by Kat Simons
The dogs launched themselves at her as soon as she opened the door, almost as if they knew she’d been in trouble. Buck and Pickles probably had. She dropped to her knees, hugging and kissing them all, even letting them take a few licks at her face.
“Good to be back,” she murmured into Buck’s thick, golden fur. Fred stuck his head in her lap. And Pickles let loose a bone deep, “Woof.”
As Deacon helped her to her feet, she asked the question she’d been afraid to voice in the forest. “What do you think the Nagas will do with Holland?”
“Nothing nice, I’m sure,” Deacon said. “But nothing he doesn’t deserve.” He settled onto the couch and pulled her onto his lap.
Leaning close, she drew in the warm scent of him and closed her eyes. “I don’t feel the slightest urge to try and protect Holland from the Nagas, even if they torture him. Is that bad?”
“No.”
She smiled at the complete lack of hesitance in his voice. Then, “I killed a lot of people…creatures…people tonight.”
“None of them were good people. They committed suicide by being there. You didn’t kill them.”
“This isn’t like the other times when people got killed by the backlash of their own powers.” She spared a brief thought for Sheldon who might have actually survived his backlash. Then shoved that problem away for another day. “A few tonight did that,” she said. “Or maybe they were caught in the backlash of someone else’s power. But I did something. I don’t even know how I did it…”
Deacon cupped her cheek and lifted, raising her gaze to his. “You were still protecting, and they still, essentially, killed themselves. By being there with Holland and attacking you without mercy.” He swiped a tear as it rolled down her cheek. “Besides, if you hadn’t killed them, I would have.”
She smiled at his admission. “So what do you think I actually did do?”
He shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I’m just glad you’re alive.” He kissed her lightly, then kissed her again, deeper.
The last remaining dregs of tension ease from her bones.
She surfaced with a contented sigh, then she settled her head on his shoulder and let her eyes drift shut again. “Not exactly the plan for our first date, was it?”
He chuckled. “We’ll get it right one of these days.”
“Whatever I did tonight,” she said quietly, “I’m not sure I could do it again. I don’t really remember how I did it. And I’m so bone weary now, I could sleep for a week.”
“I’m sure Jaxer will figure it out.”
“But what if he can’t? Or what if he’s not supposed to find the answer because of this stupid seventh year thing?”
Deacon made a small sound and rubbed a hand down her spine. “He told you finally.”
She sat up. “You knew about this. When you said you’d explain what was wrong with Jaxer in a few weeks… You knew I was about to be cut loose?”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. She could see it in his slight frown and the creases on his brow.
She slumped. “What am I going to do? On my own, without his help, without anyone…”
“I’ll be with you,” Deacon said. “No matter what. I’m not going anywhere. You’ll never be on your own.”
Cary stared for a long, unblinking minute into his beautiful golden eyes. Then she leaned close and kissed him.
Who knew rescuing a black cat on Halloween would lead to all this? But she could imagine a lot worse things than having Deacon Jones standing beside her.
“By the way,” he murmured against her mouth. “My mother invited us to come stay with them for New Years. She’s very intrigued and really wants to meet you. I told her I’d try to talk you into the trip.”
Cary’s eyes widened, but before she could say anything, he kissed her again.
Meet Deacon’s mother?
Oh boy.
Thank You
I hope you enjoyed the first novel in the Cary Redmond series! There’s plenty more adventures with Cary and Deacon ahead. Also, don’t miss the short stories about how Cary met some of the important people (and pets!) in her life. Watch out for those throughout the coming year. For release updates and the occasional free read, you can join my newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/OxQQL. In the meantime, please keep reading for an excerpt from book 2, The Trouble with Ghouls and Serial Killers.
Thank you!
~Kat
Excerpt
The Trouble with Ghouls and Serial Killers
A Cary Redmond Novel, Book 2
1
Cary Redmond stretched, blinked her eyes open, and frowned up at the faces of her three best friends and her smallest dog Fred hovering over her. Fred woofed and licked her face.
“Ugh, Fred.” She wiped her cheek. “You know you’re not allowed up here.”
Fred barked happily and jumped away.
“You’re awake,” Lucy cooed in her little girl voice.
“Finally,” Marianne said, shaking her head.
“You had us worried,” Angie added, her deep voice tinged with relief.
Cary sat up, looking around. “What the hell happened?”
She was in her own bedroom, lying on her own bed—she glanced down—wearing her own pajamas. Nothing seemed out of order except for her friends all being there. Her Labrador, Buck, and her basset hound, Pickles, were sitting at either side of her bedroom door, just inside the room, guarding the entrance as only a demon dog and a foo lion could. Fred plopped down next to Pickles, his tongue lolling out to one side.
She frowned at her little dog pack. They didn’t usually sleep in her bedroom, even if they were guarding her.
She tunneled her fingers through her hair, encountering tangles and a loosened hair band about to fall out. She didn’t precisely remember going to bed, but she felt wonderful. Fully rested. She double checked… Nope, no sore spots, aches, or pains. That was unusual. She tried thinking back to the last thing she remembered.
“You’ve been asleep for a little over three days,” Marianne said, as if reading Cary’s mind.
Which was unusual since Angie was the psychic, and Marianne made magic clothes.
“Three days!” Cary groaned. “Three days?” No wonder she felt so well rested. “What time is it?”
“Four in the afternoon,” Lucy said.
“What day?” Cary asked.
“Sunday,” Marianne said.
Cary gaped at her friends. “How long have you all been hovering over me?”
“Jaxer didn’t tell us you were hurt until last night,” Lucy said, her tone accusatory, but in her high, soft voice it just sounded like a cute little pout.
Lucy was petite, red-headed, had dark brown eyes, pale freckled skin, and was a multi-blackbelt wielding marshal artist who could fell men more than twice her size—often several of them at once. Most people mistook her voice as a sign she was a push over. They were always wrong.
Marianne sat at the edge of the bed next to Cary. Her expression soft and understanding as she patted Cary’s hand. But there were creases around her dark eyes and bracketing her mouth, marring her normally smooth dark skin.
“You’re okay now,” Marianne said quietly. “We’re here to look after you.”
“Okay, someone needs to tell me what’s going on,” Cary said. “Marianne is being too calm and sweet.”
That made the seamstress grin. “Well at least we know you’re feeling more yourself,” she said.
“When wasn’t I?” Cary asked, rubbing her forehead. “I can’t remember coming to bed, nonetheless sleeping so long. Shouldn’t I feel, I don’t know, stiff or something?”
“It was a healing sleep,” Angie said. The tall, lithe, super powerful witch was currently straightening up the few pieces of dirty clothes scattered across Cary’s floor. “Jaxer didn’t call us after that thing with the demon or we would have been here sooner to look after you,” she added.
“Thing with a demon?” Cary frowned. Oh! Right. Oliver Holland
. Everything came flooding back, including the fact that she’d used her powers in a way that wasn’t supposed to be possible.
Being a Protector wasn’t something that just came naturally to a person, and it most certainly hadn’t been part of Cary’s life plan. She’d been a perfectly ordinary human until six years ago. Then she’d saved a puppy from a demon and somehow ended up working for a group of North American Fae, whom she’d nicknamed the Nags because they were.
They imbued Protectors with their powers, powers that were purely defensive, and helped to keep innocents safe. Cary could now jump in between a bad guy and a good guy and the magic the Nags had given her kept the bad guys from hurting the good guys. She was like a walking, talking Kevlar vest. Which was handy when a rogue demon kept sending scary people after the kid she’d been protecting.
But Protectors couldn’t use that power. The magic just happened, Protectors channeled it, and everything was good.
Except she’d somehow managed to do more than just channel it.
“Did Jaxer explain what happened?” she asked, sitting up a little higher in bed. Jaxer was her faery mentor, the person she’d most relied on since becoming a Protector, even if she did occasionally want to kill him.
“Not much,” Marianne said. “Just that you did something impressive, and it knocked you out. Took too much out of you to handle the power the way you did.”
“Damn.” Cary had been awake after the face off with Holland. She remembered coming home, and… “Deacon!” He’d been with her.
Deacon Jones was a leopard shifter who had gotten it into his head that they were mates, even though it wasn’t supposed to be possible and she still wasn’t sure he knew what he was talking about. He was also Greek-god-gorgeous, and sexy, and occasionally scary, but mostly she kind of liked him. Which went against every self-preservation instinct she had and everything she’d learned about preternatural sex gods in the last six years.
“We were supposed to go on our first date.” Cary huffed. The incident with Holland had interrupted that. “He was here when I came home. Did you meet him?” She looked up at her friends.
All three women made faces ranging from annoyed to frustrated. It would have been comic if Cary wasn’t still trying to piece together the last few days.
“Jaxer was here when we got here,” Lucy said. “Apparently, Deacon got called away on family business yesterday afternoon and didn’t want to leave you alone, so Jaxer called in the cavalry.”
“Us,” Marianne said with a cheeky grin.
“Thanks,” Cary said, smiling back. “So Deacon was here then? The whole time?” She could still smell him faintly in the room. The fact that they hadn’t been on a date yet—or slept together—but her room smelled like him was…a lot more comforting that it should have been. She scowled at that. It was supposed to be irritating and disturbing. Damned man had wormed his way into her life and she was getting too used to him.
“Deacon and Jaxer both apparently,” Angie said, coming back to the bed and sitting opposite Marianne.
Lucy jumped up on the edge of the bed, sitting on her knees like it was natural. Which for Lucy it was. “Neither of them saw fit to call us sooner, or we would have been here too,” she assured.
Cary grinned. She had very good friends. With a sigh, she glanced around. “Three days.” It was the longest healing sleep she’d ever had. “Well, I probably shouldn’t do that with my powers again, huh? Whatever the hell I did.”
“Don’t remember?” Angie asked.
“Nope.” Something else of the day came back to her and she groaned, dropping back against her pillow and putting her hands to her eyes. “Did Jaxer mention this seventh year business to any of you?” she asked, peaking at them from between her fingers.
The pointed silence made her drop her hands and stare at them. Maybe she didn’t have such good friends after all.
Angie raised a hand. “Not before yesterday,” she said, calming Cary’s fears. “I would have warned you if I’d known. Especially after that wizard tried to kill you. Just before the demon did.” Angie scowled. “You might have too many people trying to kill you.”
“I agree,” Cary said adamantly. “What did Jaxer say about the seventh year?”
“That you were gonna be on your own,” Lucy said. “But you won’t be. You’ve got us.”
“And we sure as hell won’t leave you out to dry like those Nags,” Marianne added. “I’ve already started some new clothes for you, with the extra good magic in them.” She grinned and wagged her eyebrows.
Cary launched up and hugged Marianne. Which started a group hug as her girlfriends surrounded her. From the door, Pickles let loose a deep, reverberating woof that Cary interpreted as happiness.
When the friends parted, Angie ducked her chin and met Cary’s gaze. “Seriously, though, how do you feel?”
Cary shrugged. “Great. Better than I usually feel after a big job and almost getting killed.”
Unusually for her, this particular job hadn’t involved any trips to the ER, and that was always a bonus. She hated trying to explain her weird injuries to the hospital staff, because they were never what they should have been when one was, say, shot or broke their toe kicking a vampire.
“No sore muscles?” Lucy asked.
“Headaches? Tingling in strange places?” Angie asked.
Cary chuckled at that. “Nope, no tingling.” Mostly because Deacon wasn’t around.
“Nothing else bothering you?” Marianne asked.
“No. I’m good. Hungry.” Actually now she thought about it, she was starving.
“Deacon left some bagels in the fridge,” Lucy said with a grin.
“Apparently, he left donuts too,” Marianne said, “but Jaxer ate them all.”
“Bastard,” Cary said.
“Right?” Marianne said in obvious agreement. She and Cary shared a similarly eager sweet tooth.
“That was nice of Deacon, though,” Angie said, looking at Cary expectantly.
“He does that a lot actually,” Cary said. “He brought me bagels and donuts every morning for most of last month.”
“He’s feeding you,” Marianne said in approval. “Must be serious.”
“We’ll see.” Cary wasn’t sure how to feel about this thing with Deacon yet. But she did like the bagels and donuts. “We should probably go out on an actual date first, though.”
“Demon hunting doesn’t count,” Marianne agreed.
“It could, under the right circumstances,” Lucy said.
Cary laughed. Then she sighed. “I’m so glad you guys are here. I had a rough week last week.” She frowned. “Actually, a rough day. And a lot of sleep.” She shrugged. “But it’s good to have you here.”
“Come on,” Angie said, patting her leg. “Let’s feed you and get you cleaned up. Then we’ll get you out of the house for a little fun. You’ve earned it.”
“What do you have in mind?” Cary asked as she rolled out of bed.
“Dancing!” Lucy and Marianne said in unison.
Marianne’s girlfriend owned a small but popular nightclub in Old Town. On a Sunday night, when Cary might have expected it to be quiet and half empty, the place was packed to the rafters for 80s night. A mix of 80s pop favorites blared from the speakers and people of all ages crowded the dance floor in the middle of the club’s first level. The upper area was little more than a circling gallery with tables and seats scattered around, and a great view of the people below.
Cary hadn’t been to the club in ages. At least it felt like ages. She’d been working a lot. And that meant less time spent just hanging out with her friends. But if the Nags were throwing her to the wolves this year, she intended to spend more time doing fun things. Life was too short to not go dancing.
And given the fact that she wasn’t entirely sure she’d be able to survive her seventh year as a Protector, her life might just be even shorter.
In an attempt to ignore the worry of what she faced this year, she pu
shed through the crowd to the long wooden bar with Lucy in tow to get the next round of beers. She was joking with Lucy about her dance moves, enjoying the energetic beat of the B52’s Love Shack blasting through the club, when her cellphone buzzed in her back pocket.
Frowning, worry tightening her gut—because that seemed to be her default these days—she looked at the text.
Deacon: where are you?
Cary: Dance club with friends. Where are you? They said you had a family emergency? Everyone OK?
As soon as she hit send, she felt a little guilty she hadn’t texted him earlier. Between him looking after her for days and then only leaving because of an emergency, she really should have thought to check on him. Oops.
Deacon: where are you exactly? need to talk to you.
Since he lost his mind and control when he wasn’t with her for long periods of time, she assumed he just need a few minutes in her company to settle his leopard down. She texted him her location and put her phone away.
The mate thing had left him on edge and holding onto his control by a thread until—according to his mother (ahhh!)—they had sex. A lot of sex.
He wasn’t rushing her, though, which was good because the entire thing had her more than a little freaked out. It was a weird and intimidating responsibility, knowing Deacon could lose control of his animal side just because she wasn’t around. She didn’t particularly like the idea. Or the responsibility for that matter. And she didn’t trust the mate bond thing. Not even a little. So she was happy to take things slow with him.
At least as slow as her own hormones would allow. She was having an embarrassingly hard time resisting the man.
“Who was it?” Lucy shouted over the music.
