Dark Victory Read Free Page A

ex-husband’s lies and adultery. She’d given him all of her love, and she’d meant every word of their marriage vows. It was the kind of woman she was. He hadn’t meant one damned word.
    She intended to learn from her mistakes. Randall hadn’t been the love of her life after all. He had been a Wall Street investor—a high roller and a player. He’d cheated on her from start to finish, and to make the cliché just perfect, she’d been the last to find out. She was never going near that charismatic macho type again.
    But sometimes, especially recently, she wished she was a bit more like her sister when it came to men. She did not want to even think that she might be lonely or that she needed the kind of intimacy she wasn’t sure she’d ever have again, but the evenings were getting harder and harder to deal with. She’d started dating again, being really careful to go out with intellectuals and artists, but it felt as if she was simply going throughthe motions. And maybe she was. When it came to dating and sex, she was the exact opposite of her sister. If she wasn’t in love, it wasn’t happening. She didn’t turn on easily, either. Maybe love and passion weren’t in the cards for her. She was twenty-nine already, and beginning to think she’d better focus on her Destiny as a Rose woman.
    “You know, I wish you’d let me set you up with the new guy at CDA,” Sam said.
    Tabby smiled a bit grimly at her. She’d met MacGregor once, when he and Sam had been leaving the Center for Demonic Activity Agency together. “Definitely not,” she said, meaning it. The agent had had macho written all over him.
    “Let her explore the Beta side of life,” Kit said, her eyes wide with innocence. “Who knows? Maybe she’ll find a match made in some kind of odd, metro heaven.”
    Tabby felt a pang, but she smiled brightly and said, “That’s the plan.”
    Kit sobered and touched her arm. “I’m sorry. I never met Randall and I shouldn’t tease you for going out with his polar opposite.”
    “It’s okay,” Tabby said. She smiled firmly. “What’s meant to be is meant to be. Maybe the love of my life is a poet with a Ph.D.”
    Sam choked. “Over my dead body.” Then she looked closely at Tabby. “Are you okay?”
    Sam always knew when something was really wrong. “It’s still hard.”
    “Yeah, it is,” Sam said, and they both knew they were referring to their cousin, Brie. Kit probably knew it, too, but she pretended not to hear them, moving as the line progressed.
    The Rose women were special. Each had her own Destiny, tied into the war on evil. For generations, the Rose women had been using their unusual powers to aid and abet good. It hadonly been three months since Brie had left them to redeem the Wolf of Awe. The year before, their best friend Allie had also vanished. Although Allie wasn’t related to them, they had become friends with her as children. That had been Fate, too—it turned out that she was a powerful Healer. Each woman had gone to embrace her Destiny in the past, because it had been time to do so. That was how the universe worked. It was a fundamental Wisdom in the Book of Roses, which had been passed down through the generations of Rose women.
    Tabby missed them both, sometimes terribly, but she was also happy for them because Allie and Brie were hardly alone in the Middle Ages. Their Destinies had included powerful, nearly immortal partners—Highlanders who battled at their sides, as driven and committed as they were to the war on evil. But their absence had left a gaping hole in their lives. Sam had helped fill the void by going to work at HCU, the Historic Crimes Unit of CDA, a clandestine government agency dedicated to fighting the evil preying on society. Sam’s boss, Nick Forrester, ran HCU with an iron fist but he could be counted on to back them up. And so could Kit. But it wasn’t the same without Allie and Brie.
    There was no defying Destiny. Tabby’s Destiny was magic.