Chains

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Jaime McKendrick hates his fame. That, and the ghost that haunts his dressing room at the Broadway theater where he stars in A Christmas Carol. So, when a lost teenage girl finds her way to that very same dressing room, Jaime assumes she’s a ghost, too. Until she pleas for help.

Erika Brandis thought leading a tour group of teenage girls would be easy. Easier than a group of boys, anyway. Until one girl goes missing. Now, Erika must partner with Jaime to find the girl—and maybe, just maybe, exorcise more than one ghost from their past.

“Rusch is a great storyteller.”
—RT Book Reviews

“This is a must read for anyone enjoying a little mystical adventure at this great time of the year.”
—Fresh Fiction on Fiction River: Christmas Ghosts

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Nov 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310894930

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

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Copyright Information

Chains

Copyright © 2014 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

First published in Fiction River: Christmas Ghosts, edited by Kristine Grayson, WMG Publishing, October 2013

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover and Layout copyright © 2014 by WMG Publishing

Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright © Maksim Shmeljov/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

CHRISTMAS SEEMED LIKE the perfect time to be in New York, he had told his agent. Or maybe that was his manager. Or his handler. God, he couldn’t keep track of his people any more.

And when the hell did he get people, anyway?

He had been wrong. It was the loneliest time to be in New York.

Jamison Roth McKendrick, Jaime to his fans, Roth to his friends (what few there were left), sat in his dressing room at the recently renamed Mary Martin Theater and peered into the antique mirror the theater manager had installed especially for him.

***

When Roth had full stage makeup on his face, he looked odd. His skin was half a shade darker and this close, he could see the lines that photographers were so careful to airbrush out. His eyebrows, darkened with pencil, looked like creatures in a Disney nature film, and his mouth was bowed like a girl’s.

Only his blue eyes remained the same. They startled even him, not because they were (as the tabloids said) a unique shade of blue, but because they weren’t. His blue eyes were the only thing he had gotten from his father, and Roth hated the reminder.

Excuse me?

Roth closed those famous eyes for just a moment. The voice was young, and young meant he had to be somewhat polite. Jamison Roth McKendrick wasn’t known for polite, which was why he was sitting here on December 21st after having just performed a successful preview of his one-man show A Christmas Carol rather than at home in the bosom of his family.

Not that he had a family, with or without a bosom. The last bosom, in fact, had finalized her divorce from him in September, after much media fanfare. It didn’t matter to People or Extra or Entertainment Tonight that he and the bosom had been separated for more than a year; only that she had sued for part of his extensive fortune and had, sadly for her, lost.

God Bless Our Prenups, Every One.

Mr. McKendrick? the young voice asked.

So, not a fan or a friend, but something other. Not a colleague or a minion either.