Red

Book 1: Transplanted Tales Novel

by Kate SeRine

Genres: Action & Adventure Romance; Fantasy Romance; Paranormal Romance

Synopsis

"My name is Tess Little. But everyone calls me Red." Once upon a time, a spell went awry, stranding Make Believe characters in the ordinary world. Since then, Tess "Red" Little--a/k/a Little Red Riding Hood--has worked as an Enforcer for the Chicago branch of the Fairytale Management Authority. But, consider yourself warned--she's not just some waif with a basket of goodies. All grown up and with nothing to lose, a gun and combat boots is more her style. And Red's new assignment threatens to be short on happily ever afters. . . Someone is murdering transplanted Tales in gruesome fashion. The list of fictional characters capable of such grisly acts is short and includes more than one of Red's old flames. And if that wasn't bad enough, there's another complication, in the form of sexy, enigmatic Nate Grimm, the FMA's lead detective and part-time Reaper. Used to following her own rules and living life on the edge, Red has managed to avoid taking on a partner until now. But Nate's dark side makes him perfect for a case like this. That is, if she can trust him. Because if there's one thing Red knows for sure, it's that believing in the wrong person can have big, bad consequences. . . "It's not often that something totally new and entertaining comes along, but Kate SeRine doesn't disappoint with Red. I definitely recommend this to readers who want humor, drama, suspense, and a truly entertaining, "feel good" romance." --Kate Douglas "Unique and totally off-the-wall, fun, romantic, suspenseful, oh-my-GAWD enjoyable!" --Kate Douglas "If you love fantasy, romance and old fashion gumshoe detective stories you are in for a great read!" --The Best Fantasy Stories " Red ROCKED! The writing was smart and clever, and I really enjoyed SeRine's voice." --Basia's Bookshelf National Reader's Choice Award Winner Kate SeRine (pronounced "serene") faithfully watched weekend monster movie marathons while growing up, each week hoping that maybe this time the creature du jour would get the girl. But every week she was disappointed. So when she began writing her own stories, Kate vowed that her characters would always have a happily ever after. And, thus, her love for paranormal romance was born. Kate lives in a smallish, quintessentially Midwestern town with her husband and two sons, who share her love of storytelling. She never tires of creating new worlds to share and is even now working on her next project. 106,000 Words

Release date: August 1, 2012

Publisher: eOriginals

Print pages: 352

Sample

I’d been watching Dave “Pied Piper” Hamelin for a couple of days, waiting for the right moment to bring him in for his most recent screwup. Dave was a registered sex offender who’d reportedly blown the terms of his parole: no kids, no hookers, no booze. Period. And as an Enforcer for the FMA, it’s my job to, well, enforce the laws of our kind by any means necessary.

Fortunately, Dave hadn’t slipped up on the first condition this time—otherwise some other Enforcer would be hunting me down and dragging my ass in for murder. But, too bad for Dave, when he did resurface from a prolonged period of flying under the radar, he was bare-assed and shit-faced at a brothel run by one of my best informants.

One thing you learn in this business—keep your friends close and your informants closer. I’d spent decades forming my network of snitches and knew exactly who to go to when I wanted the best inside information. For people like Dave who couldn’t control their more questionable proclivities for very long, Happy Endings was pretty much a foregone conclusion. This wasn’t the first time I’d picked up Dave here and probably wouldn’t be the last.

I checked my watch, noting the time. Seven o’clock on the dot. Dave’s compulsion for punctuality was legendary—he never missed a deadline and expected the same courtesy in return. Knowing he’d be showing up any second now, I scrunched down a little lower in the seat of my jalopy masquerading as a Range Rover until I could just barely see over the dashboard.

Dave and I’d had a few go-arounds in the past, so I knew he wasn’t going to be glad to see me and didn’t want him to bolt and go into hiding again. Considering that he owned and operated a successful, environmentally friendly, and totally green pest control business and rarely deviated from his highly ordered life, the guy was surprisingly hard to corner.

Squinting against the setting sun that backlit the building across the street from me, I shook my head in dismay as Dave pulled up to the curb in his BMW. He jauntily hopped out, tossing his keys to the waiting valet.

What a dumb-ass.

You’d think someone who’d spent the last couple hundred years nickel-and-diming it in an FMA prison would be a little more careful, but the fact that he’d been visiting his favorite haunt for a little slap and tickle every night for the past couple of days had made him complacent and sloppy. An idiocy twofer.

Rock on.

I got out of the Rover and hurried across the street, grabbing the keys from the valet and pitching them down the chute of a blue mailbox.

“What the hell, lady?” the shocked, freckle-faced teenager demanded. “I’m going to lose my freaking job!”

I paused midstride and gave the kid a bemused look. “Freaking?” I repeated. “Kid, if you’re going to start something with me, go big or go home.”

He screwed up his face at me as I bolted up the rest of the steps and through the brothel’s bright red door. The red door was a bit cliché, sure, but as far as these places went, Happy Endings honestly was about as classy as you could get.

A grumpy looking dwarf—no, really, he’s a dwarf, long beard and everything—gave me a nod as I passed through the foyer in search of my pal Dave. Seeing me coming, paranoid patrons skittered back into their alcoves and love dens. Knowing me either by sight or by reputation, they were smart enough to get out of my way as I plowed a path to the fantasy suite where I knew Dave would be getting busy.

I was just reaching for the yawning lion’s head doorknob when a buzzing at my hip and the sudden strains of Combichrist’s “Red” made me jump. Too late, I realized I’d forgotten to silence the ringer on my cell phone. I cursed under my breath at the unforgivable oversight and reflexively hit the button on the side. But the rustling within the room told me that I wasn’t the only one who’d heard it.

“Great,” I huffed, leaning away from the door and giving it a powerful kick with my battered and worn combat boot. “So much for surprises.”

As the door swung open, I caught a glimpse of Dave’s back disappearing out the room’s emergency exit. A startled, pigtailed blonde pretending to be half her age hastily gathered the sheet over her bare breasts.

“Sweetie, you do this for a living,” I muttered as I rushed toward the back door. “Little late for modesty, don’t you think?”

I heard Goldilocks call something in the general direction of my departing, but didn’t bother trying to decipher it. Probably nothing I hadn’t heard before.

“Come on, Dave!” I hollered into the darkening alley I now traveled, my knees pumping as my boots pounded the pavement. “You know how this is going to end.”

I paused to catch my breath and listen for movement. Suddenly, something zipped past my face, startling me into a defensive crouch.

“What the hell?”

Not eager to get myself shot, I drew my own weapon and pressed closer against the bricks, creeping more slowly toward where I could hear Dave’s ragged breathing.

“You shooting at me, Dave?” I called out, inching farther along. “You’re a jerk and a pedophile, but you’re not a murderer. Throw the gun on the ground where I can see it.”

“Leave me alone, Red!” came the shaky reply.

“You know the drill, Dave. It’s no big deal—”

Another wild shot rang out, ricocheting off the brick and sending up a cloud of red dust.

“Damn it, Dave! Watch what you’re doing!”

“I mean it!” he yelled back, his voice taking on an edge of hysteria that made me nervous. “You don’t understand, Red. I can’t let you take me in!”

“You know me, Dave,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “I’ll make sure—”

This time when the gun fired, the bullet wasn’t for me.

One nice thing about being a former fairytale is that we’re damned hard to kill—more or less immortal, really, when it comes to the usual ways of buying the farm—but one thing that’s guaranteed to get the job done is a bullet to the brain. And Dave had managed it beautifully.

“Damn it, Dave,” I muttered, squatting down beside him. “What the hell scared you this badly?”

“Hey ya, Red.”

My head snapped up quickly at the sound of a familiar voice. “Hey, Nate,” I said with a grin. “You almost scared me to death.”

He threw his head back with a burst of mirth that always seemed at odds with this kind of crime scene, but I guess after so many years of collecting the dead as a Reaper, he’d become desensitized to it all.

Nate Grimm came over in the forties and had been so enamored with the post-WWII era he’d never really left it. Let’s just say if he’d suddenly faded to black and white and started doing his own voice-over narration in that world-weary raspy voice of his, I wouldn’t have been entirely surprised. I’d never seen him in anything except an impeccably tailored wool suit, simple silk tie, and an overcoat that looked like a prop from Casablanca. And the fedora that covered his dark hair was such a permanent fixture, I often found myself debating if the shadows shrouding his handsome face were from the hat or some other, more mysterious source.

Nate was the FMA’s top homicide detective and, by virtue of his special talents, always knew when one of us had checked out before you could even call it in. Anybody that dialed into death was a shade or two this side of creepy, but still, I couldn’t help liking the guy—even if in the back of my mind I knew he’d eventually be coming for me, too. There was just something about him that had always intrigued me.

Chomping his gum with the kind of rabid intensity that defined everything he did, Nate ambled over to Dave’s body, hands buried deep in his pockets. For a long moment, he studied the gore at my feet, his thoughts churning almost visibly behind his stoic expression. “Offed himself, huh?”

I nodded, knowing that I was still frowning. “Doesn’t make any sense, though,” I told him, rising to my feet. “I was only bringing him in for a minor parole violation. Nothing serious. But something had him scared enough to dread going back to prison. Any ideas what he’d be so afraid of?”

Nate’s bottomless black eyes flashed briefly with a haunting light as he considered my question and mangled his gum with increased vigor. I could practically see the wheels turning. Then, finally, he shook his head. “Nah. I got nothin’.”

“Some detective you are,” I taunted, casting a wry grin his way and receiving a handsome, good-natured smile in return.

Nate jerked his head toward my hip. “You gonna get that?” I’d been so caught up in bantering with Nate I hadn’t noticed my phone was ringing again. With a groan at the unwelcome interruption, I snatched up the offending device and glanced at the number before answering.

“Hey, Elizabeth.”

“Tess! I’m so delighted to have finally caught you,” came the slightly husky, softly accented voice of my best—and pretty much only—girlfriend. “Is this a bad time?”

I tried not to sigh. “Uh, yeah, actually,” I admitted, edging back toward the opening of the alley and away from Dave’s body. “I’m kind of in the middle of something. I’m really sorry—”

“Not at all,” Eliza said quickly. “I had hoped that perhaps you’d like to join me for tea this evening. Or perhaps a glass of wine? Darcy is away on business. . . .”

I glanced over my shoulder to check on the progress of the investigation and was startled to see that Nate had followed me. He stood with his arms crossed, grinning smugly while he watched me struggle with abruptly downshifting to girly mode.

“Uh, sure,” I relented. “Yeah. I can come by after I finish here. See you soon.”

“How is the lovely Mrs. Bennet-Darcy?” Nate asked as I pocketed my phone once more.

“Piss off,” I snapped. “You’re just jealous she prefers my company to yours.”

Nate’s laugh burst out again, echoing in the alley. “Perceptive as always, Red. Tell me your secret, or I’ll have no choice but to unleash my charm.”

Now it was my turn to laugh. “And what charm would that be?”

Nate grabbed my arm and spun me around once, dropping me back into a dancer’s dip so swiftly it stole my breath. “The same charm you find so irresistible.”

Irresistible?

I’d never really thought so until now as I suddenly found myself knocked off balance and held tightly in the arms of Death himself.

My instinct was to make some smart-ass quip, but as I became very aware of his arms wrapped around me, one hand pressed firmly in the small of my back, I was completely enveloped by him. Every sense soaked him in, making it hard for me to breathe—let alone put together a coherent thought. And when he offered me that mischievous wink of his, my stomach unexpectedly danced a little jig.

What the hell?

Nate wasn’t a particularly big guy, even though at an inch or so shy of six feet tall he had a good foot of height on me. But he had the kind of strong, broad shoulders you knew you could count on to back you in a fight and an imposing presence that made everyone wary the minute he walked into a room. Everyone but me, that is. I found his presence comforting, soothing—and, at that moment, incredibly and disconcertingly sexy.

My confusion and bewilderment must have leaked into my expression because Nate’s altered as well, becoming far more sober than I’d ever seen. For one crazy, mind-numbing moment, I thought he might actually kiss me.

Fortunately, just as things were getting too weird for my liking, my phone went off again, making us both start and practically jump apart. Still rattled by what had just occurred, I reflexively answered the phone, my eyes never leaving Nate’s and noting with surprise what looked like disappointment shining there.

“This is Red.”

While I listened to my boss’s sharp directive, I followed Nate with my eyes as he returned his attention to the crime scene and began to walk a slow, careful perimeter. A moment later, a nondescript black cargo van pulled up at the end of the alley. Two huge dudes in black suits and sunglasses sprang out to guard the entrance to the alley as the forensics team piled out, their unmarked black equipment cases in hand.

“What do we have, Grimm?” Trish Muffet, the coroner and lead forensics Investigator, pulled on a pair of latex gloves with a no-nonsense snap as she approached. Her buttercup yellow ringlets made her seem a lot mousier than she was, but this gal sure wasn’t afraid of spiders anymore. Or anything else, I imagined.

As Nate took Trish on a tour of the scene, I gave myself a mental shake and turned my attention back to the irritated voice on the other end of the line. “Yeah, I heard you,” I replied. “I’m on my way.”

Deciding to leave them to it and get to headquarters as I’d just been commanded, I hurried off toward my worn and battered Rover, mustering all my resolve to keep from glancing over my shoulder to where I knew Nate was watching me go. I could feel his gaze on me, willing me to turn around. In all the times I’d been around him and all the times we’d worked a crime scene together, I’d never noticed that pull between us, but I sure as hell noticed it now.

I shrugged my shoulders, mentally pushing Nate away. I’d felt that kind of a connection to someone before and knew just how dangerous it could be. No way was I going to put myself through that again.

I always hated going in to headquarters. The glossy black marble floors and one-way glass walls sucked the light out of the air and made me feel claustrophobic. Much like the lives the Tales led among our human brethren, or Ordinaries, our law enforcement agency was shrouded in secrecy and shadows.

Blend in. Avoid suspicion. Act human. That was the warning drilled into each Tale after crossing over, and the building’s lack of personality was a perfect reflection of this doctrine. In fact, if it weren’t for the pixie couriers flitting between offices delivering field intelligence, you would’ve thought you were in your average, run-of-the-mill, secret government installation.

But it wasn’t just the ominous decor that made me twitchy. I preferred to be out on the road, doing my thing and bringing in the bad guys, not sitting in some office, dealing with bureaucrats and politicians as they argued about jurisdictions and budgets and whatever else happened to be the issue of the day.

Apparently, today’s issue was more serious than the usual fare, if the hushed tones of conversation and studiously averted gazes were any indication. Not one person I passed was willing to look me in the eye. I certainly didn’t have a lot of friends within the FMA, but I wasn’t usually the leper I seemed to be today.

If the silent treatment in the hallways hadn’t tipped me off that something was up, the Chief ’s scowl when I entered his office certainly would have done the job.

FMA Chief Director Al Addin was a menacing SOB even on a good day, but today he was flat-out frightening. I was betting whoever had pissed in his Post Toasties that morning had received one serious ass-chewing.

Al was a damned good Investigator and had worked tirelessly to turn the FMA into what it was today. Considering it was his genie involved in the little kerfuffle that’d landed us in the Here and Now, he felt like he owed it to the rest of us to bring some sort of order to the chaos of our abrupt relocation. Unfortunately, it was a never-ending struggle that had cost him his fortune, his marriage, and his peace of mind. And yet he dragged his ass into work every day to make sure that the rest of us had a chance to live free and happy where fate had tossed us.

That’s why I respected the hell out of him. As long as he continued to pay me better than he should have without grumbling too much about the occasional mess I made, I figured the least I could do was put up with a trip to the office every now and then.

“Rough day?” Al grumbled with a scowl as I dropped into the leather chair across the desk from him.

“You have no idea,” I muttered, flipping a thick lock of ebony hair over my shoulder and propping my cherry red combat boots on his desk.

(What? The boots? Hey, if I’m going to be saddled with the moniker anyway, I might as well rock it right. Besides, a cherry red leather trench coat, while wicked cool, was a bit impractical in my line of work. Too visible. Mine’s black, natch.)

Al’s brows lifted a bit. “Oh, I think I might. Get your boots off my desk.”

I dropped my feet back onto the floor. “Listen, Al, there was nothing I could do. Dave has never carried a weapon in all the years I’ve known him. I had no idea he—”

“This isn’t about Hamelin’s suicide,” Al interrupted.

Now it was my turn to be surprised. “It’s not?”

Al leaned back in his chair, his already dusky features seeming to grow darker. “We have a problem.”

“When don’t we have a problem?” I joked, trying to lighten his mood and make myself feel better at the same time.

It didn’t work.

Al opened a drawer and pulled out a manila folder that he then handed to me. “Take a look.”

Warily, I peeked inside and quickly flipped through the crime scene photos, my gut clenching at the violence and gore captured in startlingly vivid detail.

I can’t pretend I wasn’t disturbed by the carnage I saw in those eight-by-ten glossies. The victims had been ripped apart, savagely mutilated. It wasn’t the aftermath of your average mugging gone wrong or even your run-of-the-mill contract hit or crime of passion. I’d seen plenty of those, trust me. No, this was far more personal. There was a rage behind it that was animalistic, inhuman.

“What am I looking at here?” I asked, my voice quivering in spite of my best efforts to seem unaffected.

Al leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desk pad. “Four Tales have been murdered in the last thirty days. There wasn’t much left for us to examine, but from what we can tell, they were all killed by the same person.”

I glanced up at him in surprise. “A serial killer?”

Al nodded solemnly. “Looks that way.”

I pulled out one of the photos and looked at the victim more closely. After a moment, I realized it had once been a man and not a Jackson Pollock gone awry. I cleared my throat of the bile rising there. “Who were these people?”

“Minor characters for the most part.” Al took the photos from my hands and spread them out on his desk. “Julie Spangle,” he said, pointing to the first. “She had a bit role in a Restoration Comedy in the sixteen hundreds. She’d been trying to break into the theater scene here in town but was waiting tables to get by.”

I scooted to the edge of my seat to get a better look as Al tapped the second photo.

“This one is Dale Minnows. He was an unnamed sailor in Moby-Dick. Made a fortune in shipping since coming over but had become a complete recluse over the last couple of years.” He slid the third photo forward. “Sarah Dickerson. Ms. Dickerson was the maid in “Sing a Song of Sixpence” and stayed in domestic service after she came over a couple of years ago. She was dropping off dry cleaning for her employer when she was attacked.”

I picked up the fourth picture—the one that had nearly made me retch just a moment before. “And this guy?”

“Probably the only name you’ll recognize—Alfred Simon.”

“Simple Simon?” I said, tossing the photo back onto the pile. “Poor little guy. Last I heard he was holding down a good job delivering soda to restaurants or something. Who’d want to hurt him?”

Al shook his head. “We don’t know why anyone would want to hurt any of these victims. There’s no discernible connection between them.”

“Has anyone talked to the families? Employers? Friends?” I asked.

“They can’t give any reasons, either.”

“Wrong place, wrong time?”

Al shrugged. “That’s what we need to find out.”

“Any suspects?”

He took a sudden interest in the notepad on his desk as he replied, “A few.”

“What about a murder weapon?”

“Claws,” he said, his tone sounding almost apologetic. “Massive blood loss.” When he looked back up at me, I was surprised to see true regret behind his expression. “I’m really sorry, Red.”

He was sorry? Oh, I seriously didn’t like where he was going with this.

“Any number of creatures could have done this,” I insisted, waving my hand toward the pictures. “What about the Jabberwocky? That guy’s a certifiable lunatic. Last time I brought him in, he was sucking out goat brains in rural Texas and scaring the hell out of the locals who swore up and down they were being attacked by a chupacabra. As I recall, you had a fun time trying to spin that one. Coyotes with mange, was it?”

“Jabberwocky’s still safely in the Asylum,” Al assured me, ignoring my acidic tone.

I ran a hand through my hair in frustration and let the heavy locks fall loosely over my shoulders. “What about one of the witches? There are loads of those twisted sisters who could have pulled off something like this using a ritual or a curse.”

Al opened his palms to me in a gesture of sympathy. “I already had forensics test the bodies. There’s no indication that magic was used to commit the murders remotely.”

Now I was just getting pissed off. “How do we even know it’s one of ours? There were some pretty crazy things hanging out in the Here and Now long before we showed up. What about that Sasquatch guy we dragged in for questioning last year? What was his name? Phil Something. He really rubbed me the wrong way—shifty eyes.”

Al sighed but didn’t respond, letting me work through everything in my head until I came around to the same conclusion he had. I wasn’t quite there yet.

“And what about an Ordinary? They’ve had their own fair share of sickos,” I reminded him. “Jack the Ripper, Belle Gunness, H. H. Holmes, Jeffrey Dahmer . . .”

“All dead, which you well know. Besides, the Ordinaries have no reason to target us this way.” Al’s stony expression softened a little and his voice was quiet when he said, “This was an inside job.”

“Says you.”

“Red—”

“Who found the bodies?”

Al sighed again, apparently willing to indulge me for the moment. “You know who.”

“Nate.”

Al nodded, then steepled his fingers, looking like an Arabian Sigmund Freud as he leveled his gaze at me. “Nate Grimm would be a damned good detective even without being a Reaper,” he reminded me. “You know he doesn’t make the kinds of mistakes you were about to suggest.”

Al knew me all too well. And, apparently, Nate knew me better than I’d thought. The little dance number in the alley now made perfect sense. He’d been playing me—probably hoping his so-called charm would cushion the blow of the bombshell he was about to drop.

“We need you to bring in the suspects for questioning,” Al continued, interrupting the progress of my rapidly growing grudge. “That’s all it is for now.”

I gritted my back teeth, knowing who would be top on their list without even asking.

I’d told Al that any number of creatures could have committed the murders, but that wasn’t entirely true. As much as I liked to think there was a hoard of potential suspects, I had to admit only a few consistently came to mind as I sat there mulling it over. And one of them was Seth “Big Bad” Wolf—the man I’d thought was my Happily Ever After.

I’d been wrong about that, so it was possible I was wrong about this, too. After all, I’d seen Seth defend himself against a lynch mob of angry villagers and come out of it without so much as a scratch, so I knew firsthand the kind of damage a cornered werewolf could do. But my intuition told me there was no way in hell Seth had committed the murders.

And Al had said “suspects,” I reminded myself. Plural. More than one. So even though he and Nate had probably already convinced themselves Seth was their guy, they were at least keeping their options open.

I couldn’t fathom what would have made Seth—or anyone else—go on a killing spree this savage. But someone had. Someone with a serious ax to grind.

Fortunately, it wasn’t up to me to figure out a motive. I’d leave that part to Detective Twinkle-Toes. All I had to do was round up the suspects. Then I could just walk away.

Well, that’s what I told myself anyway.

“Okay,” I said, holding out my hand to receive the assignments. “Give me what you’ve got.”

Al handed over three thick files. I didn’t even bother looking at them as I rose stiffly.

“Red,” Al called out, bringing me to a halt as I strode to the door. “I need this one over before the Ordinaries catch wind of it. Something like this could destroy everything we’ve built here.”

I paused, staring at the floor so he wouldn’t see the emotions raging war inside me. “I understand, sir.”

“Sir?” Al repeated. “You never call me ‘sir.’”

I attempted a saucy smile. “First time for everything.”

Al let out a long sigh and pushed back from his desk. Knowing what was coming, I tried to open the door and make my escape before he could offer any friendly advice, but he was there with his hand pressing the door closed before I could open it more than a crack.

“I know this one isn’t going to be easy,” he said gently. “But you’re the best Enforcer I’ve got. I need to know you’re on this.”

I didn’t immediately respond.

“Red?”

“Yeah,” I snapped, wrenching open the door and knocking his hand away. “I’m on it.”

I put on my best Don’t Fuck with Me scowl when I left Al’s office and kept my head down so I wouldn’t have to see all the pitying and anxious looks my colleagues gave me as I barreled down the hallway. It was taking all my restraint not to run toward the nearest exit to escape those stifling corridors as it was—the last thing I wanted was for someone to try to strike up a conversation that might seem well-meaning but was more about getting the latest gossip.

Besides, there was something about this case that was making my skin crawl with apprehension . . . and it wasn’t just the prospect of having to haul in my former lover. The whole thing just didn’t feel right.

I liked to think I had my ear pretty close to the ground when it came to these kinds of things, but I hadn’t heard anything lately that was out of the ordinary. If someone was harboring a grudge this powerful, he was keeping it well hidden. No easy task, I imagine. Hatred that potent has a way of spilling out at the most inconvenient times. Which meant eventually he’d slip up and give himself away. And I’d be right there to drag his ass to jail.

“Another job well done, Red. Bra-vo.”

Speaking of barely restrained hatred . . .

I stiffened immediately at the one voice that could get my hackles up in an instant. Forcing a smile that felt grotesque on my lips, I turned around and batted my eyes innocently.

“Well, if it isn’t Mistress Mary Quite Contrary,” I drawled, infusing my voice with my own special blend of syrupy sweetness and pointed disdain. “My visit wouldn’t have been complete without bumping into you. Tell me, how does your garden grow?”

Mary “Quite Contrary” Smith was so named for a reason. She was the most condescending, abrasive, ball-busting bitch I’d ever met. She also happened to be the FMA’s prosecuting attorney and had a hard-on for making me look bad at every opportunity. What was most irritating, though, was that she managed it with the kind of cold, calculating finesse that almost made me want to thank her for the effort.

A little more salt for my wound? Why, yes, thank you—don’t mind if I do. Could you give that knife another twist while you’re back there? Perfect!

Funny thing was, if I hadn’t hated her so much I think we might’ve actually been friends.

Mary looked down at me from her statuesque height, peering over the top of her naughty librarian glasses to make sure I realized that she was far superior to me—from her perfectly coiffed golden tresses to the tips of her six-hundred-dollar Manolo Blahniks.

“Original as ever,” Mary sneered. “Your sense of humor’s as stale as your sense of style.”

Ouch. That one hurt. I live in jeans and combat boots—so sue me. It’s a little hard to do my job in a business suit, no matter what you see on TV. And running in heels? Please.

“So, did you stop just to chat about my inability to accessorize,” I asked, keeping my expression mildly bored, “or did you actually have something worth saying?”

Mary looked like she would’ve liked to punch me in the face, but she was far too poised and professional to give in to her baser urges, which was lucky for me. Don’t get me wrong—I had no doubt I could wipe the floor with her pretty little buns of steel, but after she picked herself up off the floor she would have had me behind bars in a fairytale minute. And as much as I love to invite authority to bite my ass, I couldn’t deny that being stuck in the clink with the very people I hunted might be a bit . . . awkward.

“I just wanted to congratulate you on killing yet anot. . .