GUEST POST :: Disguised as Human by Holly Day #Excerpt #GuestPost
✨ GUEST POST ✨
Hello, everyone! Thank you, Addison, for allowing me to visit the blog again 🥰
I’m Holly Day, and I write MM Romance stories for different days, like National Mason Jar Day, celebrated annually on November 30th.
How the heck do you write a story for National Mason Jar Day, you ask. Easy, you create a character who has a lot of mason jars 😆
Disguised as Human is the fourth story in the Within the Walls series, and I strongly suggest reading them in order despite every story being about a new couple.
If you’ve read the previous stories in this series, you know they take place in a walled-in supernatural community in a town named Myrfolk. The humans are trying to control the supernaturals by refusing to hire them, raising the prices of everything, and so on.
This means they’re on the verge of starving and struggle to pay their bills.
In the first story, Vampire Food, we get to know Rue, who is a magic user with an affinity for plants. He makes things grow in abundance.
In the second story, we get to know Chaton who is a latent shifter with a garden interest. He and Rue have a garden together, and he realizes that if they can grow a lot of food, he can preserve it, and hopefully feed the community through winter when nothing grows.
And that’s how we now find ourselves celebrating National Mason Jar Day. Chaton cans things in Mason jars, but he has nowhere to keep them.
Disguised as Human is about Jasper who is a vampire and the community’s go-to carpenter. What Jasper does when he isn’t trying to avoid getting arrested for a murder he didn’t commit, is building shelves for Chaton’s mason jars.
Oscar is a detective, and while he’s convinced Jasper is innocent, he has to prove it. The problem is Oscar has a secret. Supernaturals aren’t allowed to be detectives, so he’s pretending to be human, and being around supernaturals is dangerous. They have great noses, at least the shifters, and he can’t be found out.
The problem is that he wants to be near Jasper, but hopefully, vampires don’t have as developed a sense of smell as shifters do. He just has to make sure not to bleed when he’s around Jasper. Vampires know their blood after all.
So we have murder, secrets, and mason jars. A good combination, don’t you think? 😅
Disguised as Human
by Holly Day
Genre: Gay Paranormal Romance
Series: Within the Walls (Shared Universe, Book 4)
Length: Novel / 51,104 Words / 192 Pages
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What’s a vampire to do when falsely accused of murder?
Blurb
What’s a vampire to do when falsely accused of murder?
Had Jasper Argall known he’d be accused of murder simply because he went into a grocery store, he would’ve stayed in the supernatural community where human laws don’t apply. Things are hard enough as they are without having to deal with the human police.
Oscar Christopherson is a magic user pretending to be human. He likes being a detective, but supernaturals aren’t allowed to work in law enforcement, so he’s faking it. There is always a risk he’ll be found out, and that risk increases when he’s around other supernatural people, since they have a better sense of smell than humans do.
Vampire or not, when Jasper is wrongly accused of murder, Oscar can’t look the other way. Jasper knows humans can’t be trusted, but maybe Oscar is different from all the other humans in Myrfolk. He’s out of options, so what else can he do but put his life in Oscar’s hands?
Excerpt
Jasper’s heart was banging hard as he neared the gate. Asher was a silent shadow next to him, which was unnerving since Asher was never silent.
Gertrude walked toward them with a smile more resembling a feral display of teeth than a sign of joy. “They’re still waiting in their car.”
Jasper frowned. “Did you talk to them?”
“Nope, one of them went up to the gate and told Velvela and Kurt they were here to speak to you. Velvela called me, and I came here, but then they’d gone to the car, so I’ve only watched them through the windshield.”
“All right, so I walk up to the gate and show myself or what?”
Gertrude shrugged. “I guess.”
Jasper walked up to the grid door and waited. It only took a second before the doors opened, and both men stepped out of the car. They looked twitchy.
“Mr. Argall?”
Jasper nodded.
“You’re to come with us to the station—”
“He’s on community land.” Gertrude was by his side in the blink of an eye. One of them took a stumbling step back despite being several feet from the gate.
“You’re welcome to come inside and ask some questions if you want, but no one is putting so much as a toe outside the border of community land.”
The police officers exchanged a look.
“Ms. Pechtold—”
“Yes, Officer…?”
“Edmond.”
Gertrude nodded.
“We have some questions for Mr. Argall.”
“And you’re free to ask them.”
They exchanged a look. “At the station.”
“Nope, not at the station. You can ask those questions here, or you can come inside, and we can sit.”
Another look, then the one who hadn’t spoken nodded. “We’ll come inside.”
Gertrude motioned for Velvela to open the gate, and Jasper took a step back. For some reason, the hairs on the back of his neck wanted to stand.
“We have a room in here.” Gertrude motioned at the door to the room where they placed the grocery deliveries coming to the gate. As she did, she turned her back to the officers. Asher had already taken a step in her direction, ready to head inside. Velvela was busy holding the grid door open, and Kurt was up on the wall.
Jasper watched in disbelief as the cops drew their guns. Edmond aimed at Gertrude while the other aimed at Jasper with one hand and reached for him with the other. “Jasper Argall. You’re under arrest for the murder of June Towers. You have the right to remain—”
Gertrude growled, and Asher moved toward the officer now gripping Jasper’s arm. Everything happened in slow motion, and maybe Jasper could’ve stopped it, but he wasn’t sure what would escalate the situation and what wouldn’t.
As Asher grabbed the one touching Jasper, everything went from slow motion to fast forward. The world exploded. Or Jasper’s chest did at least. The impact was hard enough to knock the air out of him, then his legs folded, and a roar sounded in his ears. It was accompanied by Gertrude’s snarl.
There were screams and yells and growls. Another shot rang out, and Jasper forced his eyes open to see what was going on. His chest was soaked, blood trickling out of him in a steady flow, and cold filled the room the blood left behind.
Headlights swept over him, then a car door slammed shut. “Stand down!”
Maybe he was hallucinating, but he believed it was Oscar shouting. Must be hallucinating. He closed his eyes again, but as another shot was fired followed by a roar of pain, he forced them open.
Gertrude dropped to her knees next to Jasper, clutching her shoulder as blood formed a blossom on the fabric of her top.
“Open the gate!” Metal rattled, and yet again Jasper was struck by how much the man shouting sounded like Oscar.
“Get Eir!” Asher crouched on Jasper’s left and leaned over him to look into his eyes. “I knew it was a bad idea to bring you. You always get shot or staked or something.”
“Sorry.” He coughed, which made the pain intensify enough for the world to turn black for a moment. When he opened his eyes again, his field of vision had narrowed, darkness was threatening to take over, and the buzz in his ears drowned out the surrounding calls.
“Yeah, totally your fault. The idiots thinking they could bring guns onto community land had nothing to do with it. I believe they were jellyfish in their former lives. Not much brain to speak of there.”
Jasper tried to smile since it was what Asher wanted, but he didn’t have the energy. Asher leaned close enough to block out everything else. “You don’t happen to have a date with a donor, do you?”
“No.” He coughed again, and the rattling sound had fear spreading in his mind. How badly injured was he? “She was murdered.”
“Typical.” Asher pressed his hands over the wound in his chest, and Jasper groaned in pain. “Sorry, bud. I don’t want to bring Chaton here when there are so many people, but I don’t think moving you is a good idea.”
Asher’s voice sounded farther and farther away with each word. Jasper tried to open his eyes, tried to say it was okay, but he was slipping away. Why did he have to get shot in November? It was so cold.
About the Author
According to Holly Day, no day should go by uncelebrated and all of them deserve a story. If she’ll have the time to write them remains to be seen. She lives in rural Sweden with a husband, four children, more pets than most, and wouldn’t last a day without coffee.
Holly gets up at the crack of dawn most days of the week to write gay romance stories. She believes in equality in fiction and in real life. Diversity matters. Representation matters. Visibility matters. We can change the world one story at the time.
