Trouble with Gargoyles: an Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 3) Read Free Page A

between my shop, Moonlight Pawn, and my friend Celestina's fortune teller shop. The lights in my shop were dark and the gate on the yard was closed. Everything looked quiet and peaceful, but I was suspicious. After all, a fairy looks sweet and pretty up until it flies up your nose.
    I was glad to turn away from my darkened shop and follow Vale and Melanie to Celestina's. From the outside, it looked like a regular home. The neighborhood was zoned for both commercial and residential use. The traditional palmistry hand painted in the front window, surrounded by Christmas lights, was Celestina's single, effective advertising for her services.
    I always got a real kick out of stepping inside the place. For as ordinary as it looked from the outside, the house was a complete shock on the inside. It was the closest you'd get to entering a Haitian mambo's Vodou shack, even if some liberties had been taken for the sake of theatricality and sales. Candles burned in tall glassware that was decorated with images that represented the spiritual Lwa, or gods. New Orleans-style Voodoo dolls, stick dolls, and altars overflowing with colorful offerings to the spirits combined with rattan-covered walls and a soundtrack playing chanting and drumming. It was all super cool. Celestina had done an awesome job creating a mood where you believed she could read your fortune. Which, incidentally, she absolutely could.
    She wasn't doing a reading now, though. She, Christian, and a big black wolf were currently standing in the center of the room beneath the dozens of Voodoo dolls that hung from the ceiling by fishing line. The Voodoo dolls were purely for sales. Celestina's family had practiced Vodou, which didn't utilize the classic dolls that most people in the West, thanks to New Orleans and Hollywood, associated with the religion. The dolls were still fun. My friends and I got together once or twice a year to make them. The more primitive the better, because that read 'authentic' to the kinds of people who bought them. The result was a bunch of fairly raggedy-looking dolls. Mine always sold the best, and I refused to read anything negative into that honor.
    When Christian turned to face us, I expected to see certain emotions on his face. To my confusion, I saw none of them. He grinned handsomely at us. "Thanks for coming so quickly."
    I had to glance uncertainly at Vale, who looked uncomfortable as he strode forward to his best friend's side. "They need to know," I heard him mutter.
    "Yeah," I said loudly for all concerned. "We need to know. What's going on?"
    "Is your mom really gone?" Melanie asked in a tremulous voice, her eyes already shiny.
    The black wolf, who was actually a wolf shifter named Lev as well as Celestina's boyfriend, trotted over and butted his head against Melanie's hip to comfort her. She absently patted its thick fur as we all waited for Christian's response.
    His smile had dimmed as he'd evidently recognized that we were on a different page of the play than he was. "You're sure it's safe here?" he asked Celestina.
    I thought it was a strange question. Safe for what?
    Celestina, decked out in so many fabrics of varying lengths that I wasn't completely convinced she hadn't simply tied a dozen dark scarves over a bikini and called it a day, nodded emphatically. "It's why she came here in the first place, remember? No one associates you and her with me."
    All of this secret talk was getting on my nerves. "Christian, the question is a simple one: how is Diana?"
    He tried to charm us with a smile, which was probably his default response to all of life's challenges. He could have been a red-haired male model. Normally that would put me off. Beautiful people made me suspicious. To be fair, though, Christian had proved himself to be a reliable ally. I guess it wasn't his fault that he was gorgeous.
    "My mother is gone, yes. Technically," he added, which made me narrow my eyes. "But she's not officially dead. She's gone into, er, a state