by Gina LaManna
“What did she want?” I whispered, remembering her pale, shrunken face at the bread vendor in the marketplace.
Trees loomed around us, arching tall pines with visible fog winding through the branches. I shuddered.
“Trenton’s mother wanted to thank you,” he said. “She was affected by Harmony. When I escorted her to the hospital, she knew me—or recognized my name—and we got to talking. She doesn’t hold anything against you, Dani. She knows Trenton’s death was his own doing.”
“How do you know that?”
Nash raised both palms. “I’m just the messenger. Do with it what you will. I hope it helps you realize that you’re not to blame.”
“Funny. You’re giving me the same lecture I was prepared to give you.”
Nash smiled. “Maybe it’s a DeMarco thing.”
I smiled too. “I’m sorry about Peter, Nash.”
“Me too,” he said. Then, gruffly, he pulled me into a hug and brushed a quick kiss against the top of my head. “By the way, congrats. The department is lucky to have you back. But if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll have to kill you.”
I gave him a good-natured shove away. “Love you, too, big brother.”
“Lieutenant, Detective...” A shimmering form appeared behind the trees. “Am I interrupting?”
Nash’s head snapped up. “Not at all, Captain. I was just leaving.”
“Don’t leave on my account,” Matthew said, stepping forward from between two thick trees. “I can always speak to the detective on Monday morning... at the office.”
Matthew’s loaded comment sank softly into the mossy grounds. Neither Nash nor I responded, though Nash did give a nod of dismissal to me, then the captain, before turning to leave.
I had eyes only for Matthew. I’d never been through the Dead Lands with him before, and it was an oddly mysterious feeling to be here with a vampire. Matthew looked stunning, as if he belonged here, as if the beauty of death and darkness brought out everything that was Captain King. Dark, brooding eyes and broad, sturdy shoulders held high. A suit made from the finest materials glistened with fingerlings of fog. Skin, so silvery pale that he looked like a piece of moonlight against the blackness of the Dead Lands behind him, shone bright.
“You shouldn’t have come here alone,” he said finally.
“Is that an order?” I found my voice, stared him down. “I thought work didn’t start until Monday morning.”
Matthew broke into a smile. “How are you feeling, Detective?”
“Fine. A little uneasy.”
“Discovering a close friend’s true nature is never easy when that nature is dark,” Matthew said. “I hardly think your feelings are unusual.”
I shrugged.
“I suppose congratulations are in order.” Matthew moved closer. “Detective DeMarco.”
I lifted my chin high. “All thanks to you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He asked your permission first.”
“Yes,” Matthew said in a careful, measured voice. “Two days ago.”
I blinked, calculating. “Two days ago? You mean—before we...”
“Yes.” Matthew watched me carefully. “The department is very pleased to have you back.”
“What about you?”
“I want to see you happy. If this makes you happy, then I, too, am pleased.”
“I wouldn’t have taken the job if—”
He raised a long, slender finger. “I couldn’t live with myself if I made you give up your dreams for mine.”
“What are your dreams?”
“To be with you,” he said simply.
“Matthew...”
He turned one finger into five, holding his palm out in a stop sign gesture. “Until you feel ready to come back to me, don’t say it. Don’t say anything—it will only make matters worse.”
My eyes teared. “You know I love you.”
He closed his eyes, let his hand drop. “I understand.”
“But—”
“I know.”
“If we are meant to be, then why is it so hard to be together?” A sob bubbled up in my chest. “I want to be with you, Matthew, but there’s no easy path to us.”
“I’ll make one when you’re ready.”
“I want to be ready.”
“But you’re not,” he said gently, dropping his grief, his frustration, his hurt, and leaving an expression filled only with love and light. He moved closer, drew my face into his hands, and pressed a life-giving kiss to my lips.
It only made me sob harder because he was right. The only man I loved was Matthew, but the time was not ours to have. Not yet.
So, I let my arms loop around his neck and devour the kiss as if it were our last. Our tongues tangled, the heat from me blending with the tender strength of him. By the time we separated, my tears had bled to his face, and his cool touch lingered on my skin.
“So,” he said, breaking the silence while my tears still glittered on his pale cheeks. “I guess this is it, Detective. Until Monday morning?”
I NEEDED SOME TIME to cool down after my run-in with Matthew. The news that he’d given the chief his word before we’d spent the night together meant something. I wasn’t sure what—but it meant something.
I ached, physically and emotionally, as I parted ways from Matthew outside of the Dead Lands. I needed to get back to the pizzeria, but I couldn’t go straight there—I was a mess. My eyes were red-rimmed and my face exhausted. The last thing I wanted was to see my family and be forced into a sympathetic pep talk.
As I wandered through Wicked, I strolled closer to the marketplace than usual. I passed several small shops, decided there were too many happy people milling about for my liking, so I turned down a dark and dingy side street. It better fit my mood.
I glanced through the windows of the shops and restaurants as I passed them, content to watch strangers interact in their normal lives, until I caught sight of one particular loner in a grimy old pub with a frosty pint in front of her.
I stalled, a wave of guilt shattering in my stomach, splintering and breaking off every which way. It was impossible to say how long I stood there, but it was long enough for Sienna to raise a skinny arm and wave to the bartender for another glass.
I averted my eyes, feeling voyeuristic as I studied her. I made it two steps before I stopped, a decision snapping into place and forcing me to turn back. I yanked the door open to the pub and slipped inside. I was at Sienna’s table and seated before she could utter a curse.
“Hi,” I said simply. The bartender swooped by to take my order, but I shook my head.
“Bring her one,” Sienna drawled. “She’ll need it.”
The bartender looked confused. He slunk away behind the bar and pretended to be busy while watching us from under lidded eyes.
“Sienna—”
“What brings you here, hotshot?” Sienna pulled her pint closer, wrapped her thin fingers around it, and studied me. She had violent black hair today—one side of her head was completely shaved, the other was covered by long, beautiful locks. Her black jeans were ripped and her shirt hung on by threads, dripping from her thin body underneath a chunky leather jacket. “Should I be asking for your autograph?”
“I came here to apologize.”
“Right.” Sienna rolled her eyes, took a sip of the pint, and slammed it to the table. “Now that you’re hired back on and need favors from me, we’re friends again?”
“Believe it or not, I owe you an apology, and I’m good for it. I know when I screw up.”
Sienna studied me. “Did you screw up?”
I hesitated. “No. I saw what I saw. And I wasn’t all that far off, was I? It was an inside job. Peter Abbott is dead because of it.”
“And Lucia?”
“She’s alive and well,” I said. “So are the rest of the Harmony patients at the hospital. At least for now.”
“What about the invisible kid in the interview room?” Sienna
asked. “He survived?”
“Juno?” I couldn’t help but grin. “He’s better than ever. He’s out of the Herbals business now, and he’s going to help Willa’s mother with her garden. DeMarco’s Pizza is going to be buying some herbs and veggies from them moving forward.”
“Aren’t you all just one big, happy family. What about Lucia?”
“Lucia will be fine—she’s tough. She’ll have some things to work through, but she’ll get there,” I admitted. “The chief has given her six months paid leave, and I encouraged her to take it. She’ll decide if she wants to come back after that.”
“You nervous about her decision, Detective? There have never been two Reserves on staff,” Sienna said. “You’ve got competition.”
“Look, Sienna—I know you’re upset, and frankly, that’s fine. You deserve to be,” I said. “I wasn’t wrong about what I saw, but that’s only part of the story. I should have trusted you. Matthew did. He never for a second believed you could have had anything to do with the bodies disappearing.”
“Right.” Sienna snorted.
“Matthew trusts you. He respects you,” I said. “And I do, too. I was wrong to assume, Sienna. I’m sorry.”
The bartender chose that very moment to deliver a pint of beer. He slid it in front of me and was gone again before I could thank him.
“You trusted Peter, too,” Sienna said finally. “And if you’d believed him explicitly—if you hadn’t followed your gut—people would still be dying from Harmony.”
I shrugged. “True, but—”
Sienna raised her glass. “Forget about it.”
“About what?”
“Cheers,” she said. “You’re the meanest detective I know, and we’re glad to have you back.”
“But—”
“You owe me dinner, remember?” Sienna said with a fiendish smile. “I cancelled our ladies’ night when you started thinking I stole dead bodies. So, what do you say? Are we back on?”
“Did someone say ladies’ night?” The door to the pub clanked shut as a breathless Willa appeared behind me. “I have been trying to catch up with you all night, Detective, but you’re so damn fast. Hi, Sienna. Anyway, I wanted to tell you thanks from my mom, Dani. She’s feeling so much better, and now that you’ve given her some work, it’s like she’s a new person.”
I patted the seat next to me while Sienna gestured for another pint. When the bartender delivered it to Willa, the three of us raised our glasses.
“To all the superwomen who saved our city.” Willa raised her glass and winked. “That’s you two, if you didn’t know. By the way, super cute jacket, Sienna. Detective—maybe you’ll look a little more badass if you shave one side of your head, too?”
Both Sienna and I stared dumbly at Willa.
“Right—never mind,” she said, and raised her glass higher. “Cheers.”
Epilogue
A shadowy figure cloaked in black robes watched Danielle DeMarco as she walked home... alone.
His hands were splayed over the crystal ball before him, his eyes alight with fire as he studied her careful footsteps, her bright eyes—remnants of jolly laughter left behind after a night at the pub with her friends.
He could do it now, he thought—kill the detective and end this, once and for all.
But that would be far too easy.
“Soon,” he murmured to the damp, stone-cold room. “Very, very soon...”
“But sir.” A man spoke quietly, with reverence, before his master. “Let me get rid of her this evening, and you will never have to worry about The Hex Files again.”
“Silence,” the master said, and then turned to his assistant. “Touch her, and you die.”
The master’s eyes gleamed.
The fire crackled.
The crystal ball went blank.
“She’s mine.”
THE END
Wicked State of Mind
Special Thanks:
To Alex—from your potato-loving BFF! я тебя люблю!
To Stacia—the best editor a girl could ask for, and the best other half of my brain!
To my family, friends, and LaManna’s Ladies, thank you for getting lost in Wicked with me!
Synopsis
There’s no rest for the Wicked...
It’s Detective Dani DeMarco’s first week back on the job, and she is not amused. The coffee at the precinct is a disaster, a most annoying colleague is driving her insane, and her on-again, off-again boyfriend is now officially her boss. As if that’s not bad enough, Dani’s faced with a double homicide before the caffeine even hits her system.
When a high-profile young elf is kidnapped and destined for death, Dani’s forced to go toe to toe with a kidnapper who has unlocked a secret so potent it could destroy an entire race of paranormals. Coupled with a favor she takes on for a mysterious friend, and Dani’s cup has runneth over. Way over. And if she can’t unmask the kidnapper before it’s too late, Dani might find herself in the crosshairs...
Chapter 1
“Well, hello, gorgeous.” A voice spoke coolly from behind me. “Am I imagining things, or is that a Reserve making coffee?”
I deliberately ignored Marcus, the slimy detective who’d slipped into the breakroom next to me. I pulled the carafe from the coffee machine and groaned. Empty as usual.
Shuffling toward the cupboard, I pulled down beans and filters and threw both into place, feeling Marcus’s eyes drilling holes into my back. I pressed the start button and waited impatiently for the machine as it gurgled to life and sputtered out the dark liquid that used to pass for my daily injection of caffeine.
Finally, I sighed. “We’re not doing this again, Marcus.”
He winked. “Glad you missed me.”
I rolled my eyes and turned my gaze back to the carafe, willing it to fill faster. Marcus was a stage ten idiot—who was annoyingly intelligent and a good detective. That made him the worst. He knew all the right buttons to push, and he never ceased to jam them all at once.
Even worse than his intelligence were his looks. Marcus was annoyingly handsome. He had the sleek blond hair of a cartoon hero and muscles that made him look like someone had blown him up just a little too big. His dress shirt stretched tightly across his body, and when he leaned against the counter, a few buttons gaped to show a smoothly tanned stomach.
Blargh.
“So, are you still single?” Marcus asked.
I yanked the coffee pot out and shoved a towel underneath the steady drip. With trembling fingers, I managed to pour most of the coffee into a World’s Best Dad mug, and then I shoved the carafe back under the drip and threw the towel into the sink.
I began to storm past Marcus, but he rested a hand on my wrist. It stopped me cold in my tracks. It took all my self-restraint not to dump my coffee straight down his shirt. “Get your hands off me.”
“Maybe you’d want to grab a drink sometime.”
“Bite me, Blondie.” I jerked my arm out from under his touch and pressed through the door, muttering under my breath, “Asshole.”
The second I stepped past him, I ran smack dab into a bigger, harder chest. The murky scent of thick coffee was instantly replaced by a sharp, familiar crispness that had my stomach curling in anticipation.
“Making friends, I see?” Matthew King, captain of the Homicide Unit, stood in my way. “Is this really the way you’d like to start your first day back on the job?”
I scratched at the back of my neck and rolled my eyes. “I came back here to work, not to solicit offers for dates.”
It was a bit of a cheap move, but I knew that would grind Matthew’s gears. The captain and I had a long running on-again, off-again romantic relationship. Even when we were firmly planted in the ‘off’ position, Matthew didn’t like to see me in a relationship with anyone else. I could relate. I’d feel the same way if he found a woman to replace me, too.
“Conference room, now—both of you,” Matthew said, his voice containing a heavy dos
e of his persuasive magical powers. “And Detective Prey... I don’t have to tell you to leave the Reserve alone, do I?”
Marcus wasn’t the least bit fazed by the captain’s stature or threats. He erred on the side of cocky and seemed to think he was equal in size and strength to Matthew. Marcus might be a very powerful sorcerer, but if he met Matthew in a dark alley, I had no doubt who would win. And it wasn’t Blondie.
I stood at attention, waiting for Marcus to lollygag nonchalantly down the hallway in the direction of the conference room. He whistled a little tune and held a coffee cup—still empty, I noted with satisfaction—as he moved away from us. Once he was out of earshot, I rounded on Matthew.
“Leave me alone!” I hissed. “Come on, King. I can take care of myself. You go around saying things like that, and people will think you’re my babysitter.”
“I’m not your babysitter,” Matthew corrected. “I’m your captain. I watch over my people.”
“Yeah, well, watch over me a little less than everyone else,” I grumbled. “I can handle Marcus. He’s an idiot.”
Matthew cocked his head to one side, not quite agreeing, not quite disagreeing. “I’m laying down the ground rules. It’s your first day back, Danielle.”
“Yeah, well, right now, the ground rules are making it look like I’m a suck up,” I said. “People will think I just got my job back because Lucia’s taking some time off, and the boss happened to have dated me in the past.”
“This is not about us.”
I blinked. “Fine. Where’s my desk?”
“I’ll show you later.” Matthew appeared dismayed our personal chat was over. “Now, the conference room.”
“No rest for Wicked, huh?”
Matthew gave me a thin smile. “Welcome back, Detective.”
WE MADE OUR WAY TO a conference room that felt like a children’s classroom. Chairs were lined up in rows and a sturdy podium stood at the front of the room. The flag of Wicked hung brightly behind it.
