The Strangeness of the Day

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Nora Barr's struggling law practice gets a boost when she meets a tall, dark, handsome stranger with a snake wrapped around his arm and his short sidekick with a mean mouth.

The stranger claims to have custody of Sleeping Beauty, and he needs Nora's help to protect her. 

Nora takes the case—against her better judgment—and her life changes forever. 

The inspiration for Rusch's novel, Utterly Charming, written under her pen name Kristine Grayson, this fractured fairy tale won France's prestigious fantasy award, Le Prix Imaginales.

"…a clever urban fantasy filled with wizards and magic."

—John Ottinger

Sacramento Book Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: May 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386938606

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.

Book preview

The Strangeness of the Day

THE STRANGENESS OF THE DAY

KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH

aka

KRISTINE GRAYSON

WMG Publishing Inc.

CONTENTS

The Strangeness of the Day

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Also by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

About the Author

THE STRANGENESS OF THE DAY

Just once, she thought, just once, she would like a little magic in her life. She believed magic was possible, on days when the sun shone through the clouds, on afternoons when rainbows dotted the countryside, on mornings when the light was so sharp it looked as if everything had been freshly made.

Not on a day like this. On a day like this, all she wanted was someone to come home to, a man to cook her meals and rub her feet, and laugh at the sheer strangeness of the day.

That was what she was thinking about as she exited the elevator into the bowels of the parking structure below her office building. The concrete structure smelled like gas fumes, and the lighting, even in the middle of the day, was a gray fluorescent that made her think of rain.

She rounded a corner, her heels clicking on the concrete, and saw a man sitting on the back of a 1974 Lincoln, holding a cigarette lighter in one hand, and a snake in the other.

The snake was alive, and twisting.

She swallowed, uncertain whether or not to keep walking. The man was gorgeous: long black hair, brown eyes, smooth skin the color of toffee. He wore a shimmery gray silk suit that accented his broad shoulders and long legs, and on his feet he wore cowboy boots trimmed with real silver.

Nora pulled her purse tight against her side. She would walk around the car and continue toward hers as if she saw nothing wrong.

Who’zat? A nasal male voice demanded.

Probably someone on the way to her car. The responding voice was deep and smooth, soft and in control. Even without clear eyesight, Nora knew who spoke second.

A tiny man stood on the bumper of the Lincoln. The first man had slid across the hood to make room for the small guy. The little guy was perfectly proportioned, square with a pugnacious face, a nose that obviously had been broken several times, and powerful arms. He wore dark blue jeans and a T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve.

It’d be nice to have a woman, the tiny man said.

His companion smiled. The snake wrapped itself around his wrist. Things are a bit different now, he said. You can’t just have any woman.

As he said that last, his gaze met Nora’s. His brown eyes sparkled as if they