The Shaman of Kupa Piti Excerpt
Reading upside down, Sergei found his name before Soda did and looked at the debit column. His bill was less than twenty dollars, so he topped it up to a hundred.
“Oh, a guy called Pavlova or Pav-something-or-other came in looking for you yesterday,” Soda said as he ran Sergei’s bank card through the EFTPOS.
“Pavlova? I don’t think I know a Pavlova.” Sergei ran his fingers through his beard as he tried to recall anyone by that name, or one that closely resembled it.
“It wasn’t Pavlova exactly. That’s just the closest thing to what I could recognise. Big blond bloke. Not from these parts.”
That could mean anything. In Sergei’s experience, not being from these parts simply meant he didn’t move in the miners’ circle. He might be a councillor, storeman, or even a travelling buyer trying to broker a deal from beneath the local gem stores. Although what any of those people would want with him was a quandary, since a travelling gem buyer wouldn’t know Sergei.
“At least I think he was looking for you. Not too many crazy looking Russians called Sergei around here,” Soda said with sincerity. He handed Sergei’s card back.
Sergei returned his card to his wallet and pulled what he thought might constitute a batty expression. “Crazy looking?”
Soda’s smile caused creases to appear in his cheeks like a set of waves rolling in. “How long has it been since you looked in a mirror? Four, five years? As long as you’ve been here?”
Before he could answer, someone called for a beer from the other end of the bar. At the same time, one of the regular barmaids, Lucy, appeared from the back carrying a rack of freshly cleaned glasses and set them in front of Sergei on the stainless steel bench that ran along the barman’s side of the counter.
Lucy’s black-and-purple-spiked hair stood in regimented peaks all over her head, like pinched mounds of shaving foam.
“Lucy.” Sergei raised his voice over the din, to get her attention. She looked up at him with blue eyes made brighter by black eyeliner. He leaned on the bar towards her.
“Yeah?” she asked.
“Do I look crazy?”
She laughed. “Hells yeah. Only when you breathe, though. But I could fix that.”
“You’re going to kill me to stop me looking crazy?”
She gave him a friendly slap on the arm and an affectionate smile. “No, I meant I could make it so you don’t look crazy.”
“How would you do that?”
“First I would trim your hair and beard. Make it short.”
A man came up to the bar and ordered a beer. Lucy reached for it and completed the transaction, barely missing a beat in her conversation with Sergei.
“Then I would colour your hair.”
He feigned a dubious look. Strange as her hairstyle choice might be, Lucy’s hair couldn’t be considered anything but intentionally fashionable. “I would change from ginger to black and purple to not look so crazy?”
“From strawberry blond,” she corrected. “But no. Black and purple wouldn’t suit you.” She stopped abruptly and stared at him. He widened his eyes and pulled his lips in as he grinned. It drew the expected laugh. “Actually, I don’t think it would matter,” she added. “You’d look crazy regardless of what anyone did.”
He pushed himself off the bar and donned a wounded expression. “Well—” He paused for effect. “—thank you for the rousing compliment.”
“You’re welcome.” Despite her smiling bravado, a cute little flush of pink tinged her cheeks. She went on to serve another customer.
Lucy pressed Sergei’s buttons in ways no woman should, considering he was gay, but experience had taught him that anticipation never matched reality—often didn’t come close. And, he thought with amusement, neither did he, at least with women.
Hollywood, so named for his ridiculously white teeth, clapped him on the back and settled in next to him at the bar. “How goes it, Sergei?”
“I am well,” he said. “I hear excitement was had at the golfing.”
“Ugh. That wasn’t excitement. It was fucken disgusting is what it was.” Hollywood laughed. “I had to explain to Doris that where I tossed my bikkies wasn’t part of the crime scene.”
That statement raised more questions than it answered. “Is Doris a policewoman?”
Hollywood drew back and looked at him with mock horror. “How have you been here so long and not know who Doris is?”
“I usually mind my own business,” Sergei explained. “We find many opals, but finding a body is unusual.”
Hollywood laughed. “I was joking. Australians sometimes call policemen pigs, and there was a pig—an animal pig—called Doris on an Australian soap opera. About seven years ago, there was a cop here who looked just like Doris the pig, so any cop stationed here now is automatically called Doris.”
Sergei nodded as he mulled that over. The police were all called Doris. Right. “Why did you throw your biscuits on the crime scene?”
Book Title The Shaman of Kupa Piti
Author A. Nybo
Publisher DSP Publications
Release Date July 30 2019
Length Paperback 203pp, ebook 193pp, words approx. 65k
Genre mm, contemporary romance, mystery/suspense
Blurb
When an international case involving a series of ritual murders lands in his lap, strait-laced and logical Agent Leon Armstrong is going to need some help.
Leon follows the trail to the opal-mining town of Coober Pedy, Australia, where he gets tangled up with the wild Russian mystic Sergei Menshikov. Despite his commitment to rationality, Leon discovers he isn’t immune to the way of the spirits, no matter how much he’d like to think so. When Sergei tells him he treads a predestined path, Leon’s world turns upside down.
Leon’s experiences in Coober Pedy will change his life forever, but can he hold out against Sergei and the spirits—who Sergei claims have chosen them for each other?
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A. Nybo has tried conventional methods (a psych degree and a GC in Forensic Mental Health) but far prefers the less conventional, such as the occasional barbecue in the rain, four-hundred-kilometre drives at 1:00 a.m. for chocolate, and multiple emergency naps in any given twenty-four-hour period.
Western Australian born, she has been spotted on the other side of the planet several times—usually by mosquitoes. She’s also discovered Amazonian mosquitoes love her just as much as they do in her home state.
Twitter/ https://twitter.com/anybo5 /@anybo5
DSP Publications / https://www.dsppublications.com/authors/a-nybo-108 / A. Nybo