“Could you … make that just a soda,” I said. The attendant looked annoyed at first but then she seemed to get it. I was betting I wasn’t the first drunk she’d ever had on a plane.
It was a tiny shell, but it felt good in hands that had been empty for so long. I held on to it as the wasteland beckoned, far below.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It’s summer in the south and it’s hot as Hell. I wrote The Night Dahlia last summer with no AC, my fan blowing tepid air. So it was written, essentially, in a sweat lodge. I’m thankful for that discomfort. The Nightwise stories have always had a strong emotional tie to me. I think you see more of me in these books than anything else I write. Make of that what you will, good or bad. Pulling things out of you should be uncomfortable. Holding them up and then daring to bind them to words on paper, to show them to other people, is a kind of magic, a summoning of a sorts, and an exorcism.
I like to think that it’s never too late for redemption, to salvage some tiny glittering scrap of your soul, but my time in the sweat lodge has shown me that redemption is painful, not just to yourself but to others. You hurt them in your failure and then you hurt them again in the reliving, the retelling. It’s easier to run from yourself, your mistakes, than to own them. You don’t get clean sometimes unless you scour with steel wool and there is no magical catharsis, no music rising like the dawn to tell you that you did the right thing, that the pain was worth it. You just get scars and a vague sense of uneasy change.
I’m in the cool comfort of AC right now, writing these words, but I still feel the same unease, the same uncertainty, that I felt in the lodge. I stumble daily, hourly, between right and wrong, good and evil, harm and care. We build a life out of our comfortable facades, our public faces, and we hope that no one realizes how haunted our houses truly are.
As Ballard has pointed out to me, we rise and we fall. Hopefully, the understanding comes somewhere in that climb. I would like to say I’m sorry to all of those who I grabbed, flailing, on my way down, and thank you to all those who helped me stand again and begin the climb anew. Hopefully, there is wisdom discovered in that cycle.
* * *
Thank you to Bruce A. Cutthroat, for winning the “Name Ballard’s Band” contest on my Facebook page. Thank you, also, to my daughter, Emily, for her band name that I used as well. I wish I had the space to name all the hundreds of contestants here. Thank you to everyone! I have the most wonderful, twisted readers in this dimension or any other.
Thank you to my dear friends, the League of Extraordinary Beta Readers and Editors: Susan Lystlund, David Lystlund, and Faye Jefferies, for their tireless work and invaluable support. I could not do this without you.
Thank you to the fantastic people I have the privilege to work with at Tor: Tom Doherty, Patty Garcia, Marco Palmieri, Desirae Friesen, Christopher Morgan, Stacy Hill, and my fantastic editor, Greg Cox, who I owe so very much to for his good nature, his patience, his imagination, and his talent. Thank you to my brilliant, nurturing agent, Lucienne Diver, of The Knight Agency, and to all the remarkable people at Knight I have had the opportunity to meet.
And as always, thank you to my children, for being the reason I stand, and the reason I keep climbing. I love you.
BOOKS BY R. S. BELCHER
The Six-Gun Tarot
The Shotgun Arcana
The Queen of Swords
Nightwise
The Brotherhood of the Wheel
The Night Dahlia
King of the Road (forthcoming)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
R. S. BELCHER is the award-winning author of Nightwise, The Brotherhood of the Wheel, The Six-Gun Tarot, The Shotgun Arcana, and The Queen of Swords. He lives in Salem, Virginia. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Acknowledgments
Books by R. S . Belcher
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE NIGHT DAHLIA
Copyright © 2018 by Rod Belcher
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Alejandro Colucci
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Belcher, R. S., author.
Title: The night Dahlia / R. S. Belcher.
Description: First edition. | New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2018. | Identifiers: LCCN 2017039424 (print) | LCCN 2017044101 (ebook) | ISBN 9780765390141 (ebook) | ISBN 9780765390127 (softcover: acid-free paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Missing persons—Investigation—Fiction. | Secret societies—Fiction. | Fairies—Fiction. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction. | Occult fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3602.E429 (ebook) | LCC PS3602.E429 N53 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017039424
eISBN 9780765390141
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First Edition: April 2018
