Hi darlins!
Today is release day for Spirited, the final book in the Treasures series, wrapping up my delve into kickass m/m urban fantasy. It's far from my last. I've got a new UF/superhero story going on Patreon, which is super fun (yes, it's a Panopolis offshoot), but today I'm all about Spirited!
You can find Spirited on Amazon and KU, and you don't have to have read any of the first three books to get this one. If you like strange magic, lovers to enemies to lovers, and deadly stakes, then this story is for you. Enjoy the excerpt!
Detective Jack Haney is tracking down the manufacturers of a new,
dangerously toxic drug. He's disgusted to learn that her superiors have
brought his former partner--and lover--Garrick O’Connel in to help with
the case. The drug has a magical component that makes it hard to
preserve, and Garrick’s magical abilities can get the job done. He seems
eager to get back in Jack's good graces, but after the way they parted
five years ago, Jack’s not sure he can trust Garrick.
The case is
turning deadly, and Jack's dangerous magic might be the only way to
solve it. It also might kill him, but Garrick swears he can keep Jack
safe while he hunts down the sorcerer behind it all. Can Jack trust him
to keep his word this time?
Can he trust Garrick to save not just Jack's body, but his heart?
***
Spirited
Chapter One
Summer, 2011
A single dusky blue orchid sat on my desk when I returned to the station. Just the one flower, elegant and exotic, curving slightly towards my chair with its sweet-smelling blossom perfuming the room.
And it was growing out of my coffee cup.
“Damn it!” I threw the paper sack that held my lunch onto my desk. No way. No way in hell. I stormed out of my cubicle and down the hall to where my supervisor, Paul Myers, spoke on the phone in his much more private office. He held a hand up to forestall any interruption. I waited with ill grace until he hung up a few minutes later, then I exploded.
“I’m not doing it!”
“Jack.” He tried to placate me. “It wasn’t my idea, but the commissioner insisted on it. Try to be reasonable.”
“Reasonable?” I exclaimed. “How can I be reasonable, when you’re handing my case over to that arrogant, selfish, ass-kissing little—”
“Jack, you’re keeping the case. O’Connell will just be assisting in the fieldwork. It’s safer for you to have backup anyway. Someone inside the clubs, not just sitting in a squad car a block away.”
It was reasonable, but I didn’t want to listen to reason. “He can’t tear himself away from a mirror long enough to be helpful. Paul, come on,” I pleaded. “I’ve been working on this case for three months and I deserve to be the one to see it through. Just because the police commissioner thinks Garrick O’Connell is the greatest thing since the inception of forensic thaumaturgy doesn’t make him a good man in the field. He’s a lab rat disguised as a caped crusader. He doesn’t follow orders. He—”
“Steals glory?” Paul interrupted softly. His voice was kind but firm. “I know how you feel about O’Connell. I know you two have a history together. But you said it yourself, Jack. You’ve been working the case for three months, and you still haven’t managed to get your hands on a sample of the drug. We need to know what we’re dealing with in order to hunt down the people who are manufacturing and distributing it, and this stuff has the fastest half-life of any magical narcotic we’ve ever encountered. We can’t hold the people who sell it because as soon as they turn out their pockets, the stuff disappears.” He sighed heavily, the lines in his face deepening.
“Meanwhile we’ve got everyone from runaway kids to the wife of a state senator getting sick on the stuff. O’Connell’s skills fit this case. The police commissioner thinks we need him to close it, and I agree with him.” Paul heaved himself up from behind his desk and walked around to me, then put a hand on my shoulder.
It wasn’t strictly professional, but I didn’t care. Paul and I went way back. He was one of the only people in the world I could truly call a friend, him and his wife Moira. The only other person in this part of the country whom I’d known as long as them was Garrick, and our relationship…hadn’t turned out so well.
“He’ll be back soon; he had some sort of official luncheon to get to and couldn’t wait for you. When he gets here, give him the case file, okay? Try to be polite. You’re both adults. Both professionals. Both cops. You can do this.”
It was all true, yet I felt like a whiny teenager. Something about Garrick pushed my angst button. Maybe it was his showmanship, maybe it was that his career had gone so much further than mine, maybe it was just that I sometimes woke up with tears on my face after I dreamed about him.
But Paul was right. I needed to focus on solving the case. People’s lives depended on it.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice almost steady. “Yeah, of course I can. Sorry about the tantrum, Paul.”
“If you never threw them, I’d suspect a doppelganger had taken your place.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Mean? What? Did I say something?” Paul grinned and headed back around to his chair. “Old age is messing with my short-term memory. Or at least that’s what I tell my wife whenever I can’t find the remote to change the channel from football to interior decorating.”
“You’re a bad man.” I shook my head. “Very bad. I hope Mo gives you hell.”
“She does, and I prefer to think of it as adding a little spice to our relationship,” he replied smugly. “Now get out of here. Go take a walk or meditate or whatever you have to do to be ready to deal with him when he gets back.”
“Will do.” I turned around and left his office, moving a lot more slowly than I had when I’d entered it. Inside though, my heart raced. Meditate? I’d need my punching bag to calm down at this point.
I sat down hard in my chair, rocking it back onto two wheels, and stared resentfully at the orchid. My lunch sat uneaten on the desk, and my appetite had fled with my composure. Garrick O’Connell. Shit. Well, the least I could do was be ready.
I started organizing the files on my desk, pulling together everything I had on the drug case. The files practically were my desk these days; this case had consumed my world. A brand new drug called Dream, manufactured by magic and controlled the same way, it seemed. I had been trying to get a bead on the dealers for weeks and weeks; that was usually the easiest place to start. It was no good, though. The drug dissolved into thin air as soon as we touched it. Apparently user intent played into its very existence, and if we weren’t buying then we weren’t getting anything, not even a speck.
Buying it didn’t work either though, not in the long term: if you didn’t take Dream within ten minutes, it vanished again. There was something new every day, but this stuff was so new it was on a level all its own.
I was so busy getting things together that I didn’t notice his arrival. The scent from the flower suddenly grew stronger, and I looked up just in time to see Garrick run one of his long, slender fingers down one of the velvety petals.
“I designed this orchid just for you, Jack.”
I didn’t raise my gaze beyond his hand. I didn’t want to see the slow curve of that smile spreading across his too-handsome face. I didn’t want to look at him at all. After a brief pause, I kept pulling my paperwork together. “Blue isn’t my color.”
“Well, originally it was going to be a lighter shade, but there was a little coffee left in your mug when I willed it to grow.” He sounded amused.
“Light blue is still blue, Detective O’Connell. It’s a pale, washed-out figment of its better self, but it’s still blue.”
“Do I detect some rancor, Detective Haney?”
I lost my cool and glared up at him. It hurt to see him for that first few seconds, standing so close after years apart, but I let my anger override the piece of me that still felt an anxious sense of desire and longing in his presence. He was smiling, the bastard. His hair was rich auburn, longer than regulation, but of course he got away with that. He was part of a family that got away with a lot of things thanks to their warm, endearing perfection. Their particular gift leant itself to beauty and health. Whereas mine…
It isn’t a competition, I reminded myself sharply. I made myself smile at him. “Rancor? Not at all, Detective O’Connell. Here.” I thrust a three-hundred page file into his arms. “Some reading material to start you off. Feel free to pull up a footstool.”
“I’m fine here, thanks,” he replied, settling his weight on the edge of my desk. “And I think you can probably fill me in faster than reading this file could.”
Damn it. I fought to keep my professional face. “What do you want to know?”
“Do you have any ideas about the chemical makeup of the drug?”
“All we know is that it’s a powerful hallucinogen,” I replied. “It induces euphoria in small doses. Larger doses lead to manic fits, hysteria, and seizures. A large enough dose can cause death, and it isn’t a pretty way to go.” My eyes glazed over for a moment as I remembered the girl from last weekend. Cute young thing, probably expecting a high like ecstasy, and instead she screamed herself to death. When I came out of my brief stupor, I noticed Garrick looking concernedly at me. Concern looked good on his face, but I knew better than to trust him.
“Despite that, the demand for the stuff is higher than ever. Dream has a magical component to it that connects it to the will of the dealer. If they want it gone, it’s gone. It has to be used fast and that’s probably one reason for the overdoses. People get anxious and they take too much.”
“The maker is a sorcerer, then.”
I nodded. “And the dealers all have to have some ability too, in order to make the connection to the drugs. There are several guys I’ve been covering, but they move around a lot, and the sorcerer has a spell that changes their appearances.”
“Aha.” Garrick smiled knowingly. “That’s the real reason you’re on this case.”
My particular talent did assist me with identifying people, but the way he said it rankled. “I’m on this case because I broke this case wide open, Detective O’Connell. I work Vice, or didn’t you remember that? Oh wait, that’s right!” I plastered a falsely bright smile on my face. “You don’t get into the trenches anymore. You’re too busy kissing ass on Capitol Hill. Do Italian boots taste better when you lick them, Gare?”
I tried to make him mad. I hated his presumption, his casual ease, his designer clothing, and his heartthrob smile. I wanted to break his composure. Angry, guilty, whatever—as long as it wiped away his cool. Instead, he threw his head back and laughed. “Oh my god, no one has called me Gare for years! Jack, you do care.”
“No, I don’t.”
“If you say so.” He glanced down at the file. “So you need me to stabilize the drugs?”
“So they tell me. We need to find out what’s in them, get a handle on where the sorcerer is getting his raw materials.”
“Why not just tail the dealers?”
“It’s not that easy,” I said defensively. “Their appearance changes, Detective. It changes every five freaking minutes. This is a high-level spell, and I’m under orders not to break cover. I’m a spotter, nothing more.” That rankled, too. “By the time I get a description off to the uniforms and they move to arrest, the face has changed. The one time we did get a collar, the drugs had evaporated. This is a sharp organization. These guys are really good.”
“Is your cover solid?”
God, I wanted to smack him so hard I knocked his ass right off my desk. “Yes,” I said slowly and calmly. “My cover is solid. My cover is great. My cover is not the issue here, so drop it.”
“It’s a security question, Jack, nothing personal.”
Everything is personal with you.
Damn, I was losing it. I needed space, fast. “If you have everything you need to make a start, I’d appreciate it if you’d go, Detective O’Connell. I have a lot of work to do.”
“I’m sure you do,” he replied. “Are you running an operation tonight? Should I be getting ready?”
There was no way I was ready to run an operation with him. “Not tonight. I’ve got other plans. Tomorrow.”
“Friday it is.” He got up off my desk, taking the file with him. “I think I’ll go see Paul again before I leave. It’s been a long time. Call me when you’re ready to go out.”
“Yeah.”
He paused, then crouched down next to my desk, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet. His eyes somehow forced mine to meet them. “It’s good to see you again, Jack. Really.”
I didn’t say anything. I just couldn’t; my throat had swollen shut. Forcing it open now would cause a dam to break inside of me, and I couldn’t live with myself if I made a pathetic scene in front of Garrick. He looked at me searchingly for a moment, then got up and walked away. I exhaled explosively as soon as he turned into Paul’s office, and felt the prick of treacherous tears threatening my eyes. I had to get out of there.
I grabbed my jacket off the back of my chair, pulled my bag off the floor and tossed my unappetizing lunch into the trash can. After a moment’s pause, I took the stupid orchid with me as well. No reason to let it suffer just because its maker was an asshole.
I went out the back door, not wanting to go by Paul’s office while Garrick was in it. My little clunker was waiting for me in the lot. Parked right next to it was a monstrous SUV, silver hued with custom hubs. Garrick’s car. The irony of his parking placement didn’t escape me. If I didn’t love my Beetle so much, I would have bashed his door with mine.
I kept my composure and pulled out of the lot. I kept it on the drive home. I kept it until I was through the front door of my apartment, my things were on the counter and my shoes were off. Then I put the orchid on my kitchen counter and let myself vent—yelling, tears, the whole shebang.
It didn’t make any sense. I was over Gare; I really was. I hadn’t had any interaction with him for five years, not since we were both rookies working our first cases together. We had met in training, and as the only two trainees with magical abilities, we were put together a lot by the instructors.
It was impossible not to be attracted to him at first sight. Beautiful and talented and smart…back then he had been kind, too. He was the first person in his family to break with the healing tradition to go into law enforcement, and he felt isolated because of it. I was thousands of miles away from my own family, and even lonelier. We became friends, partners, and eventually lovers.
The partnership only lasted a year. We were assigned to find an escaped convict hiding in a Louisiana swamp. He was half troll, and talented enough with nature magic to hide himself well. Gare could track him through the muck, though. He’d always been good with finding things in the wild.
We’d followed him into a deep section of mangroves before realizing that it was a trap. Hip deep in swamp water, the liquid suddenly became thick sludge, holding us fast. The convict could do more with his magic than just evade us, it turned out. The mud sank beneath our feet, burying us further and further in the thick, murky water.
Except it didn’t affect Gare like it did me. He hadn’t realized before that day exactly how much power he had. He broke free of the spell, propelled himself straight out of the water, and willed the mangroves themselves to hold the convict in place. It was an astonishing display of nature magic, and the convict was as surprised as Gare. Once the prisoner was secure, Garrick had remembered me.
Only by that point, I had drowned.
