Extraits

“Alex, tell me you didn’t sleep here last night?”

I jerked upright at the question and my chair rolled away from my desk. The coins I’d been analyzing before I’d nodded off scattered; several rolling over the side of the desk to fall with loud plinks onto the floor. I frowned at the sound and blinked bleary eyes as I tried to focus on the speaker.

Rianna, my once-lost-now-found best friend and business partner, stood in the doorway of my office, her arms crossed over her chest as her green gaze swept over first me and then the mess that comprised my desk. At her side, the barghest who acted as her constant shadow huffed through his large jowls and shook his shaggy head.

“Morning,” I said around a yawn. My neck and back ached—no doubt from sleeping in a chair—and I stretched, trying to work out the kinks. “What time is it?”

“A little after eight. You have a . . .” She pointed to her temple and I placed a hand to the side of my face.

One of the coins clung to my skin. I peeled it off, feeling the slightest tingle of a spell in the metal. Great, one magic coin in the whole lot and I’d slept on it. Of course, maybe it would do me some good. The spell felt like a fortune charm and goodness knew I could use a little luck.

A glance over my desk turned up a blank form. I taped the coin in the provided box and jotted down my initial analysis. I’d do a more in-depth check on the spell later.

After setting down my pen, I looked up to discover Rianna still standing in my doorway, her expression somewhere between concern and disapproval.

“What? I had a lot to do.” I waved a hand to the mess of coins and forms. She cocked one dark eyebrow, clearly unconvinced. With a sigh, I slipped out of my chair and focused on gathering the escaped coins. Even through the solid wood of the desk, I could feel the weight of her stare.

“Oh, yes,” she said, drawing out the words for emphasis. “That looks like an important case. One so pressing, it warranted working through the night.”

I didn’t answer. Rianna and I both had our private investigator licenses, and as grave witches, our specialty was finding answers for our clients by questioning the dead. Analyzing charmed coins didn’t exactly fall within the typical Tongues for the Dead case description, but peering into the land of the dead to raise shades did nasty things to the eyes. So, I’d been searching out cases that wouldn’t make me blind before my thirtieth birthday. It didn’t pay nearly as well as raising shades, but it covered some bills without burning out my vision.

“My last client got arrested before paying for her ritual,” I said, as if recouping the income justified working overtime on a simple spell-identification case we both knew wasn’t pressing.

We also both knew exactly why I hadn’t gone home last night. He had a name.

Falin Andrews.

The Winter Queen’s knight was currently crashing in my one room loft. Considering we were occasionally lovers, that might have been okay, except that it was the Faerie queen’s royal decree placing him there and saying I suspected her motives was more than an understatement. He suspected them too—which was why he himself had told me never to trust him while he was under her rule. Oh yeah, and he’d told me that while holding me at dagger-point. Just after saying he loved me.

Our relationship was complicated, to say the least. In the two weeks he’d been staying at my place we’d barely spoken, by mutual consent. And besides, I was sort of seeing someone else. Can we say awkward? Yeah.

The office was a better option.