Excerpts Young Adult Read an Excerpt From Holy Terrors by Margaret Owen It will take everything Vanja has to save not just the people she loves, but the future she’s fought for. By Margaret Owen | Published on March 26, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Holy Terrors, the third book in Margaret Owen’s Little Thieves YA series—out from Henry Holt and Co. on April 1st. It’s been nearly two years since Vanja brought down the cult she started, and she’s still paying the price. As the Pfennigeist, she bucks the law in order to help the desperate and haunt the corrupt all across the empire—and no matter what, she works alone.But an impossible killer is tearing through royalty, and leaving Vanja’s signature red penny on every victim. Suddenly the Pfennigeist is no longer a folk hero but a nightmare. When even the Blessed Empress falls, the empire’s seven royal families must gather to elect her successor within a matter of weeks, or risk the collapse of reality itself… even though it puts every house in the killer’s sights.Vanja tells herself she’s wading into the royalty’s vicious games only to save the name she made, and the loved ones also in jeopardy. But the Order of Prefects has also put their sharpest official on the case, the one who swore he’d always find Vanja—until she broke his heart. Journeyman Prefect Emeric Conrad may no longer be the boy Vanja knew, but they’ll have to work together one last time to have any chance of surviving the deadly catastrophe coming for them all. The sun’s down, a purple velvet sky trimmed in lacy gold-tinged clouds by the time I leave. It’s not quite dark enough for me to take to the rooftops yet, so I try to blend into the crowds of penitents at the temple district’s sakretwaren market nearby. As I slow to peruse racks of incense and tiny effigies, a gray-cloaked figure at the edge of my sight slows as well. I catch my breath, then move down the row of stalls. So does the figure. I hang back a moment, wait for a gaggle of gossiping aunties to pass between us, then slip between two stalls, into the quieter lane behind the vendor stalls. A beat later, the gangly figure strides into the alley as well, one silver-trimmed sleeve peeking out from the cloak. Light brown hair—the prefect with the coachman earlier. I back up into the market again. It’s too late. Footsteps smack against the cobblestones in the alleyway. I break into a run, careening around as many carts and clusters of people as possible as annoyed shouts follow me. If I can lose him in the market— Another prefect blocks the exit at the end of the stalls. I bolt for another gap between vendors, but this time loop around and go right back into the market. The ruse works. Both prefects vanish into the lane I left as I cross into the opposite one, trying to come up with a plan. They’ve found me. The game just changed. If I can’t stay underground, I have to stay one step ahead. I dart out of the alleyway and run down the street, trying to put as much distance as I can between me and the two prefects as a matter of pure survival. Their contract with the Low Gods lets them draw on the power of the Low Gods themselves, and while I would trust Emeric’s restraint, I don’t know what these men are capable of. Sure enough, I see threads of silver slithering over the cobblestones. There’s a faint ping every time a passerby steps on one. I hurl myself forward, sprinting— A silver worm slips under my foot, and a horrible screech pierces the air. People clap their hands over their ears, swearing. All the other threads converge into one leading directly to me. I immediately spring for the first handhold I see, a window ledge for a shrine of the Spindle-dam. The silver line wavers at the foundation, sputtering. That’s right. Fortune and Death said the Low Gods couldn’t interfere with the prefects. Maybe that nonintervention goes both ways. I scale the side of the shrine and reach the roof, but I’m much too exposed; I need to get higher. The grander cathedrals are deeper into the temple district, gathered around a square. Each one has a thousand places to hide if I can reach them—and I don’t need to hunker down for good, I just need to shake the prefects. I jump to the next roof, then drop into the narrow passage behind it. There’s a ghastly hiss. The silver thread whips around the corner, streaking for me. I take off for the cathedral square. Awful short bursts of the alarm blare every time the thread catches up, cutting off whenever I pass through a shrine. When I reach the square, I hare for Fortune’s cathedral. If Emeric’s briefed my pursuers, they’ll expect me to flee here, and the silver thread will only convince them more. It hovers at Fortune’s doorstep as I catch the arch of a window frame and lever myself up, scrambling onto the roof of the Gambler’s Altar. There’s a narrow gap between it and the vestibule of Time’s basilica, one I know I can clear in a leap. The prefects will spend hours scouring Fortune’s cathedral, and that’s all I need. I make the jump, pop a window open, and drop into the basilica’s vestibule. When I look back out, the silver line hasn’t moved. Finally something went right. Buy the Book Holy Terrors Margaret Owen Buy Book Holy Terrors Margaret Owen Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Even if they figure out I’m not in the cathedral, they’ll expect me to keep running. Time’s basilica has a bell tower I can hide in, its entrance a stone arch just across the vestibule. I stay low, sneaking a look into the main atrium as I make my way over. The clergy are engrossed in their divination evensong, gazing into bowls of sand as pensive congregants wait for answers. No one even notices me slipping into the tower. Slate stairs spiral up out of sight. I start up the steps— And a creaking slam rings behind me, punctuated by the grate of a lock. I didn’t even see the door. Someone knew I would come here. Knew I would go high instead of far. And if I look back, I know who I’ll find. I falter, just for a heartbeat, just for him. And then terror drives me on faster than before. My legs burn, my lungs burn, my heart burns, all of it. There is one person who could anticipate where I’d run. One person who could trap me like this. One person who swore he would chase me, find me, choose me, every time. I have waited nearly a year and a half for this. Burned for it. Run from it. I can’t stop, not now. I hear his footfalls at my back, his ragged breath—I think he’s taking the stairs two at a time, damn him and his horrible long legs— My foot catches. I stumble and crash onto a landing. There’s a glittering chime as the pouch of rings spills behind me, sending them cascading down the stairs. The pursuing footfalls slow, just for a moment, to avoid slipping on them too. I force myself up and keep going. The world narrows to a blur of spiraling stairs—and then yawns open again. I’ve reached the belfry. A great bronze bell hangs to my right, the chamber an eight-sided cage. Tall windows have been cut into each face to let out the tolling, barred with railings to prevent clumsiness from turning lethal. There’s a ladder around the other side of the bell, but it’s capped by a trapdoor I won’t have time to fiddle with. I need a delay. I whip off my cloak and tuck into a niche by a window, one obscured from the stairwell. Just as footsteps approach the final bend, I fling my cloak out over the railing. It flaps into the night. From below, it’ll look like I just pitched myself out the window. “Vanja, NO—” Journeyman Prefect Emeric Conrad’s voice rings out as he throws himself up the last few stairs and rushes to the window. I glide behind him, reaching— He turns. And just as he said he would—he catches me. A fist wraps around my left wrist in an iron grip. But he missed my right. I press his own gold-plated knife to his throat, meet his gaze for the first time in over a year, and say sweetly, “Vanja, yes.” A tortured moment passes between us, locked together, winded. He looks older—of course he looks older, you ninny, he just turned twenty on the ninth—sharper, his black hair cut a little shorter, a tension to his mouth I don’t remember. He’s still built more or less like he aspires to be a decorative ficus when he grows up—insultingly, the bastard might even be taller—but he’s verging on filling out his crisp uniform coat, the starched linen krebatte around his throat looking marginally more merited. Gods, there’s still juniper lacing his breath, calling to a thousand memories. Behind his round-lensed spectacles, his dark eyes are—unreadable to me. I want to kiss him until we both suffocate. I want to push him down the stairs. I want to ask, What took you so long? I want to tell him everything and beg for another chance. “Well, say something,” I barely manage. He—he has to know I’m not the assassin. Right? Even after the way I left, even after all this time, Emeric can’t believe I’m a killer. His jaw works. His lips part as my pulse rattles. And then he stonily recites: “Vanja Ros, you are hereby being taken into the custody of the Order of Prefects of the Godly Courts. You—” “I didn’t do anything wrong,” I snarl, heat rushing to my face—scheit, I’m such a fool to think any of this was salvageable when I ruined it myself. Then I recall the dead prince’s rings are probably still rolling down the steps and clarify: “I mean, I didn’t kill anyone.” “You are expected to comply with any orders issued by a prefect or affiliated staff,” he continues as if I’m not holding his own knife to his throat, “unless it infringes on—” “Let me go,” I protest, trying to yank my left arm free. It’s no good. “You know I didn’t do it—” “—infringes on your safety or rights as a citizen of the Blessed Empire of Almandy.” I keep squirming as my anger calcifies. He was supposed to be better than this. “I’m about to infringe this knife into your d—” “You are entitled to legal consultation with a qualified third party,” Emeric plows on, a line deepening in his brow. “You may inquire which crimes you are being charged with, but a prefect may choose to withhold any further information that jeopardizes their case.” He pauses and makes the face of a man procedurally obligated to make an enormous mistake. “Do you,” he grits out, “have any questions at this time?” “Just one.” “Of course,” he mutters. I flick my eyes to his right. “Have you ever considered changing where you keep your manacles?” Emeric’s grip slackens as he looks down, but it’s too late. Somewhere amid my tactical thrashing, his right hand’s wound up cuffed to the window railing. I finally wrench free and toss his knife over my shoulder. It hits the bell with a resounding clang. “I didn’t do it,” I repeat over his flurry of cursing, headed for the ladder. “We both know it. Walk away.” He doesn’t respond. Just as I get the trapdoor to the roof open, there’s a silver flash and a crack—damn him, his hands are free— I hoist myself up onto the belfry roof and hurry over to the parapet, scouring for a way out. I could climb down. No, I could try to climb down, and I’m sure once Emeric’s done laughing at me, he can walk down the stairs like a reasonable person and arrest me when I reach the bottom. The Pfennigeist is about to be caught. Again. Something about that—snags. I remember Benno laughing this morning, The locals say the Pfennigeist can vanish in plain sight. And I’d sneered back, Don’t believe everything you hear. I know Low Gods are what people believe of them. That enough people believed my lie of the Scarlet Maiden last May to raise my mother’s ghost to a god. But the Penny Phantom is just a name. Right? “Stop where you are.” Emeric’s rigid command strikes over the stones. Then, for a moment, terribly human bitterness breaks through: “You don’t have to make this worse for yourself.” “It’s a talent,” I say flatly, not turning around. “More of a calling, really.” My mind is racing. It’s too late to try invisibility, and there are no locks for me to break. That leaves one way out for the Pfennigeist. I think. I hope. I climb up onto the parapet as the bell begins tolling the hour. “Get down right now.” Emeric’s voice rises over the thunderous knelling. “That’s an order.” I give him a look of pure disdain. I’d feel bad if he was even a little afraid, but in his face, there’s only contempt. “Give up, Vanja. There’s no escape.” I glance down and immediately regret it. “A worse person might point out that historically, there have in fact been several escapes.” “This is your final warning.” He sounds so harsh I barely recognize the words as his. I ignore him and reach for a pocket. From the corner of my eye, I see his lips moving, fingers blurring as they trace bright runes into a wheel. There’s a strange, almost clunking noise, then—silence. The bells. They’ve stopped mid-ring. No, everything has stopped. The world is eerily silent, just him and me and the razor grin of the barest crescent moon above. Emeric’s breathing harder than when he was chasing me up the stairs, one hand clenched around silvery wrinkles in the air as if digging into the fabric of reality itself. He starts to stagger closer, sweat beading his face. It’s time. He’s stopped time itself to catch me. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have stuck. Emeric’s eyes widen as I pull a vial from my pocket, its black cork marking it for the prefect order’s strongest witch-ash. Between his knife and his manacles, I’m not surprised he missed me nicking this also. (Doesn’t help that it, too, was in the same spot.) I bite the cork out and spit it at his feet. Then I lift the vial in an insolent toast. “To your health and honor, Prefect Conrad.” I tell myself: I am the Pfennigeist. I empty the vial down my throat, eyes on the stars. And I let myself fall. Excerpted from Holy Terrors, copyright © 2025 by Margaret Owen. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Holy Terrors</i> by Margaret Owen appeared first on Reactor.