Lumiere by Jacqueline E. Garlick blog tour

The horse rears up, driving the crowd back, creating an opening for the carriage to thread through.
“Wait!” I shout, pressing ahead, shouldering my way through the angry crowd. “Wait!” I pound at the doors. “Please! I need to speak to you!”
A second crack of the whip and the horse surges forward.
I hoist my skirts and start to run. “Wait!” I shout again, struggling to keep up at the side of the carriage. “Wait!” I pound. “Please, wait!”
The stranger brings his whip down hard over his horse’s back. I dig in, thrusting on, stretching my legs out farther than they’ve ever been stretched before. “Please,” I shout, losing ground. “Please, I beg you, stop the coach!”
If I lose him, I’ve lost everything.
I can’t let that happen.
Won’t let that happen.
I’ve no hope without my father’s machine.
I lunge, throwing myself at the back of the carriage, barely catching a toe on the edge of the running boards, embedding my nails into the carriage’s seams, and hang on with everything I’ve got. The carriage surges forward, the streets of Gears fast becoming a memory.
“Stop!” I plead. My boot slips from the running boards. I swing out to the side of the carriage, dangling by one arm, struggling, trying to kick my way back up onto the platform, slowly losing my grip. “Stop, please!”
The stranger at the mount turns his head. “What are you doing?” he shouts. “Get off!”
I hang by the tips of my fingers, shocked, staring at him. I don’t know whether to scream or cry. The face of a monster stares back at me, framed in a mop of curls darker than a raven’s wing. His skin is ghostly white, marred by raised and purpled bruises. One, in the shape of an open-mouthed snake, devours his face—while the other, a purple hand, wrings his neck. He stares back at me through eyes as pink as a rabbit’s. A strange and single lock of pure-white hair cascades down over his left eye. I’ve never seen anything like it. Not even in a book. It’s as though he’s escaped a freak show.
“I said, get off!” he shouts again.
I purse my lips, trying not to cry. “I won’t!” I shout, hoisting myself up higher onto the back of the coach, my eyes still shamefully glued to his startling face.
My foot slips again and I sink beneath the rooftop, striking my chin hard on the way down. Grasping for a seam, I try to pull myself up, only to lose my grip with the other hand. My heart lodges in my throat as I swing off again to the opposite side, the toes of my boots burrowing twisted trenches through the dirt behind.
The stranger’s face appears over the top of the cab. His eyes are lit like flares. “For the love of God,” he cusses, teetering on hand and knee, then disappears, only to reappear a second later, the reins clenched between his teeth. “Give me your hand!” He reaches out for me.
My heart staggers in my chest. “I can’t,” I shout up at him. “I won’t!”
“You won’t?” His brows fold. “Are you mad?”
My fingers slowly begin to slip from the seam; my heart squirrels into my throat.
“You are in no position to be negotiating—now take my hand!” the stranger insists.
“But—”
“Take it!” he shouts. When I still don’t, he clamps his hand around my arm. “Now,” he says, “on the count of three, I’m going to pull you up—”
“Oh no, you’re not!” I clench my teeth.
“Then I’m going to let you down, which is it?”
I drop my chin, surveying the speed of the terrain rolling beneath my feet. “Up,” I say, turning my chin toward him.
“Rational choice,” the stranger says. “On the count of three. Ready?”