Hidden Depths (36 page)

“I
miss
them,” she said more moderately, clearly trying to contain a pout. “I know I’m grown up, but I do.”

Anso smiled at her so beautifully Violet appeared momentarily dazzled. “I’d miss them too, if I were in your shoes. Your mother and father are wonderful people.”

“Thanksgiving,” Violet said firmly, abruptly all CEO.

“Excuse me?” Anso said, startled by her bossy tone.

Violet didn’t know he was a king, and might not have been cowed in any case.

She squared her shoulders. “You can have Christmas, but I’m claiming Thanksgiving. The grandparents will want to see you, so we’ll meet in Charleston. I’ll book a B&B that takes children.”

“I don’t know if -”

“Yes, Violet,” Ty cut in, silencing Anso’s doubts with a gentle hand on his arm. “We’ll meet you in Charleston with bells on.”

“Bybeh!” LoLo loudly announced as she squirmed in Olivia’s lap.

Violet’s mouth fell open. “Did she just say my name?”

“Bybeh!” Konnor chimed in, smacking Violet’s menu onto the table.

“Bababa!” was Ollie’s contribution. Anso kissed the top of his downy head.

Oliver always had to be different. James petted his golden hair from the other side, his hand stroking Anso’s wrist as easily as it did Ty’s child.

The moment struck Olivia as perfect: all her men and all her babies, sitting at the same table. She’d experienced an awful lot of happiness since committing herself to her mates, but this golden day had to top them all. This was a gift no one could be sweet enough to deserve. Sharing it was the only way to say thank you.

“This is good, Vi,” James said, grinning sideways at their firstborn. “Look how many more of us there are to love you now.”

“Hmph,” Violet said, but she was grinning too.

# # #

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

EMMA
Holly is the award-winning,
USA Today
bestselling author of more than twenty romantic novels, featuring vampires, demons, fairies and just plain extraordinary ordinary folks. She loves the hot stuff, both to read and to write!

If you’d like to find out what else she’s written, please visit her website at:

http://www.emmaholly.com. S
he runs monthly contests and sends out newsletters that often include coupons for new books. To receive them, go to her contest page.

If you like threesomes, her Victorianish demon novel,
The Assassins’ Lover
, is also available. If sexy shapechangers are your thing, you might try
Hidden
Talents
, which features a werewolf cop and is set in the same general story world as
Hidden Depths
. Excerpts for these stories follow.

Thanks so much for reading this book!

Hungry for more wereseals?

“DATE NIGHT”

OLIVIA
Forster never dreamed she’d one day serve as queen of an enchanted city beneath the sea - something her three sexy husbands know. Though she adores her shapeshifting mates, she’s shy by nature, and they can tell the strain of always being “on” is beginning to wear on her. Sneaking away from their responsibilities won’t be easy, but come hell or high water, they’ll treat her to a night she won’t soon forget!

a digital short story

An excerpt from HIDDEN TALENTS

available in ebook and print

Werewolf cop Adam Santini is sworn to protect and serve all the supes in Resurrection, NY - including unsuspecting human Talents who wander in from Outside.

Telekinetic Ari is hot on the trail of a mysterious crime boss who wants to exploit her gift for his own evil ends, a mission that puts her on a collision course with the hottest cop in the RPD. Adam wants Blackwater too, but mostly he wants Ari. She seems to be the mate he’s been yearning for all his life, though getting a former street kid into bed with the Law could be his toughest case to date.

CHAPTER ONE

Dusk settled over the city of Resurrection like a blanket of bad news.

That’s me
, Ari thought, flexing her right fist beside her hip.
Bad news with a
capital B
.

This wasn’t just whistling in the dark. Ari had been bad news to some people in her life. To her parents. To every teacher she’d had in high school.
You’ll come
to no good
, they’d threatened, and she couldn’t swear they’d been wrong.

Certainly, she hadn’t turned out to be a blessing to Maxwell or Sarah. Because of her, Max was in the hospital with too many broken bones in his arms to count, and Sarah was God knew where. But at least Ari was trying to change that. At least she was trying to be bad news to people who deserved it.

To her dismay, Resurrection, NY wasn’t what she’d been led to believe when she’d looked it up on the internet.

She stood on the crest of a weedy hill outside the metropolis, her presence hidden by the deeper shadow of a highway overpass. She’d been expecting a down-on-its-luck backwater. Storefronts stuck in the seventies. Maybe a real town square and a civil war battlefield. Instead, she found an actual cityscape. The skyline wasn’t Manhattan tall, more like Kansas City. Few buildings looked brand new, but many were substantial. They formed a grid of streets and parkland whose core had to encompass at least five miles. This was definitely more than a backwater. Resurrection reminded her of city photos from the early decades of the last century, when
skyscraper
meant something exciting. What could have been a twin to the Chrysler Building stuck up from the center of downtown, reigning over its brethren.

Finding the Eunuch among all that was going to take some doing.

You have to find him
, she told her sinking stomach. If she didn’t, she and her very small gang of peeps would be looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives. At twenty-six and thankfully still counting, Ari had endured more than enough hiding. She was stronger now. She’d been
practicing
. Henry Blackwater, aka, the Eunuch, wouldn’t know what hit him.

“Right,” she said sarcastically to herself. She’d be lucky if she got out of here alive.

But faint heart never vanquished fair villain. Ari knew she’d been born the way she was for a reason. Maybe here, maybe soon, she’d find out what that reason was.

CHAPTER TWO

No one messed with people who belonged to Adam Santini. Unless, of course, the person messing with the person was also Adam’s relative.

“You. Ate. My. Beignets.” To emphasize his point, Adam’s irate cousin, Tony Lupone, was bashing his brother’s head against the squad room floor.

Since Rick’s skull was made of sterner stuff than the linoleum, he laughed between winces. “What sort of cop -
ow
- eats beignets anyway?”

“Your faggot brother cop, that’s who. Your pink-shirted faggot brother cop who’s whupping your butt right now.”

Amused by their exchange, Adam leaned back against Tony’s cluttered desk.

The precinct’s squad room was a semi-bunker in the basement. A mix of ancient file cabinets and desks were balanced by some very revved-up technology. Grimy electrum grates on the windows protected them, more or less, from things that went bump in the night outside. The hodgepodge suited the men who manned it better than most workplaces could. Rough-edged but smart was the werewolf way. At the moment, Tony was so rough-edged his eyes glowed amber in his flushed face. His big brother could have defended himself better than he was, if it weren’t for his rule against hitting his siblings.

“Ow! Lou!” he complained to Adam. “You’re supposed to be my best friend.

Aren’t you going to call off this squirt?”

“You’re the one who ate his fancy donuts.”

“All dozen of them!” Tony snarled, his grievance renewed. “I brought them in to share.”

“Shit,” said long-haired Nate Rivera, Adam’s other cousin, once removed.

“Now
I
want to whup you.”

Considering even-tempered Nate was growling, Adam judged it time to end the wrestling match. “All right, you two. Enough. Rick, I’m docking your next paycheck for the price of his beignets. Dana, if you’d be so kind, raid the coffee fund and pick up another batch for tomorrow night.”

“None of which
you’re
going to enjoy, Mr. Pig!” Panting from the exertion of trying to give his brother a concussion, Tony rose and pointed angrily down at him. “You can choke on your damned donuts.”

Wisely, Rick remained where he was while his little brother stalked back to the break room, where his heinous crime had been discovered. The dress code for the detectives was casual. Rick’s gray RPD T-shirt was rucked way up his six-pack abs. His concave stomach didn’t betray his gluttony. His fast werewolf metabolism saw to that.

“My head,” Rick moaned, still laughing. “Come on, cuz. Give your beta a hand up.”

Adam sighed and obliged. None of his wolves were small, but Rick was six four and all muscle. Even with supe strength, Adam grunted to haul him up.

“Some second you are. You had to know this would cause trouble.”

“I couldn’t help myself. The box smelled so good. Plus, he was totally obnoxious about bringing them in for everyone.”

“So you knew you were stealing food from my mouth?” Nate interjected, not looking up from his paperwork. “Not cool.”

“He’s sucking up. Ever since he came out, he’s been -” Rick snapped his muzzle shut, but it was too late.

“Uh-huh,” Nate said in his dry laid back way. He’d spun around in his squeaky rolling chair to face Rick. “Ever since he came out, your brother stopped being a butch-ass prick. In fact, ever since he came out, he’s been the nicest wolf around here. You don’t like that ’cause you’re used to being everyone’s favorite.”

“Crap.” The way Rick rubbed the back of his neck said he knew he was in the wrong. Being Rick, he couldn’t stay dejected long. A grin flashed across his handsome olive-skinned face. “Can’t I still be everyone’s favorite? Do I have to turn gay too?”

“I don’t know,” Nate said, returning to his work. “So far only gay boys bring us good breakfasts.”

Seeing Rick’s private wince, Adam patted his back and rubbed. Touchy-feely creatures that werewolves were, the contact calmed both of them. He knew Rick was still working on accepting his little brother’s big announcement. Werewolves were some of the most macho supes in Resurrection, a city that had plenty to choose from. Adam knew Rick loved his brother just as much as before. He suspected Rick was mostly worried Tony would end up hurt. Being responsible for policing America’s only supernatural-friendly town made the wolves enough of a target. Turning out to be gay on top of that was as good as taping a target onto your back.

“Tony will be all right,” Adam assured his friend. “Everyone here is adjusting to the new him.”

Rick rubbed his neck once more and let his hand drop. Worry pinched his dark gold eyes when they met Adam’s. “They’re pack. They have to love him.” Adam didn’t believe this but wasn’t in the mood to argue. Plenty of folks endowed being pack with mystical benefits. Some were real of course, but as alpha, Adam wasn’t comfortable relying on magic to cement his authority. He thought it best to actually be a competent leader.

“Boss,” Dana their dispatcher said. The young woman had her own corner of the squad room. Apart from its cubby walls, it was open. Banks of sleek computers surrounded her, each one monitoring different sectors of the city. The sole member of the squad who wasn’t a relative, Dana was the most superstitious wolf Adam had ever met. Anti-hex graffiti scrawled across her work surfaces, the warding so thick he couldn’t tell one symbol from another. How they worked like that was beyond him. Despite the quirk, Adam took her instincts seriously. Right then, she didn’t look happy. Her silver dreamcatcher earrings were trembling.

“Boss, we’ve got a suspected M without L in the abandoned tire store on Twenty-Fourth.”

M without L
referred to the use of magic without a license. Adam’s hackles rose. Jesus, he hated those. “Who’s reporting the incident?”

“Gargoyle on the Hampton House Hotel.” She touched her headset and listened. “He says it’s a Level Four.”

Adrenaline surged inside him, making his palms tingle. Gargoyles were rarely wrong about magical infractions. While the strength levels went up to eight, four was nothing to sneeze at. Thumb and finger to his mouth, Adam blew a piercing whistle to get his men’s attention.

“Suit up,” he said. “We’ve got a probable ML on Twenty-Fourth.”

“Don’t forget your earpieces,” Dana added. “I’ll help coordinate from here.” Adam’s men were already loping to the weapons room. “Load for bear,” he said as he followed them. “We don’t know what we’re in for.”

* * *

Those who wandered in from Outside found it less alien than might be expected. The founding faeries had used the Manhattan of the 1800s as their architectural crib sheet. Since then, the bigger apple had continued to provide inspiration. Immigrants especially liked to recreate pieces of their native land.

Resurrection had its own Fifth Avenue and Macy’s, its own subway and museums. Little Italy still flourished here, though - sadly - its theater district was as moribund as its role model. Adam was familiar with the theories that Resurrection was an experiment, created to see if human and fae could live peaceably as in days of old. Whether this was the reason for its existence, he couldn’t say.

The only fae he knew were exceptionally tight-lipped.

Whatever their motives, Resurrection had become a haven for humans with a trait or two extra. Shapechangers of every ilk thrived here. Vamps were tolerated as long as they behaved themselves. The same was true of demons and other Dims: visitors from alternate dimensions who entered through the portals. If a being could get along, it could stay. If it couldn’t, it had to go. And if the visitors didn’t want to go, Adam and the rest of the RPD were just the folks to make sure they went anyway.