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Chapter One
The turtle hated me. It was the only logical conclusion.
As I stretched out across the cracked, damp asphalt, reaching beneath an ancient dumpster for the moody reptile, I considered my life choices.
As one does when rolling oneself in the stench of the garbage juice that coated this alleyway whenever it rained.
Which, of course, it just had.
The old flannel shirt I usually kept on hand for these types of jobs sat in Azra’s coffee shop. Blissfully clean.
The one day I don’t bring it along…
Serves me right for getting so caught up in the kid’s stupid panic. I just don’t ever learn, do I?
He’d practically fallen over himself when he entered the cafe an hour ago, sobbing over his pet turtle who’d escaped the carrier. Streaks of tears had painted the boy’s red cheeks and dripped onto his shirt. Those small, dirt-crusted hands had been clenching and unclenching with anxiety as he told me his story through a mess of hiccups.
It’s always the tears that get me. Those damned tears…
As a rule—well, a recent rule—I didn’t take on child clients. Not because I didn’t like kids, but because they usually came attached to parents who were never pleased that their precious little star had hired a strange woman with money they’d either stolen or saved up.
I get it—not a smart thing to do in a colorful place like Manhattan. Mortal children were on the bottom of the inner-city food chain and taught to be wary of strangers. Immortal kids, on the other hand, were rare, highly valued, and heavily protected.
Mortal or immortal, kids shouldn’t be approaching strangers like me. I could be deranged, set on scamming them out of their souls, for all the worried parents knew.
“Scamming would be a better… living wage… than this,” I grunted, reaching further beneath the dumpster. The metal edge ground into my collarbone.
Just as I considered using the busted broom sticking out of the top as a capture tool, my finger brushed a cool, bumpy shell.
Yes!
Fingers reaching, reaching, reaching, I managed to hook one beneath the rim and—
The turtle scooted back.
My head hung in defeat. I released an irritated growl. “You are going to die in this heat, you stupid swimmer. It’s already eighty degrees, and it’s not even ten in the morning. You’re going to shrivel.”
Using the broom was a last-resort type of thing. I just didn’t like scaring creatures out of hiding. It already saw me as a predator, and I hated the idea of traumatizing it even more.
But these were desperate measures.
“One final try,” I assured myself. Whimpering, I rolled onto my back, giving my body yet another coat of alleyway trash dew. This time my shoulder slid beneath the rim of the dumpster, giving me an extra two inches of range.
Magic tugged on my core.
Up, it said. Look up.
As if a god’s hand guided my eyes, I glanced toward the towering apartment structure and the sky beyond. It wasn’t a conscious decision, per say. There wasn’t any good reason. Nothing interesting showed in the dark windows of the apartments.
But that’s how my intuition magic worked. A gentle nudge that told me something was happening was all I usually needed.
Just when I’d decided my magic played a trick on me, I saw it. Or, rather, him.
Standing on the metal balcony two floors up, a stranger watched me.
It wasn’t a casual, I’m-surveying-the-world-from-above type of stare that just happened to catch sight of the crazy woman beneath a dumpster. The man leaned on the railing, shoulders pitched over, sunglasses pulled by gravity toward the tip of his nose, and neck stretching for a better view.
Even through those dark lenses, I felt his gaze on me.
