An Ominous Sneak Peek Inside Tiffany Reisz’s ‘The Lucky Ones’ [EXCERPT]

Just beyond the rusty front gates lies a dragon from the past in Tiffany Reisz’s The Lucky Ones. (Photo courtesy Pexels)

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved getting lost in gothic suspense stories. Titles by Daphne du Maurier, Victoria Holt, Mary Stewart, and Phyllis A. Whitney have long lined my bookshelves, and I admittedly get a small thrill every time I revisit one of those volumes. So I’m always on the lookout for a new author of the genre. Tiffany Reisz is among the newest of those authors. So it is with great pleasure that I introduce her to you with this excerpt from her forthcoming book, The Lucky Ones.

Happy reading!
Jathan

Mira

Allison pulled in, stopped and got out of her car at the end of the long winding drive that led from the highway down to the beach. The eight-foot-high wrought-iron gates that stretched across the entrance of the driveway were open, but then again, they always had been. Iron and seawater were a bad combination and the gates were so rusted she doubted they could ever be closed again. She stepped through the gates to where the trees parted. Long ago she’d stood right here with Dr. Capello as he showed her the house, her new home, for the very first time.

“See it?” he’d asked her. “You see the dragon?”

She’d rolled her eyes, too smart for her own good at that age.

“It’s a house,” she’d said. A big house, yes. A tall odd house with blue-green shingle siding and a sort of square turret on top, but still…a house.

“Don’t look at the house,” Dr. Capello had said as he knelt down next to her. He pointed to the ocean. “Look there. Look at the water. You’ll see the house out of the corner of your eye. And then tell me that doesn’t look like a dragon.”

She’d taken a heavy breath, the breath children took when adults insulted their intelligence. But she’d done it, anyway. She’d gazed far past the house onto the ocean. She saw the whitecaps of the waves, the water running up the beach and running away again. And there in the corner of her eye, she saw a dragon.

He was sitting up, this dragon, prim as a cat with four paws daintily placed together, a straight back and his head—the square sort of turret room on top—held high. The green rain-drenched shingles were his scales and the shimmering windows his wings and the gray deck his tail wrapped around his feet. Looking at the square turret, she could make out the back of its head, which meant the dragon, too, gazed out at the ocean, just like she did.

“I see it…” she had breathed. “I see the dragon.”

Dr. Capello had laughed softly. “In the winter, when we use the fireplace, smoke comes out of his nose.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Oh, very. It wouldn’t be a dragon if it wasn’t dangerous.”

“He’s lovely.” So lovely the dragon was, she couldn’t help but try to get a closer look. She turned her gaze from the water to the house and in the blink of an eye…

“He’s gone,” she had said.

“Well, that’s what happens when you look too close at magical creatures. You can only see them when you aren’t looking at them.”

“That’s silly.”

“That’s magic for you.” Dr. Capello lifted his hands as if to say he didn’t make the rules. “It’s wonderful but fragile. You have to be very gentle with it.”

Although she was twenty-five and knew better, Allison couldn’t help but look for the dragon where the house stood. As she’d done eighteen years earlier, she gazed out at the water, letting the house hover in her peripheral vision. At first noth¬ing happened. She saw a house and nothing but a house. All the magic long gone. As she was about to give up, get into her car and finish her drive, she saw it. For a split second, she saw the shingles transform into shiny scales and the wrap¬around porch turn into a tail and the windows on the third floor shimmer like silvery wings.

Maybe there was a little bit of magic in the old house yet.

Allison’s heart ached looking at the house that had once been her home. She wanted to drive away right then and never look back. She’d told no one she was coming for that very reason. And yet she got back behind the steering wheel and drove down, down, down the winding road to the house. She parked the car where Dr. Capello had always parked his. No cars were there today. She got out and walked the flagstone path to the side door, which was the family’s entrance. She took a breath and rang the doorbell. When there was no answer, she knocked. When there was no answer again, she walked out onto the deck. The house was as close to the beach as it could be without being on the beach itself. The beach that day was deserted. It seemed no one was at home.

Allison didn’t know what to do. Roland had said someone was always at the house, but it seemed she’d come at the one time no one was there. Maybe she was too late. Maybe Dr. Capello was already gone. Regret tasted like copper in her mouth and she almost wept with disappointment. She’d tried so hard to tell herself she’d made this trip to clear her conscience, but the tear she shed was proof she’d come here wanting more than to do her duty to a nice man who’d taken care of her a long time ago.

She’d really wanted to hug her Dr. Capello one more time.

A sound echoed from the side of the house and Allison spun around, suddenly alert and afraid. It was a sharp loud sound followed by a soft sort of grunting noise. Then she heard it again. Then again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tiffany Reisz

Tiffany Reisz is the author of the highly acclaimed series The Original Sinners. Her first novel, The Siren, won the RT Book Reviews Editor’s Choice Award for Best Erotic Romance of 2012.

Slightly shameless, Tiffany dropped out of a conservative Southern seminary in order to pursue a career as a writer. This move, while possibly putting her eternal salvation in peril, has worked out better than she anticipated.

She lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her husband, author Andrew Shaffer, and two cats. Readers are invited to visit her home on the Web at TiffanyReisz.com, like her on Facebook, and follow her on Instagram and Goodreads.

THE LUCKY ONES
By Tiffany Reisz
368 pgs. Mira. $15.99

Pre-order Tiffany Reisz’s The Lucky Ones at one of these fine online retailers: Amazon, Books-A-Million, and Barnes & Noble.

The Lucky Ones excerpt is brought to you in association with TLC Book Tours.