Heart of Fire Read online

  Heart of Fire

  Lisa Edmonds

  HEART OF FIRE

  By

  Lisa Edmonds

  Copyright © 2018 Lisa Edmonds

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  Edited by Heather McCorkle.

  Cover Design by Mibl Art and Tina Moss.

  All stock photos licensed appropriately.

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  Published in the United States by City Owl Press.

  www.cityowlpress.com

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  For information on subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher at [email protected]

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent and permission of the publisher.

  To the readers who’ve lived a thousand lives through stories and let Alice be one of them;

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  To Bill, for everything;

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  And to Jeff, who is the whole of the orchard.

  Praise for Lisa Edmonds

  “Edmonds’s prose is energetic...Alice is both spunky and self-deprecating, with incredibly advanced magical powers...There is promise in Edmonds’s melding of the supernatural and the everyday.”

  - Publishers Weekly

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  “Alice is a pretty badass heroine who has potential to be one of my favorite in the genre. She takes a beating, heals herself, and goes back into the fray. The plot is fast-paced and revolves around an excellent magical mystery with earth shattering consequences should something go askew. I loved Alice's backstory and learning how this world works. I look forward to seeing what is in store for Alice in the next book.”

  - All Things Urban Fantasy

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  “Edmonds’s suspenseful second urban fantasy novel is just as action-packed and entertaining as the first... Edmonds has an eye for both detail and entertaining characters, and her story is fun and energetic... Readers will enjoy this installment and look forward to more in the continuing saga of Alice Worth.”

  - Publishers Weekly

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  “What a cracking read...ages since I read a new fantasy story that's gripped me like this, that I so enjoyed. It’s up there with my favourite reads and I hope Lisa is hard at work with the next book.”

  - Jeannie Zelos Book Reviews

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  “There is NOTHING better than finding a fantastic new paranormal series. Lisa Edmonds has started a series that grabbed and held my attention...Heart of Malice successfully shows me the new world as it’s experienced. With a little info here…and a little info there, I wasn’t bombarded all at once and I got to see it all live and in action.”

  - Stacey is Sassy

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  “Add everything together, great writing, great characters, interesting pasts, and great plotting, I can’t wait to read more! Highly recommend!”

  - Librarian, Penny Noble

  Author’s Note

  Don’t miss the start of the Alice Worth novels with HEART OF MALICE.

  Meet Alice.

  Private Investigator of the Supernatural.

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  The first time Moses Murphy’s granddaughter killed on his orders, she was six years old.

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  For twenty years, she was a prisoner of an organized crime syndicate, forced to use her magic to make Moses the most powerful and feared man on the East Coast. To escape his cruelty, she faked her own death and started a new life as Alice Worth. As a private investigator specializing in cases involving the supernatural, Alice walks a precarious line between atoning for the sins of her grandfather’s cabal and keeping her true identity hidden.

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  Hired to investigate the disappearance of a mysterious object of power, Alice enlists the help of Malcolm, a ghost running from a past as nightmarish as her own. It soon becomes clear the missing object was taken by someone with a dangerous secret and an unknown agenda. When her client is kidnapped, Alice must find her and the object of power before a vengeful killer destroys the city and slaughters thousands—starting with Alice.

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  BUY NOW!

  The Alice Worth Series

  By Lisa Edmonds

  Heart of Malice

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  Just For One Night (Short Story)

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  Blood Money (Novella)

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  Heart of Fire

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  ALICE WORTH SNEAK PEEK: BOOK THREE

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Additional Titles

  Prologue

  When the half-drunk graveyard shift cook with singed eyebrows and Johnnie Walker breath says you’re looking rough, you know you’ve got problems.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” I said wearily, tucking cash under my plate and heading for the door.

  “Your food!” the cook hollered, gesturing with his spatula at the counter, where I’d left behind an empty coffee pot and untouched club sandwich.

  “Guess I wasn’t hungry after all.” I pushed the door open and headed out to the parking lot.

  When I’d arrived, despite it being after midnight, the only available spot in the tiny lot next to Nancy’s Diner was at the back near the dumpster. I unlocked my car, tossed my bag onto the passenger seat, and started to get in.

  Someone screamed.

  My head whipped around. The sound cut off abruptly, but not before I was already running toward the alley on the other side of the dumpster.

  When I rounded the corner, I saw what looked like three or four people fighting about twenty feet away. As I got closer and my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I realized with horror that three young men had cornered a blonde girl by a large trash bin. She kicked wildly as one of them tried to pin her against the wall and another covered her mouth while the third yanked her bag away and dumped it on the ground.

  “Hey!” I yelled.

  They looked up. The one who’d taken her bag dropped it and headed toward me, while the other two continued to struggle with the girl. She looked at me, her eyes huge and panicked.

  “Bitch, you better get out of here,” he told me. A blade glinted in his hand. It was shaking.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, advancing. “Put your little knife away before you hurt yourself.”

  Twitchy raised his knife and spun it between his fingers with surprising dexterity. I was close enough now to see he wasn’t trembling because he was afraid. His pupils were dilated, and despite the cool night, he was sweating. Realization dawned. He wasn’t scared; he was high.

  The gir
l suddenly screamed again. One of the other thugs swore. “She bit me!” He punched her in the jaw. She hit the pavement hard and didn’t move.

  I took a deep breath and said a little prayer to whoever might be listening. I was about to do something really stupid.

  “Look at you losers,” I taunted them. “Three of you against one girl. Is this the only way you can get any action?”

  That did it. With twin snarls, the other two joined their friend, leaving the girl on the dirty pavement behind them.

  “Maybe we start with you instead,” the tallest of the three said. “You got a big mouth. It’ll feel real good right here.” He grabbed his crotch and the other two laughed.

  Two of them—Twitchy and Dipstick, the tall one—had blades. The third cracked his knuckles while he leered at my chest. His hands looked bloody, from hitting either the girl or someone else earlier in the evening. All of them twitched like they were holding onto a high-voltage wire.

  Three against one wasn’t great, but I wasn’t nearly as defenseless as they probably thought I was.

  Dipstick came at me first. I waited until he was about four feet away before I flicked my right wrist in a gesture as if I were tossing a pair of dice. Bright green earth magic spiraled out of my hand. His eyes widened, but he had no time to react before I whipped the stream of cold fire through the air and lashed his knife hand. He screamed and dropped the knife, doubling over and clutching his hand. I struck again, knocking him flat, then kicked him in the jaw. He went still. One down.

  Knuckles took a step back, but Twitchy advanced, his lip curled and knife raised. He turned back to his companion. “Come on!”

  They rushed me.

  I went for Twitchy, striking out with my whip and connecting with his chest. He staggered back but managed to hang onto his blade. Knuckles came at me from my left side, which was smart…or might have been, if my whip were my only weapon.

  Knuckles took a swing at me and I ducked. My cold fire whip vanished and I hit him in the chest with both palms. A strong blast of air magic sent him flying backward ten feet to smash into the wall of the building. The impact knocked him out and he hit the pavement in a heap. Two down, one to go.

  In the meantime, Twitchy was on the attack. His blade sliced across my right forearm and I cried out. Before he could strike again, I lashed out and my whip caught him across the neck. He shrieked and stumbled, dropping his knife to grab his throat. I took two steps to pick up momentum and kicked him in the groin. He doubled over with a breathless scream and I brought my knee up into his face. Cartilage crunched and he went down, blood streaming from his nose. One kick to the head, and then there were none.

  Breathing hard, I looked at my arm. Blood dripped from my fingers. I couldn’t see how bad the cut was in the dim light, but the tear in my sleeve was about six inches long and the wound stung.

  Before I could deal with my injury, I had to make sure they stayed down until the girl and I were gone. I touched Dipstick’s arm, using a “nap” spell that put him out cold for about an hour. I went to the other two and repeated the spell.

  If Malcolm, my ghost sidekick, were here, he’d have asked me why I hadn’t just put them to sleep as soon as I got close enough to touch them. I’d have told him I wanted the practice, but the truth was, I’d needed that fight to blow off steam. All the tension that had been building in my shoulders for the past week or so was gone. I felt lighter.

  With the three would-be rapists taken care of, I went to check on the girl. She was still unconscious, her jaw swelling where Knuckles had hit her.

  At a glance, I guessed she was a working girl: short black skirt, high heels, mesh top over a bright pink bra. The contents of her bag lay scattered around her.

  While I waited for her to wake up, I unfastened one of the charms on my bracelet—a small, blue crystal—and moved until I was leaning against the wall, out of sight of the street and the diner parking lot. I pushed up my sleeve, held the crystal to my bloody right forearm, and invoked the spell. “Helios.”

  It was a mid-range air magic healing spell, the strongest I dared carry with me. I breathed deeply through the pain as the spell worked to heal the knife wound. The pins-and-needles sensation lasted for about a minute.

  When at last the magic faded, I tucked the spent crystal into my pocket and looked at my arm. The cut was mostly healed, reduced to an angry red line. Another healing spell would heal the injury altogether, but I only had the one with me. I’d have to wait until I got home.

  I rolled up my sleeves to hide the blood and went back to where I had been standing when my arm got cut. I crouched and put my fingertips in my blood on the pavement. “Burn.” With a whoosh, white fire—my air magic—consumed my blood, leaving behind a fine gray ash that would blow away.

  I went through Dipstick’s pockets first. His wallet contained a few bucks in cash, no cards, and an expired driver’s license identifying him as John Andrews. I put the cash in my pocket, left the wallet on the pavement next to him, and turned his jeans pockets inside out. Nothing but some loose change and a lighter.

  Nothing interesting in Knuckles’s pockets, either, though I confiscated about forty dollars in small bills.

  I hit pay dirt with Twitchy. He had a respectable roll of cash and two small plastic bags containing marble-sized amounts of black crystals. The bags were marked with black flames. I frowned. What the hell is this? I wondered. What were these guys on?

  I tucked the money in my pocket and the drugs in my boot and stood. Behind me, I heard a moan. When I turned, the girl was blinking and looking around, plainly confused.

  I approached slowly so I didn’t startle her. “Hey, are you okay?”

  Her eyes widened. “Where are they?”

  “They’re napping.” I crouched down. “You’re safe.”

  The girl groaned and pushed herself up to lean against the brick wall. She touched her jaw gingerly. “Where did you come from?”

  “I was in the parking lot at Nancy’s when I heard you scream.”

  She looked at the three unconscious thugs in disbelief. “What are you, some kind of superhero?”

  I snorted. “Hardly. I didn’t know if they were trying to rob you or rape you or both, but I wasn’t going to stand by and let it happen. How do you feel?”

  The girl started cramming stuff back into her bag and flexed her jaw. “It doesn’t feel too good, but I’ll be okay. I’ve had worse.”

  “What’s your name?”

  She stared at me, her eyes narrowing. “Why?”

  “No particular reason. I’m Alice.”

  “Where’s your rabbit, Alice?” The girl grimaced as she started trying to stand up.

  I rose. “Can’t find him. Little furry bastard runs too fast.”

  She laughed and used the wall to push herself to her feet. “Ow, my ass,” she breathed, rubbing her tailbone.

  “Is anything broken?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Just bruises, probably. I’m Carrie.”

  “Hey, Carrie. Why don’t you take the rest of the night off?” I dug in my pocket and handed her the cash I’d collected. “It’s all they had.”

  Carrie grinned. “Sweet. I like you, Alice.” She took the money and stuck it in her bag. “Wish I could have seen what you did. First time anyone ever came to my rescue, and I missed it.”

  “It wasn’t all that exciting. Really, they went down pretty quickly.” I reached into my boot and pulled out one of the little plastic bags. “What do you know about this stuff?”

  Carrie glanced at the bag and grimaced. “Haze,” she said with disgust.

  “Haze?” I’d never heard of it. “Is that a new nickname for meth?”

  She held out her hand. I handed her the bag and she looked at it closely. “It’s not meth. This shit started showing up a couple of months back. Now it’s like everybody’s on it. They always mark the bags with the flames. They call it Haze or Black Fire. It’s bad stuff, makes you real mean and paranoid.
My old roommate took too much and jumped off a bridge.”

  “Wow.” I stared at the little bag in surprise.

  Carrie was quiet for a moment. “I’m not gonna lie: I take pills. You gotta have something to take the edge off, you know? But I don’t want any part of that garbage.” She handed the bag back.

  “Thanks for the info.”

  Carrie gingerly put her bag over her shoulder. “Thanks for kicking their asses. Hope you catch that rabbit,” she added with a smirk, and headed off down the alley and out of sight.

  I took one last look at the thugs, then cradled my sore arm and headed back toward the parking lot, tossing the bags of Haze into the dumpster as I passed.

  In my rush to get to Carrie’s aid I’d left my car unlocked, but by some miracle no one had stolen it. I got in and locked the doors, wincing as I used my sore right arm to turn the key in the ignition and shift out of park.