Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

O ne thing I can say about nearly a hundred years as an incorporeal spirit—it gives a man time to people watch.

I’d spent thousands of hours watching fools make stupid decisions for all sorts of stupid reasons. Oh, they made some good, heroic choices, too, but there was always that one two-faced bastard of an emotion that tripped them all up.

Hope.

Hope promised dreams fulfilled and happily ever onward. But when the shine of hope wore thin, there was nothing left to it but fear.

And fear made people do all sorts of horrible things.

I figured I had a million reasons to be afraid. Ever since my wife, Lula and I had made a deal with the god, Cupid, to bring me back to life in exchange for finding the spellbook of the gods, we’d been shot at by a monster hunter named Hatcher in Illinois and fought strange creatures in Missouri. We’d dealt with werewolves, ghosts, seers, and wild magic, and had rescued a girl named Abbi who was the rabbit in the moon.

We’d fought the god At? in Oklahoma who had captured Lula and buried her under a house. I’d mostly died (again) and been revived by Death himself.

Our endless trip down Route 66 had become terrifyingly dangerous in a very short stretch of time.

Still, I wasn’t afraid. No, like any other fool, I had hope, and I was clinging to it.

Which was why I was sitting at a table that seated three, by a dust-covered window in an out-of-the-way diner in the Texas panhandle, worrying about a birthday.

Lula’s birthday.

I knew that sounded small…ordinary. But I needed to celebrate her . To thank her for holding onto life all these years I’d been spirit and she’d been half-vampire—holding onto life for me.

“You’re staring, Brogan,” Lula said.

I lifted my glass and drained the water half down, while she continued to scowl at something outside the diner window. Texas was dirt-dry this time of year, heat punching like a fist, pulverizing the green to dust.

I knew Abbi, the Moon Rabbit in the form of an eight-year-old girl we’d adopted, her black kitten Hado, and our dog Lorde were outside around the corner, playing in the diner’s small patch of emerald-green grass, watered soft for playground equipment.

But there wasn’t anything worth seeing outside this window except the parking lot and empty street beyond.

“Maybe I see someone worth staring at.” I waggled my eyebrows.

Lu’s fleeting smile touched down and immediately lifted, allowing her frown to settle.

I wondered if she wanted a romantic birthday, something fancy, or maybe something sweet and simple.

I could do that. Happy to do any of it. But first I had to figure out what she wanted.

She looked away from the dead world outside the window and braced her hands on either side of the bowl of fruit she hadn’t touched. “Ask. You want to know something. You’ve been chewing on it for days.”

Weeks , I thought.

I drained the rest of the water, condensation streaking ribbons down the glass as I set it back on the clean wooden table top.

I couldn’t just ask her what she wanted for her birthday, because she’d be on to me. Then she’d refuse to celebrate at all because my beautiful, clever wife was as stubborn as a rock in a hoof.

“Think Abbi’s worn herself out yet?” I asked instead.

Lu’s eyebrows twitched. “Abbi’s on the swing. She’s trying to convince Hado to accidentally turn on the sprinklers for Lorde.”

“She having any luck?”

Lu tipped her head. Sunlight caught like embers in her red hair as she listened to sounds beyond the window. She was lovely, my Lula. Pale and freckled before she’d been turned into a half-vampire, thrawan , and even more pale now.

Being thrawan made her stronger than a human and gave her a craving for blood, though she still ate food. It also gave her heightened senses, like hearing.

“Not yet.” She shifted, the fire in her hair sparking and spreading. “Now, what do you really want to ask?”

I shoveled the last of my mashed potatoes into my mouth and gave her kitten eyes.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” I pointed at her untouched food, then at her hands, braced like she was ready for a fight. “Anything you want to talk about?”

She relaxed her ready-for-battle stance, uncoiling by measures as if just noticing how rigidly she’d been holding herself.

Barely breathing.

Not quite human.

She picked up her fork and pushed at the cantaloupe, peaches, honeydew, and grapes. “You’ve been distracted,” she said. “Mumbling to yourself.”

“I don’t mumble.”

“All right.” She looked up, mischief in her gaze. “Talking to yourself in a low, barely understandable manner.”

I made an offended sound, which earned me a small smile.

“You’re keeping something from me.” She stabbed a grape and pulled it off the tines with her teeth.It gave a muffled snap as she chewed.

“Can’t imagine that’s true.” I leaned back and surveyed the diner. It was an old building, wooden tables and chairs, vinyl booths. The walls were littered with farm memorabilia and decorations that involved a lot of cows.

A man with dark spiky hair and rosy-brown skin wandered slowly between the empty tables. None of the other people in the place were paying us any mind, but he kept throwing looks our way.

“I know you,” she said.

“Oh?” I asked, thinking I might have found a way to get her to tell me something she wanted for her birthday. “What’s my favorite pie?”

Lu’s gaze flicked up, her eyes honey-gold, a sunset over soft sand. She was fire and light and hope. Being the focus of her attention made me feel like I’d just found my way home after a hundred years’ wandering.

I loved her. Would fall for her again and again, until time ticked into silence.

“Pie.” The arch of her eyebrow was a hook of curiosity. “You want me to tell you your favorite pie?”

“How about I just tell you? I like several pies.”

“I know you like pie, Brogan. I used to make them for you. A lot of them.”

The man cleaning tables made his way closer.

“Pecan,” I said, catching at the old memory. “Apple, with cinnamon and clove. You had a way with crust...”

“There’s pie on the menu.” All her attention was on me now, wondering why I was shaking out old memories like linen on the line.

“Won’t be as good as yours. Never as good.”

“I baked for you back at Ricky’s in Missouri.”

This wasn’t getting me any closer to finding her favorite dessert.

“You baked cake in Missouri,” I said. “You liked that, right?”

She blinked, amused. “Are you telling me you actually want to visit Ricky? Ricky Vargas? The woman you’ve only just begrudgingly befriended because she saved our lives? That Ricky?”

“Let’s say I did want to see her. Not,” I added, “that I want to turn around and drive four hundred miles back to Hornet.”

“It’s only three hundred and fifty miles, Brogan.”

“Right. But if we did go see her, what kind of cake would you bake?”

“For you?”

“You already baked for me. For yourself. What would you bake? Something you love. Doesn’t have to be cake.”

She shrugged. “Something easy.”

Not helpful.

“Let’s say it appeared by magic,” I said, casually. “No work involved. What cake would you want?”

“Magic cake?”

“Pretend.”

“You want me to eat magic cake?”

“Sure.” I leaned forward and propped elbows on the table. “Any cake in the world. Which would you want?”

She opened her mouth then shut it quick, eyes narrowing. “Why cake?”

I shrugged, working to give off the right signals.

This wasn’t important. I wasn’t sweating her birthday. Wasn’t sweating trying to make it something special. Something unforgettable. Something she deserved after all these lonely years.

I spread my fingers. “Maybe it’s just cake.”

The man wiping the table next to us snorted.

“Then any cake’s fine.” The eyebrow lifted again. “Since it’s not for something special or anything, right?”

She wasn’t on to me. Not yet. But if I opened my fool mouth, she’d know. Then my plan (which was to plan to have a plan) would be shot.

“But if you had a choice?”

“Red velvet,” the man said.

Lu’s eyes widened. He was behind her, but she didn’t turn, watching my reaction instead.

Medium built, he wore a dark gray T-shirt printed with black feathers—no, with crows in wild flight, their grey and gold eyes just a glimmer amongst all the black. There was something about him and those crows, all those wings, all those clever eyes, that twigged my fight, flight, freeze instinct.

Then he turned and met my gaze.

His dark eyes were filled with a universe of power that crackled and glowed. He suddenly seemed more—bigger, massive, made of energy instead of flesh.

“God,” I breathed.

Lu twisted to look at him.

“Or,” the god said, still washing the back of the vinyl seat that didn’t need washing, “maybe devil’s food?” He studied his handiwork as if wiping off furniture was the important thing here. “That’s my favorite cake.”

I made to stand, but he shook his head. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Except you did mean to,” Lu said.

He hadn’t moved closer, not one step. But his presence grew, making him shimmer with that heat-wave light only gods carried.

No one else in the diner noticed because the god didn’t want them to notice.

We had no weapons against gods, no real defense. Even so, my hand itched for a dagger, a sword, a gun.

Lula’s fingers drifted to the pocket watch at her neck. It was magic, but all it could do was stop time.

If a god wanted to find us, even stopping time wouldn’t keep us safe.

“True,” the god said. “I did want to interrupt. Your conversation about cake was so riveting. Couldn’t wait to see how it all turned out.”

He left the rag and towel on the table he’d been cleaning and used his foot to hook the extra chair where Abbi had been sitting. He glanced at his bare wrist. “Look at that. It’s my break time. How convenient.”

He dropped into the chair and a waitress strolled our way. She set a huge brownie and a glass of iced tea on the table in front of him.

“Here ya go, hon,” she said. “Remember it’s fifteen minutes, not half an hour like last time.”

“You’re the ginchiest, Connie.”

She rolled her eyes. “Pulling out more of that old ’50’s slang won’t work on me.”

“Not even if I told you it means hip, keen, cool?”

“Compliments won’t get you extra break time either.” She started back toward the kitchen. “You have fourteen minutes!”

He chuckled and cut off a huge chunk of brownie.

“Since I’m apparently on a deadline here, I’ll be brief. I am a god.” He lifted the fork full of brownie in a toasting kind of gesture. “Nice of you to notice. Now, let’s get down to the important things.”

“No,” Lula said.

The god paused, the brownie almost in his mouth. He pulled the fork away. “No?”

“You heard her,” I said. “We don’t make deals with gods.”

He popped the dessert into his mouth, chewed.

“But you do,” he said. “You’ve made a deal— deals , more than one—with Cupid. And you,” he pointed the empty fork at me, “recently came to an understanding with Death that he was very cagey about when I tried to get him to tell me where he’d snuck off to.”

“Leave,” Lula said. “We won’t do anything for you.”

“You haven’t even heard my—”

The door flew open, and Abbi bolted into the room. She was a deity of a sort herself, the Moon Rabbit, but she looked like an eight-year-old girl. She wore yellow tights, a purple shirt, and bright-colored ribbons in her thistledown white hair. Her face was lit up with a huge, goofy grin.

“Crow!” she shrieked.

The god, Raven, shifted in his seat and opened his arms wide. “Bun Bun!”

She gave him the biggest hug, tucking her head into his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her. “I missed you,” she mumbled.

“You know where I’ve been, Bun Bun. Why haven’t you come to visit? I have a whole shop full of pretty balls and baubles for you to play with. Oh, and we have cookies now. Good cookies.”

She leaned back, and Hado, the black kitten who was her shadow and protector, peeked out from under her hair.

He batted Raven’s cheek.

“Darkness,” Raven said. “Keeping an eye on Bun Bun?”

“Those aren’t our names now. I’m Abbi, and he’s Hado.”

“I see. Well then, remember, out here…” He gestured to the diner in general, maybe the world in general. “I’m Raven. Big jobs and all that.”

She grinned. “Did you meet Lula and Brogan?”

“I did. They are very suspicious people.”

She pivoted and frowned at us. “You don’t like Raven?”

“Should we?” Lu asked.

Abbi tipped her head, taking a moment to consider. “I think so. But maybe not. He does tricks sometimes to hurt people.”

Raven stared at the ceiling dramatically. “Ouch, my reputation. Ooch, my ego. How will I ever bear the curse of being a trickster god?”

“Are you going to hurt them?” Abbi asked, serious now, her magic a cool wash in the thick air. “Because I won’t let you. Hado won’t let you, either.”

Raven waved a hand. “If I wanted to hurt them, I wouldn’t be just sitting here eating a brownie, would I?”

“Yes,” another voice said. “You would.”

Standing behind Raven was a man who had not been there a moment before.

The man was big, at least as big as me. His dark hair was combed back old-Hollywood style, his skin pale and unmarked, his shoulders wide. He was as handsome and rugged as a leading man. I immediately knew that was a disguise.

He had chosen this form. I didn’t know what he really looked like, but he wasn’t a man.

“Bathin,” Raven said with forced cheer. “How not wonderful to see you. I don’t remember inviting a demon to lunch.”