Jocelynn Drake - Dead Man’s Deal

To all my peeps back on Finchley and Stevies. You are missed.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication To all my peeps back on Finchley and Stevies. You are missed.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Jocelynn Drake

Copyright

About the Publisher

THEY WERE KILLING pixies.

I glared at the brown brick house with its neat little lawn and trimmed hedges. I wanted to storm inside and set the pixies free before I took a baseball bat to the head of whoever was running that slaughterhouse. Instead, I slouched in the passenger seat of Bronx’s Jeep, thinking of all the ways I would love to kill Reave, but I was no closer to getting out of the car.

I couldn’t set the pixies free and I couldn’t beat anyone’s head in. I was there to set protective wards on the house, not burn it down.

Bronx shifted in the driver’s seat, watching the house as well. “You know we can’t sit here all night.”

“They’re killing pixies,” I said, glancing over at the troll. “They’re making fix—killing not only pixies, but anyone who is stupid enough to take the drug. I can’t put a protective ward on that house. I’d rather hand myself over to the Ivory Towers.”

“Reave isn’t going to let you out of your deal just because you have moral objections to his business pursuits.”

“Fucking bastard.”

Months ago, Reave discovered that I was a former warlock. Well, just a warlock-in-training, but the information was enough to get me killed. To keep him from selling me to the highest bidder, I had to work for him. And because I was an idiot, Bronx was stuck working for the dark elf Mafia boss as well. I needed to extract both myself and the troll from this mess, but I didn’t have a clue as to how. So for now, here I was protecting drug manufacturers and helping them kill creatures for their livers.

Sitting up, I unbuckled my seat belt. “I warned Reave that I wasn’t going to kill anyone for him. Protecting these assholes would make me an accessory to murder.”

“Then we go back to Reave and we tell him that we’re not going to do it,” Bronx said as he reached for the key still sitting in the ignition.

“No,” I snapped. I wasn’t angry at the troll. I was angry at Reave and maybe even angry at myself. If it was just me, I’d tell Reave to shove his little task up his ass. But Bronx was in this mess too, and if I told Reave to fuck off, Bronx would get hurt.

Unlocking the door, I pulled the handle and rolled out of my seat to the sidewalk. Bronx climbed out of the Jeep at the same time and walked around to stand beside me. The large troll with the spiky blond hair scratched the stubble on his chin as he stared at the house. “Let’s take a look,” he suggested. “You should know what you’re protecting. Things could go wrong, through no fault of your own, if you don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

An evil grin spread across my mouth as I shoved my hands into the pockets of my baggy jeans and strolled down the block toward the two-story house. Man, I loved his wicked sense of humor. We were going to see what kind of trouble I could cause while maintaining a somewhat believable alibi. It was unlikely that Reave was going to buy any excuse that we came up with, but it was worth a try. If I taught the Svartálfar anything, it was going to be that you never backed a warlock into a corner.

A woman with a blue handkerchief wrapped around her greasy brown hair jerked the door open after we stood pounding on it for a couple of minutes. A cigarette was pinched in the corner of her mouth, while lines dug deep furrows in her face. Working for Reave wasn’t helping her preserve her youthful vitality.

Slipping the cigarette between two fingers, she pulled it away long enough to blow a cloud of smoke in our direction before barking, “What do you want?”

“Reave sent us,” Bronx replied while I coughed, gasping for some clean air.

“Oh. You’re him, huh?” Her eyebrows jumped toward her hairline and her mouth hung open in surprise. Apparently I wasn’t exactly what she’d been expecting.

“Yeah, I’m him,” I said.

“You gotta come inside to do your thing?”

“It helps. Reave said he wanted this place thoroughly protected. If I don’t know what I’m protecting, things could go wrong.” I leaned close, flashing a wicked grin while struggling to ignore the gagging body odor rising from her. “Horribly, painfully wrong for anyone inside.”

The woman jerked away from me, her dull brown eyes going wide. She pulled open the door and moved out of the entrance so Bronx and I could enter the house. From the exterior, it looked like a normal suburban house. You would have expected to see a tidy living room with upholstered furniture in floral patterns, neatly piled magazines on the coffee table, and maybe a stack of cartoon DVDs beside the TV in the corner. You would have been wrong.

The house was a lie. It had been chosen so it wouldn’t draw any attention. The police didn’t expect to find a lab for manufacturing lethal drugs in the middle of suburbia. They were looking for things like that in the slums on the other side of town.

The curtains were drawn over the front windows and the living room was lit by a single desk lamp resting on an old orange crate. A large man sat on a metal folding chair behind the crate, cleaning one gun while another was disassembled and resting on the crate. A small TV played in the corner, sound muted so he could hear our conversation at the front door. The guard watched us as we entered, but said nothing.

The stinky woman shut the door behind Bronx. She dropped her half-burned cigarette on the hardwood floor and crushed it under her stained pink house slipper before guiding us to the back of the house. We passed through an empty dining room and she started toward the kitchen, but I stopped her at the stairs leading to the second floor.

“What’s up there?”

She shrugged her thin shoulders. “Couple cots. Bathroom. Reave don’t keep any kind of furniture or valuables here.”

“Where are the other guards?” Bronx asked. The woman narrowed her eyes and I held my breath. I didn’t want her to whip out a cell phone and call Reave to check our story. I wanted to get in and out. “He needs to know. Otherwise your own guards could be locked out.”

“Oh, that makes sense,” she murmured, and it was hard not to laugh because Bronx was just piling on the bullshit. “The other two are picking up dinner. There’s usually only three guards here, plus me and my husband. Except on delivery and pickup days. Then Reave sends over four more guards.”

We continued to the kitchen, where we found all the counter space covered with take-out containers and greasy fast-food bags that desperately needed to be thrown out. The trash was overflowing with empty beer bottles and more rotting food. This place needed more than extra security. It needed a cleaning service, but then both the people I had seen so far also needed a few lessons in personal hygiene.

At the back of the house, the woman pulled open another door and we descended into the basement. This wasn’t one of those nice finished basements with a big-screen TV, minifridge, and pool table. This was an old-fashioned basement with cold stone walls, concrete floor, and exposed pipes overhead. All the lights were bright bare bulbs and an odor of mildew hung in the air.