Death & Desire E-Book

Deborah Wilde

• Herausgeber: Te Da Media
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Enjoy this urban fantasy by best-selling author Deborah Wilde. Featuring an enemies-to-lovers romance and a savvy female P.I., this giddy sexy detective series will keep you up all night. 

Angel of Death. 
Black market magic. 
When you’re Ashira Cohen, smart is the new kickass. 

When Ash is hired to solve her first murder, it seems like a perfectly normal, open-and-shut case of family feuds and bad blood. Until Ash discovers an evil magical artifact and her lead suspect is of the winged, white-robed, celestial variety. As if that weren't bad enough, if she can't find the perpetrator quickly, fourteen vials of lethal, ghostly magic will be sold to the highest bidder.

Her quest to figure out her Jezebel powers and find the shadowy organization responsible for stripping teens of their magic isn't going any smoother, either. Can't a girl just pursue her dream career without getting caught up in a mysterious destiny or playing a dangerous Sherlock-Moriarty game with her annoyingly hot nemesis?

But when Ash accidentally crosses the cunning and deadly Queen of Hearts, ruler of the magic black market, all those cases may go unresolved.

Permanently. 

With the clock ticking, it’ll take all of Ash’s intelligence to survive with her moral center–and her head–intact. 

The game is afoot and failure is not an option.

This snarky paranormal mystery is perfect for fans of Hidden Legacy, Lizzie Grace, Blood Vice, Mist Riders, and the Sam Quinn series.

Binge this complete series now!

Leseprobe

DEATH & DESIRE

A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series

DEBORAH WILDE

Contents

Be Part of the Magic—Join Us Now!

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

Sneak Peek of Shadows & Surrender

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Be Part of the Magic—Join Us Now!

Bestselling author Deborah Wilde presents a razor-sharp urban fantasy packed with:

• A fiercely clever private investigator whose snark could cut diamonds.

• A richly woven world of hidden magic, danger, and secrets waiting to unravel.

• Twists, mysteries, and the kind of laugh-out-loud humor that keeps you hooked.

DEATH & DESIRE is the second book in The Jezebel Files series.

Deborah has a chatty newsletter where she shares what’s warming her cold, dead heart, gives sneak peeks and insider information, and holds giveaways.

Join the Wilde Ones today!

Chapter1

I never expected Touched by an Angel to stray into bad touch territory.

“Tall, white robes, white wings. Was there a celestial light? Did anyone see a halo?” The questions I asked in pursuit of the truth.

“It’s an Angel of Death. It kills people.” Husani Tannous, a late-twenty-something Egyptian, adjusted his baseball cap to hide his receding hairline. “It doesn’t get a halo.”

Ironclad logic from a man who’d paired his masculinity issues with the semi-automatic at his feet. Like fine wine with cheese. Or gasoline with a match.

This living room was as much a battlefield as any muddy trench. There was even a dead body upstairs, and if the animosity down here got out of hand, more casualties to come. The fluttering in my stomach did double duty as nerves and a coiled excitement.

“I’m not trying to be facetious,” I said, steepling my fingers and leaning back in a fancily embroidered chair. “But I do need the facts.”

“The facts are that it murdered my brother!” He shook his fist. “And I will avenge him!”

His cousin, Chione, slowly stroked a finger over the handgun in her lap, all the while sucking butter off her toast.

I leaned in, fascinated by her particular brand of multitasking.

“Big talker, Husani. How will you find this angel? Are you going to fly up into the sky?” Chione said in Arabic-accented English.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Flying magic doesn’t exist.” Rachel Dershowitz, early fifties and mother of the bride-to-be Shannon, was as bitter as the gin and tonic she gulped down. The gaudy rock on her finger had fewer facets than the sneer she shot Chione.

Chione’s hand twitched on her gun and I stepped between the two women. “Did Omar have any enemies? Any reason why anyone would come after him?”

“Omar is a good boy. No enemies. This is a hate crime. Those sons of dogs killed our firstborns before and they’re doing it again!” Thank you, Masika Tannous, the grandmother and matriarch of the clan visiting from Cairo. While the little old lady was knitting a sweater like many a sweet grandma, she wielded her needles with a savage ferocity that scared me more than the Uzi of questionable origin propped against her side.

Between Masika, Husani, and Chione, this mercenary family packed more firepower than the Canadian Armed Forces, but like I’d always said, Mundanes didn’t require magic to be dangerous.

The physical weapons from the Tannouses were countered by serpents made of light magic that writhed above the table, ready to pounce on their victim and squeeze the life out of them.

I wanted to smack sense into all of them, but it was hard enough doing my job, never mind exuding enough badass vibes to keep these two families in line.

“You brought death into my home. Jews shouldn’t mix with Egyptians,” said Ivan Dershowitz. The fleshy home-owner on my left sat next to his wife and daughter on a high-backed chair with spindly legs that strained under his weight. His light magic bobbed like a cobra.

The two families hurled racist epithets back and forth, this season’s bridal registry must-have.

The delicate-featured Shannon let out a hysterical wail that probably used up her caloric intake for the week. However, she was the only one acting appropriately in my opinion, given her groom-to-be had been murdered. The heavens agreed with my assessment as a shaft of sunlight cut through the clouds on this March morning to confer a kind of benediction upon her.

What can I say? When I was right, I was right.

I whistled sharply. “Assuming we take the story of Passover literally, Malach, that Angel of Death, killed all the firstborn sons to free the Jews from an oppressive slavery. While it is Passover this week, we have only the one death, though I’m monitoring that.” I turned to Masika. “I’m deeply sorry about the loss of your grandson Omar, but one murder isn’t exactly mass smiting, not to mention, the Jews are sitting right here in their own home.” Low class, but hardly enslaved. “We need to keep an open mind. Perhaps it’s an Angel of Death and perhaps someone is using a good story, preying on centuries of superstition and hatred to hide what’s really at play.”

You point out one hard truth and suddenly the place was all twitchy gun fingers, snaky beams of light, and a knitting needle jabbed at you like a curse.

My command to shut it down was ignored. Fantastic.

The person standing in the center of the room cleared his throat, and everyone immediately fell back into their corners, muttering angrily.

In his forties, he had white hair and a white suit that veered sharply towards the 1970s. Between his wardrobe choices and the fact that he was the right hand man of the Queen of Hearts, my moniker of White Rabbit Man was hardly a stretch.

One day, I’d call him that out loud.

Given his overall vibe, he shouldn’t have commanded any respect, but the motherfucker of a sword in his hand helped.

Big deal. I could decapitate a few dozen people and get that response, too.

“If someone could show me upstairs so I could examine the scene?” Collecting the shreds of my patience, I met the cold beady eyes of the showpiece of this ostentatious living room: a massive crystal chandelier in the shape of a bird with its wings outstretched, soaring overhead.

Even the decor wanted out.

“Mr. Dershowitz,” I said.

“Rebbe,” he corrected.

Yeah, right. Ivan had earned that nickname not for his religious leanings but because, during his high-profile incarceration for assault and battery, he’d beaten a fellow inmate into a coma with a copy of Genesis. Can I get a hallelujah?

I gritted my teeth. “Rebbe⁠—”

Ignoring me, he sent his serpent slithering to the ground where it circled the room. The urge to pull my feet up was strong. “This marriage was a mistake,” he said.

No, the real mistake was coming to this shitshow. Although it wasn’t as though I’d had a choice to refuse this “request.”

“We can stand here and argue the existence of angels,” White Rabbit Man said, “or you can allow Ashira, the private investigator vouched for by the Queen, access to Omar’s room so she can determine precisely what happened.”

After another couple minutes of mutually insulting each other’s matriarchal lineage coupled with some anatomical suggestions that I never intended to Google, Rachel called for a maid. Husani and the help escorted White Rabbit Man and me through the mansion down a long hallway filled with bookshelves that contained zero books but an extensive and disturbing collection of china bird figurines.

Birds! They’re just like us. They nest, they whistle, they rub their genitals against tufts of grass in a lusty manner.

“Was beheading too fast a way to torture me?” I muttered at White Rabbit Man.

The tiny quirk of his lips was the only thing on his impassive face that betrayed his amusement.

“We can take it from here,” I said to the people following us, when we reached the stairs to the second floor.

My escorts didn’t move.

“The Queen thanks you for your service. I’ll be sure to mention to her how you allowed me to do the job that she so kindly recommended me for.”

Still nothing.

“We’ll call should we require your assistance,” White Rabbit Man said.

Sure, that got them going.

I stomped up the stairs, stopping in the doorway of the guest bedroom to gather my first impressions.

I’d spent a summer during university working in the coroner’s office, mostly filing and doing data entry, but I’d been given the opportunity to accompany the coroner to the morgue. That’s when I’d seen my first dead body. Seeing that person so cold and alone and irrevocably gone had hit me hard. The coroner had shared the deceased’s tragic history and how he had been revived from drug overdoses on numerous occasions before finally succumbing to this one. Struggling to remain as professional as my boss, I’d asked how she dealt with this. Her advice? Learn to straddle the line between empathy and being pulled under, because these people needed you to swim, not sink.

I’d taken that advice to heart, so while I had no problem with death, the naked hairy ass currently assaulting my eyeballs was another matter entirely. That shit demanded danger pay. To be fair, those glutes were tight, but damn, they were practically obscured in a pelt of dark hair. And now all I could picture was Shannon threading her fingers through it during sex and holding on for the ride.

Yeehaw!

The bloated corpse lay on his side, facing away from the door. Omar’s skin was mottled purple and black and he was clad in only a white undershirt and a single white trouser sock. The other sock lay near his elbow. Given the condition of the body, my first thought was death by drowning, though he was bone dry.

Gingerly, I skirted the edge of the room and checked the ensuite bathroom. No bathtub, and while Omar could have been drowned in a shower with a clogged or blocked drain and then dragged into the bedroom, the shower and bathmat were dry and the drain was unobstructed.

Strangulation? There weren’t any obvious ligature marks.

Shards of glass from the shattered skylight in the high ceiling dotted Omar’s skin and glinted amongst the fibers of the area rug with its dizzying white and gold vine pattern. If there were birds hidden in there, I didn’t want to know.

Letting the possibilities percolate in my brain, I touched a fingertip to the window frame.

“No wards,” I said. “What kind of special idiot doesn’t ward the many, many giant panes of glass in their house, given the shady characters they associate with?” Wards sensed hostile intent and then held potential attackers, freezing them in place and neutralizing their magic if they had it. I dusted my hand off on my black jeans. “With oversights like that, I despair for the continued success of the criminal class.”

“I dare you to comment on the Rebbe’s intelligence,” White Rabbit Man said. “To his face.”

“Hard pass. I refuse to engage in any activity that causes you glee as it will be detrimental and deleterious to my well-being.”

White Rabbit Man shrugged. “Regardless, you’ll have to deal with him now.”

“If I take this cockamamie case.”

“You will. Your greedy little fingers are practically twitching in anticipation.”

I humphed. True, murder was a huge—and exciting—jump from the cases I’d generally dealt with since starting my own private investigation firm, but this particular gig came with a number of ethical implications.

My phone buzzed in my back pocket. I slid it out.

Imperious 1: Come to HQ immediately.

Me: Busy.

“This is murder,” I said. “How are you going to keep the cops out of it? Nefesh or Mundane?”

“That is your concern.” White Rabbit Man didn’t take his eagle-eyed gaze off the staircase to ensure we weren’t disturbed. “Both families were most insistent about that.”

I snorted. Shocker. The magic criminals and non-magic guns-for-hire wanted to keep the fuzz far away. I snapped photos of the space, leaving a closer examination of the body to the end. Surveillance work was better suited to a proper camera but, for quick and dirty documentation like this, my camera phone worked fine.

Another text.

Imperious 1: This is more important.

Me: My cases > your random problems.

Nothing in the luxuriously appointed room was out of place. Omar’s clothing lay unwrinkled on the plush mattress. Other than the broken skylight, all the furniture was intact and the freaky oil paintings of—wait for it—birds that looked like Edgar Allen Poe had dropped acid with Andy Warhol hung in perfect alignment.

Imperious 1: I thought you’d be interested that we identified the deceased Jezebel. But your cases >…

Me. Wait. What?!

Silence.

Me: Levi!

Imperious 1: We’ll talk when you’re less busy.

Me: You fucknugget.

Imperious 1: You’ve the soul of a poet.

White Rabbit Man raised an eyebrow. “I trust this murder isn’t getting in the way of your social life? Perhaps making plans with your delightful roommate, Priya?”

“Yeah, yeah. You can get to me if I step out of line.” My flip tone belied the lead knot in my gut at him going after my best friend. “Spare me the ‘Bad Guy 101’ speech.”

“But they made me memorize it to get my certificate and everything.”

“Hilarious. The world of stand-up awaits you. Getting back to the case at hand, what about the fact that, according to public record, I’m listed as Mundane?”

“Since the victim is Mundane,” White Rabbit Man said, “you’re being hired by the Tannous family. There will be no conflict should anyone look closely.”

“Someone is going to miss Omar. You planning on telling everyone he’s moved to an island in the South Pacific, or do you expect me to procure a phony death certificate stating he died of natural causes? Technically, I can investigate this, but I’m not committing outright fraud.”

“No need. Your job is merely to find the murderer and hand them over to me. That way you won’t be violating the conditions of your license trying to make an arrest.” He spread his hands wide. “Your professional well-being is our foremost concern.”

I brushed away a pretend tear. “I’m verklempt. Hand the murderer over to you and I’ll be bypassing such pesky things as law and order or justice entirely.”

“Oh, there’ll be justice.” White Rabbit Man gave me a cold smile that sent shivers up my spine. “The Queen guaranteed your discretion. She assured the families that you would investigate this case without putting it on the radar of the police or House Pacifica. She’s most insistent that your magic be kept under wraps for the duration of this job.”

This was the second time in less than two weeks that I’d been hired with that specific qualification. The first time was by Levi Montefiore and now it was the Queen, ruler of Hedon. I was beginning to feel typecast.

“Now,” he said, “are you satisfied, or do you wish to voice any other issues with your perceived moral dubiousness of this case?”

With White Rabbit Man and the Queen involved, the murderer was a dead person walking. Omar and his grieving family deserved answers and closure on this tragic chapter. Even if I wasn’t already delighted by the prospect of my first murder case, I was the only P.I. with the skillset to pull it off. In this instance, I’d concede that it came in handy being Mundane on the record but actually Nefesh.

“The Queen doesn’t want to get too involved if you’re bringing me in to investigate instead of her own people. Why not?” I snapped a photo of the bed.

“The attack didn’t happen in Hedon, therefore, the Queen has no jurisdiction to be a part of this.”

I snapped off several more photos from carefully staged angles, zooming in on what I was missing. “I’m her way of staying involved without looking like she’s involved.”

“You’re the only one we trust to handle this. If you refuse to investigate, neither family will go to the police for obvious reasons. It will remain unsolved, tensions between those people downstairs will spill into who knows what kind of bloodshed and retribution and⁠—”

“Geez. I’ll take the case.” I pulled off the top blanket and covered Omar’s dangly bits. Whatever had happened to Omar, he deserved a little dignity in death. “However, the status of my magic is Levi’s call,” I said. “He’s House Head and if he pushes my registration through, it’ll be public record. There’s not much I can do about it.”

Besides which, I had zero desire to keep my abilities secret. I had a world of Nefesh mysteries to tackle.

White Rabbit Man smiled thinly. “I’m sure you can persuade Mr. Montefiore otherwise.”

Ignoring his implication, I noted that his shoulders were tense and his words clipped. He, or rather the Queen, wanted me specifically for some reason beyond the stated one. Normally, I’d have walked out the door at the very real possibility I was being used, but her knowledge of my blood magic hung over me like an executioner’s sword.

I cut a sideways glance at White Rabbit Man’s razor-sharp blade. Death wasn’t the worst fate. A betrayal that left you bleeding out on the sidewalk and never fully healed was far worse. Until I’d removed the Queen’s ability to blackmail or out me in a way not of my choosing, I was caught in this game.

I crouched down by the body.

A little knowledge was a dangerous thing. Especially in the hands of Her Highness. But everyone had secrets. She had mine, I’d get hers.

Meantime, I had a murder to solve.

Were Omar’s features not frozen in an expression of agony, he would have been a handsome man. He was probably around my age of twenty-eight, with deep, soulful brown eyes, dark curly hair, and aristocratic features—other than the bloated tongue lolling out of his mouth.

“What’s in this for the Queen?” I said.

“The wedding was supposed to occur in Hedon.”

“In the matchmaking business, is she?” A closer inspection revealed no gunshots or stab wounds.

“She is the Queen of Hearts.” White Rabbit Man stepped into the bedroom, his sword now magically gone, and smoothed out an edge of the area rug that had flipped up.

I examined Omar’s hands. His skin wasn’t scratched and his fingernails weren’t broken, both of which would have indicated he’d fought off his attacker. Either he couldn’t fight back or it was over too quickly for him to defend himself. “Could this be a veiled attack against the Queen? Why not strike in Hedon?”

White Rabbit Man laughed, then saw my puzzled expression. “Oh. You’re serious. No one wishes to run afoul of the Black Heart Rule.”

“Is that what you call the Queen’s guards?”

“No. The guards police Hedon as a whole, but the Black Heart Rule is specific to the Queen or anyone she has placed under her personal protection. Any attack on those individuals results in swift and dire consequences. It’s a very effective deterrent. While this attack wasn’t directed against Her Majesty, she wishes to maintain the good relationships that she’s developed with these people, and if there isn’t going to be a wedding, then it’s imperative to her to give the poor bride and groom’s families closure.”

I snicked a hand across my throat. “That kind of closure?”

White Rabbit Man remained poker-faced.

“Plausible deniability. Got it.” I checked for bloodstains but found none. “If you want me to prevent Levi from alerting authorities, Nefesh or Mundane, that’s a separate fee.”

“Keeping the police away is part of the job you’ve been hired by the Tannous family to do,” White Rabbit Man said.

It wasn’t his completely reasonable tone that made me nod in agreement so much as the dark flash of anger he couldn’t quite hide.

“Can’t blame a person for trying,” I muttered, and took a few more photos of the body from various angles.

From downstairs, Husani demanded to know what we’d found.

“Ah, the dulcet tones of the belligerent male,” White Rabbit Man said.

“Hope your pay grade makes it worth it.” I stuffed my phone in my back pocket.

“Not everything is about money, Ashira. Excuse me a moment while I parlay with Mr. Tannous.”

“You do that. Me and Omar will hang out here.” I shooed him away.

White Rabbit Man stepped into the corridor and shut the bedroom door behind him.

I moved around to the opposite side of the room to consider the crime scene from a different angle.

The two families had been staying together to get better acquainted in the run-up to the big day. Sometime around 4AM this morning, the crash of the skylight woke everyone up and they’d come running, guns and magic blazing. The angel, with robes and wings as white as a Hollywood cliché, had startled and flown the coop. I shook my head. If we were dealing with a real Angel of Death, everyone should have been obliterated.

Not that angels existed.

Our world ran on power. Mundanes hungered to wield it over Nefesh and Nefesh over each other. We lived in a reality where magic was out in the open, and if there were supernatural beings of the undead, shifting, or celestial variety, then at some point in the past few hundred years, they would have boldly stepped forward and declared themselves top of the food chain. As none had, I took it as pretty concrete fucking evidence that there weren’t any.

However, I was a professional. Sherlock Holmes was a man of many theories, but he started each case with a blank mind. I had a room full of witnesses claiming to see an Angel of Death. Therefore, I would methodically pursue that line until I could, without any hesitation, cross it off.

Think an angel would respond to a pair of wings projected like the Bat-Signal? I snickered and eyed the body. “Okay, buddy, give me something to work with.”

Having ruled out the other obvious means of death, poison was the most likely culprit. Gently, I turned Omar’s neck, looking for any needle prick indicating an administered toxin or a point of origin if it was magic-based.

His neck was stiff and his skin cold. There was no pulse, not that I’d expected there to be.

When I turned his neck the other way, the motion caused his tongue to shift, revealing a white tip at the back of his throat.

“What have we here?” I murmured, worming my fingers into the gap between his locked upper and lower jaws. The item was slippery and the angle wasn’t ideal. I tugged on it, but the damn thing was jammed fast down the poor guy’s throat.

The scent of a hot sandstorm teased my senses, a delicate sensation of arid nights and dread. One more firm pull and I found myself holding a white feather that was a good eight inches—in ruler length, not man measurements. An ancient magic raised the hairs on the back of my neck. No, that couldn’t be right. This feather felt like it had existed for millennia, like it was older than time. But magic, the kind of magic that we knew of at least, was barely four hundred years old, having been unleashed on the world in the 1600s.

These were facts. The feather was old. Magic itself was not. And yet, here I was, holding a giant fluffy contradiction, still pristine even though it had been jammed down Omar’s esophageal tract.

I forced my shoulders down from my ears and, setting the feather on the ground, moved Omar’s head to see if there was anything else in his mouth.

That’s when his eyes blinked open and a perfectly nice murder got a lot more complicated.

Chapter2

I jerked back. “Fuck balls!”

Omar’s eyes bore into me with a terrified pleading look.

The feather had paralyzed him, entombed him in a death-like state, but with it out of his body, its hold had loosened enough to feel the magic that wrapped around and through him like a spiderweb on a fly. It rolled off him in waves and I didn’t have to get close to know that, left like this, that magic would slowly and painfully kill him.

My one-of-a-kind blood powers allowed me to strip away magic and destroy it. I could save Omar.

I could also stick my hand in a dark hole and hope it didn’t get bitten off. If this feather was a weapon, engaging with its magic might make me the next victim, and who would come to my aid? I wouldn’t even be the second Jew known for a resurrection. I’d just be—I looked down at Omar—that.

He’d upgraded from Mostly Dead to only Somewhat Dead, given the ongoing bloating, mottling, and corpse-like paralysis, and while this was an improvement, it would still put a major crimp in the wedding photos. Even if I took action, the jury was out on whether he’d make it back fully to the land of the living. His breathing was shallow and slow. He didn’t stand a chance without me, but saving him could cost me my life.

I was very fond of my life, such as it was.

Omar’s blinks might as well have been Morse code tapping out “help me.”

I put my hands on my hips and shook my head at the utter disaster before me. That’s it. I was changing my business name from Cohen Investigations to Clusterfucks ‘R’ Us.

“You’ll be pleased to know I’ve secured your crime scene,” White Rabbit Man said, striding into the room, “and the families downstairs agreed not to disturb⁠—”

Omar made a strangled noise.

“Okhuyet!” White Rabbit Man swore, his sword now in hand.

I silently repeated the word a couple of times to commit it to memory, intending to find out what it meant and where it originated. That might give me a clue as to White Rabbit Man’s background, since nothing had shown up. People tended to show their linguistic origins under stress, large quantities of drugs or alcohol, or anesthetic. I’d use anything to get intel on the Queen.

“This thing—” I pointed at the feather, “has mad magic, so unless you want me to shove it back where I found it and finish Omar off for good, you’ll agree to my terms. Give me the vials.”

A recent case had involved finding out who was creating smudgy shadows killing members of the Nefesh community. The shadows were actually magic that had been ripped from their hosts—that I’d nicknamed third-party smudges—and, now dying, were desperately looking for a new body to stay alive. I’d destroyed the two rampaging through Vancouver, but had discovered a lab with fourteen other vials containing smudges intended for sale to the highest bidder.

Selling stoppered-up promises of magic was a hell of a con. There was no acquiring powers. They might skip a generation or two but you were either born with them or you weren’t.

Unless you were me.

Unfortunately, the Queen had taken possession of the vials and while she swore she wasn’t interested in selling them, those things had to be destroyed for good.

Part of me hoped White Rabbit Man would say that the smudges had already bit it.

The skin around his eyes pinched tight. “Agreed. As your fee for solving the case and healing Omar.”

My bank account wouldn’t benefit from this job but the world would. Ah, well. There might be a way to leverage this into a payout.

“Fail and your payment will take a very different form,” he added, tapping the flat of his blade.

“I respect your clarity and intensity.” I wasn’t in beheading range—yet—and I’d prefer White Rabbit Man not get twitchy and change that. “This is a delicate operation so could you leave or lose Excalibur’s sharper cousin there?”

He planted himself in the doorway with a stance that dynamite couldn’t shift.

Fuck it. I excelled under pressure.

Since I wasn’t trying to get at Omar’s inherent magic, as he was a Mundane and didn’t have any, I didn’t require his blood. I did, however, require mine. My magic stemmed from and was fueled by it.

I gripped Omar’s bare forearms. My powers swam to the surface of my palms in a silky red ribbon which I sent in through his skin.

Previously, when I’d come into contact with third-party smudges, there had been this horrible maggoty sensation that made my skin crawl because that magic was dying. This power was just as invasive but it was incredibly alive. It was like plunging my hands into stardust: the whole history of humankind written in a dancing supernova, a galaxy bursting in a rainbow of color that beckoned me in.

My body tingled and my eyes rolled back into my head. I exhaled, lost to the greatest exhilaration, a rush that packed the punch of a rocket blast. I glutted myself, the taste of the cosmos on my lips.

I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t want to.

Deeper and deeper, I fell into that magic, until I threatened to be lost to it entirely. What had been intoxicating became terrifying. Helpless against its onslaught, buffeted by the hot scent and gritty sensation of a sandstorm, I fought back hard, managing to tease the magic out of Omar.

It flowed out in a stream of golden motes and even as I battled it for my life, I craved another taste.

My blood powers morphed into a kaleidoscope of forked red branches, but they didn’t anchor this magic in place so that I could destroy it like I always did.

They snapped like the thinnest of twigs.

My mind screamed that I couldn’t do this, that I needed to get out of this now or else risk losing everything that I was to that all-consuming sandstorm. Giving in would be so easy. Except discord and danger peeked out from under that crooning lullaby, and my soul iced over.

I was a fighter. A survivor. I’d survive this, too.

Gritting my teeth and ignoring its lure, I redoubled my efforts, finding the shape of the magic strangling Omar. I gathered it close until I had trapped all that unimaginable power in my red magic branches. Thousands of white clusters bloomed along my thicket and ate the invasive magic up.

If I subscribed to the theory that magic was like a disease, then I was the ultimate white blood cell, fighting off these foreign invaders. It wasn’t even a stretch: these white clusters that ate up the magic moved like white blood cells did in all the science videos I’d seen.

It gave “blood magic” new meaning.

I blinked the world back into focus, spent, sweat-drenched, and half-sprawled over Omar, who had mercifully fainted but at least had a steady pulse. His skin was light brown now, with no sign of the purple and black mottling.

Happy as I was that he was all right, the other ninety-nine percent of my brain was obsessed with getting another hit of that feather’s magic. Even knowing down to my bones that this was a bad idea, my heart still sank when White Rabbit Man held it up to the light out of my reach.

“Gimme,” I croaked.

He snicked his deadly blade through the air, stopping barely shy of my throat. “It’s mine now.”

Huh? He couldn’t taste magic and holding the feather didn’t do squat.

I broke into a full-body spiky blood armor, tore his sword from his grip with my enhanced strength, and jumped him.

White Rabbit Man hit the ground on his back, the sword magically back in his hand. He stabbed at me, but it didn’t penetrate my armor.

I tossed the sword away and wrestled him for the feather. That got me nowhere so I kicked him in the balls. He twisted at the last second, mitigating most of the damage, and knocked me back into the dresser with a blast of electricity, his actual magic power.

The edge of the furniture smashed into the small of my back, but I barely registered the blow. This armor rocked. “Ha! What else you got, Bunny Boy?”

Balls of electricity shot forward like a baseball pitching machine set to high. My body armor crackled and sparked as I threw myself sideways.

Strikes peppered the wall above my head, leaving scorch marks. Cracked plaster drifted into my eyes and one of the creepy bird paintings hit the ground, tearing as it knocked free of the frame.

Rachel was going to kill us.

The damn sword once more appeared in his hand, the perfect accoutrement to the manic glint in his eyes.

Grabbing the closest thing at hand, I chucked a small bedside table at him, winging him in the shoulder.

White Rabbit Man dropped the feather.

We both dove for it. I dogpiled him and, employing some recently learned fighting tips, aligned my first two knuckles to be the point of impact, taking care with my follow-through. There was a satisfying crunch of nose cartilage and the sword clattered to the floor.

Tears leaked down his face, courtesy of the nose being connected to the eyes via tear ducts, and inflicted a momentary loss of vision.

Taking advantage of his temporary disorientation, I hooked my magic into his. It tasted like that metallic bite in cool air before a rainstorm, but even though it was a watered-down snack compared to the juicy richness of the ancient magic, I ached for it.

That was a bad idea for many reasons, including that ripping his magic away would break him and I refused to let my dark nature out unless it was a matter of life and death. Even then.

“Stand down or lose your powers.” I tugged gently on his magic. Gawd, it would slide free like butter and—No.

Luckily, White Rabbit Man took me at my word. He nodded and I rolled off him, the feather mine at last. As I scooped it up, I glimpsed myself in the mirror above the dresser, huddled over my prize. I wore the same desperate look as White Rabbit Man. Add in a “my precious” and I’d officially hit Gollum rock bottom.

If it meant tasting that feather’s magic directly from the source, pure and at full strength instead of the diluted version I’d sampled in Omar, I didn’t care how I looked. And that was enough to shock a sliver of sanity back into me. I pried my fingers off it, shrugged out of my leather jacket, and wrapped the artifact up, but it required all my willpower not to suck the feather’s magic out of it like marrow from a bone.

Ever since I’d first tasted magic a couple weeks ago, the desire for more had lodged in my brain like a splinter. I could no longer deny the constant longing, a song stuck in my brain tuned to low.

Levi believed there was a way to stave off the cravings, as otherwise rumors of people taking magic would have surfaced over the years. I hoped he was right. If this hum grew to a deafening roar, I’d no longer be able to curb my desire through willpower and self-disgust.

Denied my fix now, I wanted to curl up into the fetal position until the muscle spasms and stomach cramps subsided. That wasn’t in the cards because White Rabbit Man was a predator; he’d sense weakness like a shark with blood in the water.

Speaking of blood… Chest heaving, I grabbed a sheet off the bed and tossed it over to White Rabbit Man so that he could stem the downpour from his nose.

He pressed the fabric to his face with a hiss.

I sat upright against the bed, legs hugged tight to my chest and waves of sharp agony rolling through me.

“Twenty minutes ago, I would have presumed that someone in this house had attacked Omar,” White Rabbit Man said. “But they couldn’t have withstood the feather’s lure enough to leave it behind. Angels.” He swore softly. “Just what we need.”

“I’m not exactly enamored of the idea either but every possibility, no matter how slim, must be investigated.” I wiped the sweat off the back of my neck with my sleeve. “It’s not even that it’s a white feather so much as its ancient magic being the strongest point in favor of an Angel of Death.”

“Are you proposing that magic existed before humans laid hands on it?”

“Possibly,” I said. “Conceivably, angels are older than humans and certainly older than our magic is.” I frowned. “Unless part of its power is making us believe the magic is ancient. To fool people who might determine otherwise.”

“Like a Typecaster,” he said.

“Exactly.” I was listing forward toward the feather so I straightened up. “It’s too early to rule anything out, but using the feather as the murder weapon makes no sense.”

He tsked. “Oh, of course. Kill a man with an object that drives everyone mad who tries to rescue him. How preposterous.”

“I’m serious. Think about it. When a snake bites or a scorpion stings, they just do it. Predators don’t mutilate themselves to get at their prey. If there was an Angel of Death in biblical times, it wasn’t going around plucking off its wing feathers like a mangy turkey and shoving them down the throats of the firstborn sons, hoping it would eventually kill them. The murder method and suspect don’t work as a cohesive whole.”

“Perhaps. That leaves us with one last unanswered question.” White Rabbit Man dabbed at his nose. “Why in heaven’s name did you call me ‘Bunny Boy?’”

Whoops. Aw, fuck it. “If you’re going to dress like that and work for the Queen of Hearts, then you’re inviting the comparison right in. And if you don’t like it, you could provide your name so I could address you like a normal human being, White Rabbit Man.”

Boom, I did it. Never doubt I’d make good on my threats and/or promises.

His eyes narrowed. Yes, I had some measure of self-preservation and didn’t want to make an enemy of him, but I was tapped out and he’d started it.

A hand clamped weakly onto my wrist. My pulse spiked and I tore free, but it wasn’t White Rabbit Man. It was Omar, who miraculously hadn’t been injured in the melee.

“Feather,” he whispered. Other than the look of blank shock on his face, he looked much better.

“Absolutely not.” I shook a finger at him like a pissed off Mary Poppins. “You don’t have magic, much less can taste it. This feather shouldn’t affect you.” The fact that it did meant its influence wasn’t limited to Nefesh, but Mundanes as well, giving it the potential to do nuclear levels of damage. I glowered at White Rabbit Man. “You can’t taste it either, so why did you want it so badly?”

White Rabbit Man pushed to his feet. He picked up his sword, did a cursory examination of it, and then made it disappear. “It tempted me with my heart’s desire.”

“Care to elaborate?” I said.

His fingers twitched. “For one shining moment, I believed I could have it all...”

He drifted off. The ellipsis on that statement turned into a period and then an awkward “are you still standing there waiting for me to say something more?”

I placed my fingers on Omar’s temples and sent my magic inside his skull. The feather magic that had been strangling him was gone. “Odd. There’s no trace of any other magic, like a compulsion.” I swatted Omar’s hand away again. Were compulsions even evident? I hadn’t sensed anything inside White Rabbit Man other than his own inherent magic, either. Interesting.

“How close were you when this happened?” I said to White Rabbit Man. “Did the feather affect you when you first came in the room?”

“No, and I didn’t touch it. I moved it out of your way with my sword.”

“About three feet from you then?”

“Approximately.” He stood further back from the feather than that, so he was in the clear.

“Do you still feel the compulsion now?” I said.

He shook his head. “It’s faded.”

“Then it’s not widely broadcasting a compulsion and its hold fades quickly with brief exposure.” Omar no longer had the feather magic in him, but he was still under its thrall, as if the compulsion that the magic exuded had seeped into his very bones. “We need to contain it,” I said. “Do you have anything to do the trick?”

“Wait here,” White Rabbit Man said, and vanished. He couldn’t teleport, but he had a magic token on a chain around his neck that allowed him to access Hedon from anywhere. Given the black market had been stitched together from pockets of reality but existed outside of it, it was a handy little tool to have.

“Omar, what happened?” I said. “Who attacked you?”

“Feather,” he whispered again.

I growled. “Considering it almost killed you, asking for it is a very poor life decision which I cannot condone. What’s it promising you?”

He had nothing coherent to share.

White Rabbit Man returned with a thin metal pouch, etched with obscure symbols. He tossed it over and I sealed the feather up with a sigh of relief.

“Can I get one of those all-access passes?” I said.

“Hedon isn’t some backstage groupie paradise.”

“Obviously. Why get hot rock stars, sexual escapades, and a possible STI memento, when I could have nausea, hostility, and danger?” I waved the pouch. “Hedon has resources I suspect I’ll require in order to solve this case. What do you say?”

White Rabbit Man dug into his suit jacket pocket and dumped a handful of bronze tokens into my upturned palm. “Each of these will allow one shift in or out of Hedon. From anywhere. Think about where you wish to go and it will take you there.”

No need to find an entrance. How VIP. “And the cost of so-doing?”

White Rabbit Man grinned slyly.

I ran a finger over one of the tokens. It looked so harmless. “Can’t I have a gold one like yours and spare myself the pain?”

“Under no circumstances.”

Whelp, at least I’d confirmed that his method of traveling was consequence-free. Every bit of intel around Hedon helped.

“Great. Guess I’ll find out when I find out.”

Omar remained a whimpering mess. White Rabbit Man, while he was keeping it together much better than Omar, still was pretty banged up, and I had no room to talk.

“I’d like to say this has been fun, but I try to lie as little as possible.” I stood up on shaky legs and pointed at White Rabbit Man. “Are we copasetic?”

He gave me a measured look. “Moran.”

“Is that slang? Like ‘we’re Gucci,’ but more Irish? Have you been hitting up Urban Dictionary to stay relevant?”

“Are you quite finished?”

I shrugged. “I mean, I probably have one or two more gibes in me, but let’s go with sure. What’s Moran?”

“What you may call me. A name that, if you are as much of a Sherlockian as you seem, means something to you.”

My breath hitched. Colonel Sebastian Moran was a skilled assassin who worked for Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes books. Knowing I lived with Priya was one thing, but knowing about my love of Holmes? Was there anything about me that he and the Queen hadn’t unearthed? Even more frightening was the danger this message implied. The Queen had expressed interest in me; Moriarty had been interested in Holmes, too. I swallowed.

“Moran, it is.” I managed to keep my voice steady. “I’m going to stash the feather someplace safe.”

“Where would that be?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not asking because I intend to steal it,” he said. “But you weren’t exempt from its thrall. Is anywhere ‘safe?’”

“Your experience was completely different to mine. The feather itself didn’t tempt or compel me, touching it didn’t do squat, and in fact, I hadn’t cared about it at all until I engaged with the magic it released inside Omar.”

My fingers tightened on the pouch. Why was it different for me? Combine this with the fact that there was no record, official or anecdotal, of blood magic, and the universe could take this special snowflake status it was hellbent on conferring on me and shove it up its ass.

“The cravings are even subsiding,” I lied, my gut cramping up. “I’m not going to do anything to jeopardize this case and right now, this feather is integral to it. Trust me, okay?”

Moran searched my face for a long moment. “Very well.”

A surge of relief blew through me.

In my mitzvah for the day, I reunited Omar with the Capulets and Montagues downstairs. It was kind of sweet when Shannon fainted in an old-school movie swoon and Omar roused himself enough to catch her, hugging her tightly and burying his face in her neck. Since he was still mumbling about the feather, Masika almost impaled me with a knitting needle, convinced I’d done some kind of voodoo on Omar to turn him into a zombie. She didn’t buy my explanation that removing the feather had saved him from a magic that had been slowly strangling him from the inside, making it appear he was dead.

After that, an excitable Husani shot out a window with a whoop, Rachel started laughing hysterically and drinking directly from the bottle, and the good times ended.

This was what came of thinking of others. The scene was bedlam; any more interrogations would have to wait a day.

I patted Omar’s head. “Rest up, because I’ll be back.”

I left them in the sinisterly capable hands of Moran and headed out. I had a fucked-up feather to throw light on and an Angel of Death—real or otherwise—to find. Even with the vials thrown in, I wasn’t being paid enough for this gig.

Chapter3

I hurried out to my car, Moriarty, my shoulder blades prickling like I was being watched. I turned in a slow circle, but no one had followed me out of the house and the long driveway up from the front gates was clear. I stepped onto the grass, manifested a blood dagger, and carefully picked my way between the topiaries of giant robins.

These people needed to cool it with the birds. There was a difference between a design aesthetic and a Hitchcock film. Regardless, the bushy buggers only inspired a mild sense of unease and not the “Welcome to Stalkersville” energy someone or something was throwing my way.

A circuit of the yard didn’t produce any skulking intruders, so I collapsed into Moriarty’s driver’s seat, and blinked against the bluish-white glow bathing my face. Outside the car window was a rough slab that was approximately five feet at its base. The tip of its triangular top stood taller than I did. Instead of the nubby texture of stone, this piece seemed carved from a block of the sky. It was pure light contained in a static form. One of Shannon’s pieces. She’d forgone the family business to make a name for herself as a visual artist using her light magic.

I rubbed my right thigh, which ached from the rods holding my femur together. With the advent of my magic, the pain that had troubled me for years was mostly gone, but I’d over-taxed myself. I fumbled for the Costco-sized bottle of Tylenol in my glove compartment and dry-swallowed a couple of pills.

Sadly, that did nothing for the continued cravings that left me slumped over the steering wheel taking slow inhales and exhales and categorizing everything around me alphabetically: air vent, brakes, console… A self-soothing technique from years back.

I resolutely did not open my trunk where the feather was stashed. Even though I could taste, smell, and destroy magic, I couldn’t actually identify what type it was from engaging with it. The best thing would be to nuke all the magic on that damned thing so it couldn’t tempt anyone else, but until I knew what I was dealing with, I was reluctant to do that.

That was absolutely the only reason.

I locked the doors.

My magic followed certain patterns. Why I was the Cookie Monster of magic was a big “who the hell knows?” but I’d clung to what little clarity I’d had about my powers, and while the fact of my cravings was nothing new, the intensity of them this time scared me.

In all other instances, I got a high from engaging with living magic (versus with the dying third-party smudges). Usually, my psychological urges only turned to physical withdrawal symptoms if I aborted the process of destroying magic. Otherwise, I was bumped gently down from my high, temporarily satiated.

This feather magic was definitely alive, and while the rush had been greater than any before, I continued to want it even after I’d nuked it inside Omar. Equally as puzzling, he continued to be under its spell. Did I need to destroy the feather itself for our longings to go away?

While I was a puzzle wrapped in an enigma, I was also a woman with pressing questions in need of answers. Failure was not an option.

I glowered at my car’s dashboard. “I’m having a shit day, so start on me or I’ll scrap metal your ass.”

Moriarty gave a single sputter in protest then purred to life. A gray, older Toyota Camry, he wasn’t flashy, but he had the most important quality for my line of work: he was common enough to blend into almost any neighborhood. In theory, this model should have been easy to back out and turn, handle well, and have good gas mileage and power. In reality, he was okay on all that, but where he really excelled was fucking with me when it was time to start and making sure I never got too complacent.

I cranked the now-fixed heater, reveling in the warmth. My last paycheck had been enough to get on top of my bills with cash left over for this much-needed repair, but this sweet, warm idyll was only temporary. Soon the stereo volume would mysteriously get stuck on loud or a weird burning smell would come through the vents and our little dance would begin anew.

But for now, the drive to my next destination was nice and toasty.

Blondie’s was my favorite dive pub, despite its surly staff and sticky surfaces, because it had the world’s most perfect french fries and a karaoke list that was second-to-none. The low lights weren’t mood setting; they were camouflage for the scuffed wooden flooring, splotchy upholstery, and bottom shelf drinks at top shelf pricing.

I generally avoided it like the plague during the day, since its already questionable food was not made better by the sickly rays of sunlight that made it through the greasy windows, but my quarry had a Norwalk virus-resistant stomach lining and enjoyed breakfast here on the regular.

“Buy you a drink, sugarbaby?” The sixty-something man leered from his barstool.

Leftover drunks: the other reason to avoid Blondie’s in the AM.

Slightly bleary gaze, wedding ring, bulging wallet in his back pocket: he was making bad decisions in an incapacitated mindset, and yet, not my problem.

Shaking my head, I walked past him.

“Come on, sweetheart, smile. You’re a pretty girl.”

I stopped. A lecture, ignoring him, punching him in the throat—all were good options, but if I could keep another woman from being impinged on this way, then I should handle it.

I spun around, hooked an ankle under his stool rung and yanked it out from under him.

He toppled over onto his ass, sputtering.