Page 60 of Romancing the Orc

Naomi steps out of the back. Big and beautiful with it, she looks happier than ever, her brown curls wreathing her smiling brown face. She holds up the cover of my newest book, Brokk glaring from the cover in full warrior mode. “What’s this?”

“Uh.” My eyes ping-pong between the two of them, but their grins don’t give me any clues. “One of my books?”

“Who’s this on the cover?” Naomi taps at Brokk’s picture.

“My cover model?” God, why does my voice keep going up at the end as if I’m the one asking the questions?

“Do you know how to find him?” Naomi asks. “It’s really important.”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” I say, then raise my voice. “Brokk.”

He steps out from behind a bookcase, and Naomi laughs with delight and yells into the bookshop’s back room. “Wranth, you need to get out here!”

An orc fills the doorway behind her, dressed in brown leather pants and boots and a dark-blue tunic shirt. He grunts and steps forward to clasp forearms with Brokk. “Aldronn will be glad to know you’re all right.”

“Good.” Brokk grins. “I’d like to get word to my parents as well.”

“I can do that.”

Still in shock, I turn back to the women. “You know about orcs?”

“Yep,” Naomi says. “That’s my husband.”

“And Ferndale Falls is now the doorway to Faerie,” Hannah adds.

I give my head a quick shake. “Okay, I’m totally going to need more caffeine.”

“I’ll make coffee.” Naomi bustles over to the little coffee nook she set up in the shop as Hannah pulls me over to the comfy old velvet couches to sit.

I lean forward. “Tell meeverything.”

Two cups of coffee and ashit tonof talking later, I sit back, still amazed. All the things that happened to Brokk actually happened here, in my small town. Orcs and werepanthers and evil fae. A door to Faerie. It’s alot.

And it’s all freaking amazing!

“I told you it was Naomi who opened the doors of Faerie,” Brokk says.

“You did.” I give a slow nod. “But it’s a fairly common name. I had no idea you meant the one Naomi I know.”

“Small world,” Hannah says.

“No, I think it’s more than that,” Naomi says. “I think it’s because we’re witches. We’ve been drawn here—or our families were. There’s something about Ferndale Falls.”

“The sluagh did say there were many witches here,” Wranth says.

Sluagh? That kind of fae really exists, too? I need to find out more about them so I can put them in a book.

“We’re the first magical town in the world,” Hannah says, her face beaming. Then her expression turns wry. “If only I could use it as a tourist attraction.”

“Do you have powers?” I ask.

“I’m supposed to,” Hannah says. “But I don’t know what they are yet.”

“As I mentioned, I can teleport.” In a blink, Naomi’s across the bookshop. Another blink, and she’s back.

“That’s amazing!”

“And you can read languages.” Hannah leans backward and plucks a book off a shelf and hands it to me.

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