“The trajectory of Jane’s first-person adventures means that this increasingly hazardous ride is fast and furious, but the author still takes time to develop character and relationships. Peeler deftly proves she knows how to tell  an irresistible story!” –Romantic Times, ★★★★1/2 Stars

Chapter One

This time was for real. Nothing could stop me. I would crack this lesson. I would create this damned mage light. I would not burn off another eyebrow . . .

Keeping up my flow of positive thinking, I watched as a tiny sphere of blue light flickered to life in my palm. It began to grow as I fed it with my power, trying to keep myself calm. But my stomach strummed happily as a wave of triumph washed through me. I fed the bright orb just a tiny bit more . . .

And with a terrific bang it exploded, knocking me back on my ass and my breath out of my lungs.

When my vision cleared, I made out a pair of muddy brown eyes staring into mine. The eyes were attached to Trill, the kelpie, who lived most of the time in the sea surrounding my village of Rockabill, Maine. As a kelpie, she had two forms: the weird little sea-pony form she was in now and a humanoid form that would never pass as normal, even with tequila goggles.

“She still has both eyebrows,” the pony reported, her voice oil-slick slippery.

“Good,” came Nell’s deceptively grandmotherly tones. “She looked hideous with just the one.”

The kelpie nodded sagely, and I gave her my most baleful glare. “Thanks for caring, Trill,” I told her as I grabbed a hank of her seaweed forelock to help haul myself up.

“No problem, Jane.” She winced, shaking free of my hold on her mane. Without which I thumped back onto the grass, my head spinning. Magic hurts when it goes kablooey.

I groaned pathetically as Nell’s little face loomed over mine. “Come on, Jane. Get up. Now is not the time for resting.”

I took a deep breath, blinking my eyes to clear my vision. Finally, I struggled upright, still a little woozy. Nell the gnome smiled at me, but I wasn’t fooled. Behind those rustic clothes and that pleasant expression lurked the disposition of the gunnery sergeant from Full Metal Jacket.

“Come now, Jane. Stand up and do it again.”

Do or do not. There is no try, my weary brain chittered at the tiny but implacable old lady currently staring at me with her wee fists balled at her hips. If I didn’t know she could drop me in a heartbeat, I would have picked her up by her giant silver bun to discus throw her into the trees. Instead, I laboriously clambered to my feet and then took a second to reclip my bangs off my face. I was growing them out, and they were officially at the stage where they were driving me crazy.

When finished, I slowly, painstakingly, cleared my mind, trying to picture my head as an empty room, painted all in white, that held no sound. I then pictured myself sitting cross-legged in the middle of that colorless, silent room — eyes shut and perfectly in control of both my body and my mind. I felt my breathing grow shallow as I tried to withdraw even further inward, to where the power lay within me.

“Concentrate, Jane, and pull from within,” came Nell’s soothing voice. “Now, this time, create the light without focusing on the light. The light is the natural result of your manipulating your powers. Don’t let the light itself distract you from control.”

I held my palm out in front of me. Technically, I didn’t need to use my hand to create the light. But it helped to solidify my visualization of what I wanted, and I’d seen that a lot of supernatural folk, including my lover, Ryu, used their hands in creative ways when making mage lights.

And Ryu has very creative hands, chimed in my ever- irrepressible libido, as if on cue.

“Jane!” Nell barked as my attention veered to Ryu, and the little shell of power I’d begun building around myself began to fizzle. I pulled my hormones up sharply and went back to my clean bright room, keeping it conspicuously absent of a certain handsome man and his big beautiful fangs —

“Jane!” This time Nell’s voice was decidedly miffed.

I sighed and focused, firmly banishing all stray thoughts. When I was finally centered, I pictured the mage light as a spark flaring up in my palm. I fed the spark, keeping my emotions at bay, and watched as it grew into a little golf ball–sized globe of light. I held it steady, maintaining it in my palm.

“Good,” said Nell. “Now, try making it bigger.”

“Bigger” was where things usually went wrong. I focused, again, doing my best to keep calm as I started feeding energy into the small sphere. As I did so, I visualized it expanding. The shape in my palm trembled, and I forced myself to continue my slow, deep breaths. And then it grew, its pulsing skin stretching until it was about the size of a baseball.

“Excellent, Jane. Now disperse it, but remember to recycle your energy.”

This part I was good at. I focused my will and gently siphoned the energy out of my mage light, being careful to bring as much of it back into me as I could. Technically, I could let the power just flow back into the environment, but Nell was a firm believer in “waste not, want not.”

The light wavered, stilled for a split second, and then winked out of existence. I couldn’t help but close my hand with a little flourish. Now that I couldn’t blow anything up, I was allowed to be pleased with myself. That was the first time I’d managed to create and disperse a mage light start to finish.

“Who’s your daddy?” I demanded rhetorically, doing a little happy dance.

“He died centuries ago; you wouldn’t know him,” Nell replied, coming toward me. “Stop hopping about and shields up.”

Aye aye, Captain, I thought, even as I dutifully raised my defenses.

Almost immediately, the gnome let loose a fierce barrage of tiny mage balls straight at me.

“Shit!” I swore, reflexively throwing up an arm to shield my face. Despite my momentary lapse of control, however, my defenses held. I watched, still flinching every time, as each little blast of Nell’s power struck the invisible barriers I’d erected about arm’s length in front of me. Nell’s little mage balls weren’t enough to do any real damage, but I knew all too well that the little fuckers stung like hell. This time, however, they all fizzled out on my shields in bright little bursts of light. After a moment, I realized it was quite pretty, like being trapped in an inverse snow globe.

Finally, the gnome grunted happily and ceased her attack.

“Excellent, Jane. Your defenses are strong.”

I squirmed with pride at Nell’s words, for having strong defenses brought me even more pleasure than creating the mage light. After all, while mage lights did make finding my underwear easier in the dark, having strong shields would save my life.

“You’ve never had any trouble seeing through glamours, so I think you’re ready to start creating them,” Nell continued, gathering tighter the shawl she wore about her shoulders. “But we’ll leave that for next time. For now, go eat. And don’t forget to swim tonight. You’ll need more power than you expect for glamours.” She came toward me to pat my thigh with one of her tiny hands in the gnome version of a pat on the back. “You’re beginning to make real progress.”

“Thanks, Nell,” I said, meaning it from the bottom of my heart. Although I knew I had tons to learn, at least I wasn’t as entirely helpless as I had been.

My introduction to the supernatural world I now inhabited had been brutally swift. Four months ago I’d been boring old Jane — bookstore clerk and secret night swimmer. Till one night I’d found a dead body and suddenly I was Jane True, half selkie and heir to a very nonboring magical heritage. The dead body had turned out to be one of a series of murders being investigated by Ryu, the guy I was currently seeing, and I’d gotten embroiled — big-time — in the investigation. During which I’d nearly been killed twice: once in a physical attack by Jarl, the closet Hitler, and once by Jarl’s lackey, the now-deceased Jimmu, who’d frozen me with his magical snaky stare. I’d been a sitting duck to Jimmu’s naga glamour, which is why, four months back when I started training with Nell, Anyan Barghest’s sole command to my new teacher had been that Nell teach me to make my shields secure before anything else. I think Anyan was just tired of playing hero, considering he’d been obliged to rescue me both times I had nearly lost my head.

That said, and despite how chaotic the last months had been, I had no complaints. My life was a constant cycle of work, train, take care of my dad, and swim, but I loved every minute. And, while things had been too crazy for me to make it to Boston yet, about once a fortnight I would meet Ryu in a bed-and-breakfast in Eastport for our patented weekend marathons of sex and eating. In other words, I was happier now than I’d been since Jason had died so many years ago. I felt . . . whole again. I did stay up late, sometimes, worrying about what had happened with Jimmu, unable to understand the true motivations behind the murders he’d committed. Ryu had assured me that the investigation they’d done into the nagas’ murders, after the fact, had been extensive and thorough and hadn’t uncovered anything for me to be worried about. But I did worry . . . and I knew there was more to those murders than just the nagas’ racist hatred of halflings urging them to homicide.

That said, I couldn’t spend my life worrying about Jimmu. Especially not when everything had fallen into place for me. It’s like I’d finally discovered the Jane True I’d always been meant to be. I still had a lot to learn, but I was really, really excited to grow into the woman I glimpsed lurking on the horizon.

She is pretty fucking fierce, I thought, laughing at myself for my little burst of sheer narcissism.

The gnome ignored my random giggling but did acknowledge my thanks with a nod. Then she took her leave, waddling toward the forest surrounding our training pasture. Trill gave me a horrible pony grin — her eerie gray skin stretched taut over her bony skull — before she turned tail to follow Nell into the woods.

I stretched, long and leisurely, before wandering off toward the cabin that butted up to the pasture we used for training. The door was locked, so my bag was lying on the stairs of the cabin’s wide, wraparound porch.

I eyed the little house, wishing I could get in there. I had to pee, first of all, but I also loved snooping around Nell’s cabin. It was full of amazing art, and it had this awesome kitchen I would kill to cook in. It also smelled deliciously of lemon wax and cardamom, a combination of scents I’d come to crave. But it was closed up, and the gnome had gone off to do whatever it is gnomes do, so I dragged my battered old messenger bag off the stairs and started down the path that led to my house.

Feeling my oats, I gave my bag a jaunty swing. It twirled, obligingly, around my arm and I laughed. So I gave it another swing, harder this time. Which resulted in me dumping its contents onto the rough path beneath my feet.

Sighing, I knelt down to pick it all up, wondering, for about the fifth time that month, whether Nell had a spell to make me less of a spaz.

“I saw it and knew it was for you. Happy early Valentine’s Day!”

I held the T-shirt up to admire it as Iris’s honeydew voice washed over me. That said, I had to tear my eyes from her, resplendent in an aquamarine wool sheath dress that accentuated her golden skin and hair, to appreciate my gift. The shirt was white, with huge dark gray and silvery angelic wings etched on the back and a small heart with wings and a halo emblazoned on the front. It was adorable and I loved it.

“Thank you sooo much, Iris,” I said before passing the gift I’d gotten her over the table.

We were at the Trough, our local diner. Many of Rockabill’s businesses had pig-related names in honor of our whirlpool, the Old Sow, which was a tourist attraction as well as my favorite place to swim. Not intending to seduce the good people of Rockabill, Iris was dampening down her natural mojo, but I could still feel it brushing against my carefully constructed shields. And despite her efforts, the succubus’s effect on the other diners was very evident. Everyone in the Trough was turned toward Iris, their own postures reflecting each of her movements, just a little, like flowers tracking the path of the sun through the sky.

She pawed aside the gift bag’s decorative tissue to find the first three books of my new favorite paranormal romance series. They featured the antics of extraordinarily boinkable demon men, and since Iris was a succubus, after all, I thought they were an entirely appropriate Valentine’s Day gift.

“Ooo, covers,” Iris cooed, stroking a French manicured nail over the lusciously muscular tattooed back of the first novel’s cover model. I nodded my agreement. I normally didn’t like the whole “brooding man” choice of cover, but these totally rose my biscuits. They focused on the body and the tats — rather than the usually disappointing pretty-boy face that most covers sported — and I was happy to follow their lead.

“I know.” I grinned, partially happy that Iris liked my gift but also happy that I could even have a conversation like this with her. A few months ago I had no chance of keeping my shit together around an aroused incubus or succubus. And they were always aroused. But now, while I felt the waves of Iris’s sexual juju against my protected mind, I was totally capable of keeping on my underpants.

“Sexy?” she asked, arching an eyebrow at me.

“Incredibly,” I answered. “Slightly bizarre caveman-style monosyllabic dialogue in some of the sex scenes, but other than that, they are hot.”

“Mmmm. Sex scenes,” Iris purred, her eyes glowing gently in that trademark succubus manner. I laughed as Amy, our local nahual waitress, came to take our orders.

“What can I get you fine ladies this evening?” she asked.

“The usual,” I said, which meant a lemonade and a tuna melt.

“Can I have this?” Iris asked in her honeydew voice, holding up one of the novels I’d bought her so that Amy could see the cover.

“Sorry, hot man is all out at the moment. We have some corpulent taxi driver and a slice of crazy cat-lady left, but we ran out of hot man hours ago.”

Iris tsked, her luscious lips pouting adorably. “Then I’ll have a Diet Coke and the chef’s salad. Dressing on the side.”

“You got it,” Amy said as she ambled off.

“Now, Jane,” Iris said, her brilliant blue eyes fixing on mine like spotlights. “Tell me what you and Ryu have planned for Valentine’s Day. Maybe a ménage à trois?”

“Why?” I asked suspiciously. “Has Ryu said something to you?”

“No,” Iris laughed. “I was trying to make a joke.”

“Never joke about Ryu and sexual experimentation. Ever. My heart can’t take it.”

Iris grinned a particularly feral little smirk. “If he weren’t a waste of my time, I’d take him for a spin. Share trade secrets and whatnot.” Iris wasn’t calling Ryu a waste of time because she didn’t like him but because, for whatever reason, only humans and some halflings created the right type of magical essence that succubae, incubi, and baobhan sith needed to feed.

I shook my head at Iris. “The thought of you two together terrifies me. You’d burn through the floor. You’d probably smash your way to China. The friction would start a cold-fusion reaction.”

Iris laughed. “Unfortunately, he’s like celery to me. I’d burn more energy eating him than I would get from digesting.” I cocked my head at her metaphor, trying to decide if it was sexy or just bizarre as she continued. “And besides, except for feeding, he’s got eyes only for you, Jane.”

At her words, my whole body froze. The thing is, the situation between Ryu and me was really complicated. I liked him, a lot. But he lived in Boston, where he was based. He was kind of like a supernatural detective, and it was a big deal to be in charge of a city so large and important. Meanwhile, my life was here, in backwater Rockabill. My dad would never move, as he was convinced my mother would someday reappear. He also had a bad heart, so I had to be around to help take care of him. I wasn’t about to abandon my father, and Ryu wasn’t about to abandon his career. So, even though we’d been dating since we met, we were still in this delicious honeymoon stage. We had our heady weekend flings, and we never had to deal with real life.

But I still knew damned well that “real life” meant Ryu’s being with other women. He was a baobhan sith, the beings that had inspired our vampire mythologies. He drank blood, but not much. He only needed essence, not food. Nevertheless, Ryu couldn’t do his job without expending a lot of energy. Therefore, he couldn’t do his job without consuming a lot of essence from human veins. As my veins were in absentia, in this scenario, two plus two equaled him getting a little nookie on the side. He couldn’t just find any old neck and sink in his fangs, or rob a blood bank, or drink synthetic blood like vampires did in the movies. After all, it wasn’t the actual blood Ryu fed on, but the emotions. So he had either to scare the shit out of someone or arouse them. He had either to become a creature of nightmares, the kind of creature I wouldn’t want to date, or stick with arousal and do what, in human terms, would be considered cheating.

But just because I could do the math didn’t mean I wanted to. Ever. As Iris kept pouring lemon juice in my wounds, my face went all blank and weird, and I knew my friend could sense how uncomfortable she’d made me by bringing up Ryu’s sanguinary infidelities.

“Oh, gods, Jane, I’m so sorry. That was so stupid of me to say. I’m really sorry. I know Ryu cares for you . . . I shouldn’t have mentioned the feeding . . . I’m sure he’d just feed off you if he could. And I can tell you from experience that the sex really doesn’t mean anything . . .”

I tried to take deep breaths as Iris plied her shovel, digging herself deeper.

“I mean, he probably doesn’t have to feed that often anyway, and you do see each other quite a bit, so it’s probably only a few times a week that he needs to go off on his own . . .”

Before Iris could apologize any more, I forced my throat to work. “No, Iris, it’s stupid of me to get upset. It’s just all so fucking complicated.” My stressed, already overly loud voice rose on those last two words, causing old Mrs. Patterson of the randy Yorkies to glare at me from over her bowl of clam chowder before she went back to staring in rapture at Iris. “Let’s just change the subject,” I begged. “Tell me about your plans for Valentine’s Day.”

The good thing about succubae was that they were wonderfully easy to distract. Wiping away her sad expression, Iris started telling me about the marathon of debauchery she had planned for the weekend. I let my mind start to wander when she got to the part about her intended visit to Eastport’s fire station.

“. . . so the good part is they can just hose me off at the station and I won’t have to worry about showering. Get it? Hose me off? Since it’s a fire station? Jane, are you listening?” Iris’s syrupy French-toast voice finally interrupted my inner critique and I snapped to attention.

“I’m sorry, Iris. I’m here. And you’re talking about hosing. Again.”

Right then, Amy came with our food and I managed to veer Iris toward more innocuous subjects as we ate. We talked about her boutique and some new stock she wanted me to try. When we were finally finished, I insisted on picking up the check, so she insisted on paying the tip.

“Should we head out to the Sty?” Iris asked when we were in the parking lot. I shuddered. Not because I didn’t love the Pig Sty, our local bar that was owned by a pair of nahuals whom I adored. It was just that the Sty was also usually home to Stuart Gray, Jason’s cousin and Rockabill’s self-appointed made-for-TV bully. Stu hated me, and I hated him right back.

“Sorry, Iris, but I’m gonna pass. I don’t want to deal with Stuart.” Not tonight, with my self-control just about shot. One word out of Stu’s obnoxious mouth and I’d probably zap him with a lightning bolt. If I could zap lightning bolts, that is.

“How about a ride home?” she asked.

“Make it the beach and you got a deal.”

She nodded and we ambled over to her little pink hybrid. “I don’t see your wet suit,” she said, casually, as we got in her car.

I ignored her as I buckled my seat belt.

“Are you just going to leave your clothes in the sand?” she asked, trying a different angle. “Don’t they get dirty?”

I blinked at her, and she started up her car.

“I could hold them, you know. For you. Make sure they stay dry.”

I fiddled with her car’s stereo.

“Just a little sex? Please?” Iris’s voice was like caramel apples. I burst out laughing.

She laughed with me. “I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”

“I know, Iris. I know,” I said, still giggling as I patted her hand affectionately. “But those lines do put the suck in ‘succubus’.”

(c) 2010 Nicole Peeler