Apocalypsis 02 - Warpaint

me.
    “When did they blow the place up?” I asked, praying she’d say before she saw him fighting.
    She answered me in a quiet voice. “After the last time anyone saw Bodo.” She reached into her pocket and held something out to me.
    “What’s that?” I said, knowing exactly what it was when I saw the shiny silver surface but not wanting to believe it.
    “It’s Bodo’s harmonica. I found it in the grass when I went back to look for him. It must have fallen out of his pocket when he was fighting the canners.”
    I started to cry, almost not wanting to touch it. I stopped walking. “Was he winning? When you saw him? Was he winning the fight?”
    Winky stopped too, turning to look at me. “He was doing okay. Yeah, he was doing pretty well.”
    I reached out and took the harmonica from her, running my fingers over the etched scrolls on the side that had faded in places from being handled so much. I put it up to my lips but then quickly took it away again. No way in hell was I going to blow on it. It was Bodo’s, and he was going to come back and blow into it himself. He just has to. I shoved it in my back pocket and strode away wiping tears angrily from my face, leaving Winky behind.

CLIFFHANGERS
    Do they make you crazy?
    If you are not a fan of cliffhanger endings (so sorry all my books have them - I can’t seem to help myself), you can go to my website www.ElleCasey.com and read the first chapter of the next book in this series, on the page titled “Sneak Peeks”. If the second and/or third books of the series have already been published, you can go to Amazon.com and click on the “Look Inside” feature of those books and read the first chapter or more for free.