#Spotlight on The Burned Spy by K.A. Krantz

Title: The Burned Spy

Series: Immortal Spy #1

Author: K.A. Krantz

Format:ebook, 289 pages
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Published: January 30, 2018 by K.A. Krantz

Gods. Always ready to screw you.
When Bix the Gatekeeper is summoned from exile a hundred and seventy years early by the goddess of the Norse Under World, the former Dark Ops agent knows there’s a catch. On the surface, the terms of the deal are simple. Someone attacked the pantheon’s ambassador to the Mid Worlds and left the ambassador in a coma. In exchange for early parole, Bix must identify the perpetrator and drag their soul to Hel. 
It’d be a sweet contract, if not for the details. The ambassador is Bix’s ex-girlfriend, the lead suspect is the key witness from Bix’s trial, and the organization leading the official investigation is the same intelligence guild that disavowed Bix when a covert op went pear-shaped. Undeterred, Bix returns to her old stomping grounds where clues in the smoldering woods of Centralia, Pennsylvania, lead to the waterfront of Washington, DC, and Worlds beyond. 
Once valued for her skills creating passageways as small as a capillary or as large as a continent, Bix’s success now depends on the relationships she was forced to abandon. As she squares off against friends who betrayed her and enemies keen to destroy her, Bix follows a trail of secrets, torture, and treason that leads to the very superpowers who banished her. With her freedom on the line and revenge within reach, this highly-trained operative will take on Fates, dragons, angels, and gods to get exactly what she wants.

Hel hath no fury like a burned spy.

AMAZON | B&N 

Excerpt:

Chapter 1

  

The antidote burned worse than the toxin. Bix threw her head back and swore. Heat oozed through every cell, from the tips of her tangled teal hair to her broken, grimy toenails. Jörmungandr, ageless and accursed Norse serpent god, retracted his fangs from her forearm. His forked tongue laved the holes he’d caused, holes that finally broke the runic tracking spells embedded in her scars.

“Why did you summon me back from exile, Jör?” Bix muttered, enduring revulsion’s crawl for the relief of his cure. Devolving past filthy and bedraggled in the ether was bad enough, but to be in such a state before a god whose personal fastidiousness bordered on compulsive made her criminal status all the more humiliating.

“Orders.” He leaned back in the padded conference room chair and poured himself a glass of something that looked like water but smelled of vodka. His strong thighs kept her penned.

“Orders?” She turned her head away from his unflinching regard as he swished his drink in his mouth. She stared out the wall of windows overlooking the vast dark glaciers of Helheim illuminated by the aurora of the dead. “From whom this time? The judges at my trial? Did they rope you into being their sheriff again?”

“Don’t be mad at me for doing my job,” he chided. “The only way to exile a woman who can cross Worlds wherever she wants, whenever she wants is to make sure she doesn’t want to go anywhere. Turning you into a plague carrier guaranteed you stayed out of the Mid Worlds.”

“You damned me to the ether between Worlds. No World would have me, no one would help me, no god would feed me.” She met his glittering golden gaze. “You made me starve, Jör. You promised you never would, yet you did.”

“Let me atone for my sins.” He unbuttoned his crisp white shirt. “Let me feed you now.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Never again. You ruined what little trust was between us.”

Large glass doors slammed against the conference room’s tinted walls. Blasts of frigid air marked the arrival of Hel, goddess of the Norse Under World and current boss of the entire pantheon. Hel slapped a stack of glossy pages against her studded leather hip and arched a white brow.

“Jörmungandr, I said cured and dressed,” Hel admonished. “That means cleaning her up too.”

“Just getting to the fun part, sister dear.” The serpent god snapped his fingers...

About the Author:

KAK: IT'S NOT A HAIRBALLTHE THING ABOUT HAVING A COMMON FIRST NAME IS THAT ONE DEVELOPS A BAD CASE OF "YOU TALKIN' TO ME?" CURES INCLUDE SELECTIVE HEARING OR CHANGING ONE'S NAME. KAK MASTERED THE FORMER ... TO THE GREAT CONSTERNATION OF ANYONE WHO KNOWS HER. SADLY, THAT MEANT SHE HAD TO EMPLOY THE LATTER TO CURE THE CURE."KAK" ADMITTEDLY SOUNDS LIKE SOMETHING HER PET LEFT BEHIND; HOWEVER, IT IS UNUSUAL ENOUGH IN THE STATES TO BE AN EASY TOPIC OF CONVERSATION. TAKE HER TO RUSSIA, ON THE OTHER HAND, AND IT'S THE BEGINNING OF AN ABBOTT AND COSTELLO ROUTINE.THE BIOKAK SPLITS HER TIME BETWEEN CINCINNATI AND THE DC ’BURBS WITH HER EVER-FAITHFUL HAIRY BEAST. WHEN NOT WRITING, SHE INDULGES IN A SHOE OBSESSION, CONDUCTS A LOVE/HATE AFFAIR WITH PAINT, AND MAKES EPIC MESSES IN THE KITCHEN.