CHAPTER ONE
One 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 Atë 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 celebrateher. 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.
Beingthrawanmade 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.
