Infused / Michael Magnus (ePub)

Gloribella works as an executive chef at a trendy restaurant in the Boston Metro area, and every day she feeds hundreds of people. She even invents new recipes to ensure the continued success of the Belly of the Pig, until one day her best friend Luke is implicated in a crime.

From then on, her "perfect life" begins to unravel. Believing in her friend's innocence, she hires a high-profile lawyer to keep him out of prison. However, a terrifying scene in her own home reveals more than she should know, and after a confrontation, she flees to the only place she thinks is safe-her childhood home-but is it?

Excerpt from Infused:

Less than five minutes after Fabio was gone with the dog, the doorbell rang, and I thought he had returned for something. I answered the door, and to my shock, it was Uncle Joshua. He was smiling from ear to ear, and I thought to myself that it couldn't be bad news if he looked that happy.

A little girl stood next to him. She had a wheeled backpack in one hand and a doll in the other. She placed the backpack on the doormat, and I noticed it had illustrations from the Cinderella story on both sides. I looked back at the girl. She was an odd-looking child, the type I had seen on very rare occasions with their parents in the mall. Little curls hung down from beneath a bonnet. She wore a long floral dress that reached all the way to the top of a pair of white shoes with bows. She wore glasses with thick lenses-the Coke bottle kind-and she certainly was a sight to behold. But the most frightening part of those brief moments was realizing that Johnno was not with them. I tried to open my mouth, but it remained shut, as if I was suddenly paralyzed. "This is Effie," Uncle Joshua finally said. "Are you gonna invite us in?"