Forget
Me Not
Shadowflesh
Series
Book
2
by Shawn
Martin
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal
Date of
Publication: March 31, 2014
Number of
pages: 308
Word Count: 73,500
Cover
Artist: Elaina Lee
Book
Description:
Fortune has
smiled on seventeen year old Aileen McCormick ever since Addison came back into
her life, giving her the love she has so desperately longed for. That is, until a mysterious man slithers
across her path and slips a spellbinding cameo around her neck. The cameo holds more than just the image of
an enchantress who hungers for souls. It
possesses a curse that strangles away every memory Aileen has of Addison.
Addison, a three
hundred year old fugitive from the netherworld, recognizes the wretched woman
inside the cameo and the curse she has cast on his unsuspecting love. The enchanted cameo has but one purpose: to torment Aileen with hints of love she can
no longer recall.
Aileen cannot
escape the deadly cameo. She runs for
her life with the curse only a breath away.
If she truly wants her memory back, the enchantress is all too willing
to restore it. It will cost her,
though. Cost her everything.
Buy Links:
Excerpt from Forget Me Not
I
couldn’t remember the last time I had been afraid of the dark. It seemed like a lifetime ago, when shadows
and demons consumed me at night, when the end of the world was but a breath
away. That was all before I met Addison.
From the
very moment I literally fell into his arms, I had fallen hopelessly in love
with him. Hopelessly, carelessly,
eternally in love with him. And he loved
me back.
Addison
Wake had become my entire life, my reason for living. I breathed in his love and exhaled his
name. My heart beat a passionate rhythm
to which only he marched. He danced into
my dreams, stealing me away into the stars at the witching hour. Since he had come back to me we had been
inseparable.
The last
amber leaves of autumn waved goodbye to the worst and best year of my
life. The year I lost my home, my
friends, everything I thought I needed to live.
The year I discovered a grandmother I hardly knew. The year I found new friends. The year I fell in love.
The
calendar gloated that Christmas was less than a month away, but who cared? I looked forward to the first day of
winter. Or rather the longest night of
the year. Ever since finding out Santa
was just a figment of my parents’ imagination, I didn’t have much use for the
yuletide. But I had always loved that
long and wonderful night. Addison had already set a date for that night, promising
to take me to an air show in the day and onto the rooftop at night to teach me
the constellations.
It was
kind of embarrassing, but I had never really learned the stars. Sure, I could spot the Big Dipper and hardly
ever mistook the moon for a comet. But
that was the extent of my celestial knowledge.
Most of my time had been spent looking down rather than up, and I
regretted that. Just one more regret in
the long list I had been working on in my seventeen years. But all that was changing, and Addison was helping me one regret at a time.
To say I
appreciated everything he had done for me would be an understatement. He taught me how to drive a stick. He trusted me with his deepest, darkest
secrets. He saved my life. He fell in love with me, maybe even more than
I had fallen in love with him. If that
was possible.
Mere
words could do no justice for how I felt about Addison. But that didn’t stop me from trying to tell
him, or show him. I poured my heart out
into haiku almost daily. I swirled his
initials into the thighs of my worn jeans in three colors of permanent
ink. I learned to say “I love you” in
twenty-one languages.
My most recent
declaration of love cost me an entire paycheck.
I purchased a star. Not the Hollywood kind starlets walked across in stilettos. An actual star, in outer space, where no man
has boldly gone before.
Bonnie
Fay and Nicola had completely different reactions when I confessed what I had
done. Bonnie Fay wrinkled her nose and
squinted at me, forcing the kind of smile that told me I was lame. “Sounds kinda hokey,” she had said in her
southern drawl. “Sugar, if you’re gonna
tease him with something he can’t have, don’t let it be a star.”
Nicola,
the polar opposite to everything calm and conforming, had a completely
different reaction. She ached a sigh,
crossed her hands over her heart, and fell backwards onto my bed. “That is just so…” She took a breath and clicked the heals of
her combat boots. I prayed she’d say
something other than “hokey.” “So…
romantic.” Then she wiped away a hint of
her sentimentality before it had the chance to smear her dark eye make-up. She had spent too long applying deadly Goth
to have it ruined by a girly tear.
Yes, I
bought my boyfriend a star. It was a
little star – I didn’t make that much money – cleverly hidden in the Scorpius
constellation. The website informed me
the little speck could be seen near the horizon using a telescope the size of a
small skyscraper. But the heavenly body,
now and forever known as “Addison Wake,” was indeed there. It was my gift to him, a little piece of
eternity that would smile down upon us every night until the stars all went
out.
Okay, it
was a little hokey.
But what
could I have given to Addison Wake? He
wasn’t exactly like the other boys at Redcliff High. To be perfectly clear, he was nothing at all
like anyone on this mortal world. Addison was a phantom, a fugitive from the netherworld,
casually walking among the living as shadowflesh. He willed his dark, mysterious ether into the
tall, lean embodiment of perfection. An
immortal soul, yet vulnerable shadowflesh.
And no,
I didn’t need my head examined… or maybe I did.
Addison was
completely wrong for me, completely wrong for any living, breathing girl who
had a fondness for staying alive. The
more I knew we shouldn’t be together, the more I was drawn to him. Like a knot, the harder a person tried to
pull it apart the tighter it got.
To show
my love for Addison, I had to think of
something as unique, something as ageless as he. Haiku hadn’t cut it. And it wasn’t like I could burn him a CD of
my favorite music and expect it to mean anything in a year, or a decade, or a
century. But a star, it would be
forever.
And when
that long and wonderful night finally came and Addison
showed me the constellations, I would surprise him with his star, pointing to
the part of the sky where the tiny speck was supposed to be.
I had no
idea how he would react. Maybe he’d
shrug or look at me as if I had lost my mind.
Or maybe he’d arch one eyebrow higher than the other over his smoky blue
eyes and kiss me. It would be cold,
December nights get that way, so he would undoubtedly drape his leather flight
jacket over my shoulders and wrap me in his strong arms, and I would kiss him
back like I had never kissed him before, like I would never kiss him
again. And perhaps that would be the
night. The night.
I no
longer feared the darkness. As a matter
of fact, I looked forward it. The
longest, darkest night of the year waited for me, and that should have been my
happily ever after. But fate can be a
funny, cruel thing.
About
the Author
Shawn Martin
calls Springfield, Missouri, home. After
graduating from Missouri State University with majors in Economics and
Political Science, he bounced around the Midwest only to end up right where he
started.
His day (and
night) job is being a firefighter. Aside
from rescuing cats in trees and removing burnt pot roasts from ovens, he spends
his time finding the hardest way to do the simplest of things. The rest of his time is spent weaving words
into another installment in the Shadowflesh Series. Visit www.shadowflesh.com for a look into the
author and his work.
Author Links:
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