Tuesday, August 31, 2021

New Release and Story Excerpt!

 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!


Spirited at Amazon

 

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.


Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Rivalries: Chapter Twenty-Five, Part One

 Notes: We're putting things together in these penultimate chapters, darlins! Have a long section of Charlie trying to do the right thing, and being stymied almost the whole time.

Title: Rivalries: Chapter Twenty-Five, Part One

***

Chapter Twenty-Five, Part One

 


Charlie knew the chaos of a battlefield, where every move he made was surrounded by potential death. He knew the chaos of a hospital, where it seemed like every hour yet another person lost their life. He knew the chaos of a school day, now, students jostling each other as they ran from class to class, expectations being met, or not, and the worry that came from caring for so many young people.

He had never before experienced the kind of chaos that came with having your living heart separated from your body, before John was taken away from him. That was what it felt like to be apart right now, and Charlie would have spent a little more time being stunned by just how much he loved John if things weren’t so desperate.

“MR. GIBILISCO KILLED SOMEBODY IN THE PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE!” an incredibly loud girl screeched from the entrance to the gymnasium, and that was it—pandemonium swept the crowd, the last thing anyone needed after the tense duel that Charlie had barely survived. He didn’t know how he made it inside the building so quickly, when his legs were already quivering like two piles of jello, but it wasn’t fast enough. By the time he was at Principal Cross’s office, paramedics and police were already there, and John had already been led outside to a patrol car.

Charlie longed to go after him, to insist he be allowed to see him, to force his way into whatever interrogation they had planned—because from the look on Principal Cross’s face, somewhere between furious and fearful, he knew there was going to be an interrogation. But he also knew that wasn’t what John would want right now. He’d want Charlie to make sure the students were okay, and the student who needed the most help from Charlie right now was, for once, not Ari. It was Roland, and from the way he was shivering in the chair in the corner, his eyes glazed as the nearest paramedic tried to talk to him, he needed a lot of help.

“Hang on,” Charlie said to the paramedic as he knelt down in front of Roland. “Give me a minute with him, okay?”

“Sir, I really can’t have you interfering with treatment.”

“Have you started any treatment yet?” Charlie asked, wanting to shout but restraining himself. He could feel the quiver beneath his feet, the subterranean rumble that meant Roland’s knack was on the verge of erupting. “Because if this is your idea of successful treatment, you need to step back and reassess. I’m a former combat medic,” he added when the EMT looked like they wanted to keep arguing. “And I’m one of his teachers. He’s more comfortable with me. You’re welcome to stay, but please, let me help him.”

The paramedic nodded after a moment, and Charlie focused all his attention on Roland. “Hey,” he said, gripping both the boy’s hands as well as he could with his one. “Look at me, buddy. Look at me, talk to me. What’s going on?”

“Mr. Gibilisco…” Roland whispered.

“Yeah, John’s okay, he’s just with some officers right now.”

“I want him here.”

Charlie sighed. “I do to, Roland, I really do. But there are some things to work out before that can happen. Your foster mom is on the way though, okay?”

Tears welled up in Roland’s eyes, and the floor creaked warningly beneath their feet.

“Aw, buddy, come here.” Charlie pulled the boy into a hug and Roland collapsed against him after a second, sobbing. He was actually taller than Charlie, and it was hard to support so much weight from his kneeling position, but Charlie ignored the pain in his knees and the strain in his back and how his whole body was screaming with exhaustion, and held on to the kid. After a few minutes, Roland started to speak.

“She brought me to Linda.”

Mrs. Patterson? “Who brought you?” Charlie asked.

“Principal Cross. She told me I had to come with her and—”

“Lies!” the woman shouted from across the room, where she was batting away another paramedic. “Absolute garbage!”

“She told me to be quiet and she would come and get me soon,” Roland went on, ignoring the principal’s outcry. “As soon as I saw Linda, I just…couldn’t move. She sat me down in the chair and gave me an injection of something, and—”

“Where did she inject you?” Charlie asked quickly. Roland pointed to his left elbow. “Document that,” Charlie said to the EMT, who pushed Roland’s sleeve back. There was a pinprick mark over the large vein in the crux of his elbow, dotted with blood. “We need a blood sample, too.”

“I’m not a freaking CSI,” the paramedic groused. “Taking blood samples isn’t in my job description.”

“Maybe not, but it’s going to be part of my formal complaint if you don’t do it right now,” Charlie said, dead serious. “And the pictures. This is important, all right?”

The paramedic looked from Charlie to Roland and sighed, his face suddenly looking much older. “Is this an abuse case?”

“Chronic abuse,” Charlie confirmed quietly.

“Fine. But you’re explaining to my supervisor if I get called in to a trial.”

It wasn’t that simple, of course. Principal Cross was as big of an impediment as she could make herself before being taken to the hospital herself for rapidly fluctuating blood pressure. She claimed John had brutally attacked her before breaking into her office, and that she didn’t know what had happened after that. Linda Patterson, who’d been found in said office, had been knocked unconscious by the heavy wooden door that John had apparently thrown at her. None of it could be corroborated by the cameras, apparently, so all they had was the physical evidence at hand, which included Roland.

There was talk of taking him away, putting him in a “secure location” until the truth could be ferreted out. Charlie fought it every step of the way, in between demands that he be allowed to see John, or at least assurances that John had access to legal counsel. By midnight, the only ones still fighting were Mr. Patterson and Principal Cross along with their lawyers on one side, and Charlie and Roland’s case worker Camille on the other side. No one was being allowed to see Linda or John, not until the police finished their initial interviews, which couldn’t happen until Mrs. Patterson woke up.

“I’m positive my wife was unlawfully attacked,” Colonel Patterson finished up, his voice flat and eyes unfriendly. “No matter what was happening in that room—”

“Which is definitively Mrs. Patterson breaking a restraining order by being in the school in the first place, and in the company of a child she’s not permitted contact with,” Camille cut in harshly.

No matter what, I’m sure there’s a good explanation.” He pushed back his chair. “I’ll see you all in court.” Principal Cross went with him, and Charlie turned back to Camille.

“What can we do?” There had to be some way they could cut through the red tape and get John out of police custody. He’d done nothing but protect Roland, and sure, he might have done so with some pretty hairy knacks, but this was the life of a child they were talking about here. Linda Patterson was, frankly, lucky to be breathing.

“There’s nothing right now,” Camille said, sounding tired beyond belief. “We have to wait and see what kind of story they try to spin. That’s all we can do right now, is wait.” She patted Charlie on the shoulder. “I’ve got to get some sleep, but I promise I’ll be back by eight tomorrow morning. We’ll keep at this together.”

“Yeah.” His eyes were gritty from lack of rest, his body so tired he felt like he was about to fall apart. “See you tomorrow.”

“Go get some rest.” She left, and Charlie seriously contemplated putting his head down on the conference room table and falling asleep right here. But he couldn’t do that, couldn’t sleep without knowing how John was, without doing everything he could to make sure he was going to be all right. He needed help. He needed specialized help, more than Huda could give him, and it wasn’t fair to ask Huda to do more than be with Ari right now. He needed…

Oh. Shit. He knew just who he needed.

Charlie blessed the fact that he’d thought to grab John’s jacket, which had his phone in it. It was locked, but he knew the passcode—he’d seen John plug it in enough times—and went to his contacts. What would she be under, where would she be…ah. Probably Wicked Witch of the Lab.

He pressed send, then waited nervously. Maybe she wouldn’t pick up. Surely she wouldn’t—it was too late for her to be—

“Dr. Mullins speaking! Who is this?”

Charlie cleared his throat. “Ah, Dr. Mullins. You might not remember me, but my name is Charlie Verlaine, I’m a—”

“Friend of John’s, of course! The one with that delightful little knack problem.” Hell of a way to describe Ari’s issues. “What can I do for you, Sergeant Verlaine?”

Charlie sighed deeply, then began to fill her in.