Bulletproof Princess

by Craig, Alexis D.

  “Sweet tea vodka, two shots.” She smiled at the bartender and pushed a ten across the counter. She figured fortification was going to get her through the night, though not too much lest the pendulum swing wildly in the opposite direction. It wasn’t often that one of her former lovers was retiring, and was there with his new wife. Though they’d remained friends, the level of impending awkward had surpassed ‘thermonuclear’ the moment she’d opened the car door.

  “Make that four,” a gruff and familiar voice behind her told the bartender as he laid a hand on her shoulder. “Hey stranger.”

  Fuck. Make that one ex-lover and one unrequited crush. “Hey, Sean.” She smiled over her shoulder and found herself immediately ensnared in the topaz blue eyes that still showed up in her dreams occasionally. Sean O’Leary was six feet, one inch of Irish devilry, in addition to the badge and gun. Black hair that he’d let grow down to his broad shoulders and a smile that inspired in her a desire to fling her panties at him. The old Jack Daniel’s t-shirt and the well-worn jeans were doing nothing to disabuse her of that notion, either. His hand trailed fire from her shoulder and down her arm before he sidled up to the bar on the stool next to her. Being his friend was hard, and being his best friend, for the short while she had been, had been damn near impossible.

  He lightly tangled his fingers in her raven curls, sending an involuntary shiver down her spine. Anyone else would have gotten cut for that level of familiarity. “I almost didn’t recognize you with your hair long.”

  ‘Long’ was a relative term. She’d let her hair grow a couple inches beyond her normal pixie cut for the hell of it, and was still getting reacquainted with the ringlets. “Just trying something different.” Though the last time he’d seen it, she’d been damn near a dead ringer for Halle Berry.

  This time he just touched one curl, rubbing it between his fingers. “Well I like it, it suits you.”

  Ellie was grateful for the darkness of the bar as she felt her cheeks heat in pleasure at the compliment. God, she was pathetic…and damn, how long did it take to fill a shot glass? “Thanks. I’m liking the longer look on you, too.”

  His laugh couldn’t be heard over the music as he ran his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, it’s been for work, and I just haven’t felt like getting it cut.” He surveyed the room, filled with uniforms and casual clothes pretty evenly, before turning back to her with a curious look. “I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me, but I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.” It had only been three years since she and Sean had last spoken; since he’d been married and his wife was…not fond of Ellie was the politest way to say it. He slid twenty to the bartender and handed her back her ten.

  Ellie gave her ten back to the bartender. “A donation,” she said with a small grin. She then took both her shots in quick succession before turning to face Sean fully. “Of course I’m here. Sarge is one of my favorite people on the planet, and besides,” she patted the expertly wrapped gift on the stool next to her, “his wife commissioned a piece from me.”

  In her spare time, Ellie sometimes made shadow boxes for people, because she believed in keeping memories special, even if she wasn’t particularly prepared to revisit them herself.

  Sean toasted her before tossing back his first shot, “And I’m sure it’s beautiful.”

  She blushed again and nodded her thanks as another friend came over. Sean met her eyes with his in silent goodbye before pushing off the bar to evaporate into the crowd. Not that she followed his perfectly jeans-clad ass as he departed or anything. The next twenty minutes was a maze of hugs and small talk as she made her way to the gift table and the guest of honor.

  Ellie was an expert at being cool under pressure, a work trait that played well at home, too. So as she spoke to Sarge and his bride of late, Meredith, anyone who didn’t know they used to date would have been none the wiser. Still, the façade was hard to maintain for a long period of time, so when Sean appeared at her side and excused her from their presence she was entirely grateful.

  “What do you say we go someplace with cheaper drinks?” He didn’t even look at her as he steered her expertly toward the door.

  “And more of them, I take it?” She said her goodbyes as politely as she could, given the speed at which she was borne through the crowd and into the cloud of smokers just outside the front doors of the bar.

  His smile was slow and feral. “Well, naturally.”

  BOOK 2 IN THE BEHIND THE BLUE LINE SERIES

  The living have the right to remain silent, the dead, not so much…

  Nahia Wellington is not your everyday shopkeep, but as the owner of Wellington's Magical Apothecary, her bewitching sticks and stones, cards, and tomes weren't always for the typical buyer. After a call from her notorious matchmaking childhood best friend, Nahia must use her paranormal investigation skills in effort to help the police.

  When Detective Nico Verrazano agreed to this assignment, he never expected to meet the sexy, playful, and quite possibly crazy ghost hunter. Remarkably the dark hair beauty snags his interest, and when the unlikely pair meets, the connection is nothing short of otherworldly.

  When the two explore the abandoned mansion, they soon discover it has its own secrets with the ghosts to show for it. Will a wild journey to the truth of the haunting threaten to consume them both or will they realize the dead aren't the only ones being disorderly.

  Prologue

  Nahia stood at the cash register in her shop, Wellington’s Magickal Apothecary, surveying her domain with pleasure. Business was good in the downtown Indianapolis store, selling herbs for teas and tinctures, as well as crystals and other items for varying practices of religion and divination, and she enjoyed interacting with her clientele. Everyone from the boho chic to the well-heeled blueblood came to her store to peruse her wares.

  She snorted at her word choice; it wasn’t that kind of establishment. Yeah, it had the requisite dark jewel-toned walls, wind chimes, walls of various books, and tarot decks, not to mention the couple of rooms upstairs she rented out to a local clairvoyant, tarot, and palm reader, but she wasn’t all done up in faux-fortune teller broomstick skirts and jangly belly dancer belts. Today she had her turquoise streaked black mane tamed back into a long braid to her waist, her favorite Hello Kitty KISS shirt, and a pair of jeans that had been new two presidents ago. It wasn’t the mystical look, but it didn’t hurt the business at all.

  She was ringing up a beginner tarot deck and a bag of tiger-eye runes when her cell phone sang from her pocket, Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre. Even though it was her personal phone, she answered, “Wellington’s Magickal Apothecary, putting potion in motion, Nahia Wellington speaking.”

  “Nye, it’s Nigel. I need a favor.”

  “What kind of favor?” Nigel was Nigel Gooch, a childhood friend who now worked for the police department. They’d known each other so long that their parents referred to them as Nye, Squared. Nahia looked at her watch, a robust faced two pound wrist weight she was loath to part with and found it odd for him to be calling her so late in the day. He was normally a day shift car.

  “The work-related kind.” He paused to snicker a bit, “I mean, your work, not mine.”

  “Oh, this can’t be good.” Though she wasn’t exactly psychic in the traditional sense she was highly sensitive, somewhat clairvoyant and more often than not, clairaudient. For the life of her, she could think of no good scenarios for the police department needing her services. “The walls of roll call bleeding or something?” A simple haunting and a house blessing she could do. Locating missing people, not so much. Ghost hunting was a personal joy for her, with numerous pictures and audio evidence to her credit.

  “No!” Nigel sounded unduly excited to be disagreeing with her. “Not like that, exactly. We had this guy go check a house. He got thrown out of the house.”

  “That sounds like a situation for SWAT, not one for a friendly, neighborhood magickal implements supplier.” Wedging her phone between her chin and sho
ulder, she quietly tended to a customer, taking money in exchange for a rose quartz pendulum on a silver chain and a bundle of white sage.

  “Not when the house is abandoned and whatever threw him out wasn’t visible to the human eye.”

  Nahia smiled at the customer before turning to grab a piece of paper and a pen. “Now you have my attention. What was that address again?”

  Chapter 1

  Nico Verrazzano disliked favors, at least as a concept. It wasn’t that he didn’t like people owing him, but the mercurial nature of the payback in the event that he was the one who owed always bothered him. In this case, he’d owed Nigel Gooch for covering for him on a missing persons case while he went to his cousin’s daughter’s birthday party, and now, as payment, Nigel had him sitting outside of this scary-looking abandoned mansion on the north side of town in his department vehicle. Looking around with his flashlight once he got out of the car, it was like a typical scary movie set, overgrown landscaping, broken windows on the bottom floor, and an overall sense of foreboding and despair. There were even gargoyles at the end of the drive, for fuck’s sake.

  He turned around for the second time in as many minutes, feeling the tingly sensation of being watched, only to find the three story house looming over him with no movement in the blackened windows. This was not worth the original favor, definitely.

  The reason for his presence was he was supposed to meet someone here, someone who was going to ‘ghost hunt’ in the house. Since it was abandoned, he didn’t have to worry, necessarily, about them trespassing, but more about the very live things that could be hanging out in the big old Gothic structure. Why they’d want to, though, was beyond him. The place was damn creepy.

  Though it was the middle of July, he found himself fighting a shiver that chased down his spine as the evening stretched leisurely across the sky and the lengthening shadows seemed to reach for him.

  He was debating waiting inside his car when a pair of headlights pulled into the driveway behind him. A cute little Fiat, sky blue in color, bumped along to music barely contained within its confines. The door opened and the engine died simultaneously, giving him just enough time to detect the presence of U2 on the speakers.

  Nigel hadn’t told Nico who he’d been waiting for, but when the tiny little brunette bounced out of the driver’s seat with all the eagerness of a puppy with a toy, he figured this was his charge. Watching her wasn’t going to be hardship at all, he mused, taking in her well-shaped ass and legs in a pair of jeans she had a closer relationship with than he did his dentist.

  When he thought ‘ghost hunter’, she was nowhere close to what he’d imagined, though he’d be hard-pressed to describe his original suppositions. Maybe driving a hearse or dressed in a squad suit and carrying a proton pack, but not her. In a million years. Even before she marched up to him in her tight little black t-shirt with a large backpack slung over her shoulder, he knew she was going to be different than any other woman he’d met. And he’d met more than a few.