Zack rolled his eyes.
I held onto Leo so I wouldn’t float away.
The song that surprised me the most when I’d first heard the album was “Rhapsody in You.” It was unabashedly hopeful, the horns in this one not a lament but a celebration.
Finally came the reprise of “Asp.” Again, it was only Zack, the violinist, and Rohan, but this version was in a major key. Rohan had laid his ghosts to rest, slain his demons, and moved into the light. It was an ode to Asha’s life.
The crowd was going ballistic before Rohan sang his final note. He grinned, but I could see the relief on his face that they liked it. Creatively, this had been important, but as the promise he’d kept to Asha, this album meant the world to him.
Rohan introduced the band to thunderous applause, especially for Zack, his former Fugue State Five bandmate.
Zack took his bow and then pulled Rohan front and center. “In case you don’t know this guy, his name is Rohan Mitra. Give it up for him!”
When Snowflake took his bow, the place literally shook from all the foot stomping and whistling.
Rohan crooked a finger at me, indicating I should join him in the green room.
Leo shoved at me. “Blech. Go have sex with the rock god that just adored you.”
“Works for me.”
Before I could leave, there was a loud squeal of feedback cutting over the mumbled “…good to be true.”
Drio stood on stage, the mic in a chokehold.
Everyone stared at him.
He cleared his throat and sang—or his warbled approximation of it—the next few lines to Leonie, who stood there twitching, her face frozen in a grimace and her brows creased.
It took me almost the entire first verse to figure out he was singing that old classic “Can’t Take My Eyes off of You.”
The band resumed their places and the drummer took up the tempo with a soft sweep of his drum brush. Zach chimed in on piano.
Drio kept singing, a tiny bit more relaxed now that the band was backing him up.
The look of death that Leo shot Ro when he picked up a tambourine to accompany Drio should have incinerated him on the spot. Ro beat the tambourine against his hip and gave her a crooked grin.
The horn section kicked it up for the chorus and the entire room belted out the words, helping to serenade Leo.
A grin split Drio’s face and he started hamming it up, picking up more confidence. Sadly, he didn’t pick up any type of singing ability or musicality. It was the worst, but it was also very much the best.
“For fuck’s sake,” Leo said.
I flung my arm around her, singing the chorus and forcing her to sway with me.
When Drio finished the song, he got almost as much applause as Rohan had. He jumped off the stage to stand before us.
“Was that a planned serenade?” I said.
Drio shrugged. “Singing always worked for Ro to get the girl.”
“‘Always?’ What ‘always?’” I said.
Leo planted her hands on her hips. “You love me?”
“Sì?”
“This isn’t Jeopardy,” she said. “You don’t answer that in the form of a question.”
“Can we have some privacy?” Drio demanded of me.
“No.” I helped myself to a champagne flute. “Carry on.”
“I don’t need you to love me,” Leo said. “I’m never going to be Asha. But I do need you to respect me and care about me.”
“I don’t want you to be Asha. I want you to be you. Every beautiful inch of you.” He placed her hand on his heart. “Cuore mio.”
“Did you just call her ‘my heart?’” I did a happy dance.
Leo shoved me away. “Go now.”
“My work here is done.” I went to find my rock star.
In truth, I ducked behind a pillar to spy on them.
Drio tipped Leo’s chin up. He gave her a smile so brilliant, so infused with happiness and so unlike anything I’d ever seen from him, that it stole my pervy little breath away. He leaned down and planted a very sweet, short kiss on Leo.
I dropped the flute. Whoa. He’d broken his “no kissing” rule. This was epic.
Leo’s hands fluttered to her cheeks. Drio looked flustered, unsure of how to read her reaction, until she glowed up at him, rose on tiptoe, and kissed him back. Another peck like they were two thirteen-year-olds, both of them blushing. It was adorable beyond words.
Some dude in a hipster red suit and bow tie with platinum blond hair reminiscent of Ro’s hair back in his Fugue State Five Days approached me with a sniff. He looked me up and down and pronounced, “He could do better.” The man smiled at Lily, who didn’t register his existence.
“Nuh-uh.” Blair poked him backward with one red, manicured finger. “You did not diss my girl.”
“MainMitraMistress?” He nodded at my guess. “Meet Blair. Blair, this is Ro’s super fan. Total Lily shipper who’s been pinging my stalker radar tonight. Defend my honor well, Padawan.”
I left them to the Battle of the Blonds and crossed the parquet floor.
A DJ took the stage, putting on “Rather Be” by Clean Bandit and people drifted onto the dance floor. Kane and Ari led the crowd, lost in each other. Baruch was even dancing with Clara, the two of them drifting closer and closer.
I caught Rohan as he came out of the green room, sweaty, flushed, and high off his performance. He’d lost the jacket and was down to his black tank top.
“You might have a career in music ahead of you,” I said.
“Maybe get lucky, get some gigs playing cafés.”
“I mean, don’t quit the day job or anything until you can establish a fan base, but you’re pretty good at this.”
“Rather Be” ramped up, the audience jumping up and down around us, dancing in unabashed glee. Colored lights swirled. The room was alive, electric.
Once upon a time, there’d been a girl with a dream whose world had burned down around her. She’d risen from those ashes shaky, living full-tilt because she was scared to stand still and just when she’d convinced herself that she’d propped herself up by driving everyone away, her world burned down again. She was forced to fight for her very existence in a new world that didn’t want her. But a funny thing happened. Instead of every blow shattering her, it made her stronger, more certain of who she was, what she wanted, and where she was going. So, when her world burned down for a third time, she was secure in her own skin. Her power was gone, but she was powerful. She looked around at the pieces of her life and thought, “This is enough. I am enough.”
“Whatcha thinking, Sparky?”
“It’s bliss time, Snowflake.” I reached for my boyfriend’s hand, and pulled him onto the dance floor, into our happily ever after.
Thank you for reading THE UNLIKEABLE DEMON HUNTER: BURN and for being a part of this crazy ride!
The fun of this world isn’t over yet because Leonie gets her own book in LEONIE HENDRICKS: DEMON P.I.
Got a dispute with another demon and killing them just won’t solve it? Leonie Hendricks gets results, no matter what the cost.
Even if her life-long internal battle with her non-human side is seriously taking its toll.
A new case throws Leonie back into the arms of the man who broke her heart. While she’d rather stab him and get on with her life, her professional principles demand that she hunt down her client’s fiendish assailant before innocent humans get caught in the crossfire.
But when things take a sinister turn, Leonie finds herself in a deadly fight not just for her heart, but for her very soul.
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Turn the page for an excerpt from Leonie Hendricks: Demon P.I. …
Excerp
t from Leonie Hendricks: Demon P.I.
“He loves me.” Pluck.
The asper demon flinched and thrashed against his binding, as I ripped another one of his tiny wings off his knobby shoulder. It was less like wishing on a four-leaf clover and more like plucking a cantankerous, still-living chicken.
The bits of him that weren’t chained to the wall with solid iron cuffs were pinned like a butterfly specimen using iron knives, while his three eyes were nothing more than puffy lumps in an already lumpy face from the concentrated salt and ghost pepper spray that I’d subdued him with. And sure, this sounded serial killer sadistic, but aspers were notorious for disemboweling first and asking questions later.
“He loves me not.” Pluck.
“Suck it, sweetheart.” The demon shook his rattlesnake tail at me, his sneer growing lewder.
Using one of the many blades casually tossed on the table next to me, I impaled his penis stand-in, driving it deep into the thick wooden wall.
He screamed, a high-pitched buzzing cry.
“Next time, get consent to bring that swizzle stick of yours to show-and-tell.” I kicked aside the pile of wings that resembled strips of dried jerky scattered at my feet. The friendly chat I’d called him in for had now gone on about three hours too long. Time to get what I needed and have a snack.
“Daeva’s horn. You have it. Where’d it go?” I twisted the blade in deeper, taking no perverse thrills in this single-minded violence. My mentor and boss, Harry Dunn, had pounded it into me to never apply a human moral code where demons were concerned. My life was on the line with every single interaction, and power was the only language demons responded to. I’d become fluent, even if I always attempted to negotiate my way out first.
“She took from me. I took from her.” The asper spat blood at me, hitting me square in the face. There it was, the “an eye for an eye” philosophy these thuggish demons employed.
Actually, it was more, “an eye for you looked at me funny,” or “an eye for, well, it’s Tuesday,” with these guys.
I was going to take things up a notch when a few drops of asper blood got in my mouth and my inner goblin awoke with a vengeance, clawing for supremacy. The blood was hot and rich, with just an edge of savory. My fingers froze into claw formations, my half-demon side howling in my head and forming a dark shadow in the white light that I always imagined my human body suffused with.
I eyed the asper like he was a chicken and I was the Colonel.
Wiping the blood off my tongue with my sleeve, I spun around and shouldered out the door, tossing my protective gloves on the ground. Sweat ran down my neck into my protective suit.
“You’re getting demon all over my nice office.” Harry jabbed a bony finger at the gloves, causing the unlit cigarette hanging off the bottom left corner of his mouth to quiver. “Keep that mess in the interrogation room.”
I stumbled past him into the small kitchen here at Dunn and Associates P.I.–a misnomer if there was one, as there was only one Associate and right now she was scrabbling at the cupboard, teetering on the balls of her feet, balance shot. I was so, so hungry.
Harry found me a protein bar, unwrapping it and shoving it at me in record time. “Je nourris. Tu nourris. Say it, Leo.”
“Je nourris. Tu–” I shuddered, a red wash coloring my vision.
My phone rang, buzzing against my thigh.
Harry grasped my chin and forced me to look him in the eyes. “Chew and talk, kiddo.”
“Nourris. Elle nourrit. I feed. You feed. She feeds.” I repeated the mantra that he and I had come up with to remind myself that where and how I fed was a choice. That my human nature was still in control. Had I caved to my demon half, blood sustenance would no longer be optional. Blood was life to goblins, it was sacred, and to refuse it, like I did, was blasphemy.
And friends wondered why I never had any interest in vampire stories. It wasn’t so sexy when you lived it day in and day out.
Six more times my phone rang, but I couldn’t answer, fighting to firmly reassert my human side. Despite my determination to eat from the basic food groups and not someone’s bleeding heart, I still had to chow down more often than most people. Luckily, I metabolized faster as well, so by the time I’d scarfed back an entire bag of chocolate-covered almonds, the haze and the frenzied need had faded.
Classical music floated in from the front office. Ugh. Mahler.
My phone rang yet again. Seven missed calls–all from my mother. She wouldn’t stop until I answered. Please let someone be dead. “Hey, Mom.”
“Lord protect us. I just had the television on and they were reporting fresh demons on the prowl in Vancouver. Fresh! As if they were ripe melons. I was so worried about you, and then when I couldn’t reach you, I feared the worst. Leonie, you need to come to church and pray. It’s the only way we’re going to survive this plague of evil. That’s what we get for our sinful ways.”
Pretty damn ironic, since she’d had the one-night stand with my goblin sire, believing him nothing more than a charming and very human rogue, and I was the one suffering the consequences.
Gripping the edge of the counter, I tried to tune out her distressed chatter, wishing I could yell at her that her every word hit me like a bullet. Or just snap and show her the reds of my eyes, rip the veil off her nice and sunny little world once and for all. But I’d never do that. I was the good daughter, the child who understood her fears. Not one more part of the nightmare.
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If you enjoyed this book, then how about some free short stories set in this world? Demons and sexytimes, galore! There are mild spoilers in each one, so it’s best to enjoy them in the proper reading order. Click on the cover images to claim.
1) Slay: Rohan’s POV (Book 1.5)
2) Crush: Drio’s POV (Book 2.5)
3) Seize: Rohan’s POV (Book 3.5)
4) Lick: Ari’s POV (Book 4.5 - m/m romance)
Playlist for an Unlikeable Demon Hunter
Music is really important to me when I write, both for setting the mood, and within a scene itself. These are the songs that made this series what it is. See if you can find all the ones that were actually mentioned in the books.
1.“Bad Girls” by M.I.A.
2.“Back to Black” by Amy Winehouse
3.“How You Like Me Now?” by The Heavy
4.“Madness” by Muse
5.“Papaoutai” by Pentatonix
6.“Love Runs Out” by OneRepublic
7.“Starships” by Nikki Minaj
8.The music of Postmodern Jukebox – especially Von Smith’s “Cry Me A River” cover.
9.“Ain’t No Sunshine” – Bill Withers
10.“Burn” – Hamilton soundtrack
11.“Here” – Alessia Cara
12.“Crazy In Love” – Beyoncé
13.“Good as Hell” – Lizzo
14.“There Are Worse Things I Could Do” – Grease
15.“Adagio in G Minor” – Albinoni
16.“Canned Heat” – Jamiroquai
17.“This is What You Came For” – Calvin Harris
18.“Freedom” – George Michael
19.“Bootylicious” – Destiny’s Child
20.“Sunny Side of the Street” – various Jazz
21.“Bohemian Rhapsody” – Queen
22.“Blank Space” – Taylor Swift
23.“Shape of You” – Ed Sheeran
24.“Sabotage” – Beastie Boys
25.“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” – Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell
26.“Cold-Hearted Snake” – Paula Abdul
27.“You Give Love a Bad Name” – Bon Jovi
28.“YMCA” – The Village People
29.“Born This Way” – Lady Gaga
30.Crazy Rich Asians soundtrack
31.“I’m Alive” – Michael Franti
32.“Bewitched, Bothered, a
nd Bewildered” – Ella Fitzgerald
33.“I Wanna Be Sedated” – The Ramones
34.“Let It Go” – Frozen Soundtrack
35.“Hallelujah” – K.D. Lang
36.“More” – Bobby Darin
37.“Moves Like Jagger” – Maroon 5
38.“Can’t Take My Eyes off of You” – Frankie Valli
39.“Rather Be” – Clean Bandit
Nava explains awesome Yiddish and Hebrew words used in this series.
•Bat zona (Hebrew) - Daughter of a whore! (Enlightening you on swears from around the world.)
•Beseder (Hebrew) – Okay.
•Maspik (Hebrew) – Enough. Sounds way better growled at someone than the English equivalent.
•Mazel tov (Hebrew) – Congratulations. Can be shortened to “mazel mazel” which sounds super snarky and may leave the recipient in doubt as to how to take it.
•Mensch (Yiddish) – a person of integrity and honor. Technically it’s gender neutral, though I see it applied way more often to men. Go figure.
•Mishegoss (Yiddish) - Craziness. Senseless behavior or activity. I thought this was my grandmother’s nickname for me when I was little.
•Mitzvah (Hebrew) – A good deed. As in “Not punching Drio in the head was my mitzvah for the day.”
•Oy vey (Yiddish) – A very handy exclamation of dismay and grief conveying everything from “aw, man” to “kill me now.”
•Verklempt (Yiddish) – Choked/overcome with emotion. “I was so verklempt after disrupting Ari’s induction ceremony that I had to eat my body weight in chips to calm down.”
Acknowledgments
This book was a beast to write. I owe my husband and daughter insane amounts of love for putting up with me and my many mutterings of “What the hell was I thinking?” and “Never let me have this many threads to wrap up. Ever. Again.” Thank you both for being my ultimate cheerleaders, for making sure food showed up in front of me when I was deep in the zone, and being very patient all the times I nodded at what you’d just told me, even when we both knew I hadn’t actually heard you because again, the zone.
Nava Katz Box Set 2 Page 95
