Page 2 of Grave Curse

“Everyone heard how Hades offed my old man, Hugo. That asshole crowed about it in front of the whole fucking world to make sure I’d have no choice but to make someone pay. I’m the leader of the breakaway Gravediggers, you see, so I can’t show any signs of being soft. I can only answer blood with blood, because that’s the Gravedigger way. The Colgrave way. You really should’ve thought about that, and about consequences, before bending to my uncle’s will.” I hefted the plank and pauseda moment to look Hugo in the eye. “At least you won’t feel the fire when it burns you alive.”

“No, wai—”

Ten minutes later and a block away, I slung a leg over my old man’s Harley, a twenty-year-old hog that I’d kept in perfect running order per Odin’s instructions. This, I’d already decided, would be its final ride. I wasn’t the sentimental type, but this seemed fitting.

Flames began to lighten the midnight sky as I kicked the engine to life and headed out of the peaceful subdivision.

Chapter One

Growing Up Among Gods

Ginger

I almost hit the girl with my bright red Mini Cooper as I buzzed around a corner mere yards from my intimate apparel shop, Vixen’s Den.

“Shit!” I slammed on my brakes. Tires squealed against the pavement as I yanked the steering wheel sharply to the left, then nearly plowed head-on into a laundry truck trundling along in the opposite lane. The rude blare of the truck’s horn told me what I already knew—that I was in his lane—before I managed to crank my car back to where it belonged.

Holy crap.

After growing up surrounded by the dangers of the Chicago Gravedigger world, I’d nearly bought the farm thanks to a dumpy laundry truck and a brown-haired girl playing chicken in the middle of the road.

Oh.

Wait.

The girl.

Bringing my car to an ignominious stop in front of my shop, I waited for the telltale sensation of my throat closing up, a reflex action that happened when I was terrified. Nope. Just good old-fashioned adrenaline-fueled outrage. With that, I jumped out of my car and ran-walked to where the girl looked at me with huge owl eyes.

“What the absolutehellwere you doing in the middle of the damn road?” Adrenaline thumped through me, balling my hands into fists. I had weird reactions to certain stimuli, because I’d had a seriously screwed-up childhood. Terror made me gomute, and being startled or freaked out made me furious. I didn’t shake or burst into tears like a normal human being. No. I snarled and beat the crap out of whatever it was that had freaked me out. Gods didn’t get freaked out. They just flattened whatever it was that had dared to bother them. I was no god, of course, but I’d grown up surrounded by them. Growing up among gods, a weak mortal like me learned fast that the only way to survive them was to pretend I was one of them. “Answer before I toss you under the wheels of the next oncoming bus.”

“I’m sorry!” The girl—really, she looked way too young to even have a driver’s license—held up both hands as if she expected me to carry through with my threat. Her straight brown hair, parted in the middle and hanging without any life to her shoulders, made her oval face appear that much paler as she stared at me with light brown eyes as big as an anime character’s. “Please don’t hurt me, I swear I didn’t see you. I just wanted to go around my car to look at the tires, because something was thumping while I was driving along and something didn’t feel right. I’m sorry, really.”

I crashed to a halt no more than a foot from her, instinctively putting all I could into my six-foot-tall frame. I wasn’t the tallest woman in the world, but more often than not I was the tallest one in the room. I definitely towered over this little kid as I tried to get my redhead’s temper under control.

Littlekid, I repeated silently, trying to talk myself down off the attack-mode ledge. Little tiny kid who made a mistake. Quit intimidating. Don’t threaten. Don’t kill. Just… don’t kill.

Okay.

“So. Um. Your tires.” I repeated her words to buy some time as I tried to let out the steam boiling away in my brain. Whew. When it came to fight or flight response, there was never any doubt what mine would be. I could lay that nasty little character flaw directly on Hades’s doorstep, but that was weak. To conquerthat madness I first had to take responsibility for it. “Okay, I get it. You stepped out into the street to check your tires, yes?”

“Y-yes.”

“I understand. Sorry I snapped. Really, I mean it. That was just adrenaline getting the better of me.” I waited a couple beats, then stifled a sigh when she didn’t budge. “I’m not sure what you’re waiting for, but your car’s tires aren’t going to magically come over to you. You’re going to have to go over to them. Go ahead and check them, okay? I’ll wait.”

She blinked. “For what?”

This time I didn’t bother stifling a sigh. She was a sweet kid, but she obviously was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. “What’s your name?”

“Olive.”

“Olive.” She looked like an Olive, so I found myself relaxing enough to smile at her. “If it’s all right with you, I’m going to stay here and wait for you to tell me if you’ve got a car problem that we can deal with ourselves, or if we need to call for help. Okay?” When she continued to just stare at me like I was speaking in ancient Sanskrit, I clapped my hands to snap her out of it. “Go on, hon.”

She jumped into action as if poked with a pin. This time she took an almost absurd care in looking for traffic before heading around her car, then gave a despairing moan when she rounded to the trunk.

That didn’t sound good. “What’s the verdict, Olive?”

“Flat tire.” She trudged back toward me as if her feet had turned to lead, her expression woebegone. “What am I going to do? I don’t have the money to buy new tires. I don’t even know if the spare has air in it. God, my life is such a shambles. Maybe it would’ve been best if you’d just hit me and then everything would be over.”

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