TITLE: Salt and Iron
AUTHOR: Tam MacNeil
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
PAGES: 200
BLURB:
James van Helsing is the youngest son of the famous monster hunting family — and the family’s big disappointment. He’s falling in love with Gabe Marquez, James’s oldest friend and the son of the family the van Helsings have worked alongside for years. Things get even harder for James when he becomes what he and everyone else despises most — a magic user.
He didn’t mean to evolve into such a despicable person, and he knows using magic is illegal, but there’s nothing he can do about it, no more than he can stop himself from loving Gabe. Just when things can’t seem to get worse, he and Gabe are called to help nab a network of magicians who are changing destiny. Not just any destiny, but the destinies of the van Helsing and the Marquez families. James foresees a terrible fate, one in which monsters emerge from the cracks, along with his dark secret. And that’s when people start to die.
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One of my very favourite tropes in romance is the long-term-friends-who-are-actually-in-love trope. I’m a big fan of pining, and a big fan of the slow bloom of romance. I pretty much gobble it up. In Salt and Iron I got to explore that pretty thoroughly. It’s not just that James and Gabe grew up together, and trust each other in a way they simply don’t trust anyone else, it’s that they’re actually in love with each other.
When the story opens, James is pining in a pretty serious way, and his friendship with Gabe is so important to him that he simply can’t take that extra step and tell Gabe how he feels. Gabe, for his part, is a pretty closed book. It’s only when a crime is pinned on Gabe that he throws aside his professionalism and does whatever it takes to keep his relationship with James strong.
James might have a drinking problem that clouds his judgement, but he’s no fool. Gabe’s done something that’s a pretty profound declaration of trust in this world, and not the sort of thing anybody would do lightly. Unfortunately for James, before he can respond to Gabe’s gesture of trust and love, the monsters get ahold of Gabe, and they make him one of their own.
“Hey,” James says softly, “you’re up.”
“James?” Gabe asks, voice thin and taut.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
Gabe shakes his head. “No, no you should leave.”
All around Gabe time is fractured like a broken pane of ice, growing smoother and more clear as he comes into the room. “It’s okay. We’re… we’re guests. Skinny Mary… and the Baron… I guess. Anyway, the sidhe are looking after you. Looking after both of us. You won’t hurt anybody. They sedated you. You’ve been sleeping through the worst of it.”
“The worst….” His voice gives up. He breathes in a big breath. “You should leave, Jamie.”
“You’re not going to hurt me, Gabe.”
“I’m not what I used to be.”
He ducks his head, and James can see the sticklike things that are jutting from his back. They’ve grown, expanded. He comes forward, and time smooths out a little more.
“Get away,” Gabe snarls. He looks past James, through him. He’s not seeing anything anymore.
“You’re scared. I get it. It hurts still, doesn’t it? It’s—”
“Leave me alone.”
Gabe moves his hand and sweeps the empty bourbon bottle from the table, and then he jumps, startled, and turns, and James can see. James can see his back.
The wings are out now. They hang tattered, sagging like they’re broken, or exhausted, or covered in oil. They’re brownish, maybe black, webbed with thin skin and nubbed with feathers that are just breaking through.
James hears his own startled gasp, and Gabe cringes back like he’s been threatened.
“Shit, fuck,” Gabe whispers. “I didn’t want you to see.”
James can’t stop staring. The wings are everywhere. They sprout from Gabe’s head, just above his ears, small and dark and as screwed up as his rumpled hair. They sprout from his ankles and his wrists. But those are small. It’s the wings on his back that are big, enormous. And there’s more than a pair of them. There’s three pair, upper, middle, and lower.
He should say something. He should say something that’ll take away Gabe’s panic and make it okay.
“It’s…,” he starts, but there’s nothing he can say that’s going to do what he needs. He flounders. “Does it still hurt?”
Some of the fractures in time smooth away. Gabe shakes his head, hard, silent, and James steps forward and steps into something soft and warm and wet. He looks down. It’s a bloodied clump of feathers on the floor.
“It’s going to be okay,” James says, because it’s what he’s been saying, and it’s almost been working, or it feels like it’s working, a tiny thing, a little spell. It’s making time settle out like water; it’s smoothing away the lines. His voice is shaking, but maybe Gabe won’t notice. “It’s going to be okay.
I write stories of magic, mayhem, and the supernatural under the name Tam MacNeil, and sweet, silly, m/m contemporary romance with a side of angst under the name T Neilson. You can find me at Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or, even better (because inside scoop and book giveaways!) you can sign up for my newsletter at Mailchimp. C’mon over and say hi!
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