Excerpt

Cormac was pretty sure he was being watched.

On the one hand, he was usually being watched. He'd made some enemies over the years. He was an ex-con who'd done time for manslaughter, which meant any cop running his plates had an extra reason to stop and hassle him. He rarely drove over the speed limit these days—not that that kept him from getting pulled over. That was background noise to his usual life, though. This was something different, a shiver at the back of his neck, a shadow at the corner of his vision.

A couple of clues drew his attention, such as a dark sedan he'd never seen before in the parking lot of his apartment building. That only happened once, but after that he couldn't drive without feeling like he was being followed. If he was, whoever doing it was good—Cormac never spotted them. He took different routes to his usual destinations.

Then for the first time in all the years he'd lived there, the management company set up security cameras in the walkways outside the apartments. This place was a run-down rattrap in a shitty part of town, but now they were worried about security?

"Somebody put you up to this?" he jokingly asked the handyman, who was up on a ladder installing a dome camera that would look right at Cormac's front door. The guy shot him a startled glare, full of guilt.

He really had to get out of this apartment. Get out east on a chunk of land with good line of sight.

And space for a garden, said Amelia, who dreamed of growing herbs. She went through a lot of herbs in the spells she prepared.

"I'd be doing all that gardening, you know."

Oh, I think you'd like it once you got started.

Amelia was...he wasn't quite sure what she was anymore. A disembodied spirit. Far more than a ghost, a word that didn't explain their situation. They'd become partners. Friends. More.

"Mostly interested in security right now," he muttered.

I'm not sensing anything. The magical shields are holding. She didn't seem worried. She was, as usual, supremely confident in her ability to get out of trouble. Cormac worried enough for both of them.

"Maybe we should get out of town for a few days."

She doubled up the usual protection spells on the apartment, the Jeep, and himself, shoving charms in the pockets of his jacket and jeans. She cast triggers, spells that would alert her if magic was being cast nearby, or if anyone of ill intent approached within a certain perimeter.

He was careful. He'd been raised to be careful, he'd lived his whole life being careful. He prided himself on protecting what needed protecting, even after he put away his more conventional weapons.

But he really wanted to figure out if someone was watching him, and if so, who and why.

The list of people and beings who had grudges against him was long. He'd been a bounty hunter—he'd killed vampires, werewolves, and a couple of things in between. He'd already had one vampire minion come after him for killing her master. That had been a mess. He'd gotten on the wrong side of vampire cabals. He didn't quite believe that the Long Game—which might or might not have involved actual angels and demons and Lucifer himself, he still wasn't too sure—was really over, and if it wasn't he might have some really nasty people coming after him. And then there was the really old stuff: his uncle had just gotten out of prison after a long stint for weapons and conspiracy charges, and Cormac had, half his lifetime ago, gotten mixed up in some of that militia and sovereignty mess. A lot of those old tangled connections definitely held grudges. Didn't matter that Cormac had left that world. He'd call his cousin Ben, see if he'd heard anything about what his father was doing now and if Cormac needed to worry.

So yeah. The list of what might be out to get him was too long to give him any clear sense of what might actually be gunning for him. If it wasn't just paranoia and his own frayed nerves catching up with him.

Maybe he needed a vacation.

Do you even know how to have a holiday?

No, he did not. "I hear beaches are nice." Except his last time on a beach he'd been arrested.

This state of mind made even taking out the trash an adventure. He paused at the second-story railing outside his apartment, checked over the parking lot. Right before dusk, the shadows were long and the street lights hadn't come on yet. Traffic on the nearby freeway was heavy but moving fast. The parking lot was half full, with no unusual activity.

He carried the bag of trash down the stairs, checked over the parking lot again, and kept close to the wall as he walked out to the Dumpster, located between the concrete wall and a chain-link fence separating this property from the next. Came at the Dumpster sideways so he didn't have to turn his back to the wide-open lot. Dumped the bag, dropped the lid, and was turning to head back along the building to the stairs when something punched his shoulder.

He stumbled a step, spun to look—and a pinching sensation stabbed through his muscle, followed by a warm wash of tingling along his nerves, then numbness. Craning his head, he reached, batting at himself, trying to get some sense of what had happened. His hand hit something small, hard, and cylindrical sticking out of his shoulder. He yanked it out. His flesh twinged, but he felt no pain. He wasn't feeling much of anything, suddenly. His legs had turned to cotton, and he dropped to his knees, hitting the asphalt hard.

His vision swimming, he looked at the thing in his hand that he'd pulled out of his shoulder. Small, silver, the width of a pencil, with a needle on one end and plastic fletching on the other. A tranquilizer dart. Of all the stupid, idiotic, bad '80s movie bullshit...this had not been on his list of things to be worried about.

A black SUV pulled up in front of him. Someone got out. Two people? He squinted, unable to focus.

Cormac, what's happening, what's—

"Goddammit," he muttered and passed out.