Page 12 of Dragon in Boots

It also doesn’t mean putting my ego ahead of my responsibilities.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Jac said glumly. “And thanks for the money.” She inhaled deeply, grabbed her purse, and headed for the hallway.Oh. I almost forgot.

“Heebie! You coming?”

The little furball appeared by her feet.

“There you are, little guy. Let’s get out of here.” Tomorrow, she’d come back and talk to Dash, but she would not be bringing him the kitten unless he promised to leave it at home or somewhere safe during the show. Otherwise, no cat.

Jac picked up Heebie and stepped out into the parking lot, where she nearly slipped on a pile of squishy, wet, translucent globs.

“What the hell?” The substance stuck to her boots and smelled like old fish.

Whatever the stuff was, it felt like the appropriate ending to a night filled with rotten things.

CHAPTER FIVE

Damien sat at his laptop, doing his best not to become distracted by the enticing emails from car dealers offering new inventory. For him, a glossy coat of paint, a powerful engine, and a convertible top were better than sex.

Fine. Not better. But a close second. After all, an immortal man needed vices, especially him. For most of his life, he’d believed that his love, attraction, and even his innocent admiration of a woman were a death sentence.

For the woman, not him.

Mostly because any female he had gotten close to died. Anyone he cared for kicked the bucket, too. His entire family and village included. Wiped out by a plague.

For this reason, he’d deprived himself of love, friendship, and the simplest of joys in life, such as having a favorite TV show, out of fear the cast would keel over. All because he’d been told by his ex, Willa, that he’d been cursed.Lying witch. The only curse I had was her love spell.

So where did that leave him now that he knew the truth? He wasn’t cursed. He was free to live a long happy life, if he chose.

Maybe that was why this setback with Sky felt like more than a simple breakup. She’d somehow managed to conjure a spark from his cold dead heart. A miracle thrown away without a thought.

Now, he was sure the flames of passion in his heart were extinguished forever, and he would never love again. Sky’s actions had validated a lifelong conviction: he was meant to walk this earth alone. Not due to a curse, but because it was his fate.

Fuck it. I’m buying the Austin-Healy.It was a 1960 red convertible with a white racing stripe.A classic.It would give him the thrill of feeling free, the wind in his hair, and the satisfaction of knowing he looked insanely handsome driving it while wearing his tux. Tailored to perfection, of course.

“Done.” The car was his. “Now on to finding Cimil.” To catch a deranged goddess, he had to think like her, be illogical like her, and…

Search for circus-themed sex parties involving mystical creatures.

He typed several phrases into his search window, on the lookout for recent news articles involving missing clowns, mass clown arrests, raining clowns, or pop-up clown orgies.

Nope. Nothing.

He mulled for a moment. Maybe he should try a different angle. He typed in:Probed by a unicorn. Seduced by a mafia unicorn. Kidnapped and enslaved by a horny unicorn.

Dammit.The only things that kept coming up were reviews for kinky romance novels. Maybe he should try something other than clowns or unicorns.

Damien spent the next two hours entering in every combination of non-clown or unicorn-related sex stuff, only to come up empty-handed.

One last place to look.He emailed an old associate and paid him a hundred bucks to hack into the Smucker’s site and pull their Twinkie sales.

An hour later, Damien received a file.

“Hmmm…” Just as he’d feared. There were no spikes in the consumption of Twinkies anywhere.Hold on…

He clicked the numbers for Kansas.A ten percent increase.He did a quick search only to find they apparently had a Twinkie festival each year, which Cimil likely attended, but it had already passed.

Damien sighed, shut down the laptop, and poured himself a tall glass of scotch even though the sun was just coming up. When one was immortal, it was incredibly difficult to get drunk, but scotch did relax him.

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