Page 19 of Mortal Heart

Unfortunately, neither of them got an answer to that question—or at least, not in the way they wanted.

Oliver Mora opened his mouth to respond. Then he pitched forward, blood gushing from his nose, mouth, eyes, and ears. He was dead in less than three seconds.

Stunned, Ronan rose. His abrupt movement displaced Bunny. She landed on the carpet with a yelp and stared up at him, wide-eyed with surprise and annoyance.

Covered in blood, Arkady pushed Mora aside and stood. The dead man slid from the booth and flopped on the floor.

“Oh myGod!” Bunny shrieked. Sobbing hysterically, she scrambled to her feet and ran away from their booth as fast as she could on her platform heels.

The rest of the customers in the lounge finally noticed what had happened. Everyone abandoned their activities, started screaming, and ran for the exits.

“Well, that could have gone better,” Ronan said.

“Shit.” Arkady reached into her jacket pocket and threw something on the floor. The item turned out to be a small black spell bag.

Ronan’s nose twitched at the sharp odor of burned licorice and something rotting. Black magic. What the hell was she doing?

“Exit!” Arkady yelled.

The bag exploded, and all the lights went out.

6

ARKADY

When Ronan was furious,he vibrated.

Arkady would have enjoyed that sensation more if she wasn’t drenched in Oliver Mora’s blood and they didn’t both smell like roadkill thanks to witchy black magic.

He’d also gone menacingly silent, which shedidenjoy because in the first few minutes after witnessing Mora’s messy death, she was in no mood for either a lecture or pointed questions.

About ten minutes later, as Ronan tried to put as much distance between them and the chaos at Bella’s without driving recklessly enough to attract attention, she finally spoke to him via the microphone in their helmets. “Nobody’s following us. We need to go to my house to clean up and change.”

He didn’t respond, but she sensed he was listening, so she gave him her address and directions. Without a word, he slowed, turned left, and headed for her home, still buzzing with barely suppressed rage.

“We could have just waited there for the cops to arrive, I suppose,” she said as they made their way through nearly deserted back streets toward her neighborhood in the southeast part of the city. “I’m assuming you don’t mind explaining who you are and what you do to the police, or them getting their hands on a video of us watching a man die. I think they’d beparticularlyinterested in the fact you didn’t bat an eye as it happened.”

With her arms around his waist, she felt his chest rumble.

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “So the stench is the price we have to pay for a spell that made them forget about us, fried their video recordings, and let us get away.”

“How did you know that spell wouldn’t affect me?” he grated.

Ah—sothatwas what he was so pissed about, not the black magic or the smell. “Because you’re not human,” she said.

He didn’t say another word until they arrived at her house. Nor did he stop buzzing with anger.

When they pulled into the driveway of her little bungalow, Arkady typed the code for the garage door into the app on her phone. As the door rolled open, she climbed off the back of the Harley, took off her helmet, and shook out her hair. It felt sticky and matted with drying blood.

“Well, I have a new least-favorite experience at a strip club,” she said under her breath. “Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse than coming insecondat an amateur strip contest.”

She watched Ronan steer the Harley into the garage, turn off the engine, put the kickstand down, and take off his helmet and gloves, all very deliberately. His anger crackled in the air like static. The rigidity of his shoulders made hers ache, but she had way too much blood on her clothes and troubles on her mind to waste time and energy worrying about his feelings.

My sweetness. My sweetness. My sweetness.The words echoed in her head.

Her searching fingertips found the thick scar tissue hidden under her unblemished skin on the side of her throat. The healing spell she’d bought had done its best, but it hadn’t been able to repair all the damage. At least it was enough to keep anyone else from knowing what had happened.

My sweetness, Oliver Mora had called her. Then he’d died spurting blood from every orifice.

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