The drunk waved his hand, then frowned when he realized it was empty. “What the—” He looked up and blinked at Quinn. “How’d you do that?”
Quinn signaled a white-faced Katie to step away. She glanced around to be sure everyone was out of reach and then faced the drunk.
“You want to leave my establishment,” she told him with forced calm.
He scowled. “T’hell I do. I ordered a beer! And I’m not leavin’ till I get it!”
“Yes you are.” She jerked back as the man lunged at her, flicking her fingers at him. He slammed into an invisible wall but only grew angrier. Quinn swallowed hard. She didn’t have the power for more than this, and she couldn’t risk her staff getting hurt. Summoning the knife and stopping the drunk’s movement required only a little access to the waning moon. But because it had already passed the zenith of its arc, even this drained her.
She had enough for one more act. Please let it be enough. She thought heat and pointed at the sleeve of the man’s denim jacket. A second later it caught fire. He yelled and slapped at it, extinguishing the flame almost immediately, but it had done its job.
His eyes wide, he tried to back away. The overturned chair tripped him up and he stopped. “What are you?” His voice quavered.
Electric awareness alerted Quinn to the presence of the man two feet behind her before she heard his voice, a slight Texas drawl mellowing the deep rumble that always made her think of his perfectly tuned muscle car.
“She’s a goddess.”
“Goddess,” the drunk scoffed. “Them’s just a myth.”
Nick Jarrett stepped past Quinn, standing between her and the drunk without making it look like he was getting in her way. The hunger that had been easing all day flared, but because she’d never recharged with Nick, she was able to stamp it down more easily than she had last night.
“You don’t believe your own eyes?” Nick said to the drunk.
The drunk scowled at them, then at the tiny wisp of smoke rising from his sleeve. He blinked blearily and stumbled toward the door, grumbling under his breath.
“That’s what I thought.” Nick swung around to look at her, a hint of a smile on his full lips and welcome in his green eyes. “Nice parlor tricks.”
Quinn snorted, covering how happy and relieved she was to see him, and turned to her busboy. “Catch that guy and call Charlie to pick him up in his cab, will you?”
“Sure.” He pulled out his cell phone and hit speed dial on his way out. Everyone else dispersed, leaving Quinn relatively alone with Nick. Adrenaline drained out of her, and she would have sat, if showing weakness in front of him wasn’t so unappealing.
“So what’s going on?” She tucked her fingertips into her jeans pockets. The anxiety buzzing in her all day disappeared, allowing the alarm triggered by the e-mail to resurge. “You’re never early.”
“We’ve got a problem.”
Quinn watched him scan the room, cataloging her customers and staff, lingering on her computer in the far corner and the closed door to her office. His face tightened, and he moved a step closer.
“I know we do,” she said.
He whipped his head around, his eyes sharp. “You do?”
“I just found out. Come here.” She led him to the table where her computer slept, its screen dark. “I read this e-mail not five minutes ago.” They sat down, and she tapped a key to wake the computer while Nick signaled for a beer.
They waited for the wireless connection to reestablish. “You getting a lot of trouble like that guy?” he asked.
“No more than usual.” She glanced at him. “Why? Is someone else?”
“Nah.” He stood to pull off his battered, hip-length brown leather coat and hang it over the back of the chair, then rolled the sleeves of his flannel shirt up strong forearms. A waitress sashayed over to set an amber bottle on their table. She looked at Quinn, who shook her head, but Nick made a face and dropped the money on her tray. “Don’t listen to her.”
Quinn didn’t bother to argue. They had the same argument every time he came. Sometimes she won, sometimes he did. It balanced in the end.
Nick sat back down and took a pull of the beer, his strong throat working with the swallow. Light from a nearby candle picked up glints of gold in his short-cropped, dark blond hair. “Where’s Sam?”
Quinn cleared her throat. “In the office.” She diverted her eyes to the computer screen but heard his small snort of derision. “I had it under control, Nick.”
“The moon’s waning, Quinn. I don’t care how powerful you are at peak, you’re tapped out by this time—”
“Not completely. And protecting me isn’t Sam’s job.” She winced, realizing too late it might sound like criticism of Nick, and she hadn’t meant it to be.
He froze, the bottle halfway to his mouth, then set it down. “I told you to stick close. He should be out here. Or you shouldn’t. And I’m not listening to you argue with me. What have you got?” He turned the computer toward him, ignoring her exasperation.
She twisted to read the e-mail with him, now more confused by the words on the screen than anything else. “Well?”
Seconds passed while his eyes tracked over the words. “Fuck me,” he said softly. “That’s not the problem I was talking about at all.”
Get tangled in Entangled Select
After demons leave the world in ruins, the Demon Slayer, Hunter, is the only man capable of protecting it. But when he’s hired to bring a thief to justice, Hunter gets more than he’d bargained for.
Raised in an abandoned temple as a priestess’s daughter, Airie is unaware that she is the half-breed spawn of a demon…and a goddess. In a time when half-breeds are despised by mortal and immortal alike, Airie’s ignorance of her true bloodlines is the only thing keeping her safe. Especially since spending her days wrestling the required sacrifices from visitors of the Goddesses’ mountain where she grew up doesn’t make her many allies.
But everything changes when Hunter tracks her down and discovers who she really is. With a demon attack forcing them to flee the mountain, Airie must place her trust in a man who believes she should never have been born. And with a demon uprising threatening the lives only he can save, Hunter must make a choice: abandon Airie to an uncertain fate, or slay his own personal demons and love her for who she truly is.
Chrysander Notos, Supreme God of the South Wind and Summer, is on a mission: save Eurus from his death sentence and prove his troubled brother can be redeemed. But Eurus fights back, triggering vicious storms that threaten the mortal realm and dangerously drain Chrys.
Laney Summerlyn refuses to give up her grandfather’s horse farm, despite her deteriorating vision. More than ever, she needs the organized routine of her life at Summerlyn Stables, until a ferocious storm brings an impossible—and beautiful—creature crashing down from the heavens.
Injured while fighting Eurus, Chrys finds himself at the mercy of a mortal woman whose compassion and acceptance he can’t resist. As they surrender to the passion flaring between them, immortal enemies close in, forcing Chrys to choose between his brother and the only woman who’s ever loved the real him.