Date: 2022-12-19 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Urban Fantasy; Paranormal; Fantasy
Description: In a return to her urban fantasy roots, author Rachel Vincent introduces a world full of action, humor, and passion, in which one heavily armed and acerbic woman must ultimately choose between herself, her love, and the fate of the entire world… Alexandra Walker is bitter, bored, foul-mouthed, and much older than she looks. A self-styled “retrieval specialist,” she is at your disposal to reclaim whatever—or whoever—you’ve lost, and while her methods are rough around the edges, her reputation is unrivaled. Which is why an arrogant, powerful new client (species: unknown) is offering her somethin

LIVING DEAD GIRL

RACHEL VINCENT

Text copyright © 2022 by Rachel Vincent.

Cover art copyright © 2022 by Gaslight Graphics

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locals is entirely coincidental.

Rachelvincent.com

CONTENTS

How one of Rachel’s oldest books became her newest…

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Epilogue

Exclusive Excerpt!

Preview of the new Shifters world novel

Also by Rachel Vincent

About the Author

Dear Reader,

I wrote Living Dead Girl in 2006. Sixteen years ago, as I’m currently writing this. That was the year I sold Stray, which makes Living Dead Girl among the very oldest of my novels.

Around 2008, my agent at the time submitted it to my publisher at the time, and we got an offer. I wasn’t happy with the offer, and if memory serves, I’d just launched the Soul Screamers series, and I felt no real pressure to sell Living Dead Girl. So I withdrew the submission and happily focused on the Shifters and Soul Screamers series.

Over the next decade-plus, as I sold twenty more novels to three more publishers, I pulled out this old manuscript several times, wondering if I had the time or inclination to rework it. As much as I still loved the characters and the story, it never seemed to be the right moment. Until now.

A lot has changed since 2006. For urban fantasy. For our world and culture. For me as an author. I’m an entirely different writer now than I was in 2006. I’m better now, in most ways. Yet as I read through the manuscript this time, I found something fun and entertaining in my voice, raw though it was back then. Obviously, many elements of the novel needed to be rewritten and updated, which I’ve done. But the core of the story and of Lex’s character remains. I hope you find a place in your heart for this foul-mouthed, anti-social, grumpy reluctant hero archetype, who was all the rage in 2006, and might just feel old-school urban fantasy nostalgic these days.

If you like her and you want more, please leave a review and let me know!

Thanks again for reading!

Rachel Vincent

Rachelvincent.com

ONE

There are times I think fate is out for a taste of my blood. Then there are times I damn well know it. The night of the Murphy job was one of the latter.

Normally, I don’t do live extractions. They’re too complicated, and clients tend to get cross if their merchandise isn’t returned in mint condition. But I had my eye on a sweet set of high-performance night vision goggles—complete with hands-free headgear or optional helmet mount—and the fee from this one job would pay for them outright, including rush delivery.

Every girl has her weaknesses, and hi-tech toys are one of mine. Breaking skulls is another, and the chance to combine my two loves proved more than enough motivation for me to break my own rule. Which is how I wound up behind the wheel of Rusty, my ‘68 GTO, slung sideways across the dead-end road in front of Memphis Custom Plastics. At two in the morning.

Aware that I was probably being watched, I glanced around the car as if I were disoriented, then let my head flop forward to rest on the steering wheel. With a groan, I sat up and grabbed a brown-bagged bottle of Jose Cuervo from the front passenger seat. I twisted the top off and took a swig, swishing the alcohol in my mouth for good measure. When the tingling in my tongue progressed from pins-and-needles to mouth-aflame, I swallowed and took one more hit for the hell of it. I was gonna need it.

“Easy money my ass,” I mumbled, staring at the moonlit metal building as I slid the bottle back into its bag.

Crickets chirruped as I opened the car door, watching the factory for any sign of movement through the two lit windows. I swung my legs out onto the road, “remembered” I was barefoot, then glanced around the car in faux confusion before spotting my sandals on the floorboard and slipping them clumsily onto my feet.

Leaning forward, I jerked on the release lever beneath the dash, and the hood bounced up two inches before catching on the manual stop.

As I stood, I glanced longingly at the passenger seat. My Ruger and my ass-kicking boots lay on the torn upholstery, where they would have to remain to keep from ruining my disguise, consisting mostly of absurdly high heeled sandals and a sheer white tank top. Those, plus the tequila breath, transformed me from Lex Walker, freelance retrieval specialist, to Lexie Hotpants, apparently intoxicated bimbo.

Unfortunately, the guise was both tried and true.

Gravel crunched beneath my heels as I stepped back and slammed the door. Wobbling intentionally, I steadied myself with one hand on the roof of the car, using the opportunity to sneak another peek at the factory. A dark silhouette appeared behind the glass door, no doubt drawn by the squeal of tires as I’d “lost” control of my car moments earlier.

Someone was coming out to investigate. Perfect.

I’d taken three steps toward the front of the car when a growl rumbled across my skin, making my hair stand up. Creepy-ass dog, I thought, resisting the urge to rub my arms.

But then the growl seemed to roll across the sky, as well as across my flesh. That wasn’t a guard dog. Was it…thunder? There was no rain in the forecast, and when I’d scouted the place half an hour earlier, the sky had been clear, the three-quarter moon shining among a bright panorama of stars.

None of which were still visible, I realized as I stared at the black expanse above. Lightening flashed, briefly illuminating a thick covering of clouds, and when a second rumble of thunder followed, I was convinced. It was going to rain.

No, it was going to pour.

Wonderful. And me without my bra. The assholes squatting in what remained of Memphis Custom Plastics were going to get more of a peep show than I’d intended.

I stumbled my way to the front of the car, balanced on the narrow line between “nice touch” and “overkill.” Bending at the hips to tempt silhouette-man into view, I felt beneath the hood, pretending to have trouble finding the release mechanism.

Based on the client’s information, I knew only that three goons of indeterminate species were holding one Cari Murphy, age nineteen, in the unused plastics plant. The factory had closed three years earlier, yet it was obviously occupied. And dressed up like a fucking fortress. Flood lights at the corners, security cameras over the doors, a motion sensitive barb-topped chain link fence, and some G.I. Jerk-off patrolling the perimeter every quarter of an hour—a rent-a-goon if I’d ever seen one. The cocky stance, black jeans, and too-big-not-to-notice gun were dead giveaways.

On top of all that, there was at least one guard dog, whose deep growl—not to be confused with actual thunder—raised goose bumps all over my arms. The very fact that I could hear him from outside the building put me on edge. That shouldn’t have been possible.

Nothing about this job made sense. And since the client hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with the details—a fact I was willing to overlook because she’d paid half upfront, in cash—I was going in without several vital details. Like the goons’ species. All I really knew was that the opposition was male. But with any luck, that would be plenty.

Experience had taught me that a plunging neckline can be just as dangerous as a gun. All I had to do was load my ammo.

As I pretended to search for the hood release, my backside aimed at the factory, I reached into my halter through the neckline and scooped up first my left breast, then my right, settling them into place a little higher in the snug confines of my top, so the entire upper curve of each was visible. Voila! Instant cleavage.

Tequila breath and a tight white shirt would make it much easier for the goons in question to trust their eyes, rather than whatever gut instincts they may possess, and the late-October chill, not to mention the impending rain, guaranteed that they would have a good view at what lay beneath the thin cotton.

When the heavy factory door creaked open behind me, I thumbed the release lever. The hood squealed as it rose, my gaze following its ascent as if I were mesmerized by the gravity-defying magic. In reality, I was soothed by the familiar scent of engine oil.

“This is private property, sweetheart,” a deep voice croaked from behind me, accompanied by the vicious barking of the aforementioned guard dog.

I whirled around, eyes wide with surprise, and was careful to sway on my dangerously high heels. In the doorway, backlit by dim yellow light, stood the toy soldier I’d seen patrolling the perimeter fifteen minutes earlier. And blending into the outline of one shadowy hand was the prominent silhouette of his gun. A very big gun.

With my nine mil still on my passenger’s seat, all I had was the blade strapped to my left shin, which would be impossible for him to see at a glance.

Smiling vacantly, I ran my fingers through straight, pale blond strands, mussing them instead of smoothing them out, for that drunk-and-available look guys love. My gaze raked over Rent-a-goon and I licked my lips, hiding my professional assessment of him behind a mask of eager helplessness.

Though very stocky, downright bulging with muscles in some places, Rent-a-goon’s head cleared the doorframe by more than two feet. Which put him around five feet even—below average height for a human man, but just about right for a goblin.

It could have been worse. Goblins have little trouble blending in with the general populace, though they live for roughly half again the typical human lifespan. On average, they’re as stubborn as they are tough, but while they’re damn hard to kill, they have no extra-physical abilities or special powers. No Netherworld oomph behind their punches. With a goblin, what you see is what you get.

Unlike Lexie Hotpants.

“What do you want?” he barked, stomping down the steps and across the empty lot toward me. Rent-a-goon kept his focus trained on mine, even with his dog growling relentlessly from inside the building. The sound wasn’t loud, but neither was it soft. It was just…near. Eerily, discomfortingly close, as if it were inside my head, rather than separated from me by fifty feet of parking lot. And a fucking building.

I hate dogs. They seem to know instinctively that something about me is…different. And they’re typically eager to explore that difference—with their teeth.

Shuddering at the very thought, I forced my attention back to the goblin. “You know anything about cars?” I cocked my head to the side, which was supposed to look disarmingly cute, but it also gave me a better look at the motion sensitive wire threaded through the chain link fence.

I recognized the model. Intrepid. The MicroPoint cable would detect any fence disturbance—including an attempt to disable the alarm—and locate it to within a few feet. There was no way I was getting over that fence unnoticed. But Rent-a-goon just might be willing to disarm it for me…

“Who are you?” the goblin asked. Either he wasn’t falling for my act, or he wasn’t into women. Shit. There wasn’t much I could do about his orientation, and the only way to tell for sure was to pull out all the stops.

“I’m Lexie,” I said, forcing a giggle from my disinclined throat. If that didn’t work, plan B required drunk Lexie Hotpants to vomit on his feet, distracting the goblin long enough for me to go for my dagger. Or for his gun.

“I think there’s somethin’ wrong with my car,” I added, stumbling closer to the fence. “Could ‘ja maybe take a look?” I took one more fairly stable step, and a bright, motion-activated light flared to life, blinding me from somewhere above the guard booth adjacent to the gate.

Rent-a-goon came closer, stopping beside the guard booth to look up at me. “I don’t—”

“Hey, is that a gun?” I propped one hand above my eyes, shielding them from the security light as I stopped a foot from the fence, as if I didn’t know about the sensor. “What’s that thing for? You gonna shoot me?”

Grinning like an idiot, I leaned forward, as though for a better look at his gun. But really, I was giving him a better look at my guns. Unfortunately, one nearly came un-holstered. Oops. Damn V-neck.

Even from ten feet away, I saw his expression relax. In my experience, straight men are gullible, be they goblin, imp, or human. One look at a nearly-bare boob and they let down their guard, as if a woman can’t possibly support the burden of her breasts and her brain at once. Let alone a weapon.

Damn, I wish I hadn’t left my gun behind. But it was probably a good thing I had. Otherwise, I might have put a bullet through his throat for being such a moron. Then I’d have to kick the shit out of his corpse for making me break my own rule. Company policy, if you will. No killing—not even the bad guys—unless I’m in eminent danger.

Or being highly paid for my services.

Hey, a girl’s gotta eat.

Rent-a-goon smiled and stepped closer to the gate. He clicked the safety on his pistol and cradled it in one wide palm for my inspection through the chain link. “Don’t worry. It won’t go off. You wanna see?” His small brown eyes glittered up at me from beneath bushy black brows.

Hell yeah, I wanted to see his gun. I happened to have left mine in my other pants.

“Is it heavy?” I peered at the clunky black pistol and stepped forward so that my chest brushed the fence. Accidentally on purpose.

A high-pitched, squealing alarm sounded, seemingly from every direction at once. Jumping back, I whipped my head around, searching for the source of the unbearable noise. No need to pretend; the racket was truly obnoxious.

Before I could find the speaker, the sound stopped, all but the persistent ringing in my head. My focus snapped to Rent-a-goon, who now held a key-chain-sized remote in his left hand, his thumb still hovering over the largest of three buttons.

“Sorry about that.” He smiled patronizingly up at me and shoved the remote into his pocket, then pulled open one half of the gate, conveniently admitting me into his compound. “It’s to keep kids from throwing rocks through the windows.”

Suuure it was. The expensive, motion sensitive, barbed wire topped fence was to keep teenagers away from a supposedly abandoned plastics plant. Totally believable.

I was stepping through the gate, my mouth already open to answer in character—Lexie Hotpants would believe whatever she was told—when the deluge struck, drenching us both instantly. The rain came hard and fast, and almost painfully cold, in contrast to a thus-far mild Memphis fall. The sudden torrent took me by surprise, and it shocked the hell out of Rent-a-goon, who took his focus from me to frown up at the clouds. His gun still lay flat on his open right palm.

I snatched the pistol and thumbed off the safety before he even realized I’d moved. Goblins are known throughout the Netherworld for their physical strength and stamina. But quick on the draw, they are not.

Rent-a-goon’s chin dropped. His gaze found the gun in my grip. His gun. For an instant, I could see him wrestling with the obvious choice: lurch out of the way to avoid getting shot or try to take the gun. If I really were a helpless, drenched woman in need of mechanical help, taking the gun would make sense. But if he had any gut instinct at all, he’d know better than to—

He went for the gun, wide mouth curling into a snarl.

I pulled my left arm back, a bully playing keep-away from a shorter child and smashed the butt of his own pistol into Rent-a-goon’s right temple with a horrible, hollow thunk sound.

The goblin swayed on his feet. He blinked and shook his head to clear it, slinging water from his hair. Yet he remained stubbornly upright, though that same blow would have dropped most human men.

Fucking thick-skulled goblins.

He lunged for me, and I danced backward, cursing my three-inch heels. Thick fingers closed around my right wrist and Rent-a-goon jerked me forward with a sudden twisting motion. Pain shot through my arm.

I aimed at his right thigh as he pulled his fist back. I squeezed the trigger. His fist slammed into my left cheekbone. Blood poured from the goblin’s leg. Profanity poured from my mouth. We hit the ground at the same time, puddled rainwater soaking through my jeans instantly.

I made it up first, already scrambling out of reach, but Rent-a-goon stood too, steady in his sensible work boots, though he favored his injured leg. He spat something in a guttural tongue, and while I didn’t speak goblin, I was pretty sure I’d just shouted several of the very same words in English.

Rent-a-goon limped toward me, fists clenched. His eyes gleamed in fury, rain dripping from thick, dark brows. I fired into his left thigh this time.

He went down again, harder than before. His teeth cracked together as his hip hit the pavement, his left leg somehow twisted beneath his torso. Rent-a-goon wasn’t out, but he was down. For quite a while, hopefully. If the others went down that easily, I’d be home in time to stream an episode of “I Love the 80s” before bed.

“It’s nothing personal.” I smiled down at him as I shoved soaked strands of hair back from my face and kicked off my sandals. The concrete was rough and cold against my bare feet, and rain pelted me in near-freezing gusts. “You took the wrong job this time. Happens to us all eventually.”

The goblin’s furious guttural babble followed me as I backed away from him, headed for the building. But then a familiar deep growl crawled across my skin, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. I turned slowly, already aiming the goblin’s gun because I knew what I’d find.

Sure enough, halfway between me and the warehouse door stood a seriously scary guard dog, tall like a greyhound, yet thick like a Rottweiler. Some trick of the lighting made him appear black in places and a deep midnight red in others. And somehow his coat looked short and curly one moment, and long and straight the next. The only thing I was sure of was his size. Which was big. Damn big. More like a small horse than a large dog. But that growl was definitely canine.

Cujo had nothing on this beast.

His eyes were bright spots of crimson, like the pupils in a bad photograph. They stared straight into mine, and I was suddenly certain there was true intelligence behind those red orbs. Cunning, and actual anger.

Sweat formed on my palms despite the cold and the rain.

Rent-a-goon shifted on the concrete behind me, and I glanced at him over my shoulder, my new gun still trained on the dog. When I turned to face Cujo again, I found him hurtling toward me across the parking lot, glistening saliva dripping from viciously pointed, needle-sharp teeth. Upright ears lay flat against his head. But he was no longer growling. The dog raced toward me in utter silence, a predator on the prowl.

As I brought my free hand up to steady my aim, lightning flashed across the night sky, momentarily illuminating the warehouse, the parking lot, and the surrounding empty fields. In that flash, Cujo’s fur disappeared. Completely. His pelt and skin were there one instant, gone the next, exposing a bloody configuration of bare muscles, stretching and contracting with every movement he made.

Holy shit. Forget the gun. I should have brought a fucking exorcist.

TWO

“What is that thing?” I demanded, sighting down the barrel of the gun.

“Orthus, faas!” the goblin shouted, and I recognized the German command for a dog to attack.

Fuck! My breath stuck in my throat. My heart tried to claw its way out of my body.

Blinking, I rubbed rain from my eyes so I could aim, and when I looked again, the dog was back to normal—except that he was still snarling and racing toward me, massive paws splashing in tiny puddles, obviously hell-bent on my destruction.

My pulse thundered in my ears. The closer the dog came to the flood of light around the fallen goblin, the redder his drenched coat appeared. But at least he had fur now.

Seconds from impact, I spread my bare feet for better balance. But as I began to squeeze the trigger, aiming for the center of Cujo’s—no, Orthus’s—forehead, the dog started to slow.

I hesitated with the trigger halfway depressed as an imaginary devil danced gleefully on my shoulder, urging me to fire. But I couldn’t do it. In the fierce glare of the security light, I’d noticed an unmistakable change in the dog. A shift in his expression and his gait. As I watched, pistol still aimed and ready, he slowed to a stop ten feet away, blinking at me warily.

“What are you waiting for, you stupid mutt?” Rent-a-goon shouted. At the edge of my vision—I wasn’t about to take my focus from the dog—the goblin pulled himself across the wet concrete by both hands. “Rip her fucking throat out!”

Orthus glanced at him briefly, as if the interruption wasn’t really worth his attention, then his gaze shifted back to me. His tail twitched, and I almost pulled the trigger, startled by the sudden movement. But then the dog sat back on his hindquarters.

Lightning flashed again, and in the sudden, brief brightness, Orthus was instantly furless again, flashing red eyes rolling in bare, exposed sockets.

I’d seen a lot of strange things in my time on Earth—things that would have sent most humans screaming into the bowels of the nearest sanitarium—but I’d never seen anything like the creature in front of me. At his joints, impossibly white bone showed through thick ropes of bare, bloody muscle. His toes ended in sharp black claws, which looked grotesquely long with no fur to cover the portion not usually seen. But the worst by far was his face. Or rather, his skull, because his face was entirely gone. No flesh, no eyelids, and no soft black nose. With no features, there was nothing to even hint at an expression. Nothing but clean white bone and brutally sharp, curved teeth.

Shit. I hadn’t imagined it.

Light faded from the sky, and once again the dog was clad in odd reddish fur. Raindrops splattered on my face as Orthus and I stared at each other over the barrel of the confiscated gun. Weirdly, he seemed as confused and unsettled by me as I was by him.

“Faas, Orthus!” Rent-a-goon yelled, and if I’d had another gun, I’d have shot him again, just to shut him up. But I wasn’t willing to take my only weapon off the actual threat to silence a mere aggravation.

Yet instead of attacking, Orthus cocked his head to one side, apparently assessing me. Then he stood and took an odd little side shuffle to his left, clearing a path for me. A path leading directly to the front door of the warehouse.

Huh. He was going to let me pass. But I knew better than to leave a strange dog at my back. Especially one which may or may not have fur. And scary red eyes. And a tendency to growl at me from within my own head.

Seeming to sense my reluctance, Orthus shook rain from his fur and whined again, blinking those strange eyes at me. Then he turned and took several steps toward the warehouse before pausing to glance at me over his shoulder.

If it weren’t completely ludicrous, I’d have sworn he was trying to escort me into the building, a demonic Lassie coming to the rescue. But that couldn’t be right. Why on earth would the dog lead me into the factory where I planned to free the prisoner he was supposed to be guarding? And where I’d probably shoot any of his remaining goblin masters.

Surely I was mistaking the creepy dog’s even creepier behavior for actual intent. He couldn’t have been trying to help me. Could he?

Since I had no problem turning my back on the crippled goblin—if he’d had another gun, he’d already have used it—I followed Orthus toward the plant, my bare feet splashing through shallow, glacial puddles, my gun still aimed at the back of the dog’s skull. Just in case.

When he climbed the steps, I hung back to watch. Goblins never worked alone. Ever. Everyone who knew they existed knew that. And while they wouldn’t hesitate to snack on one of their own victims—or on a fallen comrade, if the chance presented itself—goblins would never desert a still-living member of their own species. So where were Rent-a-goon’s friends? Surely they’d heard the alarm. And the gunfire.

They had to be inside, with Cari Murphy. Waiting for me.

Orthus was leading me into a trap, and I had no choice but to follow him, even knowing what would likely happen once I stepped over the threshold. Because abandoning the target was not an option. Not on a live retrieval.

I glanced between the treads at the space beneath the stairs to make sure no one was hiding there, waiting to grab my ankle. Dismemberment by goblin was pretty high on my list of things never to experience. Right up there with being bitten to death and skinned alive. Either of which a goblin might do, if given enough time and motivation.

The hollow under the steps was empty, so I climbed them with my gun trained on the huge room ahead. The lights were on, but more than half of the florescent fixtures were broken, and those still functioning didn’t come close to illuminating the interior to my satisfaction.

At the threshold, I studied the huge space, which was dominated by four long rows of injection molding machines, each identical, from what I could see. Between the middle two rows, the center aisle was defined by a set of straight yellow lines painted directly onto the concrete floor, like a single-lane pedestrian roadway.

A series of doors ran along the right-hand wall. The two closest were marked as restrooms, and judging from the smell emanating from that section of the factory, the goblins had managed to clog at least one toilet. Past the restrooms, two more closed doors were labeled as storage, and beyond that were the three offices, whose windows I’d noticed from outside. The third office door was closed, the gap beneath it dark. But the first two were open, light from within painting an identical set of elongated rectangles on the floor.

Bingo.

Orthus barked once, from halfway up the center aisle. I think he wanted me to hurry. Apparently, Timmy wasn’t going to last much longer at the bottom of that well…

Glancing quickly in either direction, I stepped into the building, my stolen gun aimed at chest height in front of me. The main space appeared to be unoccupied, but there were literally hundreds of places a full-grown human could hide, and even more places to conceal a five-foot-nothin’ goblin. I couldn’t help but expect an army of sawed-off Rambos to converge on me from behind the machines, and it didn’t take me long to realize that following Orthus down the center walkway, where I could be attacked from virtually any direction, would not be the wisest course of action.

Instead, I veered to my right, edging along the front wall of the factory to keep the room—and anyone who might be hiding—in front of me. I turned the corner onto the right-hand wall and glanced down each row of machines as I passed, but the aisles were empty. When I came to the ladies’ room, I hesitated. In order to clear it, I’d have to swing my focus—and my gun—away from the rest of the factory.

In situations like that, I sometimes wished I had a real partner. Rusty had never let me down, but no car, no matter how fast and reliable, could cover the room at large while I checked the john.

My free hand on the bathroom doorknob, I took one more glance around the factory and nearly jumped out of my skin to find Orthus less than five feet away. He blinked, red-tinted eyes flashing as they reflected light from the few still-functioning fluorescents high overhead.

I frowned, and he cocked his head at me. Then he shook it slowly back and forth. Was he scolding me? Or telling me there was no one behind door number one?

Or was I losing my mind?

Orthus took up a position directly in front of the bathroom door, facing the rest of the room with his back to me.

He was covering me. The fucking dog was offering to watch my back.

When I hesitated—this was too damn weird—Orthus glanced back at me and barked sharply, clearly telling me to get on with it. So I pulled open the bathroom door, my gun already trained on the space inside.

The restroom was empty. Incredibly foul, but completely empty, except for a grungy sink, a filthy toilet, and an empty toilet paper roll. I didn’t want to know what they’d been using since the tissue ran out.

Disgusted, I closed the door and moved on to the men’s room. Again, Orthus stood watch. If the dog was out to get me, he was certainly doing it on his own schedule.

The second bathroom and the first storage closet were both unoccupied, but as I approached the second storage closet, Orthus began to snarl at the closed door, his lips pulled back to reveal a mouthful of black gums and frighteningly sharp teeth.

My heart thumping, I inhaled deeply and pushed wet hair away from my face. Orthus’s snarl intensified, somehow buzzing inside my head. I raised the gun to what I hoped would be chest height on a goblin. Then I kicked the door open.

The doorknob slammed into the wall inside, revealing a second goblin, similar enough in appearance to the first Rent-a-goon to convince me that they were related. Maybe brothers. But that’s all I had time to think before he lunged at me, thick hands open and grasping. I squeezed the trigger, and he threw himself to his right. A small hole appeared near the edge of his left sleeve. Blood filled the space, pouring from the wound in his bicep, but he never slowed. Nor did he reach for the gun still holstered on his right hip.

Apparently, I wasn’t enough of a threat to warrant shooting.

Behind me Orthus growled sharply. I had a moment to wonder which of us he was going to bite, then he sprinted into the factory at my back, barking furiously.

I squeezed the trigger again as the goblin’s hand closed around my right arm. His free fist hit my gun hand, and my shot went high and wide. He twisted my wrist. Pain shot through my arm. The gun clanked to the concrete floor and slid out of sight.

Shit! Hand-to-hand combat with a goblin was not a good idea. But hey, if I survived, the bragging rights would be good for free drinks at the Djinn Fizz for at least the next decade.

Behind me, the growling stopped, and a third goblin yelped in pain, his voice deep and gravelly. “It’s me, you stupid fucking mutt. Let go!” Orthus growled some more, and the goblin cursed in his native language. “Hagen, help me out here.”

The goblin I was fighting—Hagen, apparently—jerked me forward, his free hand already curling into a fist. “I’m a little busy,” he grunted, pulling harder when I resisted.

I skidded across the floor, fighting to remain upright without skinning the flesh from the bottoms of my bare feet on the concrete. The goblin pinned me against his chest. Foul breath wafted toward my face, and I shoved my left leg up as hard as I could.

My knee smashed into his crotch. Hagen released me to clutch his groin with both hands. Hunching in pain, he howled up at me, dark eyes sparking with fury. “You’re gonna pay for that, bitch,” he growled, twisting despite what must have been great pain to keep his gun out of my reach.

“Put it on my tab.” I stepped back as I glanced around for the gun I’d dropped. “’Cause I’m not done.”

Where the hell is that pistol?

From the nearest office came the sound of something scraping the floor. Cari Murphy. It had to be. By the time I’d searched under the two nearest machines for my dropped pistol, Hagen had recovered enough to stand. Which was all the advantage a goblin typically needed to kick my ass into the next millennium.

“Damn dog’s gone crazy!” the third goon shouted from behind me, his panicked exclamation accompanied by Orthus’s persistent growling.

“Handle it, Dirk,” Hagen said, his voice low and calm as he eyed me from three feet away, blood still dripping down his left arm. His hand hovered over the gun on his right hip. “This little lady and I have a score to settle.”

Little lady? I towered over him by a good five inches.

“Well, make it fast. She’s already shot Berg and bewitched the damn dog. Fucking mage.”

Hagen sniffed in contempt, still holding my gaze as we faced off like wrestlers. “She’s no mage; she’s human. Stupid, but definitely just human.”

While I took issue with his assessment of my mental competence, he got my species right. Mostly. “I’ll really be impressed if you can guess my age and weight,” I said, circling slowly to bring his brother into sight.

Hagen snarled, moving in a mirror image of my motion.

“Fine,” Dirk snapped, ignoring me completely. “Get rid of the human, and come get your damn dog off my ass.”

By then I could see them, out of the corner of my eye. Orthus stood several feet in front of his prey, facing away from me with his tail swishing slowly. He was keeping Dirk at bay, apparently to give me a fair fight against Hagen. As if a fair fight was possible between an armed goblin and an unarmed human.

Of course, I wasn’t entirely unarmed. Or human. But the goblins hadn’t figured that out.

Hagen pulled his gun from its holster and aimed at my stomach, rather than my head or my heart. He wasn’t planning to kill me outright; he’d make me suffer first. Lovely.

“Face the wall and put your hands behind your back,” he said.

“What the hell are you doing?” Dirk demanded from my left. He started to step forward, but Orthus cut him off with a vicious growl and a sharp snap of powerful jaws. Dirk backed off with his hands in the air, the universal sign for I-mean-you-no-harm. “Quit fucking around and shoot her.”

“We’re going to have a little fun first.” Hagen leered at my practically transparent halter.

He was half-right; I was gonna have a little fun. Just as soon as I relieved him of his gun.

“Up against the wall,” Hagen repeated.

Instead, I dropped into a squat and tugged up on the cuff of my left pants leg.

“She’s got a blade!” Dirk shouted from across the room. Hagen grabbed my right arm and pulled me up, and as I rose, I slid the dagger from its sheath. Smiling down at him, I buried it up to the hilt his stomach.

Hagen’s face went pale. He hunched over my hand, eyes already glazing over in pain. I twisted the knife, and he groaned. Blood poured over my hand and the silver knife handle.

The goblin raised his gun slowly, weakly. I took it with my free hand and thumbed on the safety before sliding it between the base of my spine and the waistband of my jeans. Hagen slumped against me, one bloody hand gripping my shoulder while the other hung loose at his side. He shuddered when I pulled the knife from his stomach.

I shoved him back, and he crashed to the concrete floor, blood pouring from the wound.

“Hagen!” Dirk lurched forward, and this time Orthus’s growl did nothing to stop him. But his bite worked like a charm.

Orthus sank his teeth into the goblin’s left butt cheek and planted all four of his huge paws firmly on the floor. Dirk could either freeze where he stood and keep his ass intact, or he could try to help his brother, at the expense of a large chunk of his own flesh and muscle.

It didn’t take him long to choose himself, which made sense, considering that a single stab wound to the gut probably wasn’t enough to kill his brother. Yes, by twisting the blade, I’d guaranteed that Hagen’s recovery time would be long and painful, but I could easily have killed him with his own gun.

Did I get so much as a thank you for my act of mercy? No. I did not. Where was the gratitude?

“Thanks, Orthus.” I had no clue why the dog was helping me. “Hold him there, will you?”

I’ll be damned if he didn’t nod at me, Dirk’s ass still clenched firmly between his teeth. The goblin’s scream—music to my ears—followed me into the first of the two offices.

In the middle of the small, barebones workspace, strapped to a cheap wooden armchair with what must have been acres of duct tape, sat a delicate-looking, apparently human young woman, her brilliant blue-green eyes wide with what could have been either shock or terror. Or both. Her mouth was covered with a short strip of gray tape, and long, sandy blond waves hung from a center part to flow over both shoulders down to the crooks of her elbows, draping a petite, willowy build.

The girl’s brows drew low in confusion, then arched as her gaze took in my blood-stained white tank and soaked jeans. Evidently, she’d expected the goblins to win our little scuffle.

I got that reaction a lot.

“Cari Murphy?” I asked, still several feet from my target. I’d hate to accidentally rescue the wrong victim.

Don’t laugh; that’s actually happened, and it was a real bitch to explain to the client.

The girl nodded, dark blond waves falling forward to cover half of her face.

“I’m Lex Walker.” I scanned her quickly to assess her condition, taking in a gauzy, sea-foam-green blouse with a ripped shoulder seam and a scuffed-looking pair of snug jeans. And yards and yards of duct tape.

Overkill? Yes.

Were they afraid this wisp of a girl was going to rip through her bindings like the Incredible Hulk shreds polyester? Not likely.

“I’ve been hired to rescue you.” Miraculously, she looked unharmed, other than a scratch on her shoulder, peeking through the torn seam. “Are there just the three goblins?” I asked, and Cari’s head bobbed in a quick, jerky motion. I forced a smile to set her at ease. “Let’s peel off all that tape and get the hell out of here before Orthus loses his grip on the third Stooge.”

She nodded again, muttering something urgent behind the adhesive gag.

I stepped toward her, and her eyes widened in a resurgence of horror. Which was when I realized I still held the bloody dagger in one gore-smeared hand. “Relax, it’s for the tape.”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to slide the double-edged blade between flesh and tape without severing something important from the victim. Clients tend to frown on that.

Hurried along by Orthus’s insistent, muffled growling, I wiped the dagger on my pants and slid it back into its sheath. I searched the drawers of a dusty metal desk, where I found a small pair of utility shears alongside what remained of the roll of tape.

Thank goodness. Plan B involved dragging her out of the warehouse still strapped to the damn chair.

I freed Cari’s right hand first, so she could help me with the rest of the job. She peeled tape from her mouth.

“Lex Walker?” she said, shaking the strip of tape from her fingers. Her voice was soft and hoarse, as if she hadn’t had anything to drink in days. “You’re Lex Walker?”

I knelt at her back to work on the tape around her waist. “Yep, that’s me.” After more than one hundred successful retrievals, I was finally getting the recognition I deserved. ‘Bout damn time.

Peeling tape from the side of her blouse, I glanced up at Cari, trying to remember a time when I was that young and naïve, or that trusting of someone I’d never met. But there had never been such a time in my life. Not that I could remember, anyway.

Naiveté is a curse, hope a terminal disease. If there’s a cure for either, death certainly fits the bill.

And I’d died at least two hundred years before Cari’s parents even met.

THREE

Cari stared at me, bending over her own knee to peel away a piece of tape binding her ankle to the chair leg.

I plucked a strip free from three of my fingers. “What?”

“You’re not…what I was expecting.”

She’d probably thought I’d be bigger and scarier, with a back-hump, a girl-stache, and a uni-brow. I got that a lot. It was getting old. Really old.

Irked, I ripped a strip of tape from her arm a little rougher than was strictly necessary. “Call me Lex.” I shuffled to my left to cut away the last bit connecting her leg to the chair. “And you’re exactly what I was expecting.” Small, frail, and helpless. Typical damsel in distress. All she needed to round out the image was a cone-shaped hat and a tall stone tower.

What I didn’t say was that anyone who’d spent more than an hour with the three stooges out there should know better than to judge a book by its cover. Size isn’t everything; the goblins themselves were proof of that.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded, and my opinion of her improved a little with the knowledge that she had some self-respect and wasn’t afraid to defend it. She stood, the top of her head barely reaching my nose, and stepped quickly away from the tape-covered chair, as if it might snatch her back without warning.

“Precisely what I said. Up for a little poetic justice?” I added before she could argue.

“What’d you have in mind?” Her gaze traveled briefly through the doorway to the barely-lit factory beyond.

I held up the gray tape. “Well, Larry and Curly are down for the count, but if we hurry, Orthus may still have Mo by the back of the pants.”

“I don’t think those are their names.” Surprise flickered behind Cari’s blue-green eyes as she processed the rest of what I’d said. “The hound? The hound has one of them by the seat of the pants?”

I nodded and tossed her the roll of tape.

She caught it in one-handed, still staring at me. “It’s their hound.”

“I don’t think that’s anyone’s dog.” I hauled the wooden armchair to the office door, pulling the pistol from my waistband on the way. She’d said there were only three bad guys, but victims sometimes got things wrong. Especially when they were tired and in shock. “I’d love to know where they found such a scary-ass mutt in the first place.”

Cari pushed past me into the factory proper, and her eyes widened when she saw that Orthus did indeed have a goblin by the seat of its pants. “Well, there’s the obvious answer,” she said her elbow brushing my arm. My gun arm. I dropped the chair and stepped away from her. The day I let something get in the way of my aim would be the day I died. Again.

“There’s an obvious answer?” I frowned down at her, pleasantly aware of the three or so inches I had over her, even while I was barefoot. And she was still taller than the tallest of the goblins.

“I mean…” Cari’s eyes narrowed as they found Hagen, where he lay in a widening pool of his own blood. “Where else would you get a hellhound? Other than the obvious.” She crossed eight feet of concrete in several long strides, stopping to kneel beside the now unconscious goblin and check his pulse.

Hellhound? I stared at Orthus, only vaguely aware of Cari pressing a cloth to Hagen’s stomach. The dog’s a fucking hellhound? That knowledge brought up as many questions as it answered. Like how on earth a human teenager had been able to identify a hellhound when I hadn’t.

“The obvious. Of course,” I muttered. The damn dog had come from, well…hell. And he liked me. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but it couldn’t be good.

Orthus growled, rolling his eyes toward me in impatience. I glanced at Cari as the shock of the whole hellhound thing wore off. “Hey, what the fuck are you doing?!” I lurched for her, exasperation emanating from my very pores. But if I was irritated with her, I was even angrier at myself for letting her wander off.

I dragged her away from Hagen’s still-but-breathing form by one arm. “Didn’t you learn anything from being kidnapped by a band of goblins? Even half-dead, he could have ripped your arm from its socket.” Stupid humans. They were always making dim-witted decisions, then bitching and moaning when they got hurt. It would have served her right if I’d let the goblin eat her fingers like hors d’oeuvres. Finger food, if you will.

That was a lesson she’d never forget.

“You mean like you almost did?” she retorted, tugging her arm from my grasp as she took a step back from me, adolescent anger blazing in her red cheeks.

I inhaled deeply, searching for patience. “That was gentle compared to what he’d have done to you if he were still conscious.”

“He wouldn’t have touched me.” She frowned up at me, know-it-all defiance written in every line of her face. “I have yet to serve my purpose.”

“Then maybe I should put you right back where I found you.” I glanced pointedly toward where Orthus still had a mouthful of Dirk-tail. “Huh? Pretend I was never here?”

Cari’s face paled, her pixyish features scrunching in panic.

That’s what I thought. “An injured goblin isn’t going to be thinking clearly enough to know he shouldn’t hurt you. He’s going to rip apart anything within his reach. You’re lucky he’s unconscious.”

So was I. Damn lucky. My inattention could have cost me Cari’s life, and a hell of a big paycheck.

I gestured toward Dirk with my blood-stained left hand. “Let’s get the third stooge restrained before the dog—” The hellhound. “—loses his grip. Tear me several long strips of tape.”

Cari wiped both damp hands on what remained of her blouse. At which point I noticed her right sleeve was missing; it was now bandaging the wound in Hagen’s abdomen.

I shook my head in bewilderment. I did not understand the Good Samaritan mentality. I was more of a “survival of the fittest” kind of girl.

Cari’s gaze traveled from Hagen to me, and I rolled my eyes. “It was either him or me,” I said, surprised by the sudden need to justify my actions.

“I know.” She snatched the duct tape from the ground where she’d dropped it and I followed her toward Orthus and Dirk, still carrying the chair. I’d made it fewer than five feet when I heard shoes slapping against the warehouse’s front steps.

I dropped the chair and was whirling toward the door, gun drawn, when Cari squealed from behind me.

“Cari!” A deep, masculine voice called. The speaker’s tanned, angular face came into focus an instant later— directly in line with the sight of my gun. He was too tall, and not quite bulky enough to be a goblin, despite an obviously solid build. Their boss? Was this the checkbook behind the hired goons?

“No! It’s Cale! Don’t shoot him!” Cari shouted, sneaker-clad feet squeaking lightly toward the door. My right hand shot out as she passed, capturing her wrist, and I jerked her out of the line of fire.

“Let her go,” Cale ordered, stepping into the room, heedless of my pistol aimed at his forehead. Apparently he didn’t think I’d shoot.

He was dead wrong.

“Stop where you are.” My voice was clear and calm, belying the spike in my pulse. “Turn slowly and put your hands up. Or I will put a bullet right between your eyes.” Your beautiful, thickly-lashed blue eyes…

I blinked, trying to clear my head, along with my vision. What the hell was I thinking? Bad guys weren’t…hot. They were target practice. Gun fodder. A waste of perfectly good oxygen. Of a chiseled jaw and sandy blond movie star hair…

Cale’s arms tensed as he lifted them slowly over his head, jaw muscles bunching and shifting beneath sun-bronzed skin as he clenched his teeth. But he didn’t turn around. “You’re making a mistake.” He met my gaze boldly. “I’m here for Cari. Ask her.”

“I’m here for Cari. And I don’t care if you’re here with a pardon from the fucking President. You’re not coming into this building until I pat you down.” And what an experience that promised to be. Cari’s tardy white knight was gorgeous, from his rain-damp, chunky golden-blond hair—several shades darker than my own—to the dimple on the tip of his chin. Seriously. The man had an honest-to-god chin dimple, not quite hidden by a short, scruffy-looking beard connecting to a trim mustache. And as if that wasn’t enough, he watched me through a pair of the brightest, clearest eyes I’d ever seen. Blue like the Caribbean, and shimmering like ocean waves. His eyes were incredible.

But I’d put a hole right between them if I had to.

“Lex, he’s my brother. Leave him alone!” Cari pleaded, trying to tug her wrist from my grasp. I held on tight.

Brother? Not her boyfriend? Hmmm.

Focus, Lex. I gave myself a mental shake. “He’s armed.” I could see the bulge in his shirt, beneath his left armpit. And yet he hadn’t drawn his gun. Was he stupid?

“He’s not gonna—”

“It’s okay, Cari,” the brother said, still watching me instead of her. Not stupid after all. “I do have a gun, but I’m going to put it on the floor. Alright? Just give me a minute,…”

Damn it, I was not being paid to deal with overprotective brothers. Even inconceivably good-looking ones. “Move slowly,” I ordered, trying not to sound as frustrated as I felt. “If your finger goes near the trigger, you’ll be breathing through your throat. For a minute, anyway.”

Cale Murphy nodded, blue eyes sparkling. He lowered his right arm slowly, slipping his hand under the front of an open blue button-down shirt, beneath which he wore a tight white tee. And apparently a shoulder holster.

He pulled his hand out slowly, and with it came a clunky-looking black-on-black pistol. It was a Desert Eagle. A fucking .50 caliber, if I had to guess, because men always thought they needed the biggest, baddest gun available. But what the hell did he need .50 caliber rounds for? Was he hunting elephants?

Yes, goblins could be hard to kill, but a bullet to the brain would definitely do it. Just about any bullet. A .50 cal was overkill.

Murphy held the gun up, aimed at the ceiling in profile, showing me that the safety lever was engaged.

“Put it down and kick it to me. And keep your hands where I can see them.”

He laid the gun on the ground, then he gave it a good nudge with one foot. The gun slid across fifteen feet of concrete toward me, slowing to thump against the bare toes of my right foot.

“Now take off your over-shirt.” And your undershirt. And your jeans, and your…

Lex! Get a grip!

Frowning, I barely resisted the urge to shake my head again, to clear it. I was in serious need of a cold shower.

In the doorway, Cari’s brother pulled first one arm, then the other from his open button-down, letting it pool at his feet in a puddle of blue cotton. Now fully exposed, his remaining white tee-shirt left no doubt that he was unarmed. At least from the waist up. His shirt was skin-tight, and the only visible bumps were the obviously hard ridges of his abs and the well-defined bulges of an impressive set of pecs. Hot damn. Somebody took serious pride in his appearance. And with good reason. Could the lower half possibly be as impressive?

Only one way to find out.

“Turn around and put your hands against the wall to the right of the door. I’m going to pat you down. You so much as twitch, and I’ll ruin that pretty face.”

Behind me, Cari snickered.

Damn it! Had I just called him pretty? Grinding my teeth, I snatched the Desert Eagle from the floor, double checked the safety, then slipped it between the back of my waistband and my skin, where it left an uncomfortably large bulge. Then I started toward Murphy, Hagen’s gun still aimed and ready in my left hand. It was almost a relief when he started to turn, holding my gaze in a self-aware, half-amused stare until the last possible second.

My step faltered as his ass swiveled into sight, meticulously outlined by a snug pair of dark Levi’s. Didn’t this man have any flaws? Other than the fact that he’d barge in on me with his gun holstered?

Murphy pressed his palms flat against the concrete wall, and I searched him quickly but thoroughly, one side at a time, head to toe. I used one hand to pat him down, and the other to shove Hagen’s gun to his back. Unorthodox, but effective.

One minute later, I stepped back, convinced Murphy was armed with nothing more than an impressively well-toned physique. And that like his sister, he was almost certainly human.

The search hadn’t just been for hidden blades and guns. Or to verify that his stomach really was as hard as it looked—and it was. I was also taking advantage of the hands-on search to try and figure out what he was, in order to assess any possible intangible weapons I might be forced to defend against.

I came up empty. There was no tell-tale hum of power in the air around him, as there would have been if he were a magi. I felt the normal human warmth of skin through his clothing, but found no feverish heat, or suspicious flush, which a parasite would have had. And if he was a troll, he was the best-looking troll I’d ever seen.

So, the real question was what a group of rent-a-goon goblins wanted with a human girl. Or rather, what their boss wanted with her.

Confident that Murphy was relatively harmless, I turned to find Orthus dragging the third stooge toward the empty wooden chair, his muzzle still clamped around a generous chunk of goblin ass. I barely held back a smile. That was one smart dog.

Cari’s brother dropped his arms and turned to face the room. I motioned toward the dog with the gun in my grip. “If you really want to help, go tape that goblin to the chair.”

Murphy glared at me, the blue of his eyes churning like the depths of the ocean. “I’m here to help Cari. Not you.”

“Fine.” I shrugged and re-aimed the gun at Dirk, making a show of sighting down the barrel.

“No!” Cari shouted, and from the corner of my eye, I saw her hands fly to her mouth in horror. “Cale, don’t let her shoot him. They didn’t hurt me.”

Yet. Surely she knew that once she’d served whatever purpose they’d intended for her, the goblins would have eaten her alive. Literally.

Or maybe she didn’t. Most humans had no idea goblins existed, much less that they’d choose filet of young woman over filet mignon any time they thought they’d get away with it.

“Cale, please!” Cari begged, gliding toward us both over the concrete, her sneakers nearly silent.

Behind her, the goblin glowered at me, remaining stubbornly closed lipped. He was two feet from the wooden chair and two seconds from collision with a nine-millimeter slug, but he wouldn’t beg for his life. Goblins never did. To die fighting was honorable. To die begging was a disgrace they believed would follow them into the next life.

I happened to agree.

Murphy sighed, his expression shifting from annoyance to resignation. He clearly cared about more than just his sister’s physical wellbeing. He wanted to make her happy.

It was sweet—nauseatingly so.

The instant Murphy passed the first row of machines, the dog tensed, growling around the bit of goblin still in his mouth. His lips curled back from impossibly pointed teeth, and his eyes rolled all the way to the right as he watched the stranger’s approach.

Murphy glanced at me over his shoulder. “Call him off.”

“Can’t. He doesn’t take orders from me.”

“He kinda seems to…” Cari noted with a shrug.

Murphy frowned as he turned back to Orthus, ignoring Dirk’s stubbornly unrepentant expression. “That can’t taste good.” His voice was calm and soothing for the dog’s benefit. “I’m just going to tape him up, so you can get the flavor of goblin out of your mouth.”

Orthus growled again, and the sound seemed to resonate within my skull. Murphy turned back to me, holding out the roll of tape. “You try it.”

“Not a chance.” I wasn’t being paid enough to take away a hellhound’s chew-toy. “If you can’t get the goblin taped up, I’ll just shoot him.”

Cari propped her hands on narrow hips, eyeing the gun in my hand. “Is that your answer for everything?”

“It’s kind of a one-size-fits-all solution.” Which wasn’t true, of course, but admitting that I tried not to kill unless it was necessary would do nothing to enhance my reputation. Or even to preserve it. I inhaled slowly, trying to summon enough patience to explain the situation to her. “He’s a goblin. One bullet in the leg won’t kill him, but it’ll slow him down enough for us to get the hell out of here without worrying about him calling for backup.”

Cari shook her head resolutely, and I was impressed by her tenacity, if not the hill she’d chosen to die on. “Just tell Orthus to let him go, and Cale can tape him up. The dog will listen to you. He’s trying to help you.”

As little sense as it made, I couldn’t shake the feeling she was right. “Fine.” Shooting the goblin would be a waste of a bullet anyway. “Orthus, please let the goblin go, so the nice man can tape him up.”

The dog blinked at me once, then opened his broad black jaws. Dirk flinched, as if being released hurt worse than being bitten in the first place. But he clearly knew better than to make any sudden movements.

Orthus backed away, then he sat on his haunches staring at me, as if waiting for a word of praise. I might have actually given him one if he were a German shepherd, or even a rottweiler. But he was a hellhound, with eerie reddish-black fur and a tendency to shed it all at once—along with his skin. As much weird shit as I’d witnessed in my two-plus centuries on earth, I’d never seen anything like this dog, and I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with him. He freaked me out. Mostly because of his eyes, ever-shifting pinpoints of crimson light in the darkness. Flickering almost like flames…

“…so much as twitch, she’ll put a bullet right in the center of your forehead,” Murphy said to Dirk, pulling a strip of tape from the roll. “You can do that, can’t you Lex? Can I call you Lex?”

I blinked, only belatedly aware that he was talking to me. “Well, that is my name.” Though I’d certainly been called worse. “And yes, I can put a bullet right between his eyes.” The dog’s eyes? Or the goblin’s? Who was I agreeing to shoot?

Dirk huffed, one corner of his mouth curling up in a cocky sneer, and I had my answer. “She’s bluffing. I’m unarmed, and she’s a girl.”

I should have just shot him in the first place.

“She’s Lex Walker,” Murphy said, and I was only half-surprised to realize he knew who I was. Not just my first name, but who I actually was. And what I did for a living—so to speak. Evidently he’d already spoken to…his mother? Could Daphne Murphy possibly be his mother? No. She was too young. Way too young. Maybe another sister?

Or a wife. She was his wife. She had to be. Damn it.

Not that it mattered. After I’d turned over the target and collected my fee, I would never see Cale Murphy again.

Dirk glanced at me over Murphy’s shoulder. “Lex Walker?” He raised one brow in almost comical skepticism. If he wasn’t buying my identity even after seeing me take out both of his fellow stooges, I had only my bare feet and wet tank top to blame.

Stomping across the cold, rough concrete into the center of the room, I aimed the gun at his forehead for effect, hoping the familiar pose would lend to my credibility. The goblin offered no resistance as Cari’s brother shoved him backward into the waiting armchair. Murphy strapped the goblin’s wrists to the arms of the chair, then slapped a short strip of tape over his broad mouth before taping his ankles to the wooden legs.

Orthus watched from several feet away, growling any time Murphy stepped too close. With Dirk completely—perhaps ridiculously—immobilized, Murphy tossed me the remaining tape and shot me a dark look I recognized as fury about to be unleashed.

My finger tightened on the trigger for an instant before I realized he was gunning for Dirk, not for me. I’d never seen a human look so…dangerous. So apocalyptically out-of-control.

A smile teased the corner of my mouth, and each breath came faster. I like dangerous.

Murphy turned back to the goblin. His arms went stiff, held away from his sides at low angles. He threw his head back, blond hair bouncing briefly.

“Cale, no!” Cari cried, wrapping her arms around herself.

For a moment, her brother didn’t move. Then his muscles relaxed slowly, and he pulled his head upright, abandoning whatever weird-ass retribution he’d been about to take. It was like watching a bomb explode in reverse as he visibly pulled himself back together, an effort that obviously took incredible self-control.

Then, in a sudden flash of motion, Murphy spun in an explosive full circle. His body unfurled before me, releasing the tension I’d just watched him reign in as his right foot flew in a broad arc. His boot slammed into the goblin’s left side.

Dirk made a muffled oof of impact behind the duct tape gag as he fell over sideways, chair and all. His head smacked the concrete, and I heard the resulting crack clearly from across the room.

Cari coughed as a gasp caught in her throat. Murphy turned to us, his blue eyes dark and violent, and surging with wrath. He took in her horrified look, and that anger melted away, his expression settling into the deceptive calm on the surface of a deep lake. “He’ll live. Goblins are tough little bastards,” he assured his sister, fists slowly unclenching at his sides. “Harder to kill than a fucking cockroach.”

I smiled, pleasantly surprised to see him go after a little vengeance. Even if only a very little. Obviously someone in the branches of their mutual family tree had a mean streak, and I was damn glad to see it surface in at least one of the Murphys. I was starting to wonder how humanity had survived as long as it had, with tendencies like compassion and forgiveness forever rotting away at the roots of civilization.

“I mean, you can just step on a cockroach,” Cari mumbled.

“Let’s go.” My faith in mankind temporarily restored, I grabbed Cari by the arm and hauled my target down the center isle at a good clip, doing my best to ignore her brother as he jogged to catch up. I was ready to forget the Murphys and ease my aches with a hot bath and can of full-sugar Coke. Liberally laced with alcohol, of course.

Or maybe I should forget the caffeine and go right for the liquor. Three goblins, two humans, and a hellhound were enough to twist even the most promising, profitable evening into a straight tequila night.

Fortunately, I had come prepared.

FOUR

I stepped out of the factory and into the night, tugging Cari along with me. The rain had ended and the clouds were gone, leaving a heavenly sheet of black velvet studded with sparkling diamonds. It was beautiful. Peaceful, as if the universe couldn’t care less about the bullets and bloodshed I’d just unleashed.

Cari followed me onto the porch and down the steps—not that she had any choice—both of us sloshing through shallow puddles on the rough concrete. Goosebumps blossomed all over my skin as frigid water lapped at my bare feet. I was ready for some warm, dry clothes, and my fuzzy green Grinch slippers.

Murphy’s footsteps paused on the porch behind us, and several wet strands of hair slapped my face when I turned to see him yanking his blue button-down into place over the empty shoulder holster. “Where are your shoes?” Evidently, he’d just noticed my naked toes.

“In the car, with my gun.” I took off across the parking lot with his sister in tow. “I snagged this from one of the three stooges.” Without slowing, I held up Hagen’s nine-millimeter. Murphy’s Desert Eagle rubbed against my lower back as I walked, reminding me that I’d picked up two new weapons over the course of the evening. Not bad, considering I still had half my fee to collect. Things were looking up.

Murphy’s steps stopped, and I glanced over my shoulder to find him staring at me in astonishment. “You took on three goblins unarmed and barefoot?”

“Nah. I had a dagger and a pair of strappy sandals. Anything more, and it wouldn’t have been a fair fight.”

His eyes widened, and I grinned.

And that’s how the rumors start…

Berg, the Rent-a-goon I’d shot in both legs, still lay in a pool of his own blood, and as we neared, he began cursing at us in his guttural native tongue. I couldn’t understand the individual words, but his meaning was clear: if we ever met again, he would definitely be carrying a grudge.

I tucked the nine-millimeter into the front waistband of my jeans, freeing both of my hands. Bending, I grabbed my soaked sandals and the alarm remote half-poking out of Berg’s pocket. As I stood, his fist sailed toward me, and I jumped back, dodging it easily. “Get back here, you stupid bitch!” Berg shouted as I passed him.

“Damn, what’d you do to him?” Murphy demanded, still several steps behind us. I turned to see him eyeing Berg’s broken, bleeding legs.

“I just shot him.” I shrugged. “He busted his knee on his own. Not my fault.”

Murphy shook his head, running one hand through still-damp hair as he jogged to catch up with us. While the rain had flattened my hair into straggly strands, his looked great wet. All thick and wavy, like it might look after a shower. Or when he worked up a really good sweat. “Glad you’re on our side,” he said, his gaze smoldering as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.

“I’m on the side of whoever signs the check.” I dug my keys from my pocket as Cari pranced through the open gate after me. “Here. Let yourself in, but don’t step on my boots. Or sit on my gear.” I dropped the keys into her palm, but she just stared at them.

“I’ll take her home,” Murphy said. “I’m parked around the corner.”

“You’re not taking her anywhere unless you have the other half of my fee in your back pocket. And I happen to know you have nothing in either of your pockets. I don’t care whether you ride with us or go fetch your car, but she’s not leaving my sight until there’s a check in my hand.”

He scowled, his gaze shifting to his sister, then back to me.

“Don’t worry, cupcake.” I winked at him. “I’ll take good care of your sister. I don’t get paid unless I deliver her unharmed.”

Cari crossed thin arms over a nearly flat chest. “So glad to see you care!”

“I work for cash, child, not warm fuzzies. Get in the damn car and watch out for my gear.”

She glanced at her brother, and he nodded slowly, eyeing me. “I’m riding with you.”

“Suit yourself.” I shrugged and turned back to the warehouse.

While the Murphys let themselves into my car, I closed and latched the front gate, then reset the alarm with the remote. Smiling grimly, I threw it into the field across the street from the parking lot. Then I kicked the gate to trip the screeching alarm.

I hoped all three goblins went deaf listening to it.

In the car, Cari had settled into the backseat, her seatbelt already buckled. Murphy held my duffle bag on his lap in the passenger seat, my keys dangling from one finger. “I tried to start the engine, but there’s something’s wrong with your car.”

“Nah.” I snatched my keys and slid the longest into the ignition. “Rusty just doesn’t trust men.”

He arched one brow at me. “Rusty?”

“Yeah.” I turned the key in the ignition and the car started smoothly, Rusty purring at me in contentment. “See?”

Cari’s gaze found mine in the rearview mirror. “I’ll be damned.”

Murphy frowned as I flipped on the headlights. “Where’s my gun?”

“In my waistband.” Leaning to one side, I pulled my duffle from his lap and lifted it over the seat back, dropping it on the floorboard at Cari’s feet.

He held out his palm expectantly, eyeing my midsection longer than necessary, and I shook my head. “Finders keepers, cupcake. Better luck next time.”

Murphy glowered at me. “You can’t just—”

“Buckle up.” I slammed the gear shift into reverse and stomped on the gas. Rusty swerved backward into the right-hand lane, and I hit the brake, stopping hard enough to throw him against the back of his seat. His skull crashed into the padded headrest, and a satisfied smile turned up one side of my mouth.

As we pulled away from the factory, Murphy now scrambling to buckle himself in, lightning flashed one last time, and I got a single fleeting glimpse of Orthus. The hellhound stared at me from the other side of the gate, his exposed skull rising above the gate latch. Bare bones peeked out from between slick cords of muscle. His eyes flared crimson in the flicker of light from overhead.

Creepy-ass dog, I thought. But I couldn’t resist watching him as we passed, the last drops of rain blowing across my windshield.

The sky was clear by the time we pulled into the rundown strip mall where my office stood, squeezed between a nail salon and a donut shop. My client sat behind the wheel of her car in the space next to mine. I would have bet money that she’d been waiting there for hours, and I had to give her points for mettle. My office wasn’t in a great neighborhood, and most women like Daphne Murphy—polite, soft-spoken, petite, and frail-looking—wouldn’t have dared wait alone in the badly-lit parking lot for more than a few minutes.

Daphne didn’t even look nervous. But she did look relieved. She was out of her car before I’d shifted into park, low heels clicking on the pavement while her gauzy skirt whipped around her legs in the icy, early morning breeze. “Cari!” She cried in that desperate, thank-goodness-you’re-still-alive voice usually heard in old westerns, when the hero returns breathing-but-bleeding from a shootout at high noon.

As I got out of the car, she pulled open Rusty’s dented back door and dragged Cari into view, throwing her arms around the teenager as if she could actually hold the girl together by force. When really it was herself she needed to pull together.

While I watched over the car roof, the older brother stepped from the front passenger seat and gently pried my client’s arms apart, freeing his sister from what had to be a bruising grip. “She’s okay,” he whispered, his voice calm and soothing. “Everything is okay.”

“And you?” Daphne ran one hand down his arm, as if to assure herself that he was really there. Solid, and in the flesh.

“Me too. We’re both fine,” he insisted. Even in the dim light from her open car door, I saw him blush like a second grader kissed by his mother in front of the entire class.

Why wouldn’t he be fine? I’d done all the work. Speaking of which, if he was available—not to mention armed—for rescue work, why was I hired in the first place? Why hadn’t Murphy saved the damsel in distress himself?

Maybe Daphne had known he’d be in over his head. Sure, Murphy was gorgeous, in a let-me-smother-you-in-butter-and-syrup-and-have-you-for-breakfast kind of way, and he obviously had a temper. But he’d burst into the warehouse without even drawing his over-the-top .50 caliber. Which was now my over-the-top .50 caliber.

After another solid minute of the pointless, touch-feely reunion, I cleared my throat. “I hate to interrupt…” A flat-out lie. “…but someone owes me…”

“Your fee. Of course.” Daphne smiled benevolently, as if paying me the money I’d damn-well earned would be doing me some kind of favor.

She opened her rear driver’s side door and ushered Cari inside. Since I hadn’t been paid, I was about to protest—with my newly-acquired nine-millimeter. But then Daphne reached into her car through the open driver’s side window and withdrew a sequined clutch purse too small to possibly carry anything useful. I mean, that thing wouldn’t even hold a .22.

From the ridiculously tiny bag, she pulled a clipped wad of hundred-dollar bills, which she dropped in my open palm with an audible sigh of relief, apparently glad that she could now forget the whole unpleasant experience. “It’s all there,” she said, when I began thumbing through the stack. “You don’t have to count it.”

Oh, yes, I did. Company policy. Also known as common sense.

When I nodded, satisfied, Daphne drove off with Cale in her passenger seat and Cari in the back. As they turned left at the stoplight and drove out of sight, the pre-dawn near-silence settled in around me. I stared into the darkened front window of my office, knowing I should go in and drop the cash in the safe. But I was just too damn tired to bother. And it’s not like I had anyone to answer to, no matter what the sign over the ripped awning said.

What it actually read was Lacey Electronic Repair, punctuated by a pair of old-fashioned television rabbit ears. But that was intentionally…um…misleading.

According to the IRS and the local Chamber of Commerce, I worked for Aaron Lacey, keeping the books, answering the phone, and fetching the coffee while he repaired a never-ending stream of old televisions, stereos, and computers. But as anyone who’d ever tasted my coffee would agree, I did no such thing. Well, I did answer the phone, but only because most of the calls were for me.

In reality, Lacey Electronic Repair was a front for my officially unofficial business—my job, my baby, and my life. Aaron Lacey was my only employee, a youngish gremlin-of-all-trades who did everything from doctoring the books—okay, he fabricated them entirely—to keeping Rusty up and running. He also designed and implemented all the “modifications” to my off-the-shelf equipment, to make sure my gadgets could handle bad guys the manufacturer could never have imagined.

If I were a good boss, I’d have opened my office right then to make my deposit and let Lacey know I’d finished the job without raising my body count. Or getting killed. But I wasn’t a good boss; I was a tired boss, and I wanted nothing more than a drink, a box of Twinkies, and my high-speed internet access. Thus armed, I’d be ready to scour the net in hopes of uncovering the goblins’ employer, and what he or she wanted with Cari Murphy.

I’d accepted twice my usual fee in exchange for not posing any of my normal questions to the client, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t look for the answers myself, now that the job was over. And I’d be stupid not to, after what I’d seen. I couldn’t begin to imagine what a gang of goblins wanted with a human girl, other than a quick snack. Yet there wasn’t a tooth mark on her.

Most goblins worked as hired guns, and that was almost certainly the case for Berg, Hagen, and Dirk. Which meant they answered to someone with enough money to pay the ridiculously steep fees demanded by a band of non-human bad guys. Or enough power to “negotiate” for more reasonable rates.

What would someone like that want with a human teenager?

If something big was brewing among Netherworlders—and if it involved humans, it would be big—I needed to know about it. You can’t block the strike if you don’t see it coming.

Eager for the comfort of my own apartment and some serious answers, I tested the office doorknob to make sure it was still locked, then I put my ass-kicking boots back on and shoved my two newly acquired guns into my duffle bag. I settled into my driver’s seat, and a sigh of contentment slipped past my lips as I shrugged into my shoulder holster and slid my Ruger into place. My favorite pistol was also my security blanket, my first line of defense, and—other than Rusty—my best friend. Because unlike people, a well-cared-for gun could always be counted on.

Twenty minutes later, I pulled Rusty into her assigned parking space in front of my second story apartment. Except for my own porch light, the building was dark, which was normal for three o’clock in the morning. Comforted by the thick bundle of cash in my pocket and the weight of the Ruger beneath my right arm, I slung my duffle over one shoulder and locked the car doors. As I climbed the exterior staircase my thoughts volleyed between the new night-vision goggles I would order the next day and the research I was about to do.

I turned my key in the lock and the moment the door swung open, the wrongness in my apartment hit me. The sharp tang of power stung my mouth like the jolt from a battery on the tip of my tongue. Chills bumps popped up all over my arms.

I inhaled through my nose, my hand still on the doorknob. Cologne. Rich, musky, and expensive. There was a man in my living room, and he wasn’t human. Or invited.

I pulled the Ruger as I shrugged the duffle from my right shoulder. The bag hit the “un-welcome” mat at my feet, and I thumbed off the pistol’s safety. Sucking in a deep, steady breath, I aimed into my living room, the barrel trained at chest-height.

Then I remembered the goblins and lowered my aim by six inches, peering into virtually impenetrable darkness. The only source of light in the room was the blinking green numbers of the digital clock on my microwave.

They were no help.

“I know you’re there,” I said into the dark void of my apartment. “Identify yourself now, or I start shooting.”

“Alexandra Walker.” Smooth, but obviously masculine, his voice instantly triggered my inner alarm. It was too calm. Too confident.

“Nope, that’s me.” I rotated my aim twenty degrees to the right, following the sound of his voice. “Who the hell are you?”

He chuckled, and I my jaw clenched. I preferred my uninvited guests shaking in fear.

“You’re underestimating my height by quite a bit, Ms. Walker. Should I be insulted?” the intruder asked, his voice now carrying an edge of amusement.

“You should be bleeding.” I adjusted my aim, not because he’d said he was tall, but because the source of his voice had confirmed it.

Sucking in a shallow breath, I squeezed the trigger once. Then once again. A muffled thwack coughed from the pistol. The barrel of the gun flashed in the dark, followed immediately by a second thwack-flash.

Was it Robert Frost who wrote something about good fences making good neighbors? In my line of work, the same could be said for silencers. What my neighbors couldn’t hear, they couldn’t report.

Something shuffled across my worn carpet—the intruder staggering backward. I smiled grimly, waiting to hear him hit the floor. Instead, a soft, wet, squishing sound met my ears from the direction of the couch. It sounded like…flesh mending, a sound I’d heard only once, years ago, when I’d had the occasion to watch a troll heal himself from a stab wound to the gut. But he’d had to feed first, to gain enough energy. Whoever—or whatever—was in my living room wasn’t feeding. So how the hell had he healed himself so fast?

I kept my gun aimed at him, hoping that though two bullets hadn’t done the trick, six more might, if it came to that. And then, there was always my blade. “What the hell are you?”

“Come in and see for yourself.”

Not gonna happen. Fortunately, by then my eyes had begun to adjust to the light shining into my apartment from the lit walkway where I stood. I made out his outline, dimly illuminated from the collar down, his face veiled in shadows. He stood in front of my couch, in the center of the room. If I had to gut him, he’d bleed all over my area rug. Assuming he hadn’t already.

The man was indeed tall, his slim build accentuated by a dark suit, a conservative striped tie, and a white dress shirt punctured by two blood-stained holes, the flesh behind which was already clean and smooth. He stood with his hands buried in his pants pockets, the open front of his jacket tucked behind his wrists. He was completely at ease.

I was freaked the fuck out.

“You have two seconds to tell me who you are and what you’re doing in my living room before I empty the rest of this magazine into your face.”

“I don’t think you want to do that.”

“Think again.” My blood rushing in fury, I spread my feet and steadied my aim. “One second.

The man sighed, his face still obscured by shadows. “I’m a client. Hopefully. I have a job for you.”

“My office hours are three p.m. to midnight. Call and make an appointment. That’s how this whole business thing works.”

A shift in the shadows above his shoulders told me he was shaking his head. “This is a special job. Off the record.”

Of course it was. Why else would the damn man-of-steel have broken into my apartment in the middle of the night? “I don’t work like that. Now get the hell out of my living room before I have to take you apart and ruin a perfectly good couch.” In about seven minutes, my arms would get tired, and my aim would start to waiver. But my patience would go long before then.

“Come inside, so we can talk.” His voice was still irritatingly smug and self-assured. You’re going to want to take this job. Trust me.”

I don’t trust people I don’t know, especially those who break into my apartment in the middle of the night. Or bored imps. Never trust a bored imp. But that’s another issue entirely.

Yet…it was that last phrase that jarred my memory. Trust me.

I’d heard those words, spoken by that voice a hundred times, as had the rest of the planet. But I’d have to see his face to be sure, because this made no sense at all.

“Step into the light,” I ordered, suddenly wishing I was holding the flame-thrower mounted over my couch. Every creature I knew of that could withstand a bullet or a blade could also be roasted alive rather easily. Death’s system of checks and balances. “Very slowly.”

He started to take his hands from his pockets, but a low-pitched noise from the back of my throat stopped him. Or maybe it was my obvious willingness to pull the trigger. Regardless, he shoved his hands even deeper into his pockets and stepped forward, just as I’d instructed.

Shadows slid from his face as he moved, the line of light from the porch rising to illuminate a wide, strong jaw and a straight, perfectly proportioned nose. Several strands of deep brown hair brushed a smooth, ageless forehead. And he stared back at me through familiar—maybe even famous—smoky gray eyes. It was him. Troy Devich. Philanthropist, high-powered CEO, and self-made billionaire. And media darling.

Despite my training and my fury over having my home invaded, my first impulse was to lower my weapon and apologize for the unkempt state of my apartment. I couldn’t help it. Troy Devich was standing in my living room, offering me a job, and I’d tried to blast his guts all over my couch. My mother would have been mortified. If she hadn’t been dead for more than two hundred years.

Fortunately, the idiotic impulse passed, and my anger roared back to the surface, singeing every nerve ending in my body. It didn’t matter who he was, what he was, or how much money he had. It didn’t even matter what he wanted. He was in my living room. Without my permission.

“What is this job?”

“Come in, and I’ll tell you.”

“Tell me, or I’ll shoot you. Again,” I countered, my ears pricked for any sound from the neighboring apartments.

Devich nodded, almost respectfully. “I understand your suspicion, but I don’t want our private business overheard by an insomniac neighbor. Neither do you. Trust me.”

Again with the trust line, which only made me trust him less, though that hardly seemed possible. Still, he was right. The last thing I needed was for the late-night bachelor two doors down to come home and find his reclusive neighbor shooting at one of the richest men on the planet. Who refused to die.

And just like that, Devich won our first argument.

With my gun still aimed at his head, I ran my hand along the interior wall to the right of the door, feeling for the light switch. “You even look like you’re going to move, and I’ll shoot you where you stand. In the head this time.”

“That sounds fair.”

It was more than fair. If I were confronting any ordinary intruder—someone who couldn’t mend bullet wounds as fast as Aaron Lacey could flip a circuit breaker—I’d have shot him in the gut, then questioned him while we waited for the ambulance.

I flipped the switch, and weak yellow light flooded the room from the dusty fixture overhead, dimly illuminating my living room and kitchen. And Devich’s smug expression.

With my left foot, I pushed my duffle bag over the threshold, where it slid across a patch of tile until it hit carpet. I stepped into the living room, leaving less than eight feet of worn brown carpet between Devich’s shiny dress shoes and my boots, in which my bare feet were starting to sweat, despite the October chill.

Staring straight into his fog-gray eyes, I reached back and pulled the door shut, closing myself in with a man I’d only ever seen on TV, giving speeches. A man the world couldn’t seem to decide whether to love or hate. He was a saint, directing the various corporate entities owned by his board of directors to contribute to every charity imaginable. He was a monster, buying and selling companies at will, putting entire town populations out of work. He was an oddball, appearing as the public face of his company, yet never revealing even the slightest glimpse of himself as a person, even to close friends. Which I seriously doubted he had.

Up close, Troy Devich appeared human—unnaturally handsome in a clean-cut, businesslike manner, but entirely lacking horns, scales, claws, or a tail. Yet having just shot him, twice, I had little doubt that the phrase “appearances can be deceiving” was coined specifically to explain his existence. He had power similar to that of a mage, healing ability like an imp, and no moral constraints against breaking and entering. He was the richest, most publicly visible Netherworlder on earth. A monster hiding in plain sight.

And he wanted my help.

Most people in my line of work would have been thrilled. I was not.

Troy Devich had endless resources at his disposal. He had access to cutting-edge technology, state-of-the-art facilities, and the most comprehensive database of information on earth. There was only one reason he would need my “off the record” services.

Whatever he wanted was probably immoral, definitely illegal, and highly likely to get me killed. Er…re-killed.

“What is this job? And talk fast.”

“I’ve lost something,” he said. “And I need you to find it.”

I shrugged. “Sounds like you were careless.”

“I did not misplace this item; it was stolen from me.” His gray-eyed gaze skimmed my cheap furniture, largely bare walls, and an ancient, twenty-inch television, and I could practically feel his pity. Or…disgust. “I pay very well, Ms. Walker.”

I happened to like my stuff, and the decision to spend my money on equipment, rather than décor was intentional. What good would marble countertops and leather couches be when I was rarely home to enjoy them?

“Not interested,” I said. And not just because he’d opened the negotiation by insulting my home. The more pressing concern was that Troy Devich seemed like the kind of wealthy, entitled man who was virtually impossible to please, and his dissatisfaction with my performance could endanger my reputation, and thus my business. And possibly my life, judging from the tendrils of power still wafting over me. I stepped to the left, clearing the way to the door. “Now get the hell out of my apartment and take your checkbook with you.”

He stayed put. “I’m not offering you money, Ms. Walker, though there’s plenty of that, should you change your mind.” His power surged over me like a wave of heat swelling from the oven, and I had to lock my knees to keep from falling against the door at my back. It was a silent threat, a less-than-subtle suggestion that I take whatever he was about to offer, do whatever he wanted, and count myself lucky to be alive.

I was tempted to tell him to go to hell—and to lend him the price of admission. But Devich’s next words stopped me cold, my eyes wide, my fingers stiff around the grip of my gun.

“What I’m offering you is knowledge.” He spoke slowly, confidently, as if he knew I wouldn’t pull the trigger. Yet. “Information I happen to know you’ve been after for decades.”

There was only one piece of information I’d been after for decades, though that was a conservative estimate at best. I’d actually been trying to solve this particular puzzle for the better part of two centuries.

“We could help each other, Ms. Walker.” His causal shrug felt anything but casual. “Or, if you’re not interested in what I know, I can think of several of your past clients—un-satisfied customers, let’s say?—who might be interested in a little background on the infamous Lex Walker.”

I was infamous? Wait, that’s probably not the point.

Blackmail. The son of a bitch was implying that he knew something about my death, and that if I didn’t do this job for him, he would sell that information to the highest bidder.

This job opportunity was starting to sound more like a threat.

I glanced around my apartment for a back-up weapon. Any other time, I’d have left a butcher knife on the counter or a sledgehammer sticking out of the umbrella canister. But the one time a monster of unknown species breaks into my apartment, the place was unbearably tidy.

Finally, proof positive that housework is bad for my health.

Devich smiled, convinced he’d won. “Sit, and let’s have a civilized conversation.”

I shook my head. “Tell me what you know, or we’ll see if a bullet to the brain is any more effective than two to the stomach.”

He chuckled, gray eyes shining with apparently genuine amusement—and no sign of fear. “You could certainly do that. But if you shoot me again, you will never know what went wrong the night you died.”

FIVE

My arms started to drop, and I pulled them up again, aiming the gun at Devich even though my muscles were beginning to protest. “Why should I believe you have any idea what happened the night I died?” How could he, if I didn’t?

“I know many things that are beyond a human’s ken.”

“I’m not human.”

His brows rose. “Don’t you think that’s splitting hairs?”

“Not really.” I shrugged. “Mortality is pretty much the hallmark trait of humanity, and I don’t seem to have any, so…” And somehow, whatever process had brought me back from the dead a quarter of a millennia ago had also accelerated my body’s healing process to about a third of the normal rate. So no, I didn’t feel particularly human these days.

“Regardless, I have access to a great deal of information you do not.”

I believed him. Even if that access didn’t come by virtue of whatever species he belonged to, he certainly had enough money and power to move mountains.

I felt my willpower crumbling under the onslaught of sudden, desperate possibility. Over the past two centuries, I’d pursued what few leads I could find, anxious for any information about my predicament and how it had come about. But each new avenue had led to another dead end, and I’d abandoned the search entirely when my questions began attracting more attention than I was comfortable with.

Devich watched me, as if he could see the gears in my head turning. “You complete the job I have for you, and I’ll tell you why everyone else moves on, but you’re still stuck here, walking the shadows between life and death.”

For a moment, doubt eclipsed the light at the end of my tunnel. If he were bluffing, I could wind up doing his stupid job in return for nothing but the name of some mystic who would tell me all my problems stemmed from bad Karma. That had certainly happened before. But in the end, I couldn’t ignore the possibility, however slim, that Devich might have the answers he claimed to have. That he might know how to fix whatever went wrong the night I died.

I lowered my gun. If he’d wanted to kill me, he would have already done it.

Pulling slim, pale hands from his pockets, he perched on the left arm of my threadbare couch. He looked relaxed and harmless, an image in stark contrast to the expensive gray suit and the wisps of power trickling into the room like toxic fumes from a chemical spill. “So, we have a deal? My information for your services?” He watched me calmly, as if he had all night to wait for my answer.

“On one condition: payment up front.” I could hardly hear my own voice over the sound of blood rushing through my ears. Was I really that close to an answer? And possibly a solution? After all these years, could it be that easy?

“No,” Devich said.

I snatched my duffle from the floor and crossed the room to my tiny kitchen, where I sank sideways into my only dining chair. I set the Ruger on the small table to my left, within easy reach, should I decide I needed it. And in case .50 caliber bullets proved more effective than the nine-millimeter shells, I pulled Murphy’s Desert Eagle from the bag on my lap and set it next to my much smaller pistol.

My gaze settled on the intruder again, and suddenly the absurdity of the situation came into crisp focus.

Troy Devich, one of the wealthiest men in the world, sat in my tiny living room, trying to coerce me into working for him. Alone. Without any of the Jolly Green Giant-sized bodyguards who almost certainly followed him around in daily life. Not that they would be anything more than show for a man who could heal bullet wounds almost instantly.

Devich rose from the arm of the couch and settled onto the center cushion, leaning back in apparent comfort, as if his suit fabric didn’t cost several times as much as my ancient upholstery. Something told me he’d look just as comfortable lounging on a block of ice. The man could not be fazed.

“Okay, here’s how this works.” My gaze found his storm-cloud eyes and stayed there, watching for any change of expression that might give me an insight into a man no one seemed to know, but everyone knew of. “Unless you want something unusual or complicated…” And I had a feeling he did. “…I charge a standard fee, plus expenses, including travel, food, and lodging if necessary. I provide my own equipment, unless the job requires something special, in which case I’ll bill you for that, as an expense.”

He nodded at my recitation as if it were old news, which it probably was. I couldn’t exactly advertise my services in a world full of humans, so most of my business came through client referrals. The customers usually knew what to expect before they ever even spoke to me.

“And I get half upfront.” I added in a sudden burst of inspiration. New company policy, inspired by Daphne Murphy.

Devich’s too-pleasant smile never faltered. “Information isn’t like cash, Ms. Walker. I can’t divide it into two neat portions.”

“Tell me something—prove you actually know something of interest to me—or this little interview is over.” I was bluffing, of course. I needed whatever information he had, but I was counting on him wanting my services just as badly. The fact that he was sitting in my living room uninvited said that he did.

Devich leaned forward, his spine stiff and straight. He closed his eyes, apparently unconcerned by the fact that he wouldn’t see me pick up a gun, if I decided to shoot him again.

What in the name of bloodshed would I have to wield to be taken seriously as a threat? Obviously neither the Ruger nor the .50 cal were enough. The flame thrower over the couch, maybe? Or the chainsaw in the closet? How ‘bout a fucking nuclear missile?

Devich’s eyes opened, and he crossed his arms over his suit coat. “Tell me about the night you died. How much do you remember?”

“Every fucking bit of it.” I barely resisted the urge to caress my gun as I spoke. The girl who’d died that day no longer existed anywhere other than my memory, yet I couldn’t think of that long ago rainy afternoon without reaching for a weapon, as if I could somehow defend myself from the ghost of my own trauma. “But you’re supposed to be the one doling out information.”

“I need to know where to start. How did you die?”

Centuries-old images flashed across my vision, layered dimly over Devich and my living room. They were phantoms from my past. Sights, sounds, and textures I hadn’t been able to forget in all the days and nights since my death, each one seasoned with the odd combination of panic and futility I relived in every nightmare.

Wood planks, rough beneath my bare feet. Men in red uniforms. Muskets thrown over broad shoulders. Mud on white breeches, black boots. Hard hands, shoving me forward.

And finally, the sound I heard in my sleep—the ghost of an echo, which still raised goosebumps on every inch of my flesh…

The creak of a taut length of rope, shifting and sliding against a wooden beam. The last sound I heard before—

I blinked. Devich was still watching me. Waiting.

I took another deep breath and swallowed the bile at the back of my throat. “I was executed. Hanged to death, in front of an audience of bloody Red Coats.”

Devich blinked, his eyes mercifully blank. “You were…?”

Hanged.

The word lingered in the air between us, unspoken.

Very few women were executed in the colonies, outside of the infamous witch hunts. But even in death, evidently, I had to do things my own way.

“What was your crime?” Devich asked.

“I’ve answered your question. Your turn.”

I’m not going to beg for information. I’m not. I hadn’t begged for a thing in more than two centuries. But we both knew how desperate I was.

Devich eyed me carefully, and his power tingled against my skin like static electricity, a reminder that no matter how concerned and sympathetic he seemed, Devich was there for his own reasons, and they had nothing to do with anything I needed or wanted. “Do you remember what happened after you died?”

“There’s not much to remember,” I said, trying to decide how much to tell him. “There was darkness for a long time, but I couldn’t tell how long. I felt the sensation of floating, but no sense of direction at all. No up, and no down. Then there were soft voices I couldn’t identify and didn’t care to. I don’t remember any light, but there must have been some, because eventually I realized there were shadows. Lots of shadows. And when I looked down at myself, I…”

“Yes…?” Eagerness shined in his eyes, and for some reason, that irked me.

“I was one of the shadows.” Speaking about it brought the memory back in eerie detail.

Calm confusion. Tasteless wind. Eternal patience. I might have been there for years without even knowing it.

Devich leaned forward on my couch, his elbows resting on his knees, his eyes narrowed. “You were a shadow? You’re sure of that?” he asked, and I nodded. “You saw other shadows? Were they moving?”

I nodded again, slowly. “I think so.” His enthusiasm was unnerving, as was the intensity in his gaze. “Some of them were whispering—maybe asking questions. Every now and then, someone would scream, and I’d hear this horrible, loud roaring sound. Bonfire, not lion. But mostly it was quiet. Silent.”

“Then what?” He was openly eager now, more interested in listening to my story than in adding anything to it.

I shrugged. “Then…nothing. I realized my eyes were closed, and when I opened them, I was standing in my own…” My voice started to break, and I closed my mouth to keep him from hearing in one fractured sound just how traumatic the transition had really been.

In my experience, once a man has seen weakness in you, he never sees anything else.

“In your what?”

My gaze hardened, and I glared at him, summoning anger to drown out the residual confusion and vulnerability that always came with the memories. “I was in my own damned house, in the front room. Just standing there, barefoot, in the dress I’d died in. The same torn dress, caked in blood and dirt. And there was a man in the house with me, wearing a strange gray robe. I could not fathom the material it was made of.”

Devich nodded again, and I hoped he wouldn’t ask me about the man in gray, because I couldn’t have described my odd visitor, even if he were standing in front of me again.

I’d thought the man had his back to me, the hood of his robe pulled over his head. When he didn’t speak, I walked around to face him from the front. Only there was no front. Both sides of the man looked the same, as if his robe were more like a gray sheet draped over him, cinched loosely around his neck.

I didn’t know which side to address the man from. His arms, assuming he had any, hung straight beneath thick gray folds, and his feet were hidden by the long hem. The result was completely disorienting and might have scared me to death—if I hadn’t already been through that part.

But I couldn’t tell Devich any of that, because if he hadn’t seen the man in gray, he shouldn’t know about him yet. It wasn’t my place to tell tales.

Except that apparently it was.

“What did he say?” Devich asked. I opened my mouth, intending to refuse to answer any more questions until he reciprocated, but he held up one hand to cut off my protest. “Just tell me what he said, and I’ll tell you part of what you want to know.”

The odd expression on his face—sinister curiosity—set me on edge. My hand found the Desert Eagle, and I picked it up, just in case. This new Devich—intense, and less than perfectly poised—was starting to really freak me out.

“He told me I was free to go. He said there was no place for me, nowhere to put me. He said he had returned my body but couldn’t return my life. Not as it had been, anyway.”

He’d said that my heart would continue to pump and my brain to function. I would still need to eat, and sleep, and breathe, just like everyone else. But because I’d been beyond, I would no longer age.

There was more to it than that, of course. Much more. But on the off-chance that Devich didn’t already know every detail of my afterlife, I saw no reason to enlighten him. Knowledge was power, and I wanted my potential enemies—Devich qualified, by virtue of having broken into my apartment and refused to die—as ill-armed as possible. He was officially on need-to-know status.

Among the things he did not need to know was the fact that the reanimation process brought with it a number of interesting side effects, most of which I’d discovered on my own, long after I parted ways with the man in gray. The most useful of those were my killer immune system and accelerated healing speed. I hadn’t been sick once since the day I woke up in my living room, staring at the creepy, faceless gray man.

Most critical to my survival in the years after my reanimation was the only piece of true advice the man in gray gave me. He’d said that to survive, I’d have to stay out of the light of humanity for a while, in case anyone from my old life recognized me, but that I would also have to stay out of the true dark, where things bigger and badder than I waited to feast on the defenseless and inexperienced. Namely, me.

I’d have to exist in the places in between. Blend into the shadows, at least until I’d learned where I fit in.

That was the extent of my introduction to the Netherworld. I was tossed into the lion cage and told to eat or be eaten. And eventually I’d learned to bite back.

But Devich didn’t need to know any of that.

“So, what of it?” I asked. “What do you know about my death?”

“Nothing.” He smiled, almost gently. “But I do know why you didn’t move on. Or rather, why you came back. For now, though, I’ll tell you what happened between those two events.”

Between. Again with the betweens. Between life and death. Between light and dark. Between a rock and a hard place. Okay, so that last one didn’t really pertain, but I was definitely sensing a pattern.

Twisting in my seat, I grabbed a bottle of whiskey and a short glass from the shelf of the microwave cart. By the time I’d recapped the bottle, he was talking, apparently unconcerned that I hadn’t offered him anything to drink.

“You did pass on, Alexandra. You just didn’t make it very far.”

“Very far toward what?”

He shook his head once, sharply. “That information is not mine to divulge.” Yet the secret of my existence evidently was.

“Fine.” I took a long sip from my glass, glad in retrospect that I’d splurged on the good stuff.

“The shadowy place was Purgatory. Were you Catholic?” Not are you Catholic. Were you Catholic. Because apparently that was no longer an option for me.

I shook my head and took a longer drink.

“Good, because I’m not using that term exactly right, but it’s close enough. It’s a holding pen for souls, if you will. Like a waiting room, without the big glass doors.”

“A waiting room.” The words tasted strange on my tongue; too much like doubt and not enough like whiskey. The term seemed appropriate, though, because it had felt like I’d waited there forever. “So why didn’t they have anywhere to put me? Was the inn overbooked?”

Devich stifled a small smile. “Hardly. But that specific piece of information is only payable upon delivery. For now, let’s just say they lost your room key.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean? They’d lost my “key,” so they’d tossed me back to earth—had I ever really left it?—with nothing but my changed body and some cryptic advice from a faceless man in gray? I’d definitely gotten the frayed end of that particular rope. Come to think of it, I’d never had much luck with ropes…

“Who was the man in gray?” I asked, running one finger down the slender barrel of Murphy’s gun. The smooth finish felt good beneath my skin. “Do you know him?”

“Not personally, but everyone meets him eventually. Most everyone, anyway.” Something quiet and dangerous flickered behind Devich’s eyes as he blinked. “He’s the Gatekeeper.”

Silence reigned for a moment. Then I shattered it with an outburst of laughter, images of proton packs and ectoplasm flashing through my memory. “Are you the keymaster?”

Devich frowned, and my smile faded. I tossed back the rest of my whiskey. I could not trust someone who didn’t even know he was quoting Ghostbusters.

I cleared my throat and set my empty glass on the table. “This Gatekeeper…he’s the one who lost my key?”

“Probably not. But it was likely his decision to send you back.”

Then that was the motherfucker I’d have to hunt down.

The thought must have shown on my face, because Devich shook his head, an arrogant smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “You can’t find him; when the time is right, he’ll find you.”

My jaw clenched and I had to force it open. “I can find anything.”

That arrogant smile faded into a look of pity, as if I were too dense to comprehend a simple concept. “I know of just one way to get to the Gatekeeper, and that particular road only goes one way.” He seemed to realize the error in his assertion as soon as the words left his mouth.

One could come back from seeing the Gatekeeper—I was living proof. Of sorts. But what I had no inclination to explain to Troy Devich was that I was no longer sure I even wanted the return trip.

SIX

Late afternoon sunlight receded from my windshield as I pulled Rusty into the shade of the awning overhead, parking her between Lacey’s charcoal-colored, turbo-charged firebird—It’ll be a classic someday!—and the bright pink Jeep sitting in our only customer spot. The Jeep had to belong to someone from the nail salon next door. People who drove cars like that didn’t have TVs old enough for Lacey to fix. Or any need for my services.

Eyeing the pink monstrosity, I tossed my sunglasses onto the dash and lugged my duffle from the passenger side floorboard, then leaned over to snatch a thick envelope from the glove compartment—my fee for delivering Cari Murphy.

I trudged across the sidewalk and shoved open the glass door, wincing as the bell overhead jingled to announce my presence. Four p.m. was too early in my day to endure high-pitched noises. Especially after all the whiskey I’d had last night to block out recently resurrected mental images of muddy shoes, red uniforms, and rough wooden planks.

In the office, I inhaled the scent of strong, fresh coffee. Somehow, Lacey always knew precisely when to start brewing, though I was as likely to show up for work at six as I was at three, when we officially opened for business.

I was half-way to the coffee pot when a sound from the back room froze me in mid-step. It was high-pitched and bubbly. It was…a giggle, giddy and irritating. And it was followed by a familiar masculine chuckle.

Was Lacey on a date? During office hours? That was about as likely as a Led Zeppelin reunion tour.

I set my duffle silently on the floor next to my desk as I pulled my Ruger from the holster beneath my right arm. From the back, two sets of footsteps approached: the familiar squeak of Lacey’s old, floppy sneakers, and the distinctive click-clack of a pair of heels. High heels. Whoever she was, she was wearing pumps during the day.

No good can come of this.

The knob on the workroom door turned, and I trained my gun on the hollow oak panel, at chest level of the average human adult. Muffled voices echoed from behind the door. That same giggle sliced through my brain like an ice-cream headache, sharp and blinding.

The door creaked opened. A girl stepped into the doorway, still smiling. My gun sight centered on the swell of her chest beneath pristine white cashmere, and she froze, staring at me with wide violet eyes.

I blinked, trying to clear my vision and verify what I was seeing. It really was a girl. A child. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old, and she certainly wasn’t legal. What the hell was Lacey doing in my back room with a teenager?

“Lori? What’s wrong?” His arm reached around the girl’s shoulder to push the door open wider. That was all I could see of him behind her curvy, five-and-a-half-foot frame.

“Aaron, I think you’re being robbed,” Lori whispered, her voice cracking on the last word. The girl’s wide-eyed gaze never left mine, her hands hanging limp at her sides. Her chest rose and fell dramatically with each deep, obviously frightened breath. She was the picture of innocence and virtue—in a tight sweater and short skirt.

What the fuck is going on?

“No one would ever rob us,” he assured her. “Damn it, Lex, put down the gun.” Lacey moved Lori aside gently because he was too short to see over her. “What the hell are you doing? She’s a customer!” From the way he hissed the last word, I gathered she was one of his customers, rather than one of mine. “She’s unarmed.”

“I can see that.” There was no way this child was packing anything but a set of D-cups. If she were, the outline would have been obvious beneath her skin-tight attire.

I flipped up the safety lever and holstered my gun, shooting Lacey an irritated look. Hopefully it said, Get your ass over here and start talking before I take up target practice on your stubby little toes.

He shuffled forward, too-big sneakers flopping with each step. “Miss Crowe brought her television to be repaired.” He nodded less than subtly at an off-brand 32-inch lying screen-down on the counter. I hadn’t noticed the TV. Damn it. She really was a customer.

“And she just wandered into the back room on her own?” I demanded as Lori—or was it Lolita?—inched forward hesitantly.

Lacey shrugged, freckled cheeks flushing. “She had to use the restroom, so I showed her the way.”

Never mind the fact that we had an iron clad “no restroom available for customers” policy. There were only two rooms in the back: the workshop and the restroom. The toilet wasn’t that hard to find, even for a busty bit of jailbait without the sense to dress for cold weather. But Lacey was burdened with that pesky Y chromosome, and she was underage sex personified. He would probably have signed over his pension plan, if she’d smiled just right.

Fortunately for all involved, he didn’t have a pension plan. Which was my idea.

“Um, I should go.” She swayed forward gracefully on four-inch white spiked heels, as if she were waiting for one of us to object to her departure.

I followed her gaze to Lacey just in time to see his expression change. To see it practically melt from his face, revealing…devotion. Or pure puppy-lust, if there was such a thing.

Understanding clicked into place in my hung-over, sleep-deprived brain. Lori wasn’t a child—not according to the legal, human definition, anyway. She was a succubus. A nasty, no-good, lust-sucking little parasite. And she was feeding on my only employee, who was apparently too damn dumb to realize it.

My regrettably empty hands curled into fists at my sides. “I’ll show you out,” I snapped, anger clipping my words short. Glaring at Lacey, I crossed our small office and shoved the glass door open wide enough that I wouldn’t have to touch the leach’s too-warm flesh as she passed by me into the late October chill.

“I’ll call you when I’m ready,” Lacey said, and his entire face flushed roughly the shade of her Jeep. Because that could only be her pink Jeep. “When your TV’s ready, I mean. I’ll call you!”

She shot him a bewitching smile over one shoulder, then tossed her pale, red-blond ponytail and flounced out the door.

“You know what she is, don’t you?” I asked, pulling the door closed as the strawberry tart settled into the driver’s seat of the pink Jeep. She shot me an innocent smile as she backed out of the parking spot, a scant inch from grazing Rusty with her side view mirror.

“A customer?” Lacey grabbed a screwdriver from the counter and headed into the workroom.

I followed him. “She’s a succubus, Lace.”

“Even succubae sometimes have broken TVs, Lex. She just came in for a repair. That’s it. She’s not dangerous.”

“The hell she isn’t.” I stopped in the doorway to the workroom. “Do you really believe that jailbait-looking parasite came here for your technical skills?”

“You’re right. She’s probably here for my raw animal sex appeal.” He spun to face me, grinning with both arms outstretched so I could get a good look at his rail-thin arms and sunken sternum. Lacey hung the screwdriver in its spot in the size-order line-up of other screwdrivers dangling from a pegboard that ran the entire length of his half of the room, above a wall-to-wall workbench. His side was flawlessly organized and clean, every tool, bottle of cleaner, and spare part in its place.

“She thinks she’s found a free meal and intends to suck you dry at the first available opportunity,” I insisted as he lifted his short, thin frame onto a stool and went back to work on the handheld radio I’d dropped last week. On average, gremlins were about the same height as goblins, but they lacked the bulky build, extraordinary physical strength, and general toughness. Like any species, individuals were unique, but generally speaking, Gremlins were highly intelligent, un-aggressive, and full of energy, which made Aaron Lacey the perfect dinner for a hungry succubus. “If I’d come in an hour later, I’d have found you on the workroom floor, bearing no obvious injuries, and no signs of life.”

He looked up from the radio, still grinning. “Is this your way of saying you love me?”

I crossed my arms over my chest as I leaned against the door jamb. “This is my way of saying I don’t have the time, energy, or patience to train another employee if you die. No piece of ass is worth risking your life over.” Trust me.

Lacey actually winked at me, the impudent little runt. “Love you too, boss.”

He thought I was being melodramatic. But I wasn’t.

Lori Crow may have looked like something from a teenage boy’s wet dream, but she was easily his worst nightmare. Succubae feed on sexual energy, on lust. If not stopped, a succubus will gorge herself until her prey is too weak to eat, drink, move, or even think. She can literally drain her victim’s life-force. The medical examiner’s report would likely blame heart failure or something equally non-specific, but the result was the same, no matter how the official words read: death.

Lacey should have known better. I’d personally taught him better. At least, I’d tried to. “Do not let her back in unless I’m here,” I said as I stomped back into the front room for the envelope of cash.

“Don’t let the paying customer back in to compensate me for my time and labor,” he called from behind me. “Solid business model, boss.”

“Okay, you’re manipulating phrasing to make my perfectly valid request sound ridiculous, when it isn’t.”

Lacey looked up from the radio as I headed back into the workroom. “Is it possible—just possible—that you’re making a snap judgement based on your own bias?”

“It is not bias—”

“I mean, I know you had a bad experience with a parasite once, but—”

“That’s not relevant,” I snapped, shutting down that line of questioning before it could dredge up any embarrassing memories. “And it is not bias to say that parasites live by draining the lifeforce from others. That’s just fact.”

“But it is bias to assume that every parasite is out to kill, when the truth is that most take energy in non-life-threatening quantities, from volunteer donors.”

My scowl deepened. “That has not been my personal experience.”

“Thus the bias.” Lacey spun on his stool to face me. “Look, your utter lack of faith in humanity is definitely part of your charm, but—”

“Parasites are not human.”

“—but,” he continued. “Just for variety’s sake, maybe you should avoid pulling a gun on the customers until they’ve actually proven themselves dangerous.”

I arched both brows at him. “By then, it could be too late.”

Lacey sighed, his soldering iron held loosely in one hand.

“Did you…?” I frowned as my gaze skimmed the right half of the workroom. “Did you clean my space?”

He shrugged. “You’d amassed enough Twinkie wrappers to paper the room in them.”

I squatted next to the safe built into the floor and set the cash-filled envelope next to my left boot.

“You were supposed to lock that up last night,” Lacey said.

“Bite me.”

He chuckled, and I couldn’t resist a smile of my own. He only looks like a kid, I reminded myself for the thousandth time as I twisted the dial to input the first number of the combination. But the reminder did no good; when I looked at him, I still saw the twelve-year-old I’d hired fifteen years ago to repair phones and TVs after school. In part, that was because at twenty-seven, he still looked eighteen.

From puberty on, gremlins age slower than humans. They’re the late developers in every junior high gym class. The thirty-year-olds who get carded at R-rated movies. At a glance, he and Lori would have made a nice couple. But then, at a glance, I look sweet, and feminine, and delicate.

Appearances aren’t everything.

Lacey’s laughter faded into a familiar, comfortable silence as I dialed in the second number. “Anything new?” I asked.

“Nope.” He pressed a button on a pill speaker he’d found in the alley and repaired for fun, and rap music pounded, streaming through his phone from some app that made little sense to me. “And it’s a good thing, since you’re going to be busy with that new job for a while.”

I glared up at him until he lowered the volume. “What gave it away?”

“You’re wearing your traveling shoes, and you only travel for business.”

I glanced down at my most comfortable pair of black boots—low, leather tops, steel-reinforced toes, and cool-gel-padded soles—and couldn’t help but smile. Lacey was one of a kind, and I was lucky to have him, especially with all the other, higher-paying mechanical and technical jobs available for a talented gremlin with a good work ethic. Fortunately for me, Lacey liked my office hours. Or maybe it was the casual-to-grungy dress code, which he was exploiting today with a grease-stained T-shirt and a pair of ripped, baggy jeans that pooled on the floor around his sneakers, because he couldn’t find any short enough to actually fit him.

Hundreds of years ago, gremlins utilized their talents in intricate wood working and sculpting, but as technology progressed, they were right there on the cusp of change, leading the way for humans to follow. Historically, gremlins were vital to the emerging field of mechanics and had their dexterous fingers in every technological pie from the development of the automobile to the design and construction of automatic weapons. Later, when electronics surged to the forefront of innovation, several closet-gremlins were lauded as the fathers/founders of the computer industry and they’ve remained active in cutting edge research and development.

Despite Lacey’s considerable skill, he had no desire to work for a large tech or engineering company. He was happy keeping my car and weapons working and fixing the occasional old television set. And I was happy to let him do it.

While my only employee hummed along with the streaming rap music he played to drive me nuts, I spun the lock dial to the final number. The combination was the date of my death, with the numbers reversed. The three-inch thick door swung open, and I dropped the envelope on top of a partially disassembled handgun, one of Lacey’s works in progress. Which reminded me of the new toy I’d planned to buy. Alas, my gadget shopping spree would have to wait until I’d finished Devich’s job. The key to my afterlife trumped night vision goggles any day of the week.

Behind me, Lacey’s stool creaked as he stood, and the familiar clink of glass against porcelain told me he was pouring a mug of coffee. Acting on impulse, I snatched the envelope back from the safe and peeled several one-hundred-dollar bills from the stack within. Then I replaced the payment and closed the door, giving it a rattle for good measure.

“Here,” Lacey said, and I glanced up as he set a steaming mug of coffee at my workstation.

“Thanks.” I pushed up from the floor and set the money on my cluttered work surface, then I took a sip from the mug as I settled onto my stool. The coffee was perfect, as usual. Lacey deserved a raise—but not this week. Not until I’d bought my new toy.

I set the mug over an old coffee ring on my large calendar/planner and pushed the small stack of cash toward him.

“What’s this?” He flipped through the bills, counting, as I’d always insisted he do. Even if the money came from me.

“Next week’s pay. I’m not sure how long this job will take.” Nor was I sure what would happen once Devich paid me, and I finally—hopefully—had the information I’d been trying to acquire for more than two centuries. If I did have to find a way to visit the Gatekeeper, I’d need to make long-term arrangements for Lacey and the business, just in case.

“Oh. Thanks.” Standing, he slid the folded stack of hundreds into his hip pocket and headed back to the coffee pot to administer his own dose of caffeine. “So, you going to tell me about this new job, or am I going to have to root through your bag for clues?”

I huffed as he poured his coffee—black, just like mine. We both knew he’d never go through my duffle. He thought of it like his mother’s purse—foreign territory, and vaguely frightening. The great unknown. Which was pretty funny, because little else seemed to scare him, after fifteen years spent working for me.

“I’m doing this one pro bono.”

Lacey spewed coffee from both his mouth and nose, and I laughed as he reached for a paper towel. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath, wiping his chin and nose. “Don’t crack jokes when I’m drinking something hot!”

“It’s not a joke.”

He rubbed furiously at the new stain on his shirt. “You don’t do charity. You don’t even let waiters keep the change without asking for a receipt for a charitable tax donation. There’s something in this for you.”

“Fine.” I shrugged and swiveled away from him on my stool. A philanthropist, I was not. “He is paying me. Just not in cash, other than for expenses. And I have a feeling this job will involve a lot of expenses…”

“I’ll bet.” He wadded up the paper towel and tossed it into the trash. “So, what’s the job?”

“You ever heard of the money pit on Oak Island?”

Lacey raised both eyebrows at me over his mug as he took a sip. “Yeah. Big hole in the ground up in Nova Scotia, right? S’pposed to be some kind of buried treasure. Gold doubloons, or some shit like that.”

“Right. Kind of. There was a treasure, of sorts.”

“Somebody dug up the cash?” He leaned against his own work surface, opposite mine, resting one elbow on the spotless stainless-steel surface.

“Yup. Well, they found something anyway. I don’t know what exactly, but I will soon. I’m supposed to find it.”

“You just said someone already found it.”

“Yeah, well, it’s gone again.” I carried my mug into the front room, where I sank into the duct-tape-patched chair behind my gunmetal desk. Lacey followed and perched on the edge of the desk. “A subsidiary of the Devich Corporation dug it up two days ago—and promptly lost it again.” To a thief, likely an employee.

Lacey grinned over his mug. “Enter Lex Walker.”

“Apparently. Devich came to see me personally.” At my home. In the middle of the night. Without an invitation. But I saw no reason to worry him with the details.

“So how’s he paying you, if not in cash?”

“Information.” The most stable currency known to man. Or to me.

Lacey’s brows rose again. “Anything I need to know about?”

“No.” I watched for his reaction, but there was none. Lacey had no idea what I was—or rather, what I wasn’t—and didn’t seem to give a damn, so long as I treated him right and paid him on time. He was the perfect employee. Competent, reliable, and completely uninterested in my private life. Ours was the single healthiest relationship I’d ever been a part of.

“’Kay. Be careful. And yell if you need anything.”

I could have kissed him—if he didn’t occupy the “little brother” space in my life. “I could use a car-sitter while I’m gone. My flight leaves at eight tonight.”

“Happy to. Rusty likes me better than she likes you anyway,” he teased.

“Bullshit!” Though he was the only man she would let near her ignition.

With that, Lacey went to work on the parasite’s television, mumbling just loud enough for me to hear about all the fun places he was going to take my car in my absence. “Drive-through restaurants. Drive-in movies. That car wash she likes on the corner, with the free wax finish…”

I laughed as I watched him work for a couple of minutes. Real repair customers were rare, but every now and then, people actually brought in broken appliances and electronics, assuming the sign out front to be an accurate description of the business within. Good sport that he was, Lacey would fix them at a very reasonable rate, just to keep himself busy. He made some decent extra money that way, too.

When he finally stopped talking, I drained my mug and pulled a thick stack of research printouts from my duffle bag.

When Troy Devich had left my apartment last night—actually early this morning—I’d sat down at my computer with an open bottle of whiskey and a box of Twinkies. Modern fitness experts say that to maintain good health, the human body should consume something like two and a half liters of water a day, along with a variety of fruits and vegetables. But over the years, I’d discovered that in a pinch, plenty of sugar and alcohol will do the job just fine—a fact Lacey and I had agreed to disagree on.

After three hours on the internet, I’d finished the whiskey and printed twelve pages of information on the pit at Oak Island, nearly twenty pages on Troy Devich and his multi-faceted corporation, and two different recipes for gourmet burgers.

By then I’d been hungry, even after the Twinkies.

I’d also searched for information about Cari Murphy and her connection to a certain small band of goblins, but I’d found nothing. Either that wasn’t her real name, or she’d managed to keep herself completely off the internet. Which I would have sworn was impossible. Especially for a teenager.

A search in each of the goblins’ first names brought up several different sites written in German, but by then I’d been too tired to try to decipher the contents armed with nothing but a serious buzz and a browser tab open to Google Translate. Instead, I’d shoved the printouts in my duffle bag with the envelope of cash and collapsed onto my bed, just as the first morning rays shone through my living room window.

Nine and a half hours later, I had run out of time to waste.

Most of the information about Oak Island was stuff I’d heard years ago, but since I couldn’t remember any of the specifics, I read through the entire file, to be sure I wasn’t missing anything important about a mystery almost as old as I was.

In the fall of 1795, three boys came across a depression in the ground beneath an oak tree on a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia. The branch over the depression was noticeably scarred, and the boys concluded that it had been used as a support to help lower something into the ground. Naturally, they assumed they’d found the proverbial X marking the spot: buried treasure.

The boys ran home for their shovels and came back determined to dig up their fortune. After ten feet, they hit a layer of solid oak planks, three inches thick. They kept digging and hit another layer of planks. Then another one. After the third layer, the boys gave up, but over the next few decades, the pit continued to draw interest, first from locals, then eventually from treasure enthusiasts worldwide, including the independently wealthy and at least one U.S. President.

Over time, several different privately funded digging companies tried to reach the treasure. None of them made it. They broke through wooden barrier after barrier, but a series of accidents and money shortages got in the way every time someone seemed to be getting close to something. Almost as if someone or something was trying to stop them.

Though none of the diggers found gold or jewels, before they admitted defeat, a couple of teams did uncover several interesting and perplexing things. They found a layer of charcoal around eighty feet down and a layer of a fibrous material beneath that, which turned out to be from the outer rinds of several hundred coconuts. The diggers also pulled up a slab of stone, supposedly engraved with indecipherable writing thought to be some kind of code.

What eventually put an end to the miners’ efforts was nothing so complicated as mysterious stone tablets or impossibly deep oak platforms. It was something simple and infuriating, and impossible to overcome.

Water. Lots and lots of water.

One night in 1803, after work had stopped for the day, the pit flooded with nearly sixty feet of salt water. At the time, the technology didn’t exist to pump it out as fast as it came in. Left with no other choice, the workers abandoned the dig.

Forty-five years later, a fresh set of diggers found the source of the water: the pit was booby trapped. Literally. In 1849, a new crew discovered a complex system of horizontal tunnels converging into one main channel which connected the money pit to a beach on the north side of Oak Island. The tunnels were lined with rocks and more coconut fiber, which absorbed huge amounts of water at high tide. Anytime diggers dug deep enough to expose the main channel, the fibers discharged the water they had absorbed into the pit, until the pressure equalized. It was genius, really. The fibers, along with large amounts of eel grass, filtered the water to keep out sand and debris, leaving a huge hole full of water. Like a salt-water well.

Of course, the diggers tried to plug the channel, but the water pressure was too strong. It broke through every kind of barrier they could think of, even when they used dynamite to try and collapse the tunnels. Years later, yet another set of workers discovered a second system of tunnels connecting the pit to a beach on the south side of the island, and once again, workers were stumped. By that point, at least two people had died excavating the hole, more had been injured, and rumors were circulating about the pit being cursed, though goodness knows, a human wouldn’t know a curse if it rendered him blind, deaf, and mute. Regardless, digging in the pit ceased for good after the discovery of the second channel, at least as far as the public knew.

But they didn’t know a thing about Troy Devich.

According to Devich, a subsidiary of his parent corporation bought the deed and the digging rights to Oak Island in its entirety in the late nineteen nineties and had been working to bring the treasure up ever since. Three days ago, they’d succeeded. They pulled up a large stone box, caked with mud and completely sealed shut.

Later that day, less than an hour after takeoff, Devich’s private cargo plane crashed in the woods near the tiny town of Dayton, Maine, with the “treasure” on board. Though the plane made no stops along the way, no sign of the stone box was found in the wreckage. It had simply vanished, along with the co-pilot, whom Devich believed to be involved.

He wanted me to find his new toy and deliver it to him, still unopened—along with whoever took it.

Across the room, Lacey turned up the radio volume, now bobbing his head to the rhythm of Must Be the Money on his favorite “old school” rap station, and completely destroying my concentration. He was peacefully oblivious to my inner turmoil, and I wanted to keep it that way. I couldn’t tell him what information I was working for, and if this job was as dangerous as I suspected it would be, I wanted Lacey left completely out of it in case something went wrong. Which was a distinct possibility on this one, since I was supposed to bring in not only the stolen object, but the thief who had taken it.

I hate live extractions.

Sure, last night’s job went well, but Cari Murphy wanted to be found. Devich’s thief probably would not.

To make matters worse, I harbored no illusions about what would happen to the thief once I’d turned him or her over. While I’d learned nothing specific about Devich during our conversation last night—other than the fact that he wouldn’t go down easily—I did come away from the meeting distinctly wary of him. The man talked like Dr. Jekyll but walked like Mr. Hyde. And he definitely was not the kind of guy who would pat an opponent on the head and let him go—at least, not while that head was still attached to the rest of the body.

Generally speaking, I have no philosophical problem with eliminating the bad guy when the situation calls for it. In my experience, very few truly violent criminals were capable of rehabilitation anyway, and in this case, I wouldn’t even be the one pulling the trigger. But Devich wanted me to bring in a thief, not a serial killer. A man who took an old box. Not a psycho who murdered babies in their sleep.

Some consider my entire line of work little better than thievery. Did I deserve to die—again—because I made my living acquiring things through extrajudicial means?

If I turned the thief in, I would be partially responsible for his fate, even if I never touched him. He wouldn’t get a trial or an attorney. He’d have no chance to explain himself, and I, of all people, knew just how wrong that was.

But if I didn’t hand over the thief, Devich wouldn’t hand over the rest of my information.

And that wasn’t even my most immediate problem. No matter how much I muddled over it, I couldn’t make sense of three goblins snatching a human teenager—at least, not since their primary motivation obviously wasn’t consumption. If they weren’t after a midnight snack, what could they possibly have wanted from Cari Murphy?

Frowning, I dug my cell from my pocket. I didn’t mingle with any goblins, mostly because I was not okay with a species that would just as soon eat me as talk to me. Still, I did know one guy…

Janssen answered on the fourth ring.

“Walker, s’at you?” a familiar, deep voice croaked into my ear.

“None other.” I glanced at Lacey across the room and found him still occupied with the succubus’s television. But I could tell he was listening. “I need a favor. Some information, if you have it.”

“Shoot.”

“You know any goblins name Dirk, Hagen, or Berg? I think they’re brothers, probably hiring themselves out as a team.”

Silence hung over the line for what seemed like forever, and I was starting to wonder if he’d hung up on me when Janssen finally answered. “Do you know every human in the country, Walker?” he growled, almost too low for me to hear.

Okay, obviously I’d crossed some sort of line. Oops. “Of course not.”

“Yet you think I should know every goblin in Memphis, just because my Y chromosome was donated by one?” Janssen’s human mother had no idea her son wasn’t completely human, but he’d found out the hard way, when a local band of goblins discovered him walking home from school one afternoon and beat the living shit out of him for “being a part of the problem.” He’d been sixteen years old.

“I do not think that, nor did I mean to imply any such thing. I was just hoping, against all odds, that you might know the names.”

Janssen snorted into my ear.

“Is that a no?” I snatched a pen from the jar on my desk and began doodling on the margins of one of the printouts as I spoke. I wasn’t surprised to see the lines and sharp angles take the shape of a pistol, but I was astonished to recognize the gun as Cale Murphy’s Desert Eagle. Which was now my Desert Eagle.

“Yes, that’s a no.” Janssen paused, and several more silent seconds escaped while I drew circles next to the sketch of a gun. Finally, he sighed into my ear. “If you have pictures, I could show them to a few people.”

Damn. When was I gonna learn to take pictures of the people I beat half to death? “Nope, no pics. But if you could ask around about the names, I’ll owe you one.”

Another snort. “You already owe me several.”

On the calendar, three of the doodle-circles morphed into a cartoon snowman with fangs and horns. “So, you’re in for a big payoff. Will you do it?”

Another hesitation. Then, “Give me a couple of days, and I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Thanks, Janssen. You’re the best.”

“Don’t forget it.” He hung up, and I dropped my phone on my desk.

“You ‘bout ready?” Lacey called from across the room. “Your flight leaves in an hour and a half.”

I looked up to find him wiping his hands on a clean towel, Ms. Crow’s television fully assembled on the counter in front of him. On the other side of the glass front wall, the moon rode high, and the parking lot was deserted. One glance at the clock over the door told me Lacey was right: it was six-thirty.

Damn. I’d forgotten to eat lunch again.

“Yeah, give me just a minute to get all this packed up.” I shoved the Oak Island papers into a manila folder, which went into the duffle next to my sneakers and the information Devich had given me from his plane’s flight data recorder. From my bottom desk drawer, I withdrew a small portable gun box made of heavy-duty grey HPX resin and equipped with a three-digit combination padlock. After entering the combination—my age on the day I’d bought it—I removed the lock and flipped up the lid. Inside were two custom-made foam inserts, one in each half of the box, with cutouts in the shape of my two favorite pistols, two spare magazines, and two silencers.

From the middle drawer, I took two empty nine-millimeter magazines and fitted them into the proper cut-outs. I would rather carry full magazines, but the airline won’t allow ammunition except in its original packaging. None in the weapon, and none in the spare magazines.

After the magazines came the silencers, from the same drawer. Then the guns themselves—the Ruger from my shoulder holster and a nine-millimeter Glock from the duffle. I closed and re-locked the box, then set it on the floor beside the duffle.

Next, I shrugged out of the shoulder holster and dropped it into the bag, which would serve as my carry-on. My blade was already packed—sheathed and locked into a metal case in my compact leather travel bag, along with two changes of clothes. Knives, like guns, had to be declared and checked, as did the two unopened boxes of nine-millimeter shells, in the interior zipper compartment of the bag.

Finally ready, I tossed the bag over my shoulder and glanced around the office to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything important.

Oops. I was. Paperwork for the weapons.

From a hanging file in the bottom right-hand drawer, I pulled a Non-Resident Firearm Declaration Form and my Authorization to Transport permit, both of which were required to bring weapons into Canada. Keeping the paperwork up to date was a pain in the ass, but not nearly so bothersome or expensive as trying to buy new guns quickly once I got there. And sneaking them aboard undeclared was basically begging for a prison sentence.

I was shoving the documents into my inside jacket pocket when Lacey called my name. His uneasy tone caught my attention instantly; something was wrong.

“What?” I glanced up to find him staring out at the parking lot.

“Something’s out there.”

SEVEN

I stared out the front wall of windows at the strip mall parking lot beyond. I saw nothing but darkness, broken up by distinct bright circles beneath the security lights, islands of safety in a sea of the black unknown.

Yet Lacey gripped the countertop with knuckles white from tension, the slim musculature of his arms standing out beneath his skin. He was watching something. And he seemed convinced that something was watching him back.

Suddenly, sitting inside a well-lit room behind an un-obscured wall of windows didn’t seem like such a good idea. It would be much easier for someone to see into the office than it was for us to see out into the dark.

“Where? I don’t see anything.” I scanned the lot again as I sank slowly back into my chair, pulling open the middle desk drawer to grope for my second favorite Ruger. The duffle slipped from my right shoulder as my fingers brushed cold steel.

“Right in front of the sidewalk, between our cars.”

I pulled the pistol from the drawer into my lap beneath the desk, staring intently at the strip of blacktop between the two vehicles. At first, I still saw nothing. Then something flashed at me: two points of crimson in the dark, around the height of my sideview mirror.

Tension drained from my body. “Orthus,” I muttered, dropping the spare gun back into the drawer as I stood. “What the hell is he doing here?” I stepped up to the window, cupping my hands on the glass to block out the light from inside. Sure enough, Orthus sat on his haunches between Lacey’s firebird and Rusty, staring at me. How the hell had he found me?

I scanned the rest of the lot to make sure he was unaccompanied, and I was not surprised to find it empty. The goblins would never trust him again. In fact, they’d have shot him if they had the chance, though I was far from sure a bullet would actually kill the hellhound.

Orthus took my appearance in the glass as an invitation to plod forward onto the sidewalk, into the light shining from our office. At my back, Lacey gasped. I reached for the push-bar on the front door, but before I could press it, a heavy, slide-catch sound came from behind me. Lacey had just pumped the ancient Winchester 12 gauge we kept beneath the counter.

“Get out of the way Lex.”

I turned to find him staring past me at Orthus, shotgun aimed and ready. His gaze held a mixture of terror and determination. I’d never seen him look braver.

My hands found my hips. “Let me get this straight: you’ll let the lust-hungry parasite suck you dry without lifting a finger in your own defense, but you’re going to shoot a stray dog with an antique shotgun?”

Lacey huffed. “‘Antique’ implies non-functional. This is exceedingly functional.” He held the shotgun in his right hand, arm extended Terminator-style. “It’s old-school.”

I cleared my throat to disguise a laugh. My gadget-man could repair or rebuild any gun he got his hands on—but he couldn’t hit a brick wall at ten paces. “Use two hands, or the recoil will knock you on your ass. Better yet, put the gun down. The dog means us no harm.”

Probably.

Lacey spoke through gritted teeth, still aiming from the hip, as if he held a pistol, rather than a forty-two-inch-long shotgun. “That’s not a dog, Lex; it’s a fucking hellhound. They don’t show up for coffee and donuts. They’re death heralds. Now get the fuck out of my way, so I can blow his ugly muzzle off!”

Damn. He knew what Orthus was. So much for the “friendly stray” story I already had half-concocted.

I drew in a slow, deep breath, reminding myself that Lacey was just trying to protect me from the hellhound he thought had come to drag one of us screaming into the brimstone beyond.

Could he be right? Had I misread Orthus the night before? If my judgment was off that badly, I had bigger problems to deal with than a lost dog and a trigger-happy coworker.

“Lacey, put the gun down. I know what he is. His name is Orthus, and while I don’t think a three-inch slug will kill him, it’ll sure as hell piss him off. And you do not want to see that dog angry.”

Confusion flickered behind his eyes, and the shotgun barrel dipped slightly. “You know that thing?”

“We met last night, on the Murphy job. I had to leave my Ruger in the car, and he watched my back.”

“The hellhound watched your back?” The gun bobbed again, and Lacey’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure he wasn’t trying to take a bite out of your ass?”

“Funny you should mention that…” I smiled, wondering if Orthus had ever gotten the taste of goblin out of his mouth.

“What?”

“I’ll explain later. Just trust me; he’s not here on business.”

Lacey frowned, but he set the shotgun on the counter, still within easy reach. “So he’s here on what? Pleasure? What does a hellhound do for pleasure?” he grumbled, eyeing Orthus through the glass. “Chase sinners through the streets of Memphis? Chomp on dismembered-limb chew toys?”

Anything he wants, I thought half-hysterically, my palm splayed out on the cold pane of glass. Chills traveled up my arm, raising goose bumps. What if I was wrong? Was I willing to bet my life—such as it was—on the assumption that Orthus wouldn’t drag me into the bowels of hell tonight, because he didn’t do it the night before? Yes, most days I was eager to begin an actual afterlife, but not that kind of afterlife.

I was shooting for the penthouse, not the basement furnace.

The clock ticked softly over my head, and I glanced up at it. I needed to be in line at airport security in twenty-five minutes, and the drive there would take at least half an hour. I didn’t have time to throw a human femur around the park for Orthus just then.

“Come on.” I tossed my head toward the parking lot as I jogged back to my desk, where my duffle and gun box still sat. “I can’t miss my flight.” I grabbed my gear and crossed the office again, pushing open the front door. Two steps later, I stood in the middle of the sidewalk.

Orthus watched me from three feet away, florescent light glinting off disturbingly pointed teeth rising from black gums. Seeing him so close up, I was struck again by how un-doglike the hellhound seemed, in spite of clearly canine features. Something in his stance, something about the way he held himself, spoke of death and despair, rather than walks in the park, wagging tails, or anything else inherently pet-like. He didn’t cock his head at me in that adorably inquisitive way some dogs do. He didn’t pant with his tongue hanging from one side of his mouth. And he certainly didn’t scratch behind one ear with his hind foot. Though we’d just met, I was certain Orthus would never stoop to something so undignified and cute. Hell, he was probably scary even as a puppy. Assuming he’d ever been a puppy.

“Hey, Orthus.” I’d decided to keep it casual. So long as he showed no sign of aggression, neither would I.

The hellhound bobbed his head in greeting, and as light shifted on his coat, the color seemed to ripple from black to dark red, then back again. No wonder Lacey was spooked. What would he do if he ever saw the beast sans fur?

“How did you get here?” I asked, passing Orthus on the way to the back of the car. It went against my instincts to turn my back on the dog, but I did it anyway, to show him I wasn’t afraid. And that I trusted him—sort of—after he’d had my back last night. “Did you come to see me?” I asked, peering around Rusty’s now-open trunk to watch for his reply.

The dog nodded, and I could no longer pretend that was just coincidence. He’d understood my question and had answered to the best of his ability. Just as he’d done the night before.

I dropped my duffle and gun box into the trunk next to my travel bag and slammed the trunk closed. “Are you here in a professional capacity?” I couldn’t bring myself to actually ask the hellhound if he’d come to deliver me to hell for eternal torture. Things like that don’t just roll off the tongue.

Orthus shook his head as I stopped at his side, and I breathed easier, surprised to realize how nervous I’d really been about that part.

The dog’s gaze shifted to look over my shoulder. He growled, and the sound rumbled across my skin, reverberating inside my head, like my own private echo. My left hand flew to my temple. “Stop that! You’re making my brain itch.”

Orthus bit his growl off in a sharp yip of reproach. Then his gaze slid back to whatever was behind me. I turned to find Lacey standing frozen on the sidewalk, staring in terror at my second uninvited guest of the day.

“That’s Aaron Lacey,” I told Orthus. “He’s my friend and employee, and you’re scaring the piss out of him. Lay off, or I’ll take you right back to that warehouse for a reunion with the goblins.”

I would do no such thing, of course. I wouldn’t go near the Three Stooges again without the promise of another paycheck. But he seemed to respond best when I let him know he didn’t scare me. Even when he did.

“Got it?” I demanded, frowning down at him with my best I-mean-business face.

He huffed, then blinked at me, and I wasn’t sure whether I’d just been mollified or flipped off in doggy-speak. Either way, that was clearly all I was gonna get.

“Lacey, get your ass in the car.”

Lacey glared at me. Then he puffed out his chest, squared his shoulders, and raised his chin as he swaggered onto the sidewalk, thin arms swinging. He looked downright intimidating—for an unarmed, four foot eleven, ninety-six-pound man-boy.

He strutted his way across the sidewalk, pausing at Orthus’s side just long enough to bob his head in greeting and mumble a faux-confident, “’S’up,” to the clearly confounded hellhound. Then he continued to Rusty’s passenger side without giving either of us so much as a second glance.

“Okay, go on home now,” I told Orthus, as Lacey slid into my passenger seat. “Wherever home is now.” The dog just stared at me, and I shrugged. “Fine. Suit yourself, but I have to go.”

I locked the office door, then slid into the driver’s seat next to Lacey. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I glanced in the rearview mirror to find Orthus still watching us, red eyes gleaming in the dark.

On the way to the airport, I told Lacey all about Cari and Cale Murphy, the goblins, and my new canine acquaintance. By the time we pulled into short-term parking, he was staring at me in a mixture of pride and exasperation. “What good does it do for me to maintain your weapons, if you’re going to leave them in the car when you need them most?”

“I’d never have gotten in with the Ruger. Sometimes a girl has to use her brain instead of her gun.” Though breasts come in handy too.

And no, that was not me being a hypocrite. Lori used sex appeal against Aaron Lacey so she could suck him dry, whereas I’d used it against three armed bad guys who’d kidnapped an innocent child. Totally different.

“Don’t worry.” I snuck a sidelong peek at Lacey. “My guns are all packed and ready to go.” Devich hadn’t given me much to work with, and I had no idea what I’d be facing. In a case like that, my chances of success—and of survival—were directly proportionate to the number of weapons I carried. I’d learned that long ago.

“Got the paperwork?”

I turned Rusty into an empty space half-way across the lot from the nearest entrance and shifted into park. “Always.” I patted my inner coat pocket. “Thanks for keeping it up-to-date.”

“No problem,” Lacey said, and I glanced at my watch in the dim yellow glow of the parking garage light shining through my windshield. “You gonna make it?”

“If I run.” I popped the trunk and turned off the engine, but by the time I made it out of the car, Lacey was already there, unloading my luggage. “Thanks.” I settled the strap of my travel bag over one shoulder and the duffle over the other. The gun box in my right hand left my other one free, just in case.

Weighed down by luggage, I turned to Lacey for a quick set of instructions—the same things we went over every time I left him in charge of the office. “You have your key?”

He dangled his overloaded zip drive keychain in front of my face.

“Okay, I don’t know how long this will take, so don’t accept any more jobs until you hear from me. I’ll check in sometime tomorrow and let you know how it’s going.”

I glanced at my watch again. My flight left in less than an hour, and it would take every bit of that to get through security and declare my weapons. I tugged my duffle strap higher on one shoulder. “Take care of Rusty for me,” I said, walking backward toward the entrance. “And pay the electric bill out of petty cash.”

Lacey frowned at my tone.

“Please.” Why did I always forget that part?

“No problem. Go on before you miss your flight.”

So I did. No hug. No kiss. Not even any waving, because my hands were full, and because that wasn’t how we did business. There was a possibility every time I left for a job that I might not come back, and acknowledging that with a demonstrative display of any kind would have embarrassed us both and accomplished nothing. So we bit our tongues and parted in stoic silence. Like goddamn adults.

As the heavy glass door leading into the terminal slid open, Rusty’s engine hummed behind me. I looked back as Lacey turned her down the first aisle toward the exit, rap music pounding from the twelve-inch sub-woofers he’d installed the month before, without my permission.

He was reprogramming my radio buttons again, setting them all on classic rap stations. Last time, it had taken me two weeks to get them back the way I liked them.

Shaking my head more amused than irritated, I stepped over the threshold and stomped into the terminal.

During my connecting flight from Newark, I sat next to a troll posing as a child traveling alone. In public, trolls always took their human child form. Their alternative appearances—ranging from green-and-scaly to brown-and-blistered—would have caused mass panic. This particular troll looked about six years old and had the most disarmingly adorable chubby cheeks and wide hazel eyes. I fell for his act completely—until I noticed that his iPad, complete with a PAW Patrol-themed case, was playing, um…adult content.

Evidently, he could tell I wasn’t human, strictly speaking, because the little bastard spent the first half of the flight trying to sweet-talk me into getting him a tiny bottle of scotch, and the second half trying to toss his honey-roasted peanuts down the neckline of my blouse. When he finally succeeded, then tried to fish the nut out with his chubby little fingers, I wrapped my hand around his wrist and threatened to break every bone in his arm if he didn’t “nap” for the rest of the flight.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see the flight attendant coming toward us from the back of the plane. But the troll did. He made with the tears and sobbed something about wanting his mommy. The attendant glared at me, scolded me for mistreating little Brian, and promised she’d “keep an eye” on us for the remainder of the flight. Then she accidentally spilled my whiskey and Coke in my lap.

Little Brian laughed as she walked off. Then he tried to help me blot my crotch dry.

At Halifax International, I rented a compact car and snatched a free map of Nova Scotia. Yes, my phone had a map app, but I’d lived long enough to know that technology will let you down when you need it most.

I’d decided to start at Oak Island, to get a feel for the case and to speak to some of the workers involved. Since Devich didn’t actually see the box pulled from the pit, I needed a good firsthand description of it from a crew member. I was also hoping to verify that the box was actually loaded onto the cargo plane, because I wasn’t completely satisfied with Devich’s insistence that it went down in the crash. Heavy stone boxes don’t just disappear. More likely, it never made it into the air in the first place.

Luggage in hand, I stepped out of the airport into the rental car lot and got the surprise of my life: snow. Lots and lots of snow, reflecting a pale, eerie glow from the security lights and the crescent moon high above. And underneath that was a serious layer of ice—a deadly slick sheet of glass my traveling boots didn’t stand a chance of finding purchase on.

I should have been expecting it; I knew how far north Nova Scotia was. Yet I hadn’t given the weather so much as a thought, as my slick-soled boots and thin leather coat showed. Fortunately, I’d spent most of the nineteen seventies in Scandinavia and had gotten quite accustomed to dealing with winter weather. Hopefully it was like riding a bike.

Which I’d never actually tried, come to think of it.

After tossing my bags into the narrow back seat, I wound my way through the parking lot slowly, cursing both the snow and the strange car. The roads weren’t clear yet. Fortunately, the rental car came with snow tires, and by the time I got to Walmart, I was accustomed to the slush and ice.

As I stood in the short, early-morning cashier line at the all-night superstore, I used the number Devich gave me to call Mike Bowman, his project foreman, to tell him I’d be on Oak Island in about an hour, barring any weather-induced catastrophes.

Bowman had been instructed to answer all my questions and give me unrestricted access to the dig site. To my surprise, he sounded wide awake and eager to help, even at three in the morning. Devich must have done some first-rate threatening to put his employee in such an accommodating mood despite the early hour. Or maybe the people in Nova Scotia were just nicer than what I was used to.

I walked out of the store with a new crowbar and a flashlight, as well as a bag of Doritos, a box of Twinkies, and a six-pack of Coke, all of which were necessary to get me through a fifty-four-mile drive on packed snow and ice.

The freeway had been cleared for more than thirty miles, so I made good time until I pulled off the highway onto less well-traveled roads. But when I turned the rental car off the road to face the causeway, my headlights flashed on an aluminum gate blocking the path, secured with a chain and a padlock. Ten feet away, I shifted into park and sat staring over the gate at the long gravel road. On either side, the narrow path sloped down into a bed of rocks rising from the water. Ahead lay Oak Island and the infamous pit, until recently, home to a prize mysterious enough to attract some of the world’s most notorious treasure hunters.

All I could see of it so far was a stand of trees—oaks, naturally—lit by a string of streetlights stretching the length of the causeway and onto the island.

Where the hell was the foreman? Without his key, I was stuck there twiddling my thumbs in the cold.

Or was I?

Leaning over the steering wheel, I squinted at the gate in the glow of the rental car headlights. It looked flimsy enough: just two thick poles held together with a thin chain and a padlock.

Should I? It wasn’t like I was driving my own car. And since Devich was paying, I’d gotten full coverage on the rental. When you buy insurance, they practically expect the car to come back scratched up. Right?

I’ll give the foreman five more minutes, then I’m driving through the damn gate.

Three minutes and thirty-two seconds later, my patience expired. I shifted the car into reverse and backed up about twenty feet. Then I shifted into drive again and stomped on the gas. The gate burst open against the grill with almost no resistance, rusty joints and a deteriorated lock succumbing to the modest power of the late-model Corolla.

It isn’t really breaking and entering when you have permission to be there. Right?

EIGHT

Ice-coated tree branches glimmered in the early-morning moonlight, on either side of the raised gravel road. They were beautiful, as if they’d been dipped in glass, and for just an instant, I decided winter was my favorite season. Then I remembered frostbite and red, cracked skin, and I came back to my senses. I was an autumn kind of girl. No doubt about it.

Specifically, autumn in more southern climes.

I drove onto the causeway slowly, and the headlights bobbed ahead of me, casting shifting shadows behind weeds and rocks on either side of the land bridge. Loose chips of ice and concrete crunched beneath the snow tires as I passed into and out of beams from the succession of streetlights. The moon and stars shown clearly above, the sky amazingly void of clouds and smog. Despite the cold, I rolled the window down an inch, to chase away the lingering smell of the last driver’s stale cigarette smoke with the clean scent of snow and salt water. For the moment, at least, the night felt serene, the world full of beauty.

But with that thought came my instant suspicion of it. I’d never in my life—or in what passed for my afterlife—been given a moment of true peace that wasn’t followed immediately by chaos and pain.

In my world, tranquility was a clear harbinger of doom.

The light ahead grew brighter as the narrow path widened gradually. After another mile, the end of the road was marked by the emergence of a ten-foot-tall chain link fence, topped with broad loops of barbed wire.

Devich was serious about keeping people out.

As I came closer to the fence, details of the site came into focus, and disappointment settled into my chest like the weight of a bad cold. The infamous pit looked nothing like I’d expected. Nothing like the outdated images I’d found on the internet. Gone were the trees, including the one that originally presided over the depression in the ground. Gone were the wooden safety fences and the plank platform used to lower previous generations of workers in harnesses into the hole.

The history of this place had been obliterated.

Now the site looked like a heavy machinery graveyard. A collection of huge Tonka toys.

The first thing to catch my eye was a gantry, like a giant’s swing set, with a huge sliding crane in place of the swing. Easily thirty feet high, it towered over the trailer housing the foreman’s office and was only dwarfed by the last of the oaks at the mouth of the road. Scattered around the site were two semi-trailers, a backhoe, a couple of forklifts, a few oil barrels, a tool shed, and several bundles of rusted pipe. The three blue portable toilets, lined up in a neat row, were the only part of the site that even hinted at organization. The rest spoke of mud, grease, and messy chaos.

If not for the ten-degree wind chill, I might have felt right at home.

Even amongst all the clutter behind the chain link fence, the pit snagged my attention like a thorn in a wool sweater. Instead of the dark, muddy hole in the ground I’d expected, the pit was now a complicated modern excavation spread out beneath the gantry. The tunnel itself had a twelve-inch-tall concrete lip, probably to prevent tools from being accidentally kicked in. Trailing over the lip and out of the pit was a large PVC snake, slithering off to destinations unknown, alongside the tracks of a rail system beginning at the edge of the hole. And presiding over it all was an L-shaped control platform, five feet off the ground at one end of the gantry.

As I stopped at this second gate, my gaze slid past the pit and snagged on the first of several more large, dark holes scattered around the site. Each was surrounded by a barrier, some wooden, others metal, and they were all clearly constructed at least half a century earlier. Weird.

I leaned over the steering wheel again to inspect this latest barrier. In contrast to the one blocking the causeway, the gate at the dig site was tall and sturdy-looking. But just like the first, it was secured with only a padlock and a chain connecting two halves of the gate. It wouldn’t go down as easily as the one I’d rammed, but it was certainly worth a shot.

I’d just shifted the Corolla into reverse, preparing to continue my gate-ramming extravaganza, when headlights flashed in the rearview mirror, nearly blinding me, and bearing down on me fast. The foreman had arrived.

As the black SUV barreled toward my car, I climbed out into the snow, gasping as a burst of frigid air stung my exposed face and hands like a thousand shards of ice. The SUV stopped suddenly, sliding to a stand-still only feet from my rear bumper. I was impressed—until the driver got out, already cussing. He was heavily bundled in a red knit cap and a thick winter overcoat over a pair of puffy, insulated snowsuit pants and bulky black boots. He pushed his door closed and fished a pair of black work gloves from his coat pockets, pulling them on as he stomped toward me, thin lips pressed together.

“Are you the asshole who rammed the gate back there?” the over-bundled man demanded, his voice sharp with fury.

One glance at my front bumper told me that “It was like that when I got here” wasn’t going to fly.

“That’s me, but flattery won’t work on this asshole. I’m Lex Walker. I assume you’re Mike Bowman?”

“You drove through the gate,” he repeated, with no accent that I could discern. The man was clearly American. Probably Midwestern. So much for my “friendly locals” theory.

“You were late.” I shrugged, refusing to feel guilty for being a punctual self-starter. If I’d waited for him, we’d still be arguing in front of the first gate. I’d saved us a step.

He stared at me, either too astonished or too angry to speak coherently. I couldn’t recall ever having that particular problem. “Are you Mike Bowman?” I repeated, and finally the man nodded. From his coat pocket, the foreman pulled a balled-up tissue and began blotting at his red, irritated nose. “Well, now that that’s settled, shall we go in?” I eyed him as patiently as I could. “You first, since you have the key. Presumably.”

His face flushed, deepening in shade to match his nose. “You sure you don’t want to run through this one too, just for good measure?”

Shrugging, I turned to pull open my driver’s side door.

“I was only fucking kidding,” Bowman mumbled, trudging past me in the snow. “What say we try the easy way this time?” He gestured toward the gate with a packed ring of keys.

I reached across the front seat of the Corolla and grabbed the Walmart bag, then closed the door and followed him, my nose already numb and threatening to run.

Bowman opened the lock and pulled the chain loose, leaving it to dangle from one side of the gate. He shoved both halves open, and I walked onto the dig site, studying the foreman for any sign of non-human lineage as I passed close to him. I found none.

“Mr. Devich had us leave the place all lit up, so you should be able to see pretty well,” Bowman said, glancing around at the dig he’d headed up for nearly a decade.

Sure enough, the site was as bright as daylight, though it was at least two more hours until dawn. Over the tops of the trees, the sky had a pale-yellow tinge to it: artificial light glowing above skeletal white branches.

“What’s with all the holes?” I asked, wiggling frozen toes inside my boots as we walked. “I thought there was only one pit.”

“There was one to start with,” he said, guiding me toward the gantry. “But years ago, when one of the dig teams got frustrated, someone got the bright idea to dig another hole, then tunnel through the ground from it to the first pit, to avoid the booby traps. You know about the flood tunnels?” Bowman glanced at me, and when I nodded, he continued. “When that didn’t work, they tried again. And again. Eventually, that dig went bankrupt and the people all left. With all the abandoned holes out here, everyone pretty much forgot which one was the important one.”

The Walmart bag smacked my thigh when I stopped walking to stare around at the maze of scattered holes and equipment. “You mean no one knows which one of these is the real pit?” Some of the holes were covered by broad, flat iron disks or boards of OSB, and others were left open like mouths in the ground, gaping in anticipation of a meal. Most likely, several of them had actually been fed over the years. In decades past, I’d heard of several deaths at the Oak Island money pit. A couple of people had drowned, and a few more had hit the bottom of the then-dry hole and been crushed by the fall.

“No. Not for sure, anyway,” Bowman said. “But Mr. Devich seemed pretty confident in his choice. We never even looked at any of the other holes. Just the one he wanted dug up. That one over there, toward the center.”

He pointed at the concrete-lined hole beneath the gantry. “Don’t ask me how Devich knows that’s the right one. He didn’t even ask the previous owner, though from what I’ve heard, that old coot would have been most likely to remember.”

I understood perfectly well why a man like Troy Devich would squander a knowledgeable resource like the previous owner of Oak Island. A man of Devich’s wealth, power, and connections in the Netherworld had the very best empaths at his disposal, any one of whom would know which hole was the real deal with little more than a glance and a moment to “feel” around with her eyes closed. The real pit would still retain echoes of past activity—a metaphysical record of things long gone, faded like an old photograph, but still clear enough to sense.

Nose cherry red now, Bowman veered through the snow toward the foreman’s trailer, and I followed, my empty hand held out to capture several doomed snowflakes. I watched as they melted on my skin, fascinated by how something so potent and so devastatingly cold, something with the power of death over those left exposed, could seem so very fragile in the slight warmth of my palm.

Like the snow, I was strongest in my own element. Unfortunately, there weren’t many shadows to be found on the dig site. Bright overhead lights drove them all into hiding, as if someone thought monsters couldn’t come out if the sun never went down.

Bowman unlocked his trailer and pushed the door open. “Mr. Devich didn’t seem to know what you’d need,” he said, tugging his hat lower on his head. “But I have just about everything in here. I also have access to the special harnesses the men use, but I wouldn’t suggest going into the pit. It’s not safe without the crew here to operate the equipment.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.” I had no intention of going into that hole. Not even if Devich promised to hand over the Gatekeeper bound and gagged.

“Be right back.” Bowman disappeared into his trailer and the light went on inside.

Shivering, I pulled a black knit hat from one pocket of my jacket and a matching pair of gloves from the other, donning them both as the foreman came back out with two long, heavy-looking flashlights.

My teeth chattered, and Bowman glanced at me in smug amusement. “Cold seeps right into you, doesn’t it?” he said. “I’ve been working this dig site for most of the last ten years, and I still can’t stand the snow. Didn’t bother us much at the pit, though, strange as that sounds. We were so intent on the job at hand, I guess.” He pulled the door shut and jogged down the steps into the snow. “Some guys were even working without their coats during that last week, digging, and pumping, and hauling in their flannel shirts with no gloves. Hell, I soaked more than one rag with sweat, myself, and I was only supervising.

“Cold enough now, though, isn’t it?” I scuffed my boot in a twelve-inch drift of snow. “Whose bright idea was it to do this in the middle of the Canadian cold snap, anyway?” I couldn’t imagine working up a sweat in the snow, no matter what I was doing.

Okay, maybe there was one way…

“Not mine,” Bowman shook his head, as if we shared a common misery. “I go where the money is.”

Don’t we all… I pulled my hat farther down over my forehead, wishing I’d brought earmuffs. And a couple of those shake-up chemical hand warmers.

“Here.” Bowman handed me a long black flashlight. I’d bought my own in Halifax, but his was bigger and probably more powerful, so I accepted it gratefully, slipping it into the Walmart bag next to my other supplies. Whoever said size doesn’t matter clearly wasn’t facing a big-ass hole in the ground armed with only a four-inch flashlight.

I fell into step behind Bowman, trying not to slip in the snow as I rounded a cluster of oil barrels and stepped over a rusted pipe. I’d come to Oak Island mainly to speak to the foreman and get his version of what happened, as well as to verify that the box actually made it onto the plane. But now that I was there, I couldn’t leave without sneaking a peek at the most infamous pit in the world.

We stopped in front of the rail system, swept mostly clear of snow by the wind. “What’s with the train tracks?” I asked, visually tracking their path to where they rounded a curve behind the foreman’s trailer.

“It’s a removal system.” Bowman stepped onto one of the wooden planks connecting the rails and kicked absently at a metal bar with one snow-crusted boot. “We have big rail carts to carry off the dirt as it’s removed from the hole.”

“What about that pipe?”

“Pumps water from the pit, but it’s not running now. We shut off everything but the lights after we loaded the crate onto the helicopter.” He stepped from one board to the next with no regard for the thin sheen of ice glistening on each one in the glare from the lights.

The plastic bag crinkled against my leg as I followed him to the edge of the concrete-rimmed hole, where Bowman stopped to look up at an ice-coated length of one-inch-thick steel cable suspended from the gantry. The huge hook attached to the cable dangled three feet above his head. If it fell, it would smash his skull like a watermelon under a mallet. And I would never get the information I had come for.

The box must have weighed a ton—literally—to require such thick a cable.

I stepped over the pipe where it climbed the side of the concrete lip before descending into the pit through a metal manhole cover. A fucking huge manhole cover. The pit was at least twelve feet across, and the disk covering it was easily four inches thick. “What does that thing weigh?”

“Ballpark?” Bowman rubbed his beard with one gloved hand. “Twelve thousand pounds.”

Shit. I dropped my plastic bag on the ground. This was well beyond the capability of my poor little crowbar. Super-strength would have been so much cooler than rapid healing.

“We thread the crane hook through the slats to lift the lid off,” Bowman added.

My gaze followed the steel cable up to the trolly hanging from a track on the underside of the massive gantry frame. “I don’t suppose you can just start that bitch up, huh?” Snow swirled from the ground around me as I stared at the operator’s booth at the far end of the crane. The icy breeze made my nose tingle and my eyes water. I blinked, and a drop rolled from each eye to freeze on my cheeks.

Bowman shook his head. “I’m not certified to operate the crane.”

“Yeah, me neither.” I took off across the snow toward the driver’s cabin, which was bolted to the frame of the gantry itself, two stories overhead. Seriously, the thing was massive.

“Where are you going?” Bowman shouted after me, but I ignored him as I stomped up two flights of metal stairs and pulled open the door at the back of the booth. “Ms. Walker! Stop! Have you ever even operated a crane?”

“One this size? No,” I called down as I stepped into the booth. But there was a reason Lacey called me “the Queen of Fuck Around and Find Out.”

The key was still in the ignition, which was common, in my experience, with equipment too big to be easily stolen. I twisted it, and the crane growled to life, the booth vibrating all around me.

“What crane have you operated?” Bowman demanded, still shouting from the edge of the manhole cover.

My operational experience with heavy equipment was on a need-to-know basis, mostly because it had involved a private nude beach and a hung-over leviathan who couldn’t make his way back into the water.

“You’re going to want to step back!” I shouted as I assessed the controls in front of me. No need to mess with the joysticks, because the hook was already positioned directly above the manhole cover. So I started pressing buttons. The first one raised the hook, and Bowman scrambled away from the pit, startled.

“Oops! Sorry!” It took me two more tries to figure out which button lowered the hook. “Hey, can you fit that through the ring?” I called down when the huge hook was low enough to just skim the metal disk.

Bowman stepped onto the manhole cover and carefully fitted the massive hook through a loop so thick I couldn’t close one hand around it. “This is a terrible idea!” he called up to me as he backed away from the pit again.

“Yeah, well, that’s the only kind I ever seem to have,” I assured him as I pressed the button to raise the hook.

The entire gantry shuddered lightly with the effort to lift the metal disk, but my buzz was something else entirely. It was power. I’d always loved being in control of something big and dangerous. Something with the power to crush my enemy with a single blow.

Too bad there are no enemies around…

“Just swing it slightly to one side.” Bowman pointed across the pit to demonstrate. “Slowly!” he added.

I gave the joystick a tiny little nudge, and the huge metal disk swung smoothly past the pit, where I carefully lowered it to the ground. Then I turned off the crane and exited the driver’s cab.

“Nerves of steel,” Bowman declared, when I stepped off the metal stairs. “I’ve seen full grown men shake the first time they operate that beast, for fear of moving too fast and hitting something.

Point of fact: I was grown. Several times over. But somehow the phrase “full grown woman” didn’t carry the same impact.

Some things hadn’t changed much in the past two hundred fifty years.

Kneeling at the edge of the pit, I ignored the snow soaking through my jeans as I peered into the hole, my coat spread out on the concrete around me. For about twenty feet down, I could see the curved concrete wall lining the opposite side of the pit. Beyond that, there was nothing but darkness. Cold, silent darkness. Without end, apparently.

“Somethin,’ idn’t it?” Bowman said, a series of little white puffs blossoming from each word like smoke from a steam engine.

“How the hell did you do that?” I asked, and he frowned, his expression one big question mark. “The walls. How did you line the inside of the pit in concrete?”

“Oh.” Twisting onto his knees beside me, he stared down into his tunneling masterpiece. “We have a machine that installs it in six-foot sections, over a spray-on layer of waterproofing rubber. It’s to prevent the whole thing from caving in and to stop water from seeping in through the sides of the tunnel. It’s the same method they used to dig that tunnel between France and Great Brittan in the 90s, only that one was horizontal, whereas...”

Bowman trailed off suddenly, frowning down into the pit, clearly confused. He extended one gloved hand over the open space.

“What?” I glanced from his face back to the pit.

“It’s cold.”

I nodded, assuming he’d developed a sense of humor. “It’s October, and we’re in Nova Scotia.” I wiped one gloved hand across my dripping nose. “It’s only a matter of time before we freeze into solid blocks of ice.”

Bowman pulled his glove off and waved his bare arm in the air over the pit, as if testing the temperature. “It wasn’t this cold when we were digging. I always assumed that was because of warmth trapped in the earth.” His expression turned thoughtful, his eyes distant and a little confused. “We must have gotten a pretty deep freeze with this storm.” When he leaned back over the hole, he shoved his hand into it, rather than across.

It took every ounce of self-control I had to resist pulling his hand out of the pit. I didn’t approve of introducing appendages into unknown voids. I knew of one unfortunate Netherworlder who’d lost a rather important part by doing that very thing. But I couldn’t exactly explain that to Bowman.

I sat back on my heels, rubbing my hands together to ward off the tingling sensation prickling across the backs of my hands. Was that the first sign of frostbite?

“This doesn’t make any sense.” Bowman shook his head. “It’s no colder now than it was during that ice storm a couple of weeks ago. In fact, it might be a degree or two warmer.”

I opened my mouth, ready to explain that the air in Nova Scotia was cold because it was in Nova Scotia, when movement on the opposite side of the pit caught my eye. I glanced up as the tingling traveled up my arms toward my shoulders, fully expecting to see some loose corner of tarp fluttering in the wind—though there was no wind blowing at the moment. And no sound at all.

Instead, I found a man standing in front of the pit, staring down at us both with the most peculiar expression of longing. He wore faded, tattered coveralls and a pair of black work boots, both of which completely were outdated in style. By nearly a century.

He wore no coat, yet he showed no sign that he felt the cold. No chill bumps. No red cheeks. No dripping nose. And something about him seemed…wrong. Somehow out of place. Or out of time, maybe…?

“What are you looking at?” Bowman asked, following my line of sight. His gaze must have passed right over the man, but he obviously registered nothing but snow and ice.

“He can’t see me, darlin’,” the odd man said, his country accent completely out of place in eastern Canada. “Can’t hear me neither.”

“I’ll be damned.” The tingling in my arms was worse now, though it had settled on the surface of my skin, like pins and needles. Or a mild electrical current. And that was when I realized I could actually see through him, if I squinted a little.

Instead, I squeezed my eyes shut until he disappeared completely, along with everything else. What the hell was going on?

A wraith.

Suddenly I understood: I’d just seen my first ghost.

NINE

“Ms. Walker? You okay?” Bowman asked.

I opened my eyes to find him watching me, his forehead furrowed into four distinct lines. “Yeah. I just…thought I saw something...” I groaned inwardly at how that sounded. Like I was hallucinating—without the benefit of drugs or alcohol. And really, where’s the fun in that?

“Well, you wouldn’t be the first. People have been reporting weird sights and sounds around here for two centuries. I have to say, though, that I didn’t expect you to buy into any of that. You don’t look like the superstitious type.”

Yeah, well, I didn’t look much like the dead type either, so…

The foreman kept talking, but I hardly heard a word. I couldn’t drag my gaze from the wraith standing over his shoulder, his expression a mixture of amusement and wistful longing.

He must have died here. My curiosity was suddenly overtaken by sympathy for the lost soul; I knew what it was like to be stuck.

Still, I was no expert on wraiths. In fact, until a couple of years ago, what I knew about them wouldn’t have filled a Dixie cup, but thanks to a recent fling with a massively self-involved psychopomp—a spirit guide—I knew enough to understand what I was dealing with.

Wraiths are the earth-bound spirits of the deceased—usually murder victims. At death, most spirits cross over on their own. But something about the way murder victims die, particularly those who die a violent death, leaves their spirits confused and disoriented in the afterlife. They don’t know what’s happened to them, or where they are. They have to be escorted to…wherever they belong. Like the Von Trap children being led off to bed, only without the song and dance.

However, the wraith staring at me over Bowman’s shoulder didn’t seem very disoriented. In fact, he seemed calmer and more in-the-know than I felt at the moment.

Standing, I brushed wet clumps of snow from my jeans, trying to decide what to do next. Which of the men to address first. What on earth to say.

“You best speak, before he thinks you’ve lost your mind.”

I straightened to find the spirit smiling at me, mirth sparkling in his too-real brown eyes. “Maybe I have,” I mumbled, fighting an overwhelming urge to reach out for him, to see what he felt like. If I could feel him at all.

To my knowledge, I’d never seen a wraith before, but considering how very real this one looked—how solid and substantial he seemed—I suddenly wondered if I’d seen others over the years and never even realized it. I’d had no idea a wraith could look so normal, other than the out-of-date clothing, which wouldn’t have been an issue with the recently deceased.

“I’m sorry?” Bowman’s voice broke through my thoughts, and I forced my focus from the loitering spirit to look at him. His brow furrowed even deeper.

“Nothing. Just thinking out loud.” I glanced at the wraith again, then back to the project foreman. “Mr. Bowman, do you have anything to drink in your truck?” I swallowed thickly for effect. “I could really use a drink.” Of whiskey.

“No, but I keep a mini fridge in my office. Why don’t you come in and warm up while I make some coffee?”

Warmth and coffee both sounded wonderful; I was so cold I could barely think.

The wraith shook his head at me, seemingly disappointed. Maybe he couldn’t wander that far from the pit. Some wraiths—haunters—couldn’t leave the sites of their death.

“Thanks,” I said to Bowman, trying not to stare at our less corporeal companion. “But I’m going to stay and look around a little more.” I crossed my arms over my chest, hunching my shoulders against the cold. “Could you bring me a cup?”

“Sure. Be right back.”

As soon as the trailer door clicked shut behind the foreman, I turned back to the wraith, who looked more solid than ever.

Evan-the-psychopomp had said wraiths were transparent and kind of fluttery, as if governed by an unknown set of physical laws. Wraiths belonged to the afterlife, and apparently the afterlife was perpetually windy. A mystical version of Chicago.

But this wraith looked completely solid now, and not the least bit fluttery. In fact, he looked heavy. His feet were buried in the snow, just like mine were, though his hadn’t left any tell-tale tracks.

He couldn’t possibly be as solid and as lucid as he seemed. But if he were, if his responses were focused and coherent, he might be even more valuable as a witness than the foreman.

Fascinated by this new opportunity, I smiled my best I-mean-you-no-harm smile, which, unfortunately, wasn’t one of my most believable expressions. “Sir, do you know where you are?”

His eyes shined with amusement. “Oak Island, same as you.”

A tingle of excitement danced up my spine. He was coherent. Or at least articulate.

“Can you tell me your name?” I asked, my fingers mentally crossed for a second intelligible response.

The wraith nodded. “Can you tell me yours?”

I laughed out loud, despite the miserable cold and the chill bumps standing all over my body. “I’m Alexandra Walker.”

“John Allen.” The spirit ran his thumbs beneath the front bib of his coveralls, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with his hands. In life, he’d probably have wanted to shake one of mine, but for wraiths, physical contact with the living world was always a gamble. Some could do it; some couldn’t. I was guessing Mr. Allen had already discovered that he couldn’t and that he wasn’t very happy with his limitations. “And just what are you, Miss Walker?” he asked, one brow arching at me. “How is it that you can see me, yet have no fear?”

I had absolutely no idea why I could see him. None. But that wasn’t exactly what he’d asked.

What are you? I got that question fairly often from Netherworlders, and I’d discovered long ago that the best answer was no answer. “I’m…I’m here on business. I’ve been hired to find the box pulled from this pit two days ago.”

He nodded. “They all come for the box, though most people don’t even know what they’re digging for.”

That was certainly easy to believe. “Do you know how you came to be here, Mr. Allen?” I asked, searching my jacket pockets for a tissue. I could not make my nose stop running.

He cocked one amazingly detailed eyebrow at me. “On Oak Island specifically, or on the wrong side of the spectral plane?”

I smiled at his phrasing. He must have been quite entertaining in life. “The latter.”

“That son of a bitch Avery Thomas pushed me into the pit, and I’ve been stuck here ever since.”

Of course he was murdered. “People who die peacefully in their sleep don’t spend the next hundred years haunting a damp hole in the ground.” I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud until Allen laughed, the lines in his face shifting with each movement. His image was startlingly lifelike, and I was tempted again to touch him to see if he had substance too. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t possibly, so I kept my hands to myself.

“When did this Avery push you, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“1904. Fall, it was. Beautiful, clear day. Better suited to a picnic than a broken neck.”

I knew exactly how he felt.

I whistled, impressed. I’d never heard of a wraith that old. The oldest Evan had ever mentioned was about fifty years dead. “You must have seen a lot of amazing things in a span like that,” I said, thinking of all the changes I’d personally witnessed.

Behind me, hinges squealed. Footsteps thumped on wooden steps.

“Your friend’s coming,” the wraith said, staring over my shoulder.

I started to nod, but I stopped when I realized Bowman would wonder what the hell I was doing, nodding to myself alone in the snow. He probably already thought I was insane. “I know,” I whispered to Allen. “I have some questions for him, but I have a few more for you too, if you don’t mind hanging around a little longer.”

He shrugged. “I have nothing else scheduled for the next…oh, eternity. I’d dearly love some of that coffee though. Can’t believe how much I miss my coffee.”

Yeah, me too. I’d had a cup on the plane three hours ago and desperately needed another. “I can’t help you with that,” I whispered as the footsteps stamped closer, crunching through snow now. “But I can go one better. I think I know someone who can get you out of here, if you’re interested.”

Allen’s eyes widened. “Out? Out of the pit?”

I nodded, Bowman forgotten for the moment. “Out of the pit, off the island, and on to whatever’s next for you. If you want to go.”

“Hell yeah.”

My smile came unbidden. I liked Allen. Anyone who could hang out in a muddy hole in the ground for more than a century without losing his mind or developing a severe case of social dysfunction was okay in my book. “I’ll make some calls as soon as I get a chance.”

His hands traveled up and down the front of his coveralls again. “Thank you.”

“Here you go.” Bowman came to a stop on my left holding a Styrofoam cup topped with a plastic lid. I took it eagerly. “You havin’ a chat with yourself out here?”

So much for me looking sane and normal… “Just going over the case.” I pulled back a small flap on the lid, and damp puffs of fragrant steam wafted toward my face. The coffee smelled good.

Bowman smiled as if he didn’t believe me, and my jaw clenched. “My office manager used to do that. She swore she could hear someone talking to her out here, when no one else was around.”

Blowing gently through the hole in my coffee cup lid, I arched my eyebrows at James Allen, who had the grace to appear a little ashamed.

“Natalie Hayes. Cute little thing. Loves the snow. Has no idea she’s a minor psychic. She can hear me, but she can’t see me. I told her I was young, handsome, and virile.”

I nearly choked on my coffee, trying not to laugh.

“You okay?” Bowman asked, oblivious to Allen grinning at me over his shoulder. The foreman pounded me on the back, and I waved him off, nodding to assure him I was fine. “Anything I can help with?” He cradled his own cup in both hands.

“Yes, actually.” I cleared my throat, dislodging the last of the inhaled coffee. “I have a few questions for you.”

“Ask away.”

“I’ve heard rumors about Oak Island, about the pit in particular. Did you see anything strange during your time here? Anything to support stories of curses and hauntings, other than the office manager’s odd behavior?”

Bowman stared into the snow on my left and sipped from his cup. “There’s nothing to those rumors. I’ve heard them too, but I never saw anything weird out here, except Natalie talking to herself. And she was weird even away from the pit, so that doesn’t really mean anything.”

“He’s lying.” Allen’s voice was calm and completely nonjudgmental. He didn’t seem to mind the foreman bending the truth to stay within his own comfort zone. Most humans did it unconsciously, depending upon denial to preserve their sanity.

I wanted some specifics from Allen, but I had to at least appear to address my questions to Bowman, and I couldn’t exactly ask the foreman for details about something he denied having seen. I’d have to work the subject back around carefully.

“Mr. Bowman, did you and your crew know what you were digging for before you brought the box up?”

“Not specifically, no.” He met my gaze that time, and I knew he was telling the truth. “We were supposed to pull up everything we found in the hole and to ship it back to Mr. Devich. He had a helicopter standing by here to carry it to Halifax, and from there his cargo plane was supposed to take it to him, somewhere in the States.” He paused for another sip of coffee. “Most of the men thought we were looking for buried treasure.”

“And the rest?” The hot paper cup felt wonderful in my near-frozen hands, and I almost hated to drink from it and lose the warmth.

“They thought Devich was out of his mind for spending so much time and money on a fool’s errand, but they were willing to do the work, so long as he was paying well. And he did pay well.”

I glanced surreptitiously at Allen as I sipped from my cup, and he nodded, verifying the foreman’s information. “We thought the same thing back in my day. We were hunting treasure, same as the group after me. None of us worked for anyone named Devich, though.”

That was no surprise. Allen had been dead for more than a century, and Troy Devich had only held the deed to Oak Island for ten years. I’d double-checked that myself.

“Mr. Bowman, were you here when they brought up the box?”

Bowman was staring at the ground again, to the left of the pit, drinking his coffee in long gulps now. When he didn’t answer, Allen nodded for him, crossing long arms over the front of his coveralls. “He was here. They were all here.” His words came out in one long string, in an apparent rush to be heard before the foreman started speaking. “The diggers hit the top of the box that morning, and by the time they were ready to pull it up, word had spread. Workers came—”

“Yeah, I was here,” Bowman said, unknowingly interrupting the wraith. “I saw the box. It was long, and carved out of—”

“—in on their day off to watch.” Allen stopped when he realized Bowman was speaking, leaving me to piece together parts of both statements.

“—some kind of stone. Granite, maybe, or something similar. The damn thing was heavy enough to strain the gantry, which should’ve been impossible even it was filled with rocks. Or iron. I knew before they even had it out of the ground that we’d found what Devich was looking for. What we’d all been looking for.”

“Wait, let me get this straight.” My right hand went to my temple, rubbing out of habit as I sorted through what I’d just heard. “The box was long and carved from granite, and workers came in on their day off to see it pulled up? Right?”

Allen nodded.

Bowman’s bushy brows furrowed. “How the hell did you know that? I didn’t mention the workers.”

I shrugged. “That’s what I would have done if I’d been looking for something for a decade, then had the misfortune to be off duty the day it was found.”

Bowman frowned, still skeptical, but I moved on. My fingers suddenly itched for a pen, eager to write down details Devich hadn’t provided about the box. The granite, the length, and the weight. Why hadn’t he given me any specifics?

“What happened once you got the box up?” I asked, determined to remember the entire interview word for word.

“We loaded it on the helicopter, as instructed.”

“Well, it wasn’t quite that easy,” Allen added shaking his head.

“What went wrong?” I asked them both.

The foreman looked up quickly, surprise thick in his expression. “Is it that obvious?” he asked, and I nodded. His lie would have been apparent even if Allen weren’t fact-checking him from over his shoulder.

Bowman sighed. “Some of the men got excited.” He drained his cup and crushed it in one hand. “They’d been digging for a long time, mostly in miserably cold and wet conditions. They were tired, and irritable, and more than a little curious. So when the box came up, naturally they wanted a peek at it. Inside it.”

Ohhh. The crew thought they were entitled to a share of the profits.

“All hell broke loose, that’s what happened,” Allen insisted.

“Did they get it open?”

“Of course not,” the foreman spat, clearly insulted by my insinuation that he’d lost control of the box. And of his crew. “They just got a little riled up. It was over in a couple of minutes. No harm done.”

“Horseshit,” Allen insisted, moving to stand behind Bowman and to his left, so I could see them both at once with a slight shift of my gaze. Smart man. “The almighty foreman here had a riot on his hands. It was a miracle no one got killed in the stampede.”

“Was anyone injured?” I asked, still watching Bowman.

He shook his head slowly. “No. Not seriously, anyway. One guy got a broken nose, and another got a little scraped up. It was no big deal. Nothing Mr. Devich needs to know about.” His last words were clipped and harsh. Fortunately for him, I felt no loyalty to Troy Devich, and no particular urge to divulge the foreman’s confession.

Cursing beneath his breath, Allen stepped forward until he was practically hovering over the other man’s shoulder. His expression was intense, almost desperate, and I sipped from my coffee as he spoke, letting Bowman think I was mulling over what he’d told me.

“They wanted it. All of them.” Allen’s eyes started to glaze over as if from a fever. Or from the strength of a very powerful memory. “Hell, I wanted it too, and my hands would probably have gone right through the damn thing.” He held very substantial-looking palms up for inspection. They seemed solid enough to me.

Over my coffee cup, I watched the foreman push snow around with the toe of his work boot.

“I could understand a stampede if they’d hauled up a treasure chest dripping with gold coins and jewels,” I said, and Bowman’s attention jerked back to me from wherever it had gone. “But it was just a big stone box, wasn’t it? No gold inlay, no encrusted diamonds, nothing special at all, right?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “It was just a big box. And there was no stampede.”

“So why did everyone want this plain stone box?” I ignored his last assertion; I believed Allen’s version of the rush on the ‘treasure.’

Bowman shrugged, shivering as a frigid gale blew across us both, sending snowflakes swirling up from the ground. “They just wanted a look at whatever was inside. That’s it.”

“Needed a look, is more like it,” Allen insisted. “They all needed the box, same as I did. We needed to touch it—to open it. It was an alarming impulse, because the whole time I stared at that box, craving the feel of the stone beneath my fingers, I was also terrified of it. Frightened almost outta my mind.”

Bowman glanced from me to the empty space on his right, then back to my face, clearly confused. I was watching the wraith openly now as he ran his hands over a phantom surface in the air in front of him. “You were scared? Of a box?” I asked, the foreman completely forgotten for the moment.

“No.” Bowman stared at me as if he feared for my sanity. But his eyes betrayed him; they showed perfect understanding. He had been scared. He had seen the box, and it terrified him too, even if he wouldn’t admit it.

“Yes.” Allen nodded, as if it were perfectly logical for a non-corporeal being to fear an inanimate object. “It’s a bad box. It feels…bad. I don’t know how else to say it, but you’ll know what I mean if you ever see it. But I hope you never do. The box felt wrong, and so long as it was buried there, so did the pit. It felt warm, and wrong, and bad.”

The box felt bad. I’d read similar reports about the site itself, though mostly in tabloids. Had people actually been sensing the box, rather than the pit, for all these years?

“Let me see if I understand this.” I paused brushing hair back from my face as I gathered my thoughts. “The box felt bad, and so did the hole, until the box was excavated. But people kept digging until they found it anyway, because they needed to…what? Touch the box?” That made no sense at all. Why would someone need to touch something that felt so…bad? And how could something you’ve never touched feel like anything at all, much less bad, which was about the least descriptive adjective in the English language.

Bowman shook his head slowly, though he seemed unsure. “We kept digging because that was our job. Devich was paying us to dig in the hole, so we dug. It had nothing to do with some abstract ‘feeling’ coming from the box, or from the pit. That’s total bullshit. Stupid rumors started by ignorant, superstitious workers.”

Allen turned his back on the foreman in disgust. “Don’t listen to him, Miss Walker. He’s lying because he’s uncomfortable with the truth. Just because he can’t understand something does not mean it doesn’t exist.” The wraith rubbed his perfectly three-dimensional, wrinkled forehead in obvious frustration. “I don’t know why, and I can’t explain how, but the box made me want it, made me desperate to touch it, to open it. But my skin was crawling the whole time, and I was kind of glad I couldn’t touch anything, because the temptation to fight over it like the living workers did wasn’t an option for me. I was removed from the true frenzy, you might say.”

“What are you looking at?” Bowman asked.

I met his gaze, fed up with his self-delusional half-truths. What kind of grown man didn’t have the backbone to face up to what he’d seen and felt, even if he couldn’t explain it? “They fought over the box?” I asked, ignoring his question in favor of one of my own.

At the edge of my vision, Allen nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, yeah. They—”

“No.” Bowman’s voice was sharp and insistent, though he couldn’t have known he was interrupting anything but my thoughts. “I don’t know where you’re getting all this crap, but there was no fighting over the box. The men—”

“—crawled all over it…” Allen said, now gesturing wildly in the air. “…pulling and kicking each other down. Even your foreman here looked tempted to jump in, but in the end, he just—”

“—got a little excited and clambered forward for a closer look.” Bowman finished, still defending his crew. “That’s it.”

“—stood there watching, like he didn’t know how to control his own men, even though he—”

My focus volleyed between them as I struggled with the chaos of two conversational threads. “Okay, that’s enough!” I shouted, crushing my now-empty coffee cup in one fist. Bowman had no idea he was involved in a very confusing argument. And Allen was so worked up, so desperate to be heard and believed, that he’d transitioned from helpful to pain-in-my-ass over the course of the past thirty seconds. I’d had it with them both.

“Mr. Bowman,” I began, shooting Allen a keep-your-mouth-shut-or-else look, which clearly confused the hell out of the foreman. “We’ve established that the men tried to get the box open, so don’t bother arguing that point with me any further. Understand?”

He nodded, obviously confused about when we’d established that particular fact.

“Now, did they succeed?” My mutilated cup fell to the ground at my feet, staining pristine snow with several drops of coffee-brown. “Did they get the box open?”

Bowman opened his mouth to answer, but before he’d even uttered the first word, footsteps sloshed rapidly through the snow behind me, followed by the unmistakable click of a pistol being cocked.

I froze. Allen’s eyes widened. He stared at a point beyond my right shoulder.

Bowman made a strangling sound in the back of his throat, like he couldn’t breathe. But he was looking in the opposite direction.

Hell. There were at least two of them—whatever they were.

I spun in the snow, already drawing my gun with my frozen stiff left hand. Sprinting toward me in the snow from the direction of the open gate was a short, thick form, bundled in a solid black snowsuit. As if that would blend into the natural surroundings.

Something streaked past on my left. My head swiveled, my gun still aimed at the first figure. The newcomer was identical in size and clothing—two idiots for the price of one.

“You got another one at three o’clock,” Allen said from behind me, and I spun again to see a third man step out of a stand of trees fifteen feet to my right. He wore a brace on his left leg, from thigh to ankle. Just in case the leg wasn’t enough of a clue, the fury in his expression was unmistakable. It was Berg, whom I’d last seen lying in the rain with a busted knee and a bullet through each thigh. Impossible as it seemed, he was up and moving now, a new nine-millimeter aimed right at my head.

Evidently this is what I get for showing mercy for the bad guys.

TEN

“Drop the gun and hit the snow!” Hagen called from directly in front of me.

“Fuck off!” I took aim at his forehead, lamenting my decision to leave my other gun in the car. Without it, other than the Ruger, I had only my blade and the crowbar, both close range weapons. Unfortunately, if it came down to hand-to-hand combat with a goblin who already knew how I fought and what weapons I carried, this was going to get very, very nasty.

How the hell had they recovered so quickly? Yes, Berg was still limping, but Hagen should have been flat on his back, holding his guts in with a half-mile of sterile gauze, not loping toward me across the snow, murder in his eyes and spinach in his teeth. I’d twisted the knife in his stomach specifically to cause him a long, rough recovery.

“Friends of yours?” Bowman’s voice was admirably steady for an unarmed human facing three armed goblins. But then, he probably had no idea they were goblins.

“Yeah, we’re like brothers,” I mumbled, sniffling from the cold as I sighted down the barrel at Hagen’s forehead.

Bowman chuckled nervously, and at the edge of my vision, his head turned as he eyed the goblins one at a time.

“Get behind me,” I whispered, trying to watch all three stooges at once. Bowman didn’t move, which was just as well, because I couldn’t possibly cover him from all angles. Even if I could, they’d just shoot him over my head. That’s what the foreman got for being so damned tall. “What the hell do you want?” I shouted at Hagen, the nominal leader. “You masochistic? Didn’t get enough pain the first time around?”

But what I really wanted to ask was how they’d found me. Had they been at my office with Orthus, watching from the shadows, waiting to trail me to the airport? Surely they hadn’t followed me all the way to Nova Scotia just for revenge. I’d certainly held my share of grudges in the past, but this was going overboard, even by my standards.

Hagen stopped twenty feet away. “We came to finish what we started.”

Dirk stopped an equal distance away on my left. “This time, can we just shoot her and get it over with?”

His brother nodded, eyes gleaming in anticipation. “Soon. Her stomach first, then her knee. Payback for me and Berg.”

“And once more for Orthus,” Dirk growled, his accent sharp and guttural. “For stealing our fucking dog.”

If they thought Orthus left the factory with me, then they clearly weren’t with him in the parking lot outside my office…

Allen stepped around the pit to stand at my side, and I couldn’t help envying his advantage: no one could see him, much less shoot him. “You must make friends everywhere you go,” he said, and I couldn’t resist a smile at the irony. I didn’t trust anyone enough to claim true friendship. Lacey came close, though.

“What’s so funny?” Dirk asked. “You think a bullet to the gut is funny?”

I glanced pointedly at the .45 caliber in his fist. “What I think is that a gun that big is obviously compensating for something.”

Bowman snorted, and Dirk flushed in fury, grumbling something in his consonant-thick native tongue. He shifted his aim to Bowman, and the foreman’s laughter stopped abruptly.

“This is what I get for showing mercy on you assholes,” I mumbled, trying to ignore the fact that I could no longer feel my nose. Compassion always comes back to bite you on the ass. “So, now what?” I glanced from Hagen to Dirk, then to Berg, who’d finally caught up with his fellow stooges, in spite of his limp. They now had me covered from three sides. “You guys put a hole in my stomach, then stand around and watch me bleed to death? That could take a while, and I bore easily. You think we could speed things up a bit?”

“No problem.” Berg chambered his first round, just for show.

“No!” Hagen ordered, glaring at his still-injured companion. “Not until she talks.”

“Why should I talk, if you’re just gonna shoot me when I’m done?” Not that I had any idea what they wanted me to talk about. Were they looking for Orthus? All this over a creepy dog?

“We’ll shoot you anyway,” Berg said. “What we do until then is up to you. You can tell us where he is now, and die quickly, or we can let Hagen convince you to cooperate. He’s very persuasive. Especially with women.”

Somehow, I doubted that. “I’m gonna go for option C.”

Hagen snorted. “There is no option C.”

My mouth curved into a slow smile, and I gave him a conspiratorial wink. Then I dropped to my knees in the snow, already squeezing the trigger. Hagen lunged to the left. Blood and feathers exploded from the right shoulder of his jacket.

Damn. Missed his head. I couldn’t let that story get out.

Rolling onto my stomach, I aimed at Dirk, who already had me in his sight.

“Not yet!” Hagen shouted. Dirk hesitated. I didn’t.

My bullet put a small hole in his forehead. A single drop of blood rolled down the bridge of his nose as his hands flew out at his sides, one still holding the huge pistol. He fell over backward like a child making a snow angel.

One down, two to go.

Shifting on the ground, I glanced to my left. Hagen barreled toward me, blood dripping down his right arm from the bullet hole in his shoulder. Bright red drops stained the snow behind him. Rage burned in his eyes. His clenched jaw bulged. But his gun remained un-aimed in his grip. Even in his grieving fury, he wasn’t willing to kill me—at least, not until he had whatever he’d come for.

Seriously? Over a dog?

“Duck!” Allen shouted, and I looked up to find him staring at something behind me.

Duck? I was already on the ground. I snuck a glance at Hagen—still charging toward me—then sucked in a quick breath and shoved my face into the snow. Something whistled past, over my head. Cold wet snow seeped into my blouse above the neckline of my coat. At my back, Berg screamed. I looked up, spitting out ice-glazed blades of grass.

Buzzing sounded in my ears. Another bullet? No. The pitch was wrong—too low.

“Oh, shit!” Bowman’s voice teetered on the thin edge of panic.

As I pushed myself onto my knees in the snow, a deep, rumbling growl erupted behind me, echoing in my head like reverberation of a bass drum. Berg’s screaming ended in a wet gurgle.

Bowman vomited in the snow to my left. I glanced at him, then turned quickly back to Hagen. I could stand neither the sight, nor the stench of so much fear.

“Orthus, no!” Hagen bellowed, the sound torn from his throat in a primal shriek of rage and anguish. He stood frozen, staring over my shoulder, and this time when the buzzing in my head began again, I finally recognized it for what it was: the distinctive, rumbling snarl of a hellhound.

It was the most welcome sound I’d heard since landing in Halifax.

“What did you do to my dog?” Hagen demanded, fury eating through his voice like acid. “Drag him out here, then use him against us?!”

I was thrilled to have Orthus on my side, but I certainly hadn’t brought him with me.

Hagen charged me again, his face distorted in grief. His lips curled back from his teeth. His eyes went wide. His nostrils flared. In his rage, he seemed to have forgotten his gun entirely and was ready to rip me apart with his bare hands.

Still on my knees, I aimed the Ruger at his throat and squeezed the trigger. The gun clicked, but did not fire. I squeezed again. Another hollow click.

Jammed. Fuck!

Scrambling to my feet, I dropped the gun. Hagen’s fell to the ground. His hands curled into fists. Bending, I jerked up on my left pant leg and pulled the stiletto free from its sheath. Hagen ducked his head. He was going to ram me, apparently unconcerned about my blade.

Until Devich’s idiot project foreman stumbled between us, face pale and eyes wide as he stared at Orthus, who snarled from somewhere to my left.

“Move!” I shouted. Clearly in shock, Bowman stared straight ahead. “Aaaghh!” I shoved him as hard as I could with my free hand. He hit the snow on his ass, between me and the charging goblin.

The foreman finally scrambled out of my way as I raised my blade. Light glinted on polished steel. Hagen blinked against the glare. I lunged, and he thrust his injured right arm in front of my knife.

My blade sliced through his coat and into flesh. Hagen roared, in anger as much as in pain. I shoved harder. Blade met bone and stopped. The goblin screamed again. His good hand curled around my wrist, squeezing until my bones ground together. I let go of the knife, but it remained lodged in his forearm.

Hagen twisted my left arm behind my back, bending me forward with as little effort as it might take me to snap a twig. He drove me to my knees with that astounding goblin strength. I shouted in frustration and fury as my knees slammed into the frozen earth.

Fucking muscle-bound freak. I felt around desperately in the snow with my available hand for something to use as a weapon. I found nothing but more snow and long-frozen blades of brown grass.

“You’ll beg for death before I’m done with you,” Hagen snarled, forcing my torso down so that I was bent over my knees. “You’re going to scream, and scream, and scream.”

“Bowman, drop that thing ‘fore you get yourself killed!” the wraith shouted. I twisted in the goblin’s grip to see Allen following the project foreman toward something left of my field of vision.

Orthus. It had to be.

Bowman’s eyes were glazed in shock, his gait stilted. Allen hovered over his shoulder, gesturing desperately for him to drop… my gun. But Bowman couldn’t hear the wraith. He stumbled forward, finger on the trigger, features warped in terror and disbelief.

“Then you’re going to beg for mercy,” Hagen continued, pulling my right arm behind my back to join my left. “You’re going to plead for the end, but—”

“I get it, okay?” I snapped, wrenching my neck to glare up at him. “You’re gonna fuck me up. Either start shooting or change the damn subject.”

He rewarded my impudence with a vicious kick to my left side, my wrists still secured in his fist.

I bit my lower lip, desperate not to shriek in pain. “Motherfucker!” I shouted, as soon as I could suck in enough air. Screaming was against the tough-bitch code of ethics, but cussing was just fine. Expected, even. Especially considering that the son of a bitch had probably cracked a couple of my ribs.

“Drop the gun ‘fore that thing gets riled up and eats you whole!” Allen cried, and my gaze homed in on him. Bowman still couldn’t hear the spirit, of course. Frustrated, Allen grumbled angrily and reached for the gun. His hand went right through both the foreman’s fist and my Ruger. “Damn it!” The wraith finally turned to me for help. “Tell him to drop…” He trailed off, staring at me in shock and alarm.

I struggled in spite of the pain as Hagen pressed down on the back of my neck with one hand and bound my wrists with what could only be a pair of ice-cold handcuffs. Largely unbothered by his own wounds.

“No, Miss Walker,” Allen said, amending his original request. “Tell him to shoot the man. Tell him now! The dog can wait. Tell him to shoot the man with the cuffs!”

But that would do no good. The gun was jammed.

I wrenched my head, trying to get a look at Bowman, but I could only see Hagen’s legs and a widening pool of blood melting into the snow at his feet. I’d gotten him good with both the blade and the bullet, and he’d start to weaken soon. Hopefully.

“Orthus!” I shouted. “I could use a little help over here!”

The growling paused for a moment, then resumed, but came no closer. What the hell was the damn dog doing?

On my left, the foreman whimpered, and my gun clicked. He was trying to shoot the hellhound.

“Bowman, put the gun down!” I shouted, as the goblin wrenched my blade from his arm and threw it into the snow fifty feet away. “He won’t hurt you.”

“The hell he won’t!” Hagen punctuated his rebuttal with a near-blinding blow to my right temple. “Orthus, you worthless son of a bitch, get him!”

“Bowman…” I trailed off, trying to breathe through the waves of pain coursing through my head and side. “Mike. Listen to me, please.” But then Hagen spread one broad hand over the back of my head and shoved my nose between my knees.

“Orthus, faas!” The goblin’s fist slammed into the back of my head, then the weight of his arm lifted from my back. He stepped away from me, still pressing my head down with his free hand. He was trying to reach his gun without letting me go.

Hagen stretched a little farther, and I lurched into motion, rolling out from under his hand. My back hit the ground, my cuffed wrists pinned beneath me. Snow filtered around the cuffs and beneath the edges of my gloves, sending fresh chills through me.

“If he thinks you’re a threat, he’ll rip you to pieces,” I shouted, shifting to search out Bowman with my eyes. “But if you put the gun down, the dog won’t bother you. I swear.”

I hope, anyway.

Hagen dove for me, still empty handed. I rolled over again, and snow went up my nose, burning and freezing at once. He landed on his knees, a foot away. I tried to roll a third time, but he caught my bicep, halting my progress with a bruising grip. “Open your mouth again, and I’ll kick your fucking teeth out.”

But he couldn’t kick me without standing, which would give me another chance to roll away. “Bowman, drop the fucking gun!” I shouted, meeting the goblin’s gaze as I blatantly ignored his threat.

Hagen pulled his thick fist back, and I turned my head. His knuckles slammed into the side of my jaw rather than my teeth. It hurt like hell, but only fractured my pride.

“The dog tore that man’s head completely off his neck,” Bowman said, his gaze still trained on Orthus. “That makes this gun my new best friend.”

Damn, really? Orthus had decapitated Berg? I wasn’t sure how that was even possible, and before I could figure it out, Hagen hauled me up by one arm. He set me on my feet with no visible effort, which was just plain creepy coming from a man I towered over by several inches.

But creepier by far was the sight of Bowman holding my gun, aimed unsteadily at Orthus, who had indeed decapitated the unfortunate goblin. The hound had bitten all the way through Berg’s neck and spine, in fact, and was well on his way to actually burying his kill. Not just in snow, but in actual earth. Orthus stood in front of a fresh eighteen-inch-deep hole in the ground, growling viciously at the foreman, his lips curled back from sharp, bloody teeth. His muzzle was slick with blood, and more of it was frozen in his fur and matted to his pointy ears.

No wonder Bowman looked like he needed a fresh diaper.

“Okay, yes, the dog killed the…man.” At the last minute, I decided against revealing Berg’s species; there was a small chance that Bowman might recover from what he’d seen and go on to lead a fairly normal life. Unless I screwed that up for him with too much information. “But that was a very bad man. He would have killed us both—”

Hagen jerked me backward, and I nearly lost my balance. He was going for his gun again, and if he made it, Bowman and I were both dead. Not the quick and easy kind of dead, either. Oh, he’d probably shoot Bowman straight away, not out of courtesy for a human caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, but because I’d be more than enough to deal with, now that his cohorts were stiff and cold.

But something told me that prolonged-and-painful was Hagen’s calling card, and that I was about to reap the benefits of his expertise.

My calling card was stubborn-and-sarcastic. Heavy on the stubborn. And I was just as willing to spread the wealth.

I tugged Hagen forward, digging my heels into the ground as best I could. My shoes slid on snow and a thin layer of ice, and he kept pulling against me. I leaned away from Hagen and took a deep breath. Using his grip on my left arm as my pivot point, I swung myself around to face him. I threw my right leg up and around as I spun. The toe of my boot slammed into the right side of his skull.

Hagen dropped my arm and swayed on his feet. Whirling, I took off toward the gantry. The goblin sloshed through the snow at my back. I was mere feet from the pit when his fingers snagged in my ponytail. He jerked down. My head snapped back. I wobbled, bringing one foot back for balance. It wasn’t enough. I fell to one knee.

His momentum unstoppable, Hagen skidded forward. I ducked into a ball on the ground. He tried to jump over me, and my elbow snagged his boot. He hit the snow in front of me, then scrambled to stand, facing the pit. Hagen turned as I leapt to my feet. I kicked him square in his broad chest.

The goblin staggered backward, waving his arms for balance. I followed him, swinging my foot around for another blow. My balance was compromised with my hands cuffed at my back, and my boot hit his arm instead of his chest. He staggered backward three more steps.

Hagen stood inches from the concrete lip around the pit, and he had no idea. One more kick, and Allen would have a new roommate—for eternity.

Desperately wishing for the use of my hands, I let my left leg fly again. My foot hit Hagen’s shoulder. It wasn’t a great kick, but it was good enough. He fell backward over the concrete lip, his ass dipping into the frigid darkness. One wide, powerful hand clutched the rim, the other clung to the edge of the metal disk.

Hagen’s eyes bulged. He glared up at me, lips pressed firmly together. He was too proud to beg for my help.

So be it.

I drew my foot back and kicked one last time, with every ounce of strength I had left. The steel toe of my boot smashed into his fingers, where they clutched at the concrete lip. Small bones cracked. He screamed and lost his grip.

Hagen slid further into the hole, his left hand now grasping for a better hold on the manhole cover. Instead, he lost his grip entirely.

I never heard the impact. I had no idea whether he hit earth or water, and I didn’t really give a damn, because either way, Hagen was gone. They were all gone, and his was one less body I’d have to bury.

Hmmm. Maybe Bowman would help me toss the other two into the pit too…

Behind me, metal scraped metal. Then I heard a familiar click-slide-catch sound, but it seemed only distantly relevant to my state of mind at the moment, as I relished my victory.

“Alexandra!”

I was at the edge of the pit, staring down into the darkness, when James Allen called my name. As I turned away from the pit, the report of my own pistol echoed behind me. “Bowman, no!” He’d cleared the jammed barrel.

I spun just in time to see the gun recoil in the foreman’s hands. The bullet hit Orthus square in the forehead, between and below his ears. He seemed to jump up and back with the impact, then settled onto his rump.

Orthus fell much too slowly to be real, as if time had begun to drag. He landed on his right side, half-in the grave he’d been digging. For a moment, his gaze met mine, and he whined. Then his eyelids dropped softly, and the red glint in his eyes blinked out.

ELEVEN

“Orthus!” I cried, surprised by the pang of grief washing over me.

The dog lay motionless, his reddish-black head and front paws stark against the snow at the edge of his own shallow grave. I charged Bowman, my hands still cuffed at my back. “You stupid son of a bitch! He wasn’t going to hurt you; you were threatening him. He was just trying to bury his kill. That’s his right, and his responsibility, which you’d know if you’d ever shot at anything more than a fucking paper target!”

Bowman stared up at me, eyes still glazed in shock. He made no move to defend himself when my left leg flew in a beautiful, low roundhouse, perfected from hours in the gym and more real-life practice than I could even begin to quantify. I hit the meaty part of his right thigh, and he crumpled to the ground almost willingly, as if that’s where he’d wanted to be all along. He sat on one hip at my feet, staring at the ground, my pistol half-buried in the snow by his knee.

“Get me out of these damn cuffs so I can kick your ass!” I demanded, too furious to think straight. Orthus was just a dog. Just a stupid, creepy dog I’d barely even known, yet watching him die made me want to skin Bowman inch by inch. Or maybe bury him alive. Or throw him into the pit, with Hagen. Or…

“Alexandra.” Allen’s voice was soft, but insistent.

“What?” I shouted, kicking snow in Bowman’s face. I had to do something or I’d lose my temper and go for the gun, even in handcuffs. I was in no mood to be scolded, especially by a wraith who’d last influenced the physical world sometime during Roosevelt’s administration. Teddy Roosevelt.

“Look.”

I followed Allen’s line of sight and my gaze settled on the canine corpse, still hanging over the edge of the hole he’d been digging. At first, I saw nothing else. Then his visible eye twitched. When it twitched again, I realized he was blinking. Orthus was still alive. Or maybe alive again. The technicalities didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was blinking—and presumably breathing—despite the bullet buried somewhere in his brain.

“Get these cuffs off me,” I snapped, looking to Allen for help, because in shock, Bowman was practically worthless. Allen arched one eyebrow at me and reached down to put his hand through the foreman’s head. Completely through. Like, in one side and out the other.

Shit. The wraith was corporeally-challenged, and the human wasn’t expected back in the world of reason and consequence any time soon. Wonderful.

“Bowman!” I shouted. He made no reply, so I nudged him gently with my foot. When that didn’t work, I nudged him not-so-gently. “Bowman! Look at me.”

The foreman looked up slowly, his gaze traveling my entire body before finally settling on my eyes. “What?” His voice was distant, his pronunciation mushy.

“Get up and give me a hand. Your life is directly connected to that dog’s. If he lives, so will you. If not, I’ll throw your ass in the pit with Hagen. I’m sure Allen would love the company.”

Bowman blinked, as if trying to clear his vision. “Who’s Allen?”

“Never mind.” I huffed, tossing a stray strand of hair from my face. “Get up. I need you to find the keys to these fucking handcuffs.” He stared at me, and I rolled my eyes. “Up. Now. Or I give Allen permission to haunt your ass for all of eternity.”

Finally, after the longest five seconds of my life, Bowman pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. His pants were caked with compacted snow, and he was probably freezing. But then, I’d rolled around on the ground too, and at the moment the only thing standing between me and a severe case of hypothermia was the body heat I’d worked up fighting Hagen.

“Will you go look for the keys while I wake him up?” I asked, glancing at Allen. The wraith took off toward Dirk’s body as I moved directly into Bowman’s line of sight. With my arms pinned behind my back, I had to shake my head to catch his attention, because he was zoning out again. Fucking humans, and their fragile psyches. Had I ever been like that?

“Alright, Mike, stay with me now.” I moved to one side, urging him to turn with me, so I could watch both him and Orthus at the same time. It worked, and I was encouraged. “That’s right, come this way a little more.”

Bowman complied, and I smiled at him, trying to remember how to be intentionally friendly. It was coming back to me slowly. Smiling was a good start.

“I know you’ve seen some things you’d like to forget, and with any luck, you’ll be able to do just that. But right now, I need you to pull yourself together for me. If we’re going to get out of here before broad daylight…” One glance at the rapidly lightening sky told me we were almost there. “…I need some help from you. Can you do that?”

Bowman nodded, but he looked unsure.

“Good. That’s a start.” I had to get him talking. Surely that would snap him out of what was obviously full-blown shock. “Allen, how you comin’ on that key?” I asked, without taking my eyes from the large but apparently delicate foreman.

“I can’t reach into his pockets, but at a glance, this one doesn’t appear to have it.”

“This one” was Dirk, and I was willing to bet that even in life, he hadn’t had much of anything. Including a brain and a functioning set of balls.

Allen walked across my field of vision, heading toward Orthus and the two-piece corpse.

“Okay, Mike, let’s chat for a few minutes while…”

…the ghost searches the decapitated goblin.

It seemed best not to say that part aloud, so I started over. “Let’s just talk. What were you saying earlier about the crew and the box from the pit? Did the men get it open?”

Bowman blinked at me again, but this time there was something behind his eyes. Confusion, maybe, which implied thought. He was coming around. He had to be.

“Did your men get the box open, Mike?”

“No.” He frowned, eyes narrowing as he thought back. “No. They couldn’t get it open. There were too many of them climbing on it. And it was still strapped to the crane.”

Behind him, Allen knelt by the larger piece of Berg, inspecting the goblin by sight for possession of a handcuff key. Orthus’s eyes followed him, flashing red when the light struck them just right. As I watched, his front right paw twitched. Then it twitched again. He was healing—not as quickly as Devich had mended his wounds, but a hell of a lot faster than I would have.

“The men didn’t get into the box. Good. So, what happened to it?” I leaned down to catch Bowman’s gaze again as it began to wander. “How did you end the riot? What did you do with the box?”

Mike Bowman was a pretty big man. Over six feet tall, and noticeably bulky, even under several layers of winter clothing. Yet when he looked at me, fear shined in his eyes like unshed tears. I couldn’t tell whether he was more afraid of what he’d just seen and done, or of whatever had happened in the same spot two days earlier. Or of the fact that he was about to admit to his fear in the first place.

He sighed and closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, his expression held a little less fear and a little more awareness. And quite a bit of resignation. He was about to ‘fess up.

“It was a riot, of sorts. The men went crazy the minute they saw that damned box. Before that, really. I had to hold several of them back from the edge while we were pulling it up. They were leaning so far over I was afraid they were going to fall in.”

Behind him, Allen had given up on the goblin and was now searching the ground around the body, trying unsuccessfully to run his fingers through clumps of snow. Orthus had lifted his head and was actively watching the search. He could obviously see the wraith, and for some reason, I didn’t find that surprising. Of course a hellhound could see dead people. That stood to reason. The real mystery lay in the fact that I could too.

Was that because, technically, I was also dead?

Bowman was still talking, sounding more coherent by the minute. I nodded, encouraging him to continue.

“I held the men back, but not to keep them safe. Not even to protect Troy Devich’s investment. I held them back because I wanted to be the first to touch the box. The one to open it.” His gaze fell to my feet, then rose to my face again in jerky, embarrassed movements. “It sounds stupid, I know, but that’s how it was. At the time, it made perfect sense. We all wanted to open it.”

“So, you held them back?” I asked, choosing to emphasize what he’d done right, instead of the fact that he’d done it for the wrong reason. I was unqualified to throw stones at that particular glass house.

“A few of them, yeah. But several others got by me. When the box rose out of the hole, they jumped on it. Four or five at once, while it was still in the air. They hung over the pit, kicking their legs, trying to gain purchase with their feet. It’s a miracle no one fell in.”

At his back, Allen stood and shook his head at me. Either Berg didn’t have the key, or Allen’s incorporeal state had kept him from finding it. Which was just fucking wonderful.

I rolled my head on my shoulders, unable to get comfortable with my hands cuffed at my back. “How did you get them down?” I asked Bowman, forcing my attention back to him before he realized that his information was no longer the number one thing on my mind.

“I didn’t. There was one guy on the crew, this deep-sea diver we brought in last year, when the pit was still under water. He helped barricade those side tunnels, and after they pumped out most of the water, we kept him around in case anything went wrong, and we needed him again. But mostly he just hung around talking to everyone, pitching in where he was needed. Not a bad guy.”

I nodded, and he continued. “Anyway, the diver seemed to have his head screwed on better than the rest of us. He tried to get everyone to calm down, but the men just kept clamoring for that box. Finally, the diver climbed into the crane’s control booth. He lifted the box back into the air by about six feet, people still hanging all over it. A few of them fell off, and one smacked his head on the concrete around the pit. But there were still three workers on top of it when he swung the whole thing up over the control platform.”

“A diver?” I was sure I’d heard wrong, but Bowman nodded. “How would a diver know how to work the crane?”

“Beats the hell outta me, but I’m glad he did.”

Yeah, me too.

James Allen stood at Bowman’s back, but the foreman was completely unaware of his presence. He shrugged solid-looking shoulders at me and frowned apologetically. “Miss Walker, I think the key went over the edge with that last fella.”

I blinked at him, at once surprised by his statement and utterly convinced that it was true. Of course the key was with Hagen. They were his cuffs.

“You okay?” Bowman frowned at me. He’d been nearly catatonic five minutes earlier, and now he was worried about me.

Was I okay?

I’d been fine while I was fighting. My increased heart rate had kept me surprisingly warm as I’d fought three goblins in a foot of snow, and there hadn’t been time to think about how bruised I’d be later. But now that the bad guys were dead and Orthus was evidently recovering, my right side throbbed viciously from the kick I’d taken to the ribs, and the back of my skull felt like it had more dings and dents than Rusty’s rear fenders. Also, I was freezing my leather-clad ass off. All of which was no-doubt more than Bowman wanted to know.

“I’m fine, all things considered. I need you to get me out of these, though.” Clenching my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering, I twisted to show him that my hands were cuffed together behind my back, in case he hadn’t already noticed my latest dilemma.

He frowned deeper. “Where’s the key?”

“I think it went down the pit with stooge number three.”

He glanced at the pit in confusion—apparently, he’d missed the best part. “So, what should I do?”

“They’ve probably got a tool shed around here somewhere,” Allen said. “A pair of bolt cutters will do the job nicely.”

And Mike Bowman probably would have thought of that himself, if he weren’t still clearly fighting shock.

I smiled at Allen in silent thanks, then I turned back to Bowman, whose expression was a mixture of concern and confusion. “Bolt cutters,” I said. “Do you have a pair of bolt cutters lying around here anywhere?”

His face lit up. “Yeah. Several, actually. But we’ve also got a jar of paperclips in the trailer over there. Can’t you just…I don’t know, wiggle a wire in there and pop them open?”

Glowering, I swung myself around so that my back was to him, wincing as pain whipped through my ribcage. “What does it say on the cuffs?” I asked, holding my hands as far away from my body as I could.

“It says, ‘Gotcha,’” Bowman read, slowly, as if the word made no sense. “Is that a joke?”

“No, it’s a brand name.” I turned back to face him, aware that I was glaring but unable to stop it. “It means they can’t be picked, or jimmied, or broken,” I snapped. “Now go get me a pair of bolt cutters before I have to kick your ass with both hands literally bound behind my back.”

I wasn’t smiling, but for some reason he thought I was bluffing. Or maybe kidding. The foreman chuckled as he walked off through the snow, rubbing his gloved hands together for warmth.

Figures, I thought, watching Bowman go. I’d shot one goblin and thrown another into the pit, and the only human around wasn’t even a little bit scared of me. I was going to have to start wearing a hockey mask or carrying a butcher knife or something, just to get a little respect.

As soon as the foreman rounded the corner of the office trailer, I turned toward Orthus, motioning to Allen to follow me with a toss of my head. “Fill me in on the rest of it while he’s gone,” I said, dropping to my knees beside the dog. I was so cold by that point that I felt neither the snow nor the impact in my legs. That would have worried me, if my limbs weren’t functioning properly, but since they were, I’d deal with frostbite and hypothermia later.

“The rest of what?” Allen asked, and Orthus looked up at the sound of his voice. He could hear the wraith too, and I took that as further proof that I wasn’t hallucinating.

Sucking in a deep, freezing breath, I forced my mind off the cold and onto the interview, even when my arms started to shake and refused to be stilled. “Bowman mentioned something about a diver who helped pull the box out of the pit and g-get everyone else under c-control?” I paused, trying to stop the chattering, which rendered my words virtually unintelligible. “Do you remember him?”

“Yup,” Allen said, watching me in sympathy as I knelt by the dog. “His name was… Murdock. Something-or-other Murdock. Nice enough fellow. Only one who seemed completely unaffected by the box. By the time he got out of the control booth, two of the men had kicked each other off and were rolling around on the platform. Murdock ran straight past them and knocked the other man off, right onto the men on the ground under the box.”

Orthus whined, still trying to pull himself from the hole, and Allen stopped his recitation to study the creature at his feet. “That’s some dog you’ve got there. He tore that man in two trying to protect you.”

Still shaking, I nodded. “He’s a h-h-hellhound, and he’s not m-mine.”

“A hellhound?” Allen’s eyes widened and his gaze shifted from me to Orthus, then back to me. “Like the hellhounds that guard the gates of Hades?”

“S-something like that, yeah.”

He nodded. “That makes sense, I guess. Is that where you…?”

“No!” Hell, was that where everyone thought I belonged? I tossed more pale hair from my face, glaring up at the wraith. “I said he isn’t mine. Finish what you were saying about Murdock.”

Allen frowned, clearly thinking back. “He ran past the men trying to climb up on the box and snatched a big coil of chain right out of the foreman’s hands. Then he jumped up on the box himself. At first, I thought he was going to try to open it too, but then he started wrapping the chain around it instead, and I realized he was trying to secure it. To kind of hold it closed.”

The wraith paused, and I glanced down at Orthus. His hind legs were moving now, clawing the earth weakly in an attempt to propel himself from the hole. I wanted to help him, but with my hands stuck behind my back, I couldn’t even help myself. Where the hell were those bolt cutters?

“Finally, the foreman came to his senses and went to help,” Allen continued. “By the time they got it all locked up, the other men were standing around staring at everything. They’d calmed down and were nursing their wounds, but no one had left. They were all still watching the box.”

“But n-no one o-opened it? You’re sure about that?” Shivering, I watched Allen, waiting for his answer, and movement behind him caught my eye. Bowman was coming back with what looked like a huge pair of hedge trimmers clenched in one fist.

“No,” Allen said finally. “I don’t know about after it left the island, but while the box was here, no one got it open. I have a feeling things would have gotten a lot worse if they had.”

I had that same feeling. “Bowman’s coming back, so m-m-make it quick.” For warmth, I hugged my arms to my torso as tightly as I could, with my hands still trapped behind my back. “What happened after they got the box chained up?”

Allen glanced over his shoulder at Bowman, then back at me. “Murdock and the foreman put it on the helicopter.”

“You’re sure?”

He nodded. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

With another growl of pain and effort, Orthus dug his back claws into the dirt and lunged forward. He landed on the ground by my knees, panting from his effort, but finally free of his accidental grave. I barely noticed. Something in Allen’s last few statements was nagging at the back of my brain. Something about Murdock helping Bowman load the box onto the helicopter…

“Okay…last question…really important.” I clenched my jaw shut to stop the chattering, but it didn’t work. “After they loaded the box…did anyone other than the p-pilot and copilot get o-on the helicopter?” I was still working on Devich’s “inside job” theory, but I was running out of time alone with the wraith, as Bowman drew closer with every step.

“Not that I saw,” Allen said. “But by then the other men were getting all riled up again. They didn’t want to let the helicopter take off, and the foreman was trying to hold them back. I guess it’s possible someone else got on. But if so, I didn’t see it.”

“What about M-murdock?” I glanced from Orthus to Bowman, then back to the wraith. “C-could he have gotten on board…in all the commotion?”

“Yeah!” Allen nodded enthusiastically, his face lit up with the sudden memory. “He did get on. He helped the foreman guide the box on from inside the helicopter. The guys who usually drive the forklifts were both at the front of the riot. One had a bloody nose, and the other one was the guy who hit his head on the concrete opening. So the foreman had to load it, and the other guy guided him.”

“So you saw him get on the chopper?” I asked to verify, and Allen nodded. “Did you actually see him get off?”

This gave him pause, and he stared off to the side, trying to remember. I smiled to realize how many of our habits don’t necessarily die when we do. I knew that one from personal experience.

“Noooo,” Allen finally said, shaking his head slowly. “I can’t say for sure that I remember him getting off the helicopter. But he must have. Why would he stay on? He was the only one who didn’t have any interest in the box.”

And that was where my theory fell apart…

“I take it you know this dog?” Bowman said, just feet away now. “That you’re talking to him to keep him company, and not chatting up Natalie’s ghost.”

Giving the foreman a job to do had obviously brought him back to his senses.

“Yeah, I know h-him.” I chose to ignore the ghost comment altogether. Selective hearing was a horrible thing to waste.

“You’re going to freeze.” Bowman frowned, taking in my hunched posture and uncontrollable shaking. “Come inside and have some more coffee.”

I nodded. “Soon.” After we’d disposed of the bodies. But my hands came first. “The c-cuffs are…t-too tight.” He’d never be able to get the cutters between my skin and the metal. “Cut the chain b-between them.” I eyed the huge sheers in sudden apprehension. They’d go through my wrist much easier than through metal. “C-carefully,” I amended.

I tried to stand, but with numb legs and useless hands, I overbalanced and nearly fell flat on my face.

Bowman grabbed my arm and pulled me up. My side screamed in protest of the rough handling, but that was nothing compared to my embarrassment over needing help in the first place.

“Turn around, and I’ll give it a shot. This was the newest pair in the shop, so they ought to do the trick.”

“If you cut me, I’ll k-kick your ass all the w-way to the next l-l-life,” I said. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t let a strange man near me with what amounted to a huge pair of scissors without warning him about what would happen if he screwed up. The lady who cut my hair always got the same speech.

Without waiting for his reaction, I turned my back on Bowman and stretched my arms as far from my backside as I could, struggling to hold them steady in spite of the shivering.

“This should only take a second,” he said.

“Th-there’s something I c-can’t understand about this whole treasure pit/mysterious box thing,” I said, trying to distract myself from the metallic squeal as he lifted the bolt cutters into place. I felt them skip off the chain, as my hands shook, and images of a bloody stump at the end of my arm stirred nausea in the pit of my stomach.

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“W-what made you g-g-guys so desperate to get your hands on the b-box? I mean, it’s not l-l-like it’s carved from g-gold or anything, r-right?”

“Not that I could tell.” Something tugged down on the handcuffs, sudden and harsh. Metal squealed, then snapped. My hands fell to my sides, and just like that, I was free. I still wore a set of steel bracelets, but I’d regained the use of my hands and arms. The rest could wait.

Rolling my shoulders to loosen them, I turned to find Bowman holding the heavy cutters in one thick, gloved hand. “It was a normal enough box, I guess. Except that it was big, and it was fucking heavy. It looked like it was carved from a single slab of stone, with some kind of writing on it.”

“If that was an ordinary box, I’m the ghost of Elvis,” Allen said, interrupting my thoughts as I rubbed my wrists beneath the steel hoops.

I glanced up at him, struck by the oddly intense quality of his voice. And by the fact that a man who died more than a hundred years ago knew who Elvis was.

“He’s half-right.” The wraith met my eyes with a serious gaze. “It was made of stone, with an elaborate, fitted lid. The sides and top were fancy, carved with designs, and with letters I couldn’t read. Didn’t even recognize. It was a…what’s the word? Kind of like a fancy coffin, you know?”

“Sarcophagus,” I whispered, my vision narrowing to include almost nothing but his face. “That box is a fucking sarcophagus.”

TWELVE

An hour later, I stood on threadbare lime green carpet in the lobby of the Mahone Bay Inn, a small motel several miles inland. For a hundred and twenty a night, the young man behind the counter could offer me a lumpy bed, central heat, satellite cable, and an iffy Wi-Fi connection.

Central heat sealed the deal.

Shivering, I pulled my wallet from the still-damp pocket of my leather coat, moving stiffly as my body worked to heal the damage Hagen had done to my ribs. The steel bracelet around my wrist clanked against the counter as I dug out my company credit card and slid it across cheap Formica to the clerk whose nametag read My Name is Kurt.

Kurt, who couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, stared at me, both brows furrowed over non-descript brown eyes.

At first, I thought the handcuffs were giving him pause. I was probably quite a sight, shivering in snow-soaked clothing, with half of a set of manacles on each wrist. But his reply set me straight. “We’re not set up for those here,” he said, and I realized he was staring at the card, rather than at my wrists. Evidently the handcuffs weren’t noteworthy, even at seven in the morning.

“You don’t take credit cards?”

“This is a small, family business. We can’t afford the transaction fees.”

Well, shit. “I have cash, but it’s US dollars.”

Kurt nodded. “We take those.”

Room 128 was cold and dark, despite dawn breaking outside the grimy windows. The dark I liked, but after only a few hours in Nova Scotia, I’d had enough cold to last me the rest of my life. Er…my afterlife.

The lamp next to the bed lit the room, yet left plenty of shadows for a soothing, familiar feel.

I dropped my bags against the wall and left the door open as I trudged back to the car for Orthus, who lay across the back seat, all four paws hanging over the edge. For a long moment, I stared through the window, watching his chest rise and fall in the rhythm of deep sleep.

Creepy as he was, after he’d been shot trying to protect me, I could hardly leave him behind. Fortunately, by the time I was ready to leave Oak Island, Orthus had recovered enough to walk pretty steadily. His healing impressed me even more than Devich’s had, because the hound was shot in the head—one of the two automatic-kill spots for most creatures, human and Netherworlder alike—rather than in the gut. But if I was amazed by Orthus’s recuperation, Bowman was damn near speechless.

By the time I’d gotten the hellhound loaded into the back of my rental car, the foreman had convinced himself that his shot had missed entirely. Or that the gun had misfired. I think that was the only way he could reconcile what he’d seen and done with the laws of nature as he understood them. His subconscious was trying to protect him. Denial, all the way.

I knew exactly how he felt.

The glare of morning sunlight on the rented windshield brought the passage of time to my attention. Soon the few other motel guests would be up and around, and I had no desire to meet them.

Orthus twitched as I opened the car door, but he didn’t wake up until I said his name, and even then, he only blinked, then closed his eyes again. My hand hovered over his flank, my fingers barely brushing thick, coarse fur as I considered shaking him awake. But I couldn’t think of anything in the world more foolish than touching an injured, semi-conscious hellhound. For all I knew, he might bite my hand off out of instinct before he’d even opened his eyes.

“Orthus,” I called again, drawing my hand back. His eyes opened. His ears twitched. He blinked, then he lifted his head and looked at me with an almost-human expression of confusion. “Can you get up?” I asked, and he barked softly, an oddly deep sound that had little in common with most canine vocalization. It was more expressive, more meaningful. Yet still intimidating.

“Come on inside, and you can rest until…”

Until what? What on earth was I going to do with an injured hellhound? Or a healthy one, for that matter, because if he continued to heal at the current rate, he’d be as good as new in a matter of hours. I couldn’t bring him with me on a job… Could I?

I stepped back from the door, and Orthus stood on the floorboard. The peaks of his ears were smushed against the roof of the car, and I gasped, impressed anew by how fantastically big he was. He took up the entire rear half of the car, and he had to weigh close to two hundred pounds. Had to.

Orthus stepped carefully down onto the asphalt, already plodding into the room as I slammed the car door. Inside, he claimed the nearest bed—Kent had given me a double—where he fell asleep again before I’d even bolted the door. The nasal rumble erupting with his every breath gave me momentary pause. If I’d known hellhounds snored, I might have thought twice about letting him inside.

Or maybe not. I wasn’t sure yet that I could trust him not to eat the other hotel guests. After all, there was a reason Bowman had shot him in the head.

Poor guy. I’d made the foreman promise to drive straight home and take a couple of valium, then climb into bed. With any luck, he’d wake up and think he’d dreamed the whole thing.

Rolling my eyes at the snoring hellhound, I closed the hideous orange drapes and turned on the heat, then I headed straight for the shower, shedding my clothes on the way.

The motel’s plentiful hot water made up for the molded-plastic tub and ripped vinyl curtain, and if not for the amputated lengths of steel chain tangling in my hair when I washed it, my shower would have been perfect.

Ten minutes later, I’d dried off, donned the sports bra and cut-off sweats I slept in and was running a brush through my still-wet hair when my cell phone started buzzing from the top of the dresser. Almost too tired to think, I sank into the ratty hotel recliner and answered it without looking at the screen. “Hello?”

“Hello, Alexandra.”

Devich sounded suspiciously alert and coherent for seven a.m. In general, morning people get on my nerves, but since this particular specimen had information I desperately wanted, I put on my professional-voice, indulging in a dark scowl to balance it out.

“Hello, Mr. Devich. How are you?” I tugged on the lever on one side of the ancient arm chair, but the pop-up ottoman didn’t move.

“That depends on what you have to tell me.”

“There isn’t much to tell yet.” Leaning sideways in the chair, I swung my legs up onto the night stand, resting my feet beside an ugly porcelain lamp. “I got a good look at the pit early this morning. Had a few words with your foreman. He seems nice enough, for a human.”

“I suppose.” From the background came the incessant clicking of a ballpoint pen—a sure sign that Devich was bored with my niceties. Which made two of us. “Where are you now?”

There were at least a dozen ways I could have phrased my response to make myself sound busy and dedicated, but I just didn’t have the energy to waste. “I’m in my motel room, about to take a nap.” I swirled circles on battered chair arm with my fingertip, desperately wishing I had time for a full night’s sleep. Or a pot of coffee.

“Shouldn’t you be out looking for my box?”

Gritting my teeth, I breathed deeply through my nose and prepared to make nice. “I’m flying from Halifax to Bar Harbor this afternoon, and I’ll be poking around the crash site tonight to see what I can find. If the crate went down with the aircraft, there should be some sign of it. And if it was taken from the plane after the fact, there will be a trail to follow.” I just wasn’t buying the disappeared-in-mid-flight theory. “But quite frankly, Mr. Devich, after the morning I’ve had, I should either be asleep or drunk, and the local bars don’t open for several more hours. So I’m going to take a nap, then get on a plane.”

I had to board my flight at three p.m., and the airport was sixty miles away. Devich’s phone call was eating into my limited rest time.

“Your morning didn’t go well?”

I glanced over at Orthus, whose chest rose and fell in the deep, steady rhythm of recuperative sleep. Very noisy recuperative sleep. “Only if you count the fact that I’m still alive. Well, as alive as I was yesterday, anyway,” I amended with a shrug he couldn’t see. “Which is more than I can say for the band of goblins dumb enough to follow me to Nova Scotia.”

Over the line, Devich made a wet coughing sound, and I pictured gourmet coffee spewing from his famously perfect nose. That probably didn’t really happen, but the mental image made me smile. He coughed again, then cleared his throat. “A band of goblins followed you to Nova Scotia?”

“Yeah, they showed up at the pit, all trigger-happy and out for revenge over a few punches I threw on a job a couple of nights ago. Like it’s my fault they’re cocky and easily distracted.”

“They fired at you first?”

Hmmm. That was a good question. Had they fired at me first? I couldn’t exactly remember… “If they didn’t, they were about to. It was either me or them, and if I hadn’t taken them down, I’d still be bleeding out in the woods somewhere, with one of them gnawing on my raw kidney. Fortunately for you, I came out on top. Unless you’d rather hire a bunch of over-armed, under-prepared goblins to find your box.”

Speaking of which, Devich had some explaining to do about his definition of the term “box.” But he posed another question before I could address that issue.

“What’d you do with the bodies?”

Turning my foot to one side, I used my big toe to flip up the lever on the base of the table lamp. Dim yellow light flooded one half of the hotel room, chasing shadows into the far corner. “Bowman helped me toss them into the pit. I figured a few more corpses wouldn’t make any difference in there anyway.”

“A few more corpses?” Devich’s voice was a mixture of dread and confusion.

“Yeah. To keep the other one company. You do know your pit’s haunted, don’t you?”

“Pardon?” Hinges squeaked over the line, and I imagined him sitting straighter in an expensive chair in some posh office at the top of a Memphis high-rise. He probably had a fancy desk—ebony, or frosted glass—scattered with ornate pencil holders and paperweights. Hell, his stupid clicky pen had probably cost more than my entire arsenal.

I smiled at the realization that I was one up on him. “Haunted. By a wraith. You know, the wandering spirit of a murder victim?”

“I know what a wraith is, Ms. Walker,” Devich snapped, sounding more openly hostile than I’d ever heard him. “What I don’t understand is why you think there’s one in my pit.”

I let my feet slid to the floor as my focus settled on an arrangement of tiny bottles on top of the TV. How had I not noticed the mini bar? “Because I saw him. Interviewed him, in fact.”

The pause that followed went on long enough that I started to wonder if Devich was still on the line. Then he took a deep breath, and I realized he was thinking. Probably trying to decide what to ask first. “Ms. Walker, wraiths can’t speak.”

I crossed the room, the soles of my feet scraping rough, commercial-grade carpet. “This one sure as hell could, and he had some interesting things to say.”

Another, shorter pause, while his ballpoint pen clicked rapidly. “Such as…?”

“Such as the fact that the box buried in your pit isn’t exactly a corrugated cardboard cube. It’s a sarcophagus.” This time I paused, to let him absorb what I’d said. “Is there any particular reason you failed to tell me that in the first place? Knowing that little detail might have saved me considerable time and effort.”

It probably wouldn’t have, but Devich didn’t need to know that.

“Is there any particular reason you failed to tell me you can see—and evidently speak to—wraiths?”

I hate it when people use my own words against me. “You first.”

Background stillness accompanied Devich’s voice, as if no other sound could compete with it. “Your job is to find the box and bring it to me. Unopened.”

No worries there. I had no intention of opening the coffin. Any coffin, no matter how old and valuable it was.

“Knowing what kind of box it is wouldn’t have helped you find it,” Devich continued, his tone entirely too reasonable.

“You can’t know that!” Angry now, I snatched four little bottles from the mini bar. “The nature of the missing object could lead directly to the thief’s motive for taking it. Which could lead directly to the thief himself. How many times have you done this?” I paused, but not long enough for him to actually answer. “Not many, I’m guessing, or you wouldn’t have needed to hire me. I’ve made more than a hundred retrievals, and the one thing they all had in common was that I knew what I was looking for.”

On his bed, Orthus growled in his sleep, then went back to snoring.

I slammed the bottles down on the table and glanced around for a mini fridge. There was none, which meant there was no ice. “How the hell am I supposed to do my job if I don’t have all the pertinent facts?”

Devich sighed over the line, and metal hinges squealed. What was he doing at the office at seven in the morning, anyway? “Well, you know now.”

I viciously twisted the lid from the mini bottle of Jack Daniels. Fifty milliliters? Barely worth the effort of opening the bottle. I downed the whiskey in one swallow, then tossed the bottle into the plastic-lined trashcan, relishing the fire burning its way down my throat.

Fuming now, my vision edged in an angry red, I grabbed the next bottle. Johnnie Walker Black Label. Good thing it was a business expense. “I do not do corpse retrieval. Ever.”

Goblins or imps causing trouble? I’ve got it covered. Incubus stalking your dreams? I’m your girl. Lost a valuable mystical relic? Give me a call. But I was not disturbing some ancient soul’s final resting place—or even his temporary resting place, for that matter. My sad little insurance policy wouldn’t begin to cover the damage from that kind of metaphysical—not to mention karmic—fallout.

Too angry for speech, I opened and downed the second bottle, and that time I barely felt the burn. My thoughts flashed by too fast to capture, searching for the right words to make Devich understand what an absolute ass he’d been to keep a secret like that.

My problem with coffins had nothing to do with fear. At least any fear a human would understand. I certainly wasn’t afraid of walking/waking corpses. Hell, I practically was one.

The problem had little to do with disgust, either. Rotting, stinking skeletons crawling with flies and assorted creepy-crawlies? Revolting, definitely. But not that big of a barrier to my professionalism. Though in theory, anything buried in that pit for two centuries should have long ago shriveled into a pile of dust.

But I didn’t believe for a second that what should have happened had happened to Devich’s missing cadaver. Regular coffins containing normal mortal remains—rotting as they ought—did not compel people to dig them up. Nor did they feel “bad.” And they sure as hell didn’t need to be chained up and whisked away in a private helicopter before anyone could open them. That shit just wasn’t normal.

And while I was on the topic of things-that-creep-the-hell-out-of-Lex, the irresistible urge to open a casket—any casket—was just plain fucked up, no matter how I thought about it.

“Alexandra?” Devich asked, breaking into my contemplation of the problem at hand. “What are you doing?”

I ignored him, still thinking as I snatched a cellophane-wrapped plastic cup from a set on the table. If I was going to reap any benefit from my limited supply of alcohol, I’d have to make it last longer. Drink it slowly, from a cup, while I figured out how to deal with the fact that I’d been hired to find someone’s dead body.

So, I was looking for a corpse—what was the big deal? The owner was dead, and thus likely unconcerned with what happened to his remains. Right?

Maybe not, and that was the problem. Humans aren’t the only species which buries its dead, and something told me that whatever was in Devich’s sarcophagus was not human in origin.

The only thing worse than disturbing a human’s resting place—which in itself carried some serious karmic consequences—was disturbing a non-human resting place, the owner of which might still be capable of seeking revenge.

“Alexandra, I can hear you moving around,” Devich said, as I poured the tiny bottle of Cuervo Black Medallion into the clear plastic cup, the phone pinned between my shoulder and my ear.

I didn’t want to know. But I had to ask. “What’s in the box, Devich?”

He sighed into my ear, and in the background, something clattered against the desk. Maybe he’d dropped his pen. “It’s a body.”

I rolled my eyes, stomping past the still-snoring hellhound on the way to my duffle bag, which held my last can of Coke. “I assumed as much. Can you be more specific?”

Amazingly, he chuckled. “Okay, it’s a very old body.”

Smartass. I grumbled beneath my breath as I jerked the zipper from one end of the duffle to the other. The broken chain link dangling from my left cuff scraped up the length of the zipper with a rapid metallic tapping sound. “Where did the body come from? Who is it? Or was it? Give me something I can use, or you’re just wasting time. Both mine and yours.”

Devich sighed again, and more springs groaned. “What’s inside doesn’t matter. It truly doesn’t, so long as the box isn’t opened. All you have to do is find it and bring it to me. Unopened. Can you do that, or should I start looking for your replacement?”

Coke in hand, I straightened in front of the bag, glaring in anger at nothing in particular. “Okay.” I breathed deeply into the silence over the line, trying to gain control of my temper. “Let’s get something straight right now, to avoid any more misunderstandings.”

“Fine,” he said, and I pictured him nodding, all composed and civilized. Not at all resisting the urge to set a building on fire.

“If there’s anything else I need to know about the sarcophagus or this job, tell me now. If I find out later that you’ve held out on me again, I’m done.”

“Done?” The question in his tone was practically tangible. “You’d walk away without knowing why you didn’t make it through the gate?” He clearly didn’t believe me. But that was his problem.

“I’d walk away from you in an instant,” I said, having finally decided I could afford to do just that. “I find things for a living, Devich. That’s what I do. Now that I know who else has the same information, I don’t really need you at all. You piss me off again, and I’ll go right to the source, passing you over entirely.”

He made a soft sound over the line, part amusement, part…pity? “You can’t get to the Gatekeeper, Alexandra,” he said, and I ground my teeth together at his repeated, familiar use of my first name. That was going to have to stop. “Not unless you’re willing to die again.”

Was that a threat?

“I’ll do whatever it takes, Troy.”

This time, Devich actually chuckled, while blood boiled audibly in my ears. “I’m starting to actually believe you would.”

THIRTEEN

After hanging up on Devich—who had the decency not to try calling me back immediately—I should have gotten five good hours of sleep. Yet despite exhaustion and bruises too numerous to count, I couldn’t drift off. Maybe it was the steel cuffs still chafing my wrists. Maybe it was fury at Devich smoldering throughout my body. But it very well could have been the idea of falling asleep across the room from a rapidly healing hellhound.

Even in his sleep, Orthus was one of the scariest things I’d seen in my two-plus centuries of been not-quite-dead. He lay across the atrocious, shiny gold comforter at an angle, his stubby tail near the bottom of the mattress, his pointed ears propped on the right-hand pillow. He took up most of the full-sized bed. And he was growling in his sleep, his lips curled back from his mouth to reveal blood-stained yellowish teeth, pointed and sharp like daggers. Even the peaks of his molars were pointed, which was just plain bizarre. One bite from a mouth like that would shred skin and muscle, and as demonstrated on Berg’s spine, the hellhound’s jaws were more than powerful enough to snap bone.

By the time I climbed into the empty bed across from him, his bullet wound had almost totally closed and had long since stopped bleeding. Only the blood-matted fur around what appeared to be a dimple in his flesh betrayed the fact that he’d been shot in the head less than two hours earlier.

I was sure—based on my own experience in that arena—that as soon as he was completely healed, he’d wake up, likely hungry and in a very foul mood, and I did not want to be asleep and defenseless when that happened. Just in case. So I slept fitfully, waking every few minutes to make sure he hadn’t moved.

By noon, he was waking up, and I was starving. My nap was over.

I dressed quickly in layered black shirts, a snug pair of jeans, my leather jacket, and a pair of low-heeled hiking boots. When I emerged from the bathroom with clean teeth and a wet toothbrush, I found Orthus on his bed, watching me through flashing red eyes.

“Hey, Van Winkle. You hungry?”

He blinked and nodded, yawning to show off two rows of dagger-teeth as he stepped easily from the bed onto the floor. He looked as good as new.

I left my key card on the dresser because I wouldn’t be formally checking out of the Mahone Bay Inn. However, I would be using the free lunch voucher I’d found in the top drawer of the pressboard dresser. According to the coupon, I was entitled to one free quarter-pound burger with the purchase of another at the regular price.

“You like hamburgers?” I asked Orthus, closing the motel room door behind us. He blinked at me again, but this time I got the distinct impression that he was actually trying to frown. “No? How ‘bout chicken?”

As I was shoving my travel bag into the trunk of the rental car, the door to the room next to ours opened, and a man in his thirties stepped out with a life jacket in one hand and a fishing pole in the other. Orthus growled from three feet away on the sidewalk, and the man’s head swiveled slowly to look at him.

The guest’s eyes widened, and his breathing sped noticeably. Orthus stepped forward, his lips curling back from his teeth. His growl deepened so that my head buzzed with the sound. He sniffed the air—his nose easily chest high on the poor man—and took another step toward him, tail wagging back and forth slowly.

I realized with a start that the hound was stalking his breakfast—on the sidewalk in broad daylight. “Orthus, no!” I ordered, slamming the trunk shut on my luggage. “We don’t eat tourists!”

The hound turned at the sound of my voice, and the guest spun on his heels. His hotel door slammed shut, followed by two distinct clicks as both locks were set from the inside. On the concrete in front of his room lay the abandoned lifejacket and fishing pole.

“I wouldn’t have let him eat you!” I called out, but the man made no reply. Hands on my hips, I stomped onto the sidewalk, frowning down at the hound with the scariest expression I could muster. “I don’t know what the goblins fed you—” Although I could guess. “—but as long as you’re with me, you can not eat people. Well, except for the bad guys. But I get to say which ones are the bad guys. Got it?”

Orthus growled, but then he bobbed his head slowly. Reluctantly.

“Good. You take one unauthorized bite, and I’ll leave your ass in Nova Scotia.” For all the good that would do. For all I knew, the damn thing had his own personal shuttle service. How else could he have followed me from Tennessee to an island in fucking Canada?

Orthus climbed into the back seat through the door I held open for him, and I drove to the fast-food place across the street to claim my free sandwich. We used the drive-through—where Orthus frightened the poor cashier right out of her paper hat and headset—then ate in the parking lot, still sitting in the rental car, while I went over the rest of our trip in my head.

I tossed the patties from two double burgers onto the back seat for Orthus and ate the remaining quarter-pound hamburger in near silence, sipping from a large Cherry Coke as I watched the hellhound in the rearview mirror. He glanced at the processed meat in disdain, then stared out the rear windshield while I finished my breakfast. Or was it lunch?

“Hey!” I called to him over the seat as I wadded my wrapper into a ball and dropped it into the take-out bag. “What are you, a food snob? You don’t like ground beef?”

He growled angrily and swatted the meat onto the floorboard, then folded one paw over the other and settled his chin on top of them.

Guess not. But if he was holding out for something fresher, he was out of luck. I probably should have let him munch on one of the goblins before we’d thrown them down the pit. But maybe I could stop for some raw meat on the way to the airport.

Speaking of which, I still had no idea what I was going to do with the dog. As far as I was concerned, anyone who’d chewed through someone’s neck to protect me had earned his place at my side, and I was perfectly willing to charge Devich the cost of the hound’s last minute plane ticket. But I was relatively certain the airline would want nothing to do with Orthus.

Hmmmm. What to do? Evidence seemed to indicate that Orthus would show up wherever he wanted to be, no matter where I left him. But I couldn’t count on him showing up when I needed him unless we traveled together.

Slurping the last of my soda, I Googled the number for the airline. After a couple of minutes of hold music, an operator answered, then transferred me to the department in charge of canine transportation. Unfortunately, that employee was much less than helpful.

The airline was prepared to handle dogs of Orthus’s size. Or so they claimed, without actually having seen him. However, he’d have to have an absorbent-cloth-lined carrier large enough for him to sleep and stand in comfortably, and even if I knew where to get one of those at the last minute, I had no reason to believe Orthus would actually get in it. The airline also wanted him sedated and supplied with an adequate amount of food—I doubted severed goblin arm would qualify—and they absolutely would not let any animal travel without proof that its shots were up to date.

I didn’t have said proof, and I was pretty sure Orthus’s immunizations were not only out of date, but non-existent. A dog that couldn’t be dropped by a bullet probably didn’t have much to fear from rabies.

Orthus would not be flying out of Halifax. Not with a major international airline, anyway.

“Well, what are we going to do with you now?” I asked, leaning over the front seat with my chin on the headrest. “How the hell did you get here, anyway? Charter your own plane?”

Wait a minute, that’s not a bad idea…

Struck with sudden inspiration, I dug through the glove compartment for the map of Nova Scotia. After a few seconds of studying it, I found the symbol I was looking for: a gray airplane icon, indicating a municipal airport in a tiny town called Digby, near the western shore of Nova Scotia. Surely they’d have private planes for hire, if one had the money to spend. And thanks to Troy Devich, I had the money.

Three phone calls later, everything was set. I had a plan and directions to a small dock on the west side of the Annapolis Basin, near Digby, where the scruffy-sounding pilot I’d spoken to would be waiting to fly us to Maine on a tiny twin engine seaplane. No dog carrier, no airport security, and no hassle. Inspired by the amount I offered him, he’d promised to be ready to leave in three hours, and he’d asked no questions about the dog, the rush, or the odd destination.

Half an hour after we’d arrived, I pulled out of the restaurant parking lot, satisfied by both my greasy meal and my recent stroke of luck. Orthus hadn’t eaten a single bite, but until I had time to find and stop at a butcher’s shop, there was nothing I could do to placate his finicky palate. So we set off for Digby, me drumming on the steering wheel along with Barracuda on the local classic rock station, Orthus pouting in the back seat.

Nearly an hour into the drive, when I was sure I wasn’t going to slide off the still-slick road into the woods on either side, I dug my phone from my pocket to check for a signal. Two bars. With Orthus snoring in the backseat—I was starting to wonder if he ever did anything other than sleep and eat people—I dialed Evan-the-psychopomp’s home number by heart. That was part of the problem with a good long-term memory: I couldn’t just forget old boyfriends’ numbers. Or their faces or voices. Though apparently they could forget mine.

“Hello?” Evan said over the line, and I exhaled in relief. I was worried he wouldn’t answer.

“Hi, Evan—”

“This is Evan. I can’t answer the phone right now, but if you leave a message, I’ll call you back.”

The phone beeped in my ear, and I groaned. Voicemail was one of my least favorite things to come out of the twenty-first century. Along with “influencers” and paint color names like Sea Foam.

It’s fucking blue.

“Evan, it’s Lex. I need a favor. There’s a wraith stuck in the pit on Oak Island, in Nova Scotia, and I need you to come pick it up. It has to be you, and you can’t tell anyone what you’re doing. This wraith is very old, and he likes to talk. I don’t know anyone else I can trust with this.”

Not that I trusted Evan in all respects, but I knew for a fact that he could keep his mouth shut. Even when he probably shouldn’t.

“I’ve got a big checkbook financing this, so send me your receipts. And keep this one quiet. Call me if you have any questions. I’m still at the same number.”

I hung up the phone and tossed it onto the center console in disgust. Calling Evan had not been part of my plan for this job, but I didn’t know any other psychopomps. With any luck, he’d just get on a plane without calling me back. Then again, I wasn’t exactly working on a surplus of luck so far.

On the radio, Patty Smythe’s ‘The Warrior,’ gave way to a news break. A calm voice announced that the President’s most recent trip to Europe had gone off without a hitch, and that an isolated case of bubonic plague in a small African village had been confirmed and contained. I reached forward to flick the power button, cutting the reporter off in the middle of an assurance that there was no need to panic. I had to agree. Humans had much more to worry about from their Netherworld neighbors than from an illness wiped out by simple antibiotics.

When we arrived in Digby, I stopped for supplies at a sporting goods store on the way to the lake. After the close-call with the fisherman at the motel, I knew better than to take Orthus inside with me, so, as ridiculous as it felt, I explained to the now-restless hellhound that I was going to have to lock him in the car until I got back. Fortunately, it was far too cold outside to risk overheating him in a locked car—not that that was really a concern for a hellhound.

In case my serious tone wasn’t enough to inspire obedience in a dog who really didn’t give a damn what anyone else wanted, I promised to buy him a whole, raw chicken if he resisted any urge to launch himself through the windshield in a bid for freedom while I was gone. Because a skull that could withstand a bullet could almost certainly destroy a pane of glass.

Clearly unimpressed by my promise of poultry, Orthus growled as I spoke, his dark fur blending seamlessly with the thick shadows on the seat. Hard-headed mutt.

I glanced over my shoulder several times on my way through the parking lot to make sure he was still in the car, and to my surprise, he stayed put. Yet twenty minutes later, when I trudged back to the Corolla carrying a new backpack full of hiking supplies, he was nowhere to be found. The car was still locked, the windshield and all the windows perfectly intact.

“Son of a bitch!” I hissed beneath my breath, shoving the key into the slot. Roaming free somewhere in a small Nova Scotia town was a hungry hellhound I’d unwittingly unleashed upon the world. I could already see the headlines: Vicious demon dog races through streets of Digby, devouring sinners and children alike.

No good could come of this.

After an exhaustive search of the parking lot and the surrounding strip-mall, during which I was propositioned by a grizzly-looking man in a flannel shirt and offered a ride from a soccer mom with four kids in the back of her van, I gave up and got back into the car. Orthus hadn’t caused any trouble on the loose in Memphis, and I could only hope he wouldn’t here. And that he could get home on his own. And that I wouldn’t be attacked by any more goblins without him around to decapitate a bad guy on my behalf.

I was angry and irritable when I left the strip mall, and my mood hadn’t improved fifteen minutes later, when I pulled into a gravel lot in front of a short wooden pier and parked at the edge of a lesser-used section of the harbor. The plane sat on the water, twenty feet in front of my windshield, balanced on the softly rippling surface on two broad white pontoons.

Glancing around for any sign of Orthus, I stepped out of the car into the bright afternoon sun, inhaling the combined scents of seawater and fuel from the dock half a mile down. My leather coat flapped in the ocean breeze as I extended my arms over my head for a good stretch. My spirits improved almost immediately. I hadn’t been on the coast in years and had almost forgotten what the ocean looked like.

Yawning, I hauled my bags from the trunk and turned toward the water, eyeing a well-kept Cessna seaplane. On the boardwalk in front of the plane stood the pilot, Arthur Finnigan, an obviously fit man in his late fifties, who looked every bit as craggy in person as he’d sounded over the phone. I liked him immediately. Mostly because he waved when he saw me instead of running his eyes appreciatively up and down my body—not that he could have seen anything worth leering at beneath the full-length leather coat.

Finnigan wiped one hand on the leg of his faded jeans, then held it out for me to shake as he introduced himself, thick gray hair blowing in the ocean breeze. “Lex Walker?”

“Yes. Thanks for making yourself available.”

“My pleasure. Where’s the dog?”

“Change of plans. It’s just me.” Even though Orthus was the entire reason I’d rented a private plane.

Finnigan shrugged, then he showed me to the plane, where the door already stood open. He didn’t offer to take my bag, nor did he help me onto the aircraft. He assumed I could handle myself. Which I could, once I figured out how best to climb up into the cabin by stepping up onto the pontoon, beneath the left wing.

Finnigan climbed in after me and pulled the door shut as I was stowing my stuff beneath the first of six seats. Walking hunched over in deference to the low ceiling, he stepped into the cockpit and settled into the pilot’s seat, where he flipped some switches, then pushed a single button to crank the engine, which sent the propeller spinning.

“Buckle up and cross your fingers,” he said, twisting to look at me over his shoulder. I scowled, gripping the arms of my chair, and he laughed, a gregarious, gut-deep sound. “Just kidding. We’ll be there in about two hours.”

The plane moved forward slowly, pulled across the surface of the water by the single nose-mounted propeller. Finnigan rotated us so that we faced the length of the lake, and he quickly picked up speed. A minute or so later, he pulled back on the yolk, and we rose into the air, much more smoothly than I’d anticipated.

With that, we were off, my eyes glued to the window on my right. I’d been on hundreds of flights since air travel became popular in the early sixties, but flying on a tiny personal plane was an entirely different experience than a crowded commercial jet. It was exhilarating, as if the anxious breath I held were somehow contributing to our staying airborne. Which was ridiculous, of course, yet I couldn’t quite talk myself into breathing normally.

Even so, the flight was a rush, and I loved it. I loved the conviction deep in my heart that I was only alive thanks to the pilot’s skill and a slight breeze. The exhilaration felt like being on a rollercoaster, where my body remained convinced that I could die, even though my head knew I probably wouldn’t.

Two hours and ten minutes later, I was staring out the windshield at a brilliant New England sunset, still smiling, when Finnigan twisted to glance at me over his shoulder, saying something I couldn’t quite hear over the rumble of the engine. When I shook my head, he pointed out the windshield, where trees spread out below us as far as I could see. He’d found the crash site.

He waved me forward, indicating the co-pilot’s chair, and in two seconds, I’d unbuckled and resettled myself into the seat on his right, just behind the broad windshield.

A couple of miles ahead and far below, a fresh scar marred the forest, a swath gouged through a sizable chunk of Maine’s ubiquitous woodlands, ending in a pile of twisted metal amidst splintered and mangled trees. From the air, it looked like a toy plane ground beneath a child’s heel, but the reality was much more disturbing. That misshapen mass of steel was what remained of Troy Devich’s personal C130. It had gone down nearly 1,200 miles from Memphis, its intended destination—reportedly without its co-pilot and cargo.

That last bit was hard for me to believe. Surely the co-pilot and the box were somewhere among or near the wreckage, simply overlooked somehow by the surviving crew and Devich’s rescue team. And if they were there, I would find them.

I could find anything.

FOURTEEN

“I’m gonna set us down over there,” Finnigan yelled, pointing through the windshield at a narrow, winding lake to the southwest. “Will that get you close enough?”

“That’ll be great.” Though as I watched the ground fly by beneath us, I realized that from the air, I had no way of truly judging the distance between that lake and the crash site. But there were no better landing options, and a hike through the woods, even if it wound up being several miles long, shouldn’t be much of a problem. Right?

A couple of minutes later, Finnigan began his descent onto the north end of the eerie, twisty-looking body of water, right in the middle of a lake-length reflection of the brilliantly setting sun. Our smooth touchdown was a testament to his skill as a pilot, and out of gratitude, I refrained from “bruising” the arms of his co-pilot’s chair.

As the plane decelerated, it skidded along the surface of the water all the way up to the north shore of the lake. Trees rushed by the window, already dark with shadows from the setting sun, which painted beautiful pink and purple stripes across the sky. The pontoons coasted onto the gently sloping bank, and Finnigan pulled back on a long knob on the control panel. The engine died and the propeller slowed to a stop as I unbuckled, then walked hunched over into the passenger compartment to gather my luggage.

As the propeller stilled, Finnigan pulled up on the lever to open the door and stepped onto the pontoon, then down into five inches of water. He stood with his rubber boots mired in mud, reaching up to take my duffle from me as I stepped out of the plane. I was about to protest that I could handle it myself when he leaned forward to set the bag on the beach, and I realized he was just trying to help me keep it dry. For which I was grateful. I did not relish the thought of having only wet clothes to change into after my hike. I let him take both my backpack and travel bag too.

“You sure you want me to leave you here?” He glanced around at the dense forest and complete lack of civilization. “How’re you going to get home?”

“I’m not going home.” Smiling grimly, I jumped down from the pontoon, splashing in the frigid, shallow water like a child in a puddle. I couldn’t resist, even in the cold. “I’ll be fine. I’m an experienced hiker…” If you count a working vacation in Oregon several years ago. “…and anything big enough to be a pain in the ass is already hibernating.”

In case I was wrong about that last part, I had my Ruger under my coat, the spare gun in my duffle, and the dagger tucked into my boot. With any luck, I’d be the scariest thing stomping through the woods.

Finnigan frowned like he didn’t believe me. “You’re not dressed for the cold,” he insisted, glancing from my bare neck to my now-soaked hiking boots. “With the sun going down, the temperature will drop fast, and that thin leather coat won’t cut it.”

Maybe not, but the ankle-length leather duster was damn flattering on a woman of my build. Besides, after stomping through snow on Oak Island, Maine felt down-right tropical.

“The exercise will keep me warm.” Digging in my coat pocket, I pulled out the cash I’d taken from an ATM in the sporting goods store in Digby. “Thanks for the ride,” I said, counting out hundred-dollar bills. “I may be a repeat customer, if that’s okay with you.”

“It would be my pleasure.” Finnigan’s eyes brightened as his hand closed over the money. “Any time.”

The pilot climbed back into his plane as I stepped onto the shore, repositioning my backpack over my right shoulder to keep my left hand free, just in case. Long term habit. I probably wouldn’t need to shoot anything in the woods, but it paid to be cautious.

Standing in the waist-high brown grass at the edge of the water, I watched Finnigan taxi out onto the lake. His plane picked up speed, then rose into the air, and he waved at me through the windshield. I waved back as the Cessna flew toward the sunset.

When the plane turned back east, I headed for the woods, bogged down with my duffle, my travel bag, and the new backpack. Hiking was going to be a pain in the ass with all that luggage, but I had nowhere to leave it. Too bad there wasn’t a certain hellhound around to help me haul supplies…

Resigned to my burdens, I set off across an overgrown field toward the woods. Fallen leaves and blades of grass crunched beneath my feet, but not because they were frozen. They were just dead. It was damn cold in Maine, but not quite cold enough for snow—at least not yet—which was a step up from Nova Scotia.

On the other side of the field, a thick line of trees marked the edge of the forest, less than a hundred feet from the lake. The woods beyond were thick, dark, and fragrant with the scents of pine and cedar. They were a shade-lover’s dream, a never-ending woodland playground where fading daylight mingled with the encroaching darkness and somehow found compromise in endlessly swaying shadows.

The forest was beautiful, a woodland home furnished with fallen logs and small streams, carpeted in moss and dead leaves, and decorated with curtains of fern, draping vines, and dangling limbs. And from the looks of the thick brush and interwoven branches, no one had set foot in this particular section of Maine’s wilderness in years. Until now.

I hiked my bags higher onto my shoulder and stepped into the forest, willing myself to enjoy the beauty and exercise, rather than dreading the lack of civilization and technology. But the forest must have sensed my true feelings, because she tried every trick up her sleeve to impede my progress.

Grumbling beneath my breath, I stomped on a thorny vine and shoved aside a long, bare branch. For the next ten minutes, I mentally cursed the state of Maine in general, and the trees in particular, frustrated and irritated by my own inability to see each successive obstacle until it slapped me in the face. Literally.

Maybe it was encroaching exhaustion. Maybe it was nearly being killed the previous two days in a row. Or maybe it was the fact that I had no idea how far I was from the nearest town—a small community called Dayton—or how long I’d have to walk to get there once I’d finished at the crash site.

Regardless, I managed to catch part of myself, my clothing, or my equipment on every single thorn and branch I passed. Twigs lodged between my skin and the amputated handcuffs, where they peeked from beneath the sleeves of my coat. Leaves blew from the trees directly into my hair. Acorns fell from above to bounce off my nose no fewer than three times. Somehow, I even got one particularly bothersome branch stuck through the buttonhole on the right lapel of my coat.

Finally, around what was surely the mid-point of my hike, I settled into a steady rhythm: Three or four good-sized steps, pause to dislodge a twig from my hair, step high to avoid a root arcing from the dirt, duck beneath a low-hanging branch, stumble and catch myself against a tree trunk…then repeat the entire process. It was a graceless ballet. A dance of torment. And the only up-side was that no one was around to witness my uncoordinated spectacle.

Another half-hour later, I tripped over a half-buried root, scraping my palm raw on the rough bark of the oak I grabbed to regain my balance. “Son of a bitch!” I hissed, blowing on my bloodied hand, as if that would help. More than ready for a break, I shrugged out from under my bags and dug in my backpack for a bottle of water. Even with the temperature hovering below forty degrees, I’d worked up a sweat, as well as a bit of an appetite.

As I unscrewed the lid on my water, smearing blood across one side of the clear plastic bottle, I glanced around in what little daylight remained and realized that soon I’d be hiking alone in the dark, toward a plane that crashed under suspicious circumstances while carrying a “bad” feeling stone sarcophagus, with who-knows-what inside. Overall, not one of my better days.

As I shoved the empty water bottle back into my bag, I stared up into the limbs overhead, amazed by the array of vibrant deciduous leaves backlit by the last weak rays of sunlight. Maples and oaks sprinkled throughout a sea of towering evergreens. The range of colors was breathtaking. The view was almost enough to make me forget that my feet were wet and sore despite my comfortable work boots, and that my face was a collection of scratches from the branches I hadn’t managed to miss.

According to my brand-new compass, I was headed in the right direction, and by my best guess, I was less than a mile from the crash site. There should be some sign of it soon, but at the moment, I saw nothing but trees. In fact, one red maple in particular had caught my eye, but I couldn’t quite figure out why…

The tree was beautiful, its limbs afire with an intense blend of deep orange and yellow leaves, practically blazing in the red-tinged light of the setting sun. Squinting, I scanned the branches, blowing in the frigid wind like flames in the breeze. It was spectacular. But it was just a tree. Why the hell had that one tree captured my attention?

Then I saw it. Dangling amid the mass of vibrant leaves was one that didn’t match. It was black. And large. And oddly textured.

It wasn’t a leaf at all. It was a shoe. Specifically, a boot.

Intrigued, I looked closer and realized the boot was attached to a leg, clothed in baggy black cloth. A black flight suit.

Pulse racing, I leapt to my feet. “The missing co-pilot.”

No wonder they hadn’t found him. Devich had come in by helicopter, so he would never have seen a body caught so low in the branches, unless it was actually at the crash site. Which it was not.

The poor dead co-pilot was barely balanced in the tree, only one thick branch away from tumbling to the ground. His head hung at an odd angle from the rest of his body, and above him stretched a series of broken tree limbs, some completely severed, others dangling by strips of bark.

Several questions came to mind immediately, the first of which was how to get the body out of the tree, and who would be responsible for that particular chore. I had not signed on for corpse retrieval.

But the second question was much more relevant to the case at hand. “How the hell did he get out of the plane?” I asked the woods in general as I dug through my backpack for a Twinkie. I focused better with a full stomach. Or at least a full mouth.

Ripping the cellophane open, I pulled out the first cream-filled cake while I considered the corpse in the tree. There were only three ways I could think of for a man to leave a plane in mid-flight. The copilot either jumped, fell, or was pushed. Yet none of those possibilities answered the big question: Why had the copilot jumped—or been thrown—from the plane? Or if he’d fallen, why was the ramp lowered, or the door opened? Or whatever.

Devich believed his missing copilot took the box because both he and it had disappeared at the same time. Only that no longer appeared to be the case.

Could the sarcophagus also be lodged in a nearby tree?

No. No fucking way. A stone sarcophagus had to weigh a minimum of a couple of thousand pounds. Even if it had fallen from the plane—or been pushed out—the box would have smashed right through any tree in its path. It would have slammed into the soil hard enough to half-bury itself in the ground.

If the co-pilot had been trying to steal the box, it would’ve made much more sense for him to kill the pilot and take the plane wherever he wanted. So why hadn’t he?

Because most humans are reluctant to kill their fellow man?

Or maybe murder and plane theft was his plan, but something went wrong, leading to his own fatal plummet as well as the plane’s.

Or maybe the co-pilot didn’t kill the pilot and take the plane because he wasn’t trying to steal the box at all. Maybe he was trying to protect it. Or to keep the plane in the air. That made much more sense than trying to steal a priceless artifact from one of the most powerful men on the planet, who just happened to be his boss.

Excited by the path of my conjecture, I pulled the second Twinkie from its wrapper, barely noticing when the sun finally slipped below the horizon.

Okay, so the co-pilot might not be the thief… Still, Devich’s theory wasn’t completely off-base. The theft was an inside job, and the guilty party was already on the plane when it took off. Hell, John Allen had seen him get on the helicopter even before that.

Murdock, the deep-sea diver. It had to be. He’d gone onboard to help load the box, then…just never got off? With all the commotion at the dig site, chances were good that no one gave Murdock a second thought. Then, at the airport he could easily have snuck off the helicopter and onto the C130 along with the cargo. That was the only explanation that made sense. At least, as much sense as any of it made.

Murdock. I had to find…Something-or-other Murdock. Devich would have the diver’s full name and contact information, of course, but if I asked for it, he might go after Murdock himself and decide I hadn’t earned my fee.

I’d call the foreman instead, as soon as I’d had a look at the plane.

I balled up my snack wrapper, pleased to have a working theory of the crime—until I uncovered the fatal flaw in my conjecture.

As the co-pilot had proved, getting off a plane in mid-air wasn’t that hard. All the thief would need was a parachute and iron-clad nerves. But what the hell had he done with the sarcophagus? He couldn’t very well have carried it on his back all the way down. Not and survive the impact.

Which meant I was back to my original theory—that both the thief and the box went down with the plane, then left on foot. Or on the back of a fucking flatbed truck, which would surely have left tracks at the crash site. Which Devich would have noticed.

Newly frustrated, I set off toward the wreckage, shiny new compass in hand.

Having lost the last rays of daylight, I had to turn on my flashlight to clearly see my own feet, not to mention the roots and vines constantly tripping them up. Nightlife accompanied the moon when it appeared above the treetops, lending occasional patches of light as it shone through gaps in the fall foliage. Crickets and cicadas chirruped all around me, so loud and continuous that I soon ceased to hear them. Owls hooted above me, and unidentified creatures scurried around my feet.

The temperature dropped quickly, and the murky panorama was no longer enough to feed my anticipation or inspire my good humor. I was fed up with the great outdoors and ready for a little more processed sugar, a lot more caffeine, and most importantly, central heat.

What I got instead was another fallen tree to climb over. A tree whose branches were broken into sharp points, and whose trunk was more than two feet in diameter.

Grumbling beneath my breath, I started to haul myself and all my luggage over the latest obstacle. But then the beam from my flashlight skimmed over a stretch of at least three dozen other toppled trees up ahead. They’d all fallen in the same direction, like a giant arrow pointing toward…

The plane. It had to be.

I hauled my bag higher on my shoulder as I climbed over the fallen tree, still staring at the moonlit path cleared before me. Seconds later, the caustic stench of airplane fuel flooded the pine-scented air with no warning, singing my nose hairs and tainting each breath with the taste of kerosene. An instant headache followed, ripping through my skull like a Van Halen guitar riff.

I hiked the rest of the way as fast as I could. The plane came into view minutes after I climbed over the fallen tree, and my back-of-the-mind fear that I might walk right past the wreckage without seeing it was put to rest. Definitively. I couldn’t have missed the plane if I’d tried, even with scant moonlight to assist my narrow artificial beam.

The metal exoskeleton rose from a bed of full-sized trees splintered like toothpicks. It was ugly: an industrial gray blemish on nature’s fall canvas. Trailing behind the wreckage, the path of torn and fallen trees was a gash on the earth itself, which would likely take years to heal. Maybe decades.

“Damn,” I whispered, stepping up onto one of the sheared tree trunks for a better look. I shined my beam of light slowly across the wreckage, inspecting it from a distance. Confirming my earlier suspicion that there was no way on earth a vehicle big enough to haul off a two-thousand-pound box could make it past all the debris and broken trees, even if it managed to navigate such dense woodlands on the way in.

The sarcophagus had not left the crash site on a flatbed truck, or in any other large vehicle.

As I stared, something rustled in the shadows around the right wing, and my breath caught in my throat. I swung my light in that direction, but I saw nothing.

Cursing the bags I still carried, I climbed down from the tree trunk, my flashlight aimed at the plane. I grabbed a nearby branch to steady myself as I stumbled over a root hidden by a cushion of crunchy leaves, my gaze and light skimming the plane in tandem.

The C130 hadn’t blown up—a fucking miracle, considering how thick the kerosene fumes were, even two days later—but it had sustained significant damage. Even from nearly a hundred feet away, I could see broken tree trunks sticking up through the bottom of the fuselage and a long gouge dug all the way through one side.

At the edge of the newly-created clearing around the cargo plane, I hesitated, trying to decide where to begin. Like all C130s, Devich’s plane had started off with four propellers, two on each wing. At a glance, I could only see one of them, half-buried in the dirt. It was still attached to the shorn right wing, which lay several yards away from the fuselage, rising from the ground at a sharp angle like a small mountain in profile. The other wing was broken into several pieces, most of which had landed at least fifty feet to the west of the rest of the wreckage. I was betting that wing was responsible for shearing most of the damaged trees.

At the back of the plane was the cargo hold, currently open to the elements because the ramp was lowered beneath the raised tail section. Had that happened before the plane crashed, or after? I wasn’t sure how to tell.

I was halfway between the wing pieces and the fuselage before I realized something was wrong. Something other than the wrecked plane and missing sarcophagus. That knowledge came to me whole, creeping across my skin like a sudden awareness that you’re being watched on a dark street.

Someone else was here; someone sentient and not native to a woodland habitat.

I froze, my heart pounding. Cold sweat slid down my spine, despite the chill as I glanced around without moving my head, watching for any sign of movement. A sharp clang rang out ahead and to my left—something heavy clattering against the metal floor of a cargo plane’s freight hold. Metal creaked, as soft footsteps came closer.

Whatever it was, it was bigger than a coyote and walking on two legs.

For the moment, anyway.

FIFTEEN

Metal clanged again, a little closer this time. Dead leaves crunched as my duffle and travel bag slid to the ground. I whirled toward the sound, transferring my flashlight into my right hand, and my hiking pack shifted on my back. My left hand slid beneath my coat lapel, going for my gun. Every muscle in my body tensed. The flashlight beam swept across the bottom of the ramp, illuminating a set of dark hiking boots and a pair of denim-clad shins.

“Step into the light with your hands over your head!” I shouted to be heard over the roar of my own blood in my ears. Who the hell was that? Everyone who knew about the wreckage had either died in it or hired me to find the missing cargo. Or stolen it in the first place.

Since Troy Devich wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of scuffed and dirty hiking boots, the guest of honor had to be the thief himself. And if that were the case, the box had to be nearby. Why else would the criminal return to the scene of the crime, if not to retrieve what he’d failed to get the first time around?

“Come out where I can see you,” I shouted, pistol aimed and ready. “Now—or you’ll limp for the rest of your life.” The boots didn’t move, so I used my thumb to click off the safety on my pistol, careful to keep the flashlight in my other hand trained on the target.

My finger tightened on the trigger, ready to fire a warning shot. But then bright light flashed overhead, accompanied by a deep roar of thunder. For an instant, my gaze was pulled toward the most spectacular display of lightening I’d ever seen. Brilliant white bolts of fire shot across the sky by the dozens, connecting and intersecting at hundreds of points. In that one moment, the night was as bright as day, illuminating immensely thick cloud clover where moments earlier there had been none.

The show lasted only a couple of seconds, but when I forced my gaze back to the ramp, the boots were gone.

Damn it, Lex, you know better. I sighed, easing up on the trigger. We were going to have to do this the hard way.

Shrugging my backpack higher on my shoulders, I shoved the amputated handcuffs as far up on my arms as they would go and shifted my aim with the flashlight, illuminating the ground between my feet and the plane in one long, smooth movement. What I wouldn’t give for those infrared goggles now…

I walked as quickly and quietly as I could, sweeping the beam of light constantly between the plane and the ground as I dodged obstacles and covered the hatch with my gun. Mr. Hiking Boots did not reappear, and less than a minute after the brilliant display of lightening, I stood on the right side of the ramp, aiming both my flashlight and my pistol inside.

From the ground, I studied the interior of the plane, looking for any sign of Boots, hopefully cowering in the dark. He was gone, and I saw nothing out of the ordinary in the cargo hold. But the truth was that I didn’t know what constituted “out of the ordinary” for a downed C130, because I had no clue what “ordinary” looked like.

The walls were lined in narrow corrugated metal panels—at least those spots that weren’t buckled or ripped open like an aluminum can run through with a Ginsu knife. In several places, the floor had been punctured by tree trunks a foot or more in diameter, as if the forest were trying to grow up through the airplane. Embedded in the still-intact sections of floor were two sets of metal tracks, fitted with steel rods at about one-foot intervals. Presumably, straps could be clipped to the rods to secure cargo.

Just past the ramp entrance was a set of exits, one on either side of the plane. The right-hand hatch-style door hung open at an odd angle, its interior cradling a set of steps so that one could descend the door itself to the ground below. Or so someone below could sneak up into the plane behind me, once I’d passed the entrance.

When I’d examined everything I could see from the ground, I climbed onto the ramp. My boots rang the metal surface like a gong, and I winced, but nothing inside moved. My spine against the wall so nothing could sneak up on me, I swept my light around the plane. It was largely empty, except for scattered debris from the crash. Mostly dangling wires, dented freestanding toolboxes, and broken pieces of equipment.

At the front of the fuselage, on the left, was another of those doors that folds down into steps. It was also open. Boots had either gone out through that door—in which case he’d probably circled behind me and would likely shoot me in the back—or gone into the cockpit, from which I assumed there was no other way out.

I made my way through the plane slowly and carefully, more amazed with each step by how very large the C130 was. It could easily have carried more than a hundred of Devich’s dusty old coffins. Hell, in military use, they carried several tanks apiece. And with fuel prices at an all-time high, it was no-doubt unbelievably expensive to operate. Yet he sent it out to retrieve something he could easily have had shipped on a commercial carrier for much, much less money.

Whatever—or whoever—was in that box was damned important to Troy Devich. Either that, or he had waaaaay more money than sense.

Why couldn’t that be the worst of my problems?

I was only feet from the open cockpit door, mentally preparing to go down shooting, when the floor creaked softly behind me.

My heart slammed against my sternum. I whirled around, putting the cockpit door on my left, the open rear ramp on my right. If things went wrong, I could be surrounded. But if there were enough people on the plane to surround me, I had bigger concerns than the availability of the nearest emergency exit.

My right arm swung up, and my light skimmed across the dark toward the open rear door. Nothing. I tightened my grip on the pistol and swung the flashlight to the right.

A worn, stained pair of jeans came into view against the right-hand wall, inches from the open hatch door. Boots had circled around behind me, as I’d expected.

“Don’t move,” I ordered as I raised the flashlight slowly, and the rest of him came into view. Narrow, denim-clad hips. A bulky gray-on-black snow jacket, its over-sized hood thrown back, likely to preserve his line of sight. Above the zipper was a broad jaw covered in short blond stubble—and a familiar dimpled chin. Then, the most beautiful, liquid blue eyes I’d ever seen.

Cale Murphy. Son of a bitch. First the goblins on Oak Island, now Murphy in Maine. The only one missing was the goddamn ghost of Christmas future!

What the hell is he doing here?

Murphy couldn’t have followed me; he got there first. Which was sort of a relief. If he’d followed me, I’d have to mess up that pretty face to make a point and secure my reputation. Pounding on an ass-ugly mug was one thing, but smashing up a perfectly good face—especially one with such remarkable bone structure and strong features—would no doubt leave me nauseated and a little sad from the loss.

But if he hadn’t followed me, Murphy’s presence on the plane could only mean that he was somehow involved with the crashed C130 and the missing box. And that didn’t make one damn bit of sense.

“I take it this is more than mere coincidence, Mr. Murphy,” I said, taking aim at his throat.

“That’s what I was going to say.” He squinted against the glare from my flashlight, standing with his hands tucked mostly into the front pockets of his jeans, as if he had nothing to fear from me.

He clearly hadn’t learned a damn thing since our last encounter.

Murphy’s smile faltered. “Let’s be friends, Lex. Put the gun away, before you do something we’re both gonna regret.”

“I make it a point never to suffer regret. And you are not my friend.” It took more than a rugged chin and a pair of hypnotic blue eyes for a man to be able to call himself my anything. Though those qualities certainly helped…

Good humor faded from his eyes, leaving them as blue and cold as arctic ice. “I should have known!” he whispered fiercely, his right hand leaving his pocket to curl into a fist at his side. “I don’t have enough money to call myself your friend, do I?”

“I’m not sure we’re speaking the same language, Murphy, and I seem to have misplaced my English-to-gibberish dictionary. So, if you want to leave here in one piece, you’d better start making sense.” I lowered my aim to his gut, my gun still steady as the loathing in his expression triggered my defensive instincts.

“Isn’t this a conflict of interest?” he demanded, his tone sharp, square jaw bulging in anger. “Or doesn’t it bother you at all to set my sister free one day, then hunt me down the next? Not that I have any intention of being taken.”

I blinked, trying not to show my utter confusion. “I’m not hunting you. Unless that’s your way of admitting you brought down this plane.”

“Fuck you,” he spat, and I couldn’t resist an appreciative look at the breadth of his shoulders, surely not due entirely to the heavy down jacket. Frankly, I might have been tempted by his offer—I’d certainly had worse—if he weren’t turning into a huge pain in my ass.

Murphy ignored both my assessing glance and my gun, neither of which happened to me very often. “I’m not going willingly,” he snapped. “You’re gonna have to kill me.”

“The hell I am. I wasn’t hired to hunt you, much less murder you, and I don’t do either of those things without cash, half up front.” I shrugged, without shifting my aim. “But if you don’t explain yourself post-fucking-haste, I’ll will start shooting off your toes. I’m betting my patience will expire long before you bleed out. Either way, I think we’ve got awhile. Care to test the theory?”

His expression was grim now. You’d think I’d threatened to shoot off something more…valued. “Put the gun away,” he said, as if we were negotiating.

I hesitated, waiting for the magic word. For some sign that he was willing to cooperate.

He gave me nothing but a frown.

“What are you packing?” I asked searching him visually for weapons.

“Packing?” Dark blond brows furrowed above blue eyes, like clouds gathering over the ocean.

“Carrying.” I let my pistol bob slightly for emphasis. “Gun? Knife? Fucking broadsword? How were you planning to keep your careless ass alive tonight?” Evidently some people didn’t worry about such things on a daily basis.

Weird.

“Oh.” He rolled his eyes, as if I were the one making no sense. “Nine-millimeter, in a shoulder holster.”

“With your coat zipped?” I eyed his down jacket but couldn’t identify any particular lump beneath such bulk. “You’re either lying or you’re stupid, and I don’t like either possibility.” If I were a bad guy, instead of a sweet, gentle, forgiving soul, I’d have already shot him before he got a good grip on his zipper, much less his pistol.

“Is that all?” I asked nodding toward the gun I wasn’t even sure he really had.

“You already took my other one.”

“History’s about to repeat itself, Mr. Murphy.” I shrugged one shoulder, and my backpack slid down my arm, making my flashlight beam swing wildly. I set the bag on the ground, careful to keep the amputated handcuff beneath the sleeve of my coat from showing. The last thing I needed was for him to know someone had gotten the better of me.

That might give him false hope.

“You’re not taking my gun.” Murphy’s frown disappeared beneath a confident smile, his eyes sparkling with challenge, and with…something else. Something too warm for those arctic blue eyes. The effect was one of discord, and intriguing possibilities.

“You’re wrong.” I smiled and felt my pulse jump at the thought of patting him down for suspicious…bulges. “You know the drill. Turn and face the wall, arms in the air, feet spread.” Wide.

He hesitated, glaring at me fiercely, bright eyes flashing. I shrugged. “There are lots of places I can shoot you without killing you. Your choice.”

Anger flashed across his expression but was gone in an instant, smothered beneath another steamy smile, betrayed only by the tense muscles in his clenched jaw. He turned slowly, meeting my gaze as long as he could, as if losing eye contact somehow meant losing the battle.

His back to me now, Murphy splayed strong, powerful-looking hands on the corrugated metal wall. I ran the flashlight slowly down the back of his coat, then his jeans, looking for anything out of the ordinary. I found nothing suspicious, but truth be told, nothing about the man was strictly ordinary either. He was gorgeous. Truly beautiful in both the flat, sculpted planes of his physique and in coloring I found unusual in a grown man—glacial blue eyes, set against sun-kissed hair and skin.

“Is this really necessary?” He twisted his neck to watch me through one exposed eye, his face inches from the freezing metal wall.

Hell. Yes. “Standard procedure. I can’t have you pulling an Uzi on me as soon as I lower my gun.” His ass looked pretty suspicious. I was going to have to pat him down very carefully.

Murphy laughed, his body shaking against the wall. “If I had an Uzi, I’d be patting you down.”

We’ll try it your way in minute, Cupcake.

Fortunately, my brain-to-mouth filter was functioning for once, so what I actually said was, “Not if you kept that zipped up in your jacket too.”

Bending, I set my flashlight on its end by my feet, so that the light shined straight up. That left me one hand with which to search Murphy. I had to stand on my toes to reach his wrists, and when I stretched to run my hand down his arms, the front of my jacket brushed the back of his coat. He inhaled, and his torso expanded against me, his neck mere inches from my nose. He smelled so good. Undeniably masculine, yet fresh, and clean, and warm, like the first summer rain.

I breathed him in, and images flashed through my mind. They came fast and hard. I couldn’t stop them.

I didn’t want to…

Cale Murphy and me, standing in the rain, half-sheltered by the awning above us. Thin rivulets of water running down his face. Shirt stuck to his chest. Hair plastered to his head. Blue eyes shining in the moonlight, flashing with each bolt of lightning overhead. My hand on the warm, hard planes of his arm, slick with rain.

His fingers tangle in my hair. His free hand clenches my hip. His eyes stare through me. His lips meet mine, and he tastes so good. So indescribably, fantastically scrumptious. I open my mouth, and we’re…

… standing in the plane, cold and dry, my hand on his down-clad triceps, stretched over his head.

My nipples were hard beneath layers of leather, cotton, and satin. My breathing was frantic. My pulse raced. I could still feel the rain on my skin, his lips against mine. I could still taste him.

Damn it, Lex, focus!

I shook my head to clear it, to get back to the job at hand. Murphy chuckled as if he knew what I was thinking, and my teeth ground together. I patted his arms quickly and thoroughly, overcompensating for my lapse of professionalism by patting too hard. Searching too rough. He didn’t seem to mind. Didn’t object at all, in fact.

Murphy’s arms felt normal, from what I could tell through his down-filled snow jacket. No blades, no weapons of any kind. His right side was clean, but beneath his left armpit I felt the familiar hard edges of a gun. He’d been telling the truth.

I reached around Murphy’s chest, trying not to touch him any more than necessary as I unzipped his jacket. I pulled his arms down behind his back and tugged on the first coat sleeve. The steel band still closed around my right wrist shook free of my jacket cuff, clanking against the length of severed chain.

“What was that?” Murphy craned his head for a look. I shoved the side of his face into the corrugated metal wall, ignoring the question. He grunted, and I smiled. I was back in control, of both him and my own treacherous body.

“Seriously? Was that necessary?” he asked, his mouth half-smashed against the metal.

“Move again before I’m done, and I’ll take away more than your gun.”

“Awfully cocky, aren’t you?” But he didn’t move as I pulled his jacket off and dropped it next to my flashlight. Beneath the coat, he wore a thin, ribbed black sweater, snug against his well-toned chest. Over that was a black vertical-draw holster, cradling a Glock nine-millimeter. I ripped open the Velcro strap to take the gun, but Murphy jerked to one side, trying to stop me. “Don’t—!”

I slammed my free hand into his shoulder, shoving him back into the wall. My left hand swung at his head, automatically following up the restraint hold with a blow to his skull—with the butt of my pistol. I didn’t even think about it. It was habit. Training.

Murphy slapped one hand to the back of his scalp, where a bump was already rising. “Damn it! Why did you hit me?”

“You went for your gun.” I pulled the nine-millimeter from his holster and checked the safety, then tucked it in the back of my jeans, beneath my coat. The gun was nothing special, no doubt a backup weapon, but it was mine now. And he was unarmed—just the way I liked my men.

Not that Murphy was my man…

“I didn’t go for my gun. You went for my gun. I was just trying to keep you from stealing all my toys, like the overgrown playground bully you obviously are.”

Was he whining at me?

“Quit bitchin’ and stand still,” I ordered, tugging on his arm to turn him around. I ran my hands down the sides of his shirt and across the front and back, checking not-quite-perfunctorily for weapons. A quick but thoroughly interesting pat-down of both legs turned up strong thighs and lean calves, but no guns or knives. He had a single car key in his hip pocket, and the wallet in his back pocket was suspiciously thin.

Satisfied that he was unarmed—now that I’d taken his gun—I stood and stepped back, preparing to holster my own weapon. In a sudden flash of movement, Murphy lunged toward me, ice-blue eyes sparkling in the light shining up from my flashlight on the floor. Deep shadows made a mask of his face. I pulled my left arm back for another pistol-whip, but he seized my wrist freezing my arm in the air.

My right hand curled into a fist. Murphy caught it almost immediately. He spun us, driving me backward into the wall where he’d stood a moment earlier, grinning in brash satisfaction. Staring boldly down into my eyes, he held me against the side of the plane with only his hands. His body stretched a scant inch from mine, from head to toe. I felt his breath on my lips, breathing in his scent with each inhalation. But he didn’t touch me, other than to hold my arms against the wall.

I fought his grip, lunging forward, and for one terrifying moment, I wasn’t sure whether I was trying to get free from him or get closer to him. But in the end, it didn’t matter, because my struggle was useless. I was pretty tough, and not just for a woman. But I couldn’t budge him. He was too strong. Way too strong. And fast.

With a sudden leap of intuition, I realized Murphy wasn’t human. Not completely, anyway. No human could move like that.

My face blazed in anger, and in other things I would never have admitted to. Where was that strength and speed before? Had he been toying with me? Pretending to be slow and careless while waiting for a chance to catch me off-guard? If so, I’d given him just the opportunity he was waiting for.

I jerked on my left arm, putting everything I had into the effort, but he held on tight, his nose almost brushing mine. He squeezed my wrist in warning, but not hard enough to make me drop the gun.

Why let me keep the gun?

“Back off!” I shouted, beyond pissed that I couldn’t win a physical fight with him. At least not a fair fight.

“Not until I get what I want,” he whispered directly into my ear. My next breath seemed to hinge on how he finished that thought. “My gun. I want my gun back.”

I exhaled, oddly disappointed. “Not a chance.” Although I was starting to wonder if he even needed it.

Murphy pulled back until he could see my eyes, and he was smiling again. An easy grin. Completely confident. “What would you say to a truce?”

“Will it get you off me?”

“For the moment.” His smile widened, and I couldn’t drag my gaze from his chin dimple. “Will you promise not to shoot me?”

“For the moment.”

He laughed, and suddenly I was free. And pissed. And more than a little impressed. I hadn’t been pinned in a while. Not by force, anyway.

Murphy stepped back, gesturing toward the center of the fuselage with one out-swept hand.

I plucked my flashlight from the ground and glanced around for the backpack I’d left in the middle of the floor. “You thirsty?” I asked crossing the cargo hold in several long strides. “I’ve only got bottled water, but I’ll share.” Though a steaming mug of coffee would’ve been just the thing at that moment. Each breath I exhaled hung on the air in a tiny white cloud.

“Please.”

Bending, I set the flashlight down and unzipped the bag one-handed, without taking my gaze or my gun from him. I couldn’t trust Murphy now, knowing what he was capable of. Not that I’d trusted him in the first place.

“Here.” I pulled two water bottles from my bag. He clearly had information I needed, and since beating it out of him was looking a little more complicated than I’d planned, I was running out of options. Fortunately, I could play nice when I had to.

Murphy caught the water I tossed him and settled onto a large metal toolbox lying on its side. “So, what does a guy have to do get his guns back?”

I leaned against the nearest wall, watching him. I had no intention of giving him back his weapons, but I knew better than to admit that before I had what I needed from him. “For now, how ‘bout a trade—answer for answer.”

He thought for a moment, then nodded. “Ladies first.”

Perfect. I cracked open my bottle and took a long drink, contemplating my first question. “Why did you think I came here looking for you?”

Murphy shrugged, as if the answer should have been obvious. He drained a quarter of his bottle in just a couple of gulps. “It’s a little complicated. The goblins who took my sister were actually hired to find me, and when they couldn’t, they took her to draw me out. When I saw you here, I assumed you were Devich’s new henchman. Er…henchwoman.” Another shrug. “I figured once he found out you bested his goons, he wanted you on his payroll.”

“Devich?” I froze, the water bottle halfway to my mouth. “Troy Devich, the billionaire?” I asked, and he nodded. “Are you sure the goblins were working for Devich?”

“Yeah. And you must be too, if you’re here. Everyone who knows about this crash site, other than Troy Devich, is dead.”

I’d had a very similar thought.

“Which means he either sent you after me or after his cargo.”

“Well, I’m not here for you.” I slid my pistol back into the holster beneath my coat. If he’d wanted to kill me, he’d had ample opportunity to try it already. “Why are you here?”

“It’s my turn. You’ve already asked two questions.”

“Fine.” I rolled my eyes.

“What kind of music do you like?”

I blinked in the dark, sure he was kidding. “If you’re not going to take this seriously, I take back the truce. Ask a real question.”

“This is a real question. I want to know what kind of music you listen to.”

“Why?”

“So I can take you to a concert. You look like you need a night off.”

He’s flirting. I’m in the middle of the most important assignment of what passes for my life, and he’s hitting on me.

I was both appalled and intrigued. What must he be like on normal days? On nights not spent poking around in the back of a downed cargo plane or rescuing his sister from a cannibalistic group of goblins?

“The bands I listen to are collecting social security checks these days, instead of touring. And I don’t need a night off. I need you to tell me what the fuck is going on with Devich and the goblins. And this plane. And what any of that has to do with your sister.”

“So, you like the oldies? Like what? The nineties?”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. He was infuriating, yet undeniably entertaining. “Yes. And eighties hair bands. Satisfied?”

He nodded graciously, showing no sign that he wanted to laugh at me or at my taste in music. Bonus points for Cale Murphy.

“My turn. What are you doing in Devich’s plane?”

“Math.” He pointed at something on my left, and I grabbed the flashlight, swinging the beam in the direction he’d indicated. The light settled on a scuffed black backpack, an unlit canister-shaped flashlight, an open spiral-bound notebook, and a pencil, all on the floor behind an overturned toolbox near the far wall. Which I hadn’t noticed on my once-over of the plane.

“I was doing calculations,” he continued in response to my confused look. “Based on the coordinates of the crash site and the plane’s trajectory.”

Frowning, I stomped across ten feet of embedded metal tracks and snatched the notebook from the floor, tilting the flashlight beam so I could read the contents. It was open to a page near the middle, covered in numbers, straight lines, angles, and a simple, but obviously skilled, sketch of an airplane. In one corner was what appeared to be an island, surrounded by squiggly lines representing water. Another broad, straight line traced the plane’s flight path from Oak Island to the crash site. But he already had the coordinates for both locations, so what could he possibly be calculating?

“What is this?” Irritated, I aimed the light directly at him. “You’re looking for the cargo?”

“Wait your turn.” Shielding his eyes with one hand, he drained the bottle and set it on the floor, standing to face me.

“Murphy, I don’t have time for games.”

He crossed the fuselage in several long strides and was in my face before I could step back. “This was your idea.” He pulled the flashlight from my grip and returned to his seat. “And it’s my turn.”

I rolled my eyes and snatched his much bigger flashlight from the floor. “Let me see if I can speed this process up a bit. Twinkies are my favorite food, whiskey my drink of choice, and I don’t have a favorite color, though black comes damn close. Now you owe me three answers.”

Murphy grinned. “Good to know, but I wasn’t going to ask any of that. When’s your birthday?”

“This is ridiculous!” I groaned.

“Then answer the question, so we can move on.”

I had to force my jaw to unclench in order to answer. “April first.” 1757.

“Aries. I should have known.”

At least he hadn’t made an April Fool’s joke. “Whatever.” I held up the notebook, shining the beam from his flashlight on it. “You’re looking for the missing cargo, right? Why? And does that mean the goblins were actually looking for you when they showed up on Oak Island?”

He tensed, swinging his light in my direction. “You went to the island?” His voice was thick with confusion. “Where are the goblins now?”

“Dead. Rotting at the bottom of the pit. Fitting, don’t you think?”

Murphy lowered his arm, and the beam of light fell from my eyes, leaving me blinking in relief. “Dead? All three?” He smiled. “Well, I guess I should thank you.”

“Don’t bother. I didn’t do it for you. They showed up, aiming guns at me, and I had no choice. At first, I thought they were after their dog, but then Orthus turned up, and they still wanted information, so they must have been after someone else. You, I assume?”

“Almost certainly,” he said. “Devich doesn’t accept failure, so they probably hired healers when we left them alive but bleeding, then they followed you, looking for me, under the assumption we were working together, because we rescued Cari together.”

I rescued Cari. But that was a point to be made another time.

Why would Devich send me after the box, but send the goblins after Cale? How was Murphy involved with the pit, the plane, and the box? Unless…

Sudden comprehension hit me like a slap across the cheek, leaving me angry and red-faced. “You’re Murdock, the deep-sea diver.”

Murphy blinked at me. “How the hell did you…?”

I rolled my eyes. “What I don’t understand is that if you were working on the dig site under an alias, and you stole the box right out from under Devich’s nose, why are you still looking for the damn thing? And why didn’t he tell me who took it, if he knew?” The cargo would be much easier to find if I knew where to look and who to talk to.

“Lex, Devich has no idea I was ever on Oak Island.”

“What? Why is he hunting you, if he doesn’t know you stole his cargo?”

“He…wants me to work for him.”

“With no idea you were already working against him.”

“Devich knows that in the grand scheme. Thus the hired goons. But he has no idea about the specifics of this particular incident.” Cale spread his arms to indicate the entire plane and its missing cargo. He frowned, and I noticed in the deep shadows that his left cheek had a tiny dimple to match the one on his chin. “You can’t give it to Devich.” His arms dropped to his side, and the flashlight beam swung across the floor in a broad arc. “He’s dangerous, Lex. Whatever you do, you cannot give the box back to him.”

The hell I couldn’t.

Devich’s information about my afterlife was the closest I’d come in more than two and a half centuries to finding out what really happened when I died and how I could escape this physical perpetuity. I wouldn’t give up that opportunity for anything, no matter what I’d threatened Devich with. Yes, I was pretty sure I could find the Gatekeeper if I had to, but delivering the stupid sarcophagus would be much faster. And probably easier.

But I couldn’t tell Murphy any of that.

Something scraped the floor at my back, and his focus snapped past me. His eyes narrowed, shadows shifting on his face to make him look furious. And dangerous.

Thunder roared all around us, echoing within the plane. Dread drenched me like a sheet of freezing rain. I dropped the open bottle of water and drew my gun as I turned, and I was staring into the black void at the back of the plane when the voice spoke.

“Well, isn’t this a surprise? Both of you. Together…”

My flashlight searched the dark in short, frantic sweeps. One impossibly long second later, the light found a pair of black pants—linen from the looks of them—and a matching embroidered blouse. Not my idea of work clothes.

Then again, blood would barely show against the material, if I got the chance to shoot her. But since she had a nine-millimeter pointed at my forehead, my chances weren’t looking very good.

I aimed at her oversized chest, my finger on the trigger as I raised the flashlight, searching out her face to confirm my suspicion. She came into view all at once.

Lori Crow, the Jeep-driving, over-endowed, lust-sucking parasite who’d tried to snack on Lacey in the back room of my office.

What the actual fuck?

“Hello again, Ms. Walker.” Her honey-sweet voice oozed over my skin in thick, sticky rivers of sound. “I just want to tell you how much I admire your work. And how honored I am to be the last person you’ll ever see.”

SIXTEEN

Lori’s barrel flashed in the dark and I dove to the left, already returning fire. Her gun bucked up from the recoil. My flashlight beam zigged wildly across the plane, but Murphy kept her spotlighted with his.

Pain ripped through my right arm, just below the shoulder. My arm went numb, and my hand fell to my side. The flashlight clattered to the floor, lighting a wedge of Lori’s black boots. In a blink, the succubus stepped six inches to one side, and my bullet thunked into the metal wall at her back. I hit the floor on my side, bruising my left hip and jarring my shoulder.

From above me came a series of harsh shuffling sounds, a loud thud, and a feminine grunt. Murphy’s light sliced through the dark.

I rose to my knees, taking aim again with my good hand, but he stood in my line of fire, completely blocking Succu-bitch from view. “Murphy, get out of the way!”

I heard a familiar metallic slide-click, and he stepped back an instant later, flashlight wedged under one arm, Lori’s gun in his left hand, her full magazine in his right. How the hell did he do that? I lurched to first one foot then the other, grateful that I couldn’t feel my arm. Steady now, I re-aimed at Lori’s newly bruised cheek, pleased to find her against the wall, arms at her sides, hands pressed to the metal at her back.

“Wait.” Murphy thumbed the first four bullets from the end of the magazine, one after another. They fell to the floor with a pinging sound, and one rolled through the dark to land against my boot.

Why empty the magazine? Why not just keep her gun? That’s what I would have done.

“Don’t shoot her yet,” he insisted, as another round hit the floor. If he hadn’t added the “yet,” I might have had to shoot him instead.

I swallowed a moan as feeling rushed back into my arm, bringing with it a searing, throbbing pain. “Give me one good reason.”

“I want to talk to her first.”

Not good enough. “She’ll still be able to speak with a hole in her gut. For a few minutes, anyway. Get ready to talk fast.”

He placed one heavy hand on the barrel of my gun, gently forcing it lower. “Humor me, okay?” His light was aimed at her, so I couldn’t see his face, but he sounded dead serious.

“Whatever. I’m bleeding from a bullet wound, but I can probably spare a few minutes for you to flirt with Jessica-fucking-Rabbit.” I shrugged. “Why not?”

“Let her kill me.” The succubus pouted but couldn’t quite pull off the “pitiful” act with her hands curled into fists. “You know what he’ll do to me if I go back empty handed.”

Two more bullets pinged against the floor. “Not my problem, Lori. I told you to quit.”

“You two know each other?” I shifted my aim back to her head. When I shot the succubus—and I would shoot her—I wanted the bitch to die, not lie bleeding and whining on the floor of the plane.

“Lex, how bad is your arm?” Murphy asked, ignoring my question altogether.

Nothing a battlefield amputation won’t fix.

“It’s fine.” I brought my right hand up to support my left-handed grip on the gun, to prove I was still in the game. The bullet must have just grazed me, because my arm still worked, though it hurt like hell. “But that little bitch shot a hole through the sleeve of my favorite coat.”

Lori smiled sweetly, as if we’d just traded recipes, rather than gunfire. “I was aiming for your chest. It’s just that the target’s so small…”

I laughed, pleased to hear how genuinely amused I sounded. “Stick to your strengths, sweetheart. You make a better Lolita than Rambo.”

“Toss me my gun, and we’ll test your theory.”

“Sure.” I nearly choked on my own sarcasm. “You want me to paint a fucking target on my forehead while I’m at it?”

“Ladies, please.” Murphy ejected the last bullet and tossed the empty magazine across the fuselage, toward the flight deck. “Okay, Lori.” He was the very essence of calm authority. “How much am I worth, and how did you find me?”

“Believe it or not, hon, I had no idea you’d be here.” She batted her eyes at him, looking irritatingly unconcerned by the gun I was aiming at her. “I’m here for her.” Her gaze flicked back to me, her expression hardening. “And I don’t need her alive.”

“Okay, this is entirely too weird,” I said, trying to maintain my two-handed aim, despite the agony in my arm. “First the goblins, now you two. Is my mail carrier going to show up in a minute with a bazooka? Or my hairdresser with a hidden camera?”

Lori’s forehead furrowed over sculpted blond eyebrows.

“Never mind. You’re too young to remember Candid Camera.” A premise that had only worked back before people expected to be recorded as a matter of daily life.

“Devich put a hit out on Lex?” Murphy looked as confused as I felt. “Why? She’s working for him.”

“That’s not how it looks, with her cuddled up in here with you, hours after she killed the team he sent to bring you in.”

Shit. Devich thought I’d betrayed him.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” I told Lori. “I had no idea the goblins worked for him, and they’re the ones who came at me, waving guns around.” Threatening to kill me slowly. “This is a misunderstanding.”

Lori tossed her red-blond waves in the narrow beam of light. She looked for all the world like a spoiled sixteen-year-old, as unconcerned with what others thought of her as she was about her cholesterol and blood pressure. “Then how do you explain this little tête-à-tête?” Her gaze flicked from Cale to me. “Not that it matters. Word’s out. You’re burned. If I don’t take you out, he’ll send someone else. Or he’ll come for you himself.”

Fuck. I had no idea what Devich was, but I knew I’d need something bigger than my Ruger to defend myself against him.

The irony stung. I’d been ready to move on from this sham of an afterlife for more than a century, and I would have leapt in front of Lori’s bullet instead of dodging it if I had any faith that a second death would work out any better for me. But there was a reason I hadn’t been able to move on the first time, and if I died again before I figured out what that was, chances were good that I’d be no better off than before.

“No better off” being the best-case scenario.

“Do you even know what your boss is up to?” Murphy asked Lori, and I got the distinct impression they were continuing an old argument, something I wouldn’t understand even if I’d been around from the beginning. “Do you have any idea what he’s trying to do?”

Lori shook her head, hair swinging from side to side. “Don’t know, don’t care. So long as he keeps paying me, I keep working. He wants her head on a stake, and rumor has it there’s a cash bonus for you—alive. This should have been my lucky night.” She turned to me, squinting at my flashlight. “Out of curiosity, why ditch the flight from Halifax, then show up exactly where you told Devich you’d be? Not your smartest move, Walker.”

I wanted to point out that she was the one staring down the barrel of a gun. “I didn’t know he was fucking hunting me,” I said as I shifted my aim to make her nervous.

The truth of that sat on my chest like a lead weight, heavy, suffocating, and impossible to escape. Devich was trying to have me killed for some imaginary disloyalty. He probably didn’t even have the information he’d promised me, and murder was his way of clearing a debt.

“I’m tired, cold, and bleeding.” In fact, just thinking about my arm made it hurt worse. I’d have to eat soon, if I wanted to heal, and a little rest wouldn’t hurt either. “Let me shoot her now and get it over—”

“Lex…” Murphy’s warning tone set me on edge. I did not work for him. And the truth was that I didn’t work for Devich either. I was self-employed—my own goddamn boss.

“What the hell are you doing here, anyway?” Lori asked him.

“He’s looking for the box he did a piss-poor job of stealing,” I said.

“You hijacked Devich’s plane?” Lori’s sultry voice edged higher on the last syllable. “I’m impressed. And he gonna breathe flames when I tell him.”

“What’s the bounty?” Murphy asked.

“Hundred grand for her corpse. Quarter mil for you, alive.”

“Why is he worth more?” I snapped, absurdly irritated. They both looked at me like I’d lost my mind. As if it shouldn’t matter that Murphy was worth more than twice as much alive as I was dead. But it mattered.

Finally, Lori shrugged. “Devich needs him.”

“For what?”

“Cale has a rather rare set of skills. Don’t you, sugar?” the succubus purred, subtly rearranging herself so that she looked more like a voluntary vixen than a prisoner held at gunpoint.

Damned sex parasites. Even those who carried weapons would resort to seduction when they were cornered. Fortunately, Murphy didn’t look like he could be seduced. Not with his mouth set in that hard line, his free hand clenched into a fist.

“Yes, he’s much more than a scrumptious piece of eye candy, though he certainly is that.” She licked her lips slowly, moistening a pouty smile. “Cale is as talented as he is tasty.”

“Lex, don’t listen to her.” Murphy’s calm, reasonable tone stood at odds with the tension obvious in his posture, even draped in deep shadows.

“You think I’m an idiot?” I’d have rolled my eyes if I were willing to take them from the succubus. I didn’t trust anyone who wasn’t afraid of my gun.

“No, I mean literally don’t listen to her voice.” Murphy stepped closer, facing us both. “Block it out completely. She’s a suc—”

“I know what the fuck she is.” I shook my head, trying to form a coherent thought from the jumble of disconnected phrases suddenly tumbling around in my mind. I’d thought ignorance was putting him at risk, but if he knew she was a succubus…

“She’s feeding from you,” I said. “If you know each other as well as it sounds like you do, this likely isn’t the first time. She’s probably been sucking you dry for years, like her own private buffet. It’s a wonder you’ve survived.”

“She’s never fed from me, Lex.” The amusement in Murphy’s voice made me chance a glance in his direction, but I could only make out his outline behind the flashlight he held. “She couldn’t have, even if I’d been willing. It was just plain, old-fashioned sex.”

Lori tried to object to the ho-hum description of her sexual prowess, but I cut her off, aiming my next words at Murphy. “I don’t give a damn who you’ve slept with, and I certainly don’t want to hear about your weird-ass, parasite fetish. But you’re seriously deluding yourself if you think it was just sex. Succubae don’t do ‘just sex.’ They cultivate your lust, then gorge themselves on it. A guy with a hard-on is like a full course meal for your sweetie here.”

“You’ve done some research. How flattering!” Lori cried, perky and delighted, despite my gun trained on her head. “But Cale’s right; I can’t feed from him. I can only feed from humans and a few humanoid subspecies.” Likely including goblins and gremlins, among others. “And while Cale has many enchanting…features, humanity is not among them.”

Murphy made an angry sound in the back of his throat, and I turned to him as lightening flashed outside the plane. His eyes blazed in rage, and his hair looked oddly thick, as if static electricity were pulling it straight up from his scalp.

As I watched, a second bolt of lightning zigged across the sky, brightening the entire cargo hold through a jagged hole ripped in the ceiling directly over Lori’s head.

The succubus glanced at Murphy, eyes bright with glee. “See, there he goes!” Her smile broadened in the sudden flash, even as near-darkness descended again. “He’s giving us a show. And that’s only a glimpse of what happens when he really gets worked up. You should see what he can do with a hot-tub—”

“Lorelei!” Fury sharpened Murphy’s voice to a piercing edge. Rain burst from the sky in a sudden deluge following a third strike of lightning, and water poured into the plane from the hole overhead. The succubus was drenched instantly. The floor in front of me flooded in seconds, little rivers flowing along the recessed tracks. The metal surface looked dangerously slick.

Lorelei shoved wet hair back from her face. Her smile widened. “What, you haven’t told her?” she taunted, hair clinging to the sides of her heart-shaped face. Even wet and probably freezing, she looked more like a sex kitten than a drowned rat. Which was just plain unfair. “I assumed you two knew each other pretty well, based on the level of mutual lust floating around in here. It’s like breathing through cotton candy. Or swimming in chocolate.”

Mutual lust? Was she lying to distract me? Or worse: using the truth as a weapon? Hmmm.

“Admittedly, this place tastes fantastic, with you pumping hormones into the air, but the rain’s a bit over the top, don’t you think, Cale?” Lori shifted her focus back to me, still infuriatingly unbothered by my pistol. “But then, moisture isn’t usually a problem with him around, is it?”

Umm… Come to think of it, it was raining when I met Murphy, in Memphis…

Son of a bitch! I completely forgot about the pain in my arm as understanding came crashing down on me, heavy as Devich’s stone box and frigid as my cold-numb fingers. He was a sprite. Cale Murphy was a fucking water nymph.

SEVENTEEN

“You’re doing this?” I demanded with a glance at Cale. I heard the note of awe in my voice but couldn’t contain it. There had always been rumors that a few nymphs had survived into the modern age, but I’d assumed they were just stories. I’d never met a sprite. Hell, I’d never met anyone else who’d ever met one. “You did this in Memphis too, didn’t you? You’re a water nymph.”

“Only half. On my mother’s side.” He shrugged, on the edge of my vision. “And we prefer to be called elementals.”

Of course they did. Any non-human species that made it into the twenty-first century in spite of the mortal onslaught had the right to a rebrand. I guess I could call myself “life-challenged.” But that made me sound as if I were struggling to exist, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

I was struggling to move on.

“Shouldn’t you be prancing around a waterfall somewhere in Europe, or…I don’t know…playing the pan flute, or some shit like that?”

Murphy huffed. “Sorry, pan flutes went out with togas and laurel wreaths. I do play a little acoustic guitar, though, when the mood strikes. Other than that, I’m just your friendly neighborhood deep sea diver.”

“Come on, Cale, you’re selling yourself short,” Lori purred at him from across the cargo hold. “You’re much more than that.”

“And you’re much less.” His voice dripped with venomous anger; clearly he hadn’t wanted her to tell me about his species. “Why don’t you go lap up some adolescent hormones and leave the real work to the big boys and girls?”

“Don’t mind if I do…” Lorelei’s gaze settled on me with an almost physical weight. She no longer seemed aware of the flashlights shining in her eyes or the drenching rain. Her lips parted. Her tongue flicked between them, like a snake scenting the air. Her eyes rolled back for a second, pale violet irises all but disappearing. Then they found me again, and I blinked, trying to clear away the sudden fog of confusion and make sense of what she’d been saying.

Or had Murphy been talking? I couldn’t quite remember.

“Lorelei. Stop,” he snapped. “Lex? You still with me?” His voice flowed over my skin like a silken caress. I shuddered, and the sound of rain pounding on the fuselage faded into the background. As did the cold and most of the pain in my arm. I felt cushioned from the world, suddenly, as if I were separated from everything around me by a thick layer of… nothing. Of warm, denser-than-normal air.

My gaze slid from Lorelei to Murphy, and I was positive I’d find him standing right next to me, his body heat washing over me, the source of the sudden tantalizing warmth. But he was still several feet away. So where had that delicious heat come from? Why could I feel him, warm, and soothing, and irresistible, despite the cold and the rain?

My eyes strained against the shadows to see him better. “I’m still with you,” I said, mildly surprised by the dazed quality of my own voice. Damn was I with him… I was right there with his eyes, and his voice, and that chest I had run my hands over only minutes earlier. And those incredibly strong legs. And his nice, tight…

“Focus, Lex.” Murphy’s words cut through my thoughts, but instead of clearing away the fog, they thickened it. The metal walls around me began to blur. The cold, the rain, and the succubus were all but forgotten. His voice was the only thing clear or substantial. The only thing I could hear or feel. The only thing real.

“You can block her out if you concentrate,” he said, and while I heard the cadence of his speech and felt his voice dance along my nerve endings like metaphysical foreplay, his actual meaning didn’t penetrate.

Block her out of what? I didn’t give a damn about Lorelei. Murphy was my problem now. He also happened to be the solution…

“You can feel him, can’t you?” the succubus said, her words slurring. Mildly surprised, I glanced at her. Was she drunk? “Touch him, Alexandra. Put your hand in his.”

I reached toward Murphy with my non-gun hand and only dimly realized that should have hurt my injured arm. Only long-term habit kept the pistol in my grip as my right hand—still holding the flashlight—swung toward him, highlighting each angle of his face, each plane defined beneath layers of denim and cotton.

“Touch his face,” Lorelei crooned. “Touch his hair. Everything will be okay once you touch him.”

Murphy’s boots splashed in the rapidly accumulating water as he stepped farther away from us both. “No!” he shouted.

Yes! Lorelei was a goddamn genius! She was right. Everything would be better if I could just reach Murphy. If I could run my hands beneath his sweater, and over the jeans hugging the curve of his ass, the line of his thigh. If I could just touch him. Taste him…

“He wants you to.” She was chanting now, in a soft, sing-song voice, deep and hoarse, yet steady enough to enthrall. “He needs you to touch him.”

“Lorelei…” he snapped, his voice a bitter warning for… For something I couldn’t quite focus on.

I stumbled toward Murphy, and that single motion sent water rushing over the top of my boot. My foot was suddenly drenched with freezing rain. The shock woke me up, reminding me that my feet were still firmly planted on the cold, wet ground, and that my thoughts should be down here too.

Fear clawed through my mental fog, and I clung to it desperately because it seemed to clear my head. What was I doing? Why was my gun hanging limp in my hand? Why had I taken my eye off the succubus? Why was Murphy watching me in horror?

He tore his gaze from me to glare at the succubus, who was closer now. She’d stepped out from under the hole in the roof, though I couldn’t remember actually seeing her move. “Let her go, Lorelei.”

“Nooooo, she’s yummy,” the succubus moaned, licking her lips seductively, her eyes half-closed, yet still focused on me.

“Lori, I don’t want to hurt you.” Murphy’s voice was low and dangerous. “You know I don’t. But if you don’t let her go right now, I won’t have any other choice.”

“You do what you gotta do, sugar.” Her fatalistic smile shined through the mental haze rapidly re-enveloping me. “I’ll do the same.”

Murphy’s hair glowed golden in the glare from my flashlight. Rain pounded on the roof of the plane, but I scarcely noticed. All I could think about was his hands on me. Mine on him. Standing in the rain, warm in spite of the temperature and the season…

“You want me to kill you.” He stared past me at the succubus, gaze narrowed on her. But I barely heard him, and I certainly didn’t process his meaning. I was too busy studying his chin dimple, imagining kissing it. Licking it. Trying to fit the tip of my tongue in that adorable little hollow, before working my way up to his mouth…

“No, I want to kill her, turn you in, and collect my paycheck. But that’s clearly not going to happen, so I’ve moved on to Plan B.”

Plan B. If succu-bitch had a Plan B, I needed one too. Something involving my gun and her forehead. Or maybe Murphy and a bottle of caramel syrup. Oooh, and a couple of cherries…

“Suicide?” he asked, as I stepped closer, my gun now dangling from my trigger finger.

“That depends on you, sugar. Maybe we could make a trade—you know, for old times’ sake?”

“What do you want?”

Cale Murphy, a box of Twinkies, and an hour of privacy. No, make that two hours… Oh, wait. He wasn’t talking to me.

“You help me with her, and I’ll forget I saw you here. Give you a twenty-four-hour head start.”

Murphy crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I can’t let you kill her any more than I can let Devich have the box. You know that.”

Lorelei shrugged. “Have it your way, sugar. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Lorelei turned back to me, and my eyes fell closed as a sudden barrage of images flooded my mind.

Murphy, naked in the rain, tiny rivers of water cascading down his chest.

Murphy, naked in the surf, sunlight glittering in his hair.

Murphy, naked in a pool, deeply tanned and gleaming with coconut oil.

I was sensing a theme, and I liked it.

“Lex?” Murphy asked, and I moaned as his voice slid over me, moistening me in places the rain couldn’t possibly have reached. I wanted to close my eyes again, but I wasn’t willing to lose sight of him. Something splashed in the water at my feet, then clattered to the floor. Dimly, I realized it was my gun. I’d dropped my gun, and that meant something. Something really important.

It meant…um…that I now had a free hand with which to touch Murphy.

I reached out for him. My fingers grazed the stubble on his cheek. Unseen flames whipped down my arm and throughout my body, a flash of pleasure scorching me from the inside out before settling low and deep inside me.

Murphy lurched away as if I’d hit him, moving easily in two inches of water. “Lex, pick up your gun,” he said softly, soberly, his stance unwavering.

My gun? Yeah, I’ll probably need that back. I was reaching into the water when Lorelei spoke again, her voice that of reason, it seemed, and of desperation born of desire. “You can’t touch him with both hands full.”

An equally good point… I rose, thoughts of my gun shoved to the back of my mind by mental images of the man in front of me.

Murphy made an angry sound in the back of his throat. “She’s in your head, Lex. Block her out. She’s messing with your mind.”

But my mind wasn’t the problem. My body was. My body craved him. My brain had caved beneath the onslaught of need and was willing to tag along for the ride, silent for once.

“He’s lying,” Lori insisted. “He’s too cold to think straight. Why don’t you warm him up?”

I could do that. I could warm us both up. At the moment, I felt like I could warm up the whole damn continent, using my body heat alone. And oddly, I didn’t care if she watched, so long as she didn’t try to interfere with my Plan B, which was rapidly taking shape. And that shape looked remarkably like Cale Murphy.

“She’s feeding off you, Lex. Don’t let her. Don’t be her meal.”

That gave me pause, but just for a second, because it wasn’t true, and I couldn’t remember him lying to me before. Lorelei couldn’t feed from me, because I didn’t lust for her.

Shaking my head in private denial, I scooted toward his voice, vaguely surprised to realize my right arm hung limp at my side, refusing to move. The flashlight shone down at rainwater still collecting on the floor. The amputated handcuff slipped from my sleeve to rest on the broadest point of my hand, freezing against my inexplicably warm flesh, but no one seemed to notice. Hell, I barely noticed.

I could hardly feel my injured arm now, and I couldn’t move it at all. Yet I wasn’t afraid. Not about that, anyway. I was worried because Murphy had taken another step away from me, putting more abominable space in the chasm between my body and his.

Water sloshed on my left—Lorelei coming closer. “Go after him,” she whispered, and I wanted to do just that. “He wants you. Ask him. He’ll tell you the truth.”

The truth. I was a big fan of the truth. “Do you?” I asked Murphy. But my words came out soft and slightly slurred, like Lacey sounded after one too many shots at the Djinn Fizz. Was I drunk? On Murphy?

I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I needed him. That was the important thing. I shuffled forward a little more, because I couldn’t quite summon the energy to lunge after him. Blood loss was taking its toll, but touching Murphy would make it all better. Our union would make everything alright.

The flashlight slipped from my numb right hand and splashed into the water. Murphy’s form was now only outlined behind the glare of his own light. Still, he didn’t speak.

“Answer her, Cale,” Lorelei said, closer now. “Do you want her?” Her voice dipped lower, not in pitch, but in position. She was kneeling. Or bending down. I started to turn and look, but her next words stopped me cold, desperate to know whether or not she was telling the truth. “I can feel it. I can feel how much you want her, so let her hear it.”

Yeah. Let me hear it. “Don’t you want me?” I asked, trying valiantly to quash the Human League song rising from the depths of my memory to taunt me at such an inappropriate moment.

Murphy closed his eyes, as if gathering his thoughts. Or his strength. “Of course I do. Very badly. But this is not the time. You’d hate me tomorrow when you realize it was her decision, not yours. It’s not worth that, Lex. I won’t do it like this. She’s fattening you up like Hansel and Gretel, and already nibbling on the sly. Don’t let her do this to you, Alexandra.”

“I’m not into girls. She can’t be feeding from me.” Yet I realized even as I spoke that something was wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. I was injured and bleeding. I’d lost feeling in one arm. I’d dropped my gun. I’d turned my back on the woman who shot me. Yet all I could think about was Murphy. Touching him. Him touching me. My nipples hardened just from the thought. Private parts of me throbbed with every word he spoke. I could still feel his skin beneath my fingers, though they’d barely brushed his chin.

I was high on Cale Murphy. Completely addicted to a drug I’d never even tried. Lorelei was using my own body against me. Somehow, she was intensifying and feeding from my lust for Murphy, and she would drain my energy until I collapsed. Until I died. And the truly frightening part was that understanding what was happening to me didn’t change anything. It didn’t give me the strength—or the desire—to stop her.

Even knowing that it would kill me, I just wanted Murphy on top of me. Or beneath me. Either. Or both.

On my left, more water sloshed. From the corner of my eye, I saw the succubus bent over, looking for something in the water.

“Shit!” Murphy shouted, his voice sharp enough to cut through the cloud of need obscuring my thoughts. “Lex, shoot her!”

Yes! I should shoot her! But I’d lost my gun, and she was about to find it. If Lorelei found my pistol, it would all be over.

Maybe you should just let her shoot you, I thought, glancing from the succubus scrambling in the water to Murphy, standing straight and strong, then back again, as the chaos seemed to close in around me. The pounding rain, the howling wind, and the roaring thunder faded into the background again. Suddenly I was alone with my thoughts. With the crazy idea that it could all be over right then, if I wanted it to. After all, death is the one guaranteed way to find the Gatekeeper.

“Lex!” Murphy was suddenly in my face, shattering my thoughts, along with the eerie calm that had settled around me. Tropical heat rippled across my body. I felt my skin flush. Waves of need washed over me, nearly knocking me to my knees in the freezing water.

Any other time, I might have died from embarrassment over such an intimately physical reaction to a man I barely knew. But this time I didn’t care. There would be time for humiliation later, after he’d eased the vicious ache deep inside me. After my hijacked brain had returned from an overdue vacation. After—

“Wake up and fucking shoo—” Murphy shouted, almost directly into my ear.

I cut him off with a kiss. I couldn’t help it. Speech was a waste of precious time and energy. So I kissed him.

The truly amazing thing is that he kissed me back. Hard. Deeply, as if now that I’d started it, he was bloody well going to finish it the right way, timing be damned.

I barely breathed. I think my heart actually stopped beating, yet I felt my pulse in my throat, in my lips, throbbing along with the ache in my breasts.

More water sloshed behind me, but I barely noticed. My left hand found the back of Murphy’s head, holding him to me. He didn’t fight. He pressed himself against me. His hands ran up my waist. His palms brushed the sides of my breasts briefly, and I moaned, in both pleasure and frustration.

His fingers found my arms, trailing up the damp leather of my coat. His hands wrapped around my biceps. His tongue thrust into my mouth. I opened wider, to let him in—then screamed into his mouth as scorching pain shot through my right arm.

I pulled away, but he wouldn’t let me go far. “I’m sorry,” he whispered against my cheek, an exquisite, intimate betrayal. Then something squeezed my right arm, and I screamed again. The son of a bitch was digging into the bullet wound with his fingers.

Furious, I shoved him away with my good arm, then followed up with an immediate left hook. My fist connected with his stubbly jaw. Murphy stumbled backward—smiling. Grinning like a goddamn fool.

“Welcome back,” he said, rubbing red blotch on his right cheek. “Now shoot the bitch so we can get out of here.”

What? Ohhhh. He’d used pain to clear my head and return my free will. I’d have to remember to thank him. In kind.

I spun around, water sloshing against my boots. My left hand went behind my coat, drawing the gun I’d forgotten I even had. Murphy’s gun. A humble Glock nine mil, but it would do.

No sooner had my eyes settled on the target—Lorelei, hunched over, still feeling around in the water for my pistol—than she stood, aiming my own gun at me.

“It won’t work wet,” I said, eyeing my soaked Ruger. I was lying, of course, but she might not know that.

“Let’s find out.” Lorelei squeezed the trigger, and I dropped to one knee. The bullet whizzed over my head and thunked into something behind me. I pulled Murphy’s gun up, aiming even as I fired.

A small hole appeared in the center of Lorelei’s chest. Her eyes widened as she stumbled backward into the wall, blood welling from the hole in her sternum. She blinked at me, and my gun fell from her hand. She slid down the wall into the water, slouched into a sitting position. One small, delicate-looking hand covered the wound. Blood dribbled between her fingers.

Lorelei’s mouth opened, then closed. Then opened again. She said something, but I couldn’t make it out. I leaned closer, keeping Murphy’s gun trained on her, just in case. Blood bubbled from her lips and dripped down her chin. Her mouth opened again, and she looked into my eyes.

“Bitch…” she whispered, even as her eyes glazed over in death, still staring up at me.

I stood, surprised to find myself directly under the hole in the plane, through which Murphy’s temper-tantrum still poured. Freezing-cold rain ran through my hair and down my face. I stepped back, unable to take my eyes off the ruined succubus with the face of a child.

“Right back at ‘cha. Sugar.”

EIGHTEEN

Normally, I feel obligated to dispose of any corpse I create in the line of duty—not that I deal out that much death, but honestly, in my line of work, shit happens. So long as it happens to the bad guy, I bury the body and count myself lucky to be the one digging, and not the one decomposing. But for Lorelei, I felt no such obligation. Devich had started this particular pissing match, and he could damn well clean the mess up himself. And since I’d shot her with Murphy’s gun instead of mine, even if the police found her, they’d have a real bitch of a time tracing the body back to me. But they wouldn’t find her. Devich would make sure of that. He stood to lose much more than I did if the native peace-keepers stumbled across a dead succubus in a crashed C130 he’d never reported.

So we left Lorelei exactly where she’d landed, slumped against the side of the plane like a broken doll. I didn’t even have to touch her to get my Ruger back, because she’d dropped it in the water before cursing me with her last breath. Fortunately, a little dampness wouldn’t hurt a good gun, so long as I remembered to dry it and clean it as soon as I had the chance.

Before we left the crash site, Murphy insisted on assessing my arm, despite my assertion that all I really needed were dry clothes and a hot meal. So, I peeled off my ruined leather coat, still complaining about the wardrobe loss. He wanted me to remove my sweater and blouse too, but I refused. The last thing I wanted after that humiliating, ill-timed kiss was for him to see a single extra inch of my bare skin. Plus, I was fucking freezing since Lorelei was no longer there to raise my body temperature as she fed.

My clothes were staying in place.

In response to my stubborn refusal to cooperate, Murphy ripped the sleeve from my sweater without so much as a word of warning. I was still cussing over the loss of yet another article of clothing, and about the less-than-gentle jarring of my injured arm, when he gave a second vicious tug, and the sleeve of my black blouse gave way at the shoulder seams.

“Try that again and you’ll be limping out of here!” I shouted, cradling my injured arm against my side.

“What’s that?” he asked, ignoring my threat, and I followed his gaze to my right wrist, where the buttoned cuff of my blouse had gotten hung on the half-handcuff. The inside-out sleeve dangled down to my knees.

I closed my eyes and took deep, calming breaths, trying to exorcize humiliation from both my spirit and my expression. “It’s the latest in punk jewelry. Haven’t you heard?”

He frowned, and I stifled a groan. “It’s half of a set of handcuffs, what does it fucking look like?”

His answering grin practically smoldered in the thirty-something degree chill. “It looks like someone got you all tied up.”

“What he got was the business end of the Oak Island pit, headfirst. And I got these nifty souvenirs, at no additional cost.” I gave my left arm a shake, and the other cuff tumbled into view around my wrist.

“At least your look’s coordinated.”

“Thank goodness. Mismatched accessories would look ridiculous with this ensemble.” I lifted my good arm so he could take in my drenched hair, the one-armed sweater and blouse, damp shoulder holster, amputated hand cuffs, and water-logged boots. I must have looked absolutely absurd, but to his credit, Murphy didn’t laugh. He did smile, though, and that was kind of nice.

As the last drops of rain pattered softly overhead, he gave my wound a quick inspection, revealing exactly what I’d expected: a relatively clean hole, in one side and out the other. There was no bullet to dig out, and not enough blood for it to have nicked an artery, which had been my major concern. Using my detached sweater sleeve as a bandage, I applied moderate pressure to both sides, which soon stopped the slow trickle of blood. It still hurt like hell, but as long as I kept my arm relatively still long enough for the wound to heal, there shouldn’t be any permanent damage, though I’d probably wind up with a dandy new scar.

In the empty cockpit, I changed into a set of dry clothes from my travel bag, steadfastly refusing Murphy’s offer of help. I was more than two centuries old and could damn well dress myself—even if every movement of my injured arm did send pain shooting throughout my poor, abused body.

While I was in the cockpit, I took a quick look around and spotted the pilot’s aeronautical map, still neatly folded in a pocket on the side of the captain’s chair. I slid it into one of my coat’s inner pockets. It was bound to come in handy later.

Finally dressed and re-bundled in my ruined coat, I took off through the forest behind Murphy, hoping for an easier time leaving the crash site than I’d had finding it.

Hiking out of the woods took much longer than it should have, due mostly to my loss of both blood and energy at Lorelei’s hands. Fortunately, this time I had an extra flashlight and a hiking companion who seemed to know exactly where he was going. And since Murphy had actually driven to the crash site, instead of walking several miles to the nearest town—my original exit strategy—we only had to make it a mile and a half, to the four-wheel-drive he’d parked on the shoulder of an unlit, two-lane woodland road.

We made both the hike and the subsequent drive in near silence, despite the barrage of questions floating around in my head. I needed answers, but I needed rest worse. I wouldn’t be able to think coherently or start healing my injury until I’d had a nap and a good meal—something other than processed sugar and alcohol, as badly as I hated to admit it.

We wound up in the hotel room Murphy had rented the night before, because registering for one in my name would have been suicide, considering that Devich wanted me dead. And while I didn’t have an alias with her own ID—until then, I’d never hesitated to use my real name and claim credit for my work—Murphy did.

Charles Murdock was a deep-sea diver and a nature enthusiast in town for a little R&R. As long as no one else on Devich’s payroll figured out who Murdock really was, his hotel room was the safest, most convenient hideout I could think of. At least long enough for me to recuperate and form a new plan.

It was just past ten p.m. when Murphy left me sitting in the armchair in one corner of his room, my bad arm propped on a pillow in my lap, the TV remote and a can of root beer on the table to my left. He said he’d be back in twenty minutes with food. By the time he left, I was exhausted and in serious pain, and if I’d been thinking clearly, I’d have asked him to bring back alcohol. Lots of alcohol. And painkillers, because while my body would heal itself if given enough time and rest, it would hurt like hell throughout the process.

But I wasn’t thinking clearly, so the only request I managed before he left was a whispered, “Chinese” when he asked whether I’d prefer Hunan Palace or Taco Bell, which were apparently the only choices available in small-town Maine after nine p.m. on a Tuesday.

By the time he returned, I’d downed the root beer and exhausted my options on the television. Late-night sitcom reruns didn’t hold my interest, and the news kept bouncing back and forth between the recent outbreak of viral illness that had been contained somewhere in Africa and the latest presidential scandal—something about the under-aged first daughter and a certain young, married senator from Massachusetts.

I had the remote in hand, ready to throw it at the twenty-inch screen, when the door opened and Murphy appeared in the threshold, backlit by the incandescent parking lot lights and loaded with paper bags. He kicked the door shut and set the bags on top of the dresser. “Hey.” His gaze met mine as he peeled off his gloves, hat, and coat. “I got you something.”

“Thanks, I’m starved.”

“Not this,” he said with a gesture at the fragrant, grease-stained bag. “This.” With a magician’s flourish, he withdrew a small brown paper sack from inside his coat and pulled out the tiniest set of bolt cutters I’d ever seen. “Let me see if I can get those cuffs off.”

“Gladly.” I padded across the room toward him like an old woman, sore, stiff, and hunched over. I was exhausted and in real pain from my encounter with Lorelei.

Murphy eyed me appreciatively, apparently unaware of my geriatric troubles, and my arms crossed automatically over my chest. Two hours earlier, I’d have done anything to see that look on his face, that heat in his eyes, but now I was embarrassed almost beyond the ability to function by what I’d said and done in the airplane.

My problem wasn’t my reaction to him. Murphy was a damn fine specimen of a man, and the best advance to come out of the past two centuries—other than cell phones and fast food—was the social acceptance of a woman’s healthy sex drive. My attraction to him was perfectly normal.

But my inability to control it was not.

Never in my entire, very long existence had I felt as violated—as used—as I had with Lorelei manipulating me. She’d drawn not just emotions from me, but actual physical reactions. Against my will. She’d made me drop both my guard and my gun.

The more I thought about it, the angrier I got.

Nothing pisses me off worse than not being in control, especially of my own actions. If the succubus weren’t already dead, I’d kill her. But this time she’d suffer first. Not physical pain, but the same kind of soul-smashing, ego-bruising, pride-crumbling, call-up-the-king’s-horses-and-men-to-put-humpty-together-again humiliation she’d put me through. I wanted her shattered and broken beyond the possibility of repair. I wanted to see her grovel and flush as her body betrayed her. I wanted—

“Lex, you okay?”

I blinked and my eyes focused on Murphy, who stood frowning at me, bolt cutters at the ready. “Yeah. Just contemplating the vengeful abuse of a corpse. Where’d you get those?”

“The drugstore around the corner had a display of ‘tools to fit a woman’s hand,’ and this one looked narrow enough to get between the cuff and your wrist.”

I scowled. “The problem with that isn’t the concept, it’s the marketing. Why couldn’t that just be ‘tools to fit small hands’?”

“Agreed. Let’s get these off and get some food in you. You’re looking pretty pale.”

“I’m always pale. It’s part of my charm.” And the direct result of both my nighttime schedule and Lorelei sucking the energy right out of me.

“It certainly is.” He smiled, and I found myself smiling back. His good humor was irrepressible, and quite possibly contagious. “Here, sit and give me your arm.” Murphy sank onto the end of one bed, and I sat facing him with one leg pulled up onto the bedspread. He took the hand I offered and positioned it on my thigh, fingers stretched toward him.

“Thanks for this,” I said, staring at his chin dimple because looking directly into his eyes made me dizzy.

“Any time.” His chin shifted as he smiled. “This should only take a second. Hold still.”

I couldn’t have moved if I’d tried. Hell, I could barely breathe with him so close to me. His hand brushed my arm as he positioned the bolt cutters, and I didn’t realize how cold I still was until his fingers scorched my skin. Precious flashes of heat traveled up my arm with each touch, settling lower in my body. Smoldering.

“Ready?” he asked, and I finally exhaled. I was ready. So very ready. “Lex?”

I nodded, finally looking straight into those deep-sea eyes.

“Here goes…” He squeezed the cutters closed on the thinnest point of the cuff. For a moment, his arms bulged, straining. Then steel snapped, and the cuff fell away from my left wrist.

I grinned like a fool. I almost laughed out loud from relief. Wearing those stupid handcuffs was a constant reminder that Hagen had almost gotten the better of me. Between him and Lorelei, my pride had taken a serious blow and would need to be inflated again soon.

Murphy took my bare right arm, moving it gently into position. His touch was light and warm. And very odd. Almost…protective. Not as if he thought I couldn’t handle the pain, but as if he thought I shouldn’t have to. I hadn’t been touched like that in more than two centuries, and the memory of that last time brought tears to burn behind my eyes.

I blinked them away as soon as they came, before Murphy could see them and start asking questions. Or trying to comfort me.

The second cuff came off as easily as the first, and Murphy tossed both pieces across the room into the trashcan, where they landed with a jarring clatter. “Now let me get a look at your arm.”

“It’s fine. Let’s eat.” I started to stand, but his hand closed firmly around my left wrist. Glaring at him, I jerked my good arm from his grasp. “I said it’s fine.”

“You’ve been shot, Lex. Let me take another look and clean the wound. Please.”

It was the “please” that won me over. In my experience, most men don’t say please. They say “now” and sometimes “harder” or “faster,” but rarely ever “please” or “thank you.” So I stayed seated on the bed while he grabbed a small first-aid kit from his backpack, opening it to reveal the usual assortment of band-aids, antiseptic, and Q-tips, which I had yet to find a single legitimate use for.

Still facing him, I held out my right arm, and he took it gently, carefully pushing my sleeve up as far as it would go. His fingers were warm against my skin, cradling my elbow so I wouldn’t have to hold my arm up on my own. Frowning, he leaned in closer, and I winced as my arm shifted. “Sorry. It’s not as bad as I thought it was. I guess better lighting makes all the difference.”

Or maybe it had already started to heal.

Murphy lowered my arm carefully and pulled a bottle of alcohol from his bag. The wrong kind of alcohol. “This will sting a little, but it’ll keep you from getting an infection.”

“That’s really not necessary.” I hadn’t gotten a single infection since the day I died, and I really didn’t need all the pampering. In a couple of days, my arm would be good as new, with nothing but a puckered scar to prove I’d ever been shot.

“Just sit still.” Holding one of the bathroom hand towels under my arm, he poured alcohol from the bottle directly over the hole in the back of my triceps.

“Son of a bitch!” I hissed, clenching my fist as tiny bubbles popped and fizzed on my arm.

He grinned wryly. “I told you it would sting.”

“And you clearly like to be right.” I ground my teeth together as he cleaned the other side of the hole, then taped a square of gauze over each side.

When he was done, Murphy dropped the hand towel on the bed and stood. “Let’s eat.”

In about two seconds I’d crossed the room to the small, round table. “Thanks for dinner,” I said, sinking into the seat opposite the door, in front of which sat the bag of food. I pulled out a paper-wrapped egg roll and a white cardboard carton emanating the most delicious aroma. I opened the box and inhaled deeply. Mmmm, cashew chicken.

“There’s shrimp fried rice, if you’d rather. And Szechuan beef, and vegetarian egg rolls. I wasn’t sure what you like.” He held up a cellophane-wrapped plastic fork in one hand and a sleeve of chopsticks in the other.

I plucked the chopsticks from his fist and dumped them from the paper sleeve. “This is fine.” I let the first bite sit on my tongue for a moment, savoring the flavor. Either I was really hungry, or I was eating the best cashew chicken in history. Or both. “I take that back. It’s wonderful. Thanks.”

Pleased, Murphy plopped into his own chair and scooted up to the table. “Next time we’re going out.”

I couldn’t resist a grin. “For the record, I’m not agreeing to that.”

“That’s okay.” He met my eyes boldly. “I’m not asking.”

Laughing, I dug in for another bite. It took me about three minutes to devour the cashew chicken and a can of Vanilla Coke, and by then I was feeling better, except for my arm.

“Wow.” Murphy grinned at me over his carton of fried rice. “Here. Have the Szechuan beef.”

“Thanks.” I grabbed the unopened carton and dug in. I felt no need to explain to him about my faster-than-human healing, or that the process required a lot of fuel. And now that I was feeling at least marginally better, I was more than ready to have my questions answered. Starting with the most pressing.

“So, you and this Lorelei chick? You were together?” The words had barely passed my lips when I felt my cheeks flush and knew they were bright red.

Damn it Lex! Keep it professional. I’d opened my mouth to do just that, but a personal question had slipped out instead.

“Yeah. For a couple of years, a long time ago.”

“What happened? She try to suck you dry?”

Murphy laughed, and my cheeks flared from backyard-barbeque to supernova. Unintentional double entendre. Damn it, Lex!

But he seemed amused. “Not exactly. We had a difference of opinion. A philosophical disagreement, if you will. About Troy Devich.”

“Let me guess: she was pro, and you were con.”

“Pretty much. I thought he should roast in hell for all of eternity, and she thought he should pay her rent and bills, in exchange for service in perpetuity. After that, we just couldn’t see eye-to-eye on much of anything.”

I nodded sagely. “Yeah, it’s always the little things that drive couples apart.”

Chuckling, he dumped an entire packet of soy sauce into his rice and stirred it with one chop stick. “Don’t I know it.”

We ate several bites in silence, then I paused, an egg roll halfway to my mouth. “So, who’s in the box?”

He arched one brow. “Devich didn’t tell you?”

“He didn’t even admit it was a sarcophagus until I found out on my own.”

Murphy dropped his chopsticks into the carton. “I don’t know why that would surprise me. It doesn’t benefit him to tell you what he’s doing. What he’s really after.”

“It does if he wants me to actually find the thing. What is he doing? Who’s in the box?”

Pushing his carton away, he leaned forward, arms crossed on the table between us. “It isn’t a who, in the traditional sense.”

“The body isn’t human.” I’d suspected as much, of course. Human corpses didn’t typically cause chaos, confusion, or compulsion from beyond the grave. In fact, they were generally pretty well-behaved, as far as cadavers go.

“Not even close. It’s a djinni.”

I blinked, sure I’d heard him wrong. Or that he was joking. “A dead genie? As in, I Dream of…”

Murphy’s mouth crooked in wry amusement. “Sort of. Not exactly.”

“Not exactly a genie, or not exactly dead?” I asked, searching for a full packet of soy sauce in a pile of empty wrappers.

“Both. If we could figure out how to kill him, we would have done it long ago. But we can’t. The djinni isn’t dead; he’s just good and pissed off. And he bears no resemblance whatsoever to Barbara Eden.”

I laughed around a mouthful of chicken. “More like Aladdin and the lamp? You know, Robin Williams saving the day with a poof of purple smoke and a catchy one-liner?”

Murphy shook his head. “Getting even colder.” He took a long draw from his root beer, and I got the distinct impression he was avoiding telling me something.

“Then spell it out for me.”

He put the can down slowly, and for once, that twinkle of good humor in his eyes was absent. “There are no genies according to the American pop culture definition. No jolly cartoon magicians or blond women wrapped in pink gauze. No eye blinking, head nodding, or nose wiggling. All that belongs to Hollywood. And the truth is that it was always a rather offensive appropriation.”

I considered reminding him that Samantha Stevens was a witch, not a genie, but I held my tongue because he was probably too young to have seen “Bewitched,” except in reruns. And because that didn’t negate his point. “So, what are we dealing with here?”

“Devich has found an actual djinni. D-J-I-N-N-I. Some people call them djinns.”

Ah, like the Djinn Fizz, I thought, swallowing a sudden craving for a Grateful Dead over ice. Finally, the name of my favorite bar made sense. Sort of. “What is a djinn, exactly?” I asked, not quite able to let go of the Disney image in my head.

“They’re similar to demons in that they specialize in pain and chaos, but much more dangerous because they aren’t bound to hell. Though rumor has it that’s where they originated.”

A djinni from hell. Fantastic. What I knew about djinnis wouldn’t fill my own bellybutton. “I’m afraid I’m not up to date on the latest djinni lore. Do you have a primer, or a cheat sheet? Maybe a copy of ‘Djinn for Dummies’?”

Murphy grinned, and the dimple in his left cheek flashed at me. “Unfortunately, no. Just oral tradition.”

A double entendre of his own? “That’s the best kind,” I said, just in case.

That time his grin was definitely flirtatious. Maybe Lorelei was right about the mutual lust. But the heat in his expression was gone all too fast, as he turned the discussion back to business. “Here’s what I know: Devich is after a djinni called Xaphan—one of only four in existence, that we know of.”

“There are only four?” That doesn’t sound too bad.

“That we know of,” he repeated, pinching a shrimp between his chopsticks. “Trust me, four’s more than enough.”

“Please tell me they weren’t all in the Oak Island pit.” Because they’re gone now… If they were still there, the pit would surely still feel “bad,” instead of cold and empty.

“No. I have no idea where the others are—that’s sort of need-to-know information—but I’ve been assured that they’re kept far away from one another.”

“They’re all buried?” My chopsticks scraped the bottom of my carton, and I peered into it in disappointment.

“Or otherwise contained.”

“So who ‘contains’ them?” I asked, plucking a single pink shrimp from the bed of rice.

“We do. The elementals,” he added in response to my confused look.

I nearly choked on a half-chewed chunk of shrimp. “You mean—” I sputtered, then washed the bite down with a sip from a fresh can of Coke. “You mean a few wood and water sprites are the only thing standing between humanity and a hoard of evil, pain-and-chaos wielding djinnis hell-bent on the destruction of mankind?”

Murphy leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, framing an impressive set of pecs. “You have this way of making everything I say sound completely ridiculous.”

“Hey, I work with what I’m given. Is that about the way things stand?”

“Basically…” He shrugged. “Yes. But it’s not as bad as it sounds. Elementals are the most qualified for the job. Our abilities mirror those of the djinn, so we’re the natural choice to keep them in check.”

“Or in boxes.”

He smiled. “Yeah. The first three have been out of the way for more than a millennium, but Xaphan was a real bitch to catch. They finally caught up with him in the late seventeenth century, and now Devich is trying to wash all that hard work down the proverbial drain.”

“So, we stop him.” I shrugged. It was as simple as that. Right? “What do you mean by ‘mirrored’ abilities?”

Murphy leaned forward again, his eyes bright and eager. I’d clearly pressed his hotkey. “It’s kind of like a cosmic game of ‘rock, paper, scissors.’”

I shook my head, brushing a stray grain of rice from my lap onto the floor. “You’ve lost me.”

“‘Rock, paper, scissors’ is a game kids play in pairs.” Murphy held his hands up for a demonstration, one stretched out, palm up, and the other clenched into a fist. “You pound on your palm three times with your—”

“I’m familiar with the game.” Lacey beat me every time we played. “But I don’t see what it has to do with your gig as djinni warden.”

“Oh. Okay, just a minute…” Leaning to one side, Murphy snatched his notebook from the seat of the empty chair between us. He flipped it open to a blank page and drew several small images in a circle, connected by curved arrows pointing clockwise. When he was done, he set the notebook on the table and spun it around to face me.

“This is earth,” he said, tapping the eraser end of his pencil on a skilled sketch of snow-covered mountain peaks at the top of the circle. “The element, not the planet. And this is air.” He traced the arrow leading from earth to a small drawing of clouds and several lines clearly representing the wind. “Earth beats air, just like rock beats scissors.”

“So, earth elementals are better than air elementals?”

“No. Not better than. But if an earth elemental pits his abilities against an air elemental, the earth elemental will win, assuming they have similar levels of power.”

“Why?” I leaned forward for a better look at his notebook.

Murphy smiled at me gently, like a parent humoring a child’s silly question. “That’s just the nature of our abilities. But if it helps you to remember, think about it like this: earth’s gravity pulls everything in the air back toward the ground.”

“Everything that goes up must come down?” I was starting to grasp the big picture.

“Basically, yes.”

“So, air beats water,” I said, following the arrow leading from the clouds to a sketch of an ocean wave. “Because air evaporates moisture?”

He shrugged. “Not exactly because of that, but it works as a mnemonic device.”

“And water puts out fire?”

Murphy nodded as I tapped the image of roaring flames on the left side of the circle. “Xaphan is a fire djinni. That’s his element to control.”

“And you’re a water elemental.”

“A half-breed. My mother has the real power. With a little assistance, she can control him, or at least confine him. She helped put him in the box in the first place. Then into the pit, where he would still be if Devich hadn’t spent a fortune and several centuries finding him and digging him up.”

Several centuries? That meant that both the djinni and Devich were older than I was. By a lot. It had been a long time since I felt like the new kid on the playground. Fortunately—or maybe unfortunately—Murphy still made me feel like I ought to be walking with a cane.

For most Netherworld creatures, age was directly proportionate to power level, so the younger the monster, the easier he’d be to put back in his place. Wherever that was. “Just how old is this djinni?”

“Really old,” Murphy said, and my stomach clenched a little at his serious tone. “I’m talking prehistoric. My mother remembers Julius Caesar’s reign, and she says the djinnis were already ancient by then. As far as we know, the four we have contained are the only true djinnis there have ever been.”

“How is that possible? If there were only ever four, how has their lore spread all the way into sixties American sit-coms?”

“That’s a bit complicated,” Murphy said. “So, there are djinn mentioned in all kinds of ancient texts, including the Quran. Several ancient, pre-Islamic, pre-Christianity cultures recognized djinn as one of the mortal, sentient races, like humans, gremlins, goblins, and all the others. But those djinn, who lived and died in a vaguely human lifespan and had minor supernatural abilities, were actually descendants of the four original true djinn, stemming from their…interactions with humans, throughout the years. Just like the Greek gods were rumored to have spawned demi-gods with literally hundreds of humans.”

“So, the djinn most people are kinda familiar with are actually the part-human offspring and descendants of those four?”

Murphy nodded. “Or part goblin, part gremlin, part elemental. Part something. But not true djinn, like the original four, who’ve been around forever. Literally. In fact, that’s part of the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

He folded the top of the beef carton closed and dropped it into the bag. “Djinn aren’t actually evil. At least, by not by nature. Just like any species, they come with the full spectrum of moral inclinations. They’re just…well, bored. And spoiled. And what do bored, spoiled children do?”

“Cause trouble.” Even I knew that one.

“Exactly.” Murphy dropped a handful of empty sauce packets into the bag, followed by his chopsticks. “Take Aura, for example. She can control the air. Her name means ‘gentle wind,’ and that’s essentially what she is. She doesn’t set out to kill hundreds with two-mile wide tornadoes and straight wind speeds of over 120 miles per hour. She does it because it amuses her, when little else holds her attention anymore. But the result is no different than if she’d done it on purpose.”

I arched one brow at Murphy, letting my skepticism show. “I’ve never heard of a two-mile wide tornado, and I’m pretty sure the National Weather Service has never clocked 120 mile an hour straight winds.”

“That’s because Aura’s been locked away since long before the equipment existed to monitor or measure her little games.”

Oh. “So, Xaphan, what, sets bonfires to amuse himself?”

“Um, no. You know how every now and then you run across a kid who seems to have been born rotten? Not just mischievous, but truly malicious?”

I nodded. I’d run across several of those little bastards in my time.

“Well, Xaphan is like that. Times one million. He dabbles in large-scale destruction like Mozart dabbled in music. You ever hear of the Great Fire of London?”

“Yeah. Sixteen sixty-six, right? The flames took out more than thirteen thousand homes and a bunch of public buildings.”

“That’s the one.”

Horror settled into my stomach like bad meat, heavy and nauseating. I knew where his tale was headed… “Let me guess, that baker’s oven story was bullshit, right? Xaphan the fire djinn started it all?”

Murphy’s head bobbed. “And kept it going, devouring whatever caught his fancy. He also started the great fire of Rome, in 64 A.D. And the one that burned half of Constantinople near the beginning of the twelfth century. The Royal Library of Alexandria, though…. My mother said he did that one in a fit of anger. He didn’t like something written about him in one of the scrolls, so he torched the whole damn place.”

So, mad djinn equals flames, ashes, and mass destruction. Not good. Still…

“Okay, I understand that this Xaphan isn’t a guy we want running around Memphis unchecked. But let’s talk worst-case scenario. Say Devich does find him and let him out, for whatever mad-cap bad-guy scheme he has in mind. What’s the worst the djinn could do? Commercial buildings are made of concrete, steel, and glass now, and most houses have smoke detectors in every room and a fire department on speed dial. He’d pretty much be limited to forest fires today. Which would still be bad, but nothing we can’t handle, right?”

Murphy shook his head. “You don’t understand. Xaphan can burn anything he wants. Rock, metal, glass, even dirt. His isn’t a natural flame like we think of fire. It’s his own special brand of hell, and he sends it where he chooses.”

“Jesus,” I breathed, as chills overtook my entire body.

“Yeah. He thrives on chaos. On pain. On wreaking havoc. He could burn down the entire state of Tennessee in the blink of an eye if he thought it would make for a fun Saturday night. And considering that he’s been locked in a box for the past four hundred years, he’s probably gonna want one hell of a coming out party.”

I rubbed my forehead with my good hand, trying to wipe away exhaustion and an encroaching tension headache. But it did no good.

“You can’t let Devich find that box, Lex.” Murphy’s voice was at once pleading and commanding. “You don’t want to be responsible for that much death and destruction.”

“And I won’t be.” The only death and destruction I planned to be involved in was Troy Devich’s.

I pushed my chair back from the table and glanced at the bathroom, ready to shower, then sleep for a couple of hours. Murphy’s twenty-minute crash course in djinnis had been enough to make my head spin, and I’d need some rest before I’d be able to form a new plan. “Beat Devich to death” was a good starting place, but it lacked the panache of a truly skilled revenge plot.

Or any sense of realism, considering he could heal bullet wounds instantly.

“Don’t you want your fortune?” Murphy asked as I pulled shampoo and conditioner from my duffle.

“Sure.” He tossed me the last cookie and I caught it one-handed. I pulled open the cellophane wrapper and dumped the thin, crispy pastry onto my palm, then broke it open with a single quick snap. I dropped the edible part onto the nightstand and pulled the paper straight, ignoring the bolt of pain streaking through my bad arm.

You’ll soon find new excitement in life.

Yeah. Like I needed any more of that.

NINETEEN

It was just past midnight when I shut myself into the hotel bathroom and stripped carefully, moving my right arm as little as possible. The mirror provided my first real glimpse of the injury, and relief flooded me as I stared at it. The wound was raw and ugly, but minor and easy to examine, since Cale had cleaned it. The bullet had passed right through the edge of my triceps, taking out a chunk of flesh and ripping through muscle, but missing the bone entirely. It had already started to heal, and in a couple of days, my arm would be as good as new.

The rest of me, though…

My long, pale hair had dried plastered to my scalp, what little makeup I wore was now streaked across my face, and my hip and shoulder were bruised from dropping onto the floor of the plane when psycho-bitch shot me. And, of course, the handcuffs had raised a chafed ring of skin on each of my wrists.

I looked like an escaped convict.

For at least fifteen full minutes, I stood beneath the almost-scalding water without bothering to actually wash. My body temperature had crashed when the succubus-induced fever faded, and even with the hotel heat cranked up to seventy-five and my stomach full, I hadn’t truly thawed out. The cold, ceramic-tiled bathroom did little to help that.

Finally, once my teeth stopped chattering, I reached for the shampoo and squirted the usual half-dollar sized dollop on my right hand. Which was when I realized how much of a challenge a one-armed shower would truly be.

I couldn’t lift that hand over my head.

Well, shit.

Irritated beyond reason by such a stupid dilemma, I scraped the shampoo onto my other hand. In the two hundred years I’d been in this line of work, I’d only been shot three times—four, now—but never in the arm. I’d taken two bullets to my left leg—one in the thigh, one grazing my calf—and one to the gut. That gut shot was a real bitch. I couldn’t work for a week, and Lacey had to wait on me a lot. He’d even helped me shower in the beginning, displaying impressive professionalism. Apparently he really did think of me like a sister.

Unfortunately, Lacey was several hundred miles away, and I was not calling on Murphy for help. If and when he saw me naked—a distinct possibility, assuming we both lived through the week—I did not intend to be bruised, grimy, or in too much pain to participate in the festivities.

Sighing, I rubbed shampoo into my hair with my good hand, doing my best to gather it all on top of my head and lather it properly. But my efforts were pointless, even with my dominant hand functioning perfectly. Washing hair as long as mine was a two-handed job.

Frustrated, I accidentally knocked the shampoo bottle off its little shelf, and when I tried to catch it, I slipped and crashed to the bottom of the tub on my ass. The back of my head hit the faucet, and I slid to the end of the soapy surface, my legs splayed out to either side. Near-scalding water rained down on me. Pain shot through my injured arm.

Before I could push myself upright, the bathroom door flew open, bringing with it a chilly breeze. And Cale Murphy.

“Lex, you okay?” His shadow-silhouette appeared through the closed shower curtain.

“Yeah. Just slipped.”

“Need some help?”

Probably. “I’m fine, thanks.” Using the side of the tub for support, I pulled myself into an awkward sitting position. “Go back to…whatever you were doing.” No knight in shining armor needed here. The damsel in distress has it covered.

“Sure. As soon as you stand up, so I know you’re okay.”

“I’m fine. Just soaking in hot water to, um…make my arm feel better.”

He chuckled. “You’re soaking in the tub? With the shower on?”

“That’s how I do it,” I snapped, glaring at the broad outline he cast on the white vinyl. “Go away so I can finish my shower…bath.”

Murphy sighed. “You’re hurt. Let me help you.” The silhouette of his hand loomed larger as it came closer.

“You touch that curtain and I’ll rip your hand right off,” I snapped.

Another chuckle. “If you could stand up on your own, I might actually believe that.”

His shadow approached, and I pulled my knees up to my chest, hiding as much of myself as I could. When and if he saw me naked, I intended to be at my very best—composed, confident, and capable of standing under my own power.

His fingers curled around the edge of the cheap vinyl curtain and started to pull. I grabbed the hem and held it in place.

“Be reasonable, Lex,” he said, and I glanced up to find him staring down into my eyes from a gap in the curtain. Only my eyes. “I’m just trying to help you.”

I hated needing help.

But when he reached out for my good hand, I gave it to him, because huddling in the tub did not make me look strong or dignified. Heedless of the water soaking through his sleeve, Murphy pulled me easily to my feet.

I met his eyes boldly, daring him to look away first. To glance down and admit he was interested in more than just helping me to my feet.

His gaze stayed glued to mine. A tiny smile claimed the corners of his mouth. He recognized my challenge and seemed determined to meet it.

I stepped beneath the full flow of the shower, letting water pour over my bare form. Murphy’s chest rose and fell faster. His hand tightened around mine. His eyes closed, and he groaned in the back of his throat.

His forehead furrowed with the effort not to look.

“You’re getting all wet,” I said, surprised by the husky quality of my own voice.

Murphy glanced at his sleeve, damp from stray splashes. “So are you,” he growled. The heat in his eyes and the depth of his voice said he wasn’t talking about the shower.

He was not wrong.

His hand squeezed mine again, and his gaze trailed down from my face. It lingered, then lowered. Then lingered again.

He’d looked.

I’d won.

Satisfied, I dropped his hand and tilted my head back, rinsing shampoo from my hair and giving him the view in profile. My victory had made me bold, and I felt powerful, having retaken control of the moment. Inviting him to look on my terms.

Murphy stepped back and pulled his shirt over his head. My gaze tracked up one tan, bulging arm to his shoulder, then across his bare, heavily muscled chest. My pulse spiked, and I swallowed a whistle of appreciation. No sense looking too impressed. He might get a big…head.

His grin was all heat and sizzle, scorching me from the inside out. I couldn’t think straight with him looking at me like that. And he damn well knew it. “You look like you could use some help with that shampoo.”

Not exactly what I had in mind… “I can wash myself, thanks.”

“As evidenced by your near-fatal slip and fall.”

“Smartass.”

Murphy chuckled. His gaze smoldered as it traveled over my breasts and lingered on my hips. I should have told him to close the curtain and go away, but my mouth refused to form the words. I could practically feel his gaze on me, like sun-heated waves washing over my skin, and it felt wonderful.

His hands would feel even better; I knew it.

His cheek dimple flashed at me, and I felt my defenses wilt beneath the onslaught of promise and possibility. My willpower was no match for those brilliant blue eyes. Or my own imagination…

“I’ll be good, I promise,” he whispered, leaning in so that his breath brushed my cheek.

I had no doubt about that. He’d be very, very good. But getting involved with Murphy would distract me from the job at hand. It would mislead him, considering that I planned to abandon my corporeal form as soon as I was sure I wouldn’t just wind up right back here.

It might also be completely beyond my willpower to resist.

I sighed, well aware that I was almost certainly making a mistake. “I could use a little help washing my hair, but that’s it. And that’s only because I can’t lift my arm that high. Got it?”

“Yes ma’am.” His smile became a grin of anticipation, and I found myself returning it, indulging the fantasy playing through my head and ignoring common sense as it bobbed alone in a sea of fancy.

In an instant, Murphy had shed his jeans and a pair of black knit boxers. He stepped into the tub, and I moved back to make room for him. Plenty of room, because brushing against him would be more than I could bear with dignity. The first graze of his body against mine would trigger impulses I couldn’t hope to control. I’d probably tackle him, throwing us both to the floor of the tub beneath the spray of water, heedless of my injuries and my battered willpower.

My pride couldn’t take such a defeat. But if I let him initiate, I might walk away from our encounter with a little dignity still intact…

I faced him beneath the cascade, focusing on his eyes, determined not to look any farther down. “Is it too hot?” I meant the shower, of course. Really.

“No such thing.”

I felt my face flush even redder than the steam had no-doubt made it.

Murphy tugged the shampoo bottle from my grip. I hadn’t even realized I was still holding it.

“Turn around.”

“What?” My pulse raced.

“So I can wash your hair. That’s what you wanted, right? Or was there something else?” His eyes blazed, and my breath caught in my throat.

“No. Right. My hair.”

What the hell was wrong with me? I’d lost my virginity centuries years ago, and here I was acting like I’d never seen a naked man. But that may as well have been true, because I’d never seen this naked man. I’d never seen the way water poured down his chest, trailing across abs that couldn’t have been better defined if they’d been carved from marble. I’d never seen the way he seemed to take up the entire shower, and how not touching him was a struggle. An effort I wasn’t sure I really wanted to expend.

I turned away from him reluctantly, breathing deeply with my eyes closed as hot water beat on my chest and stomach. I’d never felt such simultaneous anticipation and dread of a single touch. If I were thinking clearly, I would’ve had to acknowledge that Cale Murphy was dangerous. That he was bad for my focus—which made him bad for my life expectancy.

But I wasn’t thinking clearly. I wasn’t thinking at all. I couldn’t. Especially once he touched me.

He gathered my hair gently but deliberately, piling it on top of my head with confidence and skill few men possess naturally. He’s done this before. No doubt about it.

His hand brushed my cheek, collecting a stray strand, and I exhaled as heat spread across my skin from the spot he’d touched. He massaged the shampoo into my hair methodically, starting at my hairline and working his way toward my neck. His hands were strong and confident, and with each touch, more tension drained from my shoulders. My injured arm fell slowly to hang at my side. His hands on my scalp felt so good I began to wonder why I’d tried to do it myself in the first place. And whether I ever would again.

When every inch of my scalp was clean and soapy, he gathered my hair in a lather-bound bun. His hand settled on my left shoulder, its weight warm, and wet, and delicious. I held my breath, knowing I should pull away, but not quite able to do it. Stepping out from under his touch would be like not drinking when I was thirsty. Not sleeping when I was tired. It would be denying myself something I needed to survive.

His breath swept my skin an instant before his lips touched my neck, just below my ear. My head tilted all on its own, giving him better access. “You said you’d be good,” I practically moaned.

“Is this not good?” His chin skimmed my shoulder as he spoke, beard stubble scratching me in exquisite contrast to the light caress of his lips.

And it was good—much better than a simple brush of lips should have been. It was an erotically charged preview. A promise of so much more to come.

I should have pushed him away and ordered him out of the bathroom. It was unprofessional to get involved with… With what? Murphy wasn’t my client. He wasn’t my employee. And he was no longer my target, since the client had put out a hit on me, effectively nullifying our agreement.

Suddenly the reasons not to get involved with Cale Murphy were no longer as clear as they’d been moments before.

Murphy’s hand slid slowly down my good arm, his touch gentle, yet eager. His arm curled around my waist, hand spread across the flat part of my lower stomach. He hesitated, as if unsure which direction to go from there. Then he pulled me close, and I felt him pressed against my back. All of him. His skin was hot against mine. His touch was urgent and all-encompassing, chasing all thought from my mind, leaving nothing but primal longing and erotic compulsion.

Strong fingers slid up my stomach and over my ribcage. My heart slammed against my sternum, and I realized I was breathing through my mouth. Panting, as if I couldn’t get oxygen fast enough. His lips found my earlobe, sucking greedily. My good arm arched behind me, searching for a handful of…anything Murphy. I found the back of his thigh and groped upward until the firm curve of his backside filled my palm.

I leaned into him, resting the back of my head against his shoulder. His fingers brushed the underside of my breast, and I closed my eyes as need flooded my body. His thumb rubbed my nipple. I gasped, not quite surprised to find it already hard. He lifted my breast, squeezing as his free hand curled around my hip, holding me against him, and that was all I could take.

I twisted around in his grip, and my mouth found his before my feet even found purchase on the bottom of the tub. His hands trailed over my back to cup my ass, squeezing. I pressed myself into him, and he moaned against my lips.

My good hand slid over his arm and across his chest, touching anything and everything I could reach. His skin was hot and slick beneath my hands, his muscles shifting with each movement. I couldn’t get enough of the feel of him.

Murphy gave my ass one final squeeze, then lifted me in both hands. I hugged him with my legs, throwing my head back as his mouth found my nipple. Shampoo suds slid down my arm. Warm, clear water ran over and between my breasts. Murphy lapped at it, licking a trail from one crest to the other.

His teeth scraped my nipple and I gasped, writhing against him, lost in blissful friction. My eyes closed as water poured over my face and down my neck. I felt each individual drop roll down my skin, triggering a series of carnal reactions—explosions, really—beneath the surface. My skin was hyper-sensitive, as if each point on my body was connected to a point on the inside. One particular point, in fact.

Murphy had done something to me. He’d flipped a switch somewhere in my brain, or maybe much lower down. My body was alive with sensation. Every feeling was magnified, every point of contact throbbing with anticipation. Each touch hummed its way through my body like a dart searching for the bull’s-eye. And they never missed.

Neither did Murphy.

He swung us to one side, and the shower rained on my good arm. My back hit the cold tile wall, and the temperature change shocked me. His mouth left my nipple, and I slid lower on the wall and along his torso. His lips crushed against mine almost desperately. Teeth nibbled my bottom lip. His tongue stroked into my mouth, and my good arm went around his neck, my fingers curling in his hair. His scent curled through me with each breath; he smelled like the air at sea, salty and fresh, and clean. And irresistibly masculine.

Murphy tucked my right arm carefully between our bodies, so I wouldn’t have to move it. His finger traced my skin from shoulder to elbow, leaving a hot, wet trail in its wake. I shuddered. Every place he touched me felt wonderful. I couldn’t get enough of him.

Desperate for more, I let go of his hair and grabbed his hand. I pressed it to my breast and squeezed. Lifted. Showed him what I wanted.

He groaned, and pressed me harder against the wall. He throbbed against my stomach. His thumb rubbed my nipple. His tongue trailed up my neck.

“Murphy—”

“Cale,” he corrected, whispering his name against my jaw, his chin stubble scraping my cheek. “If you’re going to talk while we do this, use my first name.”

“Cale.” I tried his name out, and it seemed to fit my tongue like his body fit against mine. As if it had always belonged there.

His hand gripped the back of my neck, tilting my mouth to meet his. Cale shifted against me. He lifted me higher, positioning himself between my legs. “Yes,” I murmured, my lips pressed to his neck, the hard tiles cold against my spine.

Hot water beat down on us both. His hand dropped between us, opening me. Testing. I clenched around his fingers instinctively, and he moaned into my ear, inarticulate syllables that managed to convey pleasure, need, and urgency, all rivaling my own.

My head thumped against the wall, my eyes shut tight. I needed him. All of him. Right then.

His fingers disappeared, and before I could object, I felt the tip of him against me. I held my breath in anticipation.

Cale lifted me one more time, positioning himself. He hesitated, and I opened my eyes to find him staring at me. He started to lower me into place, and I exhaled. It felt so right. So good. So long in coming.

So what if Devich wanted me dead, and I’d been shot by a psychotic succubus? Everything would be okay once Cale was inside me. Everything would be absolutely perf—

“Stop!” I shouted, drenched by a shock of sudden comprehension. Devastated by it.

Murphy groaned, but he set me on my feet, shower water pelting us both, a substitute for the tears of anger and aggravation I held back by sheer determination. “What’s wrong? Did I hurt your arm?”

“No. It’s fine.” Though I would have preferred that to what I suspected was really happening. I met his eyes and saw in them none of the dread I felt. His expression showed only eagerness and candid lust, neither of which I wanted to jeopardize. “I want this, Cale. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted any man in my entire life.” My very long life.

“Happy to oblige.” Grinning, he reached for me, but I stepped out of his grasp, shivering as a gust of cold air hit me from around the shower curtain.

“Wait.” I put one hand on his chest. His hard, exquisitely sculpted chest… “This feels great, don’t get me wrong. But it also feels like a compulsion. Like I don’t just want you. I actually need you.” The effort it took to resist touching him, even in that moment, was enormous. “So I have to know…is this really us? Or is it her?”

Confusion lined his forehead. “Her?”

“Lorelei. Is this because of her? A side effect of what she did? An aftershock, or delayed reaction, or something?”

Cale shook his head, clearly amused. “No. She can’t mess with you from beyond the grave, Lex.”

“She shouldn’t have been able to feed off of lust aimed at someone else either, but she did. If that’s possible, so is this.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“How the hell do you know that?” I stepped around him and back into the flow of hot water, running my good hand through my hair to make sure it was thoroughly rinsed.

He hooked one eyebrow at me. “I’m pretty familiar with Lorelei’s abilities.”

Irritated by the implication, I scowled. “So, you knew she could feed from me?”

He nodded. “I tried to warn you.” And so he had. Damn it. “It’s a special ability. Very rare. While most incubi and succubae can only work with lust aimed at them, Lori could enhance and feed from any physical attraction, regardless of the recipient. That’s why Devich recruited her.”

I shook my head in disgust. “You really know how to pick ‘em.”

Cale shrugged. “She wasn’t always like that. Devich warped her. She used to feed to survive, just like the rest of us. Taking no more than she needed. Only feeding with permission. But he taught her not just to feed from the lust, but to live for the kill.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. I didn’t give a shit what she used to be like or why she’d changed. All I cared about was that she’d blasted a hole through my arm and stripped me of my dignity. Made me grovel for Cale like a junkie begging for a fix. And now the very thought of her had drenched the flames of my desire like a bucket of ice water dumped on a lit match.

“Thanks for washing my hair,” I said, letting water pour over my face.

Cale’s expression darkened. “So, I’m dismissed now? Is that it?”

I sighed. “No, of course not. But talking about your psychotic ex doesn’t put me in the mood for anything sexier than exercising basic hygiene.” And maybe defiling the bitch’s corpse.

“Well, what does this put you in the mood for?” Cale’s hand snaked behind my head, and he leaned down to meet me. His mouth crushed against mine, and there was nothing gentle or hesitant about that kiss. He sucked at my lips, nibbling, teasing, demanding more. His mouth opened, pulling mine open too. His tongue explored, tasting, encouraging. And suddenly my lust came roaring back to life, scorching through every vein in my body.

When he pulled away, he wore a knowing, heated smile. I grinned like a fool. “How do you feel now?” he asked.

Hot. Wet. Aching. I couldn’t answer him with words. So I tossed my good arm around his neck and went back for a second helping. He lifted me, and I wrapped my legs around him. My back hit the wall again.

I panted, sucking in what air I could between feeding desperately at his mouth and clutching whatever parts of him I could reach. His hands kneaded my ass. His scent laced every breath I took. And he throbbed against my most sensitive parts with an inhuman warmth—a scorching, delicious heat I might have expected from a parasite, but hadn’t anticipated in a nymph. I was dying to feel that heat inside me, warming me from within.

Touching Cale was intoxicating. Exhilarating. It made me feel exactly like I had in the rain, in Devich’s downed plane—like I needed him. As if joining my body with his would make everything okay.

But that was ridiculous. What it would do was make us both happy, even if just for a few precious minutes.

“This is just about sex,” I panted into his ear, unsure which of us I was trying to convince. “Nothing more.”

“Fucking right.” His hands gripped my hips and lifted. Then he drove me down onto him, in one long, smooth stroke.

I cried out in wordless pleasure, writhing against him. He was so hot, so incredibly hot and hard, and I wanted nothing more than to hold him in place. And maybe grind into him. But Cale had other ideas.

He lifted me again and brought me back down. Then he did it again. And again. Each time my body slammed into his, sparks of pleasure shot through me. Exquisite jolts of carnal bliss, chasing each other up my spine and down my limbs. Humming in my very center. Building with an intense pressure.

I moaned and opened my eyes to find him watching me, his perfect lips pressed together in concentration. He lifted me again, and I squeezed my thighs around his hips to guide my descent. My legs clenched around his waist. My good arm went around his neck. I leaned forward, into him, licking my way up his neck to his ear, then down his jaw to his chin. He tasted so good. So incredibly warm, and salty, and fresh. My tongue flicked out, the tip nestling in his chin dimple. It fit perfectly. Somehow, I’d known it would.

I kissed him again, and as he pumped into me, pleasure built in a thick, hot wave, threatening to wash over me completely.

His eyes closed, and he thrust harder, slamming me into the wall over and over again. My back hit the tiles. His chest brushed my nipples. I groaned and hugged him closer, my bad arm trapped between us. He stiffened, and his pace became frenzied. My pleasure mounted, and I rocked faster against him.

Ecstasy broke over me, rolled through me in surge after surge. I screamed, then bit my lip to keep from waking the other hotel guests. Murphy pumped frantically, pinning me to the wall with his body, almost abandoning rhythm altogether in the quest for satisfaction.

At last, we were still, my legs wrapped around him, his forehead resting against mine. He breathed slowly, but I felt the frantic pace of his heart beating against my chest.

“Lex…”

“Nope. Not yet.” I shook my head slowly, and his forehead rolled against mine. “Can’t talk yet.”

He chuckled, throbbing one last time deep inside me. I gasped as aftershocks rolled through me, and I felt myself clench around him. He lifted me almost reluctantly and set me on the floor of the tub, still leaning against the tile at my side. Water rained over us both from the faucet overhead, but it was only lukewarm now. We’d drained the cheap motel’s hot water heater.

My cheek rested against his chest, and his breath brushed my damp forehead. “So, you like pasta?”

I glanced up at him, ignoring the droplets that sprayed my face. “Are you asking me out? Now?”

“Yeah.” He brushed wet, dark blond hair back from his face, grinning down at me. “What do you say?”

Frowning, I stepped to the back of the tub, wringing my hair out with my left hand, my right arm still held tight to my side. “We already discussed this.” In a manner of speaking. “That was just about sex.”

“Yes.” He nodded, that cocky grin lighting not just his face, but the entire dingy bathroom. “That was about sex. Damn good sex. But this is about me asking you to spend some time with me once we’ve secured the safety of the known world. Quality time—doing something other than groping in the shower or beating the shit out of strangers. Dinner, maybe? Or that concert?”

I should have said no. I should have told him the truth—that with him around, visions of frolicking naked in the rain drove work-related thoughts right out of my head. I needed to be in complete control of my faculties just to survive my day job, to say nothing of actually earning the money to keep myself in Twinkies and ammunition. I couldn’t afford to have Cale hanging around, throwing off my game.

But I didn’t say any of that. The memory of him inside me was too fresh for that much honesty. And anyway, there’d be plenty of time for the truth later, after we’d found the djinn and made Devich’s heirs very, very rich.

“If I say yes, will there be more of this?” I waved my hand back and forth between us to encompass the shower and what we’d just done.

Cale reached out for me. I let him pull me closer, and he smiled, planting a kiss on my nose. “All you can handle, of one variation or another.”

All I could handle? Evidently surviving a bullet wound hadn’t told him much about my stamina.

Water boy was in for one hell of a surprise…

TWENTY

Finally clean and dry from the dirtiest shower I’d ever taken, I lay on my good side on top of an ass-ugly green and yellow comforter on the bed I’d claimed for myself. Cale sat across the room at the cheap motel desk, working under the only lit lamp in the room. He’d turned the rest of them off so they wouldn’t keep me awake. Or maybe so I wouldn’t yell at him. Probably both.

I’d made him promise to wake me in two hours, because I couldn’t afford to sleep any longer than that, but neither could I afford to go without rest. Not if I wanted the hole in my arm to heal. The last thing I heard before I fell asleep was his soft, rhythmic breathing and the scratch of his pencil against paper as he took notes, or made calculations, or whatever he was doing in that same spiral notebook.

* * *

I woke to an unbearable itching in my right triceps—a sure sign that it was healing—and the sudden realization that the room around me was completely silent. And dark, but for the red glow of the alarm clock numbers, which told me I’d only slept for an hour and a half.

Something was wrong. I couldn’t hear Cale breathing.

I sat up on the bed, careful not to put any weight on my right arm, and turned on the nightstand lamp. Dim light illuminated the room—revealing that the gun and blade I’d left on the nightstand were gone.

As was Murphy.

Mother. Fucker.

I should have known I couldn’t trust anyone who’d date a fucking succubus. Or who was so unfailingly nice.

I had one still-damp boot on and the other half laced up when a quick glance around the room for my duffle instead revealed my nine-millimeter, deliberately and obviously arranged on the dresser. Next to the Ruger lay my blade, still sheathed.

Cale had taken them—probably just to prove he could—but left them where I’d be sure to find them before I panicked. Much.

My shoulder holster and ankle strap turned up in the top left drawer of the dresser. I immediately buckled them both into place, donning my weapons as quickly as possible to fight back the encroaching sense of unease that descended any time I woke up in an unfamiliar place. Or walked around unarmed for more than a minute and a half.

Weapons were my security blanket. In the most mature sense possible.

So what if I looked ridiculous with a gun strapped over a black sports bra and jogging pants? Better ridiculous than bleeding, right?

On the bathroom door, I found a white sticky note with the hotel’s logo printed across the top, above a hand-written message in neat, square writing.

Went out for breakfast. Be back in half an hour. We have more to talk about.

C

Okay, so Cale hadn’t absconded. He’d gone for more food.

It was possible I had trust issues.

At the bottom of the note was a ten-digit number, obviously to his cell phone. The Shelby County area code told me he lived in or around Memphis. Which meant we were practically neighbors.

Sleep-deprived and grumpy, I ripped the note from the door and dropped it into the bathroom trash on my way in. Two minutes later I emerged, my bladder relieved, my teeth brushed, and my mood unimproved. I grabbed the last Twinkie two-pack from my backpack and the television remote from the table, then settled into an armchair in the corner for a snack and glance at some scrolling news headlines. If the shit had hit the fan—meaning the downed plane with Lorelei’s body in it had been found—CNN would be reporting it every fifteen seconds for the next two weeks, thanks to Devich’s billionaire celebrity status.

Halfway through the second Twinkie and three minutes into the predictably dull news broadcast, I sat straight up as a sudden realization sent a tingle of irritation up my spine. Cale’s gun was gone. The Glock I’d shot Lorelei with and had refused to return to its owner. He hadn’t left it on the dresser with my other weapons.

Nice try, Murphy, I thought stuffing the remainder of the cake into my mouth. But there are no takebacks in a finders-keepers scenario.

Hell, there was a chance he hadn’t even taken it with him, considering how seldom he seemed to think about the gun even when he was wearing it.

“Zipped up and completely inaccessible in his jacket…” I mumbled as I snatched his backpack from the floor where he’d left it.

The only thing the damn bag didn’t contain was a gun. A quick glance through the contents revealed the most random assortment of shit, none of which he’d need on a hike through the woods except for his flashlight. That had come in handy. But the hardback book? Unless it was a wilderness survival guide, it was worthless as anything other than campfire fuel.

Curious, I lugged his bag onto the bed, noting that my right arm hardly hurt at all. I plopped down cross-legged on the rumpled bedspread and began pulling things from Cale’s backpack one by one, organizing them in a semicircle around me.

There was his green notebook, scuffed and bent around the edges. A North American atlas, the pages still crisp and pristine. And the book: a well-worn hardback copy of Demons Throughout History.

What the hell was that for?

Intrigued by Cale’s unexpected reading interests—and oddly fascinated by the jacket image of demons frolicking in lecherous abandon—I pulled the book into my lap.

Inside the front cover was a full-page color print of a drawing by Botticelli, which, according to the caption, was from Inferno, Canto XVIII. It showed Dante and Virgil touring hell in their brightly colored robes, while legions of the damned suffered below them. How cheerful.

No wonder Cale didn’t want a nap. He probably had nightmares.

Why the hell was he reading up on demons, anyway? Xaphan was a djinn, and Cale had said djinn were different from demons because they weren’t bound to hell. Maybe the similarities were numerous enough to warrant studying a brother-species? Or maybe there were no serious texts on djinn, and a book on demons was as close as he could get.

Flipping through the book, I found more full-color illustrations, including everything from Michelangelo’s Last Judgment to graphic novel images of the infamous lobster-red Hellboy. On every other page was a new image of death and damnation. Furry wolf-like creatures devoured sinners whole. Fra Angelico’s winged, horned monsters stabbed, hanged, disemboweled, beheaded, starved, cooked, and consumed the damned. Signorelli's deathly-blue demons tortured a knot of naked human sinners in every conceivable manner, arms, legs, and heads flailing about in chaos beneath a stone arch and a cheery, bright blue sky.

After several minutes of staring at the grisly, detailed illustrations, I lingered long enough to read bits of the text. It wasn’t pretty. For centuries, humans have blamed their vices on the temptation of Satan and his army of demons, but very few of those claims are actually true, based on what I’ve heard. There just aren’t enough demons to go around. Nonetheless, several hundred of those claims were documented in Demons Throughout History, in fantastically grotesque detail. I couldn’t help wondering how accurate the images and stories were. Not that I was in any hurry to find out for myself.

About halfway through the book, I found a white strip of paper pressed between two of the pages like a bookmark. It was a receipt from a Walmart in Cutler, Maine, detailing the purchase of a bottle of root beer, an atlas, a pair of sneakers, a pre-paid cell phone, and a spiral-bound notebook—probably the one I’d just pulled from his backpack.

The date on the receipt was the very day Devich’s plane went down. Which was two and a half days ago.

I stuck the receipt back between the pages—upside down and backward, just like I’d found it—and was about to close the book when an illustration on the right-hand page drew my eye. According to the caption, it was a woodcut done in the late fifteenth century by a man named Albrecht Dürer. I’d never heard of the artist, but the image itself was truly frightening and amazingly detailed. It showed four men on horses trampling several broken and dying people beneath their hooves. A winged angel flew overhead, and in one corner, the mouth of some huge beast stretched open, ready to chomp down on the man unfortunate enough to find himself between the creature’s long, sharp teeth.

Why did people insist on scaring themselves with imaginary monsters, when there were so many real ones out there perfectly willing to do the work for free?

In the caption below the image, the name of the woodcut had been highlighted in lit-class yellow. Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Huh. Wonder what that has to do with the scary fire djinn hell-bent on Earth’s destruction…

A quick scan of the opposite page gave me no clue, despite the single line highlighted halfway down, which read, “The fourth horse is generally considered to represent pestilence and to be ridden by Death.” Interesting stuff—creepy, but fascinating.

I was staring at a full-page black-and-white illustration of Signorelli’s The Reception of the Damned into Hell when my cell phone rang. Dropping the book on the comforter, I snatched my phone from the bedside table. The name on the screen put an instant frown on my face, but I answered anyway. “Hi, Evan.”

“Since when can you see wraiths?”

“Nice to talk to you too.”

“Cut the crap, Lex. I delivered your ghost, and you owe me an answer. When did you start seeing wraiths?”

“I don’t know.” Sighing, I plopped down on the bed and pulled Demons Throughout History back onto my lap, noting with relief that holding the phone at my ear barely bothered my bad arm. I was healing even faster than expected. “Since yesterday, I guess. Or maybe I’ve been seeing them all along and just didn’t realize it. The dead don’t look any different from the living, right?”

“Right. Except that they’re freakin’ transparent.” His sarcasm was sharp enough to etch glass.

“Either cuss, or don’t cuss, Evan.” I flipped another page in the book. “That half-ass shit just sounds stupid. And James Allen was not transparent. He was solid enough to stop a fucking train.” Stuck between the next two pages was a stapled packet of paper, folded in half, then stuck in the spine of the book.

“What the hell are you talking about? He was so old I could barely see him. I might not have even known he was there if you hadn’t told me where to look.”

“Sounds to me like you’re slipping.” I smiled at the angry sound he made in the back of his throat, while I pulled the folded papers from the book and opened them. It was a report or research document of some sort. At a glance, it looked about as interesting as watching Orthus lick himself. “Look, I told you what I saw—believe whatever you want.” I dropped the pages on top of the green notebook, my respect for Cale’s taste in entertainment dwindling by the second.

“That’s it? No explanation? No thank-you? No ‘how ya been, Evan?’ I drag my butt all the way to Nova Scotia in the middle of the night to do you a favor, and you won’t even tell me what’s going on?”

Okay, he wasn’t exactly out of line on that one. And I still hadn’t told him that my client was no longer picking up the bill for his flight… “You’re right. I’m sorry. Thank you. And how ya been?”

“Very funny.” Yet he sounded thoroughly un-amused. “One of these days I’m going to call in all the favors you owe me, and I’m only going to tell you half of what you need to know to get the job done.”

I was no longer listening. Several patches of yellow on the creased report had snared my attention. Cale—or someone—had highlighted two words on the first page. “Erra” and “Jarri.” Sounded like nonsense to me, but then so did pig Latin, so I was hardly qualified to judge.

Curious now, I flipped the first sheet over to find “Resheph” highlighted on the second page. And “Merihim” and “Pazuzu” on the third. In context, they read like names. And at the bottom of the third and last page, Cale had written the word “Dever” in that unmistakable square print. Unfortunately, there was no context to help clarify that one.

“Lex? I know you’re still there. I can hear you breathing.”

What? “Sorry. I’m— Hey Evan, have you ever heard the word ‘Merihim’?”

“Not that I remember. Why?”

“What about Pazuzu, or…” I flipped back to the second page. “…Resheph?”

“Yes!” His pitch rose in recognition. “Resheph was the Phoenician god of the underworld. Or maybe it was Egyptian. It’s been a while since my college mythology class. And Pazuzu?”

“Yeah.” I scanned the report as I listened.

“You should know that one. It’s the name of the demon that possessed that little girl in The Exorcist.”

“What?” That caught my attention, and a subconscious connection pounded on the surface of my conscious mind, trying to break through. “Pazuzu’s a demon?”

“Yeah. A minor demon no one gave much thought to until the movie came out. Why? What are you doing?”

Pulling Cale’s bag open again, I dug through the main compartment for a pen. “I’m not sure yet. What about Jarri, or Erra?”

“I don’t know Erra, but if memory serves, Jarri was one of the Hittite gods. The god of pestilence, I think.”

Two mythological gods and a demon. Hmmm. “Okay, just one more question, then I’ll leave you alone. What about Dever? What’s that?”

“Lex, what the hell are you doing?” In the background, a voice spoke over a loudspeaker, announcing a delayed flight. Evan was at the airport. “Why are you asking me about demons?”

“I’m still trying to figure the ‘whys’ out. So, Dever’s a demon?”

He sighed. “Yeah, but I don’t think he’s real. When I was a kid, my grandfather used to tell me these stories to scare me. Made my grandma really mad, but gramps would insist the stories were true. One was about this demon named Dever, who was so evil the guardians of hell couldn’t control him. So they exiled him to the surface.”

“And let me guess, if you weren’t good, Dever would come into your room while you slept and drag you kicking and screaming into the bowels of the underworld.”

Evan chuckled, but he sounded more unnerved than amused. “No, that’s the boogie man. Dever doesn’t care whether you’re good or bad. He spreads sickness and suffering to everyone he sees.”

When no pen materialized, I pushed the bag away. “No wonder your grandmother got mad. What kind of bedtime story scares the shit out of a little kid before turning him over to the sandman?”

Over the phone, I heard the fizz of a soda being opened, then Evan gulped into my ear. “It’s not a bedtime story. It’s a legend designed to scare the crap out of little kids before turning them over to the sandman. And it works. But that’s all it is: a legend.”

Let’s hope… I thought, setting the report aside.

“Why are you asking about all this, Lex? What are you doing? If you’re involved in some kind of demon business, you need to get uninvolved right now. You can’t win a fight with a demon.”

“Why not?” I had no plans to ever meet a demon, much less fight one. But being told I couldn’t beat one… well, that irked me.

“Because demons are immortal. You could shoot them until the end of the world, and nothing would come of it. Same goes with your knife.”

Immortal. Damn. “What about pain?” The ace up my sleeve. “Can they be wounded?” I found it hard to believe that they couldn’t. There are no true absolutes, including invulnerability.

And that statement about there being no true absolutes…

“Of course they can—but not by you. Legend says they can only be wounded by weapons indigenous to hell. Or by one of their own kind.”

Legend, huh? Legend also said Santa lives at the North Pole, but I’d been there twice and had yet to meet him. “Thanks for the advice, Evan, but I’ve never even seen a demon. They’re restricted to hell—” Except for Dever, apparently. “—and I have no plans to go there.”

“So, what’s with all the questions?”

“I’d tell you if I could. But I can’t. And you should thank me for that. You don’t want to get mixed up in this. Trust me.”

“Fine.” Silence settled onto the line, except for the airport background noise, then Evan exhaled heavily into my ear, as if he were about to say something he didn’t want to say. Or something I wouldn’t want to hear. “Don’t call me again, Lex. It makes Emily nervous.”

I made his fiancé nervous? At least I’d accomplished something useful… “Well, we certainly don’t want that. Poor thing might faint and call for smelling salts.”

“I’m serious, Lex. Don’t be a bitch.”

“Fine. I’m sorry I bothered you and the little woman. It won’t happen again.” I hesitated, my throat thick and sore with the effort to hold back everything I wanted to say, but definitely wouldn’t. “Thanks for helping.”

“You’re welcome.”

The phone clicked in my ear, and silence engulfed me, heavy and suffocating. For a minute, I sat still on the bed, doing and thinking nothing at all. Evan had every right to say what he’d said, and I couldn’t really blame him. I had been a terrible significant other—not really deserving of the title at all. And I was a bitch. I’d never denied that.

Still, hearing it stung.

But one minute of hurt feelings was more than any ex deserved. Back to business as usual. The hardbound book. And some kind of academic report about mythological gods and demons. What the hell was water boy up to?

Maybe the book had nothing to do with anything important. Maybe Cale just liked his literature on the dark side?

If so, he was welcome to it. I closed Demons Throughout History with a final-sounding thud and dropped it on the comforter, then I picked up the green notebook. I hadn’t seen enough of it earlier to tell me how close he was to finding Devich’s box. Maybe he’d pinpointed the location while I slept and had gone out for celebratory donuts.

Not quite daring to hope for both good news and junk food, I opened the notebook. The first page was blank. Completely empty. As were the second, third, fourth, and fifth. I flipped through the notebook, looking for anything but those same blue, college-ruled lines. I didn’t find the first trace of ink until more than a third of the way through the pages, and it wasn’t very helpful. He’d written—in that same neat, square print—a flight number, airport gate, and destination: Memphis. And a date: the day I’d freed his sister from the goblins and had first set eyes on Cale. He must have come straight from the airport to the factory. No wonder Daphne had hired me instead of relying on him.

He wasn’t home.

Halfway through the notebook, I found the sketch he’d shown me on the plane, but a close inspection of the drawing did little to elevate my mood. While the image itself showed some skill, regarding practical application, it was virtually worthless. Murphy’s “calculations” amounted to little more than a line sketched between a drawing of Oak Island and a stand of trees representing the patch of Maine woods. But he was trying. I had to give him that much.

Two pages later was the circle of arrows connecting the four elements. The rest of the notebook was empty. Completely, miserably blank.

Disappointed, I flipped it closed and dropped it on top of the demon book.

The Canadian section of Cale’s atlas contained area maps of each province, as well as insets of heavily populated areas. Nova Scotia’s page was all marked up, most noticeably with a bold, confident line drawn from Halifax into the Bay of Fundy at the edge of the page.

Unfortunately, that same line was scribbled out with red ink—the grade school version of white-out. Surrounding the scribbled line were a series of faint, irregular smears, and I laughed out loud when I realized what they were. Eraser marks. After messing up the first line, Cale had switched from pen to pencil. With good reason. I counted half a dozen other lines, all of which were erased with varying degrees of success.

Still smiling, I flipped through the atlas to the map of Maine, and sure enough, Cale’s pencil lines continued from the right side of the page, stretching across the Atlantic Ocean south of Penobscot Bay and into the nearby Maine woods. Also on the mainland, a red circle and a set of map coordinates—instead of an X—marked the spot. Or rather, the plane crash. Unfortunately, none of the lines, presumably originating in Halifax, ended within that red circle.

Cale was trying to trace the C130’s flight path from Halifax to the site of the crash, presumably to figure out where the box had landed, since it clearly hadn’t gone down with the plane. But he couldn’t get his lines to match up. Neither his math nor his equipment were up to the job.

A large part of the problem could be solved with a better map—one that showed both Maine and Nova Scotia on the same page.

Fortunately, I had just the thing.

I’d just started stuffing Cale’s things back into his bag when a scuffling from outside drew my attention. Someone was at the door.

I rolled over the comforter on my good arm, my heart slamming against my ribs. My knees hit the floor on the far side of the bed, and I drew my gun even as the impact echoed through my legs. My pulse raced in my throat. The door swung open. I peeked over the edge of the bed.

Cale appeared in the doorway, a plastic grocery bag dangling from one hand. He stepped inside, glancing around the room, and the door swung shut behind him, latching automatically. “Lex?”

I stood awkwardly, using my gun hand on the mattress for balance.

He grinned. “Why were you hiding behind the bed.”

“I wasn’t hiding. I was strategically positioned to defend our base of operations.” I held up the gun for emphasis.

His grin widened. “You look like you were playing hide and seek. Badly.”

“Fuck off. I could have shot you. Announce yourself next time.”

“This is my motel room.” His smile faded as his gaze found the backpack open on my bed. “And that’s my stuff. Why the hell are you going through my stuff?”

Guilt bobbed to the surface of my conscience like an un-weighted corpse floating to the top a lake. But I observed a strict no-regret policy, so I…changed the subject.

“What you should be asking is what the hell you’re doing with this stuff. Because you certainly aren’t going to find that box with a five-dollar atlas and a flashlight.”

Cale tossed the food onto the table and crossed the room in several angry strides. “These are my things.” He shoved his stuff into the backpack and zipped it up. “Keep your hands to yourself.”

That’s not what you said last night. But something told me he wouldn’t appreciate such my adolescent retort. So I went with, “You started it. If you’d left my shit alone, I wouldn’t have touched yours. I was looking for the Glock.”

“The Glock is mine, and it’s right here.” Cale pulled back one side of his down jacket to reveal the nine-millimeter in his shoulder holster.

“At least you have it within reach this time.”

“Obviously I should keep my bag within reach too.” He hauled the backpack off to “his” side of the room, where he dropped it on the floor behind the bed. “Uncover anything interesting?”

“I’m not sure.” I re-holstered my gun and headed for the table to see what was for breakfast. Which was really more of a middle-of-the-night snack, considering we were still a couple of hours from sunrise. “What’s with the book on demons? I thought we were looking for a djinni.”

“We are.” Cale was at my side in three steps, snatching the bag right out of my hands. “Fortunately, Xaphan can’t cause much trouble until someone lets him out—which will happen eventually, if we don’t find the box and remove the temptation.” He reached into the sack and pulled out two pint-sized cartons of orange juice, setting one on each side of the table. “But until then, we have a more pressing problem to deal with.”

A surge of adrenaline shot through me. “Demons? We’re dealing with demons?” So much for my leisure-reading theory.

“Devich.” He watched me carefully, like he was waiting for my reaction.

“We’re dealing with Devich? Or Devich is dealing with demons?”

Cale closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, clearly steeling himself for something. “Did you see the pages folded into Demons Throughout History?” he asked, meeting my gaze again.

This can’t be good. I ripped open the carton in front of me and sucked down half of the orange juice in one gulp, desperately wishing it were laced with vodka. “Yeah, I saw them.” Although I couldn’t help noticing that he hadn’t answered my question. “What is that, some kind of report?”

Cale pulled two paper-wrapped breakfast sandwiches from the bag, followed by a package of powdered donuts and a bag of beef jerky. He was starting to remind me of Mary Poppins with her bottomless carpet bag. “As a matter of fact. It’s a college term paper I found online.”

Arching one brow at him, I reached for the donuts. “Can’t handle your own homework?”

“Laugh if you want, but it’s a nice succinct chunk of information. Those theology students really know what they’re talking about.”

Surely a rarely spoken sentiment.

“So, what do a bunch of demons and mythological gods have to do with an evil billionaire and a missing djinni?”

He unwrapped around a sausage-and-cheese biscuit. “How much of the paper did you read?”

“I only had time to scan it. But I know that Resheph was the Phoenician god of the underworld, and Jarri was the Hittite god of pestilence,” I said, hoping fervently that I’d remembered it all right. “And wasn’t Pazuzu the demon who possessed that kid in The Exorcist?”

Cale looked so impressed that I almost felt guilty for taking credit for information Evan had given me. Maybe if the prick hadn’t hung up on me, I’d have attributed my knowledge to the proper source.

Then again, maybe not.

“Right, but there’s more to it than that.” Leaning to one side in his chair, Cale pulled open the door to the motel microwave, which sat on a shelf next to the table, and tossed the sandwich inside, still in its open wrapper. “Resheph was also known as the god of plague and pestilence…”

“Like Jarri.”

“Exactly.” Cale set the microwave for thirty seconds, and it hummed to life, the sandwich inside rotating slowly. “And Pazuzu was a demon of the hot south-east wind, which was supposed to carry disease with it. Erra and Merihim each had similar traits.”

“I’m seeing a pattern here.”

“Good.” He tore open his own box of juice. “Those mythological gods weren’t gods at all.”

“They were demons,” I said, lifting my own carton for another sip.

Cale nodded, clearly pleased that I’d caught on. The microwave beeped, and he dragged his steaming sandwich out by one cellophane corner.

“But you said demons are confined to hell, so how can they be out there tempting and torturing the masses?”

“Unfortunately, every rule has an exception or two, and that’s what we’re dealing with here.”

So, the story about Dever was true. Did Cale’s list of related demons mean there was more than one walking around unchecked in the human world?

“Well, isn’t that just fucking fantastic?” I snapped, and not even the box of Twinkies he pulled from the plastic sack was enough to appease me. After all, what was a little enriched flour, corn syrup, and polysorbate 60 compared to an army of Satan’s minions? “In the future, I’d like to be advised of all relevant exceptions up front, if that’s not too much to ask.”

Cale gave me a sheepish look. “I was working up to it. I hated to hit you with it all at once.”

Not surprising, considering he had yet to actually “hit” me with the pertinent information. “So, how’s Devich involved in all this demon business?” I ripped the open-strip from the box of Twinkies. Cale started to answer, but I cut him off, snatching a cream-filled cake from the top of the stack. “Wait, let me guess. Devich’s trying to summon these demons to help him get his hands on the djinni. Am I close?”

He shook his head, without even a hint of a smile. “Devich doesn’t need to summon a demon, Lex.”

I stared into Cale’s eyes, unnerved by the gravity I found in them.

Oh, fuck.

Understanding hit me hard and fast, and I leaned back in my chair. “He’s one of them, isn’t he?” The still-wrapped Twinkie fell from my hand to land on the table. “Devich is one of the demons in that fucking paper.”

“He’s not just one of them.” Cale pushed his breakfast away, as if he’d suddenly lost his appetite. “He’s all of them.”

TWENTY-ONE

I didn’t take the news that Devich was a demon very gracefully. Or very quietly. If there were people staying in the rooms on either side of ours, they were awake now, pulled from an ignorantly peaceful human slumber by my foul tirade and heavy stomping. “That evil, lying, hit-ordering, animal-torturing, baby-murdering son of a bitch. I’m gonna rip his horns off and shove them straight up his demonic a—” I paused in mid pace, whirling around to face Cale. “Does Devich have horns?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “He calls himself Dever when he’s not pretending to be human. And I don’t know. I’ve never seen his demonic form. But horns are possible. So are wings and hoofed feet.”

“I bet he does have horns.” I was pacing again, stomping from one end of the room to the other, the Twinkie in my hand squeezed into a sticky handful of cake and cream. “And his wings are probably all gross and scaly. I’m gonna tear them off one at a time and shove the damn things right down his throat. The world has never seen the kind of Picasso cubist motherfucker I’m going to make out of that infernal bastard.”

“Lex?”

“What?” I stopped near the far bed and turned to Cale.

“We have to catch up with him first. And before we can do that, we have to find the box.”

“You said Devich was more important than the djinni.”

“I said he’s the more immediate problem. Because he’s roaming free. But if we don’t find Xaphan before someone else does, he’ll be free too, and then we’re screwed. We’re all screwed.”

“Wonderful.” I licked a chunk of squished Twinkie from the mass oozing between my fingers, then spoke with my mouth full. “So, ‘et’s find the ‘amn ‘ox.”

“Easier said than done. I’ve been working on that for two days and have only managed to wear an entire eraser down to a stub.”

“Yeah, but you’re ill-quipped and untrained. I’m neither.

He frowned. “What, like you’re an expert?”

“Actually, yes. This is what I do. For a living, so to speak. Bring me what you have so far.”

Cale dug the atlas from his bag while I licked the last of the Twinkie cream from my fingers and warmed up a Canadian bacon-n-egg biscuit. “Here.” He dropped the atlas on the table and sat across from me, running one hand through golden blond hair as I flipped through the pages. No sense letting him know I’d already snooped through all his stuff.

He frowned, sausage biscuit in hand. “I was working on the Nova Scotia and Maine pages, but there isn’t much to go on. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure how I got in this position in the first place. I swear I dropped the damn box into the ocean. That should have taken care of Xaphan once and for all.”

I glanced up from the map. “Why would you drop him in the ocean?”

The microwave dinged, and he retrieved my sandwich, sliding it across the table toward me, still in the paper. “He’s a fire djinni. Surrounding him with that much water should leave him completely powerless. The plan was to drop him into the sound in mid-flight, then jump in after him. Some of my mother’s friends would haul the sarcophagus out to sea. Deep sea. The djinni disappears right out from under Devich’s nose, and I get away free and clear. Still on the payroll, in fact. If it had worked.”

“Your mother was in on the plan?” I was fascinated by a family dynamic unlike anything I’d ever personally experienced.

“It was her idea. She and the other elemental elders are trying to keep Devich from undoing what it took them thousands of years to accomplish.”

“And you’re helping.” I took a bite of my biscuit, chewing as he spoke.

“I’m trying to. I was supposed to keep him from digging the box up for as long as possible, which is why I took a job with his crew in the first place: to sabotage the project. I broke pumps, cut lines, weakened chains, and even got one of the mechanics fired. But eventually I started to look incompetent. I couldn’t afford to get fired and lose access to the pit, so I had to quit messing things up.”

“At which point they reached the sarcophagus,” I guessed, speaking around another bite.

“Right. When I couldn’t stop them from pulling the box up, I was supposed to keep Devich from actually getting his hands on it. So far so good on that one.” He shrugged sheepishly. “Except now I can’t find it either.”

“Okay, so you snuck on board the helicopter, then the plane. Then you threw the box off the back of the C130 and into the ocean. In the middle of the night. In mid-flight.”

He frowned, chin dimple deepening. “Well, that was the plan. But it didn’t go like we’d hoped.”

I drained the last gulp from my juice carton. “What happened?”

“When I lowered the ramp, I must have triggered an alarm or something in the cockpit. The co-pilot opened the door just as I was un-strapping the crate. He…um…tried to throw me out the back of the plane.”

“The bastard.”

Cale grinned. “He rushed me, and we fought. The copilot kept yelling to the pilot for help. Fortunately, my mother’s people had a bitch of a storm going, and the pilot was afraid to leave the cockpit. He must have altered his heading though, because the plane crashed too far inland for the route they had planned.”

“Mm hm,” I mumbled around another bite, and Cale continued. “The copilot put up a hell of a struggle, but humans can only move so fast. I grabbed a wrench from the nearest toolbox and knocked him out cold. The pilot was still shouting, sounding pretty damned panicked. I knew I had to toss the box before he turned on the autopilot and came after me.

“I finished un-strapping the crate, then checked to make sure we were still over water—and we were. So I rolled the box down that wheeled track in the floor and shoved it down the open ramp. I was about to jump out after it when the ramp started closing, right in front of me. I turned around, and there’s the pilot standing in the cockpit doorway, a gun in one hand and the ramp control lever in the other. He fired, and I ducked.” Cale shrugged, regret softening his features. “I had to shoot him. It was either him or me.”

“I know,” I said, because he looked conflicted about his decision. In my experience, listening to your conscience in life and death situations is tantamount to swallowing your own gun. Fortunately, he’d listened to his survival instinct instead. “What happened then?”

“The pilot went down, and I threw the ramp lever on my end of the plane. Then I jumped out. I hit the water, but the box never did.”

Frowning, I wadded the empty cellophane wrapper into a tight ball. “How can you possibly know that? Even a ten second delay between the time the box went overboard and the time you did could result in a half-mile mile difference between the two landing points. And your delay was probably several times that. Chances are the box did hit the water somewhere.”

Cale shook his head, completely devoid of doubt. “Nope. It never hit. The Nereids know everything that happens in their section of the ocean, and there were several dozen of them there that night. That crate never landed in the sound. It hit solid land somewhere.”

I shrugged. “If that’s true, there’s no point in looking for it. The impact would have shattered it into a million tiny shards of wood and stone, and there’s no possible way to put Humpty back together again after that kind of damage.”

He grinned, evidently amused by my naiveté. I hadn’t gotten that look in several decades, at least. “I’m sure that’s exactly what happened to the crate. But wherever the box is, it’s whole and still functioning. If it were broken and the djinni loose, we’d know it. Trust me. Xaphan likes to announce his presence.”

“Wonderful.”

“Exactly. I have to find the box before Devich does.”

“Fortunately, I think I can help with that,” I announced, pushing my chair back. And again, I noticed that my arm hurt less and less with each passing hour. It was healing extraordinarily quickly, even for me. The nap must have helped after all. Or maybe it was the food.

Cale’s gaze tracked my progress as I crossed the room toward my backpack, where I’d dropped it next to the bed. “Is this the part where I’m ill-equipped and under-trained, and you’re not?”

“Yup.”

He grinned, leaning back in his chair. “All right, work your magic.”

“It isn’t magic, unfortunately.” I plopped down on the bed and bent to unzip my bag. “Just lots of practice, good connections, and all the right toys.” Reaching into an inside zipper pocket, I pulled out the disk Devich had given me, holding it up for Cale’s inspection.

“What’s that?”

“Information from the plane’s flight data recorder.”

“The black box?” He sat up straighter, brows furrowing.

“Yeah. But it’s not actually black. They’re day-glow orange, to make them easy to find among the wreckage.” I set the disk on the bed and pulled my rugged travel laptop from the bag. The extra three pounds had seemed like a real pain in the ass during my hike through the Main woodlands, but now I was glad I’d brought it.

I carted the computer and disk over to the table, where I turned the former on and inserted the latter. By the time Cale dragged his chair over to my side of the table, the information had loaded. “You seem like you know what you’re doing,” he said, leaning forward for a good look at the screen.

“I’ve actually only done this once before.”

“Tracked down a crashed plane looking for a stolen artifact? How very Lara Croft of you.”

I laughed. “Not exactly. I was hired to find a man who crashed a private jet in Africa. His wife was convinced he’d faked his own death. She was right. He did it to get away from her.”

“Damn.” Cale pulled the plastic sack from the middle of the table and dug around inside. Apparently the bottomless grocery bag still wasn’t empty.

“Yeah. When I found him, he offered me twice what she was paying me to pretend I’d never found him.”

“Did you take it?”

“Hell yeah, and I kept the non-refundable portion of what she’d paid me,” I said, accepting the can of Coke he handed me. It was still cold. “Okay, here we go.” The screen in front of me was divided horizontally into two sections. The top two-thirds showed a photorealistic still-shot of an airplane in flight over the ocean. The bottom third displayed a series of airplane instrument gauges and readouts.

“What is this?”

“It’s a plane crash simulation, based on the information in the flight data recorder. This is what they use to investigate plane crashes. Once it’s compiled, it works just like watching a movie.”

“Devich gave it to you?”

I popped the top on my Coke. “Yeah. Back when he was planning to pay me, rather than kill me. I’m betting he regrets sharing information with me now.”

“I’m sure. So how does this work?”

“The box records on a one-hour loop, but you were only in the air for, what, twenty minutes?” Cale nodded, and I continued. “So, we should have the entire flight available, though we’ll only need the last few minutes.” Sipping from my soda, I clicked play, then clicked the fast forward icon three times, for optimum speed. On the screen, the digital C130 seemed to float in place, and I couldn’t tell that it was moving until small islands began flying by comically fast in the water below. In seconds, the shore came into view, and the plane began heaving and bobbing erratically as it moved toward the mainland. Seconds later, it dipped drastically to sheer the tops from a strip of trees before finally crashing into the earth.

I clicked stop, then tapped the rewind icon once. On-screen, the plane flew backward across the trees, which slowly rebuilt themselves. In the air again, still over the water, Devich’s plane began pitching back and forth. When it evened out, I clicked pause and turned to face Cale. “There.” I tapped the screen. “The plane’s getting tossed around like Dorothy in the damned tornado. Were you still on board when that happened?”

His face brightened. “Yeah! Right after I pushed the box over, the plane started dipping and heaving. I think part of it was the storm, and part of it was the pilot over-correcting for turbulence. Either way, it knocked me right off my feet. Twice. By the time I made it back to the rear of the plane, the pilot had already hit the switch to raise the ramp.”

“Good.” I glanced at the screen, where the plane’s current coordinates were displayed in a box in the bottom corner. “That’s where you were right after you pushed the box off. Let’s see if we can find the exact moment. It’s a long shot, but we may get lucky.”

I clicked rewind again, but only once, to keep the reverse action slow. On screen, the plane flew backward again as we watched, our cheeks practically brushing, our noses inches from the screen. “Look!” I clicked the cursor, watching as what I’d seen played again in real-time. “Did you see the plane bob?”

“Yeah, just barely. What was that?”

“I think that was you pushing the box out the back. How much would you say it weighed?”

“Several thousand pounds, at least. If not for that wheeled track, I couldn’t have budged it.”

“That might actually do it. The shift in weight made the plane bob just a little. The pilot probably adjusted for it at the controls. Then, a couple of seconds later, the plane starts pitching with turbulence. Is that how you remember it?”

He nodded, brilliant blue eyes wide as he stared at the screen.

“I need a pen, some paper, and a map,” I said, pushing my chair away from the table. Cale dug through his backpack while I pulled a thick, folded bundle from my inner coat pocket, where it lay thrown over the back of the armchair in the corner.

“Here.” He handed me his convenience store atlas, along with the green notebook and red pen.

I took the notebook and pen, but only glanced in contempt at the atlas. “What, you couldn’t find a treasure map in your breakfast cereal box?”

“What?” He frowned.

“You couldn’t get your lines to match up because your map’s a piece of shit. You need to be able to see both Maine and Nova Scotia on the same page.”

“You looked at my atlas?”

I shrugged. “When I’m stuck on a problem, I use every tool to at my disposal to work it out.” And I sure as hell wasn’t going to apologize for that. “Fortunately for us both, I have much better tools than you do.” I held up the folded packet I’d pulled from my coat.

“What’s that?”

“It’s an aeronautical chart. I found it in a pocket on the pilot’s chair when I was in the cockpit.”

Cale’s expression froze half-way between a smile and a frown, as if he wasn’t sure whether to kiss me or yell at me. “Good thinking,” he said finally, as the smile won out.

“Jot down the coordinates for me while I spread this out.”

He arched one brow at me. “What’s the magic word?”

“Now?” I guessed, not the least bit surprised when he shook his head. “Fine, I’ll do it myself.” I snatched the notebook and pen from his hand and took down the on-screen coordinates while he spread the chart out on the dingy brown commercial carpet. The map took up a good bit of the available floor space, but it contained just what we needed: a detailed, two-dimensional view of the Maine coastline, all the way north into Canada.

We knelt on the floor together and I traced the longitude while he followed the latitude, until our fingers met. Then, because I didn’t trust his navigational skills after what I’d seen in his atlas, I double checked his. He was right, and it was a damn good thing, because he was already circling the point on the map in red ink.

“Use a pencil,” I said, fighting to unclench my jaw. “Everyone makes mistakes.” And some people make them compulsively…

He ignored me with impenetrable good humor, tapping the red ring on the map. “This is where the box fell?”

I knelt next to him, and our thighs touched, his body heat radiating through both layers of denim to warm me more than should have been possible. And damn, he smelled good. I blinked, clearing my head. “No, this is where you pushed it out.” I grabbed the notebook and pen from him and scratched out some quick calculations on the back cover.

“Okay, according to the flight data recorder, you guys were traveling at 500 feet—probably to stay below FCC radar—at 200 mph, so that’s…” I closed my eyes, watching numbers trek across the backs of my eyelids. “About two hundred ninety feet per second. S equals one half GT squared,” I mumbled, still scribbling as Cale squinted at my figures. “So, five hundred equals 16T squared. T equals 5.6. Times two hundred ninety-three equals 1,640 feet. That’s almost third of a mile.”

“What does all that mean?” Cale asked, when I finally smiled up at him.

“The box fell for about five and a half seconds, and momentum would have moved it west by as much as a third of a mile. Once we allow for drag and wind resistance, if you’re sure it didn’t hit the water…” I bent back over the map, staring at the circle surrounding the box-drop coordinates. “The only place it could possibly have landed is…here.” Using the red pen, I circled a small, vaguely L-shaped island just east of Casco Bay. “Seguin Island. It’s there. It has to be.”

“Are you sure?” Cale asked, peering at the tiny curve of land.

“No, of course I’m not sure. I won’t be sure until I actually see the box. But this is the best we have to go on, for now. You ready to go?”

“Give me five minutes.”

While he used the restroom and brushed his teeth, I devoured another couple of Twinkies and used the hotel’s free Wi-Fi to find out what there was to know about Seguin Island. “If this were June, we’d be royally fucked,” I called out to Cale.

“Why?” he asked from the bathroom, over the sound of running tap water.

“Fortunately, no one lives on Seguin Island, but the old lighthouse is a big tourist attraction on some historical society’s list. They’re busy during the summer. No one should be there this time of year, though. Even the caretaker moves inland for the winter.”

“Perfect.”

I was tempted to agree, but afraid to jinx us by acknowledging an apparent bit of good fortune. “We’ll see,” I said instead, taking a screen shot of the road map on the historical society’s website.

TWENTY-TWO

After a quick weapons check and a trip to the restroom, I donned my poor, shot-up coat, shrugged into my backpack, and headed out the door, with Cale on my heels. We’d driven less than a mile before I thought, for the first of many times, how much faster I could have gotten us there in Rusty. After fifteen minutes of annoying near-silence, I leaned into the back seat and pulled the demon book from Cale’s bag.

“You mind if I familiarize myself with our adversary?” I asked, settling back into my seat.

“Be my guest. But you won’t find much about Devich in there, except for the parts I highlighted,” he said, staring at the mercifully snow-free roads. “He’s a minor demon, thank goodness, and not of much interest to most humans who study the Netherworld.”

“That must be a small group of scholars.”

“Yes, actually. And most of those don’t even believe what they read. They study demons—and the rest of the Netherworld—as mythology. Stories made up centuries ago to explain the unexplainable.”

“Well, if the shoe fits…” I said, scanning a page of text about a demon blamed for fathering a rash of bastard children in an eighteenth-century colonial town.

“I guess so.”

I flipped another page in the book and could only stare, fascinated, at the image of death and destruction a particularly nasty-looking demon was unleashing upon a helpless mass of humans. No wonder demons were confined to hell. Except for Dever, apparently…

“Wait. The story I heard is that Dever is so evil they couldn’t keep him in hell, so he was exiled to our world. That doesn’t sound like a minor demon.”

Cale snorted. “No, that sounds like a story intended to scare children.”

“That’s what I said!”

“The truth is that Dever is too minor a demon for anyone from hell to bother chasing after. But a minor demon on the loose is still a major problem for those of us in this world. It’s an issue of scale. Kind of like how a few raindrops won’t drown a human, but they can flood an ant hill.”

“Dever being the raindrops on our ant hill?”

“Exactly. He’s more than this world can handle.”

“Okay, except that he hasn’t been, historically. Right?” I twisted in my seat to face Cale. “He’s been here for thousands of years, yet we’re all fine, and he’s been playing billionaire philanthropist. Why would a demon bother blending in with humanity at all? Why not gouge a bloody path across the globe, if that’s what they get off on?” I held the image up for him to see.

Cale flinched in the glare of the passing streetlights and turned his focus immediately back toward the road. “He would if he could; you can bet on that. But about four hundred years ago, he was relieved of his most dangerous ability by a gathering of the most powerful Netherworlders around at the time. It was the last major inter-species effort in history. Unfortunately, because Dever is a demon, they couldn’t actually hurt him—”

“Because they weren’t indigenous to hell?” I asked, thinking back to my call from Evan.

“Right. How did you know that?”

“I’ve got sources...” I waved one hand for him to continue. “Go on.”

“So, they had to settle for stripping him of most of his power. A magical neutering, of sorts. He can still wreak minor havoc on occasion, but it’s the supernatural equivalent of a quickie. His days of full-scale debauchery are long gone. Unless he gets his hands on that sarcophagus.”

“Why? What does he want with the djinni?”

Cale glance away from the road long enough to get a glimpse of my expression, as if he weren’t sure whether or not to take me seriously. “He wants the same thing everyone wants from a djinni: a wish. He wants his power back.”

I laughed, sure he was joking, but Cale just kept driving. And the punch line never came. “Wait, you’re serious? Xaphan can really grant three wishes, just like Robin Williams?” That was absurd. Entirely too ridiculous to believe.

“Well, he certainly could do that. But he almost definitely won’t. As payment for freeing him, the djinni owes one wish to whoever lets him out, and unfortunately, there are no restrictions on that wish, other than that you can’t wish for more wishes. Well, you can, but you’d just be wasting your breath, as well as your wish. You only get one.”

I waved off his long-winded explanation. “But you can get whatever you want?” I was mortified to hear the thread of desperation tainting my voice. And to know that he’d recognize it too.

I wish I could say I wasn’t thinking about freeing the djinni myself, but…well, I was. Since the day I’d died, I’d only ever wanted one thing. One. A single wish from Xaphan could mean the end of my eternity on earth. I could move on. Find out what came next.

And it’s not like I’d be the only one to benefit from my wish. If I freed Xaphan, I’d not only be doing both the djinni and myself a favor, I’d be keeping the wish out of Devich’s hands—which was saving the world from certain doom. That’s better than charity. It’s like a good deed on steroids. I’d have a good-karma surplus. Karma would fucking owe me.

The way I saw it, the wish would make us even, me and the still-intact world. After all, what was one measly little wish in exchange for not being at the mercy of an evil, no-longer-impotent demon?

Cale glanced quickly from the road to me, then back again several times, his forehead drawn into an anxious frown. “I know what you’re thinking, and you can’t do it, Lex. You can’t let Xaphan out.”

Oh, yes, I could. “I’ll help you lock him back up. We can get your mom’s people all assembled before I open the box, and they can snatch him as soon as I get my wish.”

I hated the words, even before they left my mouth. But I said them anyway. We were still nearly seventy miles from the damn box, and already I understood its allure. Suddenly I could truly appreciate what the men on Devich’s crew went through when they pulled the sarcophagus up. And even before. Their desperation must have felt something like this.

No wonder people had been digging in that hole for decades, with no real reason to believe they’d ever find anything buried in it.

For the first time in more than two centuries, I could practically see an end to my internment on earth. I could feel the next life calling me, and it felt like home. Like my heart was already there, waiting for my body and my soul to catch up.

If the djinni could make that happen, I’d do whatever it took to secure the wish for myself. I deserved that much after what I’d lived through. At the very least.

“I don’t think you understand.” Cale flicked on his right blinker and stepped on the brake, swerving us onto the shoulder of the road. I grabbed the armrest and anchored my feet against the floorboard, but he didn’t seem to notice. “If you let him out, he’s free. Free. To do whatever he wants.”

I shrugged, trying to figure out why that was such a big deal. “So, catch him again. You guys did it before, you can do it one more time. I said I’d help.” Assuming I hadn’t already moved on.

“And if we can’t? You have no idea what a Herculean effort that was the first time. I don’t either, really. I wasn’t even alive yet. But I know there’s no guarantee we can do it again.”

He shifted into park and closed his eyes, clearly trying to decide how best to make me understand the root of the problem. Finally, he twisted in his seat to face me, his gaze imploring in the glare of the streetlight shining through the windshield. “Okay, hear me out, Lex. You owe me that much.”

“Djinn are dangerous for two reasons, not just the obvious. On his own, Xaphan can torch anything and anyone he wants—forever and ever without end, no food or rest breaks required. But that’s it. Just fire. That’s all he can do.

“However, if he’s granting a wish, a djinni’s powers have no restrictions. He doesn’t just set bonfires for whoever lets him out. He can give them whatever they want. Anything. No limitations apply.”

“We’ve already established this,” I said, waving him on. “If you rub his lamp—figuratively, of course—you can wish for anything. Any one thing.”

“Yes, now take that a step further.” Cale’s blue eyes burned with the zeal of obsession, and I fought the urge to pull away from him. “He’s obligated to grant one wish to whomever breaks him out of jail, but once that debt’s paid, he can grant whatever he wants, to whomever he wants. He’ll only give you one wish because whatever you want won’t interest him. But—”

“Wait, how can you possibly know that?” I demanded, oddly offended by his assumption, though that wasn’t even in the same galaxy as his point. “You have no idea what I want. It could be scandalously interesting.”

His mouth quirked. “It’s not. Not to Xaphan. Not unless you’re planning to wish for the death or mutilation of millions. And you aren’t. You don’t have that in you.” I frowned, and a cocky grin snuck past his stern expression. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

I could only shake my head.

“That’s what I thought. So, he’ll grant your one wish. Wealth, or fame, or beauty, though take my word for it; you don’t need any more of that…” He paused, as if I should have been flattered out of my womanly senses.

I didn’t even blink.

Unflustered, Cale continued. “He’ll grant your wish, then he’ll move on to someone else. Someone he’ll choose, after wandering around in search of the most perverted, psychotic, sadistic son of a bitch out there. And that’s the bastard who will get unlimited wishes. At least until Xaphan gets tired of him. But until then, he’ll give the psycho du jour whatever he wants, consequences be damned. You’ve heard of Caligula? Vlad the Impaler? Nero? Attila the Hun?”

“Of course.” I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess, they were all buddies of the djinni.”

He nodded. “As long as they amused Xaphan, he granted them wish after wish. Glory. Power. Wealth. Victory. It was endless, and the world paid the price. If you let him out, it’ll happen all over again, this time in a society with access to countless weapons of mass destruction.”

Nukes. Oh, fuck. My hands clenched around the demon text, my pulse racing. And finally, I started to understand his point.

“So decide right now: is it worth it? A few million in the bank, or your face on the cover of a magazine, or whatever trivial thing you think you want—is worth it?” He stared straight into my eyes with the single most intense, imploring look I’d ever seen, and all I could think was that he didn’t know a damn thing about me. Not a fucking thing.

Millions of dollars? What good would that do me? No fortune would last an eternity, which was what I was facing without that wish. My face in the public eye? That would just make it harder to go unnoticed, as I failed to age, which would make it impossible for me to do my job.

But try as I might, I couldn’t overlook his point. Did I have the right to make a choice like that for the rest of the world? By taking that wish, I would be saving humanity from Devich, but I could also be sentencing it to Xaphan, and the truth was that no one had the right to do that. Not even me. Not even if it meant giving up my afterlife. Again.

Shit!

My fist slammed into the rented dashboard, and the glove box popped open. Cale reached calmly past me to close it, and I shut my eyes tight, trying to reign in my temper. I didn’t even know who I was mad at, but I was suddenly so pissed off that instead of seeing the dark backs of my eyelids, I saw only angry streaks of red and star-like bursts of light.

“No,” I said finally, opening my eyes to glare at him. “It’s not worth it. Of course it’s not worth it.”

Relief flooded his expression, and for some reason that made me even angrier. I wanted him to be furious along with me—angry for what I’d lost again, instead of pleased that I’d made the “right” decision. But he didn’t know what I’d agreed to give up. And he wouldn’t know.

“I’m glad you agree,” Cale said, and the urge to punch that smile off his dimpled chin was almost too much to resist.

I drained the last of my Coke as he pulled the car back onto the dark, empty highway, apparently satisfied by my capitulation. I was anything but satisfied. Unfortunately, with nothing around to punch, fury would do me little good.

“So Xaphan is a supernatural jack of all trades,” I said, popping the top on another can of regrettably non-alcoholic soda. “But what about Devich?”

“I’m sorry?” Cale kept his eyes glued to the dark road ahead, probably intentionally avoiding my gaze.

“Devich. What’s his ‘special demon power?’ The one he wants back.”

“Oh. Sorry, I thought you’d figured that out,” he said, in a tone of voice that clearly said I was an idiot for needing to ask. “He’s a demon of pestilence. The demon of pestilence, actually.”

I frowned, unable to see much threat inherent in such a power. “So he, what, causes disease? Isn’t that ability kind of passé? I mean, disease isn’t such a big deal in the age of mass-produced antibiotics.”

Cale turned to look at me, ignoring the road for waaaay too long. “You really don’t understand any of this, do you?” he demanded, and I cocked my head, letting my confusion show, as badly as it pained me to acknowledge my own ignorance. “How could you possibly know so much about the Netherworld in general, yet so little about demons and djinn?”

Before I could come up with an answer that wouldn’t reveal that I hadn’t been born into the Netherworld, Cale sighed. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that antibiotics won’t stop Devich any more than concrete-and-steel buildings will stop Xaphan. And even if antibiotics would fix it—they wouldn’t, even if all diseases were bacterial in nature—there’s no way the medical community could keep up with him.”

The feeling of dread grew in my stomach until I felt heavy and bloated with anxiety. “What do you mean?”

“The power Devich lost wasn’t the ability to create or even to transmit disease. He can still infect people one at a time with any illness in existence, and probably several we’ve never heard of. What he lost was the power of mass communicability. The ability to transmit disease in frightening numbers, with terrifying speed. I’m talking about a one hundred percent infection rate. Everyone who’s exposed gets sick.”

“Sick with what?”

Cale shrugged, and the steering wheel rotated a little with the movement. “You name it. His old favorite was bubonic plague. You’ve heard of the Black Death, right?”

“The one that wiped out a third of Europe? Yeah. I think I’ve heard of it.”

Cale ignored the near-toxic level of sarcasm in my tone. “That was Devich’s handy work, though I doubt he’s planning anything quite so nostalgic this time. He’ll probably go with something more modern and efficient, like that variant of the measles that kills up to seventy-five percent of those who catch it, or that nasty flesh-eating disease. Or maybe some kind of hemorrhagic fever. Hell, I bet he could breathe Ebola or Marburg straight into the air.”

“Breathe a hemorrhagic fever?” I repeated, hoping I’d heard him wrong. “He could produce an airborne strain of Ebola?”

“Every strain of every disease he transmits is airborne. He literally breathes disease at will, contaminating the very air and infecting everyone who breathes it. If he gets his powers back, instead of infecting people one at a time, he could infect hundreds in a matter of minutes, simply by sharing air with them. Any public gathering could turn into a massacre.”

My grip on the door handle tightened and nausea swept through me. I clenched my jaw to hold back vomit at the thought, but Cale wasn’t done.

“He could transmit tuberculosis to tens of thousands of people by attending a single Tigers game. He could cross the country, leaving a trail of crowded hospitals and packed morgues behind him like a great big ‘Devich wuz here’ spray-painted across CDC headquarters. Hell, why stop there?” Cale asked no one in particular. I’d never heard him sound so venomous. So full of hate. “He could take his private jet across the Atlantic and hit all of Europe in a matter of days. Then Asia, and—”

“Africa,” I said, goosebumps popping up all over my body, despite the heater blasting hot air into my face.

“Yeah, he’ll probably hit Africa eventually,” Cale said, still ranting at the cold, quiet night.

“He’s already been there.” Every television and radio news broadcast I’d heard in the past few days played through my head at once, the words coming back to haunt me. “I’ve been hearing reports all week about a town quarantined with bubonic plague in Mozambique. That’s Devich, isn’t it? It has to be. He’s practicing, or something. Didn’t you say he could still infect people individually?

Cale nodded grimly. “But I don’t know why he’d bother with bubonic plague.”

I knew. “Because he’s a vindictive bastard. He’s making a statement. A big ‘fuck you’ to all involved. If he gets that wish, he’ll revisit his glory days by spreading the Black Death to every corner of the world.”

Jesus.

“What’s the survivability rate of a demon-spread disease?” I asked, leaning my head against the headrest as the hood of the car ate up long stretches of highway.

“That depends. For those who can’t get medical help—which would be just about everyone, if the medical community were infected too—it has to be close to zero. For the lucky few who find treatment before infrastructure collapses, I’d say maybe fifty percent. Speaking optimistically.”

Fifty percent. The words echoed in my head for much longer than they should have. If Devich got his hands on that box, we were so unbelievably, massively, irreparably screwed. My latest client, the man who held my afterlife dangling from a single demonic claw, stood poised to decimate the human population using nothing more than a serious case of bad breath.

Screw the white night. What I really needed was a cosmic Tic-tac.

TWENTY-THREE

At just past five in the morning, after driving up the Maine coastline for a solid hour and a half, we wound up in the tiny coastal town of Fort Popham, which consisted of little more than a long stretch of beach and several tourist support industries. Because of the early hour, there was no place open to rent a boat. Fortunately, several trusting locals had left their vessels moored at the public dock, ripe for the takin’.

Excuse me, ripe for the borrowing.

In all my years, I’d never once driven a boat, so I followed Cale down a small pier to where two vessels were moored opposite each other, resigned to letting him choose, since he had the experience. One was an old-fashioned-looking rowboat, the other a sleek white motorboat with two seats behind the sharply sloping windshield and two more in the bow.

“You’re not serious,” I said when he turned toward the rowboat.

“What? It’ll be good exercise, and it’ll definitely keep us warm.”

I shot him a suggestive smile, which he probably couldn’t see in the dim glow of the security light twenty yards away. “I can think of a much better way to keep warm.”

“I’m up for that. Let’s do it in the rowboat.”

“Um, no. You can row, row, row your boat to your heart’s content, cupcake. Hell, swim across the channel for all I care. But I am not setting foot in that antique.”

Okay, I guess I wasn’t resigned to letting him choose.

Cale huffed. “I was just kidding. Mostly. But I really could swim the channel, you know,” he insisted, following me to the motorboat, where I’d already tossed my bag into the passenger seat.

“And I’m sure you’d look fucking fantastic doing it.” I lowered myself into the floor of the boat and he followed me, kneeling in front of the driver’s seat to lift the cushion.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for the key.”

Rolling my eyes, I dropped to my knees in front of the panel beneath the steering wheel. I might not know a thing about boats, but I did know how to start an engine without the convenience of a key. “Shine some light over here,” I said, feeling around the edges of the panel. At my back, I heard Cale digging through his backpack, mumbling something about breaking and entering and grand theft.

“This coming from the man who hijacked Troy Devich’s C130,” I snapped, popping the panel loose.

Something clicked at my back and a perfect sphere of yellow light appeared on the exposed wiring in front of me. “Devich is the bad guy.”

I spun on my ass to face him, then I lay down so that I was looking up at the steering column. “But if it makes you feel any better, we’re not actually breaking; we’re just entering. And we’ll bring the damn boat back.” I wrapped my left hand around the wiring harness and jerked back, pulling a bundle of different-colored wires from the back of the ignition switch. Using my short-but-functional fingernails, I stripped the red hotwire—the wire leading to the positive battery terminal—and twisted it to the ignition system wire. Then I touched the exposed end of the starter wire to the twisted-together bundle, and the boat engine rumbled to life.

“I sure hope you know how to drive this thing,” I said, scooting over to make room for Cale at the controls. “Because this is where my expertise on the water ends.”

He looked at me like I’d just asked him what color the sky was. “Yeah, I think I can handle it.” As I settled into the passenger’s seat, he untied the boat from its mooring, then he dropped into the driver’s seat and backed us smoothly away from the dock.

The closest thing we could find to a dock on Seguin Island was the remnants of a long-ago collapsed pier, so Cale took us as close to the beach as he could get. I hopped out into a foot of frigid water, carrying both of our bags, as well as his clothes and gun—but only after I’d promised to give them back to him.

While I waited, he took the boat back out into the cove and tied it to one of the available moorings. Then he jumped overboard and swam ashore. In October. Apparently half-breed water nymphs don’t feel the cold like mostly-dead women do. Lucky him.

He emerged from the water like King fucking Triton, moonlight glistening on every water droplet clinging to his perfectly sculpted chest and arms, his hair slicked back against his head, and in that moment, I almost volunteered myself as his human towel, ready to rub myself all over him and lick off every drop.

Though that would only make one of us dry.

On the beach, Cale got dressed, then we hiked toward the center of the island, which turned out to be quite a chore. Most of Seguin Island was elevated more than one hundred fifty feet above the beach we’d landed on and was accessible only by a steeply pitched foot trail running alongside a supply tram that probably hadn’t been touched in years.

I bitched and complained while we hiked up the trail, and Cale told me to shut up and keep walking every few minutes. If I’d had the energy to spare, I’d have told him where he could shove his stoic attitude. I hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in several days, and my energy reserves had largely been used to heal a bullet wound. The only thing that made the hike bearable was the fact that my arm had quit hurting, though I would have sworn it would take several days to heal completely.

At the top of the foot trail, we followed the tram tracks to the highest point of the island, where a picturesque white stone lighthouse towered over the building housing both the caretaker’s residence and a small museum. Both were unoccupied, due to the season, so there was no one to catch us when Cale pulled out his wire cutters and removed the small padlock from the lighthouse door.

Inside, we climbed a spiral staircase to the lantern room at the top, despite my aching thighs. From there, the heavily wooded north side of the island—where I’d determined the box should have landed—was visible, thanks to a largely cloudless night and a nearly-full moon. After several minutes of staring at the treetops, I spotted what appeared to be a break in the dense foliage. That had to be where the box had broken through the trees.

Please let that be the place, I begged fate as Cale took a reading with his trusty compass.

On the way down the stairs, the cold and my own exhaustion combined to render my legs heavy, my head foggy, and my fingers stiff inside my gloves. But we were close. So damned close to taking Xaphan out of the equation that I could practically taste the sleep I planned to reward myself with. I could almost feel the mattress beneath me. After another short hike, then a field trip into the sound, I’d be free to relax. To sleep, even if only for a few hours. And after that? Devich—oops, Dever

Cale and I would have to figure out how to take out a demon.

At the foot of the steps, I squared my shoulders and pushed open the door, then stepped out into the frigid October-in-Maine night—where I nearly jumped out of my own skin when a large shape stepped out of the thick shadows to one side of the tower.

“Orthus, you worthless mutt!” A relieved smile snuck up on me. “Where have you been? And how the hell did you get here?” Swim from the mainland? No, wait, I’d last seen him in Nova Scotia…

“Is that the goblins’ hellhound?” Cale hovered several feet away from the dog. Like that would do any good if Orthus decided to eat him.

“Not anymore. Come on, mutt.” I took off toward the woods, assuming they’d follow. And I was right—about the Orthus.

“Lex, he can’t come with us. That’s not a pet; it’s a fucking hellhound. He’s here to claim some poor soul in the name of eternal torture.”

“Nah.” I shrugged with a grin. “He’s been following me around for couple of days now and hasn’t tried to drag anyone into the hereafter. I think he just wants company. Stay out of his way, and you’ll be fine. Come on.”

Cale didn’t move. “Why the hell is he following you?”

“I have no idea, nor do I know how he got here,” I called back over my shoulder, Orthus at my heels. “But he would already have hauled me into hell, if he were going to. You comin’?” I stopped, turning to shine my flashlight at the angry nymph. “I’d like to be long gone with the box before the sun comes up.” Which gave us less than two hours.

Cale glared at me, but finally he started walking. “How the hound got here is pretty clear. It’s why that’s worrying me.”

My feet crunched on dead grass and the odd pinecone, making our trek absurdly loud in the pre-dawn hush. “Yeah, well, the how is still a mystery to me. Spill.”

He jogged to catch up with me, claiming the spot on my left—as far as possible from Orthus, on my right. “Hellhounds are creatures of the afterlife. They walk the shadows, just like Devich.”

“What does that mean, ‘walk the shadows’?”

My light found his face, and Cale squinted against the glare, favoring me with a dramatic how-can-you-possibly-know-so-little sigh. Which I chose to ignore. “Creatures of the afterlife can pass through the shadows. Having never done it myself—elementals are creatures of life, not afterlife—I’m not sure how it works. They walk into one shadow, then walk out of another. Could be in the next room, or on the next continent. Wherever they want, I assume. That’s how Devich can spread disease in Mozambique and still make it to the three pm boardroom meeting in Memphis. Pretty convenient, huh?”

Waaaay too convenient and un-fucking-fair. Though it certainly explained how Devich had gotten into my apartment without breaking the lock. “How exactly is a demon of pestilence a creature of the afterlife?” I asked, keeping a scowl out of my voice by sheer will.

“You keep walking, and I’ll keep talking,” Cale said, stomping off without me, though it must have made him uncomfortable to turn his back on the hellhound.

Grumbling beneath my breath, I followed. “Talk.”

Cale’s light bobbed on the ground ahead, highlighting dead grass and crunchy piles of brown leaves. “Devich may be in the mortal realm at the moment, but like all demons, he belongs in hell, torturing the damned for all of eternity. Because he’s from the afterlife—hell, in particular—so he can walk the shadows, just like your pretty pooch, here.”

On my right, the hellhound growled, and Cale jumped.

“I don’t think Orthus appreciates being called ‘pretty.’ And he isn’t mine, a fact he goes to great lengths to make sure I understand.”

Cale shrugged. “Whatever you say.” By then we’d reached the tree line, a jagged, coniferous break in the winter-crisp grass. Compared to the huge woodland we’d navigated near Dayton, the quarter-mile-long patch of trees on Sequin Island was nice and small. It was also dense, dark, and completely unfamiliar. Cale and his compass took the lead, and Orthus stuck me in the middle by refusing to walk ahead of me, probably so he could investigate the local wildlife along the way, without me cramping his style.

Except for the occasional pause as Cale shone light on the compass, we managed a fairly consistent pace, too busy not running into trunks and stepping in holes to waste energy on speech. Behind me, Orthus growled almost constantly, and no amount of scolding from me could shut him up. He paused in front of tree after tree, staring up into the needle-laden branches and barking, like he’d treed a squirrel and wanted me to come shoot it for him.

And I’ll be damned if I didn’t try, just to silence him. I shined my flashlight into several different trees, but found only swinging leaves and branches, as if something had just darted out of sight.

The third time I failed to catch sight of whatever he was chasing, I lost what little patience I had in the first place. “Orthus, shut up and come on!” I snapped over my shoulder. “It’s just a squirrel.”

“Not likely,” Cale opined. “Most squirrels are diurnal. We won’t see them until the sun rises.” He shined his flashlight on the compass one more time to check the heading and Orthus wandered off to snarl at another tree.

I winced as the hellhound’s complaint reached an absurd volume and my brain started to rattle. “Orthus, shut up and get over here,” I snapped, rubbing my forehead with one hand. He ignored me, staring up into a near-skeletal deciduous tree with his back paws planted at the roots, his front paws pressed into the bark five feet off the ground.

My curiosity resurrected by his persistence, I shined my flashlight up into the mostly bare branches. Scratching, scurrying noises accompanied a soft crunch of several brown leaves as they fell to the ground all around the hellhound. “You’re right. It isn’t squirrels,” I said, trying to track the noise with my light. I saw nothing but fall foliage and coniferous branches heavily laden with pine needles. “And it’s way too heavy to be an owl. Unless Maine’s had a recent surge in the bobcat population, I’d say Orthus has found something he can eat. Or at least play with.”

“What does a hellhound eat, anyway?” Cale turned slightly as he stared into the trees holding the compass, minutely adjusting our course.

“I’m kind of hoping never to find out,” I admitted as I turned away from the dog. “Come on. We’re getting close.”

My flashlight beam caught Cale’s worried expression. “How do you know that? Can you feel it?”

Yes. My step faltered as the realization sank in. I could feel the box. Which was very unnerving. “Feels like strong anticipation. Like when I really need a jolt of caffeine and can smell coffee brewing. It’s a vicious craving.”

He exhaled slowly. “Is this going to be a problem, Lex?”

“No.” I hadn’t survived the past two centuries by giving in to every fleeting itch, and I could damn well resist the urge to rub some djinni’s lamp. Er…box.

Cale accepted my answer, and my opinion of him went up another notch. He took the lead again, and I followed, Orthus several feet behind me, still growling softly at whatever forest creature he was stalking. A couple of minutes later, Cale’s beam of light rose from the forest floor to the fall awning above us.

“There it is,” he said, tension thick in his voice. His light had hit an opening in the tightly woven canopy overhead and about fifty feet away, which had flooded the forest floor with mottled moonlight. “That has to be what we saw from the lighthouse.”

“It is.” Anticipation tingled beneath my skin, and my heart pumped harder. The sarcophagus spoke in my head like my conscience guiding me onto the straight and narrow.

Or an obsessive thought urging me over the ledge of reason into the chasm of insanity.

In that instant, I came to truly understand what I’d known academically all along: the sarcophagus wasn’t talking to me. Xaphan was. He knew I was coming, and he was calling to me just like he’d called to Devich’s crew members on Oak Island, compelling them to open the sarcophagus. He wanted to be set free just as badly as I wanted to release him.

Wait, no, I didn’t want to release him.

Only…suddenly I did.

I shook my head, trying to jar that thought loose. I would not be ruled by my urges. Except maybe hunger; that one I tended to oblige. And alcohol. After more than two hundred fifty years on the planet, sometimes the urge to think about anything other than letting go and moving on was impossible to resist. Which was why I also rarely resisted more carnal urges.

But the compulsion to crack open a four-hundred-year-old coffin and let its evil occupant free to slaughter large swaths of humanity? Not gonna happen.

The clearing was small, because the pine crate only broke a few trees on its way to the ground. Still, it was impossible to miss. The crate was completely destroyed—smashed into shards, just like I’d known it would be. Pieces of wood littered the ground all around us, some as long as my arm, others mere splinters. Yet I was more convinced than ever that Cale was right about Xaphan. He was still contained.

I could feel him, silently demanding to be let out.

Several steps through the debris, as I scanned the ground with my flashlight, I put my foot down on something hard and angular enough to be uncomfortable through my boot sole. I knelt to inspect a chunk of rock half buried in the ground, and the first touch of cool, flat stone convinced me that the rock wasn’t a rock after all. It was a chunk of marble, impossibly smooth and precisely cut on two sides, jagged and broken on the others.

“Fuck,” I swore softly, and Cale merged his beam of light with mine. “Oh fuck me!”

He dropped into a squat to pluck the stone from the ground. “Looks like the sarcophagus didn’t survive the impact.”

“No shit.” I swept my flashlight across the ground, where it shone on more chunks of marble, most of them much larger than the splinters of pine from the crate. The sarcophagus had been destroyed, just like I’d said it would be.

“Why do I still feel him?” I said, standing when Cale did. “How is that possible?”

“The sarcophagus isn’t what’s actually confining him.” He held up the chunk of marble for me to see. “The rest of it must still be intact. Come on.” He took off in a blur of motion, before I’d even managed to stand. I ran after him, my flashlight beam bobbing on the ground between us.

The actual coffin didn’t come into sight until we were right on top of it because it wasn’t simply lying on the forest floor. It had been half-buried upon impact, and only the top few inches of the inner box and its lid were exposed above the dirt. More shards of shattered marble and pine lay all around it.

Orthus sniffed one edge of the inner stone box, then he dismissed it entirely with a snort, turning his attention back to the local wildlife apparently still hiding in the canopy. Cale knelt beside the casket, running his hands over the lip of the lid, presumably making sure the seal—or whatever—was still intact. As he inspected the stone, I shined my light around on the ground, staring in amazement at the damage to the forest floor.

“It’s a fucking miracle that thing survived the impact,” I said, still eyeing the scarred earth. Though the crate and the marble sarcophagus surrounding it had not.

“Yeah.” Cale’s voice sounded oddly strained. I swung my light around to find his flashlight propped against a fallen log. He stood with his feet spread on one side of the box, trying in vain to pull the lid open. His neck bulged with the effort, chords standing out starkly from his skin in the harsh light. “It certainly is.”

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, shining my light into his eyes.

He blinked against the glare, shielding his face with one hand. “What does it look like? I’m trying to get it open, and I could use a little help, if your arm feels up to it.”

My arm was fine, but that was beside the point. “Aren’t we supposed to be not opening the box?” Orthus growled on my right, but I ignored him.

“We can’t carry the whole damn thing, can we?” Cale said. “Even if we could get it down to the beach and into the boat, it would sink us in minutes. Xaphan’s in an urn inside the box. That’s all we need.”

My gaze narrowed on him. I wasn’t sure what to believe. What if he was trying to secure the wish for himself? He’d been unaffected by the djinn’s pull at Oak Island, but what if it was getting to him, now that he was this close? Now that the crate and sarcophagus were destroyed.

“Lex!” he snapped, desperation a sharp edge to his voice. “Help me!”

Spending a few days with Cale didn’t mean I really knew him…

What if this had been his goal all along? Maybe he’d snuck on board the helicopter, then the plane, in order to steal the crate for himself. To steal the wish for himself. Had he used me for his own gain?

I pulled my gun from its holster and clicked off the safety. “Step away from the box and put your fucking hands where I can see them.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Cale frowned at me for a second, then he rolled his eyes in the glare from my flashlight as understanding settled into place. “Wow, seriously? I wouldn’t free Xaphan for a hundred wishes. He was buried in an urn, with the body. The urn is clearly still intact.”

“Why should I believe that?”

He stood up straight, clearly exasperated. “Why wouldn’t you? I’ve known where Xaphan was hidden my entire life, and a pit full of water wouldn’t have stopped me from blowing the sarcophagus to bits and taking the wish for myself, if that’s what I’d wanted. But it isn’t. I’m trying to get the urn out of here, intact, before anyone else finds it.”

Okay, that made sense. “There’s really a corpse in there?” A four-hundred-year-old cadaver?

“Of course there’s a corpse. What else would you put in a coffin?”

A djinni, apparently. “Whose body is it?”

“Xaphan’s last ‘master,’ for whom he razed entire cities. My elders were into poetic justice.” Cale glanced at the box, then turned to look imploringly at me again. “You know, if you give me a hand, this’ll go much faster.”

I hesitated for a moment, then holstered my gun. Griping beneath my breath, I worked the end of my flashlight into a tight clump of ivy so that it shone on the box. Squatting in dense, crisp foliage, I brushed the end of my long coat out behind me and wrapped both hands around the lip of the lid. The stone was flawlessly smooth against my fingers, but instead of the skin-numbing cold I expected, the lid was—

“It’s warm.” Somehow, the stone was warmer than my skin, despite the below-freezing ambient temperature.

Cale nodded. “That’s Xaphan. He can’t feel me any more than I can feel him, but he can obviously sense you, and he thinks you’re about to let him out.”

My fingers ran over the stone almost absently, and when I realized that I was stroking the box, I snatched my hands away, horrified by the compulsion. “Why can’t you feel each other?”

“Our abilities are too dissimilar.” If Cale noticed me twisting my fingers into knots, he showed no sign. “His power disguises mine, and vice versa. Makes him harder for me to find, but easier to resist. Speaking of which, how you doing?”

“Fine,” I said, even as my hand curled around the lip of the lid again. I was doing just fine. I would help Cale get the box open, then leave the urn to him. The less contact I had with it the better. “On the count of three,” I said, and he nodded. “One… Two… Three!”

I pulled. Cale pulled. For a moment, nothing happened, which didn’t surprise me in the least. The box was heavy. But then his end of the lid started to creak, so I pulled harder, and the lid lifted just a bit. Less than an inch. But that was apparently enough.

Cale stopped lifting and started pushing. The stone lid slid out of my hands and across the top of the coffin, opening a four-inch gap in the box, through which I could see and hear nothing. Not a thing. No fingers creeping out toward me, no scratching from the inside of the box, no low moan of agony. We’d opened a miniature crevasse, dark as death and just as silent.

I reached for my flashlight as Cale gave the lid another mighty shove. The stone slab slid farther off the box, its back edge dropping to the dirt on the other side of the hole, so that the lid sloped up toward us, exposing the entire inside of the coffin.

Morbidly eager to see what was inside, I shined my light directly into the box. And for a moment, I could only stare.

I’d seen dead bodies before. Many, many times. But most of those were bad guys I’d killed, or people who had died recently. Xaphan’s dead master was like no other corpse I’d ever seen. Little more than bones wrapped in the remnants of clothing, he bore a striking resemblance to a mummy I’d seen exhumed on The Discovery Channel years before. Like that mummy, this corpse’s skin was dark, discolored, and appeared to have been shrink-wrapped to his skeleton. And all of him—both flesh and clothing—looked dry and brittle, as if the slightest breeze might scatter him into billions of tiny dust particles.

Suddenly I had the macabre urge to blow on the corpse’s face, to see if it would really disintegrate… I resisted, of course. Barely. And mostly because I couldn’t stand the thought of breathing in powdered dead-guy.

Though I saw no sign that the body had actually burned, the entire coffin smelled like ash, even after four hundred years in a hole in the ground. A week earlier, I probably would have found that fact strange, but after befriending a hellhound, talking to a wraith, nourishing a succubus, and being hunted by a demon…well, my definition of “strange” was starting to evolve.

“Wow,” Cale whispered from my right.

I glanced at him. “You’ve never seen this?”

“It was buried four hundred years ago,” he said, still staring into the coffin. “How the hell could I have seen it?”

“I don’t know. You seem to know so much about it…”

He knelt, running one hand over the warm edge of the marble. “I’ve heard the stories all my life, but this is the first time I’ve ever actually seen this particular part of my family dynasty. Or touched it.”

I focused my light on a plain, smooth stone urn topped with a matching, domed lid. It was tucked under the dead man’s arm, as if he were cradling it even in death. Or maybe clinging to it out of desperation. “Is that it?” But I knew the answer even as I asked the question. I could feel Xaphan inside. Listening… Waiting…

“It must be.” Cale bent to take the urn, and the moment it slid free of the dead guy’s arm, Orthus burst into a fit of barking. I spun toward him, and my jaw dropped as I took in the creature falling toward me from the branches above.

I caught a glimpse of a slim torso and four long limbs as I dropped face first into the ivy. My flashlight landed upside down in a pile of brush nearby and my right elbow slammed into the ground. Pain ripped through my newly healed arm. I rolled over, already going for my gun.

Overhead, the creature—a petite man in jeans and a dark, bulky shirt—angled his arced descent, shooting for the coffin. One long, plaid-clad arm shot out through a beam of moonlight, and he snatched the urn from Cale as he passed over the box.

I rolled onto my knees, aiming at the falling man, but he never hit the ground. Instead, he rose into the air again, in another long, graceful arc.

“What the hell?” I yelled as Cale pulled his gun. And that’s when I realized the small man hadn’t been falling at all. He’d been swinging. The Tarzan motherfucker was swinging from a rope attached to another man clinging to the lowest overhead branch.

An instant later, at the apex of his upward arc, Tarzan tossed the urn over his head. I gasped. My eyes followed the prize, my aim tracking it as well, though shooting the djinni’s stone prison would not help our situation.

A third creature, this one female, swung upside-down from a nearby tree, passing through Cale’s flashlight beam. Long, dark hair trailed behind her as she arced toward the urn, which was now in a terrifying freefall. Reaching out easily, gracefully, she plucked it right out of the air.

I could only watch, stunned into a rare moment of silence, and an even more rare inaction.

“What the fuck is going on?” My gaze climbed the woman’s body to the rope connecting her to a fourth creature hugging a tree trunk above her. “Who the hell are these circus freaks?” I snatched my flashlight from the ground and tracked her, not quite surprised to find only madness reflected in her eyes. No sense. No anger or fear of any kind. I saw only blind, single-minded desperation. Obsession.

Whatever these creatures were, Xaphan had gotten to them.

“Imps,” Cale spat, bending to snatch his flashlight from the ground.

“What…?” Ohhh. Tarzan and friends weren’t swinging from ropes. They were swinging from tails. Long, fur-less, fully prehensile tails, gripping each other at the mid-point of each “rope.” They swung through the trees with ease and grace, weaving among the branches and leaves like trapeze artists on powerful, flesh-and-blood swings.

“What the hell are they doing here?” I snapped, whirling to follow the woman’s swing to its conclusion.

Cale’s beam traced her path until she tossed the urn to her right, where a sixth—or maybe the first?—imp seized it just before it would have slammed into a broad, bare tree trunk. “I’m guessing they live here, at least in the off-season. Xaphan has enthralled them, just like he did with the digging crew.”

“Damn it!” I cursed, ducking as a dangling foot soared through the air on a collision course with my skull.

Orthus dashed back and forth across the clearing, growling viciously as he chased one creature after another. But one by one, they disappeared into the branches, only to drop into sight again a moment later. They were playing with him, and the frustrated hellhound never got close enough to carry out the bite promised by his furious bark.

Cale grunted, dodging a flying fist on his left. “We cannot give them a chance to open that urn.” His gun sparked as he fired, briefly illuminating half-a-dozen bodies dangling or swinging from limbs above us. The shot echoed throughout the forest, and the imp arcing through the trees with the urn tucked beneath one arm screeched with lunatic laugher as a clump of leaves exploded a foot behind his shoulder.

Over his head, his female spotter jumped, startled, and lost her grip on his tail. The man slipped from her grasp and dropped several feet. I sucked in an uneasy breath, sure the urn would crash to the ground and break open, releasing Xaphan—without a master to answer to.

But at the last second, the male imp’s tail caught a nearby branch as he fell. His fall ended in a new upward arc, propelling him toward the next tree, where another imp waited to grab him.

Damn, what a show! I couldn’t help thinking, as the imp—and the urn—sailed by, ten feet off the ground. Cirque du Soleil would love these guys!

A second gunshot shattered my fascinated trance. More leaves fluttered to the ground in a pocket of moonlight. The urn flew through the air toward another imp, who caught it in mid-swing, and I exhaled, then turned to glare at Cale. “What the hell are you doing?” I shoved him with my good elbow, and his next shot went wild.

He turned on me, furious and obviously frustrated. “I’m not going to shoot them,” he hissed, too low for even the nearest imp to hear. “I’m just trying to scare them into dropping the urn.”

“If he drops it, it’ll break open, genius. Then the djinni goes free.”

Cale scowled at me, but his aim faltered. “If you have a better suggestion, let’s hear it. Otherwise, be ready to catch the damn thing when it falls!” He aimed again, his jaw clenched as sweat rolled down his forehead in spite of the cold.

As Cale’s gun tracked the urn back and forth, my gaze roamed the forest, searching the dark frantically for something—anything—that would help us get Xaphan back. Or at least slow the imps down. But there was nothing but the box, me, and Cale. And Orthus, who now stood in the middle of the clearing, growling frantically as he watched imp after imp drop from the trees only to disappear among the leaves a moment later.

“Orthus, fetch!” I yelled, in a moment of panic and desperation. The hellhound cocked his head to one side, staring at me as if I’d just spoken in tongues. The urn changed hands again, swinging to my left this time, and I kicked the back of Cale’s knee to throw off his next shot. “Stop fucking shooting!” Before he could regain his balance—or retort—I turned back to Orthus. “Go get the urn, you worthless pile of bones!” I shouted, gesturing skyward with my pistol.

The hellhound barked, a sound almost as sharp as it was deep. Then he took off after the she-imp who currently cradled the urn in her arms like a baby. Growling, he leapt nearly five feet into the air after her. The girl squealed and rushed her up-swing, which threw off her balance. She arced too low to the ground.

Orthus jumped again. The imp panicked, flailing her empty, delicate hand in the air. The hound’s powerful jaws snapped shut over her wrist. She screamed as Orthus pulled on her arm, digging his paws into the dirt for purchase. Her tail slipped from her anchor’s grip. She crashed to the ground on her back, the urn still cradled in her other arm.

Cale rushed forward to snatch the ceramic jug while the imp still lay stunned and unmoving. But before he could reach her, another imp swooped in from overhead and snatched the prize right out from under his outstretched hand.

Snarling, Orthus crossed in front of me, snapping at the imp. Startled, the young man swung too close to me, the urn tucked under one arm. My left hand shot out, acting out of instinct and years of practice, rather than any conscious planning. I was just as surprised as he was when my fist wrapped around his ankle.

Grunting, I jerked on his leg, practically hanging from it. His grip on the tree branch gave way, dumping us both onto the forest floor, me on top.

Straddling his waist, I punched him just hard enough to stun him. Though I may also have knocked out a couple of his teeth. The imp hissed at me, both torn lips pulled back in a grimace. I wiped blood from my knuckles onto his shirt, then tugged the urn from his grasp with my good hand.

As I stood, triumphant, his tail snaked around my wrist. It felt like a long, thick finger, articulated, and incredibly strong. He yanked on my arm, and fresh pain ripped through my recently-healed triceps. Furious, I stomped on his groin as hard as I could. He howled, and I pulled free of his grip.

I backed out of the grounded imp’s reach, and another one dropped from a tree in front of me, reaching for the urn. I lunged to my right, only to find a third imp hanging at my back. This one’s tail curled around my left wrist, trying to loosen my grip on the urn. I twisted to the side, breaking his hold on me.

This is the time to shoot! I thought, searching the broken clearing for Cale and his eager gun.

“Lex!”

Spinning with the pot tucked into a football hold, I found him fighting two imps at once, each suspended from a different tree by its tail, both hands wrapped around one of the nymph’s arms. His gun was gone. He twisted and flailed, but the imps clung to him, pulling themselves farther up in the tree. In seconds, they had him suspended a good foot off the ground, his legs kicking wildly.

Anger fired through every nerve ending in my body. I was tired, hungry, and ready to get the hell out of Dodge. Scowling, I stomped toward Cale, drawing my gun.

“No!” He shouted as three more imps dropped from the trees between us. “Go! Get the urn out of here!”

Cale was right. We were outnumbered and out-maneuvered, and I didn’t have enough bullets in one magazine to take them all out. Not that it would be fair to shoot them, when they were acting under the djinni’s considerable influence.

It was time to take our toys and go home. But when I turned to race through the forest toward the lighthouse and foot trail, I found my path blocked by two more imps, one standing on the ground, the other dangling from yet another tree branch.

“Break it!” Cale shouted from behind me.

“What? No!” I lunged to my left as the imp on foot reached for the urn. Spinning to face Cale, I kicked a dangling imp in the head on my way around. “We can’t open it!”

Behind Cale, Orthus had a thin forearm clenched between his jaws, shaking some poor imp furiously, like a puppy pulling on a play-toy. He slung the creature back and forth as it screamed, blood spraying from torn flesh. Yet even Orthus was outnumbered, with two imps seated on his back, and a fourth pulling frantically on his tail, trying to free his savaged friend.

“No choice!” Cale grunted, still trying to free his arms while he dangled above the ground. “If you don’t open it, they will. Better us than them. You have to open it, Lex.”

I shook my head, ducking as a petite imp woman with long dark hair swung toward me. “I will not go down in history as the woman who unleashed a pyromaniac djinni on the world. No way in hell.” But what scared me—truly terrified me—was the fact that I wanted to break it. Deep down, part of me was grasping at the straw Cale had offered as justification to do just that. The rest of the world be damned.

He swore, jerking frantically on his trapped right arm. “He can’t leave you until he repays his debt. Break the urn, but don’t make a wish. It’s the only way to keep the imps from getting him.” Roaring in fury, he kicked out with his left leg, trying to dislodge the woman who’d seized his ankle. “We’ll figure out how to get him locked up again later. You have to do it, Lex. Now!” he added, as another creature swayed toward me from my left.

Setting Xaphan free was a horrible idea, but Cale was right: better us than the imps.

Fury pounding like a second pulse in my ears, I searched the ground, looking for something to smash the urn with as five imps closed in on me, their eyes shining with anticipation—with compulsion bordering on madness.

I wasn’t close enough to the stone coffin, and there was nothing else around, except—

Dropping into a squat, I slammed the urn into a thick length of root arcing from the ground at my feet. It broke into three pieces: the lid, and two halves of the jar itself.

Eerie silence settled over the woods. The imps—all of them—froze in place. They stared at me and at the broken urn halves, one large and one small. Both empty.

What the hell? I picked up the largest piece of pottery and turned it over in my hand. In my peripheral vision, two of the imps shook their heads, as if to clear their mental fog, but I hardly noticed. I was too busy staring at the urn. The fucking empty urn.

All that work, for nothing…

“Lex?” Cale called.

I glanced up, expecting to find him every bit as confused and pissed off as I was. What I found instead was a tall, broad, red-headed man standing in a generous pool of moonlight. He wore knee-length breeches and a matching short-waisted doublet with the sleeves slashed to the elbow to show the shirt beneath. Despite wearing clothing more than four hundred years out of date, his smile was genuine and almost giddy. In fact, I couldn’t remember anyone ever before looking quite so pleased to see me.

The man reached down to help me up, and I accepted his hand, not surprised in the least when he pulled me to my feet with no visible effort. Nor was I surprised that his skin was hot to the touch. He kept hold of my hand, rubbing one very solid thumb back and forth across my knuckles as he spoke.

“Greetings, mistress. I am Xaphan. What is your wish?”

TWENTY-FIVE

My wish?

To die.

The question—or rather, the blatant asking of it—caught me so off-guard that I almost answered out loud, without even thinking. But at the last moment I stopped, my lips already parted. That wasn’t quite right; I didn’t want to die. Again. I wanted to move on from the mortal plane. Start my afterlife. But I couldn’t say that to the large djinni in short pants, who was eager to wreak havoc the world over.

“Lex!”

Leaning to the left, I glanced past Xaphan’s silk-clad shoulder to find Cale jogging toward me. The imps that had held him suspended moments ago now hung upside-down from those same trees, like human opossums, mouths gaping, hair swinging, arms crossed over their chests. I might have laughed at the absurdity of fighting a troupe of imps for possession of a djinni in seventeenth century clothing if I weren’t almost too tired to stand upright.

“Lex…” The djinni drew the single syllable out, as if he were tasting my name. He hadn’t looked back when Cale called out. Hadn’t, in fact, taken his gaze from me at all, as if nothing else mattered. Nothing but me and my wish. “You want for something. I see need in your eyes…Lex.” Again, my name lingered on his lips, as did that smile, which lent the unnerving impression that he knew everything about me. That somehow, he knew my every thought, every fear, and every desire. “Mistress?”

“Yeah, we don’t really use that term anymore,” I said, my words sluggish with shock.

“She doesn’t want anything.” Cale came to a stop at my side and pulled my hand from Xaphan’s grasp. I blinked, suppressing an overwhelming urge to shake my head like a wet dog.

The djinni stared down at me through eyes so black I could find no boundary between his irises and pupils. “You have only to name it, and it will be yours.” His voice slipped across my skin with the intimacy of a much more carnal touch.

Cale put one hand on my arm, his fingers sliding across the leather of my coat. “Don’t listen to him.” He tugged me to the side, threading his arm through mine. “He can’t make you wish for something, but he can tempt you, and until you get accustomed to his attention, he’ll be hard to resist.”

“Silence, sprite!” Xaphan ordered, his voice as sharp and threatening as it had been smooth and alluring only a moment before.

Cale glared up at him through an impenetrable mask of anger. “Bluster all you like, Xaphan, but you have no influence over me. I’ll say anything I damn well please.”

Was that his version of na-na-na-boo-boo, you-can’t-catch-me?

The djinni’s smile returned, and his gaze shifted from Cale to me. “She can think for herself.”

“Yes, she can,” I said as I pulled my arm from Cale’s grasp. He should have known better than to hinder my gun hand. “And thanks, but no thanks on the wish,” I snapped at the djinni. “I don’t want anything.” Except Devich’s head mounted on the street sign at the corner of Main and Beale. And to figure out how to get the djinni back in his urn. Which I’d smashed.

Okay then, into a new urn. Or a fucking shoe box, for all I cared. Whatever worked.

“Orthus?” I pulled my flashlight from my pocket to scan the crowded clearing. Two red pinpoints flashed in the beam of light, and Orthus barked, weaving among a scattering of stunned-looking imps. “They going to be okay?” I asked Cale as Orthus bounded toward us.

“Unfortunately, they’ll be fine. Your buddy here has probably had them wrapped around his finger for the past two days, and we’re damn lucky they couldn’t pry the lid off that coffin.” Evidently being small enough to swing through the trees left them lacking in the strength department. “But they’re coming around now. I suggest we get going before they wake up enough to want to defend their territory.”

“How can this be their territory?” I followed Cale as he set off through the woods again, compass in one hand, flashlight in the other. Orthus walked at my side, and I could sense, rather than hear Xaphan behind me, because his feet made no sound when he walked, despite the stiff-looking cuffed knee-high boots. We were going to have to find the big guy something else to wear before we took him out in public.

Or maybe we should just keep him out of sight altogether…

“They probably only stay here in the winter,” Cale said, sidestepping a tangle of thorny vines. “I’m sure they spend their summers some place colder.”

Of course they did. Imps liked cool weather and isolated forests—everyone knew that. But I’d had no idea they were so fucking childish and irritating.

Ten minutes later, we’d left both the forest and its inhabitants behind and were halfway down the steep footpath. I was freezing, exhausted, and ready for a soft, warm bed and a cold, stiff drink. And I was far from happy about the six-foot-plus djinni shadowing my every move.

So far, Orthus had shown no interest in the djinni at all. Unfortunately, the reverse did not hold true. Xaphan was fascinated by the hellhound. He wanted to inspect Orthus’s teeth and his huge paws. He wanted to know what the dog ate—not that I could tell him—and where he slept, and where I’d found him. He even tried to convince Cale to call forth a storm, so he could see Orthus’s skull-and-bones trick in the lightening.

Cale ignored the djinni, but no matter how terse my own replies became, Xaphan couldn’t take a hint. Or, he understood that I didn’t want to talk to him, but he just didn’t give a damn.

We couldn’t stuff djinni back into his bottle fast enough to suit me.

“Any idea what we should do with Barbara Eden, here?” I asked Cale, tossing my head toward Xaphan, who’d wandered past us to observe the hellhound up close.

Cale shook his head. “I’m hoping my mother will have a suggestion. I’ll call her when we get back to the mainland. But whatever we do, we have to get rid of him before we can address the second part of our problem.” Devich, of course. “Those two mix about as well as imps and trolls.”

“Will your mother take him off our hands?”

“She can’t.” Cale took his frustration out on a small stone in his path, kicking it past the dog and the djinni, and all the way down the gravel slope. “He can’t leave you until he’s granted your wish. Or until we figure out how to seal him into the nearest empty soda bottle.”

Now there’s an idea…

“Can’t leave me? What does that mean, exactly?” Dread took the form of a lump in my throat. “He’s gonna hang around my office all day?” I don’t even like it when Lacey does that.

Cale chuckled as he turned toward the moon-lit beach at the end of the foot trail. “Frankly, you’ll be lucky if you can get him to sleep on your couch, instead of at the foot of your bed. Where you go, he goes, and he’ll do whatever he can to get you to make a wish. Flattery, bargaining, threatening, you name it. He can’t actually hurt you, but if you have any pet peeves, I’d keep them to myself if I were you. Otherwise, he’s likely to drive you nuts popping his fingers or smacking his gum until you relent and make your wish.”

“That doesn’t sound very scary, for a big, bad djinni.”

“You might reconsider, after twelve straight hours of ‘Freebird’ played on a nose harp.”

Um, yes, I probably would. “I guess I was just expecting something a little more… sinister from the man who burned down the library at Alexandria.”

“He’s not a man, he’s a djinni,” Cale insisted, and I knew from his serious tone that he wasn’t just picking on my word choice. Evidently the distinction was very real. “He’s doing his child-on-Christmas-morning routine because he hasn’t seen the outside of that urn in more than four hundred years. All his toys are still shiny and new right now, but he’ll get tired of them very quickly and start looking for other forms of entertainment. And those will be about as disturbing as they come.”

“Great.”

Cale nodded gravely. “Do not underestimate him. He’s biding his time. Testing you to see how much resistance you’ll put up. But he’ll start pushing you for real, soon, and you probably won’t even see it coming.”

The hell I won’t. I wasn’t born yesterday.

“Do not ask him for anything, no matter what he says he can get for you. Don’t ask him for advice, don’t ask if him for the time, and don’t ask him who really shot JFK. Don’t even ask him to pass the fucking salt, because he’ll interpret that as your wish. Once he grants your wish, he goes free.”

“I did not sign on for this shit,” I mumbled running one hand over the butt of my gun out of habit. Who’d have thought saving the world would involve so little gunfire and so damn many rules?

“I know. I’m sorry.”

When we reached the beach, Xaphan investigated the modern miracle of garbage, poking through litter that had washed up on the sand while Cale stripped down to his boxer briefs twenty yards away. I didn’t even try not to look at the goods; moonlight was the only garment that man should ever wear. Besides, a sneak peek was the least I deserved, considering it was his fault I’d be connected at the hip to the walking torch until further notice.

“Don’t listen to anything he says,” Cale whispered, folding his jeans neatly. “Djinnis can’t actually lie, but they can get very creative with the truth.” He handed me his pants, then bent to retrieve his shoes, giving me a priceless view of his tight, narrow rear.

“He can’t lie?” That little nugget of information might come in handy…

“No, but he can tell half-truths, and twisted truths, and out-of-context truths. And he can just plain refuse to answer.”

That’s no different than any man I’ve ever met, I thought, barely clamping my lips shut on the words before they poured from my mouth. Cale did not need any more glimpses into my private life. “Don’t talk to him, and don’t listen to him. Got it.”

He smiled. “Good. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes with the boat.” Frowning, he hesitated instead of jumping into the water. “I’m really sorry about this, Lex. I never meant for either of us to actually lay eyes on the djinni. Any djinni, but this one in particular.”

“I know. Let’s just get out of here and figure out how to get Thing One locked up, so we can go after Thing Two.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” He obviously hadn’t read Dr. Seuss as a child. Then again, neither had I. “Get going before I decide to wish myself off the island.”

I was smiling, but Cale’s frown only deepened. “Do me a favor and don’t mention the W-word again, even in jest. Don’t give him any excuse to grant you something and call his work done.”

Paranoid, much? But I nodded as images of singed cities and scorched corpses flashed behind my eyelids. Xaphan could not go free. Not even by accident.

“I’ll be right back.” Cale leaned forward and kissed me. Then, before I’d recovered from that not-unpleasant surprise, he took off across the beach and dove into the water, as if we were in Maui in July, rather than Maine in October. And I hadn’t noticed a single chill bump on his skin. Not that I was exactly looking…

“Is that what you wish for?” Xaphan asked from directly behind me.

I nearly jumped out of my skin, my left hand going automatically for my gun. I hadn’t heard him approach. Nor had I heard him breathing. Did djinnis even breathe?

“Is what what I wi—” I barely caught my slip up in time for a rephrase. “What are you talking about?”

The djinni stepped forward, stopping by my right arm, in which I held Cale’s clothing, because I wasn’t willing to tie up my gun hand. “The water sprite,” he said. “Is he what you wish for? I can give him to you, if you only say the word.”

I could get Cale on my own, if I wanted him. Hell, I’d already had him, once.

My ponytail slapped my cheeks as I shook my head. “No. Absolutely not.” I turned, intending to chew the djinni out face-to-face and set the record straight. “I don’t want anything from y—”

I choked on my own words. Or maybe on surprise.

The knee breeches were gone, as was the slitted silk doublet. And the high, cuffed boots. Xaphan now wore a dark pair of Levis and a gray cable-knit sweater peeking through an unzipped gray-on-black snow jacket.

“What the hell happened to your clothes?” I demanded, stepping back to see him better in the moonlight.

“You seem to like these better.” The djinni indicated his new ensemble with an all-inclusive, sweeping hand gesture.

My eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why do you say that?”

“You clutch at those as if they have great value to you.”

“What?” I glanced down at the bundle of clothes Cale had given me to hold, and that’s when I realized that Xaphan had somehow produced for himself exact replicas of everything Cale had been wearing. At least that I could see. And I was not going to check his underwear for consistency.

“I’m not clutching them,” I insisted, though the djinni looked less than convinced. “I’m holding them so they won’t get wet while he goes for the boat.”

“Of course.” His condescending smile said he didn’t believe me. “Is this more appropriate for the current year?”

I nodded, impressed yet unnerved by the ability to pull new clothes from thin air.Could he do the same thing with weapons? Did djinn even need weapons?

“You long for something very badly. I can feel it in your very presence. What is it you want, if not the sprite?”

It’s not that I don’t want the sprite…

“Nothing. I have everything I could possibly want already.”

Xaphan shook his head slowly. “Another lie. Your request sits on the very tip of your tongue, yet you won’t speak it. Why?”

“Because it doesn’t matter.” I sighed, staring at Cale, who was climbing onto the ski boat at that very moment, to avoid looking into the djinni’s eerie black eyes. “I didn’t free you to earn a wish. I smashed your box to keep the imps from doing it. And very soon, we’re going to stuff you into a new box, then let the nymphs tow you out to deep sea, where no one will ever have to worry about you again.”

Xaphan laughed, a deep, ringing sound that rolled across my skin the way Orthus’s growl reverberated in my skull. Irritated, I turned on him. “What’s so damn funny?”

“You speak with absolute confidence, as so few humans do. You are arrogant and sure—amazingly so for a woman. And you have dark urges. Many dark urges. They swirl around you in a cloud of anger. So much rage in one so small…” He paused, and I could swear I saw his irises swell, taking over space from the whites of his eyes. “We could have fun together, little Lex. Such fun, if you would but say the word.”

At the moment, the only word on my mind was a profanity, and my darkest urge was to stuff a certain djinni into the nearest empty whiskey bottle and throw him into the deep end of the ocean. “I don’t need anything from you. Not a thing. What I want, I take for myself.”

“Yet there is something you hunger for. Something you cannot claim on your own. Power, maybe? Do you crave the authority a woman cannot wield alone?”

This time I laughed, a short, harsh barking sound. “These days, there is no authority a woman cannot wield. Humans are more complicated than you remember; they want more than shelter and security. They heat food with the press of a button and kill with one squeeze of the trigger. They fly through the air in big metal tubes, crossing the planet in a matter of hours. Women have power, ambition, and seats of authority that were earned, not granted. And firefighters…” My lips curved into a tight smile as I told him the best part. “They drench flames with huge quantities of water and chemicals shot from high-pressure nozzles or dropped from ships in the sky. Times have changed, Xaphan. People have changed. You can either roll with those changes or be rolled over by them. Trust me.”

My speech did not have the intended effect. Instead of the fear and disappointment I’d hoped to see on his face, Xaphan watched me in mounting wonder and excitement, his smile broadening with each passing second. “Thank you for the primer, Lex.”

Anticipation, I thought, finally able to name his expression. Xaphan thought I’d laid out a challenge, and he was eager to rise to the occasion.

Just. Fucking. Great.

TWENTY-SIX

Before I could figure out how to stuff my second foot into my mouth, Orthus barked from down the beach. I glanced up to find him standing in several inches of water, beside the borrowed boat.

“There’s no need for the vessel,” Xaphan called after me as I jogged across the narrow, pebbled beach. “At your word, I can take us anywhere you want to go.”

I glanced back to find the djinni following me reluctantly, his expression completely blank, which seemed to indicate strong emotions, rather than the absence of any. “No, thanks. The boat’s just fine.” I suppressed a smile at the realization that Xaphan was nervous about getting in the water. Maybe even afraid. Cale had said the water interrupted his power, effectively crippling him. Suddenly I was feeling very fond of the ocean…

As I handed Cale’s clothes back to him, I nodded pointedly at the djinni now dressed as his double. Cale scowled, grumbling as he pulled a spare shirt from his bag and tugged it over his head.

Xaphan sat in the bow of the boat, and at a glance, he seemed to be enjoying the ride. His face was smooth and relaxed, his fists unclenched. But he didn’t smile or investigate any of the new technology on board. Nor did he say a word until we were safely on the mainland again.

The sun was rising by the time we tied the boat to the dock, exactly where we’d found it, and a single old man stood hunched over another boat, a hundred yards or so down the beach. If he knew we didn’t belong in the boat, or even in Maine, he showed no sign, but I was eager to get going just the same, before any more locals showed up.

Xaphan sat next to Orthus in the backseat of Cale’s rented Corolla, which was not built to accommodate two such large creatures. They looked about as comfortable as Hulk Hogan on a tricycle. And almost as ridiculous.

After our brief, whispered front-seat consultation, Cale drove us to a local diner, the only place in town serving breakfast. We left Orthus stretched across the back seat, snoring, and I skipped my usual warning for him to stay put. He would go where he damn well chose, no matter what I had to say about it, and frankly, I was starting to respect that.

While the djinni and I ordered—a lengthy process for a man who’d never seen a laminated menu or heard of a “short stack”—Cale paid a visit to the restroom so he could call his mother without Xaphan overhearing the conversation. The djinni already knew we were plotting to get rid of him, but letting him in on the specifics seemed foolish, and since he wouldn’t leave my side, I couldn’t participate on the phone call. I spent that time explaining every single item on the menu to our seventeenth century guest.

By the time Cale returned to the table, our food had arrived, and the djinni was half-way through his second stack of pancakes. He’d also tried a bite of my hash browns—without permission—which was how I discovered that like demons, djinnis couldn’t be injured through ordinary means. Xaphan hadn’t even flinched when my fork went through his hand, leaving four tiny dents in the Formica tabletop. He’d just pulled the clean tines calmly from his flesh and set the utensil beside my plate, as he’d seen the waitress do.

How the hell was I supposed to keep him in line if he couldn’t feel pain?

When Cale slid onto the booth across from me, I glared at him, still seething over the fork incident. “Did you know you can’t hurt this son of a bitch?” To illustrate my point, I slid the blade of my steak knife between the bones of the djinni’s left forearm, leaving the handle protruding from the sleeve of his sweater. Xaphan went on eating with his other hand, completely unfazed. In fact, my irritation seemed to amuse him.

“Damn it, Lex, are you trying attract attention?” Leaning forward, Cale pulled the knife free and dropped it on the table. Just like with the fork, there was no blood, only spotless steel. “Magic trick,” he said to the man staring at us from the next table. The man went back to his French toast without a word, eating much faster than before.

“He’s a djinni,” Cale hissed. “Of course you can’t hurt him. That’s why they locked him up in the first place, instead of using him as a fucking pin cushion.”

“That would have been nice to know before I smashed the urn, Cale.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered.” He paused with a bite of omelet halfway to his mouth and glared at Xaphan, who ignored us in favor of his chocolate chip pancakes. Though we knew damn well he was listening. “There was no other choice,” Cale finished. “It was us or them.”

I poured orange juice from the carafe into my glass. “It always is.” I gulped half of the juice, watching Cale chew. “Did you get in touch with her?” I asked, careful not to mention Daphne’s name or her relationship to him.

“Yeah. She’s working on the problem. Hopefully by the time we get there, she’ll have something worked out.”

“Good.” I cut another bite from my fried egg, trying to ignore the murmur of other, likely much more benign conversations going on around us. “When does our flight leave?”

He met my eyes for a moment, then stared down at his plate. “We’re driving.”

I huffed, sure he was joking, though I couldn’t imagine why. But he was serious, as was the firm line of his mouth. “All the way to Memphis? Why—” The waitress stopped at our table to freshen my coffee, and I paused, waiting for her to leave. “That’ll take two days, Cale. We don’t have that kind of time.”

He washed down his last bite of omelet with a sip of ice water. “I’m not confining him on an airplane with several hundred humans,” Cale said with a pointed glance at Xaphan, who’d lifted his empty plate to lick up smears of chocolate and syrup. Like a goddamn toddler. “That’s asking for disaster. Besides, we can be there in twenty-four hours if we take turns and drive straight through. She needs time to set things up, anyway.”

Lovely. Just fucking perfect. Twenty-four hours in a small car with a nymph, a hellhound, and a fucking fire djinni who had no respect for personal space. That felt like the punchline to the colossal joke that was my afterlife.

“Let’s go.” I stood, dropping my napkin on my plate. “We’re wasting time talking.”

Cale started to object, then took one look at my face and stuffed his last sausage link into his mouth whole. He left some cash on the table and followed me across the restaurant and through the front door, Xaphan close on his heels.

We stopped at the nearest convenience store for supplies—Coke, Twinkies, and a packet of beef jerky for Xaphan, who’d just discovered the twenty-first century version of dried meat—then hit the road. Cale took the first shift because I refused. I was exhausted, and if they made me drive, I’d probably run us into the back of a semi, killing those of us who could die and setting Xaphan loose upon the world. Fortunately, Cale saw reason—which bore an uncanny resemblance to the barrel of my gun.

I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to sleep sitting up in the front seat—the djinni’s knees left no room to lean the chair back—but my concern proved unfounded. I slept for nearly eight straight hours, only waking when my bladder demanded a rest stop.

Cale stopped at a gas station off I95 south, and Xaphan trailed me through the store, snatching snack foods from the shelf at random as he walked. By the time we got to the refrigerated rear wall, his arms were full and his satisfied grin ridiculously wide. His sweet tooth, I’d discovered, rivaled my own, and his taste for salty snacks could not be appeased.

At the back of the store, I pushed open the bathroom door, and to my utter aggravation, the djinni followed me right into the bloody restroom.

“Out!” I ordered, pointing stiff-armed to the main room of the store.

Xaphan ripped open a bag of Chex Mix and tossed several pieces into his mouth. “Why?” he asked around the first mouthful.

“First of all, you can’t bring merchandise into the restroom. They’ll think you’re stealing it. In the second place, you can’t eat the food until after you pay for it. Those are the rules in the human world, and when in Rome…” I faded into silence, assuming he could finish the cliché for himself.

I was wrong.

“The Romans didn’t have… ‘Chex Mix,’” he said, peering at the words on the front of the bag. I had no idea when he’d learned to speak and read English. Maybe djinnis had some kind of universal language omniscience.

“Not the point. You have to pay for it before you can eat it. And you cannot come into the ladies’ restroom!”

“Why not?”

I was all for uni-sex bathrooms, but this wasn’t one, and I wanted just two minutes without Xaphan standing close enough for me to smell his breath. “Because you’re not a lady!” I hissed in a loud whisper.

“Neither are you. Ladies wear corsets, not sidearms.”

I rolled my eyes. “Welcome to the twenty-first century, asshole.” I spun him around by his shoulders and shoved him out the door, surprised all over again that his skin was very, very warm, even through his clothes. Just like the box had been. And the Oak Island pit. I frowned, unnerved by the reminder that beneath the djinni’s childish fascination with the modern world, there lay more power than any one being should have—and not so much as a spark of self-control or moral influence. “I’ll be out in a minute. Wait here if you must, but do not come back in.” With that, I closed the door in his face, cutting off his reply.

Minutes later, I emerged to find Xaphan waiting exactly where I’d left him, a Cheeto in one hand, orange powder coating his fingers and lips. He even had clumps of it stuck in the reddish stubble now peppering his broad chin. I started to laugh, until I noticed that three empty snack bags lay at his feet. “You can’t just go around stealing food,” I snapped, bending to pick up the wrappers. “You’re going to get us all arrested.” And while he might be able to “poof” himself out of incarceration, I could not.

Xaphan shook his head, crunching into the Cheeto. “There will be no trouble. I’ve taken care of the clerk.”

“What?” My pulse spiked. “What did you do?”

The djinni shrugged, a gesture he’d picked up from Cale at some point during the last eight hours. “He was threatening to summon the local authorities.”

Panic pounded deep inside my chest. My arms suddenly felt heavy, and my hands curled into fists. I took off at a run, weaving between the isles of chips, motor oil, and two-liter bottles of soda. As I slid around the last curve, my boots barely finding purchase on the mopped-slick floor, I froze in place, staring in horror at the clerk who sat behind the counter. Or rather, at what was left of him.

When I’d entered the convenience store, the clerk been balanced cross-legged on a tall stool behind the register, flipping through a graphic novel. That novel now lay at my feet, in front of the counter. Which was just as well, because the clerk would have no further use for it. Ever.

Xaphan had toasted him alive. Instantly, evidently, because the scorched young man looked exactly as he should have, down to the part in his hair, the high-school class ring on one finger, and the phone still in his hand. Only now, instead of that too-pale pallor, his skin had the inky tone and crispy texture of a scorched marshmallow.

My breaths came in quick, hoarse pants, my chest heaving at the bottom of my vision. Nausea settled into the pit of my stomach, churning the contents mercilessly, and I held back vomit out of sheer will and the knowledge that throwing up all over the floor would leave evidence of my presence at what was now the scene of an inexplicable crime.

“Xaphan, what the hell were you thinking?!” I shouted, whirling to face the djinni in aisle two, where he stood beside a display of chocolate-covered peanuts, licking cheese-stained fingers.

He shrugged again, and I wanted to beat the nonchalance right out of him. If I were sure my fists wouldn’t go straight through him, I might have tried. “I was thinking that the local authorities would present quite an inconvenience. For you.”

“Well, hell, why stop with the clerk?” I demanded, my arms spread to take in the entire store. “Why didn’t you burn the whole damn building down?” I was closer to hysteria than I’d ever been in my life. Or my afterlife.

The djinni shrugged. “It seemed a shame to waste all the food.”

“It seemed… Fuck!” I closed my eyes, mentally counting to ten. Cale was right. Xaphan could not be unleashed on the world—no matter what. He had infinite potential for death and chaos, and no concept of right or wrong. He was like a toddler armed with a pistol: clueless and deadly. And I had let him out of his box.

I counted to ten again, and when that didn’t work, I went on to twenty, breathing slowly in and out. Then I rushed to the front of the store and waved frantically to Cale through the broad window; by some miracle, he was the only person in the parking lot. He shrugged with his palms up, posing a silent, “What?”

With a frustrated huff, I waved him toward the building with large, exaggerated movements. When he started toward me, I flipped the sign in the door so that it read closed, then froze in place as my gaze snagged on the only other vehicle in sight. It was a silver sedan parked at the last pump on the lot, a gas nozzle still protruding from its tank.

“Fuck!” Someone else was in the store.

I took off down the main aisle, looking for the owner of the sedan. The main room was empty, and by the time Cale pushed through the front door, I’d checked both the stockroom and the office and had found no sign of the missing customer.

“What’s wrong?” Cale asked as the front door closed behind him, and I pointed across the store at the clerk’s charred corpse. “Oh, shit.”

“Exactly. And I’m assuming someone was pumping gas into that silver car,” I said, pointing at the parking lot through the wall of glass.

Cale followed my gaze and flinched.

“Mmmm,” Xaphan said, around a mouthful of beef jerky, the remainder of the meat strip sticking up from the center of his clenched fist. “He’s in the other restroom.”

With a groan, I raced across the floor, nearly losing my balance when my foot landed on an empty chip wrapper in the middle of isle three. Just past the door to the ladies’ room was the men’s, and I hesitated a moment before shoving the door open wide. Crossing my fingers that an irate man would start yelling at me for interrupting his dump.

But there, framed almost exactly in the center of the doorway, stood another ash-man facing the middle urinal, his charred penis still held in one hand. He hadn’t even turned to look when Xaphan entered the room. He’d never stood a chance.

“Son of a bitch,” I whispered, still holding the door open.

“Any ideas?”

I spun around to find Cale peering over my shoulder, his expression grim, but unsurprised. “Just one: let’s get the hell out of here before the place fills up again. This lull can’t last much longer.”

He nodded, and we had an official plan. While Cale used the only men’s room stall—when you gotta go, you gotta go—I smashed the digital video recorder in the office, hoping the feed from the security camera wasn’t being recorded somewhere off-site. Back in the store itself, I glanced from the huge front windows to the clerk behind the counter. He was positioned right in the middle of the last pane, where anyone walking by could glance inside and see the lump of coal which had once been a living, breathing young man.

He’d have to be moved. Or covered somehow.

“You! Get in the car, and don’t do anything,” I said, careful not to say the W-word as I pointed my index finger at the naughtiest djinni in history. “Not a thing. No burning. Not even any talking. Go!” Finished with his beef stick now, Xaphan shrugged and snatched a bag of Doritos on his way out the door.

Behind the counter, I stared at the perfect ash replica of a store clerk. Where the hell was I going to put him?

Fortunately, location turned out not to be a problem. The instant my finger touched what had once been flesh, the entire charred statue collapsed in a puff of powder-fine black cinders. It went everywhere—all over the counter, the floor, and me. Ash coated my clothes and my hands. I was fucking inhaling the stuff. Literally breathing in the dead.

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.

“You ready?” Cale asked, jogging down the main aisle from the bathroom. His eyes widened when he took in the missing clerk and the black soot covering me from head to toe. “What…? What…?” He didn’t seem able to articulate a question about why I was covered in powdered human.

I shrugged, my arms held out from my body. “He wasn’t just charred on the outside. He was burnt the fuck up.”

“Clearly.” Cale stared at me for a moment, still stunned. Then he turned, scanning the shelves behind him. He snatched something from the one on his right and tossed it toward me. “Here, we’ll take these for the road.”

I caught the white plastic bundle in one hand. It was a travel pack of wet-wipes. Better than nothing, I guess, I thought, giving in to the urge to shake myself like a wet dog. I brushed dust from my arms and legs and ran my hands through my hair, fluffing it upside down like an eighties hairspray queen. Ashes rained all around me, settling onto the floor with the remains of the incinerated clerk. And still I tasted it. Tasted him.

As clean as I could possibly get without a shower, I stomped toward the glass door Cale held open for me. As I passed the cooler by the exit, I snagged a bottle of water and dropped a five-dollar bill in its place. Stealing from the cremated corpse seemed a bit like speaking ill of the dead, and being mostly dead myself, I was a bit sensitive to such things.

In the parking lot, I rinsed my mouth with a swig from the bottle and spit grayish water onto the pavement. Then I slid into the passenger seat and immediately ripped open the package of wet wipes, ignoring my seatbelt with reckless abandon.

“You okay?” Cale glanced at me as he shifted the car into gear.

“Peachy.” I scrubbed at my cheeks and forehead. “How ‘bout you?”

“Same.”

In the back seat, Orthus growled softly, and Xaphan crunched on his Doritos. Constantly. I could smell them, and the cheese-heavy scent did nothing to settle my stomach. As it was, I’d never be able to eat Cheetos again. Thank goodness he hadn’t grabbed a box of Twinkies…

“Why did you do that?” I demanded, twisting in my seat to glare at him as Cale merged the rental car with light highway traffic. I’d certainly left my share of bodies for the police to sort out, but they weren’t innocent bystanders. The people I killed deserved to die, and even then, I wasn’t trigger happy.

Hell, I hadn’t killed any of Devich’s goblin goons during our first confrontation, mostly because that would have been a waste of bullets. But also because, there was a part of me—a deep, dark, secret-Lex part that only surfaced in my dreams, and in drunken oblivion—that believed I was stuck in a quarter-millennia-old body for a reason. That if I truly deserved an afterlife, I’d already have one.

Call me superstitious, but I wasn’t willing to do anything that might put another black mark on my permanent record, and murdering at will definitely qualified.

“Why did I do what?” Xaphan crunched into another corn chip, watching me with no sign of guilt. No indication that he understood the problem at all.

“Why did you torch those people? What on earth made you decide to fucking cremate an innocent teenager and some poor guy who just stopped to take a piss?”

The djinni frowned, a chip inches from his mouth. “A live clerk can call in the authorities. A dead clerk cannot. If he’d called his police, there would have been many more bodies to burn. The other man presented the same threat. This way, there was less mess.” The chip went into his mouth, and fury battered my already fragile temper. I was so mad I couldn’t even speak to him without screaming. So I slid back into my seat and wiped more ashes from my face with the damp cloth.

“We have to get rid of him, Cale.” I didn’t bother to whisper. “I can’t sit in this car with him for another sixteen hours.”

He gave me a sympathetic glance, but I couldn’t help noticing that his jaw was clenched in the same fury plaguing me. “We’ll get rid of him in Memphis. There’s nothing we can do until then.”

“Yes, there is,” Xaphan said, and I tensed, already knowing what he would say. “You can make a wish.”

That’s when I realized he’d done it on purpose. Somehow, even tainted by his own incomprehensibly amoral viewpoint, he’d known that killing those people would upset me. That it would piss me off so badly I’d do almost anything to get rid of him. Xaphan was playing the game, and he thought he’d just won.

He was wrong.

Oddly calm, now that I knew what he was up to, I tilted the rearview mirror so I could see his face. His irritatingly smug and evil face—the toddler-with-a-pistol imagery was long gone. “Xaphan, there is nothing in the world I want badly enough to set you loose upon humanity. Not one. Fucking. Thing.”

The djinni’s lips turned up in a smooth, creepy smile. His eyes, already blacker than the midnight sky, darkened even more, until I felt like I was staring into the depths of evil itself. “Nothing?” He tilted his head slightly, arching dark red brows.

“Nothing.” I was confident in my answer. Completely, utterly confident—until I heard his next words.

“Think carefully, Alexandra.” His eyes burned into me, as if they could singe not just my body, but my spirit too. “Say the word, and I can restore your very soul.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Restore my soul?

I laughed out loud, unable to conceive of such a statement as anything other than a joke. A really fucking lousy joke. “What the hell does that even mean?” I demanded, tossing the used wipe into the plastic sack on the floorboard between my feet. “Are you saying there’s something wrong with my soul?”

Djinni-in-the-mirror shrugged, still chewing. “I cannot judge the worth of a soul. That is beyond my ken. But I can tell you this: the problem with your soul is not quality, but quantity.”

“What?!” I glanced at Cale to find him staring at Xaphan in the rearview mirror with the same perplexed expression I surely wore. Only his was flavored with a healthy dose of anger.

The nymph shook his head. “Ignore him. He’s pushing your buttons on purpose because his last trick didn’t work.”

“But he’s telling the truth, right? You said he can’t lie, so he has to be telling the truth.”

Cale frowned. “He’s telling part of the truth, I would assume. Or maybe his version of the truth. But he’s not going to give you the whole story—not unless you wish for it—so arguing with him is pointless.”

He was right. Still, pumping the djinni for information couldn’t hurt, so long as I didn’t say the magic word. Right?

Ignoring Cale’s warning, I pulled another wipe from the package, then dropped the remainder into the plastic bag and twisted to face the backseat again. I tossed the balled-up tissue at Xaphan, but he merely watched it fall into his lap, arching one brow at me in question. “It’s to clean your hands. And your mouth. You look like a Kindergartner after snack time.”

Frowning, he prodded the tissue cautiously with one orange-stained finger, like a cat poking its prey to make sure it was dead. An hour earlier, I might have laughed over a comparison of the powerful djinni to a harmless house cat. But now, having inhaled the victim of his human barbecue…

Images of the roasted store clerk haunted the backs of my eyelids. It wouldn’t do to underestimate the djinni again. “What do you know about my soul, Xaphan?”

One corner of his cheese-rimmed mouth turned up in a cagey, wicked smile. “Not as much as I would know if it were intact.”

For a long moment, I couldn’t quite process what he was saying. Nor could I think of a follow-up question.

“Either tell her what she wants to know, or shut up entirely,” Cale snapped. “Enigmatic answers just piss her off.”

I could have kissed Cale, but the djinni ignored him completely, as had become his habit. Orthus held Xaphan’s interest, and I held his freedom. Cale was nothing to him. Lucky nymph…

The djinni dropped the now-empty chip bag on the floor at his feet. “What do you want to know?”

Everything. “What do you mean by ‘if it were intact’? Are you saying my soul is broken?”

Wet wipe draped over one finger, he swiped almost delicately at the stain around his mouth, and the cloth caught on patches of reddish chin stubble. “In a manner of speaking…yes. Your body and soul are still joined. If they were not, you could not sustain its physical form.”

My pulse pounded in my throat. The djinni was skirting dangerously close to a subject I’d rather he not touch—and Cale not know. I rolled my eyes, hoping to communicate impatience, instead of panic. “Every imp in diapers knows that. Get on with it. What’s wrong with my soul?”

“The problem with your soul lies in the fact that you, my dear, do not possess all of it.”

“I don’t…? How is that even possible? Are you saying someone else owns my soul?”

Xaphan paused in mid-stroke, the wet wipe poised over his grimy right hand. His head tilted to one side in contemplation. “Have you knowingly and intentionally sold any portion of your soul in exchange for compensation of any kind?”

“No. Why the hell would I do that?”

“The damned have their reasons…”

My spine stiffened in indignation I could never have explained. “I am not one of the damned.” I couldn’t be. Could I?

My head spinning, I sank back into my chair, twisting to sit properly so I could lean back. My stomach churned. Roadside scenery flew by in red-tinged blurs. My limbs felt heavy, and unreal. Goose bumps sprouted over every inch of my skin, in spite of my coat and the heater blowing full blast.

I was going into shock. I was freaking-the-fuck-out at eighty-five miles an hour in a rented Corolla, surrounded by a hellhound, a water nymph, and a psychotic djinni. Not exactly how I pictured my future when I was ten. Or even one hundred and ten.

“If you haven’t sold any portion of your soul, then no, officially no one else owns it,” Xaphan spoke up from the backseat. Then, before I could get my hopes up, he continued. “But possession, as they say, is nine tenths of the law.”

“What?!” Blood rushed to my cheeks, fury scalding me as I twisted to face him again. “‘Finder’s keepers’ does not apply to souls! Right?” I glanced at Cale, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. His were busy staring at the road, his brows drawn low over them in concentration. Or maybe in confusion.

Questions tumbled through my mind, tripping over each other to claim my attention. But I couldn’t concentrate on any one thought, except the terrifying, mind-numbing idea that I might actually be one of the damned. For all of eternity.

Suddenly, every risk I’d ever taken with my body—every time I’d taken a bullet to the leg, a blade to the gut, or a hit to the head—came roaring to the front of my memory, taunting me with the knowledge of how incredibly close I’d been—on multiple occasions—to dying again. To losing my physical form.

The prospect hadn’t seemed so bad at the time. Any of the times. Surely with my body gone, my soul would be free to pursue the afterlife I so desperately wanted. There were even times I’d wished for the courage to effect such a change myself.

But what if my afterlife turned out to require SPF 1,000,000 sunscreen, rather than Band-Aids on my fingers, from all the harp-plucking?

Or worse, what if, without my soul intact, I couldn’t achieve either option? What if, when my body died, my soul—however much was left of it—became stranded here? Would I become a wraith, a non-corporeal spirit forever haunting the earth with no way to act upon it? Like John Allen at the pit? And like the thousands of other wraiths who lacked the mental capacity to communicate or even comprehend their own existence. Or lack thereof.

Panic clawed the inside of my throat, a scream desperate to break free.

How many times had I been a hairsbreadth away from physical death and non-corporeal perpetuity?

“How much?” I asked, surprised to hear the croaky quality of my own voice, as if holding back shrieks of rage and panic had led to an actual physical consequence.

The backseat creaked, and the car swayed slightly as Xaphan repositioned himself. “Pardon?”

“How much? How much of my soul is missing? Hell, how much is left?”

“That is difficult to quantify…”

“Which means he doesn’t know,” Cale interjected, veering smoothly into the left-hand lane to pass a minivan full of teenagers. “Or that he doesn’t want to tell.”

“That is not what it means,” Xaphan growled, only acknowledging Cale to argue with him.

I rested my forehead in my hand, my fingers rubbing my temple. I was getting the beginnings of my first headache in decades. “How much, then?”

“Not enough to break the bond between your soul and your body, but enough for me to sense something missing the moment I first saw you. I cannot be more precise than that, because there is no exact measurement.”

What, my soul couldn’t be calculated with a scale or a ruler? Why couldn’t there be a pint of soul, if there was an ounce of prevention and a pound of cure? Or was that a pound of flesh?

“I can’t restore your soul unless you actually wish for it,” Xaphan said, shattering my disjointed thoughts like a sledgehammer through a pane of glass. He leaned forward so that his chin brushed my shoulder. “That is a necessary part of the process, unfortunately.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said, unpleasantly aware that I actually did sound sorry. “But I’m not making a wish.”

Xaphan sighed into my ear, his lip brushing my cheek, his breath stirring my hair. I threw my left fist up and back, intending to smash his nose—but it was no longer there. “You lack foresight, my dear,” he said, from my other side this time. “You’ve had no use for your soul thus far, so you foolishly assume you never will. But you are wrong.”

My heart throbbed in my chest, and my throat tightened. Something important was coming. I could feel it.

“Your soul is the most valuable thing you will ever own. It is as much a part of you as your nose or your hand. If you die without full possession of it, you cannot move on. Your soul is your ticket into the next life, my dear. It is—”

“My room key…” I swallowed thickly as the memory clicked into place.

“Pardon?” Xaphan said, but I barely heard him. Someone else had my attention at the moment, speaking to me in the recollection of a three-day-old conversation.

Let’s just say they lost your room key… Dever—AKA Troy Devich—had said, explaining my prolonged stay in purgatory—the spirit world’s waiting room.

That’s what he was going to tell me. I was missing part of my soul. My room key. Only it was more like a boarding pass, without which I couldn’t board the Afterlife Express.

That fucking figures.

But on the bright side, I no longer needed Devich’s information, so there was no reason not to kill him on sight—once I figured out how. And…I now knew what had kept me from moving on, and how to rectify the situation. I had to get my soul back—in its entirety—from who- or whatever now possessed it.

But first, the more immediately pressing problem. We had to get rid of both the djinni and the demon before I could concentrate on my personal issues.

“I can save you from an eternity in purgatory. Consider carefully, Lex—or do you prefer Alexandra?”

“No.” Two hundred years ago, maybe, but not since I’d hung from a redcoats’ rope. “It’s Lex. And I’m not afraid of purgatory. I’m not afraid of anything, anymore. Not death, not the afterlife, and certainly not you.” Okay, I was a little afraid of becoming a wraith, but saw no reason to advertise that.

Xaphan was silent for a long, peaceful moment. So long that I glanced in the rearview mirror to see if he’d fallen asleep. He hadn’t. He was watching me with an alarmingly intent expression. An odd depth to his eyes. Then he frowned and leaned forward again, as if to whisper in my ear. But when his words finally came, they were much too loud to suit me.

“When did you die?” he asked, his too-hot breath scalding my ear lobe.

From the left corner of my vision, I saw Cale glance my way. The car slowed as his foot eased off the accelerator, though I doubt he’d even noticed. He was waiting for my answer. For me to pronounce the djinni wrong. Mistaken.

But I couldn’t.

“Seventeen seventy-seven,” I admitted in a whisper, though I couldn’t have said precisely why. Xaphan had already announced out the important part; the details couldn’t make things any worse.

Cale stomped on the brake. The Corolla veered across two lanes of traffic and into the emergency lane, where the front right tire dropped onto the grass beyond. Behind us, brakes squealed, and tires smoked. Horns honked, and cars swerved all over the road. One small sedan wound up in the median, another on the shoulder fifty feet past us. But by some miracle, there were no collisions, and by the time Cale had regained his composure, traffic was picking up again.

“You’re dead?” Cale demanded, staring at me as if I might sprout wings and beat him to death with them.

“Not really. Sort of.” Damn it! I had neither the time nor the energy to explain my strange state of being at that moment. “I was dead, briefly, and the consequences of that turned out to be…long term.”

“I knew you weren’t human,” he said, staring straight out the windshield. “Humans can’t heal that fast, even with my help—”

His help? What the hell did that mean? Pouring rubbing alcohol on an open wound did not constitute a miracle.

“—but I was thinking more along the lines of ‘mage’ or ‘empath,’ than dead.”

I shrugged. What could I possibly say to that?

“Were you ever planning to tell me?” His expression cycled through hurt and irritation before finally settling on a blank look, as if my answer didn’t matter. But I knew better.

“Honestly, no,” I admitted. “For this very reason.” My arms spread to take in the car and the emergency lane it was parked across.

He scowled. “I wouldn’t have reacted like that if you hadn’t said it at eighty-five miles an hour.”

“You were driving, not me.”

His chin dimple deepened as he frowned. “So, if you died nearly two hundred fifty years ago, why are you still breathing?”

“It’s a long story. I’ll explain it when we get rid of our third wheel.”

Cale glanced at Xaphan in the rearview mirror, then at me again. His jaw tightened. “Fair enough,” he said, nodding as he shifted the car back into drive, though he looked anything but happy.

“You’re trapped here, aren’t you?” the djinni said as Cale flicked on the blinker and eased us back into traffic. “Instead of purgatory, you got this. Eternity with the living, right?”

I ignored him, but silence didn’t seem to bother Xaphan in the least.

“I can get you out of here. One word, and I can restore your soul. Or you could pass over that part and go straight into the afterlife.” My lack of a response didn’t faze him. “You aren’t happy here. I can see it in your eyes.”

Apparently the rearview mirror was a magic mirror…

“Save your breath, Xaphan,” I said finally, when his persistence had used up the very last of my patience. “You’re not going to convince me to make a wish. You can’t force me into it, or trick me into it, or fucking seduce me into it. So you may as well just give up.”

“Seduce you?” He had the nerve to sound intrigued by the idea, as if he hadn’t already thought of it, when he’d been breathing in my ear minutes earlier. “Oh, no, my dear. I would never presume to compete with an incubus.”

“An inc—?” Turning, I frowned at him, thoroughly confused. “What incubus?”

The djinni turned to look pointedly at Cale.

My chest tightened. I followed his gaze. I had no choice.

The nymph stared straight ahead, his eyes glued to the road. His jaw was clenched so tight that the muscles stood out beneath his skin, which was red with fury beneath a short blanket of golden chin stubble.

“Cale?” My voice came out as a squeak, my hands curling into fists in my lap. “What the living hell is he talking about?”

Cale opened his mouth, then he closed it again with a sharp click of teeth. He shook his head, but I wasn’t sure whether he was denying the accusation or his right to refute it.

Xaphan laughed, a sound of pure delight resonating from deep inside his chest. “Didn’t you know? Your lover is an incubus.”

“No. He’s a water nymph. He can make it rain. I’ve seen him make rain. I’ve heard you call him a sprite.” The djinni couldn’t lie, but he could be wrong…

“He is both.” Xaphan turned back to Cale, leaning even farther forward. “Which one is your mother? A nymph or a succubus? I wonder if I might know her? I knew a luscious young succubus in London… Ah, but she can’t still be alive. Pity.”

“My mother…” Cale began, hands clenched around the wheel in fury. “…is the nymph queen who put your ass in that box in the first place.”

Xaphan’s face flushed as red as his short, scruffy beard. “Daphne…” He spat Cale’s mother’s name with hatred that could only be personal. “I should have known. You have her eyes.”

“Is it true?” I asked, having barely followed their bitter exchange. I’d assumed that Cale was half-nymph and half-human, and I desperately didn’t want to believe otherwise. At least not until I’d heard it from the proverbial horse’s mouth. “Your mother’s an elemental. What is your father?”

Cale sighed and closed his eyes, ignoring the road for far too long. “He was an incubus.”

“Fucking hell.” My fist shot out before I could stop it, and a dent appeared in the glove compartment, right before it popped open. “You knew how I feel about parasites, and you let me…! You…!” As usually happened when words failed me, my fists took over.

I punched him in the shoulder—hard—and drew too little satisfaction from his grunt of pain. So I did it again. Then I went for his ribs.

He flinched under my assault, batting away my fists as well as he could without running us off the road. “Stop it, Lex. Let me explain!”

“Fuck your explanations, and fuck you,” I shouted, scanning the passing road signs for the name of the nearest town. “Stop the car.”

Cale glanced at me cautiously and pressed on the brake. A little. “Will you listen?”

“Pull the fuck over!”

“It’s not like you think it is.” Twisting to peer through the rear windshield, he flicked on the blinker and swung into the right-hand lane, then onto the shoulder once again. I was out of the car in an instant, but he followed me, rushing around the trunk and nearly getting run over by a horse trailer in the process. “I didn’t feed from you, Lex. I swear. Think about it. Did you get sick? Did you even feel tired?” When I didn’t respond, he answered for me. “No. Because I didn’t take any energy.”

I tried to walk away from him, but he grabbed my arm to stop me. My gun arm. I jerked free of his touch, so angry I literally could not unclench my jaw, and had to speak through gritted teeth. “Don’t touch me, Cale. Don’t ever fucking touch me again.”

He recoiled as if I’d punched him. Flames of regret flickered through me, but I stomped them down before they could spread. I would not feel guilty about this. He was a parasite. A dirty, lust-sucking parasite, and there was nothing I hated worse.

Okay, there was little I hated worse. And him not feeding on me didn’t mean a damn thing. He’d fed on others, and that was bad enough.

“Lex, please listen.” He held his hands up, palms toward me, to show he meant me no harm. And that he wouldn’t touch me. “I swear on my life—on my sister’s life—that I never fed on you.”

Cari. Was she a parasite too? She couldn’t be. I would have known it. I should have known about Cale, but I’d attributed the power I felt from him to his nymph blood, which was apparently only part of the truth.

“It doesn’t matter, Cale. You’ve fed from others. You have no choice; I understand that. But I can’t live with it.”

“You don’t understand, Lex,” he said. I tried to turn away, but he stepped in front of me, his brilliant blue eyes pleading with me to listen. “I don’t have to feed. Not like that. I’m only half-incubus, and I don’t need sexual energy to live.”

I hesitated, my eyes narrowed as I tried to squelch the bloom of hope unfolding in my chest. Hope was dangerous, and pointless, especially where parasites were concerned. “You don’t feed on sex?”

“No.” He shook his head, giving me a small smile. “I swear on my soul that I don’t. In fact, I fed you instead.” His hand stroked my arm, and I let it, against my better judgment.

“How is that possible?”

Cale’s smile broadened, deepening the cleft in his chin. “Parasites deal in energy. Sexual energy specifically, for incubi and succubae,” he said, and I nodded. That was the whole problem. “But it can go either way. We can give, as well as take, and that’s what I did with you.”

“Why?” I couldn’t stop suspicion from leaking into my voice.

He shrugged, and the gesture looked much more genuine on him than on the djinni. “I felt guilty about Lori shooting you, and I was trying to help you heal. I didn’t know you could do it on your own, so I fed you, instead of feeding from you.”

Holy shit. No wonder I’d healed so quickly.

“That’s still a deception. And you should have told me.”

“You didn’t show me your family tree either, you know.” His smile was starting to fade, without any reassurance from me.

“My roots are all human.”

His shrug looked…awkward. “I can’t help what I am, Lex. I didn’t choose my gene pool.”

“I know. And I know that parasites—most of them, anyway—have no choice but to feed from others to survive.” Which made me uncomfortable in ways I couldn’t begin to describe. “But I am no one’s food, Cale. Where one person’s wellbeing requires me to sacrifice my own, I’m going to choose mine every day of the week. That’s my right.”

He nodded, almost too eagerly. “I get it. I really do. It’s not on you to feed parasites.”

“Nor is it on anyone else who doesn’t choose to make that sacrifice for themselves.”

“Agreed. And I would never ask that of you. Or of anyone else.”

“Have you ever done…that?” It was a very personal question, and the truth was that I had no right to ask it. But that had never stopped me before…

Cale sighed. He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Once. When I was a teenager. Before I realized what was happening.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I never met my dad, and it’s not like my mom could show me how to deal with my incubus…issues. But I figured it out. And I haven’t fed on anyone since.” He shrugged off an obviously painful memory with a small grin. “These days, I go for pizza when I’m hungry.”

“As well you should.” Pizza was hands down one of the best things to come out of the twentieth century.

“So…think you can forgive me?”

I pretended to think about it as his charm worked its magic. “You promise to keep your paws off my energy reserve? No taking or giving?”

“Absolutely.” Cale reached for my waist, and I let him pull me close, against my better judgment. “I’d much rather exhaust you…manually,” he whispered into my ear, his breath a warm counterpart to the cold air.

“Oh, you think you’re going to wear me out?”

He chuckled. “That sounds like a challenge. Let’s go get rid of this djinni so we can…explore that.” Cale tugged me back toward the Corolla, and I went reluctantly, dreading another day in the car with Xaphan. “By the way, you look pretty good for nearly two hundred fifty.”

“Fuck off,” I said, smiling in spite of myself.

Cale was leaning in for a kiss when my phone rang. “Who the hell is that?” he mumbled, his lips brushing mine as he spoke.

I pulled the phone from my pocket, frowning at the display. It was Lacey, probably wanting to know where the hell I was and why I hadn’t checked in. “This’ll just take a second,” I said as I answered the call. “What’s up, Lace?”

“Hello Alexandra,” Devich said into my ear, his voice smooth and deep with fury. Chills skittered up my spine in an icy torrent. “At the moment, what’s up is your employee’s temperature. One hundred and four, to be exact. And if you don’t do exactly what I tell you, I am going to let him die.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

“Dever.” The name fit. It was true. He was no longer Troy Devich to me; for what little of his life remained, he was Dever.

Cale went stiff the moment the demon’s name left my mouth. He arched thick blond brows at me and mouthed, “Is it him?”

I nodded as I put the demon on speaker.

“I would be quite impressed, Ms. Walker…” Dever said, and it took most of my fragile self-control to keep from stomping my phone into bits just to get his voice out of my head. “…if I hadn’t already known of your involvement with the incubus.”

Was I the only one who didn’t know about Cale’s father?

It seemed pointless to explain to Dever that he was the one responsible for my involvement with Cale and his save-the-world crusade, so I didn’t bother. “Where’s Lacey?” I demanded, fear for the gremlin twisting my gut into knots.

“He’s right here with me. For the moment, at least.”

“I want to talk to him.”

The demon clucked his tongue in mock sympathy. “I’m afraid he’s in no shape for conversation. The last coherent sentence he uttered was a cry for his mommy.”

“Lacey has nothing to do with this,” I snapped, fear and rage coursing through me.

“He has everything to do with this. You want him, and I want my box. We’ll make a trade. My best guess is that your friend has about two hours before his temperature spikes high enough to cook his brain. You give me the box, and I’ll give you the gremlin, to do with what you will. Shove Tylenol down his throat, or rush him to the hospital. I don’t care. But if you don’t produce my box in the next two hours, I will let him fry.”

Mother-fucking son of a bitch! I didn’t have curses strong enough to express my rage and terror on behalf of Aaron Lacey, the only true friend I’d had in several decades.

Fresh grief and horror stirred up the dregs of memories I’d buried more than two centuries earlier and hoped never to resurrect. I couldn’t watch while someone else I loved died. Not again.

Not ever again.

Dever’s voice soaked through my thoughts like blood through a cloth bandage, drenching me in fury and horror. “Next on the list is the lovely Cari Murphy.”

Cale tensed beside me, and I was amazed by the restraint it must have taken for him to remain silent.

“Two hours isn’t long enough,” I said into the phone, forcing the words through teeth clenched in rage. We were still fifteen hours from Memphis. “We can’t possibly get there in time.”

“Do you have my box?”

“Of course not.” I squeezed my eyelids shut as I rubbed my temple. “It was too fucking heavy to carry. But I have the contents,” I added, before he could respond. No need to tell him that I’d already opened said contents.

“Fine. I’ll come to you. Where are you?”

I glanced at Cale for the answer, and he pointed at a highway sign fifty feet up the road. “Interstate 95. A couple of miles south of Wilmington, Pennsylvania.”

Silence settled over the line, and when Dever spoke again, he sounded pleased. Which made me nervous. “There’s a town called Chadds Ford, ten or twelve miles north of you. Follow the signs for Linden Farm and turn into the Birmingham-Lafayette Cemetery. It’ll be on your left, past—”

“I know where it is,” I snapped, infuriated by the realization that he had not chosen the location at random.

I hadn’t seen Linden Farm in more than two centuries. In fact, the last time I’d been there, it was still named for Samuel Jones, the former owner. But I had no doubt I would recognize it instantly, no matter how much had changed. My existence was indelibly connected to that plot of land, which was why I’d stayed away. It would take a lot to get me back there.

Unfortunately, Dever had a lot to offer.

“There are three large, commemorative monuments,” he continued. “Hard to miss. I’ll be in front of the tallest of them in one hour. If you want your friend back, meet us there. And bring the nymph. I can hear him breathing.” The phone clicked, then went silent.

For several seconds, Cale and I only stared at each other. I’m not sure what he was thinking, but my own thoughts were something along the lines of, Fuckfuckfuck…!

“We can’t take Xaphan with us,” Cale said, breaking into the litany of profanity my thought process had been reduced to.

“Yet neither can we get rid of him.” I shoved my phone into my back pocket and trudged toward the rented Corolla. “Life sucks, huh?” But not as badly as death.

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Cale grabbed my arm. Frowning, I jerked free and whirled on him, scowling. “Sorry.” He cut me off before I could start yelling. “But we cannot put Xaphan and Dever in the same room, and not just because it would be a phenomenally bad idea to concentrate that much evil energy in one place.”

Morbid curiosity got the better of me. “Why then?” I glanced at the car to find the djinni watching us from backseat, my last Twinkie dwarfed in his fist. Selfish bastard.

“Xaphan and Dever go way back. Back to the Black Plague, in fact. They used to work the same sections of Europe, blazing trails of pain and chaos like teenagers today mark their turf with graffiti and burned rubber.”

“How do you know so little about teenagers, when your sister is one?” Shouldn’t I have been the out-of-touch old lady in this scenario?

He scowled. “My point is that they have history.”

I nodded slowly. “A demon and a djinni tearing through medieval Europe like sailors on shore leave? I can totally see it.”

“Yeah. But here’s the problem: Xaphan started the fire that basically ended the Black Plague.” Cale’s gaze searched mine, obviously seeking some sort of comprehension. “Do you see what I’m getting at?”

“Xaphan rained all over Dever’s parade? I take it they’re not the best of friends anymore.”

Cale nodded. “Dever got so pissed about the end of his plague party that he turned Xaphan in.”

“In?”

“To my mother and the elementals. He gave the djinni to them. Practically bound and gagged. He’s the reason Xaphan spent four hundred years cuddled up with a corpse.”

“Oh, shit. So, Xaphan’s not going to be very happy to see his old buddy.”

Cale shook his head slowly, sunlight shining on his golden hair. “No, he won’t. Dever knows this, of course. Once he’s free, Xaphan will be out for a pound of demon flesh—and whatever else comes off with it. I think that’s why Dever was hunting me in the first place: he needs me to put jack back in the box.”

Ohhhh. That particular question had been bugging me ever since Lori mentioned the reward for bringing Cale in alive. I knew what I wanted him for, but something had told me Devich’s plans for the sea sprite included neither a bed post, a bottle of baby oil, or a series of body shots, though he might have found use for the length of rope in my backpack.

Impressed, I felt my eyes widen. “Can you do that? Can you put Xaphan back in djinni jail?” If so, why hadn’t he already?

“On my own? I doubt it. But Dever doesn’t seem to know that. He probably only knows that I inherited my mother’s abilities, and while he can’t get anywhere near her, he stands a decent shot at getting his hands on me. Or my sister. But where Cari’s concerned, the joke’s on him. She inherited more from her father than from our mother. She could never handle Xaphan.”

In the car, the djinni shoved the last bite of my last Twinkie into his mouth, staring right at me. I turned away from him in disgust. “It’s a moot point now, though, isn’t it?”

Cale nodded solemnly. “But I do not want to be caught between the two of them when Xaphan sets his eyes on Dever.”

“Maybe we can convince him to stay behind.”

“You can try, but I’m not holding my breath.” His shoulders slumped in defeat. Or maybe acceptance. “We’ve only got an hour. Let’s go.” Cale opened the driver’s side door and slid behind the wheel as I sank into the passenger seat, intentionally ignoring the djinni’s demands to know what we were talking about and why I’d spoken into the tiny silver box.

I breathed a silent sigh of relief over his technological ignorance. So far, he had no idea we’d been in contact with either Dever or Cale’s mother, but if he grew to understand electronics as fast as he’d come by his love of snack food and grasp of modern vernacular, we’d be in serious trouble.

As Cale started the engine, I twisted in my seat to make eye contact with Orthus. I was hoping to pacify him with some quick talking, to make up for leaving him alone with the djinni. But the hellhound was gone. In his place I found only a patch of deep gloom.

“Where’s Orthus?” I demanded, glaring at Xaphan. “What did you do to him?”

The djinni shrugged. “I only wanted to inspect his teeth. They’re so fantastically sharp and curved.”

Wonderful. The djinni I couldn’t get rid of had chased off the only partner I’d ever truly trusted. My scowl deepened, and I bit my tongue to keep from saying something I’d regret. We needed Xaphan now more than ever, if the infant idea forming in my mind was to ever reach maturity.

We had little time to plan, which was just as well, because we also had very few options. According to Cale—and thousands of years of elemental lore—we couldn’t kill Devich, and I didn’t hold out much hope of disabling him, after having shot him twice with no success. So we decided to save offensive tactics as our Plan B.

After a short discussion in a makeshift keep-djinni-in-the-dark code, we decided that our main strategy would involve a mixture of bait-and-switch and good old-fashioned lying, both of which I had plenty of experience with. In the home décor aisle of a local hobby store, Cale found an antique-looking clay pot with a lid, which we planned to paste on with some superglue from the craft section. Once we removed the sticker reading “made in China,” it was difficult to tell at a glance that the pot wasn’t several hundred—or a thousand—years old. Even Xaphan was impressed, and since Dever had never actually seen the real one, we were hopeful that he’d fall for our fake at least long enough for us to get Lacey to safety.

For the final touch, we needed the djinni’s help, a prospect which did not sit well with me in the least. Or with him, in part because we couldn’t tell him why we needed his help or what we were up to. In the end, I had to bargain for his cooperation, and it took every bit of dramatic skill I possessed to convince him that if he helped us, once we had what we wanted, I would use my wish and set him free.

He wasn’t buying it, until I told him—while Cale was inside buying the fake pot—that I intended to use my wish to get back at the half-breed incubus bastard for not telling me what he really was before I slept with him. When I said that, Xaphan’s eyes gleamed in anticipation, and he looked at me with so much respect that my stomach churned. I didn’t want the respect of such a monster. But my lie worked, either because he hated Cale or was curious about how I would exact my revenge. Or both.

Fortunately, what we needed from the djinni was simple and easy. We wanted him to stay out of sight, but near enough for his presence to be felt by all of those involved. If Dever didn’t feel the djinni when we gave him the pot, he wouldn’t buy our ruse, and Lacey would die. And we probably would too.

Xaphan outright refused to get into the new pot, even though glue alone wasn’t enough to seal him in, and I couldn’t really blame him. But after a few more minutes of cajoling, and several hints at what I wanted him to do to Daphne’s son, he admitted that he could manipulate his physical form anyway he saw fit—changing his size, stature, and even his…opacity. Evidently that was how he fit into the original pot in the first place.

After the hobby store, Cale stopped at the first pharmacy we found, and I waited in the car with the djinni again while he went inside for Tylenol. I wanted to get it myself, but Xaphan wouldn’t stay behind, and I knew better than to take him into another store. Ten minutes after he went in, Cale came back with a plastic bag full of medicine. And I mean full of medicine. Tylenol, aspirin, Sudafed, Aleve, Icy Hot, throat lozenges, and sterile bandages. He even got Chloroseptic throat spray, in two flavors, though what he planned to do with them, I have no idea.

After glancing through the drugstore-in-a-bag, I eyed Cale quizzically. He shrugged. “I don’t know what Dever gave him, so I figured it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

“What exactly do you expect Lacey to do with this?” I held up a bottle of Midol, my lips quirking up in a smile.

“I don’t know. I just kind of shoveled things into the basket.”

Clearly. “Unfortunately, I suspect he’s going to need antibiotics, which they don’t sell over-the-counter.”

“Yes, they do.” Leaning to one side, he dug into his right pocket and came out with a small brown prescription bottle, with no label. “If you know how to ask nicely.” He tossed me the bottle, and I opened it to find at least twenty white pills. “Amoxicillin,” he said, in response to my puzzled look. “On the house.”

I screwed the lid back on and dropped the bottle into the bag with the other drugs. “What did you do?”

He shrugged. “There are a few advantages to being part incubus.”

My jaw clenched in irritation. “You played the lust card.” That didn’t sit well with me, even if he was using it against someone else.

Cale’s brows arched. “As if that’s not the card you played against the goblins when you rescued Cari. We all use the weapons at our disposal.”

“That’s different,” I insisted, indignation burning in my gut.

Cale crossed his arms over his chest. “How?”

“The weapon I was using wasn’t my ability to inspire lust. It was their lechery. I was exploiting a weakness. Not creating one through an unfair advantage.”

“That’s a very fine line,” he insisted. “In fact, I’m not sure I actually see it. A seam in someone’s armor is a weakness, but it won’t kill on its own. Someone still has to drive a weapon through that weak spot. Which is exactly what we both did. You’re welcome, by the way,” he added with a pointed glance at the antibiotics that might just save Lacey’s life.

Damn it. The taste of my own hypocrisy was bitter, indeed.

“Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry. I have a bit of a hair-trigger where parasites are concerned.” For no reason I wanted to explain to him. Ever. “And…thank you.”

Cale grinned as he pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the highway.

“What is the meaning of ‘on the house?’” Xaphan asked, and I answered without twisting to face him.

“It means he got the pills for free. At no charge.”

“Like a gift?”

“I suppose. Kind of.” After that, I blocked them both out, saving my energy and patience for the job at hand.

It took us twenty minutes to get to Chadds Ford and several more to find Linden Farm and the cemetery. I glanced around in amazement as we drove. The land had changed more than I could possibly have imagined, but just as I’d expected, it still felt exactly the same. We parked near the stone wall entrance and walked the rest of the way, and by then, Xaphan was insanely curious about our destination, probably made more so by our refusal to discuss…well, anything.

To his credit, the djinni was in a fine mood, ogling everything we passed and chattering incessantly about the smooth face of the grave markers, the neat cut of the grass, the electric lights overhead, and anything else he found inexplicable but fascinating.

Xaphan was easily the most upbeat psychopath I’d ever met.

I, on the other hand, felt myself sink deeper into melancholy with every step. I hated cemeteries, Birmingham-Lafayette in particular, and I avoided them whenever possible. Not because they scare me—they didn’t—but because it was really eerie for me to walk around looking at headstones for people who were born in my own generation or later, who’d died one to two hundred years ago. Cemeteries reminded me of what and where I should have been, which was no doubt part of the reason Dever chose to meet us in one.

But even worse than the personal reminder—and almost as bad as the real reason the demon had picked Linden Farm—was the fact that graveyards felt strange to me. They made me physically uncomfortable. After several minutes surrounded by headstones and pots of dead flowers, my skin started to itch and prickle. It was a bizarre feeling, almost as if I could feel the presence of death in the air against my skin.

I made a point to stay out of graveyards, so I hadn’t felt it in years, but if memory served, the feeling started in my hands. A tingle, like pins and needles. Just like I’d felt right before James Allen, the wraith, appeared at…

Son of a bitch.

Understanding slid into place in my head with an almost audible click, and I stopped walking as suddenly as if I’d hit a wall. It wasn’t the cemetery itself I’d been feeling for all those years. Those decades. It was the wraiths. I had been feeling them—and no doubt seeing them—all along, and I hadn’t even known it.

But I knew it now.

A little excited, in spite of the reason for our excursion, I glanced around the graveyard, scanning for any sign of life. Or rather, death. But I saw and felt nothing. Not so much as a tingle, and no sign of movement except the wind blowing leaves from trees.

Well, that fucking figures. I’d finally realized what I should have figured out two centuries ago, and there were no wraiths around to test my new-found ability. The damn djinni had probably scared them away with his “bad” feelings.

As we walked, my gaze fell upon something I recognized, despite all that time and landscaping had done to change a plot of land engraved upon my memory like an epitaph etched in stone.

The meeting house. Where it all started.

Memories assailed me as I walked past the Birmingham Friends' Meeting House—what was left of it, anyway—and the cemetery as it currently looked was overlaid with images from my own recollection. The cold October night and the stone wall lit only by moonlight merged with a day more than a quarter of a millennium ago, when red uniforms clashed with blue, screams rent the air, and blood nourished the soil. Everywhere I turned, soldiers called out to me, some by name, others in inarticulate moans of agony. Up ahead, laid over a field of brown winter grass scattered with gray headstones, I saw a sea of red-tinged green, sprinkled with fallen soldiers waiting to be tossed into the common grave: a great trench like a gash in the earth, still being dug.

I blinked, and the gash was gone now, long ago healed and commemorated with a gray stone marker. Everyone who had seen the mass grave in person had died more than two centuries ago. Including me. Yet the images still made my palms sweat and my stomach clench. Made my eyes see what was surely no longer there.

The headstone called to me silently, and I obeyed the summons. I had no choice. My hand reached out of its own accord, brushing the cold gray stone as other textures slid beneath my fingertips. Rough cloth bandages. Warm, tacky blood. Damp, fragrant earth. Still-warm flesh.

“Lex?” Cale called, and I turned to find him watching me from ten feet away, the fake urn hidden in the backpack slung over his left shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I whispered, then I shook my head. Was I okay? Had I ever been? “I’ve been here before.” I left it at that, and he was wise enough not to ask for more.

Xaphan stared at me openly, and I could almost see the gears in his brain grinding. He was too intuitive for my liking. That, or I’d become much too easy to read.

Cale glanced at his watch. “We only have a few minutes, and I want to get there before he shows up.”

I nodded, but the djinni looked irritated. “Before who shows up?”

Cale scowled, waving me over. “We’re meeting an old friend.”

Of yours, I thought, finishing silently what Cale had surely itched to say aloud. My hand snaked beneath one side of my coat as I turned away from the mass grave. My fingers stroked the butt of my gun, looking for comfort, though I knew deep down that the nine-millimeter would do little to protect me from anything we were about to face.

I took the lead, because I was the only one who knew were we were going. Xaphan had been underground for a couple of centuries by the time the Battle of Brandywine devastated the continental army, and Cale wouldn’t be born for at least that many more.

Up ahead, the monuments came into view slowly, rising from the ground as we mounted a small hill. Dever was right: they were impossible to miss. They were massive and beautiful, inscribed to several of those who’d fought in the battle.

“Where is this old friend?” Xaphan glanced around impatiently; he was clearly losing patience with an adventure we’d repeatedly declined to explain to him.

“He’ll be here any minute,” I said, checking the time on my phone. “We need to get you out of sight.” I watched the djinni carefully, waiting for him to do…whatever he had to do in order to disappear. “Any time,” I nudged when he remained wholly visible.

Finally, with a roll of his eerie black eyes, Xaphan faded slowly from sight until I could see the largest of the three monuments through him. Then he was completely invisible. I glanced at Cale to find his eyes as wide as my own surely were. “Perfect,” I whispered, still a little stunned.

“So glad you approve,” Xaphan said from behind me now. I whirled around, my gaze searching the moonlit dark, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Frowning, I reminded the djinni that if he didn’t play his part—including the silent element of his performance—not only would I not make my wish, but I would help the elementals stuff him into a new jar. Then I would personally drop him into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. For a moment, as my last threat faded into silence, I was afraid I’d pushed him too far, and that he’d start torching people to piss me off. But then his lips—and only his lips—appeared out of nowhere, turned up in a decidedly lecherous Cheshire Cat smile.

Chills shot up my spine. The sick bastard seemed to think I was flirting with him.

Shaking my head in disgust, I watched as his mouth faded from view once again. Then we waited.

In the first couple of minutes, I glanced at the time on my cell phone at least two dozen times. The wind blew, and the temperature was in the low forties, but I barely felt the cold, despite wearing only my thin, bullet-breached leather coat over my jeans and sweater. It may have been the djinni’s presence keeping me warm, but I couldn’t help thinking it was my own anger at Dever and concern for Lacey.

Finally, just when I’d decided Dever wasn’t coming, the long, broad shadow stretching behind the tallest monument began to flicker. As I watched, it shimmered like the air above hot asphalt on a Memphis summer afternoon. Then Dever stepped from the depths of the darkness into the cemetery, his smile civil and inviting, yet somehow eviler than a scowl could ever be.

“Good evening, Ms. Walker. I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

TWENTY-NINE

Devich’s smile graced the philanthropist’s face, but it was Dever who watched me through eyes that saw right into my fractured soul, I had no doubt. And it was Dever whose power scalded my skin with wave after wave of heat, as if I were standing too close to a fire. Not a campfire, but a roaring blaze, like a forest fire, or…

No, wait. That sounded more like Xaphan than Dever, even if the demon did originate in hell.

The djinni had obviously recognized his former friend and now clearly understood our plan, at least in part. And he would believe that since we were offering Dever an empty urn, we were taking Xaphan’s side in the centuries-old feud.

By all appearances, he’d decided to play along, at least for the moment. Thank goodness.

Dever’s eyes rolled slowly from side to side, and his smile widened. His gaze narrowed on Cale’s backpack and his lips parted slightly. I could almost see him salivate. He felt the djinni’s presence. And he seemed to be buying our ruse.

The demon extended one human-looking hand toward me, as if he expected me to simply pony up, niceties be damned. “Give me the urn.”

Shit. He already knew there was an urn. But with any luck, Cale was correct in that the demon had never actually seen the real one.

I shook my head slowly. “Lacey first. Where is he?”

Dever frowned, and I felt the first true pulse of his power, threading through Xaphan’s heat wave toward me. The demon’s power felt like heat too, but of a more electrical variety. Lightening, rather than open flame. Dever would strike hard and fast from a single point, dropping me in my tracks, whereas Xaphan’s power would swell and bloat, consuming me from every direction all at once.

Two distinct visions of hell, but either one would do the job.

“You’re pushing your luck, Alexandra.” The demon watched me calmly, evidently waiting for me to fold under pressure.

I shrugged, as if dread hadn’t wound itself around my ribs, threatening to squeeze the very breath from my body. “So, either push back or go get Aaron Lacey.” Facing down a demon in the middle of a cemetery wasn’t exactly on my bucket list, but I knew better than to let my fear show.

Dever blinked, and his expression went blank. For a long moment, he did nothing, and I thought we were too late. He hadn’t brought his bargaining chip, because Lacey was already dead. Game over. I’d lost.

I’d lost my friend.

But then, without turning to look, the demon extended his arm backward into the deep shadows at his back. Again, the darkness shimmered, and his hand and wrist disappeared into it. When his hand reappeared, it was wrapped around an unfamiliar arm, which belonged to the first in a string of four goblins who poured from the shadow in a single-file line, linked hand-to-hand like a bunch of preschoolers. The third goblin carried Aaron Lacey tossed over one shoulder like a bag of sand. I could only see his bottom half, worn-slick sneaker soles barely peeking from beneath too-long jeans, but the gremlin wasn’t moving. If he was breathing at all, I couldn’t tell it.

I scowled as I eyed the goblin goons. Apparently Dever had a never-ending supply of them, and I’d forgotten to specify that he come unaccompanied. But then, I had backup too, if a half-breed incubus/nymph and an invisible djinni counted. And since they were all I had, I was pretty damned inclined to count them both.

“He better still be breathing,” I said, letting my threat go unspoken, because there really wasn’t much I could threaten a demon with.

Dever made a casual motion toward the ground, and the third goblin stepped forward, one hand at the base of Lacey’s spine. He heaved one broad, powerful shoulder, and the gremlin’s small, fragile-looking body tumbled to the ground at my feet, with nothing to break his fall as I lurched forward to catch him.

I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t expecting the bastard to drop him.

Lacey didn’t even flinch. He was unconscious.

As I knelt to examine him, my left hand slipped beneath the open front of my coat. I drew my gun and put a bullet through the third goblin’s forehead before he could even step back into line. He fell over backward, an astonished look on his face as his eyes stared blankly into the star-speckled night sky.

All three remaining goblins went for their guns. I shifted my arm to the left, aiming at the second goblin’s right eye.

“Stop,” Dever ordered, before any of us could get a shot off. It was just one word, and he didn’t even shout, but all three of his remaining goons froze. And since they hadn’t fired, I didn’t either. Instead, I met each of their gazes in turn, boldly. Silently letting them know that I would not hesitate to end them if I got a chance; as Dever’s minions, they were evil by association and did not qualify for my mercy.

With any luck, anyone who survived this little rendezvous would spread the word.

“You have your gremlin. Give me the urn.” Dever eyed Cale’s backpack, betraying his own eagerness. Not that it mattered; we all knew how desperate he was to get his hands on the djinni.

I reached down for Lacey without taking either my gaze or my aim from the goblin in the middle. My hand traveled up his arm, over his baggy long-sleeved tee until I reached his neck. The moment my fingers touched his skin, I jerked back, my focus drawn to his face instinctively. He was burning up—literally. His skin scorched my fingers, and I pulled my hand back reflexively.

Dever had already nearly killed him. Lacey needed medicine. Immediately. He also probably needed an ice bath to bring his temperature down before he was cooked from the inside out.

“What is this?” I demanded, shifting my focus to the demon. “What did you give him?”

“It was a simple infection a few hours ago, but it has moved into his blood stream. He needs serious medical attention. As soon as you hand over the urn, you will be free to go care for him.”

Fury pumped through my veins, fueling my temper like gasoline poured on a fire. I would get him. Somehow, I would make Dever pay for what he’d done. But Lacey came first. “Cale, toss me the antibiotics,” I said, without looking away from the demon’s face.

Cloth rustled as the bag slid from Cale’s shoulder. I heard the soft buzz of a zipper being opened, then the rattle of pills in a plastic bottle.

“The urn first,” Dever said. “Or I won’t allow the pills to take effect.”

I glared at the demon, wanting to believe that was beyond his power. But I couldn’t be sure. Twisting, I arched my brows at Cale, who nodded, confirming that Dever’s threat wasn’t empty. Fuck. “Give me the urn.” A thread of defeat wove its way through my voice, despite my best effort to censor it.

Cale set his backpack carefully on the ground and unzipped the main compartment. Reaching in with both hands, he pulled out the five-dollar pot as if it were the most precious antique on the face of the planet, gripping it carefully on both sides of the narrow base.

On the right edge of my vision, I felt Dever go completely still. He even stopped breathing. I could practically taste his anticipation.

Standing, I took the urn carefully from Cale, playing my part as planned. The clay pot was unusually warm in the cold October air. We had filled it with chemical hand warmers before gluing the lid on, because the demon would know that anything confining Xaphan would give off heat, just as the djinni himself did. I was more than a little relieved that the hand warmers had worked.

Turning slowly, I faced the demon across Lacey’s body, where he lay stretched out on the cold ground. Dever reached for the pot, and I hesitated, as if reluctant to let go of it. He smiled, and the last shadow of doubt drained from his face. He was buying it. With any luck, he’d be back on the other side of the shadows by the time he discovered the urn was empty.

Still wearing my angry, disappointed face, I placed the urn gently in the demon’s hands, breathing a silent sigh of satisfaction that I was only pretending to give him back the power to destroy the human race.

The moment Dever’s hands touched the warm clay pot, his face changed. In a single instant, all semblance of humanity seemed to melt away. His human skin appeared to fade into his body, as if it were being absorbed.

The demon beneath wasn’t red, as I’d expected, based on caricatures of the devil as crimson, horned, and fork-tongued. Dever was white. Not flesh-white, but alabaster. The creamy white of a cold, hard marble statue. He was white all over, from his nail beds to his gums, except for sharp grayish teeth, jet black eyes, and a set of broad obsidian-like horns sprouting from either side of his forehead, curving sharply upward into gleaming points.

My mouth went dry. A weak sound croaked from my throat, but it was neither articulate nor particularly audible. It was the sound of shock. Complete and total shock. I’d known Devich was really Dever, and that Dever was an honest-to-god demon. But I hadn’t expected to ever see his true form.

Dever smiled, pale lips pulling back from pointed teeth the color of ash. His shiny black-eyed gaze never left mine, but he was speaking to his remaining goons when he said, “Kill her. Take the nymph.”

And that’s when all hell broke loose.

THIRTY

The first goblin lunged past me, going for Cale. I spun on one foot, kicking him in the chest with the other. He flew backward. His spine hit the large granite monument and he slid, unmoving, to the stone base.

My gaze found Dever just as the second goblin soared over Lacey and smashed his shoulder into my solar plexus. We both slammed into the ground, and air burst from my lungs. Agony radiated outward from my center. I squeezed the grip of my gun to keep from dropping it.

The goblin on my chest drew a double-edged knife from his belt. He slashed downward toward my throat. I heaved my legs up and back. The goblin flew over my head and crashed to the ground out of sight. Bone crunched, followed by a wordless scream.

Rolling over, I shoved myself to my feet in time to see Dever pull another string of goblins from the shadows like a line of paper dolls. Short, ugly paper dolls. If only I had a pair of scissors…

The goblin I’d kicked rushed me from the base of the monument. I shot him in the neck, and he went down gurgling.

On my right, Cale fought an especially bulky goon who was bleeding from a gunshot wound to the shoulder. The Glock lay useless on the ground at Cale’s feet. He hit the goblin in the ribs. The goblin struck back at Cale’s kidneys.

I put a bullet through the back of his skull. Blood and gray matter sprayed them both.

Spinning, I sighted my next target, but before I could fire, another goblin crashed into me, driving me to the cold, hard earth. My gun hit the ground two feet away. His fist slammed into my right cheek bone. My right hand pushed against his chest, holding him off me while my left pulled the blade from my boot. I slit his throat. My eyes and mouth closed just in time to avoid the worst of the spray.

Shoving the butchered goon to one side, I rolled onto my stomach and grabbed my gun as I lurched to my feet, wiping blood from my face on the sleeve of my leather coat. Goblins lay dead all around me. On my right, I was surprised to find Orthus gnawing on the arm of a dead goon.

Where did he come from?

Cale stood on my left, his arms stretched out to either side of his body. His fingers were splayed and slightly curled, as if he were fighting some invisible tension. A goon stood on either side of him, each in direct line with one of his arms. They were bent nearly in half, gasping and wheezing. One coughed, and thousands of droplets sprayed from his mouth. The other gurgled, spitting up a stream of clear liquid.

Puzzled, I shot a goblin pulling his gun on me from several feet away, then my sight settled on Cale and his victims again. What the hell was he doing to them?

Before I could ask, the goon on the left collapsed. His eyes rolled up into his skull. Water streamed from his nose and mouth. And finally, I understood. Cale had drowned them. He’d concentrated moisture from the air in their lungs and drowned them on dry fucking land.

Stunned, and more than a little impressed, I gave him a smile just as the second goon collapsed.

Two more ran at me together, drawing their guns. I shot one as I ducked beneath the other’s bullet, mentally counting my own rounds. That should have been my last, but I squeezed the trigger again, just in case. Yup. I was out.

No time for a new magazine. The second goon aimed again, this time from two feet away. I dropped to the ground and shoved my foot at his kneecap as hard as I could. Bone crunched. His leg bent the wrong way, and he screamed as it collapsed beneath him. My right hand snagged his gun as he went down, and I put one of his own bullets through his left eye.

There were three more goblins, at least that I could see. One facing me, gun aimed and ready, one about to rush Cale, and a third staring down the hellhound. But they didn’t move. Why was no one moving?

From the direction of the largest monument, a loud ripping sound tore through the air. The goblin aiming a gun at me turned to look. I shot him in the side of the head, and as his body fell, I twisted toward the monument, expecting to see Dever.

I saw clawed feet instead—dangling in mid-air. The alabaster-skinned demon hung several feet off the ground, suspended by nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing. He was beating two huge black feathered wings.

The bastard really did have wings! I fucking knew it.

Dever hovered above the largest monument, legs dangling almost gracefully, wings flapping slowly. Almost elegantly. His suit jacket was gone, his white dress shirt hanging in shreds from smooth, sculpted pallid arms. His wings were so big they generated an actual breeze, and the air they disturbed blew my hair back, drying blood and sweat on my face. The damn things were each six feet long, giving him a wingspan of at least twelve feet.

Damn. I was almost jealous.

As I watched, the demon threw his head back, and a roar of triumph erupted from his mouth. My ears rang with it, my very bones shuddering. The goblins winced, as if the sound hurt their ears. Dever’s bare, pale arms stretched above his head, tatters from his shirt flapping in the breeze he stirred. He held the fake urn in two black-clawed hands. He met my gaze, his own glowing crimson now, like the hellhound’s. Then he threw the pot at the granite tower beneath his feet.

Oh, shit. I hadn’t expected him to break it in front of us. If the demon wasn’t already pissed, he was about to be. Fucking hell.

The urn shattered, shards of clay scattered among a dozen beanbag-shaped hand warmers. And nothing happened. Absolutely nothing.

My gaze trailed up from the busted urn to the monument, then over Dever’s mostly-nude calcite body to his face. I expected to see fury. Pure rage. What I saw instead was a look of…was that joy? Could demons feel joy? Because Dever looked pretty fucking happy, for no reason I could imagine as he stared past me, at…Cale?

I turned slowly, loathe to know what could make a demon that happy, because I was pretty damn sure that his joy and mine couldn’t exist in the same universe. My gaze slid past Orthus to Cale, then kept going, because something behind him had caught my attention. Movement. Pale reddish hair fluttering in the persistent puffs of air stirred by the demon’s wings.

And suddenly I understood. Xaphan. He’d popped in on cue—dressed again in seventeenth century clothing—and the demon thought he’d won. That he’d freed the djinni and earned his wish.

“Dever,” the djinni said, and his voice echoed throughout the cemetery, impossibly loud. A blatant display of power.

The demon dropped to stand in front of the monument, his ebony toe claws scratching against the stone. His wings folding gracefully at his back. “Xaphan. It’s been a long time.”

The djinni nodded.

“I have freed you, after four hundred years of imprisonment. I’ve earned a request, and I am ready to make it.”

Xaphan nodded, again mute. His arms hung at his sides, hands relaxed. There was no sign of anger or tension in his expression or bearing. He looked totally at ease. “Make your wish.”

Dever inhaled deeply, his folded wings ruffling with the motion. “I wish to have the full range of my power restored. Everything I was born with. Now.”

Xaphan didn’t move. I held my breath, waiting for him to speak. Cale, Orthus, and the remaining goblins stood frozen. And finally, instead of answering, the djinni laughed.

Yes, laughed.

He threw his head back and roared with laughter, his whole body shaking. He trembled so hard I thought for a moment that he might be having a seizure. But finally, he stilled, and I glanced at Dever. The demon’s pale face was tense, his forehead furrowed where a human would have had eyebrows, his demonic features, lit only by rays from the moon and the weak beams from the light at the cemetery gate.

“No,” Xaphan said, and my head swiveled back in his direction.

“No?” Dever sounded thoroughly, exquisitely confused.

“No,” Xaphan repeated. “I already answer to another mistress. I will never grant your wish, and when I am free, I will send you back to the flaming depths from whence you came.”

Could he do that? Was there some way I could wish for the djinni to do that, without setting him free?

Dever shuddered deeply, his entire body quaking with fury. He rose into the air with a mighty flap of ebony wings. A sound of pure rage tore free from his throat. Black-nailed claws tore at the clothing still clinging to his body. Shreds of white cotton shirt and black linen slacks fluttered to the ground.

His head twisted inhumanly fast. Glowing red eyes zeroed in on me. His wings flapped once, twice, like an engine revving. Then he was suddenly racing through the air toward me.

If I’d been thinking clearly, I’d have reminded him that if he killed me, the djinni would be free to enact his revenge. But as the demon devoured the space between us, claws already curling in preparation to rip through my flesh, I wasn’t thinking at all.

I fucking panicked.

Heart slamming against my sternum, palms slick with sweat, I pointed the gun I’d taken from a goblin and emptied the magazine into Dever. No need to aim; the demon was too close to miss.

Bullets slammed into his face. His chest. They thunked into flesh and muscle, then seemed to melt into his body. To soak in.

They didn’t even slow him down.

I dropped the gun and groped for my knife, suddenly wishing I had a sword instead. A flaming sword.

The demon dove toward me. Air whistled in his wake. He screamed in rage, and I faced him alone, my knife held ready. His claws reached for me, and—

Something hit me from the right, shoving me out of the way. Something tall and blond. Cale.

My hip hit the ground, and my back followed. I rolled onto my knees looking for him. Rain burst from the sky, drenching me instantly. Lightening streaked over and over, lighting up the night in flash after brilliant flash. Illuminating my goal. But there was no blond hair to be found.

There was only a tempest of soaked ebony wings and slick alabaster flesh pounding and beating. Obsidian talons clawing. Ripping. And blood. I saw blood everywhere, pouring onto the ground at my feet. Mixing with rain, gleaming wet in the moonlight.

I screamed, a sound of primal grief and fury. The edges of my vision blurred red. I threw myself on the winged abomination, determined to kill Dever or die trying, consequences be damned. My knees landed on the demon’s hard, cold back. My fingers curled through feathers. My blade sank into his flesh. Over and over, I stabbed him, and he let me. The wounds healed, sometimes before I could pull out the knife. But he never stopped ripping Cale apart.

The wet, slick thuds didn’t cease.

Dever didn’t feel a thing.

Shrieking in rage, I pulled myself higher onto his back, grasping at his wings. Clutching at the handle of my blade where it was still buried in his flesh like a mountain climber’s piton. I was going for his neck.

On my left, a dark blur soared across the ground toward me. A growling, snarling smear of reddish-black fur, scarlet eyes flashing.

Orthus leapt. His muzzle sank into the hilt of Dever’s left wing. The demon’s head arched back, and he screamed, a sound that felt like it could rip open the very sky. The hellhound dug his claws into the ground, giving one final, mighty heave. Flesh and muscle tore. The wing’s top joint ripped open with a wet popping sound.

Dever flapped his now-torn wings, rising unsteadily into the air with us both in tow. I clung to him, trying to hold on. Hanging by his muzzle, the hellhound growled around a mouthful of black down. Dever lurched to the right, and my grip on the rain-slick feathers failed. I fell to the ground on my side with my knife still clutched in one fist. Orthus thumped to the earth beside me.

The demon flapped harder, trying to retreat to the sky, but he was too badly hurt. My knife hadn’t fazed him, but a single bite from the hellhound had nearly torn off one whole wing.

Why? But suddenly I understood.

Orthus wasn’t just a dog; he was a weapon originating from hell.

Dever half-flew, half-hobbled toward the monument and its shadowed safety, and in my shock, it took me a second to realize that none of his minions were coming to his aid. When I turned to find out why, I discovered that all of the remaining goblins were now pillars of ash, quickly dissolving in the softening rain.

Drenched, I dropped to my knees beside Cale, rain mixing with my tears. Where his chest should have been, I found a mass of splintered bone and bloody tissue. My finger stroked his torn cheek and found it cold. So miserably, hopelessly cold. I said his name, but he didn’t answer. His eyes were open, but dull and lifeless. Rain fell into them, the last of nature’s tears for her fallen son. For Cale, the incubus who’d fed me, instead of feeding from me. The man whose smile lit up my world. The asshole who had put himself in the path of a raging demon, to save my life.

Orthus lay his head in my lap, whining while I screamed.

Dever limped away. He was halfway to the monument now, and I didn’t go after him, because that would do no good. I couldn’t hurt him, and Cale was already gone. I had lost. It was all over. Dever would heal, then he would come for me, and there was nothing I could do about any of that.

Xaphan appeared at my side as I sobbed. He took my hand in his eerily warm one, stealing my attention as the rain finally ended. He murmured in my ear, wretched words of hope. Of horror. Impossible choices. Terrible possibilities.

“I can save him,” the djinni whispered, and my heart stopped beating. My breath stopped coming. My hand clenched around his. “I can bring him back, whole. Good as new. Better than ever.”

“He’s dead,” I croaked, uncomprehending. Miserably, horrifyingly grief-stricken, as I hadn’t been in more than two centuries.

“I can fix that. Say the word, and he’s yours again. Not so much as a scar.”

Xaphan could fix Cale. Could save him. He could bring back Daphne’s son, who’d given his life to save mine. Cari’s brother, who hadn’t fucking asked me before jumping in to play the hero and getting torn apart by a goddamn earth-bound demon.

It was my fault. I’d had him, then lost him, and it was all my own fault. The djinni could make it all better—but at what price?

“Say the word,” he repeated, and I met his stare. His gleaming black eyes offered me the lesser of two evils. The greater had just killed Cale. The lesser was offering to save him.

“We’ll catch you,” I whispered. “You know we’ll catch you.”

He smiled. “You’ll try.”

We would try. Both of us. Because I couldn’t let Cale go. “Do it. Bring him back.”

“You have to say the word.”

I sucked in a deep breath, not at all sure I was making the right choice. Then I made it anyway. “I wish for you to bring Cale back, just like you said. Just like he was—not so much as a scar.”

Xaphan nodded. Then he was gone. In a blink, less than a single instant, he was just…gone.

Cale sucked in a huge, gasping breath. My hand found his cheek, his blessedly intact cheek. His eyes flew open, wide and shocked. He blinked. Then his gaze found me. “What happened?”

I ran my hands all over him, pushing aside his shredded clothing, probing his chest for a wound that had already healed. That might never have been there at all. His clothes were ruined and still bloody, but his flesh was whole. Unscathed. Unscarred. Just like Xaphan had promised.

“Lex, what the fuck just happened?” he demanded, pushing me back as he sat up. Plucking at the torn, drenched remains of his shirt.

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t figure out how to tell him what I’d done.

Cale stood and pulled me to my feet. He frowned and his gaze moved from my face to the cemetery at my back. “I—”

A scream ripped through the night, cutting him off. We both turned to find Xaphan standing on the granite base of the monument, red hair still plastered to his head from the rain. He held Dever up by one arm, as if the demon weighed nothing. Dever’s clawed feet dangled in the air, kicking helplessly. His right wing hung from Xaphan’s free hand, dripping dark, dark blood onto the granite and the ground.

“Alexandra!” the djinni called, and I met his gaze, half afraid of what I’d find. He smiled. “This one is on the house.” With that, and with a single wink, the djinni tossed the detached wing to the ground at Orthus’s feet. Then he unleashed a mighty roar of triumph and ripped the remaining, semi-attached left wing from the demon’s back in a single, powerful heave.

The demon screamed. The djinni disappeared. Dever crashed to the ground on his knees, clutching at his severed wings like a child with a broken toy.

“What the living hell...?” I murmured, watching the pale demon shriek as he clenched handfuls of his own feathers.

“It’s a gift,” Cale explained, taking me by the shoulders. “The damn djinni just sheered the demon’s wings. For you.”

I shook my head, comprehension passing me by entirely. “What the hell am I supposed to do with a pair of severed wings?”

Cale blinked at me in astonishment. “Nothing.” He shook his head. “The gift isn’t the wings. It’s Dever’s mortality. Without his wings, a demon is no longer indestructible.”

My pulse raged through my body like a river rapid. “You mean…he can be killed?”

“Like any human.”

“Take care of Lacey,” I said as I plucked the abandoned bottle of antibiotics from the ground and pressed it into Cale’s hand. He nodded as I stood and grabbed my blade on my way across the rain- and blood-soaked earth.

Dever knelt on the ground in front of the monument, clutching his wings. Thick black blood poured from his back onto the stone. He looked up as I approached, his eyes glowing red with rage. “I will end you,” he snarled. His hand shot out. Claws sank into my calf.

My pulse racing, I shoved my knife between two of his ribs, into his heart, and he screamed.

I twisted the blade, and he gurgled.

Dever collapsed at my feet. His claw fell from my leg.

I sank onto the ground and sobbed.

EPILOGUE

“How’s Lacey?” Cale asked as he sank into the waiting room chair next to mine. It was a small room with only a dozen seats, one of three just like it on this floor of the hospital. For the moment, at least, we were the only occupants.

“Better, but still quarantined,” I said. “They took him off the ventilator about an hour ago, and he’s breathing on his own.”

Cale nodded, exhaustion evident in his unbroken stare at the floor. “Do they know what it is yet?”

“Pneumonic plague. Same bacteria as the bubonic form, from what I understand, but it settled in his lungs. Because of that, you can catch it from respiratory droplets. Thus, the quarantine.” Which was just a taste of what Dever could have unleashed upon the world, had he gotten his powers back. “Fortunately, the antibiotics are doing their job.” Massive doses of intravenous antibiotics. “The CDC is looking for the source, because there hasn’t been a case east of the Oklahoma panhandle since 1970.”

Cale snorted. “Good luck with that.”

“You have any symptoms?”

He shook his head, still staring at the linoleum. “Not likely to have any, either. Nymphs aren’t susceptible to most human illnesses.”

I didn’t seem to be either, anymore. Thank god for small miracles.

“I know why I look like warmed over dog shit,” Cale said. He’d spent the past three days in Memphis, debriefing the nymph elders on everything that had gone down with Dever and Xaphan. Ad nauseum, evidently. During which he’d been largely out of communication. “But Lex, have you even gotten out of that chair since I left?”

I nodded. “I have a hotel room down the street.” Though I’d mostly been using the rented space to shower and change clothes. I’d been sleeping and eating at the hospital for three days because I didn’t want to miss an update from the doctor. And because I didn’t want to leave Lacey alone, even though he wasn’t conscious yet and couldn’t have visitors.

I had gotten him into this. The very least he deserved was my presence. My full attention.

“Any sign of Xaphan?” I asked, suddenly worried that was why Cale had come back.

“Not a single glimpse of him. Not a peep from him. And his disappearing act is really setting the elders on edge. They expected him to celebrate his return in some obvious and destructive fashion. And while that would have cost some lives, at least then—”

“You’d know where to find him,” I finished, and Cale nodded.

“As it is, we have no idea where to even start looking.” He exhaled, and my entire body tensed. That sound was resignation. It was the preamble to a question I wasn’t going to want to answer any more than he wanted to ask. “They want to know what happened, Lex. How he got loose.”

“What did you tell them?”

He shifted in his chair, his physical discomfort mirroring my discomfort with this entire conversation. “That my recollection of the events was less than entirely clear, because I was severely injured in the fight.”

I nodded slowly. “That seems accurate.”

“And yet, they’re not buying it.”

“You understand that that isn’t my problem, right? I don’t work for your elders, and I didn’t volunteer for save-the-world duty. I got fucking drafted, and I did my goddamn best.”

Another nod. “I also know that you curse more when you’re feeling particularly defensive.”

“Fuck off.” But my bark held no bite.

“What did you do, Lex? What happened? I remember tackling you, to drive you out of Dever’s way. Then there’s just nothing. It’s like I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, you were on the ground next to me, crying. My clothes were shredded, but there wasn’t a mark on me. Then Xaphan tore off the demon’s wings, and for probably a day and a half, while I was still trying to sort it all out, I thought that’s what you’d done. That you’d wished for him to hurt Dever. But that theory doesn’t hold water. You didn’t know what tearing a demon’s wings off would do. And Xaphan told you that was on the house. Gratis. Which means you didn’t wish for it. So I need you to tell me, Lex. Just fucking tell me what happened.”

I twisted in my chair, tucking both feet beneath myself, to look at him. And I could tell—I could see it in his eyes—that he already knew. He didn’t need me to explain it to him; he needed me to confirm what he’d already guessed. For his sanity, maybe. And definitely so he could report the verified details back to his elders.

“You died,” I said.

Breath burst from Cale’s lungs like a small-scale explosion.

“You pushed me out of the way, and Dever ripped you to shreds. Your chest was this gaping hole of splintered bone and shredded tissue. You were destroyed, and Lacey was dying, and I’d lost everything. Dever was hurt, and he was about to disappear through that fucking shadow to go heal, and then he would have come back for me. And for Cari. And for your goddamn elders. And I didn’t have any way to stop any of that.”

“That would have been small-scale destruction, compared to the alternative,” Cale said through clenched teeth.

“I know. And I was going to let it happen. But then Xaphan said he could save you. And I couldn’t say no.”

“You should have.”

“I know. But I couldn’t.”

“Goddamn it, Lex, you could have.” He exploded out of his chair and marched halfway across the room before turning back to me, brilliant blue eyes alight with fury. With angst. “You fucking released a djinni!”

“I saved your life. You can forward my address to your mother for the thank-you card.”

Cale huffed. “Well, that’s not going to happen.”

“Your mother isn’t grateful you’re alive?”

“Sure, she is. But that doesn’t change anything! My life isn’t worth more than the thousands—possibly millions—that Xaphan will take, now that he’s free!”

“Not even to your mother?”

He shook his head. “We both knew I might die on this mission, and I took the job anyway. She sent me anyway. One life is never worth more than many lives, Lex.”

“That is not true.”

“It is, though,” he insisted. “I was prepared to do anything to stop Xaphan from going free. I was willing to die.”

“Yeah, me too,” I assured him. “But were you willing to watch me die?”

Agony swept over his features. Then he clenched his jaw. His eyes narrowed. “Yes. That was the job. The scales don’t balance with your life on one side and half a million pillars of people-shaped ash on the other, Lex.”

I shrugged, my arms crossed over my chest. “Yeah, well, the decision is made, and I fucking stand by it. You’re still here.”

Yet I could never, ever admit how much more complicated the truth really was. How guilty I felt for unleashing Xaphan upon the world. How every single second of sleep I managed to get sitting up in a waiting room chair was plagued by nightmares of the damage I’d done.

And by replays of Cale being torn apart by an alabaster demon.

“Maybe don’t leave the fate of the world up to me next time,” I spat, my heart beating hard enough to make my vision swim. “I’m not your goddamn hero.”

“You’re right.” The disappointment in his voice burned all the way into what was left of my soul. “That was my mistake. I won’t make it again.” Cale turned his back on me and walked into the hall, and I threw the side table lamp at the door as it closed behind him.

Shards of ceramic rained all over the floor, and Orthus stepped out of deep shadows cast by the sudden lack of that lamp. He growled at the door, clearly taking my side over Cale’s, then he sat on the floor next to me and rested his muzzle on my lap.

I stroked his creepy, reddish-black fur, accepting his mute comfort. And I abso-fucking-lutely refused to cry.

EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT!

Turn the page for a preview of the new Shifters-world novel, introducing Charley Studebaker, Marshal of the northern zone of the Mississippi Valley Territory!

PREVIEW OF THE NEW SHIFTERS WORLD NOVEL

FAT CAT

Chapter One

“Charley!” Grinning broadly at me, Doug Myers slid onto his favorite barstool with the creak of leather. I rinsed lime juice from my hands and grabbed a clean towel, then I headed toward him from the service side of the bar. I could smell smoke on his clothes before I even got close. Wood smoke, not cigarettes. Doug had a small cabin in the Lakeshore complex, deep in the woods outside of town, and though he had power and running water, like most of the other Lakeshore residents, he both cooked and heated with wood.

I’d always found the scent to be comfortably nostalgic.

“Whiskey!” His shout was half request, half expletive, and I grabbed a bottle of middle shelf on my way.

“Caught a couple of new scents in the woods today,” Doug said as I set a shot glass on the worn-smooth bar in front of him and poured.

“Oh yeah?” I lifted one brow as he threw the shot back, but I didn’t bother to close the bottle. Doug was in his early 40s—a decade too young to be my father—and like most shifters, he had a hard time getting drunk because of his supernaturally high metabolic rate.

Also like most shifters, he never gave up trying. Which was why the Fat Cat Bar and Grille, the only shifter-friendly bar in the northern zone of the territory, enjoyed a steady stream of regular customers, most of whom ran up large tabs.

Without spouses or kids, they had little else to spend their money on anyway. May as well spend it at my place.

“Yeah.” Doug tapped the bar, and I poured him another. “Out in the common run.” The heavily wooded acreage behind the Lakeshore cabin complex, which was open to shifters twenty-four seven as a recreational area and hunting grounds.

“Well, the common run is called that for a reason, Doug. All shifters are welcome.” Whether or not they lived at Lakeshore. I visited the common run myself, regularly.

“I know, but I thought you’d be interested.” He threw back his second shot, and I poured one more.

Interested? Yes, because it was my job to keep tabs on how many and which shifters live in the zone. Concerned? No. Our territory attracts newcomers regularly. Some are just passing through, out of curiosity. Others decide to stay. “Thanks, Doug. Let me know if you catch their names or figure out where I can find them.”

“Will do, boss!” he called as I walked back to my tub of uncut limes.

I was not Doug Myers’s boss, but like many members of our Pride, he was a little fuzzy on the meaning of my title.

My position—Marshal of the Mississippi Valley Pride—had existed for less than three years. Our Alpha, Titus Alexander, created the job around six months after our Pride was officially recognized, when he realized that though ours was geographically the smallest territory in the US, we had the largest population by far. Which meant we also had the densest population.

All but two members of our Pride were strays. All but three were men. Basically, we were all sitting on a powder keg of testosterone and newly minted shifter strength and speed, neither of which came with any instructions or any truly helpful instinct.

“Doug, you want anything to eat?” I asked as I sliced the last lime. He’d been munching from the peanut bowl but hadn’t touched his third shot yet.

“Um… Is Davey cooking?”

“No, we’ve removed food prep from her job description,” I told him. “Billy’s at the grill.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“I heard that.” My sister pushed through the swinging door from the kitchen carrying a plastic rack of clean beer glasses. “And for the record, I never wanted to be in the kitchen in the first place.” She stuck her tongue out at Doug, and as she turned on her square-toed boot heel to set the rack on the counter, one blond pigtail swung over her shoulder to trail down her back, beneath her cowboy hat.

“No offense, Davey,” Doug called from his barstool. “You’re great on this side of that swingin’ door.”

“None taken, hon.” She set two still-steaming glasses on a shelf beneath the bar. “So, you want a burger or somethin’?”

“Steak, if you got it. Rare. Fries on the side.”

“You hear that, Billy?” Davey shouted toward the swinging doors.

“Got it,” he said from the kitchen, but it was clear from her frown that my sister couldn’t hear him.

“He’s on it,” I told her with a smile.

“Shifters, with their freaky hearing,” she grumbled.

“You’re just jealous,” I said as I grabbed a couple of glasses to help her finish off the rack.

“Of course I’m jealous. You think I like being the token human in this place?”

I winked at Doug as Davey lifted the empty crate. “I think you thrive on it.”

“Oh, come on, you know we love you, Davey,” Callum Blake called from the other end of the bar, where he was finishing his third beer.

Other customers whooped in agreement from various tables, and Davey tipped her hat at them. “Love you guys too.”

A little too much, maybe.

Normally, a shifter bar would be the last place you’d expect to find a young, pretty, human female bartender/waitress/bookkeeper. Especially considering that it was against shifter law to reveal our existence to a human. To any human. But Davey had found out about shifters accidentally, and that couldn’t be taken back.

And the truth was that the closer I kept her, the less I worried about her safety among the dense population of male strays in the Mississippi Valley.

Davey brushed by Vance Cooper on her way into the kitchen. Vance was one of six enforcers under my supervision, two of whom also worked as both security and jack-of-all-trades at the Fat Cat. The other four enforcers lived spread throughout our zone: the western third of Tennessee and the western tip of Kentucky.

“Hey Davey,” Vance said as he held the swinging door for my sister. “You closin’ tonight?”

“Is this a day that ends in Y?” She smiled up at him. Way up. Vance was six foot five, barefoot, which made him a good thirteen inches taller than my baby sister.

Who—she constantly reminded me—was no longer a baby at all.

The door swung shut behind her, and Vance headed toward me. “Hey, boss.”

I really was his boss.

“Hey. You just back from patrol?” I asked as I pulled another beer for Callum, at his signal from down the bar.

Vance nodded. “All’s well in town.”

“Town” would be Buford, Tennessee, about fifty miles northeast of Memphis, off a largely unkept length of state highway 18. Buford had around four thousand residents, including—unbeknownst to most of them—the largest concentration of shifters in the state. All strays.

All men, except for me.

There was no easy way to get to Buford. But once you found it, if you were willing to drive deeper into Hardemon County, you’d find the Fat Cat Bar and Grille. Though few people were ever willing to drive that far. Few human people, anyway.

Most shifters—even those who lived in town—were used to being out in the boonies. That was where we hunted, both alone and as a community. Where we congregated. It was where many of us lived.

“Doug’s just reported a couple of new scents out in the common run,” I told Vance.

He gave me an amused look as he helped himself to a beer from the tap. “Good work, Doug.” Vance drank from his glass while I stared out at the front room of the bar. There were only a handful of customers this early, most of whom had stopped in for a beer and a burger before working a night shift.

Vance turned to me as Davey came out of the kitchen carrying Doug’s dinner. “A couple of scents? Together? Or two separate scents?”

“Good question. Doug?” He’d heard us, of course. It’s very difficult to avoid eavesdropping, as a shifter.

“How the hell would I know if they were together?” Doug asked around a juicy bite of his steak.

“Did you smell both scents in the same place?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He gulped from his glass as Vance and I moved closer. Everyone in the bar was listening now. Including Davey, who’d started drying glasses that weren’t even wet, for an excuse to stay near. “Smelled them on my run this morning. Several places, in fact. Always together.”

“Well, that seems definitive, if odd,” Vance said. “Strays traveling together.”

Making a stray is illegal—comes with an automatic death sentence—so most strays are made by accident and born into our world in trauma. It’s disorienting, to say the least. Isolating, usually. Those who survive learn to keep to themselves, at least until they find a safe haven, like the Fat Cat.

“Maybe they were together.” I shrugged. “Or maybe one was following the other.”

Davey tossed the towel over her shoulder. “Cat’s can’t track by scent.”

“I am aware,” I said with a smile. She was very proud of every ounce of shifter knowledge she’d accumulated. “But we can stalk each other, just like a human would.” Only much more effectively, with hyper-functional vision and hearing. “We won’t know what’s going on until I get a chance to talk to them. Doug, you let me know if you smell them again, okay?”

“Will do, boss.”

The late afternoon lull set in, and I stared out the window as the sun began to set, shining on trees across the highway, heavy with vibrant fall leaves. I wiped down the bar and confirmed the week’s liquor order with Davey, pausing to nod to customer after customer as the afternoon crowd headed out the door one by one, most of them on their way to pick up a night shift at the elevator factory or one of two local correctional facilities.

Shifters make really effective prison guards.

Every last one of them called out, “Bye, Davey!” as they pushed through the door, making the little bell overhead jingle.

The night crowd arrived in fits and starts, keeping Davey, Vance, and me busy pouring shots, pulling drafts, and serving burgers. I smiled as I listened to the regulars greeting one another. As I watched them share well-worn booths and sit together at the bar. It wasn’t like this, at first.

Back when Titus assigned me the northern zone to run, this place was more like the wild west: every man for himself. Strays naturally found it hard to trust, and asking them to fall in line under a woman, when most of them had never even met a female stray, seemed like a Herculean task. But Vance was with me from the beginning—actually, he was here before I got the job—and Tucker, my other local enforcer, came along shortly after that. In the beginning, Titus lent me several of his men from the south zone of the territory, but I sent them back after less than a week, when I realized that I needed the citizens of the north zone to trust me, not a series of temps who didn’t know the area. Who could never love it or its residents like I did.

It took a while. But eventually, the Fat Cat became known as a haven for strays in the area. Slowly, a real community began to form.

Still, no community is without its challenges[ Davey took her dinner break around eight, and Tucker arrived while she was upstairs in my apartment, taking advantage of the quiet to answer some emails while she devoured a plate of chicken nachos[ 10/19/21, 3:14 PM]. ].

Tucker arrived just after eight, and he took over behind the bar so Vance could go on his break. “All’s well up north,” he assured me. Tucker had spent the past day and a half in Kentucky, checking in with our two northernmost enforcers, updating our citizen roster—an electronic census database—and making sure our guys up there had everything they needed.

All of that could be done over the phone, but I’d learned quickly that face-to-face interaction was the best way to gauge my enforcers’ states of mind. And to maintain a positive relationship with them.

That, and Tucker liked the occasional isolation of a long drive, after a couple of weeks tending bar and busting the odd head. It gave him a chance to think.

“They managed to track down the new guy?” I asked.

Tucker nodded, his short, light brown hair catching the glow from the overhead fixture. “Turns out he’s new to the area, but he was infected more than a decade ago, so he doesn’t need to be debriefed. I added him to the database and emailed you his particulars.”

“Thanks.” I hadn’t checked my email in a few hours. Because I hated email. “I’ll take a look and forward it to Titus.”

“Everything quiet here?” Tucker asked.

“So far, so good. Though Doug Myers reported a couple of new scents. A pair of them, most likely.”

“That’s interesting. New guys usually wander into the territory alone.”

“Yeah. We’re keeping a eye out.”

The bell over the door rang again, and I looked up as Cole[ Fit Cole into more scenes. Give him a distinct trait. Something memorable to go along with his last name.

How do we deal with Billy knowing who he really is, yet seeing him at the bar?] Senet shuffled toward the bar. Though he was one of our younger regulars, he was walking like an old man that night, frowning, kind of hunched over. Looked like he’d just been kicked in the gut.

“Cole? How’s it going?” I asked while Tucker moved to the other end of the bar to pull a couple of drafts.

“Been better.” Cole slid onto a bar stool in front of me, running one hand through short-cropped brown hair, briefly exposing an old scar snaking over his scalp. “Tracy dumped me.”

“Well, shit. I’m sorry.” I pulled a shot glass from beneath the counter and turned to my sister. “Davey…?”

“On it.” She was already tapping on her phone, her blue eyes narrowed at the screen.

The song playing on the jukebox in the corner ended abruptly, and a shout echoed from the other side of the room. “Hey! I paid for—”

The opening beats of “Another One Bites The Dust” began to play, and the shouter’s mouth snapped shut. “Sorry,” he said, his gaze finding Cole. “That sucks man. Been there.”

They’d all been there.

“Raise your fucking glasses!” Davey shouted, as I poured a shot on the house for Cole.

A dozen hands went up around the bar, each holding a pint or a lowball glass. “Another one bites the dust!” Davey called out, and they all echoed the familiar toast. Then they drank.

And ordered another round.

Yes, this is a haven. It’s also a business.

Cole threw back his shot and gestured for another. “She said I was ‘emotionally unavailable.’”

And the truth was that Tracy, whom I’d never met, was probably right about that. It was very, very difficult—virtually impossible—for a shifter to maintain a longterm relationship with a human, because one of our most important rules is that we may not, under any circumstances, reveal our existence to the rest of the world.

Davey was the only human I’d ever met who knew about us, and part of the reason I kept her so close was that Titus had admitted when he named me Marshall that he could not be sure what would happen if the Territorial Council[ But Faythe knows. Mention she’s the only one, other than Titus?] found out how much she knows.

So she was our little secret, out here in Hardemon County, in a middle-of-nowhere bar off a cracked two-lane highway. And for her part, Davey did seem to enjoy being the Fat Cat’s “token human.” No matter what she claimed.

She listened to Cole narrate the end of his two-month courtship of a human woman named Tracy, and I went back to placing orders and pouring drinks as the Friday night crowd grew.

Until an unfamiliar scent drew my gaze to an equally unfamiliar form, as he walked through the door.

I couldn’t remember the name of every stray in the northern zone, but I remembered all of the scents and most of the faces of the ones I’d met.

“Tucker.” I tugged him to the far side of the bar and whispered so softly that I was barely speaking, counting on my very low volume and the blasting of the juke box to cover my voice. “Do we know the guy who just walked through the door? Gray-on-gray canvas jacket over sweater. Tan hiking boots.”

Tucker studied the newcomer’s face and took a subtle sniff in his direction. “I don’t.” He turned to Vance, as he pushed his way through the swinging door from the kitchen. “Got an ID on the gray jacket?” he whispered. “Guy with a short beard and blue eyes?”

The new guy did have blue eyes. I hadn’t even noticed.

A second later, Vance shook his head. “Want me to make an introduction?”

“With any luck, he’ll come to us. Tucker, you start clearing tables near the door. Vance, you loiter near the restrooms.” Because the rear exit was back there. “I’ll see if Doug recognizes his scent.”

I didn’t really expect the new guy to run; he probably wouldn’t have come in if he had anything to fear from a bar full of shifters. But it was always good to have my bases covered. And a shy stray would be less intimidated by Davey and me than by Tucker and Vance, so I needed them to vacate the service area.

I watched subtly as the stranger hovered in the doorway, taking the place in. He’d likely never seen this many shifters in one place, and he probably wasn’t close enough yet to realize I wasn’t human. It never occurred to most guys to check my scent, because until they met me, most strays had never even seen a female shifter.

After a couple of minutes, he made his way toward the bar, and I leaned over to whisper to Doug. “There’s a guy in a gray jacket heading our way. When he sits, I need you to take a whiff and give me a signal if he’s one of the strangers you smelled in the common run.”

Doug nodded, his eyes wide at my request. He was alway eager to help. Even when no help was required.

“Welcome to the Fat Cat. What can I get you?” I said, as the stranger sat on a stool two down from Doug.

Doug inhaled through his nose, then he nodded at me, a gesture that was more enthusiastic than subtle. This was one of the cats he’d scented. The other one, though, was still in the wind.

“Whatever’s on draft.” The stranger[ Reassess Merritt Jamison. I think we have too many names/characters to remember. He serves a purpose in this chapter, but doesn’t appear again. Is he tied to Eamon in some way? setting up something for the sequel?] took in my scent, evidently unaware that I’d just been investigating his, and his eyes widened.

That’s always a fun moment.

He sniffed in Davey’s direction, and his mouth snapped shut, cutting off whatever he’d been about to say upon discovering that there was, in fact, a human in the room.

“Don’t worry,” I leaned across the bar to mock whisper. “She knows.”

“She does?”

“I do!” Davey assured him as she slid a bowl of peanuts toward us. “But let’s not spread the word about that, okay?”

He gave her a solemn nod, then he twisted to look around the room again. “I thought this place was a rumor.” He turned, his dark brows arched, evidently impressed. “In fact, I bet on it. Which means I’m out twenty bucks.”

I smiled as I set a beer in front of him.

The stranger sipped from his glass, still looking around. “You know where I can find Eamon? I need a word.”

The entire bar went quiet. Seriously, you could have heard the ends split on a single strand of my hair.

“Eamon MacLean is no longer a member of the Mississippi Valley Pride,” I said in as neutral a tone as I could muster. “If you have business with the Marshal, you’ll want Charley Studebaker.”

“Oh.” He frowned, clearly put out by the news. “Well, can you point me in his direction?”

Brows arched, I extended my hand for him to shake. “Charlene Studebaker. Marshal of the northern zone.”

“You’re…?”

Davey laughed. “She is.”

“But you’re—” His mouth snapped shut.

“A bartender? Yeah. I can also whistle all of Bohemian Rhapsody. I am a woman of many talents.”

He had the decency not to admit that the word tripping him up was woman. “What happened to Eamon?”

Before I could decide how to answer a question most people would never have the nerve to ask, the bell over the door jingled again, and four women in their late twenties came in, giggling. I could tell from the glazed eyes and easy laughter that three of them were already half-drunk.

The tone in the bar changed immediately. The awkward silence surrounding the Eamon question morphed into the buzz of casual conversation and the clink of ice in glasses as the ladies made their way to the bar, but beneath that I could feel a tension that was both the natural result of a secret that must be kept and genuine excitement over the opportunity for a bunch of mostly straight men to drink with the female of the species.

Well the female of a species, anyway.

I arched a brow at the newcomer, and he nodded to let me know he understood what had just happened.

We don’t get many humans at the Fat Cat, but they aren’t entirely unexpected on the weekends. And they’re almost always women; human men rarely make it over the threshold. It’s something hormonal. Something in the scent of a bunch of male werecats that they find subconsciously threatening.

Women, though… Any human woman looking for a strong, confident, capable, employed man will find what she wants at the Fat Cat. It’s my job to make sure that she only finds what she actually wants.

So far, that hasn’t been a problem.

“You got this?” I asked Tucker. He nodded, while Davey started taking the women’s orders.

“Nope, no margaritas,” my sister said with a shake of her head. “No mojitos. No daiquiris. No cocktails of any kind. But I can throw a cherry on top of a Jack and Coke, if you want.”

“Perfect,” declared a woman with a pink blouse tucked into her boot-cut jeans. “This place is adorable,” she whispered to her friends. “So rustic.”

That’s us. So rustic.

I made eye contact with the newcomer. “Let’s go have a chat.”

He stood, beer in hand, and I motioned for him to follow me. Vance fell into step with him as I led them through the kitchen to my office.

“Am I in some kind of trouble?” the stranger asked as I held the door open for him.

“Have you done something wrong?”

“No. I just heard that if you visit the northern zone, you should check in with the Marshall at the Fat Cat.”

“But you didn’t hear that Eamon hasn’t been the Marshal in more than a year and a half?” Vance asked as he closed the office door behind us.

“No. I guess my information is a bit dated.”

“Well then,” I said as I sank into my desk chair. “Consider this your check-in. Welcome to the northern zone of the Mississippi Valley territory. I have just a few questions for you.”

“Okay.” He gave me a solemn nod. “Fire away.”

How cute that he thought I needed permission.

“First of all, what’s your name?” I asked as Vance leaned against the door at the stranger’s back, arms crossed over his broad chest.

“Austin Graham.”

“Mr. Graham, when were you infected?”

“Just over four years ago[ adjust as necessary]. I’m a Tennessee native. Though this was the free zone, back then.”

So it was. We had many shifters who pre-dated the recognition of our Pride.

I leaned back in my chair, holding his gaze. “Do you plan to stay in the territory?”

He frowned. “Am I obligated to divulge my plans?”

The question raised my hackles, but I reminded myself that it was not unusual for strays—or humans—to feel protective of their privacy. “No. Though we try to keep our census updated, so if you leave, we’d appreciate a heads up, so we can update our records.”

“Fair enough.”

“As I said, I’m Charley Studebaker. I hold Titus’s authority and I operate in his name everywhere in the territory north of the Tennessee state line.”

For a while, Titus had tried to do it all himself. Educate all the strays on the rules and obligations that came with our new citizenship. Track down all the newly infected members and teach them the basics of instinct, shifting, hunting, loyalty, and the pecking order. He’d tried to be father, brother, priest, and king to every werecat in the Mississippi Valley, and burnout came hard and fast, even with Robyn Sheffield at his side and Jace Hammond at his back.

Dividing the territory into zones was Titus’s first major decision as an honest-to-God Alpha, and from what I’ve heard, he didn’t have much trouble getting approval for that from the Territorial Council. Some of the other alphas truly didn’t care what went on in the “stray Pride.” Some actually had faith in him. Others were hoping to give him just enough rope to hang himself with. Regardless, within six months of the Mississippi Valley Territory’s inception. Titus had divided it into three zones and appointed two Marshals to run the day-to-day operations of the middle and northern zones.

Titus oversees the southern zone himself, from his house an hour north of Jackson, Mississippi, and as an Alpha himself, Jace was the obvious choice to run the middle zone.

I was not Titus’s first choice to take charge of the northern zone. But how Eamon MacLean screwed things up and I got his job a year later was a whole ‘nother story.

“The gentleman behind you is Vance Cooper, my second-in-command,” I said. “The other gentleman behind the bar is Tucker, another of my enforcers.”

“And the woman?”

“Davey. My sister.” I watched him closely for any sign of interest, but I saw none; Austin Graham appeared to be all business. Still, everyone got my standard warning. “The fastest way to get yourself escorted out of the northern zone in the trunk of my car is to make trouble for her. That means you can talk to her while you’re here. Politely, obviously. You can order food and drinks from her. But the moment you leave the bar, you will forget she exists until the next time you come in. Understood?”

“Of course.” Another nod.

“You will not seek her out, outside of this bar. You will not ask her personal questions. You will not speak to anyone else about her. Everyone in the northern zone knows those rules, so if anyone asks you a single question about Davey, you will immediately report that to me or to one of my enforcers. Do you understand?”

Graham crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back in his chair.

“Ms. Studebaker, I have nothing but respect for your efforts to protect your sister. More than you could possibly know. Is she… Is she in some kind of danger?”

“That’s unclear. As I’m sure you know, exposing our existence to a human carries the death penalty for a shifter, all over the world. But guidelines for what to do with humans who already know about us are rather vague. So we take every necessary precaution with Davey. With Titus’s blessing.”

“That is very good to hear.” He seemed to truly mean that, and my curiosity about him intensified. But he’d already declined once to give us any personal information beyond his name, and I was starting to believe he had real reasons for that.

“Good. Now, we don’t have any official citizenship process—everyone is welcome—but those who live in the territory are expected to follow the rules at all times. Breaking any one of them is grounds for immediate expulsion from not just the northern zone, but from the entire territory. Are you familiar with all of the rules and expectations that come with citizenship in the Mississippi Valley Pride?”

“I suspect I am. I’m not exactly newly—”

Shouting echoed toward us from the front of the bar, and I spun in my chair to face the north wall of my office. It was a cacophony of sound. A sudden burst of voices, all of them outraged.

“Charley!” Davey cried, a second before something collided with the other side of my office door.

Vance spun around and pulled it open to reveal my sister, her blue eyes wide. “Something’s going down outside. Some new guy confronted Callum Blake and they’re fighting, out in the front parking lot. Tucker’s trying to break it up, but—”

Vance pushed past her on his way out the door.

“Shit,” Austin Graham swore, already on his feet to follow.

I grabbed the rifle mounted on the wall behind my desk and ran after them.

My zone. My rules. Anyone who doubted that was welcome to fuck around and find out.

* * *

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ALSO BY RACHEL VINCENT

SHIFTERS

Stray

Rogue

Pride

Prey

Shift

Alpha

WILDCATS

Lion’s Share

Blind Tiger

Wild Card

UNBOUND

Blood Bound

Shadow Bound

Oath Bound

SOUL SCREAMERS (YA)

My Soul To Take

My Soul To Save

My Soul To Keep

My Soul To Steal

If I Die

Before I Wake

With All My Soul

MENAGERIE

Menagerie

Spectacle

Fury

THE STARS NEVER RISE (YA)

The Stars Never Rise

The Flame Never Dies

BRAVE NEW GIRL (YA)

Brave New Girl

Strange New World

100 HOURS (YA)

100 Hours

99 Lies

YA STANDALONE

Red Wolf

Every Single Lie

No One Is Alone

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo credit: Kim Haynes Photography

Rachel Vincent is a former English teacher and an eager champion of the Oxford comma. She shares her home in Oklahoma with two cats, two teens, and her husband, who’s been her # 1 fan from the start. Rachel is older than she looks and younger than she feels, and she remains convinced that writing about the things that scare her is the cheapest form of therapy—but social media is a close second.

For more information…

www.rachelvincent.com

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