Hell Bent Read Free Page B

him?

Chapter 2
    Terric did the driving. I did what I did best: nothing. Just slouched in the front seat, eyes closed behind dark sunglasses, coat collar flipped up to my cheekbones, head pounding. It took a lot to get me drunk, double that to push me into hangover land. Three days and nights in a bar just about did it every time.
    Except I usually got a day or so of sleep afterward. The half hour of shut-eye I’d managed only sharpened my headache.
    “Shit,” Terric said, slowing the car. “That’s Hamilton. Stay here. I’ll be right back.” He parked the car, opened the door, and was out of it in the same amount of time it took me to open my eyes.
    Narrow street, old warehouses, MLK Boulevard. Whatever, whoever Hamilton was, it must be serious. Not only was Terric running down the street all long-legged and action-heroed, but he had also double-parked on the wrong side of the street.
    I thought about calling the cops to ticket him for it. Imagined how angry he would be. Smiled. Closed my eyes again.
    Eleanor poked me in the shoulder.
    Thing about ghosts—they are dead cold. And stubborn. She poked my arm a second time, gentle as a dull ice pick chipping at my bones.
    “What?” I said. “He’s fine.”
    Poke.
    Opened my eyes. Again. “I am not running out there after him.”
    She pointed at my heart.
    “Nothing there, love,” I said. “Empty as a shadow.”
    A man slipped out one of the warehouse doors and walked quickly in the opposite direction that Terric had gone. He looked over his shoulder, then caught sight of me sitting in the car. Light hair cut short and clean, thin, tanned face with eyes set just too wide on either side of his nose. He wore black boots, dark jeans, and a button-down short-sleeve shirt he’d rolled the sleeves up on to show the tattoo of a stylized black feather.
    He pulled one hand up, stuck his finger at me, thumb cocked like a gun. Even from this distance I could read his lips as he jerked his hand in a shooting motion: “dead.”
    There was no spell attached to that action, and I’d never seen this joker before in my life. I flipped him off and mouthed, Bite me .
    He scowled and moved off at a jog. Sure was in a hurry to be somewhere.
    Then the back-of-the-head slap of magic being used, bent, and manhandled hit me hard enough I hissed. Terric was casting magic. More than that, Terric was trying to break magic.
    Without me.
    “Balls. What does he think he’s doing?”
    Eleanor poked right in the middle of my forehead this time, the pain and cold of her finger mixing with all the rest of the hurt in me.
    “Damn it, woman, stop touching me.”
    She held up a finger and aimed it at my eye.
    “Fine!” I shoved the door open and groaned. It was too damn sunny, too damn cold, and too damn early for me to be walking this damn street to save Terric’s damn magic-wielding skin.
    New plan: find Terric, knock him out, no magic required. Then drive back to my room where I could sleep off the knife-wielding banshees screaming in my head.
    I stormed down the street clenching and unclenching my fists, the rings scraping between my fingers. I hoped to hell there was going to be someone I could punch at the end of this.
    Unfortunately, someone else had the same idea.
    Just as I reached the corner of the alley, I saw a guy move out of the shadow. I ducked the fist aimed at my face. Took a shot at the guy’s ribs. Since the man was built like an ox, the only bones that cracked were my knuckles.
    “Bloody hell!”
    “Don’t kill him, Shame,” Terric said from somewhere farther down the alley where he was, apparently, holding his own against three guys.
    “If I’d wanted him dead . . .” I jumped back out of the man’s reach. “I’d have already . . .” The heel of my boot hit something slick.
    Fuck.
    I went down hard, knocking the back of my head against the moss-covered brick wall.
    I’ll take “concussion” for four hundred, Alex.
    While I reacquainted myself with the