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***Read on for an excerpt of Redemption, a
paranormal romance for readers over the age of 18***

REDEMPTION

CHAPTER 1

It all started with the dog—a real one, not
a mech one. Not that Matilida Upton blamed the poor creature for
changing her life in a most dramatic and permanent fashion. No, the
blame could be laid squarely at the studded boots of Sir Magnus
Grimshaw, the queen's Chief Royal Inventor.

Tilda knelt on the slippery flagstones of
the lane running alongside her London townhouse, the elongated and
fitted cuirass style of her bodice lending a degree of difficulty
to the task. She peered into the underground cavity, wrench in
hand. The blasted air filtering system had stopped working again
and Tilda, being the only one in the household of four women who
knew how to fix it, tinkered with the gears. She loosened a nut and
a burst of steam shot out of the pipe, fogging up the goggles of
her leather and brass mask. It would have scalded if she hadn't
taken the precaution.

She set the wrench aside and peered into the
cavity. Warmth and the scent of damp metal drifted out but the
smell of something more putrid penetrated the mask's breathing
holes. Urine. She wiped the goggles and looked closer. Something
was in there. A grey ball of fluff. She reached in and pulled it
out. It whimpered and stared up at her with huge brown eyes.

"Hello, little one. Who do you belong to?"
There was no one else in the lane, and certainly no one looking for
a dog. The animal blinked at her and snuggled closer. It was made
of flesh and fur, which didn’t necessarily categorize it as a real
animal, but Tilda could feel little ridges through its coat which
were unmistakably bones and not metal rods or gears. It was also
warm and rather affectionate. Clearly it was someone's pet and used
to human contact.

She took it into the kitchen and set it down
on the wooden table on which Mary had just finished preparing the
vegetables to go into the soup. The maid glanced up from her stool
near the cast iron oven and dropped her ladle, handle and all, into
the cauldron. "Ew, what's that bedraggled thing, miss?"

"A dog," Tilda said, removing her mask and
hanging it on the hook near the door. The air was cleaner in the
house than outside but still not fresh. With the filter not
working, it would remain that way. "A real one," she added. "I
found it outside."

"Are you sure it's a dog?" Mary said,
bending down to get a closer look at the animal. She screwed up her
nose. "Could be a rat." The dog peered at her beneath fluffy grey
brows then buried its nose under its paw. "I mean, who would want a
real dog? You have to feed and clean a real dog, and pick up its
whatsit."

Tilda patted the animal's matted hair.
"Shall we clean it up and find out?"

"Your aunt won't approve," Mary said,
casting a cautious eye at the door.

Rather eerily, the door opened but instead
of Aunt Winnie, Tilda's sister bounced in. Letitia was always
bouncing. She had far too much energy for a genteel lady, even one
of only eighteen. "There you are, Til," Letitia said. "I've been--.
Oh! What are you doing with that rat?"

"I think it's a dog," Tilda said.

"A real one," Mary added.

Tilda explained how she'd come across it.
"We're about to clean it up. Perhaps there's a clue to its owner
beneath all this hair."

"Or perhaps there isn't." Letitia clasped
her hands as if in studious prayer and bounced. "If not, can we
keep it, Til? Pleeeease. I've always wanted a dog."

"Mr. Cranker has mech ones for sale," Mary
offered. "With red fur and everything. Red suits your coloring,
Miss Letitia."

Letitia stuck out her bottom lip. "I rather
like the idea of a real one," she said. "I could take it for walks.
And buy it a pretty red collar, studded with pearls—"

"Before you get carried away, we can't
afford pearls," Tilda said. She sighed. Her sister was a
delightfully fun companion but she was rather trying at times. "And
I think you'll grow tired of walking a dog every day."

"And scooping up its whatsit," Mary said.
"The Council for Cleanliness doesn't like dog mess on the
pavements."

Hence the growing rate of mech pets instead
of real ones in the city. "Besides, it may have an owner already,"
Tilda said. "Come on, let's clean it up before Aunt Winnie returns.
She'll have a fit if she sees a dog in the kitchen."

Mary dipped the brass temperature stick into
a small pot of water sitting on the stove then wiped it on her
apron. "This'll do," she said, showing them the read-out in the
panel at the stick's crown. "I was going to use it for washing but
it's just the right temperature now for the little mite. Come on,
let's dip him in."

"After we feed it." The dog's ears waggled
as if it understood. They gave it the ham bone Mary had kept aside
for the soup and filled a bowl with water. After the dog had eaten
its fill, they plunged it into the pot. It yelped and struggled for
a moment then its eyes fluttered closed and it seemed to enjoy
being scrubbed, dried and pampered.

It turned out to be white, not grey, and
quite a pretty little thing. It wore a slender leather collar
studded with black jet surrounded by rings of gold. A lovely piece
that must have been worth a small fortune.

"Let me have a closer look," Tilda said,
removing the collar. "It might have a name or..." Her sentence
trailed away as a sliver of tingles crept from her hand along her
arm. Her fingers grew warm, as if the collar threw off heat.
Impossible.

And yet she knew it wasn't. This strange
phenomenon had happened several times over her twenty-four years.
Whenever she touched an object separated from its owner, her skin
heated, as if the source of the heat was the object itself. And
then a clarity came to her, like a vision of a path to follow.

Her mother had explained what it meant when
Tilda had first asked her about it. She'd been barely eight years
old. The object was like a talisman and it was using her to find
its way back to the owner. Tilda's mother had possessed the skill
too, but had warned Tilda to keep it a secret. At the time, Tilda
didn't know why but later she did.

Divination was a dangerous skill to possess
in a time when machines ruled and the men who controlled them were
treated like Gods with wealth and privilege thrown at them. Anyone
possessing paranormal abilities—a power not based on mechanics but
on the unexplained—was treated with suspicion and fear. The most
powerful, the hellhags, were blamed for all the ills to befall a
community. An epidemic of disease was said to be caused by the
hellhags, the unexplained death of a child or the occurrence of any
strange phenomena was laid at the feet of women with even the most
tenuous skill.

It only took one accusation, one pointed
finger, and an entire community would jump at the chance to punish
the person responsible for their tribulations. According to the
law, hellhags were to be put on trial and hung until dead. It was a
long English tradition, one deeply entrenched in the hearts of even
the good. No one would deny the simple folk a target for their
fears, least of all the inventors. A cynical person would claim the
inventors didn't want rivals more powerful than themselves, didn't
want anyone to take their place at the helm of the government and
the forefront of progress. And since their class held the ear of
the law-makers, the law stated that anyone possessing strong
non-mechanical abilities must be put to death.

Tilda, like her mother before her, may only
possess a weak and rather useless talent for finding people but it
was not a talent she wanted to advertise to the world. She didn't
want to be branded a hellhag by mistake. Letitia too had shown
signs of some skill at divination but hers was even weaker than
Tilda's.

The heat from the collar grew more intense
so Tilda placed it on the table and plopped down on one of the
chairs. She and Mary exchanged glances. Letitia was too busy
cuddling the dog to notice.

"You all right, miss?" Mary asked, eyeing
Tilda closely.

"Did it have any writing on it?" Letitia
said, nodding at the collar. She scratched the dog under the chin
and made coo-coo noises at it.

"Er, yes. An address. I'll take the dog
back." Tilda scooped it up.

Letitia pouted. "Now?"

"I'm sure the poor thing would like to see
its owner again."

"I suppose." Letitia sighed. "Some little
boy or girl must be missing him."

"Be careful, miss," Mary said, fixing the
collar around the dog's neck.

"Why?" Letitia asked, frowning at one and
then the other.

"There's a lot of construction work going on
in the city," Tilda said quickly, scooping the dog into her arms.
Its fuzzy little face nestled against her chest. "Of course I'll be
careful."

Tilda set off immediately with the dog
tucked under her arm. It would be lovely to see it back where it
belonged. As Letitia said, perhaps the owner was a child. How happy
they'd be to see their beloved pet again! It seemed to enjoy the
company of people and didn't mind the loud grinding of digging
machines, the whir of cranes and the shouts of workers that had
taken over London of late.

She followed the path laid out for her by
the divination, a somewhat tenuous thread that pulled her along.
Whenever it weakened, she touched the dog's collar and the way was
made clear to her once more. The process took a great deal of
concentration, and so keen was she to reunite the dog with its
owner, she walked right up to the palace gates before realizing
where her divination had taken her. Straight to the queen.

It wasn't that the sovereign was so
terrible. Tilda actually admired her. It mustn't be easy for a
woman to rule over a rapidly changing country dominated for so many
centuries by men. It's just that the queen was the one who'd
reinstated the law to terminate all the hellhags after a deranged
one had tried to assainate her early in her reign. The country had
gone nearly three hundred years without incident and hellhags had
become normal members of society in that time, neither feared nor
loathed until the horror of thirty-seven.

Not that Tilda was a hellhag. A little skill
at divination didn't put her into that category. Nevertheless, it
was best to keep even her small amount of power from the
authorities. They tended to get over-zealous.

With her heartbeat skipping more erratically
than it usually did after divining, she walked up to one of the
red-coated guards standing to attention at the gate and told him
about the dog. She gave him a story about having seen the queen's
servant out walking it once and so was able to identify it as
belonging to Her Majesty when she found it. The guard gave her an
unreadable stare. He opened his mouth to speak when a man
approached. He was tall with a pointed black goatee and moustache
and bright striped vest of green and gold. Set against his cream
colored coat and breeches he looked different to the dreary figures
who usually walked the city streets.

"Forgive me," he said, bowing. "I couldn't
help overhearing. My name is Sir Magnus Grimshaw. I live in the
palace." He indicated the grand colonnaded façade of the royal
residence beyond the gates and fountain.

"Oh, then perhaps you could return the dog,"
she said, holding out the animal.

He winced and shook his head. "The guard
will. I simply want to ask you how you knew it belonged to Her
Majesty."

Tilda went cold. She hadn't been careful
enough. "As I told the guard, I recognize--."

"But there are probably hundreds of dogs who
get walked every day in the city. Do you mean to tell me you knew
that this particular one was the queen's simply by looking at
it?"

"The collar is distinctive," she said,
thinking fast. "And mech dogs are more common than real ones
nowadays."

"It's not that distinctive." He smoothed his
thin moustache with his thumb and forefinger then turned to one of
the guards. "Open the gates." The guard pressed a lever set into
the wall. The mechanism hissed and the great iron gates yawned.
"And take the dog. It does indeed belong to Her Majesty. I believe
it was the very one that bit me last week." Sir Magnus strolled
through the gates. As they slid closed behind him, he turned and
added, "Find out where she lives."

Tilda felt sick. Her stomach roiled as she
handed the dog to the guard. Should she flee or stay and pretend
nothing was amiss. In the end, she found her legs were too unsteady
to run so she answered the guard when he asked her where she lived.
She didn't dare give a false address. If her lie was detected, Sir
Magnus's suspicions would be confirmed. For he
was
suspicious. He must have guessed she'd found the dog's owner by
using a paranormal skill. She only hoped he would forget about her
or decide she was not worth bothering about.

But she knew with a dreadful foreboding that
he would not forget.

A week later she was proved correct. Sir
Magnus came to her house. Aunt Winnie and Letitia were out and
Tilda had to entertain him on her own in the parlor. Mary brought
tea and biscuits, forked a brow at Tilda in question then left when
Tilda shook her head. This was a person she must face alone. Thank
goodness her sister wsn't home. Letitia might have only a little
skill at divination but she also possessed the unenviable skill of
not being able to keep her mouth shut.