SFR Brigade Presents WIP Snippet

Well I'm off at one of my favorite conventions today, drinking some form of scifi booze and NOT stalking stormtroopers. (crossing fingers) Really. I'll be good.
While I'm gone here is another snippet from the WIP and a new round of Science Fiction Romance Brigade Presents.

You can find all the excerpts here too.

Cheers!
~ Frances

SEEN

The shard whispered to him. The smoke boiled with resinous messages, and acolyte Devlin peered at him through a veil of black clouds. The boy’s face shifted at once, taking on a foreign countenance. Shayd saw an older man, one whose skin wore the color of ash naturally, but who had fine blue lines tattooed across both cheeks and down over the square jaw and thick neck.
Devlin’s eyes vanished, squinting into a keen and calculating glare. They narrowed, and the vision mouth tightened, but his assistant’s voice came from the alien lips, and the smoke shifted the image back to the Shrouded boy.
“You’ve been summoned again.” He blinked at Shayd, not expecting an answer but unable to kill the instinct, the body’s reflexive expectation when a reply might be forthcoming. His head tilted to one side, and his long topknot braid swung out in an arc. The incense smoked and wafted between them still, shifting, changing the face again.
A woman with skin like charcoal, with high cheeks and wide, sapphire eyes.  
“I believe he said urgent today.”