Excerpt: Rod of Glass

It made Sarabeth feel at peace to know that no one was out to get her right now. Or, at least, to not know if anyone was actually out to get her. She couldn’t actually know if no one was out to get her, because Sylvester could still be planning and…
Bad thoughts. She really needed to slow down and think about something else once in a while, because although she hadn’t heard from Sylvester, she still kept thinking about him.
And so it had been him that she thought of the day that the strange looking tail had almost shattered the front window of Eldritch.
She hadn’t been sure at first, or even after, that she had actually seen a tail. Certainly, nothing had actually been destroyed, but she still swore that there had been something there. Something big and scaly and menacing, something that she had almost smelled… Something that had made her skin crawl, in the same way that she sometimes shivered for absolutely no reason when someone walked too close by her.
But there hadn’t been any mark of it. She was sure she would have noticed if a great serpent-like thing had left huge footprints outside of her shop. Instead, there was nothing. Not a scratch, not a scrape, not even a chip out of the brick or a mark in the bit of grime that covered the window front of the shop. Nothing.
Still, Sarabeth was sure that she hadn’t imagined it. And just as sure as she was of this, she was sure that Sylvester either had something to do with what had happened or knew about what had happened.