About Skin Deep
Written by Drew Zachary
77 pages / 30300 words
ISBN: 1-933389-35-4
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc
In a world where extrasensory talent is acknowlegded but not trusted, it’s not easy to be Razzi, a young man with an ''extra''. Especially when someone in the complex where he lives fingers him for a crime he didn’t commit.
Dannen Garniner is the Protector sent to investigate him, and he’s fascinated by Razzi in spite of himself. Who wouldn’t be fascinated by a kid who can change his appearance at will? But it goes deeper than that, as they soon find out. Can Dannen and Razzi both face their fears about their abilities, and about letting someone else get close?
Review
CB Potts, editor of the upcoming anthology Play Ball, writes: Beauty’s only skin deep. So the saying goes. But who believes it – the one looking upon the beautiful person, or the beautiful person themselves?
This pivotal question is at the heart of Drew Zachary’s Skin Deep. We meet Razi, a magic user skilled in creating wondrous, beautiful glamours, and Dannen, the police office obsessed with finding the real person beneath the finery. The two meet during the course of a routine robbery investigation, but what follows is anything but routine.
Zachary has done an amazing job with the characterization on this tale. I’m half in love with Dannen myself! Razi’s is drawn with an eerily honest attention to detail, and his pangs of self-doubt and timid steps toward revelation are extremely lifelike.
Skin Deep is short, and leaves the reader wanting more. What bad things happened in Razi’s past to create his current persona? Will Dannen be willing to let sleeping dogs lie, or will he want to write some very old wrongs?
A perfect read to snuggle in with on those snowy December evenings – and, maybe, if we’re good, Santa could promise us a sequel next year?
Sample
Anyway, this thief, one Derek Breller, had pointed the finger at another tenant. Dannen didn't have a name, just apartment 520, the other end of the hall from Breller. Apparently someone fitting the thief's description, which also fit Breller, had come and gone from the place around the time of the robbery. The case officer's notes didn't specify what Breller himself had been doing up at four am, looking out his door, but Dannen imagined the guy would have any number of excuses.
He was on the case because apparently Breller thought the guy going into 520 was 'hinky'. Dannen snorted. He'd like to know how anyone could see 'hinky' from the other end of a dark hall at four in the morning. And even if the tenant was extra-normal, that didn't automatically make him bad. Bigotry of that sort though was often shared, one of the reasons the Protectors had a special unit to deal with anything tagged extra-normal.
Dannen figured the officers on the case would have better luck 'interviewing' known fences and keeping their eyes on them to find whoever
had pulled this one off. The stuff taken was just old enough to need a specialized fence to get rid of it.
He pocketed his hand unit, put on his hat and got out, hitting the locking mechanism on his belt before heading across to the double doors of 421. A sign above them proclaimed the apartment complex to be the Black Feather Arms and Dannen couldn't help but smile. He missed the old habit of naming buildings. It was one of the things that gave them the character that was lacking in the modern glass high-rises.
He let himself in with his universal pass and took the stairs up to the fifth floor. Using the stairwell gave him an opportunity to check out the thief's most likely route of escape. Only a fool would use the elevator for something like that. He didn't find anything, but the stairwell opened up to Breller's end of the hall, which allowed him to gauge how well the man might have seen someone at the far end.
He snorted again. Not well at all. Breller had definitely been throwing suspicion away from himself, which in Dannen's eyes made the man look guilty. Still, he'd follow up on the lead, just to tie it off.
As he approached the door to 520 he felt it.
Now, Dannen didn't have extra-normal powers himself, but there was a certain vibe that such powers left behind, almost like a signature, a slight vibration in the air that always made the hair on his skin stand up.
And it was standing up now.
So, their thief or not, someone in 520 was an extra-normal.
He knocked on the door.
''Yeah?'' a voice yelled from the other side. ''Who is it?''
''Protector, Sir. Badge number 734.'' He held his badge up to the old fashioned peep hole. ''I just have a few questions for you, Sir.''
There was a long pause before the door opened, but it did, slowly. A face peered out at him and looked him up and down, the bluer than blue eyes finally fixing on his shoulder patch. ''Spook hunter?'' The man's voice was silky smooth, light and airy if such a thing could be said about a voice. He had shocking white hair to go with the blue eyes, and everything about him screamed fear and suspicion.
''I'm with the extra-normal unit, yes. I just need to ask you a few questions about a robbery that occurred here last night.''
That earned him a snort and the door opened wider. ''Robbery, so naturally you come to me.''