Breathing Fire (Heretic Daughters #1)

Chapter One: A Doozy

JILLIAN

DAY ONE

My day had already gone to shit when two angry druids stormed into my shop.  My blood went cold.  The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.  My palms itched to hold the handle of a weapon.  The presence of druids in my shop was bad.  Very bad.  Their presence made the rest of my day seem pleasant in comparison, and it’d been a doozy so far.  

I’d gotten exactly two hours of sleep the night before, thanks to some new scheme concocted by my best friend/arch-nemesis, Christian.  He’d taken me on a police stakeout, claiming to need my help.  I’d only gone along because he’d claimed it was an emergency, and I owed him a favor, or ten.  

By the end of the long, eventless evening, I was more than a little suspicious that he’d dragged me out just for the company.  We’d spent hours in a crowded night club, bullshitting until four in the morning, before I’d realized I’d been duped.  

When I’d confronted the mischievous Christian, he’d only shrugged, saying, “I was bored.  It’s not like you had a date.”  I’d gone home in a rage, which hadn’t helped me get to sleep any faster.  

I’d still managed to stumble into my shop relatively close to opening time.  Even at seven a.m., the day had already been a scorcher.  Just being outside, even at that early hour, felt a lot like being assaulted by nature’s biggest hair-dryer.  

My dark T-shirt and jeans were wrinkled (but hopefully clean?), my blonde ponytail was messy, I hadn’t had even one cup of coffee, and I was in a dark mood.  But it was my only day to open the shop, so by the gods, I could manage to at least get there somewhere approaching the right time.

I was none-too-pleased to run into cops and a busted lock as I approached the back entrance of the used bookstore/coffee shop I co-owned with my sister.  I came to the obvious, and correct, assumption that our shop had been robbed, yet again.  

We were located in a questionable area of town.  Though admittedly, in Vegas, every area was at least a little bit questionable.  Even posh areas in Vegas got robbed.  Vegas criminals were equal opportunity employers.  

I’d cursed with gusto when I saw the full extent of the robbery.  The robbers hadn’t gone straight for the safe, as they had the last few times.  The place was trashed, top to bottom.  Why would anyone rob a used bookstore?  I had no idea.  There was never a lot of cash in the safe, not ever.  Pickings must be slim indeed for our little shop to be the target of no less than four robberies in the last nine months.  

My naturally paranoid mind had worked with the statistics busily.  It was not a good sign, I’d concluded.  It was starting to look like a good time to move on from our comfy old bookstore.  It had been aiming in that direction, anyway.  The growing popularity of e-books would have closed us down soon enough.  Business had been far from booming, and we had stayed in one place long enough.  

We moved often, my sister and me.  We were runaways by nature.  Drifters by necessity.  And we were adaptable.  It was our greatest ability, as far as I was concerned.  We changed houses, jobs, cars, and cities on a regular basis.  We’d lived in several countries, and we acclimated to other cultures well.  That was, perhaps, why the states had suited us so well for so long.  And the transient population in a place like Las Vegas was a particularly good fit.  What better place for two accomplished runaways to fade into the background? 

I dealt with the police, sending them quickly on their way, and began the annoying and time-consuming process of cleaning up my mess of a shop.  

By nine a.m., both of our full-time employees had called out sick.  This meant that on top of repairing the whole shop from its assault, I had to run both the café and book portion of the store.  On a weekend.  Grrr.