Page 1 of Half Dead

CHAPTER ONE

“How do I look?”I turned to face the Greek chorus line. Four faces crowded in the doorway of my tiny powder room: my two resident ghosts, Ray Bauer and Nana Pratt, and my mage assassin friends, Gunther Saxon and Camryn Sable.

“Like you’re going to the bank to ask for a loan,” Ray said.

“Do banks still give those?”

Gun waved a hand. “Don’t get distracted. This meeting is important. You need to focus on fashion.”

I examined myself in the powder room mirror for the umpteenth time. “This fabric is uncomfortable. What is it? Some kind of magical material designed to curse the wearer with itching and sweating?”

Ray gave me a dubious look. “It’s wool.”

Gun tossed me a heather gray suit jacket. “Here. This is made with fifty percent recycled polyester. It’s tailor-made for someone with your refined taste.”

I swapped jackets. “You’re commenting on my sofa again, aren’t you?”

“It isn’t the fact that it’s red leather of questionable origin.” He paused. “Okay, it’s partly that, but it’s also the factthat you hauled it off the curb before the trash truck could get to it.”

“You snooze, you lose.” I took another look at my reflection. “I don’t like it.”

Gunther sighed. “Not everything has to be denim or leather, you know. Give other fabrics a chance.”

“Says the man with purple leather boots.” I wriggled in the skirt. “I can’t wear this. I feel too constricted. What if I have to kick my way out of The Corporation’s headquarters?” I’d have to tear a slit up to my underwear, and nobody wanted to see those saggy bottoms.

“You’re about to attend a business meeting with powerful gods,” Camryn said. “I don’t anticipate any kicking.”

I held up a finger. “But there’d better be donuts if they know what’s good for them.”

Gun eyed my stomach. “But they aren’t good for you.”

“Hey, I deserve a little sugar.”

“That’s what Kane is for,” Camryn said.

Gun craned his neck to look in the foyer. “Speaking of the former prince, where is your little slice of hell?”

“He should be here soon. He was adamant that he act as my escort as far as the entrance.” The fiercely independent part of me had objected when Kane first mentioned it, but the part of me focused on learning to thrive in an interdependent relationship told self-reliant me to suck it up.

“I don’t understand how you’ll get to their headquarters if you don’t know where to go,” Nana Pratt said. Although the elderly ghost had been exposed to the supernatural world since her death, she’d yet to wrap her head around the full extent of magic and myth in the world she inhabited.

“They’re too smart to send GPS coordinates.” The Corporation trusted me as little as I trusted them and with good reason. They’d murdered my parents and would likely do the same to me the moment I let my guard down. If they couldn’tcontrol you, they killed you. Not quite the severance package most employees would choose.

“They have all types of gods on their payroll,” Gun said. “I bet one of them collects you from the rendezvous point and whisks you away on a cloud of tears and bitterness.”

“Not without me, I hope.”

A smile brightened my lips in response to Kane’s soothing timbre, and I pushed my way out of the powder room to greet him. The prince of hell was dressed for success in a custom suit that was perfectly tailored to his chiseled form. Behind him lurked Josephine Banks, his judgmental right hand.

Josie’s gaze raked over me, as sharp as her fangs. “If the look you’re going for is soccer mom attending a PTA meeting, then congrats because you nailed it.”

I shrugged off the jacket and handed it to Gun. “That’s it. I’m getting changed.”

Cam whipped out a tarot card. “Let me use magic. I can conjure something appropriate.”

Camryn and Gunther were members of La Fortuna, an ancient society of mages that specialized in tarot magic. Depending on the card, the process of mastering it could be arduous, and even deadly.

“You nearly died to master that card, yet you want to use it to dress me like a life-sized Barbie doll?”

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