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"I like the shadows. It's where I feel most at home."

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"I bet you look pretty fantastic in a bikini. Or out of a bikini." He grinned. "We could get a private beach. Swimsuits would be optional."

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Hs moufht left mine, and those golden eyes scorched me from inches away. "The mistake is thinking you don't deserve something god in your life. You refuse to believe what's going on right now matters at least as much, if not more, than whatever's behind you." He nuzzled my neck and breathed deeply. "You want me, right here, right now, and that scares you. I want to make you forget all the bullshit in you head. I want to make you happy, but you won't let me, and that's the biggest mistake of all."

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When I started to refuse, his eyes lit up with anger. "Be reasonable. Adam caused you harm and he wants to make it right, for his sake as well as yours. You're hurting yourself and him declining his help."

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"Maybe you shoudn't be so quick to tell him to hit the bricks if he wants to talk. You two had a nice thing going there for a while. He's good for you. And you can't very well blame him for trying to take care of you. He's an alpha. It's waht they do."

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PROLOGUE

When the half-drunk graveyard shift cook with singed eyebrows and Johnnie Walker breath says you’re looking rough, you know you’ve got problems.

“Thanks for the coffee,” I said wearily, tucking cash under my plate and heading for the door.

“Your food!” the cook hollered, gesturing with his spatula at the counter, where I’d left behind an empty coffee pot and untouched club sandwich.

“Guess I wasn’t hungry after all.” I pushed the door open and headed out to the parking lot.

When I’d arrived, despite it being after midnight, the only available spot in the tiny lot next to Nancy’s Diner was at the back near the dumpster. I unlocked my car, tossed my bag onto the passenger seat, and started to get in.

Someone screamed.

My head whipped around. The sound cut off abruptly, but not before I was already running toward the alley on the other side of the dumpster.

When I rounded the corner, I saw what looked like three or four people fighting about twenty feet away. As I got closer and my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I realized with horror that three young men had cornered a blonde girl by a large trash bin. She kicked wildly as one of them tried to pin her against the wall and another covered her mouth while the third yanked her bag away and dumped it on the ground.

“Hey!” I yelled.

They looked up. The one who’d taken her bag dropped it and headed toward me, while the other two continued to struggle with the girl. She looked at me, her eyes huge and panicked.

“Bitch, you better get out of here,” he told me. A blade glinted in his hand. It was shaking.

“I don’t think so,” I said, advancing. “Put your little knife away before you hurt yourself.”

Twitchy raised his knife and spun it between his fingers with surprising dexterity. I was close enough now to see he wasn’t trembling because he was afraid. His pupils were dilated, and despite the cool night, he was sweating. Realization dawned. He wasn’t scared; he was high.

The girl suddenly screamed again. One of the other thugs swore. “She bit me!” He punched her in the jaw. She hit the pavement hard and didn’t move.

I took a deep breath and said a little prayer to whoever might be listening. I was about to do something really stupid.

“Look at you losers,” I taunted them. “Three of you against one girl. Is this the only way you can get any action?”

That did it. With twin snarls, the other two joined their friend, leaving the girl on the dirty pavement behind them.

“Maybe we start with you instead,” the tallest of the three said. “You got a big mouth. It’ll feel real good right here.” He grabbed his crotch and the other two laughed.

Two of them—Twitchy and Dipstick, the tall one—had blades. The third cracked his knuckles while he leered at my chest. His hands looked bloody, from hitting either the girl or someone else earlier in the evening. All of them twitched like they were holding onto a high-voltage wire.

Three against one wasn’t great, but I wasn’t nearly as defenseless as they probably thought I was.

Dipstick came at me first. I waited until he was about four feet away before I flicked my right wrist in a gesture as if I were tossing a pair of dice. Bright green earth magic spiraled out of my hand. His eyes widened, but he had no time to react before I whipped the stream of cold fire through the air and lashed his knife hand. He screamed and dropped the knife, doubling over and clutching his hand. I struck again, knocking him flat, then kicked him in the jaw. He went still. One down.

Knuckles took a step back, but Twitchy advanced, his lip curled and knife raised. He turned back to his companion. “Come on!”

They rushed me.

I went for Twitchy, striking out with my whip and connecting with his chest. He staggered back but managed to hang onto his blade. Knuckles came at me from my left side, which was smart…or might have been, if my whip were my only weapon.

Knuckles took a swing at me and I ducked. My cold fire whip vanished and I hit him in the chest with both palms. A strong blast of air magic sent him flying backward ten feet to smash into the wall of the building. The impact knocked him out and he hit the pavement in a heap. Two down, one to go.

In the meantime, Twitchy was on the attack. His blade sliced across my right forearm and I cried out. Before he could strike again, I lashed out and my whip caught him across the neck. He shrieked and stumbled, dropping his knife to grab his throat. I took two steps to pick up momentum and kicked him in the groin. He doubled over with a breathless scream and I brought my knee up into his face. Cartilage crunched and he went down, blood streaming from his nose. One kick to the head, and then there were none.

Breathing hard, I looked at my arm. Blood dripped from my fingers. I couldn’t see how bad the cut was in the dim light, but the tear in my sleeve was about six inches long and the wound stung.

Before I could deal with my injury, I had to make sure they stayed down until the girl and I were gone. I touched Dipstick’s arm, using a “nap” spell that put him out cold for about an hour. I went to the other two and repeated the spell.

If Malcolm, my ghost sidekick, were here, he’d have asked me why I hadn’t just put them to sleep as soon as I got close enough to touch them. I’d have told him I wanted the practice, but the truth was, I’d needed that fight to blow off steam. All the tension that had been building in my shoulders for the past week or so was gone. I felt lighter.

With the three would-be rapists taken care of, I went to check on the girl. She was still unconscious, her jaw swelling where Knuckles had hit her.

At a glance, I guessed she was a working girl: short black skirt, high heels, mesh top over a bright pink bra. The contents of her bag lay scattered around her.

While I waited for her to wake up, I unfastened one of the charms on my bracelet—a small, blue crystal—and moved until I was leaning against the wall, out of sight of the street and the diner parking lot. I pushed up my sleeve, held the crystal to my bloody right forearm, and invoked the spell. “Helios.”

It was a mid-range air magic healing spell, the strongest I dared carry with me. I breathed deeply through the pain as the spell worked to heal the knife wound. The pins-and-needles sensation lasted for about a minute.

When at last the magic faded, I tucked the spent crystal into my pocket and looked at my arm. The cut was mostly healed, reduced to an angry red line. Another healing spell would heal the injury altogether, but I only had the one with me. I’d have to wait until I got home.

I rolled up my sleeves to hide the blood and went back to where I had been standing when my arm got cut. I crouched and put my fingertips in my blood on the pavement. “Burn.” With a whoosh, white fire—my air magic—consumed my blood, leaving behind a fine gray ash that would blow away.

I went through Dipstick’s pockets first. His wallet contained a few bucks in cash, no cards, and an expired driver’s license identifying him as John Andrews. I put the cash in my pocket, left the wallet on the pavement next to him, and turned his jeans pockets inside out. Nothing but some loose change and a lighter.

Nothing interesting in Knuckles’s pockets, either, though I confiscated about forty dollars in small bills.

I hit pay dirt with Twitchy. He had a respectable roll of cash and two small plastic bags containing marble-sized amounts of black crystals. The bags were marked with black flames. I frowned. What the hell is this? I wondered. What were these guys on?

I tucked the money in my pocket and the drugs in my boot and stood. Behind me, I heard a moan. When I turned, the girl was blinking and looking around, plainly confused.

I approached slowly so I didn’t startle her. “Hey, are you okay?”

Her eyes widened. “Where are they?”

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