Page 3 of Tall, Dark & Horny

“You’ll stay here until sunrise. Then you’ll leave, never to return.”

He didn’t argue, which was good because I wasn’t in the mood to repeat myself.

The cell door slammed shut, runes flaring to life. The magic inside was sealed. And if he was stupid enough to test it, he’d bleed and burn for the effort.

I turned and walked back up, the walls murmuring as I passed. They weren’t truly alive. But they remembered. And so did I.

Back on the main floor, everything had returned to normal. Low conversation. Glass clinking. Music playing softly from nowhere.

Thomas slid a shot of barrel-aged demon fire whiskey across the bar. The smoky, dark amber liquid that smelled of charred oak and heat was made in-house at The Abyss. Infused with a drop of hellfire essence, it was something only a high-ranking demon could handle…and my favorite drink.

“On the house tonight,” he said.

I quirked a brow and muttered, “I own the place.”

“Exactly.”

Shaking my head, I lifted the glass. “Salute.”

The shot went down smoothly. But it didn’t touch the heat already burning inside me.

Nothing ever did.

2

CALLIOPE

As a travel influencer, I planned my trips meticulously from my route to the places I wanted to eat and where I stayed. I didn’t leave anything to chance. It had worked well for me over the past two years and was a big part of how I had managed to quickly grow my following to the point where I got free stays and was earning money from my posts.

To say that today was an aberration was putting it mildly. Everything that could go wrong had. The second leg of my flight had been canceled, leaving me stranded more than a thousand miles from my destination. Since it was due to a systemwide issue for the airline, a ton of people were impacted by cancellations. The earliest flight I could get out of town was three days later, which would’ve left me checking into the hotel less than twenty-four hours before I was due to check out.

I hadn’t wanted to let this delay ruin my entire trip, so I headed to the car rental counters. Snagging one before they were all gone felt like a small victory. Unfortunately, my problems didn’t end at the airport.

An unexpected storm popped up out of nowhere when I was only a few hundred miles into my drive. My mom had hated anything more than a light drizzle, but storms didn’t bother me. I’d always had an odd affinity to storms, almost as though they energized me.

It must have taken out some cell towers because I lost my signal on my phone…and access to my maps app. My dashboard GPS didn’t even try to help. It spun in place for a few minutes like it was taunting me before declaring it couldn’t find my location. Without them, I had no clue where I was going.

Still, I pressed on, doing my best to remember the route. The most I could recall was that I was supposed to stay on the highway for about another hundred miles.

But then the highway signs disappeared. Eventually, the sky got darker. And the road narrowed. Finally, I realized with a twist of dread that I had no idea where I was.

I spotted a small roadside diner through the downpour and turned off the road, pulling into a mostly empty lot. The neon sign flickered over the windows—fitting, considering everything else that had gone wrong.

Inside, the diner smelled like burnt coffee and something vaguely fried. A single server leaned on the counter, staring at her phone with a bored expression. A wall-mounted TV murmured in the background, the volume too low to follow.

“Evening,” she said without looking up.

“Hi.” I offered a hopeful smile. “Sorry to bother you, but the GPS in my rental car isn’t working, and my cell lost its signal. I’ve been driving for a while, and I’m pretty sure I took a wrong turn somewhere. Any chance I could borrow your Wi-Fi?”

She snorted. “I wish we had Wi-Fi for you to borrow, then I wouldn’t have to download stuff to read or watch before I come into work. It’s the freaking worst when I forget and am stuck here twiddling my thumbs for my entire shift. And GPS won’t help much out this way anyway. You’re in a bit of a dead zone.”

I’d been to several places off the beaten path, but at least they’d all had Wi-Fi or a cell signal. “Maybe you can give me directions?”

“I could try, but you’d probably end up lost.” She finally set her phone down and glanced up at me. “I don’t drive, so I don’t pay much attention to where I’m going when my dad drops me off places.”

“Crap.” I pressed my lips together in a flat line as I considered my limited options. “Is there a town nearby?”

“That depends on your definition of near. And what you think is a town.” She picked up her phone again. “Closest stop with anything worth much is about an hour past my house.”

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