by Jill Myles
“Whoa, slow down there, Jackie,” he began with a chuckle.
“You can call me Princess all you want. As long as it’s not her name.”
“It’s always been yours.” He played with a lock of my curling hair. “She chased sheep for a living. I called you Princess because I couldn’t think of anyone better for a vampire prince.”
I pressed my face against his neck, breathing in his scent. “You sure you don’t want Heaven over me?” I said in a soft voice.
“When I’m with you I am in Heaven.”
Damn, I was going to start crying again. I looked over at Gabriel/Ethan, suddenly embarrassed.
So maybe … maybe I could use the archangel’s favor for Noah. He could ascend and reunite with Rachael, and I could stop feeling so guilty. “Gabriel,” I said, pulling away from Zane slightly (though I kept my hand firmly in his). “I have another friend I want to use the favor on instead.”
The sightless eyes focused on me. “What favor do you speak of?”
I frowned. “You said that if I returned the halo to you, then I could ask anything I wanted.”
“I said that if you returned the power of the archangels to me, you could ask anything you wanted,” he said in the deep, sonorous voice. “I have not forgotten.”
“Well, that’s what I just gave you. It wasn’t some souvenir,” I retorted.
“Jackie,” Zane said faintly. “What did you promise to do for him?”
“I promised to return the archangel’s power.”
Zane shook his head. “There were seven archangels, Jackie. The seven seals of Heaven. Almost all of them fell when the rest of us fell.” He eyed Ethan/Gabriel. “Except him and Michael.”
“Seven?” I echoed. Oh, hell. When Gabriel had told me that I had to return the archangel’s power, I had assumed it meant one archangel. Had he meant archangels’? As in plural, not possessive? As in, I wasn’t done with the job yet? Not by a long shot? “No!” I protested. “No way. That’s cheating.”
“It is not cheating,” said the angel, stone-faced.
“You didn’t explain that there were five more freaking halos.” Could angels ever ask for anything without making it a double-sided deal?
“The deal was always for all halos. How you chose to interpret it is not my problem.”
I gritted my teeth, my fist raising.
“Jackie, Princess.” Zane placed his hand over mine, stopping me before I did something reckless, like punch Ethan/Gabriel.
I forced myself to exhale slowly, trying to calm down. “All halos. Then I get the reward.”
“That is correct.”
I swear, they must have given out merit badges for sneaky promises up in Heaven, because this was ridiculous.
“The seven seals are the guardians to the gates of Heaven,” Zane explained to me. “If all of them fall, then there is nothing to stop Lucifer from taking Heaven for his own.”
I pointed at the church. “So that halo in there …”
“Is one of the seven seals,” intoned Gabriel. “I am another. The Archangel Michael is another. Two were recollected in days long past.”
So that meant … “There are still two remaining?”
“That is correct,” said the archangel.
“Fuck me,” I said in disgust.
Zane grinned. “I’ll handle that,”
EPILOGUE
“We decided to call the cat Angelbait,” Remy told me as I entered the kitchen. She was feeding the cat a can of tuna on the floor. “He doesn’t have anyplace to go, so he might as well stay here. We could have a halo addicts support group or something.” She grinned at me, dipping her peanut-butter-covered spoon into a jar of jelly and then shoving it into her mouth. “He likes Ethan, too,” she said around the spoon.
I smiled at her and moved past, digging in the fridge. Now, where had that gone? I pulled out a container of honey, eyed it, and then put it back in the fridge. Not quite what I was looking for. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a jar of uh … stuff?”
“Body butter?” she asked helpfully.
A blush crept up my cheeks. “That’s it.”
“Goes great with peanut butter,” she said, then giggled.
“Remy!” I turned around and sure enough, she was swirling her spoon in it. I snatched the jar away.
“What?” she asked in a hurt voice. “It’s strawberry flavored and we’re all out of jam.”
Cheeks on fire, I screwed the lid on as quickly as I could. “It’s not yours.”
“Well, what kind of dipshit puts their sex stuff in the fridge, anyhow?”
Lord, I was never going to stop blushing. “Ethel thought it was a snack. She put it there and I couldn’t find it.”
“I see,” she said in a voice that made me want to smack her in the face. “Anything else I’m going to find in the fridge?”
“No! Shut up!”
“Can I borrow it later?”
“Get your own,” I retorted. “Besides, you’ll scar Ethan for life if you try this on him.”
She rolled her eyes and hopped off the counter. “I’m breaking him in easy, I promise.” She bent down to pet the cat. Angelbait sniffed the peanut-butter spoon and began to lick it. Yick.
“So how are things going with you and Ethan?” I ventured.
Remy shrugged. “Not bad. Could be better. He still thinks you should go after Noah, by the way.”
“Noah made his choice. I made mine. Tell him to quit trying to make me feel guilty about it.” Nothing was going to ruin my happiness right now. Especially not the world’s largest Boy Scout.
“Yeah, I told him to shut up about it, too, but you know how he gets. He has this possessive thing that I’m trying to break him of. So far it’s working. He’s promised not to freak out whenever he sees me on TV anymore, and I promised to show him what a Cleveland steamer is.”
“Remy!”
“I’m kidding, Jackie. Jeez. You’re as bad as he is.” She gave a gusty sigh. “Ethan and I aren’t too bad, now that I got fired from The Big Sleazy. Oh well.” She sounded glum. “I guess I can always do an autobiography, or something boring like that. Ethan’s lucky he’s got some big equipment, or he’d be back to that sanctuary.”
I headed over to the kitchen table to examine some paperwork there. “Just don’t break his heart, or we’ll have the Serim council back here with new kinds of torture.”
“Pass on that,” she said, making a face and following me to the table. “So, any luck with the halo hunt?”
“No,” I said in frustration. I flopped down on a chair, staring at the maps spread over the table. With no clue of where to find the two missing archangel halos, we’d started by cross-referencing ancient artifacts and old temples. Visiting everything that seemed to be a likely site would take years, and I had no leads. No more hints from possessed pool boys, and no signs from above.
Clearly, these other two halos weren’t as big of a threat, or they’d have offered more help. I was on my own for the next leg of the scavenger hunt, it seemed. “I swear, just when I think I’m getting free of angelic entanglements, I get launched into another. It isn’t fair.”
“Of course it’s not fair,” she said, moving over to pat my shoulder. “Cheer up. Something is bound to turn up. It always does.”
I glanced out the window—sunset. Time to go. “I’ll be back later. Right now I’ve got a date.”
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she said, winking.
Yeah, like that left anything. “By the way, Remy. I still have the nullifier necklace I gave you back in New Orleans. Do you want it back?”
She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “No, thanks. That thing just reminds me of Joachim and he’s better off as a bad memory.”
“Gotcha.” That suited me just fine. Zane had originally gifted the necklace to me, and I’d kept it for sentimental value. Too bad I couldn’t wear it regularly—the nullifier charm worked on succubi too … and I really didn’t have any desire to have my
libido dampened at the moment. I grinned and sprinted up the stairs to my wing of the house.
Sunset was my favorite time of the day, and I looked forward to it with enthusiasm. As I headed back to my rooms I passed Ethel, the little old maid who kept Remy’s house, and smiled at her.
“Hello, Miss Jackie,” she said in a disapproving voice. “I cleaned your scarves again.” She held it out to me, clearly scandalized. “Don’t get them so dirty.”
I took the black sashes and shoved them in my pocket. “Thank you.”
She merely sniffed and continued down the hall. I raced toward my room, grinning with anticipation, and shut the door behind me. The bedroom was dark, the blinds shut, and the bed occupied.
Zane’s black hair was tousled on the pillows, wings neatly tucked underneath him. He was naked, the sheets slung low on his waist. I admired the sight, then set down the jar of body butter. Pulling the scarves from my pocket, I tied one of his wrists to the headboard, then straddled him to tie his other one.
“Well,” he said in a sleepy voice against the vee of my legs. “This is what every man dreams of waking up to.”
I laughed and swung off of him, bouncing next to him on the bed. “Evening, vampire.”
One hand flexed, then the other, and he smiled, displaying white fangs and eyes bright red with interest.
“You ready for another game tonight?” I asked.
Zane chuckled, a low rasp that did incredible things to my insides. “Your wish is my command, love.”
At the affectionate term, my heart swelled. I leaned over and kissed him, filled with happiness. “I love you.”
He smiled into my kiss.
My tongue played along the points of his fangs, then I slipped away to straddle him again. “Tonight’s game is called Bite Me. Very exciting stuff.”
“Sounds like my kind of game. What do I get if I win?”
“You get to bite me all over.”
“And if I lose?”
“You get to help me study maps again to figure out where the halos are. Tonight’s continent,” I said, trailing a finger down his washboard chest, “is Australia.”
His smile flashed. “Fuck that. So how do I win?”
“We bet on how many bites it takes for you to make me come.” I leaned over him to press a kiss on his chest. “I bet ten.”
Zane’s breath hitched. “I bet one.”
“One?” I scoffed. “I need one bite just to get wet.”
“Princess, never dare a vampire when it comes to his bite,” he said, teeth flashing. “He might take it as a personal challenge.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “You’re on.”
It turned out he was right. It was a personal challenge.
And it did, in fact, only take one.
Turn the page and step
inside Midnight Liaisons, a paranormal dating service
open to every vamp, were, and angel
The first book in
a fun, sexy new series
by
Jill Myles
Coming soon from Pocket Books
Midnight Liaisons,” I answered as I cradled the phone to my ear. “This is Bathsheba. How can I help you?”
“Hi,” the man breathed nervously into the other end of the phone. “I’m looking for … company. Tonight. Maybe a redhead.”
I winced. There was no way to misunderstand what he was looking for, as he’d clearly stated “redhead” in a rather obvious (and breathy) fashion. We got at least one of these kinds of calls a day and I’d become an old hand at deflecting the creepiness of the occasional misguided caller. “Midnight Liaisons is a dating service, sir. Not an escort service.”
Now please, never call me again.
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Oh,” he said. “Well, that’s fine. How can I access your website to look at the dating profiles? It won’t give me a password.”
“The password is your Alliance ID number.” I fought to keep my voice pleasant. “Or I can check your credentials and get you set up with a temporary log-in. If you can tell me who your pack leader is, I’d be more than happy to send through the background check—”
“My what?”
Definitely a civilian on the line. A “natural,” as my boss liked to joke around the office. I decided to play dumb anyhow. “If you don’t have a pack leader … perhaps your master?” If this guy was familiar with undead society at all, he’d catch the hint.
“Huh?”
“Coven? Fey King?” I couldn’t resist. “High Lord?”
“What are you talking about, lady?” The man on the other end of the line was irritated at me. Gone was the smarmy tone, replaced by your typical, run-of-the-mill angry customer. Except he definitely wasn’t one of our customers.
“I’m sorry,” I said in my most sugary voice. “But Midnight Liaisons has an exclusive clientele. Our dating service is open to referrals from current clients only. Have a nice day, sir—”
“Now just a minute,” the man began, but I hung up on him anyway. The chances of him ever becoming a client were slim to none, after all.
Across the room, Sara snickered at me as she typed. “You always get the weird ones.”
“Of course I do,” I said, turning in my chair to glance at her. Sara’s eyes were glued to her screen, but she had a smile on her face. “We get weird calls because the company name sounds like an escort service. And I get them because you’re not answering the phone.”
“I’m busy,” she said, but her mouth quirked.
“Part of your job is to answer the phone,” I retorted, exasperated. “I’m the office manager! If any one shouldn’t have to answer the phone, it should be me.”
“But you’re so good at it,” Sara soothed me, grinning. “I’m not half as patient with them as you are.”
“Then maybe I shouldn’t have hired you to work here.”
Sara had heard my complaint a hundred times before, but it was an empty threat. Seeing as how she was my baby sister, she could get away with—and usually did get away with—just about everything. She flipped through the slender stack of profiles on her desk as if searching for something, ignoring my sputtering with the good-natured humor of someone completely safe in their job. “Midnight Liaisons is a stupid name, I admit. But what else was the boss supposed to call a dating service that caters exclusively to the paranormal?”
“Bangs For Fangs? Flea-collared Submissives?” I quipped, turning back to my screen to get rid of the flashing software pop-up reminding me to log the call into the database. “Fresh Meat for Deadbeats?”
I could hear Sara’s snort of laughter across the small office. “You’re too hard on them. They’re not all jerks just because they have fangs or tails.”
“Says the woman that doesn’t answer the phone,” I replied, but smiled. It was a weird business, but generally I liked my job, weirdos and all. The hours were strange, the clientele were even stranger, but it paid well, I ran the office like it was my own, and I got to watch over my baby sister. Life was good. Strange, but good.
Across the room, Sara sucked in a breath. “Uh oh.”
I turned in my chair again to glance back at my sister. “Uh oh? Why ‘uh oh’?” While my job was to set up new profiles and match up clients unable to manage on their own (in addition to running the office), Sara had the task of personal follow-up and account maintenance. It was her job to check in with our clients to see that dates were still on, to follow up after the date to ensure everyone enjoyed themselves, and to update profiles with “exclusive” status if necessary. It was the easiest job in our small office. Sara usually finished it within hours and then flipped her computer over to gaming mode, spending the rest of the day playing Halo or something equally obnoxious. “Something wrong?”
“Profile #26742, that’s what’s wrong,” she said with an anxious note in her voice.
Oh boy. I flinched. I didn’t even have to access the profile to know who it was. “What’s Rosario done
now?”
Rosario was what Sara had lovingly referred to as “trouble.” She cancelled on dates regularly, was aggressive as hell, and had given more than one guy problems, and not just of the flea-and-tick variety. Some guys were into it—they expected a werewolf chick to be fiery, especially a Latina one.
Everyone in our office hated her.
“What’s she done now?” I repeated, anticipating the complaint call certain to come in.
“She’s accepted a date with a cat shifter,” Sara said, sounding puzzled. “Through the website. Don’t worry, I can handle it.”
A nervous quiver settled in my stomach. “But Rosie always cancels on the cats.” We had a string of complaints in Rosie’s file a mile long. If someone canceled on a date, they were charged an inconvenience fee. But our boss Giselle had decided a while back that she liked Rosie, so she waived her fees, and Rosie used and abused her privileges.
I suspected that Rosie and Giselle had some sort of hidden agreement that involved a bit more than what the standard contract said, but I wasn’t about to ask. The only reason Rosie was still allowed in the dating service was because the pool of female Alliance members in the database was so small compared to the male membership. Especially one as attractive—and willing to date—as Rosie. We couldn’t afford to lose her. She was brisk business, even if I questioned her motives.
“Not just any shifter,” Sara amended as I headed over to her desk. Her eyes flicked back and forth as she regarded the screen. “One of the new accounts. The head of the Russell clan.”
The Russell clan was powerful, but to my knowledge, they’d never used Giselle’s services before. “I don’t recall setting up—”
“His account is starred.”
A star on someone’s account meant someone powerful and dangerous, and not to piss them off, or the boss would do terrible things to us. It also meant Giselle had circumvented the regular account set-up process and had taken care of this one on her own. She had a vested interest in its success.
