Tempt Me Read Free

else would I know you cracked your tooth when you fell chasing after Ben and your sister in the back of my old house? The same day you told your father you were playing with spirits for the first time.”
    Gabriel remembered. How could he forget? That was the day everything had started going to shit.
    “If you’re Emmanuel, and I can’t see ghosts, then how can I see you?”
    The younger man was suddenly right beside him, so close he could feel his breath. His expression was tinged with pain and regret. They were emotions Gabriel knew well. “You can see me, Gabriel, because I am not a ghost. I’m no longer anything I was. And neither are you. But I’ve faced more than a few of my monsters. It’s time for you to face yours. You need to understand what’s happening to you, before you lose yourself completely to the darkness.”
    This was some sort of twisted joke. Gabriel closed his eyes and saw a flash of a memory. Father Leon, the priest who had taken special delight in punishing him, tormenting him with images of his sister and mother burning in Lucifer’s inferno for eternity. Warning him that he would join them if he didn’t purge himself of his family’s evil. Warning him that he would be taken by the darkness.
    Even then, there was a small part of the young Gabriel who would have taken that punishment, would have burned, if only he could be with his family again. His mother. If only he could have been like his twin, Mimi. Special.
    He felt like he was going to be sick again. This couldn’t be happening. He needed to get out of this cursed city. “Fuck the coffee. I need another drink, maybe two, and then I’ll be on the next flight out of town. As far away as I can get.”
    Gabriel took a step toward the bar’s back door, but Emmanuel was there before he could reach for the knob.
    He shook his head. “Stubborn ass. This is for your own good.”
    Gabriel saw Emmanuel pull back his fist and swore when it connected with his flesh. For a ghost, he had a powerful right hook.
    He was falling to the ground again, hearing Emmanuel before he hit the cobblestone pavement.
    “You’ll thank me for this, Gabe. Eventually.”
    Gratitude wasn’t on his mind as the hard ground jarred his bones. His ears rang with the power of the physical blow he’d just received from his imaginary pest. No, it wasn’t gratitude causing the red haze of anger and pain to blind his vision.
    It was the need for revenge.
    As soon as he could get up again, Emmanuel would learn what everyone who’d ever gotten on the wrong side of Gabriel knew. Clichéd but true . . .
    Payback was a bitch.

    THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT HIM .
    Angelique Rousseau grabbed a candied pecan but paused before slipping it into her mouth. She’d been planning on announcing her presence, but she didn’t want to miss the hushed discussion between her sister-in-law Allegra and Michelle Toussaint. Not when they were whispering about her current obsession, Michelle’s elusive brother, Gabriel.
    Michelle’s sigh drifted into the kitchen from the formal dining room as Angelique hopped quietly onto the marble island. “Mama said she heard a knock on her door at three in the morning. Apparently he was bloodied up and falling-down drunk, with no idea how he’d gotten to her house.”
    “He’s been here a week and he hasn’t told anyone why he came back? Has he said anything ?” Allegra sounded worried and more than a little tired. Angelique wondered if her unborn niece or nephew might have something to do with that.
    The little troublemaker. Not even born and it was already driving its mother up the hormonal wall, not to mention putting a cramp in Auntie Angelique’s social life.
    She hadn’t had any time to herself from the moment she got home. Instead she’d been mobbed at every turn by Toussaints and Adairs. Tasked with taking her mother to one gathering after another, all so Theresa Rousseau could get to know her new extended family better before the baby