Ustari Cycle 00,5 - Fixer Read online

  I took a deep breath. My heart was ragged in my chest, and I felt shaky and light. I reached into my jacket and extracted an old, soiled handkerchief and started wrapping it around my hand.

  “C’mon, Mags,” I said, turning for the stairs.

  He hustled to walk beside me. “What’s the matter, Lem?”

  I didn’t pause. I could hear thick leathery wings in my head, too close. “Deep magic, Mags,” I said, pushing open the door to the stairs. “Deep fucking magic.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JEFF SOMERS was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. As a child he imagined he would be a brain surgeon, until a spirit-crushing experience convinced him that in order to be a brain surgeon he would have to actually attend school, work hard, and master basic mathematics. After a severe head trauma, he chose instead to write stories and learn the high art of cocktail mixing, and spent the next twenty years in a pleasant haze of fiction and booze.

  After graduating college, Jeff drove cross-country and wandered aimlessly for a while, but the peculiar siren call of New Jersey (a delicious mixture of chromium, cut grass, and indolence) brought him back to his homeland, where he got a job as an editorial assistant at a medical/science publisher in New York City. Most experts agree that this is likely where the young man went insane.

  In 1995 Jeff began publishing his own magazine, The Inner Swine (www.innerswine.com). His first novel Lifers was published in 2001; the Avery Cates series, beginning with The Electric Church, was published by Orbit Books from 2007–2011; and in 2013, Chum was published by Tyrus Books. He’s also had stories published in many magazines, most of which regret the connection. His story “Ringing the Changes” was chosen for Best American Mystery Stories 2006 and his story “Sift, Almost Invisible, Through” appeared in Crimes by Moonlight, edited by Charlaine Harris in 2010.

  He currently lives in Hoboken, NJ, with his lovely wife, Danette, and their plump, imperious cats Pierre, Homer, Spartacus, Otto, and Coco. Jeff insists the cats would be delicious.

  In-between all this and writing, too, Jeff plays chess and staves off despair with cocktails.

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Pocket Star Books eBook.

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  Pocket Star Books

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  New York, NY 10020

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Jeff Somers

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Pocket Star Books ebook edition July 2014

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  Interior design by Davina Mock-Maniscalco

  Cover design by Alan Dingman

  ISBN 978-1-4516-9686-8

  CONTENTS

  Fixer

  We Are Not Good People Excerpt

  About the Author