Joy Stephens

Black snowflakes creep down from the sky, advancing slowly, methodically. All the money in the world, which my father seems to have, can__ keep the demons from chasing me _ Aishling Morrighan Delaney, a.k.a. princess of Clan Delaney. Everything is messed up. I__ wearing the __appy Birthday_ sash across my chest that my best friend, Claire, had always insisted I wear for my special day, but this is not that day. My twentieth birthday was over a month ago, on October 31, the night of Samhain, the Celtic New Year__ Eve.This is December 7th, and the Ten Colds Moon is rising. My fate stalks me. Doesn__ look like I__ going to make it to my belated birthday party. I lean into my horse, Kheelan, as he tears across the bracken and bramble moor, and beyond through the amethyst fields of devil__ bit, for a moment outrunning the faerie__ freak show. The spiky shrubs of the moor bite my legs as we attempt to outrun the Fates and the black snow that comes like a gathering sandstorm, trailing me. This princess thing in Ireland can get a girl killed fast, or maybe it__ just me. I am the faerie slayer of the seventh order and the 28th generation, the prophesied Gael Siridean, the Searcher. As such, my head is crowned with a supernatural bounty, and the price is high_The thread of my life frays rapidly, as does the hem of this black velvet medieval-style dress I borrowed from my best friend, Claire. She__ throwing me a themed party this year. If I make it out of this alive tonight, she__ going to kill me for ruining her dress and causing her more worry. Maybe she__l grant me mercy when she takes in my drenched, haggard appearance with thistle strewn throughout my hair and dark eyeliner no doubt leaving claw marks down my cheeks. I can__ tell her what really happened here tonight. I can__ tell anyone.