Howl at the Moon E-Book

Deborah Wilde

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

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Enjoy this urban fantasy series by best-selling author Deborah Wilde. The fun of the Jezebel Files world continues! Love, danger, and magic collide in this action-packed urban fantasy featuring witty banter, a shifter romance, and a clever Red Riding Hood retelling. (Plus, more of Ash and the gang.)

Dr. Raisa Montefiore has based her life on science, but at the moment, only three facts are relevant: A) werewolves don’t exist, B) she may have created the one standing in front of her, C) revisit fact A.

She’s a magic scientist with a mission to heal, but when her passion project is twisted to create the world’s first wolf shifter and her entire world comes crashing down, she’s thrown from the lab and onto a path filled with changing—and dangerous—unknowns.

With her life’s research on the line, she’s forced to work with the wolf, an infuriating man who was bossy enough before he went furry. Worse still is their cover story: fake dating. Their deadly pursuers are looking pretty good in comparison.

She’s trusting the Big Bad Wolf to protect her from the perils of the forest, while hoping he’s not the biggest danger of them all. Or that she won't give in to the urge to throw his corpse in a vat of strong acid, leaving no trace of his remains.

Either way, Raisa is redeeming her life’s work and no man—or wolf—is going to stop her.

This snarky, sexy paranormal fairy tale is perfect for fans of Mercy Thompson, Rouen Chronicles, Lost Library, Alice Worth, the Golden Wolf, and the Sundance Series.

Get it now!
 

Leseprobe

HOWL AT THE MOON

An Urban Fantasy Fairy Tale

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

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Sneak Peek of Lost in the Woods

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 brilliant magic scientist and total geek whose love of facts and formulas gets hilariously scrambled when the scientifically impossible shows up wearing fur.

• A richly woven world where cutting-edge science meets exciting magic, with dangerous consequences waiting to unfold.

• Romance, witty banter, and a clever Red Riding Hood twist that will keep you turning pages.

HOWL AT THE MOON is the fifth 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 hurried through the industrial park double-fisting takeout cups, visions of Pumpkin Spice dancing in my head. Not the flavor—I was a two-shot mocha latte woman—but the digital subject at my research lab. Early versions of my loyal simulated patient had rendered her as speckled with burns as the traditional fall latte was with cinnamon, and, morbid though it was, I chose to make light of it. Thus, Pumpkin Spice, the Virtual Colleague, was born.

Listen, if our mega-comet-sporting, black-hole-toting universe could taste like raspberries (true fact!), then my virtual 3D lab subject with disturbingly lifelike renditions of severe burns could have a cute name like Pumpkin Spice.

A checkerboard of beige and red loading bay doors dotted the corridor of long brick buildings that ran from my lab to the café. I held my breath as I passed by a herd of blue dumpsters, and a hopeful rat waddled out from between them before disappearing under a forklift.

The sodium-vapor streetlamps kicked on, infusing the cool evening with a warm reddish-yellow glow. Should everything go well in the next hour, my rapid regeneration formula for burn victims would be in clinical trials with actual people soon.

It would mark almost half a lifetime of work training my magic, attaining my PhD in chemical genetics, and further developing my research at this lab, but my promise would be fulfilled by the time I turned thirty next year. I drank deeply, savoring the very real joy of chocolate and caffeine.

A coyote’s howl drowned out the grinding noises from the metal fabrication workshop a couple blocks over. Those furry bastards roamed like gangs in a turf war around here, so I picked up my pace.

The only contrast to the concrete and asphalt was a scraggly patch of half-wilted purple asters poking up from a crack in the low retaining wall. They were so bright and colorful they almost seemed fake. I smiled. One more underdog beating the odds.

I balanced the takeout cups one on top of the other in my right hand and engaged my Weaver magic. My specialty was light, specifically weaving precise targeted beams from the red light and infrared end of the spectrum. Even when I couldn’t see that light with the naked eye, I sensed it. While I could also manipulate light with a higher Kelvin count, like blue light or sunlight, handling the wide spectrum was tricky. I was unwieldy at best and dangerous if I lost control.

I brushed the pads of my fingers, now glowing pale orange, over the asters.

Weaver magic manifested in a variety of ways. Some could manipulate thread so deftly that they unraveled a garment to reform a cocoon or even a solid spike to impale a person. Others wove plant material while a very rare few could weave water or fire. It all depended on power level and training. A low-level Weaver might be able to stitch a fallen hem with their magic and not much else.

The most common professional use was ward building, magically stitching a client’s blood into thresholds. I had better things to do with my abilities than keep corporate towers and dictators safe.

The purple petals bloomed into fat, lush blossoms as I deftly wove light into the cellular structure of the flowers, speeding up photosynthesis. I gave them a final pat and rounded the corner, my anxiety battling it out with excitement as the sleek façade of Perrault Biotech came into view. My second home was a two-story T-shaped structure. The offices, conference rooms, and break areas formed the short part of the letter “T,” while the labs occupied the longer section.

It reminded me of a superhero HQ: totally unremarkable from the outside while behind those doors we were secretly revolutionizing the world of medicine. The research lab I worked at was home to many magical and scientific breakthroughs for the advancement of healthcare, one of the top in the Toronto area. Would I be adding to those achievements tonight?

I’d soon find out.

I swung the front door open and entered the lobby to the mellow bossa nova of “Girl from Ipanema” streaming smoothly out of inset ceiling speakers.

Ella Fortose, the research facility’s office manager, was busy signing files left for her by our receptionist, Kaitlin. From Ella’s neat chignon to her elegant all-silk ensemble and impeccably color-coded calendar, the sixty-something brunette effortlessly held our office together.

“Celebratory coffee?” She placed the last file on top of the pile.

“Garden-variety stimulant.”

“If anyone can leap this last hurdle, it’s you. From day one you put your head down and didn’t let any setback derail you.” She pulled out her phone and swiped at the screen, her French manicure flawless. “You’ve nailed this. A fact I’m so confident of that I already bought the Double Stuf Oreos.”

I perked up at the mention of the treats that she doled out on a merit basis. Juvenile perhaps, but popular nonetheless. “Do I get three if I pull this off?”

Ella made a raspberry sound. “Raisa, the whole pack is for you.”

My grin stretched from ear to ear.

“Now, riddle me this. Ah. Here we are.” She squinted at the screen, then pulled her glasses off her head. “‘Shaken players carry the load.’”

Setting my boss’s drink on the desk, I parsed out the cryptic crossword clue while I finished my mocha latte. Ella didn’t just corner us to help solve the complex puzzles she loved so much, she’d turned it into a workplace game. Each month someone won her Helper Brain award, receiving cookies and having their picture pinned to the dented corkboard in the staff lunchroom. Competition was surprisingly fierce, with staff members going so far as to bribe her with chai lattes to let them solve more clues than other employees.

I may or may not have been among that number.

Sadly, as much as I coveted that spot, I shook my head. “Sorry. I’m coming up blank.” After tossing my empty cup in the recycling bin, I grabbed the other drink, then pressed my thumb against the small biometric pad mounted on the wall behind the reception desk.

Ella shook her fist at me. “Fine. Leave me stumped.”

“I’ll be back for the Oreos.” I blew her a kiss as the scanner light turned green, releasing a solid steel door with a quiet click. It connected the publicly accessible part of the “T” to the longer section where the scientists worked.

The light jazz was replaced by the hum of an air conditioner, the stylish décor switched out for bland concrete walls and exposed pipes along the ceiling. At least the original fluorescent lighting had been updated in favor of LEDs.

Bypassing the elevators to the research facilities and the small auditorium on the upper floors, I turned into the stairwell. With each step into the bowels of the building, my stomach twisted into worse knots, my footfalls echoing grimly off the walls. I swallowed against the sour taste in my mouth and took a deep breath.

Here goes everything. I unlocked the final security door to my lab.

There were no beakers or test tubes in my domain. Lord of the Rings figurines lined the tops of the huge monitors on my desk, while the two screens presided over my many multicolored sticky notes like twin gods. A temperature-controlled server room about the size of a walk-in closet was located off to one side. It held the computing power necessary to run the sophisticated coding that simulated my calibrations of Weaver magic and chemistry on a digital human body.

Filing cabinets and bookcases covering everything from chemistry to engineering to coding to magic gave the space a cozy private library vibe, but the framed posters of great thinkers like Descartes, Ada Lovelace, and the cartoon mouse Brain nailed that personal touch. I loved my mind grotto.

Dr. Richard Woodsman, a brilliant geneticist and the facility’s director, hunched in front of my screens, watching the latest trial. His short afro was more salt than pepper, and his lab coat was wrinkled. Knowing him, he’d probably slept in it. Woody was the Phantom to the lab’s Paris Opera House, but in the sense that he was like the world’s smartest kid in the world’s best playground. Single and childless, he didn’t have to go home unless he wanted to (or Ella told him he really needed a shower), and so he’d often camp out by the machines, helping the maintenance technicians install complicated devices, chatting with interns, or drinking coffee while talking through a project at any time of the day or night. If he was a phantom, then he was the world’s friendliest ghost and a genuine delight.

I hung my jacket on the hook over my lab coat, since I didn’t work with anything dangerous, and didn’t usually wear PPE, then I patted the top of the monitor featuring my digital patient spinning slowly on-screen. Her skin currently showed both the charred spots and white patches indicative of fourth-degree burns.

“Hi, Pumpkin Spice,” I said. “How you doing, baby?”

“You are a disturbed individual,” Woody said.

“Calling her Deadpool doesn’t make you any less disturbed.”

My mentor grinned and swiped his drink from my hand, revealing four pens clipped to his lab coat’s uppermost pocket. I frowned. He’d only ever gotten distracted enough to have that many pens on two other occasions. Once during a proposed funding cut, and the other when he got the phone call saying he was being honored for his advancements in stem cell and genetic editing.

Unable to tell which emotion was relevant now and knowing from experience that he wouldn’t share until he was good and ready, I nudged his shoulder. “Hey, Quasimodo. Sit up.”

“That’s Dr. Quasimodo to you.” Woody took a sip and grimaced. “This isn’t a mocha, double shot, double whip.”

“No, it’s green tea. Glad to see your four doctorates yielded such keen observational skills.” As Woody had gotten comfortable in the ergonomic masterpiece, I dropped into the piece of shit chair kept for visitors. With a seat that listed sideways and one wonky wheel, I’d have turfed it ages ago, except it was the undisputed champ of midnight races in the hallway against my coworkers. “I’m not aiding and abetting your high blood pressure,” I said. “Now quit bitching and keep admiring my genius.”

“You’re a brat.” He made a note on the legal pad resting in his lap.

“That’s Dr. Brat,” I said sweetly. Was that a good note? A bad note? A pox on his weird shorthand that I couldn’t read. Porco miseria, he wouldn’t make me revise my research yet again, would he? Obviously, I’d do it—I strove for the same excellence he did—but the thought made me want to line my pockets with rocks and wade into the river. They’d find me floating near a weeping willow, my hands clasped to my breast, and my visage beautifully pale with no pesky skin maceration. Yeah, I had planned it out, thanks.

When it came to incorporating magic in scientific research, the laws were strict. Human clinical trials were forbidden until the digital results could be flawlessly replicated, at which point they were scrutinized and approved by a special governing body. Mundane scientists didn’t face that extra time-consuming hurdle.

Every day spent fine-tuning a digital trial meant practical applications had to wait—and more lives were lost due to serious burns. It didn’t matter whether you were Mundane or Nefesh (possessing magic), all the money in the world couldn’t buy you a treatment that didn’t exist. Not even level five Healers could undo that kind of damage.

But my formula could.

I blinked away an image of haunted blue eyes staring out from weepy-looking bandages. This test run had to work and get me one step closer to clinical trials. Any other outcome was unacceptable.

On-screen, the experiment hummed along smoothly, Pumpkin Spice’s exposed bone and muscle tissue healing. Although magically weaving red light into humans at a cellular level sped up regeneration, it wasn’t sufficient on its own for my end goal: any and all burn-related injuries, both internal and external, healed in a matter of moments.

After much trial and error, I’d landed on an edited protein, derived from the Hsp60 gene, as the best partner with my magic. Proteins were incredible: large complex molecules that did the heavy lifting in cells. Without them, our tissues and organs wouldn’t have structure, function, or the ability to regulate.

I knit the combination of magic and the heat protein into the very fabric of the affected cells to achieve accelerated wound healing throughout the body—in the digital model at least.

I glanced sideways at Woody, who remained annoyingly silent. Had his fascination left him speechless? Was he busy cataloguing my list of failures? Or worse, was he bored? I adjusted the blingy studs and gold rings of my multiple piercings in each ear, twisting my small diamond helix piercing, which my sister and I had both gotten on our thirteenth birthdays. Getting grounded had been worth it. My weird self-soothing technique eased some of the tension from my body.

I’d dubbed my magic and science combo Red Carpet, both because I imagined it unfurling through the body like one, and because rolling out the red carpet was to give someone a special treatment, and I hoped my formula would do exactly that.

Woody tapped one of the monitors. “Do you believe the Hsp60 was the way to go?”

I curled my thumbs under my other fingers so I didn’t further mutilate my already-ragged cuticles. After years of grad school where I answered to my principal investigator—aka the lab lead—I appreciated Woody training me to take the reins on my own work. At the same time, I’d be completely fine with him just giving me a gold star and telling me to move to the next phase.

“The Hsp60 is fusing nicely to the magic.” I checked the vitals. “Everything appears stable and inflammation has decreased.”

“And?” This guy would make a hell of a therapist. Get you to figure out your own problems, then tell you time was up and charge you a hundred and fifty bucks.

Ask me how I knew.

“And there ain’t no protein like a heat shock protein,” I rapped.

My mentor raised an eyebrow. “Dr. Montefiore, if you’re going to bust out rhymes, at least have the courtesy to finish a full verse.”

I grabbed my utility knife from my desk drawer and sliced open the plastic straps holding a bundle of new cables to replace a couple worn-out ones on the server. “We’re not out of the woods yet, but I’ve created a clear path to success. Watch.”

As if on cue, an alarm beeped out of the monitor’s speakers and on-screen, cancerous tumors bloomed throughout the digital patient’s body. My heart rate spiked, but I reminded myself that I’d planned for this.

Since my Red Carpet formula mutated genes, which affected cellular morphology—things like structure and size—it was great when they mutated in a way that was favorable to my desired results. Like when the cells bounced back injury free and more resilient than ever. What was less great was when the mutation went bad. More scientifically, when they exhibited an out-of-control cellular division. In layman’s terms? Turbo cancer.

In seconds, Pumpkin Spice bulged with tumors. This was not the end of the game for our girl though. No way. I, Dr. Montefiore, would not give up on someone, not even a digital someone, so easily.

I leaned in and waited. Come on, my precious.

The bulk of my research lately had been centered around controlling this moment, finding a damping switch, a tumor-suppressing protein to integrate with my serum and beat back the cancer. I couldn’t use the Hsp60, as it functioned differently, but the most recent protein had shown incredible promise. I’d investigated it from every angle before my assistant, Julian, had coded its elements into the software expression of my formula.

The tumor-suppressing protein should have kicked in by now. I gripped the utility knife, tempted to whip it like a throwing star into the computer and kill that damn alarm. Yeah, the cancer was still present. I got it without the repeated aural cue.

Woody watched without comment while I remained glued to the screen, my heart sinking and sinking until it flopped messily somewhere around the soles of my feet.

That was the catch with my Red Carpet. I had to fight the cancer back fast enough that the body could expend its precious energy healing internal burns, knitting back together damaged skin, and recuperating from the trauma. On-screen, tumors bloomed and withered, but not quickly enough. My digital patient’s form grew fainter and fainter as the number of living cells decreased until she was just a dark outline, a static state.

Dead.

I laid my head upon the desk. My left hand tightened around the cables. I’m so, so sorry, Robyn.

Next to me, Woody grunted.

I slumped back in the shitty chair. “You were right, okay? I went down the wrong path with this particular protein⁠—”

“That wasn’t an ‘I told you so,’” he said.

“Well, maybe if you used your facial muscles to help convey tone.” I demonstrated with exaggerated movements. “Or better yet, used actual words. Wait. Was it a pity grunt? Because I don’t want that either.”

He typed a command on the keyboard and a window popped up with the results, the alarm silencing. “That damping switch worked a lot better than I expected.”

I blinked stupidly at him. I’d defended my belief in this cancer-suppressing protein in more than one rigorous exchange with Woody, and the black screen was proof of how misguided I’d been. But he never would have admitted its feasibility now if he wasn’t convinced it could work. “What led you to that conclusion?” I asked cautiously.

He tapped his pen against his lip, his gold and ruby signet ring catching the light. “You got an eighty-three percent overall regeneration rate despite the tumors. I ran the simulation twice and got identical data.”

I rolled my chair over to the small fridge in the corner under a giant whiteboard. “Is eighty-three percent enough to get your blessing in reaching out to Dr. Nakahara?”

“ABC, kid.”

Snorting at his favorite motto of “Always Be Closing,” I moved aside a six-pack of Coke kept for late-night caffeine jolts and removed the precious stoppered vial I’d stashed on the top shelf.

Despite the many, many coded iterations of Red Carpet, this vial contained the single physical manifestation of my infrared Weaver magic and the Hsp60 heat protein in existence, bound into an injectable nontoxic solution.

“I’m so close, Woody. Imagine it. No more infection, respiratory distress, or painful grafting surgeries.” I clutched the tube with the serum to my heart. “Apply this baby on-site and bam. I just need Dr. Nakahara’s help.” With her assistance, we’d add the tumor suppressant into my work and stem the issue of the cancerous growths.

“While tumor-suppressing proteins are based on hard science…” Woody rummaged around in his lab coat pockets, tossing a squash ball–sized bundle of foil on the desk. His lab coat was an emporium of wonders. Having seen everything from bottles of formaldehyde to petri dishes, and on one occasion, a half-soled sneaker he kept forgetting to have repaired come out of those pockets, nothing surprised me anymore.

Half fascinated, half impatient, and totally waiting for him to resume speaking, I carefully placed the vial back in the fridge.

He discarded a fork, two eyedroppers, and a dry cell battery before fishing out a crumpled stick of gum. He unwrapped it, tucked the paper back in a pocket, and popped the mint-scented nubbin in his mouth. “I’m not totally convinced that this particular protein will easily integrate into your regeneration cocktail, though I’ve revised its odds. You anticipated a lot of variables in coding this damping switch, but until Dr. Nakahara weighs in, I’m not taking it as empirical fact that this is the solution. If you must look in another direction, then you look in another direction. But you better remember, Dr. Montefiore, how far you’ve come. And you also better remember that you’re not letting anyone down. Okay?”

I nodded, forcing the slump out of my shoulders. “Okay.”

His phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen, then slid it back into his pocket before standing up and rolling out his shoulders. “I’m going out for my walk.”

Woody’s daily walks were the result of a series of increasingly frustrated requests from his primary care physician, who had expressed concern that Woody was becoming either a worm or a mushroom, existing inside and in the dark for as long as he did. Ella had even set up a sticker chart for him at the front desk, and he got to put a little dancing vegetable sticker on it every time he successfully exercised outside the building. If any of the lab techs or research scientists noticed a lack of new vegetables on the chart, we roasted him about it mercilessly. It was a good system.

“Enjoy, old man. Get those sticker-driven endorphins.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I’m sixty-three, not Methuselah.”

“You’re old enough to be my dad. Go on, get out there and enjoy your senior discounts.”

He held the pen like a shiv. “One day, I’m going to slice up your organs⁠—”

“And leave them in the ravine out back for the animals to feast on. Yeah, yeah. Have you ever considered meditation for those violent tendencies?”

“Because that went so well for you.”

“I’m half Italian, what’s your excuse? Besides…” I took a deep, cleansing breath. “I am an oasis of calm and compassion.” I shooed him off. “So go take care of yourself and don’t stroke out and upset me.”

He laughed, his white teeth flashing against his Black skin, started to head out, and then backtracked. “Do an old man a favor then.” He pulled a capped syringe out of a pocket and tossed it to me. One corner of its flexible film packaging had failed to seal. “Tell Ella the thermoforming on this order is compromised.”

“Sure thing.” I shoved the syringe packet in my back skirt pocket. Better to throw out the entire order than risk contamination due to faulty wrapping.

He patted my shoulder and left.

Now that Woody had signed off on my Red Carpet serum, I could get my meeting with Dr. Nakahara. Her years of cancer research had to be the final piece in this puzzle.

People’s lives would be changed for the better.

My promise would be kept.

I yanked the utility knife out of the desk, not bothering to move my keyboard to cover up the gouge. That was a seven-holes-ago me move.

The fire exit door at the end of the hallway opened and clanged shut. The Phantom had left the building.

I reached for my cell. After many phone calls redirecting me to different offices, I tracked Dr. Nakahara down at the university hospital and convinced her to meet. I’d just hung up, ready to text my assistant, Julian, that drinks on Monday after work were on me, when Ella ran in.

Her face was flushed, and she’d snagged her nude hose, a ladder pattern snaking up one leg. “Where’s Woody?”

“Out following doctor’s orders. Why?”

“The police are here. They’ve got a search warrant.” Her hands fluttered in front of her face, almost taking out my eye with her cell phone.

“On what possible charge?” I stuttered.

“Money laundering,” Ella whispered.

I laughed, or sort of laughed. What came out was this bizarre, choked sound. “That’s ridiculous. Have they not done any research on us at all?”

Perrault Biotech had been around for almost thirty years. We were a real, legit company who provided much-needed research on complex traumas. We literally sat on the cutting edge of medical science. And these people, what, thought that we had the spare time to twiddle our thumbs and do shady shit with money? No one—I could think of exactly zero people here—busted their ass at this place to get rich.

We busted our asses for reasons a hell of a lot better than that.

“Keep trying to get hold of Woody.” I stormed past Ella, half jogging up the stairs and through the secure steel door out into reception.

It was chaos. Ella’s light “mood-affirming” music was drowned out by the sound of cops talking and uniformed officers streaming out of the building carrying bankers boxes of files, computers, and snake trails of cables.

Hell no. This stupid misunderstanding was going to be a massive pain in the ass for Woody to unravel and would delay any further progress on our work. I came from academia, thus I was familiar with red tape and the slow speed of bureaucracies. I had to stop this before it went any further and buy my boss time to get back here.

I raced through the frosted glass door separating the reception area from the office cubicle farm and got the attention of an officer who was disconnecting the hard drive in Ella’s office. “Who’s in charge?” I demanded.

“I am.” A leanly muscled man homed in on me with a focus behind his glasses that was as sharp as his tailored suit and dark blond fade. “Inspector Gideon Stern. What seems to be the problem?”

Chapter2

Was he kidding me? I looked around. Papers littered the floor, shelves devoid of their electronics sat gap-toothed on the wall, and the few support staff still here this late huddled forlornly on a bench. What didn’t look like a problem?

Someone had even confiscated Ella’s Helper Brain corkboard from the break room and piled it on top of a couple of hard drives. I’m sure the photo of Dr. Ferguson taken mid-yawn would reveal some hard criminal insights.

I raised my eyes to Inspector Stern with all the fury of a stellar explosion. “What you’re doing right now is directly interfering with this lab’s ability to function.”

He narrowed his eyes behind his tortoiseshell glasses, compressing his lips into a flat line and crossing his arms. Officers were scurrying around literally dismantling the place, while Stern loomed over me like a puffer fish, his jacket falling aside to show the badge hooked to his belt.

I pulled myself up to my full five-foot-five self, which did little against the six inches he had on me, but screw him if he hoped to make me cower. I had no time for cops on a perpetual power trip, using their status to intimidate people. “Well?”

“All clerical files are now part of our investigation. Unfortunately, it seems I’ll be disturbing your work.” With that, he pivoted for the door to reception.

Sexist asshat. I hurried after him, my Doc Martens thudding on the tiles. “My work is in the labs, but it’s good to see how quickly you pigeonholed me.”

He cut a sideways glance at me, pulling his frames off to clean the lenses. “Apologies, Miz…”

He was handing me the best gift of this entire wretched evening. “Doctor,” I corrected and blinked my lashes fetchingly. “Donatella.”

Most guys got all hot and bothered by images of Italian vixens when I purred that name, making it easy for me to go in for the kill. Not Inspector Stern. Sadly, he lived up to his name, his metaphoric jugular intact and his jaw set in a hard line as he put his glasses back on. “Dr. Donatella what?”

I blinked. Well, no backing out now. I’d already committed. “Mutant-Ninjaturtle. It’s hyphenated.”

He studied me for a moment, then squatted down next to a glass-fronted bookcase that had been unlocked and read the spines on a row of fat binders containing archived projects. Like I was less interesting than paper.

I curled my fingers into my palms so I didn’t snap them to get his attention back. We weren’t done until I learned whether his team was moving on to the labs after they took everything from the offices—like a crew of Grinches. Just as I opened my mouth to ask, the inspector spoke up.

“As a spur-of-the-moment tactic,” he said, “I give your Mutant-Ninjaturtle jibe a solid seven.”

“Spur of the moment?” I flicked a hand in dismissal. “Like Mendeleev just conjured up the periodic table over breakfast? Please. Dr. Mutant-Ninjaturtle is a richly drawn persona.”

The inspector selected a half dozen binders. “You heard me.”

I remained close on his heels. No way was I letting this insane man go anywhere farther without answers. “Was your sweep of our facility a spur-of-the-moment thing? I give it a solid negative a billion.”

“Listen, Dr. Mutant-Ninjaturtle,” Stern said, rebalancing the binders.

I bit the inside of my cheek.

“With all due respect, I don’t have to tell you anything,” he said. “But since you are clearly distraught enough to follow me around, I will say yes, we are coming for the labs. We’re coming for everything. I have a legal right to every piece of information in this building. If you’re going to be upset, then you can go back and sit on the bench with the other staff and be upset together.”

The door to reception hit my shoulder and I didn’t even feel it. “How—how assumptive!” I spluttered. “What else do you think I can’t handle besides my own emotions? Math? Jar lids?”

I was saying words, but a dead weight in the center of my chest was tethered to my research in my lab. He was coming for it. I had to get it out of here, had to save it, had to⁠—

“Let me guess,” Stern said drolly. “You tend to overthink things.”

An instrumental cover of “All Out of Love” by Air Supply came on. I was all out of air thanks to this guy’s arrogance sucking the oxygen out of the room. Did that count?

“Your aspersion of a total stranger aside,” I said, “I think them through. And as a police officer with that tie, you might want to do the same.”

He glanced down at it like he’d forgotten it was there. “What’s wrong with it?”

I grabbed the binders away and plunked them down on the reception desk, keeping my hand—and all my weight—on them. “Really? Riddle me this. What could possibly be wrong with pink donuts on a cop’s tie?”

“They’re circles.” He tried to retrieve the binders, but I sat on them.

As for the tie… I shot him a flat stare.

“Aw, shit,” he muttered, grimacing. “I thought they were circles.” He headed around the desk toward the steel door.

I ran to block his progress.

“Can we get someone to open this already?” he called out.

“On it,” a female officer replied, pulling out her phone and heading outside.

“Good luck with that.” I smirked. “The door is solid as shit and the scanner is biometric. The only way you’re getting access to the labs is my fingerprint on that pad. And you’ll have to knock me unconscious first if you want that.”

He had the gall to eye me.

“Call off your minions until our director, Dr. Woodsman, gets here to examine your warrant.” Woody would find a solution. He always did.

Stern stepped sideways. “Open it.”

I mirrored him, my arms out, ignoring his order.

“Considering I’m the one with the badge and you’re the mad scientist working for an allegedly fraudulent company, you might want to follow orders.” We did a side-to-side hustle for a moment, then he exhaled hard and stepped back. “Let us into the labs.”  

“No.”

He dangled a pair of handcuffs from his fingertips. “I can make you.”

“You can’t take our research,” I said. “It’s proprietary.”

“And yet, I have a piece of paper that says I can.”

“So did Doctor Who, and not everyone rolled over for him either.”

The inspector shoved the cuffs in his pocket. “What’s with you and pop culture references? Your fallback position when you get mad?”

A wiry cop about Woody’s age updated Stern that the network had been dismantled and they could start loading the servers. At first, it was weird to see an older man speak so deferentially to a younger one, since the inspector was probably in his early thirties and only a few years older than me, but then the weight of those words sank in.

Dismantling the servers.

We had multiple networks at Perrault Biotech, same as any midsize company. This was probably the administrative servers where all the financial information would live, as well as our emails. But if Stern had the approval to go this far, he could just as easily dismantle the server rooms elsewhere in the building.

Including the server with my digital patient and my hard-won years of exacting work on it.

I ground my teeth together. Not today, asshole.

The inspector made a good-natured crack about the man’s strength, receiving a teasing jibe in return before the other officer left. But Stern’s smile vanished when he looked at me. “Open the door.”

Humans emitted a tiny amount of infrared light, which I could sense. Using my magic, I gathered up and wove Stern’s back into his cells. That extra bit of heat was enough to make his cheeks flush and a bead of sweat appear at his temple.

“Shut this down until the director arrives,” I said. “What kind of fly-by-night operation are you that you barge in here and don’t do things by the book?”

“You people are the last ones to talk about ‘doing things by the book’ given the charges.” Stern ran a finger under his collar, fanning his neck. “I do my job efficiently and before anyone can interfere or tamper with the data. That is exactly what is going to happen here, Dr. Mutant-Ninjaturtle.”

“That—” I stomped my foot. “That was a whole interaction ago.”

“Which you clearly overthought, so be grateful I’m bringing it back up for you to get your neuron’s worth.” He blotted his forehead with his sleeve. “Open. It.”

“Push me to open any doors for you,” I said, rising onto tiptoe to be at eye level with him, “and you’ll experience the meaning of the word ‘immolation.’”

Pale orange light danced over my knuckles. I couldn’t make him burst into flames given the tiny bit of light I had to draw from—much to my dismay—but it was a hell of a good bluff.

“I could arrest you for assaulting an officer,” he growled.

Technically, I guess he could. Ooh, and if he did, he’d have no one to get him through the steel door. Any scientists still on the premises were tucked away in their labs none the wiser about the craziness happening down here (honestly, some would be oblivious to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse galloping past), Ella was downstairs, and none of the remaining clerical staff had clearance.

Since any obstruction charges would never stick, I called his bluff and held out my wrists. “You want to write me up for making you break a sweat, Inspector?” I widened my blue eyes and batted my eyelashes at him. “All I want is for the director to verify the warrant. It’s all so overwhelming to my poor blonde self, as I’m sure you’ve already so insightfully determined.”

His fingers twitched briefly into throttling formation, but he neither killed nor cuffed me.

I wasn’t opening that door. Fine. I just had to stall until Woody got back. Then I’d turn it over to him and find a solution to keep my research out of Stern’s hands. Hmmm. Did I know anyone with a van?

“Look,” Stern said in a lower register. He ran a hand over his dark blond fade and sighed. “It doesn’t give me pleasure to hurt people who are caught in bad actors’ poor decisions. But I take pride in my work. I went through all the proper channels on this. I spent almost two years investigating, checking and double-checking every last dotted “i.” This case has been one of the most taxing and most demanding of my career. There hasn’t been a mistake; believe me, I’ve tried to find one. This is well-hidden, devious work, and now, after a lot of laborious effort and time on my part, I’m going to put an end to it.”

This was not some blowhard cop. This was someone who talked about ruining my projects, my career, my life, as seriously as I talked about creating it.

“Yeah, well, it was a couple years for you, but it’s been more than a decade for me.” My hands were clenched so hard my fists ached. “I’ve poured everything I had into my research.”

A cop the size of a linebacker entered with a heavy battering ram, his boots thudding on the floor as he homed in on the steel door.

“I’m sorry.” The inspector gently moved me out of harm’s way. “I hate it when innocents get caught in the crossfire.”

“Then don’t put me there!” I grabbed his sleeve. “Stop this.”

Stern shook his head. “The wheels of justice are in motion.”

I opened my mouth. To protest, to scream, to cry, I didn’t know. I had to say something, buy more time, save Red Carpet, save my project, but for the first time in my incredibly productive life, I could think of nothing.

“Bastard.” The word came out so that tears wouldn’t.

The officer got in position and drew the battering ram back to strike the door down.

Stern was about to say something, snarky or sincere, I’d never know.

Because that’s when the building exploded.

Chapter3

I was hurled into Stern, who caught me in a steel grip, his other arm out for balance.

The cop with the battering ram managed to hold on to it, though he fell to the ground cradling the heavy item like a football. Papers rained down like snowflakes, a couple of chairs slid sideways hitting walls, and a bulb shattered.

My ears ringing from the thunderous rumble of the quake, I stared dumbly at the floor. The explosion had come from the basement in the lab wing, but there weren’t any dangerous chemicals or Bunsen burners down there. There was a special fireproof lab for tests conducted by our resident fire element, but she was on vacation this week, and my research assistant, Julian, had his office downstairs, but he’d gone home.

A fire alarm blared, making it harder to sort out my jumbled thoughts.

The inspector squeezed my shoulder lightly to get my attention. “Where’s the main gas meter?”

How cute that he believed it was the gas. “No rotten egg smell,” I said, sore and numb.

This was an electrical explosion. My mind was a schematic, a decision tree of logical conclusions falling into place. Electrical had one room downstairs, the main one. It was located right next to the server room to accommodate the power demands of my work. Right next to my mind grotto.

“It’s precautionary,” Stern said. “We have no idea what happened.”

Something bad, obviously. Something bad was always happening when my body got like this, cold and hollow, and I went out of myself.

I stuttered out that the gas meter was on the right-side exterior back wall, and he barked at an officer to turn the valve off, ordering a couple others to go into the office and check on the support staff and call the paramedics.

“Hey.” The inspector’s voice had changed. He took me by the shoulder. “What’s your real name?”

My teeth were almost chattering too badly for me to say it. “Raisa.”

“Raisa, listen to me.” He held the sides of my face very carefully, like I was hurt. How weird. “I don’t know what’s happening, but I do know that there are probably people in that wing. People that might be hurt. If I waste my time getting my guy to slam through the door, colleagues of yours who need help might not get it. Time is of the essence. Please, let me into the labs.”

“If scientists are around,” I said, “they’ll be upstairs.”

“Thank you.”

I gave a sharp nod and sprinted for the scanner, dimly aware of the inspector issuing orders behind me in a booming voice. My desire to make sure my coworkers were safe warred with a pineapple-sized knot of doubt that Stern had emotionally manipulated me into trusting him so he could carry out the warrant.

The pad malfunctioned, cycling between yellow and red as though it too had been stunned by the explosion. Cursing, I mashed my thumb against it three more times, throwing the door open the second it blinked green.

Stern poked his head into the hallway, a few members of his team behind him, and scanned the area. “I don’t see foundational damage but stay vigilant.”

“There may be chemical hazards,” I said. “Any burning in your eyes or your skin could be attributed to a half dozen dangerous acids, so the moment you feel prickling get out of there immediately.”

He met my eyes, bobbing his head in thanks. “You heard her.”

Holding the door while the officers bypassed the elevators and ran for the stairwell, I scanned the damage here in reception. A large crack spiderwebbed through the front window, and the photograph of Toronto’s skyline at night that hung behind the desk lay broken on the floor, next to the scattered files that Ella had signed.

I gasped, gripped by a cold panic. Ella was downstairs. I’d have seen her if she’d come back from my lab. She could be unconscious or… I swallowed. No. She couldn’t be dead. She was too competent, had too much of her shit together for that.

Where the police had gone up, I headed down, jumping the treads two at a time, grateful there were no cracks in the stairwell walls or ceiling, and cautiously peered into the basement corridor.

Happily, the air was free of any acrid scent, and neither my eyes nor skin prickled with any irritant. The fire alarm jackhammered into my brain, but there was no sign of a blaze, and the electrical room door appeared intact with no blackened patches on the wall around it.  

If there was a fire down here, it was contained. Good. Dying of smoke inhalation while creating a comprehensive treatment for burn victims would be ironic but would also royally suck.

I headed for my office but was immediately hauled backward.

“Outside. Now,” Stern commanded. He pointed at the cracks splintered through the hallway’s broken plaster walls and the sagging ceiling tiles along the seam. “Whatever you were planning to do, forget it. It’s not safe. And the warrant still stands.”

“Vaffanculo! I wasn’t going to destroy evidence, you asshole.” I wrenched free. “Ella, our office manager, is down here.”

“I’ll get her,” he said in an authoritarian tone.

“You have no idea where to look. I do, and newsflash? It involves another biometric scanner. I don’t need you.”

“We’ll go together,” he unwillingly conceded.

I pushed past him, but it was like trying to break through a brick wall. “I get that you’re a total control freak and must approve everything I do, but consider for one freaking minute that I might be better qualified to do this than you. You’re not invincible, Clark Kent.”

“I’m trained,” he growled.

“So am I. And I can get past the scanner to my office.” Taking a couple steps into the hallway, I flicked my fingers, which now glowed pale orange, using my powers to separate the LED light from the overhead lamps into bands. Under my magic touch, the light behaved as if it had substance with the malleability of yarn.

Stern’s mouth fell open. “What the⁠—”

There was no time to weave the strands together into a sturdier physical structure, so I focused on creating a series of “X”s with the individual beams, knitting them to the ceiling and floor to create scaffolding braces. It wasn’t my finest work, but it would keep the basement from caving in.

The cop’s expression was unreadable. I bet he didn’t have magic. Well, Nefesh-hating Mundanes were the least of my problems right now, but that explained why he’d gotten so hard over shutting down our lab. 

Shoving away my rush of anger, I raced to the eye-washing station outside the fireproof lab and tore off my sweater. Behind me, Stern made a weird noise of surprise or protest, but screw him, he mattered about as much to me as dryer lint right now and was about as useful. Dousing the sweater completely, I draped it over my head, with one arm over my mouth and nose. This, ladies and gentlemen, was why you didn’t sleep through the lab safety videos.

I ran for my office.

I jammed my thumb against the scanner and threw open the door, the sting of burning plastic making my eyes water. This was bad, but if Ella was here, I had to get her out. I squinted my eyes, held the wet sweater tight against my nose and mouth, and stepped inside.

My server room was a smoking ruin of broken glass and twisted metal, ground zero of the explosion. Fire still snaked along the back wall by the electrical outlets.

Once, when I’d first started at Perrault Biotech, I’d walked through this room with its many humming rectangles of electronics and silently thanked each of them for helping me fulfill my life’s work. It sounds dumb, but I meant it.

Now all those servers that had faithfully conjured Pumpkin Spice and all my other whimsically named digital patients were burning. Precious data were melting into nothingness and trash.

Something stung my eyes. God, fire was always, always destroying my life.

My data was backed up off-site. Logically, I knew that. But it didn’t stop me from keening with loss, my stomach dropping out and panic cresting around my heart.

All my hard work was becoming garbage, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Behind me, Stern swore. “The sprinkler system’s been disabled.”

“Water protects the building, dry-type systems protect the equipment.” I recited the info from our safety drills on autopilot.

“Well, you’ve got jack shit in here.” Stern brushed past me, calling out for Ella.

No kidding, since my server room is burning. I allowed myself one more masochistic look at the wreckage before heading after Stern.

Ella had been knocked to the ground, her leg pinned awkwardly under a filing cabinet, and her phone out of arm’s reach. Her eyes were blurry with tears, but the smoke was minimal in this part of the room, so she was only coughing lightly.

“Carthorse,” Ella said.

“What?” I dropped down beside her, checking her eyes for a concussion.

Stern heaved his shoulder into the cabinet, dislodging it with a grunt.

“The cryptic crossword clue,” Ella said. “I figured it out. Nothing else to do while I was stuck here.”

“Well, thank goodness that got solved.” I tried to help her up, but she hissed in pain. Her ankle was twisted a good forty-five degrees, and I had to look away, queasy as hell. Burns I could handle. Body parts at grotesque angles, not so much.

“What’s the fastest way out?” Stern said.

“There’s an emergency door in the hall leading to an outdoor driveway,” I said.

He relayed my information into his walkie-talkie, along with the situation about the sprinklers, then we got Ella up. She was unable to put any weight on her leg, so he swung her into his arms.

For a split second I had the irrational urge to lie down and take her place on the ground, like Arthur Dent trying to stop the bulldozer from knocking down his house for a planned road bypass in one of my favorite books.

I eyed Stern, two hundred plus pounds of both rock and hard place. I’d have better luck reasoning with the bulldozer. Best to get him out of here as quickly as possible. I held my office door open, indicating the exit that was only thirty feet away. “Go. I’ll be right behind, keeping everything braced.”

“Right behind,” he admonished and took off with Ella.

I may not have been the fastest runner in the world, but I could hustle at a good clip.

The lights in the lab flickered. I had one last chance.

I hadn’t come this far only to get this far.

A sprint across the room. My hand on the fridge, fumbling aside the Coke cans. Two seconds, and the Red Carpet vial was in my palm, safe and perfect, then stowed in my bra and hidden away.

I took a second to survey the wreckage of the last two years of my life, Brain and Ada curling up into strips of ash and blackened paper, then I swiped at my eyes and ran out. I made a futile effort to shut the lab’s security door, but it was stuck.

In one final act of awfulness, the scanner crackled and shorted out.

“Oh hell.” All I had to do was run a straight path and out the door. I’d have preferred to brace this section of the hall with my light braces but there was no time because smoke edged into the corridor.

Readjusting my barely damp sleeve over my nose, I booked it toward the fire exit. I’d just passed Julian’s office when I heard Woody call my name.

I froze.

Had Ella managed to contact him about the warrant? I shook my head. Even if she had, he wouldn’t have rushed into danger and entered a fire zone. Not the man who so militantly held safety drills.

I was imagining things.

A loud pop from behind made me jump. Smoke poured out of my lab in toxic plumes, flames stretching blazing tendrils into the hallway. Coughing, I flicked my gaze between the exit, the fire closing in on my assistant’s office door, and the inert malfunctioning sprinklers. WTF was up with those?

While Woody wouldn’t deliberately enter a fire zone, even if he didn’t know about the warrant, he must have heard the explosion. He’d totally come back to help and personally check on all his staff.

Could I chance that wasn’t the case now? Could I live with myself if he’d been injured in his desire to find me, and I’d saved my vial but not my mentor?

Angry hissing and crackling filled my ears, the fire pressing down on me. My skin was hot and tight, my icy core failing to numb the sparks snapping off the flames and flicking against me. I did my best to breathe through my damp sleeve, but smoke burned the back of my throat, and I tasted ashes on my lips.

Using my sweater to protect my skin from the metal knob, I flung Julian’s door open with a trembling hand, grateful there wasn’t a security panel on it.

His office was empty.

“Is someone else injured?” Stern hollered at me from the emergency exit.

Before I could answer, the fire mushroomed like an inferno in the pit of Hell.

My wail got caught in my throat and I doubled over, coughing.

Plaster mixed with the smoke, swirling around in a noxious fog and blanking out all light. I was paralyzed in place, my brain screaming at my useless legs to move. My skin felt like it was melting, and every breath of hot air scoured my lungs.

Had Robyn been terrified her hands would become charred lumps before she could get her seat belt unlatched? Had everything been dread and darkness for her as well?

My heartbeat trumpeted in my ears.

Who would tell Mom she’d lost her other child to another fire?

That thought broke the spell.

I headed for what I prayed was the dim light from outdoors piercing the gloom and not just a wished-for hallucination.

Someone strong grabbed me, my brain processing the blurry outline as Inspector Stern.

He pressed his hand against my back, urging me to go faster, but the heat ground me down, sooty tears burning my eyes and streaking down my cheeks. I shuffled forward on rubbery legs, my body racked with coughs.

Falling ceiling tiles jostled me sideways, and I lost contact with Stern. I forced myself to keep going, almost running face-first into a length of pipe that had broken free from its ceiling brackets.

After what felt like a lifetime, I burst through the open fire exit, gulping down beautifully fresh air.

Stern didn’t appear.

There was another muted boom from the bowels of the building, and the basement ceiling caved in with a deafening thud. Plaster chunks and a twisted section of the metal air vent flew out the open door, narrowly missing me.

“Inspector Stern!” I fanned the smoke by the exit, desperately searching for any sign of him. My breath caught at the sight of one shoe sticking out from under the collapsed ceiling. He was mere feet from freedom.

Porco puttana. Now I had to go back into a blazing and unstable structure because in yet another wrong assumption, he’d deemed me some damsel in distress.

I took a deep breath of fresh air, put my head down, and barreled back inside, frantically kicking enough debris away to haul the inspector clear of the wreckage. Jeez, did he eat rocks for breakfast? One man should not have been this heavy. My chest was heaving and sweat ran down my back by the time I dragged him the short distance outside to the concrete and slammed the emergency door shut. Thankfully, it held, leaving us alone with nothing but the full moon for company.

I resented how cheerful it appeared.

He’d been caught in the blaze before the ceiling collapsed. The epidermis and dermal layers of his exposed skin were destroyed, his skin was a charred mess, and one arm was gashed open with glistening twists of muscle visible. The probability that he had burns to his muscles, tendons, and bones was high. I’d learned all about that long before I started my PhD, long before I’d begun this research.

I dropped to my knees, beating at the sparks eating through his shirt like dozens of tiny moths with my ruined sweater. I didn’t have my phone, and though I screamed for help, no one answered.