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Chapter One

Okay, this was going to be easy

That wasn’t sos, but easy has never been one of them My name is Cassie Palmer, and I used to be a down-on- tarot in a bar But then stuff happened A lot of stuff A lot of hair-raising, spine-tingling, unbelievably crazy and potentially deadly stuff As a result, I was now a down-on-my-luck Pythia, the chief seer of the supernatural world

Yeah, I don’t kno that happened, either

But e Because my partner, as currently lost in ti for for what felt like forever, was right across the room

And this ti

“This ti,” I said into my beer

The should-have-been-handso up the wall next toat so on his sto so I wouldn’t be tempted to add a few more

“Did you hearnot to call attention to us Not that that seemed likely The little dive in Amsterdaroup had just blown in through the door Along with a blast of cold air and icy slush that nuh thick leather boots and added another layer of frost to my eyelashes

Apparently, central heating was not a thing in the 1790s

The sed toof chairs and a few stool-type things that I guess were supposed to be tables Or beer holders, anyway But we couldn’t join them and try to thaw out Because the bar was by the fire and a half-dee named Pritkin was by the bar

He’d glanced around a few times since we’d come in, but hadn’t picked me out because laedand fattened my already plureat look for me, but since my reluctant partner had provided it, I’d decided it could be worse

I was sort of surprised he hadn’t given me warts

I wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t bothered to answer Rosierset to see that side of hi at his hairy abdo of bruises there was potentially life-threatening

If only, I thought, and kicked him

That won er’s black eyes, because Rosier earing a glaed blond good looks of his son and our elusive target And nothing else The stubborn sense of honor, the brutal honesty, and the iron discipline of the man I knew must have all come from Pritkin’s human side, because I’d yet to see a shred of them in his reprehensible father

“Why are you asking reasy dark brown bangs “I wasn’t the one who screwed up last time”

“You got ed last time!”

“You shouldn’t have left erous city, doubly so in the Victorian age—”

“You’re a deet beaten up—”

“A deic”

“—by a handful of street thugs who didn’t even have—wait What?”

He scowled atthis?” he slapped the side of the leather uess incubi are uys Or maybe there was another reason

He’d pulled the little patch out of it that had provided lamourie earlier I hadn’t stopped to wonder about it at the tiet into my multilayered Victorian outfit But now it occurred to me that ic

And shouldn’t have the crap beaten out of him quite so easily

“In their infinite wisdom, the demon council decided to put a dam on my power,” he confirmed bitterly “They worried about what I would do to soic intact Not being able to deprivethat becoe brutes!”