Title: Cash in Hand
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Release: December 15th
Blurb:
The last monster died a hundred years ago. At least, that’s what the monsters want you to think.
Half-monster Cash just wants to keep his head down and raise his daughter, Ellie, to be an upstanding member of monstrous society. Even if she’d rather spend the summer with her human friends than learn the art of man traps at Camp Dark Hollow.
So the last person Cash wants to see is her uncle Arkady Abascal, who’s also Cash’s ex-boyfriend.
Arkady has more than Ellie’s summer plans on his mind. He’s there to enlist Cash to find out who’s been selling monster secrets. Cash hasn’t gotten any better at telling Arkady no, but it’s not just his weakness for Arkady that makes him agree. The Prodigium thinks an Abascal exposed them to humans, and now the whole family is at risk—including Ellie.
Recruited to help Arkady identify the culprit—or frame a scapegoat—Cash finds the machinations of monstrous power easier to navigate than his feelings for Arkady. At least, at first. But when things get bloody, he wishes romantic disasters were all he had to worry about….
DEC 10 – BOOK GEMZ
DEC 11 – LOVE BYTES
DEC 12 – BOY MEETS BOY
DEC 14 – READING REALITY
DEC 16 – MM GOOD BOOK REVIEWS
First of all, thank you so much for having me! I’m thrilled to be here with my new release, Cash in Hand by TA Moore. Any of you who read Bad, Dad, and Dangerous very nearly got to read this in there. Cash in Hand was the first story I wrote for the anthology, the only problem with it was that it was…a bit long. It was a novel. So I was told to write another novella immediately, and Cash in Hand became a thing in itself! Which I hope you guys check out and enjoy!
For the blog tour I’ve written a short story set in the Prodigium world, this is Chapter Two. I hope you enjoy!
Chapter Two
It wasn’t wine.
Dim hummed to himself as he unpicked the ancient lace of the dress. The silk was cracked and brittle, white darkened to a yellow-ivory that was within a few shades of the old bone.
It was perfect. Just what the customer wanted, with an added touch of gore to just give it that Ragno signature.
He laid the pieces out on his work table– over the disarticulated rib bones and ribbon-knotted hanks of dirty, untangled hair–and laced his fingers together to crack his knuckles.
Time to get to work.
The clock on the wall ticked away toward the Witching Hour as Dim threaded dead girl’s hair onto a needle made of her bones to weave the lace and silk together into a heavy, faux-brocade. The ribs he used to bone the corset, the bones broken by bullets laced together with strips of stained lace at the front.
Once the top was finished–he only needed to harvest a few lengths of cartilage to stiffen the high ruff–Dim took a break. His fingertips were blistered and his back ached from being hunched over as he worked.
Most tailors who were monsters were brownies or kobolds, who could spin a dress out of moonlight and milk by dawn, but they didn’t tend to work for monsters. They fed on mortal gratitude and debt, and monsters felt neither of those things. Besides, any monster who could afford to pay for a Ragnu bespoke gown expected the sweat and service as much as the stitches and seams.
Luckily they paid very well for Dim’s blisters. Well,they did once the old grave gold and unearthed treasures were traded for dollars and stocks.
He fed a pod into the Keurig and left it to spit and sizzle as he hunted through the drawers for syrup. All he found was a bottle of banana abandoned scornfully at the back of a cupboard. He grumbled under his breath, but he’d inherited his sweet tooth from Grandmother so it wasn’t as if he could pretend he didn’t expect to get cleared out sometimes. He finally found some old sugar cubes he’d stuck in the petty cash box and added a couple to his mug.
One drink of the hot liquid and he added another sugar.
He needed something to keep him going until dawn. Dim knuckled his eyes and stifled another yawn. Left to his own body clock he’d be quite happy at this hour, but it raised too many of the wrong eyebrows to have a tailor’s shop that only opened after midnight. The monster’s own Senate, the Prodigium, had ruled that any monster owned businesses had to keep mundane opening hours.
Dim’s father had done it as a young man, and now it was Dim’s turn. One day, when he was old and bristly, it would be his turn to retire from the daytime business and hand the shop over to his child. Which would be Van, he supposed.
He thought about that for a moment as he drank his coffee. Try as he might, he couldn’t imagine it. Maybe he just needed time. Van had been fourteen when they found out about each other. Neither of them had quite gotten used to that yet.
Or maybe Dim should just accept that he’d need to get up in the morning for the foreseeable? That or look into adoption.
He had just taken another drink of coffee when he heard the distant rattle of the chimes hung over the door. ‘Put the finger food away’ bells, Astrid called them. Dim swallowed hot coffee and licked his lips. He’d locked the door, though.
Van was upstairs. He’d been swearing at Overwatch up there when Dim got home and say what you like about the kid, it hadn’t taken him long to work out not to sneak out around Grandmother. No one else had the key.
It wasn’t exactly a good idea to give your human staff a key when sometimes…well, sometimes you were taking corpses apart for the aesthetic. They might get the wrong idea. Worse, they might get the right one.
Dim carefully put his coffee down, grabbed the dead girl’s thighbone, and ventured out of the workroom. It was probably just Astrid, he told himself. She might have gotten an early start on her Hands of Glory centrepieces.
He nudged the door into the main shop open and squinted at the unexpected glare of all the lights. Bolts of cloth were bright on the shelves, already stitched gowns glittered on the dress forms, and rolls of silk ties and socks shone with expensively muted style in cubby holes.
A tall man in old jeans and a battered old jacket stood at the counter, a length of gun metal grey cashmere folded between his fingers. There was a shotgun laid down next to him and blood on his jeans.
Now that he was faced with the intruder, Dim’s came up short on what to actually do about it. Murder seemed easiest, but it had its drawbacks. He cringed at the thought of having to clean blood out of all the fabric and wood in here. Besides, Van had only learned he was a monster last year. They’d all agreed it was best to try and ease him in to the…messier bits.
“I’ve called the police,” Dim said.
“That would be stupid,” the man said, his voice empty and calm. He let the fabric slip out of his fingers and turned around. He looked amused as he took in the bone in Dim’s hand. “Put that down.”
For a moment Dim was struck by how pretty he was, a spray of gilt freckles on high cheekbones and a jaw that could slice silk. His mouth got that dry, sticky feeling he usually had before he talked to a hot guy….apparently his dick wasn’t worried about the fact the hot guy was an intruder.
Then Dim recognised him.
Luka Kohary. The bloody left hand of the Prodigium. Who could probably execute Dim for finding him hot. Or for any reason. No reason. Who’d ask him to justify himself?
Dim dropped the thigh bone.
TA Moore is a Northern Irish writer of romantic suspense, urban fantasy, and contemporary romance novels. A childhood in a rural, seaside town fostered in her a suspicious nature, a love of mystery, and a streak of black humour a mile wide. As her grandmother always said, ‘she’d laugh at a bad thing that one’, mind you, that was the pot calling the kettle black. TA Moore studied History, Irish mythology, English at University, mostly because she has always loved a good story. She has worked as a journalist, a finance manager, and in the arts sectors before she finally gave in to a lifelong desire to write.
Coffee, Doc Marten boots, and good friends are the essential things in life. Spiders, mayo, and heels are to be avoided.
| Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads |