Heart of Stone (Alice Worth Book 4) Read online

  Heart of Stone

  Lisa Edmonds

  HEART OF STONE

  By

  Lisa Edmonds

  Copyright © 2019 Lisa Edmonds

  Edited by Heather McCorkle.

  Cover Design by Mibl Art and Tina Moss.

  All stock photos licensed appropriately.

  Published in the United States by City Owl Press.

  www.cityowlpress.com

  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 Bill—

  For twenty years of road trips, good music, and bad puns.

  You make loving fun.

  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

  “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

  “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

  “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

  “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

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

  “A nice mystery wrapped up in suspense and a few hotties to top it off! A perfect way to describe Heart of Fire—a paranormal romance with a set of characters that pull the reader into the story.” — InD’tale, Jacey Lee

  “Lisa Edmonds has made an instant fan of me. I look forward to reading the next case that requires Alice’s special set of skills.” — The Reading Cafe

  “The Alice Worth series quickly turned into a must-read series for me. As soon as you think you have a handle on what she can do, another level of power is revealed. She truly is a bad-ass and it’s amazing to witness what she can do. As with book one, I didn’t want to stop reading when the book ended. I look forward to seeing what book three will bring to the table.” — Urban Fantasy Investigations

  “Alice is the type of Heroine I live to read about and scour the net looking for others of her ilk. Tough, no-nonsense, a bit damaged, yet so real and full of compassion and needing love yet afraid of it when it finds them. Edmonds can’t get book three out fast enough as far as I am concerned.” — Boundless Book Reviews

  “10 New Urban Fantasy Series You Need to Read: Alice Worth is a Mage Private Investigator with a ghost sidekick and some really cool magic. She can conjure a cold fire whip! There are vampires and werewolves and all our favorite old school UF elements. I wish more people were talking about this series.” — Vampire Book Club

  The Alice Worth Series

  By Lisa Edmonds

  Heart of Malice

  Just For One Night (Short Story)

  Blood Money (Novella)

  Heart of Fire

  Heart of Ice

  Heart of Stone

  Contents

  Want More City Owl Press Books?

  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

  HEART OF SHADOW SNEAK PEEK

  Keep Reading the Alice Worth Novels

  Want More City Owl Press Books?

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Additional Titles

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

  Meet Alice.

  Private Investigator of the Supernatural.

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

  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.

  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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  1

  I ran through the trees, moving as quickly and quietly as I could. Small twigs and branches I couldn’t see in the dark whipped across my face, leaving scratches that stung mercilessly.

  Behind me, sirens blared and bright lights swept across my path, searching for targets. I thought of the snipers on the walls of the compound and my back itched. I expected to hear shots and feel an impact at any second. I ran faster.

  I chanted swear words in my head as I ducked under branches and dodged the searchlights. Where the hell is Arkady?

  I had little time to worry about my partner’s fate. Dark figures moved in the trees to my right, head
ing in my direction. I veered left, hoping to find cover and a chance to regroup while I came up with a strategy for avoiding capture.

  I stole a glance at my watch. Only a little over an hour until sunrise. Dawn meant safety and hopefully escape. I’d survived this long—surely I could make it just one more hour.

  A twig snapped behind me. I dropped to my stomach in the mud and held perfectly still as stealthy footsteps passed less than ten feet away. I held my breath as they went by, my heart pounding in my ears.

  I waited until my pursuer was out of earshot before I belly-crawled through the mud to hide behind a downed tree and catch my breath.

  If Arkady was still out here, she’d be headed in the same direction I was going, hoping to either meet up with me or reach a secure position to wait it out until our rescue arrived. I heard shouting back in the direction of the compound, but I couldn’t tell what they said. If those shouts meant she’d been captured…well, I’d have to deal with that later. Either way, I couldn’t stay where I was. I needed to keep moving.

  I listened hard but heard only the usual chorus of nighttime insects, rustling leaves, and branches creaking in the wind. I moved to a crouch and peeked over the top of the tree trunk.

  Nothing.

  I rose and grimaced at the mud covering the front of my long-sleeved black tee, borrowed BDU pants, and combat boots. I’d actually thought I looked fairly badass and had a little bit of Arkady-style swagger, but that was before we’d tripped some kind of perimeter alarm near the compound, given away our position, and had to split up to avoid capture. And before I’d had to crawl through the mud.

  I swung my legs one at a time over the downed tree and continued heading east. As an earth mage, my affinity to the land meant my internal compass was stronger than most. Heavy cloud cover meant lack of moonlight with which to see or navigate, but I knew which way was east. With any luck, I’d make it to the rendezvous, find Arkady waiting there, and get the hell out of Dodge.

  Just as I thought that, the earth literally fell out from under me.

  One second my boots were on firm if muddy ground, and the next I was falling. It happened so quickly I didn’t have a chance to do more than gasp.

  My body landed in what felt like rope webbing. That broke my fall, but then the webbing gave way. I fell about four more feet and landed face-down in—of course—more mud. The impact knocked the wind out of me and left me stunned, unsure of what had just happened or where I’d ended up.

  I raised my head, spat out a mouthful of mud and leaves, and found myself in a pit about the size of two graves, six feet wide by ten feet long and ten feet deep.

  And I was not alone.

  Arkady Woodall, my new best friend and the person I wanted to kill most in the world right now, grinned at me and picked leaves out of her hair. She sat with her back against the side of the pit, and she—almost unbelievably—was covered with more mud than I was. “Hey, Alice. Are you having fun?”

  “Am I having fun?” I hissed, pushing myself up on all fours with a grimace. I spat out something slimy I didn’t look at too closely. “I have mud in my boots, mud in my bra, and mud in my…never mind. No, I am not having fun!”

  She laughed. “Liar.”

  I flipped her off and pushed muddy hair back from my face. “When I said I’d do a girls’ weekend with you, this is definitely not what I thought we’d be doing. A two-day intensive survival camp? Really?”

  She rolled her eyes and pulled a twig out of her hair. “What did you think we’d be doing, champagne brunch, mani/pedis, and seaweed wraps? You know me well enough to know I wasn’t taking us for a spa weekend. And hey, look at this.” She wiped some of the mud off her face and held up her hand. “People pay hundreds of dollars for mud treatments at spas, and it was included here at no extra cost.”

  “This mud smells like something died in it, Arkady.”

  “That probably makes it even better for your skin.”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I made a sound that was a little of both. “I’m so tired. And cold. And thirsty. And I smell like… God, I don’t even want to know what I smell like.” I looked up at the top of the pit. “How long are they going to leave us in here?”

  “They’ll come get us at dawn.”

  I groaned. I was getting perilously close to whining. “That’s almost an hour from now! Why not just come get us? We lost. We surrender. We’re dead. Why make us suffer more?”

  “You signed off on the rules, same as me.” She settled in more comfortably. “Just think of it as more time for us to bond.”

  “I think I’ve already bonded with you as much as I want to for one weekend. We bunked together last night and we had to use the communal showers in the locker room, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She grinned again. “That was fun. It’s like being at summer camp, right?”

  I’d never been to a summer camp. Activities like that weren’t an option when you were a prisoner of your grandfather’s crime syndicate from ages four through twenty-four. I’d rarely gone beyond the walls of his compound for months at a time, much less spent weeks away at camp, doing whatever it was non-mage kids got to do at such places.

  “Yeah, just like summer camp,” I said after a moment. “So, how many times have you made it to the extraction point without getting caught?”

  “Twice.”

  “Out of how many attempts?”

  She rested her forearms on her knees. “I’ve lost count. They change it up every time—different traps, different patrol routes, different objectives. It’s never the same challenge twice. That’s why I like it. If I could beat it, I wouldn’t get better. I’m here to improve my skills, not to win.”

  “I don’t see why the two should be mutually exclusive,” I grumbled. “Or why we have to stay in this pit until sunrise.”

  “They’ll actually probably come get us sooner than that. The last time, it was only about twenty minutes before they got me out.”

  “The last time? How many times have you fallen into one of these?”

  She frowned at me. “That’s not the point, Alice.”

  “So, a couple of times.”

  “Four times,” she muttered.

  I laughed.

  Arkady made a pfffft sound. “Hey, you think this is bad, you should try getting caught in a snare and dangling upside down ten feet off the ground by one ankle. Then you really want them to come get you quickly.”

  “I don’t remember that from the orientation.”

  “Yeah, they discontinued that one. Something about too much risk of head injury and the insurance company was going to cancel their coverage.”

  “Insurance companies are such killjoys,” I said dryly. “Head trauma, spine injuries, blah blah blah.”

  “No kidding.” She looked completely at ease sitting in a mud pit in the deep woods. “So, how are things between you and Sean since you guys got back from the Bahamas?”

  “It’s been good,” I said, smiling despite how cold and gross and miserable I felt. “Really good. This two-day getaway with you is the longest we’ve gone without seeing each other since we got back.” And I missed him more than I’d ever admit to anyone. I’d had a hard time falling asleep last night without him next to me, even as exhausted as I’d been after nearly twenty hours of running around trying to evade capture by the camp’s employees.

  “You two thinking about maybe moving in together?”

  I shook my head. “We haven’t talked about it.”

  Sean had hinted once or twice about the possibility, but I’d ducked the conversation. I saw no way for him to move into my home, which was much smaller than his, and the thought of members of his pack coming and going from my house all the time, invading my space, made me almost break out in hives.

  At the same time, I couldn’t just move in with him; my basement was a heavily warded fortress that had taken nearly five years to create, and giving that up didn’t seem like an option. Particularly not when recen
t events made it likely I might be found by my grandfather and I’d need all the protection I could get.

  Arkady distracted me with another question. “And things with the pack? Better?”

  My smile faded. “About the same.”

  “Is Sean’s beta still giving you trouble?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve only seen Jack once since we got back. We crossed paths outside Maclin Security one day when I met Sean for lunch, and he just ignored me. I’ve heard he pretends I don’t exist and doesn’t say anything if the subject comes up in conversation with other pack members. It’s pretty obvious he and his wife Delia still strongly disapprove of Sean and me being together, but Sean warned him to keep his opinions of me to himself, so that’s probably why he hasn’t been bad-mouthing me.”

  “But the rest of the pack likes you, right?”