Page 1 of Snowed In with an Incubus

Chapter 1

Two weeks ago?

Sam Heller frowned as he counted up the days in his head. That couldn’t be right. He hadn’t gone more than one week without his potion since he was a teenager.

His boss’s voice echoed from the back room of the tattoo studio. “Snowing pretty bad out there! Any more and nobody will want to go to Reg’s New Year’s party. You’re coming, right?”

“You bet,” Sam called back.

Tammy’s blonde head popped out from the back room. “Are you—?” She paused, cursing as she picked a strand of hair out of the twin fangs that protruded up from her lower jaw. “Are you being sarcastic? I can never tell with you. And you don’t do parties.”

“I do parties,” Sam argued.

His shoulder twinged. He scratched it, wincing. His wings always threatened to emerge when he was hungry. He looked like a human right now, but if he waited another day, he’d start sprouting horns and leathery wings and even a whippy tail, just like his dad. He’d never seen his dad in incubus form, and he’d only experienced that form himself a few times. He preferred to avoid it. Which meant drinking his potion, something he hadn’t forgotten to do in years. Except now, apparently.

Tammy snorted, emerging from the back room wearing a puffer jacket and a scarf piled around her neck so high he couldn’t see her wide, green nose. She gave his T-shirt and thin jeans an envious look. The heating in the tattoo studio was faulty at the best of times, and orcs were one of the many species of monster that didn’t run hot. Not like incubi. Even in human form, incubi had an internal heater that kept them warm.

“You didn’t go to the last New Year’s party,” she reminded him, picking up her handbag from her battered tattoo chair. “And you didn’t come to any Christmas parties. Been here going on two years now, Samson. Gotta get out there sometime.”

“I get out,” Sam said, pretending to be deeply focused on wiping his tattoo gun free of disinfectant. “I just don’t get out to your parties.”

“Guess you’re just not cool enough.”

“Maybe I don’t want to see you any more than I already have to.”

Tammy snorted again, clapping a hand over her jacket-padded chest. “Ouch! Incubus: one. Orc: zero. Brutal.”

She strode toward the door, slowing as she checked her handbag.

“Handbag pocket, left side,” he called.

She rummaged in her bag and made a triumphant noise as she held up her car keys. A dozen other keys dangled from her fuzzy key chain, including a familiar thick black one that up until yesterday had lived in Sam’s jeans.

“You locked the back door, right?” Sam asked. “I know I’m usually on lock-up duty, but if you have my key—”

“I locked it!” Tammy flicked him goodbye with her keys. “Okay, I’m gone. Happy New Year’s Eve Eve.”

“Not a thing.” Sam placed the tattoo gun down onto the workstation and clenched his gloved hands, trying to stop them from shaking. He’d take his potion first thing when he got home. Xena would just have to cope with her dinner being thirty seconds later than usual.

The automatic front doors swished open. Snow rushed in, accompanied by a cold wind that made even hot-hearted Sam shiver.

Tammy came to a sudden stop in front of the doors. At first, Sam assumed it was her reaction to the icy cold, which hung around for six months of the year and sometimes even longer. Claw Haven, Alaska, wasn’t known for warm weather.

Then a sharp voice said, “Are you closed? Please don’t be closed. If you’re closed, I’m going to freak out.”

“Uh,” said Tammy, taking a step back from their new visitor.

Sam turned just in time for the automatic doors to swish closed.

A tall woman stood on the doormat, shaking from the snow. Or maybe it was from the rage clearly visible in her strong features. Her face was so twisted that Sam half expected to see flames start burning in her green eyes. His own eyes did that when he transformed. Was she a monster?

He sniffed the air. Nope. This woman was human from her fur-cuffed boots to her curly red hair, which was bunched in what had probably been a bun before whatever happened to make her so pissed off.

Tammy gave her an apologetic look. “We’re actually—”

Sam interrupted her. “How hard would you freak out?”

Both of them turned to look at him. Sam flashed the stranger a wry grin just in case she was serious about her impending emotional breakdown. They had a vampire passing through town last week who had threatened to headbutt the mirror when they told him they couldn’t fit him in that day for a tattoo of his recently deceased cat.