1

“Stash, give me another one,” I said, clunking my shot glass down on the counter with fervor. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and this party was just getting started.

Now, any reasonable person might have wondered what I was doing at the Magic Formula, a witch bar in New York City, taking shots of glowing alcohol mixed with magic at this early hour. It wasn’t depression, a broken heart, or lamentations of a wretched life that had brought me here. It was my training with the Legion of Angels, an elite unit of supernatural soldiers with powers gifted to them by the gods themselves.

Stash looked at me, stroking the dark stubble of his two-day beard in thoughtful silence, like he was considering cutting me off. Instead, he poured me another shot of magic-tinted pink alcohol.

“Smart man,” I said.

He snorted.

“I can handle it,” I assured him, throwing back the shot. It burned like lighter fluid on the way down, just like it was supposed to.

His eyes followed the shot glass as I set it daintily back on the counter. My hand didn’t even shake. Compared to what I was used to, this fizzy pink stuff was child’s play.

“I have no doubt of that, sweetness. You eat poison for breakfast.”

Stash was right. Nectar, the drink of the gods, was essentially poison, a magical substance that either killed you or leveled up your magic. That’s what they gave us at the Legion of Angels when we were up for a promotion, a do-or-die sort of test. The Legion was big on do-or-die.

He leaned his elbows on the counter, the corners of his mouth lifting. “So, what is a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

I laughed at his feigned attempt to flirt. Outside of my family and the Legion, Stash was probably the closest thing I had to a friend. A shifter who’d gotten kicked out of one of the city packs, he now did odd jobs for other supernaturals in the city. We’d met in a fairy bar a few months ago. He’d been earning money arm-wrestling the bar’s patrons. He hadn’t counted on my Legion status, that I was stronger than most supernaturals, even a big, tough shifter like him.

“Sorry, buddy, this visit is strictly business,” I told him, turning my head toward the stage where a live band was playing under a turning light show of artificial colors.

On cue, a vampire burst out of the bathroom and streaked naked across the stage, zigzagging around instruments and band members, red and green light bouncing off his pale, naked ass. Laughter and cheers rose up from the crowd as all across the bar, people lifted their drinks in salute, a thank-you to the vampire for that brief moment of amusement.

They were thanking the wrong person. The vampire hadn’t come up with the brilliant idea to give these people something to cheer about. That had been all me. I’d put the idea into his head—literally, with magic. It had many names: compulsion, enchantment, charisma, the siren’s song. It was a tricky beast of a spell, and I’d been spending the past four months practicing it nonstop. This was necessary training for the next Legion level.

“Pretty good, right?” I said, turning to look at Jace.

“You convinced a drunk male vampire to part with his clothes. Bravo,” he replied drily.

Jace had been my practice partner over these four months. He was a Legion ‘brat’, an endearing term for a Legion soldier with an angel parent. They had all the magic, discipline, and arrogance you’d expect from people with their esteemed heritage, but Jace wasn’t so bad once you got a few drinks into him. Real drinks, laced with drops of Nectar. These witchy shots and cocktails didn’t seem to affect him at all.

“It doesn’t matter. I was successful, so you have to drink,” I told him.

Jace drank his fizzy blue shot, then set the glass down in front of Stash.

“Oh, yes, I can see you’re working real hard, Leda,” the werewolf said to me.

I grinned at him. “Work and play. Killing two birds with one stone, my friend.”

“Just how many stones are you planning on throwing in here, sweetness?”

“Until the birds start throwing back.”

Eventually, it would happen. I’d run out of steam or I’d pick the wrong target, someone strong enough to resist my still-weak magic. Compelling people was hard work, so I’d had the idea to bring it to a bar and make a drinking game of it. Every time either Jace or I successfully compelled someone, the other had to take a shot. I hadn’t counted on my opponent in this game being immune to alcohol.

I looked at Jace. “Your turn.”

His eyes panned across the club, finally settling on a female fairy with a pixie cut of bubblegum-pink hair. Putting down her drink, she slid her hand down to the leather strap of knives fastened to her thigh. It was common practice to go to a supernatural bar armed to the teeth. The fairy’s fingers danced across the knives, throwing them in quick succession at the opposite wall. Even though the crowd was as thick as molasses in winter, she hadn’t hit a single person. What she had done was spell out ‘Jace’ on the wall with her knives.

“Good one,” I told him, laughing. I took a shot from the glass Stash already had waiting for me.

“This is the most bizarre drinking game I’ve ever seen,” the werewolf told me. “And I have seen a lot of weird shit.”

A vampire on the other end of the bar was staring at me, his mesmerized eyes locked on my pale hair. He was looking at it like he wanted nothing more than to stain my platinum ponytail with my blood. Vampires had a thing for my hair. I’d never understood why, but something about it made them want to bite me, sparking hunger in even the most satiated vampire.

The vampire rose, his silver-blue eyes glowing with savage need. He was about to lose it. If he went for my neck, I’d have to shoot him, and I really didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t his fault my weird hair was a trigger for bloodlust in vampires.

I’d just have to put his energy to better use. I concentrated on his mind, on that spark of consciousness buried beneath a firestorm of instinct—and I grabbed onto it with everything I had. His consciousness retreated further, seeking refuge in the depths of his mind. I didn’t let it go. I poured my own will into him. I didn’t have a lot of magic, but what I did have was enough to get me in. And once I was in, his mind was mine. Compulsion was a game of mental gymnastics, a war of willpower. And there were few people who could match me in raw stubbornness.

The vampire stopped in front of me, the silver-blue sheen of his eyes fading out. He stared down at me, a blank slate. I gave him a big smile. In a burst of supernatural speed, he was suddenly on the bar, cartwheeling across the countertop in a series of stunts that would have made a top-tier gymnast green with envy.

“You really are the bringer of chaos,” Stash told me, then he ran after the cartwheeling vampire, trying to knock him off the bar.

I drew another mark under my name on the napkin Jace and I were using to keep score.

“That was…showy,” Jace said.

“You’re one to talk. You had a fairy spell out your name in knives on the wall.”

“That was a test of precision mind control.”

“Yeah, yeah, tell that to the scoreboard.” I showed him the napkin. “I’m ahead, goldilocks.”

“The people you picked are drunk, so they’d do anything you tell them anyway. With the way you’re dressed, it doesn’t take much convincing.”

I was wearing a dark red minidress and knee-high black boots, so he might have had a point.

I smirked at him. “Was there a compliment buried somewhere in that excuse?”

“Gods, no. I know better than to hit on Colonel Windstriker’s girlfriend.”

“I’m not his girlfriend.”

He gave me an indulgent look. “You keep telling yourself that, Leda.”

“We haven’t even gone on a date yet.”

“Yet,” Jace repeated with emphasis.

“Ok, yes. He asked me out, but he’s been out of the office more than he’s been in lately, so we haven’t actually been on a date.”

“That hasn’t stopped you from making out with him in the library.”

How could he possibly know about that? Nero had found me in the library, reaching for a book on the reading list he’d given me to prepare for my next Legion level. The bookcases in the Legion’s library were too high, obviously built with angels in mind. That created problems for those of us with our feet stuck on the ground.

Nero had plucked the book from the high shelf for me. One thing had led to another, and before I knew it, I was tackling him against the bookshelves, books raining down around us.

A sigh escaped my mouth. Kissing Nero was a dangerous pastime—an addiction, a gateway to dark and deadly seductions. And I was already in too deep.

“When is the last time you saw him?” Jace asked me.

“That day in the library last month.”

And that little rendezvous had certainly left its mark. He’d kissed me like I was the only woman in the world, and then he’d just left. That angel was playing a game with me, a game I didn’t even know the rules to, a game I was beginning to realize I’d lost before it had even begun.

“You’ve got it bad, Leda,” Jace said, chuckling.

“Oh, shut up.” I tossed a piece of popcorn at him. “You’re one to talk. Rumor has it you and Mina are getting pretty cozy lately.”

The smile wilted from his lips. “Mina and I are just friends.”

“You just keep telling yourself that.”

He clenched his jaw. “We should get back to practice.”

“Then, by all means, impress me.”

“Compelling someone is about controlling them, inside and out, body and mind, every sliver of self-control, every thought. There.” He pointed at two groups of men facing each other down. They looked a hair’s breadth away from breaking out in a fight. “What do you see?”

“Shifters versus witches, the epic showdown.”

He didn’t laugh. “It’s one thing to convince someone to do something they might do anyway. The true challenge is in convincing them to do something they don’t want to do.”

The shifters and witches suddenly stopped, eight men completely frozen in time. A moment later, they clapped their hands, the synchronized pop echoing over a lull in the music. A stomp followed. A turn. A twist. They broke out into a coordinated dance, like they were caught in a musical. Spinning, spiraling, circling, lifting. On and on they moved, not enemies but partners. Pivoting, prancing, snapping, tapping.

“That was cool,” I said to Jace as the shifters and witches finished their musical number. Their faces red, their eyes turned away, they parted ways too embarrassed to fight. “So much control. Every step was perfect. You should do shows.”

“Siren’s Song isn’t a party trick. It’s an important skill. It helps the Legion rally its troops. It diffuses problems. And learning this ability builds up a soldier’s resistance to mental control.”

“Did you swallow the Legion handbook?” I asked him.

He shot me a perplexed look. “You’re doing that thing you do again.”

“What thing?”

“Teasing.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“I…can’t really decide if I like it.”

“So growing up, you and your family didn’t tease one another.”

“My father doesn’t tease. He disciplines you for your own good.”

I snorted. “He sounds like your typical angel. I take it that speech about Siren’s Song was a quote from him.”

“Yes.”

I added another mark to the napkin under his name. “Well, I think I’ve proven that we can work on this important skill and have fun at the same time.”

I caught the arm of a passing vampire. She paused, her eyes taking on that distinctive hungry sheen as they slid down my hair, dipping to my neck. Her mouth curled back, exposing her fangs.

“My, my, what long teeth you have,” I said, taking hold of her mind.

The vampire kicked off the floor, sliding with silky grace over the bar.

“Hey, you can’t be back here,” Stash told her as she hopped down beside him.

The vampire batted her glittered eyelashes with false modesty. Then she grabbed Stash and kissed him hard on the lips. Her fingers, tipped with dark red polish, clawed through his hair, scraping down his stubbled jaw. Stash was kissing her back, and he wasn’t being gentle about it either. I guess he’d decided she could be back there after all.

“Are you done yet?” Jace asked me.

I chuckled. “They’re doing it on their own now.”

Surprise flashed in his eyes. He looked from the kissing couple to me.

“Pretty good, huh? The compulsion became ingrained, not just when I was actively controlling her.”

“It’s hardly surprising,” he said, recovering. “She is a vampire after all.”

I sighed. “What will it take to impress you?”

Jace glanced across the dance floor. “There,” he said, indicating the witch sitting on a sofa set atop a raised platform, looking down over everyone and everything like he was the king. “Enchant him. Convince him to sing ‘In the Moonlight’, and then I’ll be impressed.”

“That’s a shifter song,” I told him.

‘In the Moonlight’ was the shifters’ anthem, their theme song. It’s what they sang before getting furry and howling at the moon. Convincing a witch to sing it was about as easy as convincing a vampire to go on a no-blood diet. Nowadays, the shifters and witches of New York were getting along about as well as pickles and chocolate.

“Well, if you’re afraid of failing…” Jace allowed his voice to trail off.

“I’m afraid of nothing, least of all a witch wearing a purple wig and a gold suit.”

I poured myself another shot and drank it down. The witch king had bodyguards, two big witches who looked like they’d fallen off the pages of a bodybuilding magazine. I threw back another shot.

“If you’re not scared, then why do you need so many drinks?” Jace asked me.

“Just boosting up my magic.”

Which was kind of the truth. Witchy drinks had a hint of magic in them. Certainly nothing akin to Nectar, but you could only get Nectar drops in Legion bars. It was, after all, poison, so the fatality rate was pretty shocking. And killing your customers simply wasn’t good for business.

“He’s a leader,” I said, glancing at the witch king tucked safely behind his wall of bodyguards. “Leaders are harder to compel. The qualities that make others want to follow them also make them resistant to mental attacks.”

“That’s why it’s called a challenge,” replied Jace. “Don’t you want to push yourself?”

I did. Like everyone else, I had my reasons for joining the Legion. Some just wanted a place to fit in, others were hungry for power—or desperate for the magic that the gods’ gifts bestowed. That was me. Desperate. After my brother Zane went missing without a trace six months ago, I’d gone to the Legion with the intention of blasting through the ranks to gain the magic I needed to find him. The catch? The magic that would allow me to link to him, something called Ghost’s Whisper, was a ninth level Legion ability. I had a long way to go, assuming I even survived. This training was what I needed. I had to push myself.

The Legion was doing a good job of pushing me too. Thanks to the First Angel, I was on the fast track, an accelerated path of intensely brutal training. And I wasn’t the only one.

“Ivy told me there are dozens of us across all Legion offices in this fast track program,” I said.

“How does she know that?”

I shrugged. “She talks to people. And you know Ivy. People tell her everything.”

“Maybe she could convince the witch king to sing ‘In the Moonlight’.”

“I’ll do it. Just give me a moment.” I traced my finger across the lip of my empty shot glass.

Jace’s brows lifted. “Need another?”

“I think I can manage without,” I said, tapping my fingertips atop the counter. “So many of us being pushed to grow our magic faster. The Legion must be preparing for something.”

“You ask too many questions. That’s what gets you into trouble.”

“Has your father told you anything?”

“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” he replied, frowning. “Trouble.”

I smirked at him.

Jace sighed. “No, he hasn’t told me anything. Colonel Fireswift is not big on sharing.”

“Just like an angel,” I commented, rolling back my shoulders as I stood. “Ok, I think I’ve procrastinated long enough.”

I cut around the dance floor, keeping some distance between me and the hot scent of sweaty armpits and raging hormones. Sometimes possessing the heightened senses of a vampire was more of a burden than a boon. I strutted straight for the witch king’s stage, my eyes raised with confidence, my heels clicking hard against the floor. Attitude was everything, a little tip I’d learned in my bounty hunter years.

I’d made it to the wall of hired muscle. The witch king waved his bodyguards aside. Obviously, he was impressed by my attitude. Either that or my red minidress.

“Come here,” he purred richly, patting the empty seat to his right. The spot to his left was already occupied by a raven-haired witch covered in a tiny piece of lacy black lingerie masquerading as a dress.

“I think I’ll stand. I have the perfect view of your lovely companion’s panties from here.”

Silence filled the space between the witch king and me. The seconds dripped by. Then, suddenly, he threw back his head and laughed.

“Fantastic.” He pulled out an embroidered handkerchief and wiped the tears of mirth from his eyes, careful not to smear his eyeliner. “You are perfect. Too perfect. Did Constantine send you?”

“Constantine Wildman?” I asked. He was the only witch named Constantine I’d ever met.

“Yes. He’s always sending his minions to try to recruit me into his coven. After the last one, I told him that his next messenger had better be a pretty girl, or I wasn’t listening.”

“I’m not one of his minions.”

He braided his fingers together. “Then to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

“You sound like a man with a spectacular singing voice.”

His smile grew wider. “Go on, you silver-tongued siren.”

“I was hoping you’d honor us all with a song tonight.” I reached for the threads of his mind. “Something emotional. Something deep.”

“What did you have in mind?”

This was the moment of truth. How much of the siren’s magic was already in me? “In the Moonlight.”

His smile soured. Anger flashing in his eyes, he jumped up. Chants—or were they curses?—spilled out of his mouth. He snatched a vial from his belt and threw it at my feet. An invisible weight pressed down on my shoulders. I felt like I was caught inside an airtight bottle, slowly suffocating on my own breath. Something hard slammed into me, and the witch’s spell hurled me off the platform. My back hit the dance floor with a dry crack. I rolled over, gasping for breath, pushing myself up on my shaking arms.

One of the big bodyguards was waiting for me. His fist slammed down like a hammer. I slid out of the way—barely—and his hand broke through the floorboards. He shook off the splintered wood fragments and tried again. I rolled away, bouncing back to my feet. The bodyguard grabbed the closest table and pulled up so hard that the screws bolting the legs to the floor popped out. Then the friendly fellow hurled it at me.

I ducked. “That’s not nice,” I told him.

There was a strange, subtle glow to his body, some kind of spell. A strength-enhancing spell, I realized. He’d sprinkled the glittery gold powder all over himself. I ducked a second flying table. One of my witchcraft books had mentioned how to counter this spell. How did it go again?

I reached into my pouches, mixing together Wildflower and Unicorn Dust. Then I tossed the resulting pink-white powder at him. He froze, suspended in time. It wasn’t the spell I was looking for, but it would do for now. I was about to go find a chair to finish the job when a cloud of sparkling midnight blue powder hit him in the back. His mouth puckered up into a surprised O, and he hit the ground, revealing Jace behind him.

“I thought you could use a hand,” he said, looking down at the unconscious witch.

“I was doing all right.”

He looked around the club pointedly. It was open warfare season. The shifters and witches were fighting, and the vampires had taken chase, hunting down the fleeing fairies.

“Ok, so maybe it could have gone better,” I said.

A thunderous boom shook the building. Everyone stopped. The boom repeated. The staircase shuddered. Pictures tumbled off the walls, the glass front shattering against the quaking ground. What was going on?

“Uh-oh,” Jace said, his voice low.

“What is it? A monster? A demon?”

He shook his head. “No, an angel.”

The door to the club flung open, and golden streams of sunlight poured inside the dark room, lighting up a winged silhouette in a halo. He stepped inside, flaming cinders sprinkling off of him like burning rain.

“You’re in trouble now,” Jace whispered.

I met the green fire burning in the angel’s eyes, a fire that threatened to consume me. It was like time had stopped. I couldn’t help but stare at the angel moving toward me—or appreciate the muscled physique crafted over centuries of hard training. He moved like satin over steel.

His skin seemed to shine from within with the gods’ light. And those wings! He’d spread them wide, showcasing the darkly beautiful tapestry of black, blue, and green feathers. He’d obviously done it to get our attention. Well, he had it, one hundred percent. I couldn’t have looked away if I’d wanted to—and I definitely didn’t want to. I wet my mouth, my tongue sliding slowly across my lips. His gaze dipped to my mouth, and something dangerous sparked in his eyes.

“Leave us,” he said with a wave of his hand.

And just like that, the club emptied. His face impassive, the angel stopped in front of me and Jace.

“Nero,” I began.

“Why am I not surprised to find you at the center of this chaos?”

Nero had an aura that toppled mountains and froze hurricanes. He moved like he owned every room, like he owned you—and you just wanted to please him, to make him look at you, to notice you. A hot sweat broke out across my skin, fear and excitement swirling inside of me.

“We were training,” I said weakly.

Nero’s hard eyes turned on Jace. “Training is over. Go back to the office. Your father is waiting for you there.”

“Yes, Colonel.” Swallowing hard, Jace trod across the floor and left the club. He must have known his father’s visit wasn’t about father-son bonding time.

Nero watched him leave, then his eyes snapped back to me. “Is there any point in lecturing you about proper decorum?”

“Probably not.” I leaned my back against the bar.

“It was foolish of you to try to compel Orsin Wildman.”

I didn’t ask how he knew what had gone down here. He’d probably lifted it from the minds of the partiers. Nero was an accomplished telepath.

“It was Jace’s idea.”

“The witch was wearing an amulet to ward against compulsion,” Nero said. “You will need to gain a lot more magic before you can break through a spell like that.”

“An amulet? So that’s what that glitzy necklace was.”

“You need to read more of the books I assigned you,” he replied with practiced patience.

“I am reading them. There are just so many to get through.”

His brow arched. “An excuse?”

“A fact,” I retorted.

“Being a soldier in the Legion of Angels is a constant struggle to improve yourself, to grow every skill, even the ones you think you’ve mastered. I’m trying to help you.”

“I know, and I’m trying.” I sighed. “I’ll try harder.”

“I didn’t come here to lecture you, Leda.”

“Then why did you come?” A smile tugged at my lips. “Want to make out behind the bar?”

Nero’s eyes flickered toward the bar. Silver sparked in them for a brief moment before sinking into the emerald depths. I winked at him.

“You live dangerously, Pandora.” His eyes dipped down, sliding across my body like molten honey.

“I love it when you call me Pandora.” That was his nickname for me, the bringer of chaos.

His hand brushed down my arm, his touch featherlight. Goosebumps prickled up across my skin, like I’d been zapped by lightning. And not in a bad way.

“I came to tell you about our new mission.” He lifted his hand to my neck, brushing back my hair.

“Our? As in you’re going too?”

“Yes.”

“And what mission has finally brought the illustrious Colonel Windstriker back to us?”

“I wanted to come back sooner.”

“Oh? Missing the days of torturing new initiates?”

“I missed you, you smart ass.”

I chuckled. “Tell me about this mission.”

“We’ll be guiding a group of Pilgrims across the Black Plains.”

The Black Plains was a scorched expanse that was home to hundreds of different monster varieties. The only people who went there were the criminal and the insane—and soldiers of the Legion because angels like Nero thought fighting off human-eating monsters built character.

“The Pilgrims are going on a holy pilgrimage to the battleground site of the final showdown between gods and demons two hundred years ago.”

“So I take it our job is to protect them from being eaten by monsters?”

“Yes.”

“How romantic.”

“Leda, I’ve assigned you to this mission because you know the area, not because I have any ulterior motives.”

“Of course not.” I kept my face perfectly serious. “Because that would be completely inappropriate.”

“Exactly.”

Ok, fine. Professional. I could do professional.

“When do we leave?” I asked.

“In half an hour.”