It wasn’t perfect, but the holiday season had turned out far better than ever I had hoped. Sure, there were more gatherings, bleeding out, and the addition of blood martinis to my diet, but all said, it wasn’t terrible.
“I’m fairly sure that courtship includes kissing,” I teased. “There’s even mistletoe over the doorway.”
“We’re nowhere near that doorway.” Eli was smiling when he leaned in to kiss me, though, and everything felt just about perfect in that moment.
Death threats, draugr, and drama with relatives were undoubtedly in our future, but for today, I’d enjoy my blood martini and mistletoe kisses.
* * *
The End
The Wicked & The Dead is AVAILABLE NOW!
* * *
“I loved The Wicked and The Dead! A sassy, ass-kicking heroine, a deliciously mysterious fae hero, and a wonderful mix of action and romance. Add that to Melissa's usual great world-building, and I'm already looking forward to book 2!"
— Jeaniene Frost, NYT Bestselling Author
Geneviève Crowe makes her living beheading the dead. But now, her magic has gone sideways, and the only person strong enough to help her is the one man who could tempt her to think about picket fences: Eli Stonecroft, a faery bar-owner in New Orleans.
When human businessmen start turning up as draugar, the queen of the again-walkers and the wealthy son of one of the victims, both hire Geneviève to figure it out. She works to keep her magic in check, the dead from crawling out of their graves, and enough money for a future that might be a lot longer than she’d like. Neither her heart nor her life are safe now that she’s juggling a faery, murder, and magic.
Excerpt of The Wicked & The Dead
The Wicked & The Dead
AVAILABLE now!
Chapter 1
Autumn in the South was still both humid and hot. New Orleans was always a wet city. Wet air. Wet drizzle. Beer soaked streets. Other things spilling out from behind trash bins. Sometimes, the heavy air and frequent rain was just this side of too much.
Most nights, there was nowhere else I’d rather be. We were a city risen from the ashes, over and over. Plagues, floods, monsters. New Orleans didn’t stop, didn’t give up, and I was proud of that. Tonight, though, I watched the fog roll out like a cheap film effect, and a good book in front of a warm fire sounded far better than work. The nonstop rain this month would wash away evidence of the things that happened in New Orleans’ darkened corners, but I could prevent bloodshed. It was more or less what I did. Sometimes, I spilled a bit of blood, but if we weighed it all out, I was fairly sure I was one of the good guys.
More curves and sass than actual guys, but the point held. White hat. Dingy around the edges. I blame my persistent nagging guilt.
A thump on the other side of the wall made me pause.
Could I hurl myself over the wall into Cypress Grove Cemetery? It wasn’t the worst idea ever—or even this month—which said more about my life than I’d like to admit.
I listened for more sounds. Nothing. No scrabbling. No growling.
I needed to be on the other side of the wall where tombs were lined up like miniature houses. The tree branches I’d used last time were gone, probably trimmed by someone who saw their potential. Now, there was no graceful way to hurl myself over the ten-foot wall.
Every cemetery in the nation now had taller walls and plenty of newly-opened space for the dead. Cemeteries had become “stage one” of the verification of death process. Honestly, I guess graves were better than cold storage at the morgue. The lack of heartbeat made it impossible to know if the corpses would walk-again, and those of us who advocated for beheading all corpses were deemed callous.
I wasn’t sure I was callous for wanting the dead to stay dead. I knew what they were capable of before the world at large did.
At least I was prepared. A moment or so later, I shoved a metal spike into the wall, cutting my palm in the process.
“Shit. Damn. Monkey balls.”
A ripple of light flashed around me the moment my blood dripped to the soil. At least the light was magic, not the police or a tourist with a camera. While the laws were ever-changing, B&E was still illegal. And I was breaking into a cemetery where I might need to carry out a contracted beheading. That was illegal, too.
It simply wasn’t a photo-ready moment—although with my long dyed-blue hair and nearly translucent skin, I was far too photogenic. I won’t say I look like I’ve been drained of both blood and color, but I will admit that next to a lot of the folks in my city, I look like I’ve been bleached.
I fumbled with my gloves, trapping my blood inside the thick leather before I resumed shoving climbing cams into gaps in the wall. Normally, cams held the ropes that climbers use. Tonight, they’d be like tiny foot supports. If I were human, this wouldn’t work out well.
I’m not.
Mostly, I’d say I am a witch, but that is the polite truth. I am more like witch-with-hard-to-explain-extras. That smidge of blood I’d spilled was enough to send out “wakey, wakey” messages to whatever corpses were listening, but the last time I’d had to bleed for them to rest again, I’d needed to shed more than a cup of blood.
I concentrated on not sending out a second magic flare and continued to insert the cams.
Rest. Stay. I felt silly thinking messages to the dead, but better silly than planning for excess bleeding.
At least this job should be an easy one. My task was to find out if Alice Navarro was again-walking or if she was securely in her vault. I hoped for the latter. Most people hired me to ease their dearly departed back in the “departed” category, but the Navarro family was the other sort. They missed her, and sometimes grief makes people do things that are on the wrong side of rational.
My pistol had tranquilizer rounds tonight. If Navarro was awake, I’d need to tranq her. If she wasn’t, I could call it a night—unless there were other again-walkers. That’s where the beheading came in. Straight-forward. Despite the cold and wet, I still hoped for the best. All things considered, I really was an optimist at heart.
At the top of the wall, I swung my leg over the stylish spikes cemented there and dropped into the wet grass. I was braced for it, but when I landed, it wasn’t dew or rain that made me land on my ass.
An older man, judging by the tufts of grey hair on the bloodied body, in a security guard uniform had bled out on the ground. Something--most likely an again-walker--had gnawed on the security guard’s face. Who had made the decision to have a living man with no special skills stand inside the walls of a cemetery? Now, he was dead.
I whispered a quick prayer before surveying my surroundings. Once I located the draugr, I could call in the location of the dead man. First, though, I had to find the face-gnawer who killed him. Since my magic was erratic, I didn’t want to send a voluntary pulse out to find my prey. That would wake the truly dead, and there were plenty of them here to wake.
Several rows into the cemetery, I found Alice Navarro’s undisturbed grave. No upheaval. No turned soil. Mrs. Navarro was well and truly dead. My clients had their answer—but now, I had a mystery. Which cemetery resident had killed the security guard?