Page 1 of Wicked Deeds

Chapter One

I’ve always dreamedof monsters. Nightmares chase me through the dark. Well, at least since I turned thirteen and my mother secretly bound my magic to a demon. Dark things have stalked my dreams, the terror waking me from sleep to twisted sheets and my heart thumping so damned loud in my ears it’s deafening.

I rarely remember much of the detail when I wake—a small mercy I’m happy to take. But some nights, the fear still lingers. It drives me from my bed to work or read or watch mindless vidstreams until the sun rises and I feel safe again. I’m used to it now. Both the nightmares and the lack of sleep. And to tell the truth, since I met Damon Riley—tech god, billionaire and the man who I know would guard me in my dreams if he could manage it—the nightmares have come less often.

Correction.Werecoming less often. Because for the last month or so, they’ve been back. Only this time it’s not a demon haunting me.

It’s a photograph.

One that, to anyone but me, contains nothing alarming at all. Two people on a beach, smiling at the camera, wearing skimpyswimwear, tans, and the satisfied air of people having regular good sex.

The woman is beautiful. Long red hair, dazzling green eyes, a face that could launch a thousand ships if invading by ocean to steal a woman away to marry her was still a thing. The man beside her is no slouch either. His pale blue eyes are almost shocking against his deep tan and his dark hair is pushed back from his face as though it’s still damp. His grin could charm a brick wall.

So, no, the photo itself isn’t alarming.

But the woman is my mother, and her companion is Jack Miller, a dangerous witch who corrupted VR technology to a virtual prison, kidnapped Damon, and burned down my house with the assistance of imps. A man who consorts with demonkind can be nothing but evil.

Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn they’d crossed paths at some point. My mother—Sara—always had time for men with money and an inclination to spend it on her. Until she became a mother.

Once she’d had me, she laid low, dragging us through a series of middle of nowhere small towns across half the country. But she’d often told me how she’d lived the high life before I’d arrived to cramp her style, how she could have any man she wanted. When she was drunk and bitter and ranting at me over something I didn’t remember doing. I’d tried to let those moods wash over me, focusing on her body language, not what she was saying, trying to judge when I could safely retreat to bed and leave her alone with her resentment.

As for Jack, well, I don’t know him. We’ve only crossed paths in person a few times, but he’s charming. The kind of man not inclined to say no to bedding a beautiful woman who lets him think she’s charmed. Sara was a master at that, though Idoubted she’d ever been truly charmed by anyone. She was far too focused on working a situation to her own advantage.

I didn’t know how they met. I wanted to believe they didn’t. But Damon’s security team had analyzed the image and hadn’t found any signs of it being a fake.

So I had to assume it was real. Resulting in broken sleep and a brain spinning in too many directions, struggling with memories of not only the recent pain Jack had caused but also of my mother and a childhood I’ve done my best to forget.

Though my mother had always been unforgettable. Even when she was trying to blend in in small town after small town, I watched people turn to her, drawn like moths to a flame. Willing to let her spin her web of dazzling-sounding fortunes and useless potions, handing over their money and thanking her for the privilege.

She never told me who my father was. From her I inherited my magic, though it took me accidentally breaking that bond with a demon to discover my magic and my mother’s lies. So I came late to my power. But I’d understood tech instinctively from the first moment I’d learned to use it. Which I didn’t get from Sara—who would no more have learned to code than fly to the moon—or her parents, who were reluctantly competent users of gadgets at best.

Jack, though. Jack was a tech genius. He’d made his money inventing a refinement in holographics that helped revolutionize the industry. He’d taken the money when he and his partners received an offer they couldn’t refuse and sold up. He’d grown it making smart investments in new technologies. To the rest of the world, he was a smart, savvy Samaritan, helping small tech businesses succeed. But I knew the dark side he hid so well.

Which is why the photo was haunting me. The metadata for the image was limited. We knew the location—a small privateisland in the Bahamas, which these days was mostly underwater—and the date it was taken.

Ten months before I was born.

The date made my stomach twist every time I thought about it. Sara had never been one to hold on to men for long—usually because she got what she wanted and got out—but being with Jack in the Bahamas suggested some degree of seriousness.

It was possible she’d dumped him not long after, gone home and found someone new in time to get knocked up.

The island, being private and now no longer inhabitable, had no records of who had come and gone thirty-odd years ago. Damon’s sources confirmed Jack and Sara’s passports had been processed in Los Angeles, leaving the country on a private jet a week before the photo had been taken and returning two weeks after.

That was the sum total of information we had.

Nothing to calm my suspicions. My mother had been estranged from my grandparents well before I’d been born and they’d always told me they had no idea who my father was. My birth certificate had Sara’s name only.

I had no way of knowing for sure if my hunch was right, unless I could get a DNA sample from Jack.

But there’d be no DNA if we couldn’t find Jack. He’d been eluding Damon’s efforts to hunt him down for almost a year now.

Did I even want to know? Jack was a criminal. Of both the human and magical varieties. I’d always clung to the hope my dad had been some poor normal dude Sara had duped along the way. She fell firmly into the category of wicked witch. I didn’t want to believe I had criminals on both sides of my gene pool.

Ugh. I swiped the image closed. The datapad landed with a thump as I tossed it onto the far end of the sofa I was occupyingin Damon’s living room. He’d gone to bed an hour or so ago. Any sane woman would have joined him by now.

Instead, I’d told myself I’d finish some work on an analysis I’d done for a client first. I’d lasted about five minutes before I pulled up the picture again. Staring at it for most of an hour hadn’t yielded any blinding insight.

Nope. All it had done was make me edgy, anxious. The kind of jittery that told me sleep was going to elude me, unless I did something to burn it off.

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