things like Mr. Andrade’s coin, which’ll shout at just about anybody with a magical pulse. “I wanted to show Henry,” I mutter, wrapping my hands around my mug and wishing my disappointment would evaporate with the steam. As a relic hunter, my dad would love to know the chest’s history from its point of view. Soon I’ll be able to tell him new things about everything he’s collected, and maybe then he’ll reconsider taking me on an expedition with him. “Your father will be home all month.” Nora scoots back her chair and stands. “You have plenty of time to figure it out. Speaking of which, I need to finish packing before Gran gets here.” “Do you even know what a suitcase looks like?” I tease. I’m thirteen, and I can’t remember a single time Nora went on vacation. Uncle Roy and ...
