by May Dawson
Beth snorted “My son still lives at home. Thirty-two! Don’t let ‘em stay in your house a day past eighteen.”
“Too late.” Liam shrugged, leaning back in the booth. “I guess you’re on your own, kid.”
I pulled a face. I’d celebrated my eighteenth birthday just the weekend before. “Your fault.”
We’d moved around a lot the first few years of my life until Liam was sure that the vamps that had killed my parents weren’t going to come after me. I’d been late starting kindergarten, but to be fair, I’d had a lot to work through before I dealt with crayons and paste and the alphabet.
I’d been kind of a mess, after being four-years-old when my parents were murdered, while I heard every bit of it.
We ordered our ice cream—a chocolate chip cookie dough cone for me, and a piece of cherry pie with vanilla ice cream and a black coffee for him—and Beth sashayed off into the back to get it together.
“You’re drinking coffee at two in the morning?” I asked.
“It doesn’t keep me awake.”
“You say that now, but when you’re watching horror movies on the couch at four in the morning…”
“You’ll join me?”
“Do you mind if I meet back up with the girls?”
“Is that a good idea?” he asked, his voice neutral. “After the night you’ve had? What if those boys come looking for you?”
“We’re just sleeping over at Kate’s house.”
“No after parties?”
I made an X over my heart. I wouldn’t lie to him. It was hard for him to give me space after he’d lost his brother. Our deal was that he’d let me go where I wanted, when I wanted, as long as I always told him where that was. And as long as I did my fifteen hours a week in the dojo and gym, maximum effort.
“What are you going to do if they go to an after party after all?” he asked.
“It’s not in the plans,” I said. “But okay. I’ll play. If they go, I’ll get my butt in the Challenger and drive it on home. Okay? That way, I won’t miss out on making fun of you for the inevitable fall out from…”
I looked meaningfully at his coffee as Beth set it down on the table.
I’d left my car parked at Kate’s house, so I’d have to go back and get it one way or another. Might as well finish my girls’ night, even though Kate would have an earful to give me about getting into a fight during what was supposed to be a fun evening. Kate didn’t believe that trouble always found me.
But it was true. Otherwise, my uncle wouldn’t have had to search my parents’ blood-splattered house frantically for me while I sucked my thumb, silent and terrified, in the hidden crawl space behind the hot water heater in our basement. It had been my secret hideaway, my unfindable place when we played hide-and-go-seek.
It was just lucky that I’d shared my secret with the uncle I loved, and so he was able to pull me out and carry me through that blood-soaked place as the sirens blared nearer and nearer to our house. Don’t look, baby, he’d whispered to me.
But I’d looked.
“Did you get the cherry pie before he died?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” he said evenly.
It had been my dad’s usual order when they stopped here during their Hunting trips: cheeseburger and fries, black coffee, cherry pie with ice cream. My uncle was kind of a health nut, not someone who made a habit of ordering pie. In his forties now, he was lean and dangerous, his powerful arms tattooed with dark, fanciful scenes from fairy tales. His other tattoos helped hide that his chest was marked with magical runes that prevented demon possession and enhanced his instincts.
“But you’re right,” he went on. “It reminds me of him.”
Beth came back with his plate and my cone. I took it from her gingerly; somehow trickles of ice cream were already beginning to run down onto the paper.
“Tell me about the first time you came here,” I asked.
“You have a lot of questions about him tonight. Any particular reason?”
I shrugged. “I can’t work in the dojo forever.”
“Right. You can’t,” he said flatly, warming up to a familiar argument. “You can go to college. Work in the dojo during the summers. Those little kids in your Mini Tigers karate class love you.”
“Is that why I’ve been training? To go to college and…what?”
“There are so many things you can do with your life,” he said. “Your parents did not dream of that life for you.”
“I know.” I licked my lips. “What if it made me feel closer to them, though? Doing the same thing they did.”
“The same thing that got them killed?” he asked. He sighed then, running his hand through his hair. “Okay, you really want to hear this story again?”
“I really do.”
Just then, a scream vibrated through the night air outside.
It sounded like a scream, but maybe it was a car’s tires screeching or something. I cocked my head to one side, listening.
My uncle was already on his feet.
In my rush to slide out of the booth and follow him, I dropped my ice cream cone.
He looked at me over his shoulder. I could feel his urge to tell me to take the keys, get in the car, and wait for him.
But he didn’t.
He nodded and pushed out the glass double doors, and I went with him.
To find out what happens, download Her Kind of Magic now…
Also by May Dawson
The Wild Angels & Hunters Series:
Wild Angels
Fierce Angels
Dirty Angels
Chosen Angels
Ashley Landon, Bad Medium
Dead Girls Club
The True and the Crown series:
One Kind of Wicked
Two Kinds of Damned
Three Kinds of Lost
Four Kinds of Cursed
Five Kinds of Love
Their Shifter Princess:
Their Shifter Princess
Their Shifter Princess 2: Pack War
Their Shifter Princess 3: Coven’s Revenge
Their Shifter Academy:
Their Shifter Academy: A Prequel Novella
Their Shifter Academy 1: Unwanted
Their Shifter Academy 2: Undone
About the Author
May Dawson’s first crush was Indiana Jones, and it wasn’t just for Harrison Ford’s rugged good looks. She’s always been drawn to adventure, and she found it in Bali and the Antarctic, traveling widely before she settled down to raise two red-haired munchkins/hooligans. These days you can find her embracing a very different kind of adventure: love. Living it. Writing it.
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