Roxanne Fosch Files Collection - The Complete Series

Excerpt from Roxanne Fosch Files Collection

“It's a trap,” Vicky, my childhood best friend informed me from the kitchen, peering at me with eyebrows furrowed. “That Elizabeth is trying to set you up for some fall.”

“Why'd she do that for?” I propped my legs on the coffee table. I only had enough time to place my keys on the kitchen counter before Vicky arrived for our girl's night in, which we had most nights since Tommy called her. She'd hung up with him and called the number he'd given her, and after the first awkward meeting, it was like there wasn't a ten-year gap in our friendship.

I'd relayed my encounter with Mwara while I showered and changed into my version of PJs–flannel pants and an oversized T-shirt. “She got rid of me ten years ago.” I sighed with relief as I stretched.

In the kitchen, divided from the living room by a half wall, Vicky fiddled with shredded ice. She shrugged, dumped ice in the blender and emptied a can of Mountain Dew after it. “Women are evil creatures. You never know why they do the things they do.” As if we both fit under a different category.

“I don't know. Her fear was real enough,” I said.

She paused what she was doing to look at me. “Can you, you know,” she rotated a slender, manicured finger, “tell when someone is lying?”

“I can sense strong emotions. I guess it's like sensing the truth.”

Vicky frowned. “But what if she was afraid of something else? Like, Elizabeth sent her to deceive you and she was afraid she'd fail? You'd sense her fear, but not the reason for it.”

I stared into her earnest blue eyes, baffled. “Where do you get all those convoluted ideas?”

She shrugged again and took out a can of condensed milk from the grocery bag she'd brought with her. “You haven't learned the deceitful ways women behave yet. That's why I'm here. To point out other women's evil plots.” She gave a cheeky grin and a shallow dimple appeared in her right cheek before her expression grew serious. “Why didn't she go to that guy Vincent, or that other one, Dimple? You know the one you're hung up on his friend?” She gave me a pointed look.

“Diggy, and I'm not hung up on Logan,” I said in a defensive tone.

Diggy, aka Douglas, aka Doug, was the owner of the basement apartment Logan took me to after I returned from the Low Lands five weeks earlier. He was also a rejected, a Dhiultadh from our rival clan. And a respected member of the Hunters team, one step below Vincent. It had been his position with the Hunters that kept him from accompanying us to Archer's rescue attempt. He'd been the one to mark a trail for us to follow in the woods surrounding the PSS, and to supply us with the equipment and weapons we'd used. I remember Logan explaining that Doug, or Diggy as he was known by the Hunters, wouldn't accompany us in the event we got caught and needed someone to bail us out.

Vicky gave me a pitying look, but didn't argue. Logan had become a tired topic between us ever since I told her about him, something I've regretted dearly. She thought I was pining for him, which I so was not.

I glanced down at my wrist, at the bracelet he gave me. Arianna's bracelet, he'd called it. I'd used it to blow up an entire building into smithereens, along with whoever stood between it and me. It was a simple trinket, with five copper wiry straps braided together, supporting a jet-black rock in the center. Once, back when he'd first given it to me, the rock had been blue and had hummed with power. Now it was nothing but a simple bobble, devoid of anything. I wasn't sure why I didn't take it off, but I was sure it wasn't because I was pining for him.

“Strawberries in the fridge?” Vicky turned, not waiting for a reply, her long blonde hair swishing in her ponytail. She opened the refrigerator, scanned the contents once, grabbed the strawberries and shut the door, not blinking twice at all the raw meat stuffed inside. Amazingly, she had waltzed into my life five weeks ago and accepted all the absurdity I'd dumped on her without batting one eyelash.

She added the strawberries and condensed milk into the blender, pulsed it a few times.

“Anyway, why didn't she go to them?”

“She doesn't trust them.” I leaned my head back on the couch and closed my eyes.

“Exactly! See what I mean. You're the last person on earth she should trust, and you're the first one she turned to.”

I frowned. “Maybe because she knows I understand her fear.”

Vicky snorted, but let the topic drop when her phone rang. She glanced at the screen and scowled. “God, doesn't he understand a letdown? I'm ignoring you so I can move on!” she shouted at the screen. “Guys are so dense,” she muttered, throwing the iPhone on the counter.

“David?” I guessed, David being the last guy she'd gone out with. She bared her teeth in a savage grin and turned the blender full-on, silencing the ring. Behind her, a small shadow, no bigger than a child's appeared.

I dropped my feet to the floor and sat forward. The shadow unfurled itself, gaining at least a foot in height and stalked forward. The creature itself wasn't visible. Its shadow was that of a thin child, if one overlooked the pointed, arrow-like ears and tail. The protrusions on its back were small; no one would guess they were wings without seeing them.

A few feet away, Vicky was oblivious. His approach was slow, pausing when the blender turned off and again when Vicky reached for two glasses inside the cupboard. When she reached for the next cupboard, I held my breath, sure she would see him. She grabbed a plastic bowl and returned to the blender, the shadow unnoticed.

I exhaled, watching the shadow slip closer and closer. It was going to get her. Vicky whirled around, her eyes focused on an empty spot behind her. “Gotcha!”

Frizz blinked into existence an arm's length away.

Features softening with an affectionate smile, she said again, “Gotcha. Shouldn't have tried to get this close. You could have jumped from back there.” She turned her back on him then, and he hopped on, like a small monkey.

“Are you sure you're human?” I asked, sagging back on the couch and returning my feet to the coffee table. “Frizz is supposed to be a predator. He's supposed to catch his prey unaware.” I aimed a disgusted look at him. “It's embarrassing.”

Vicky flashed a smile, poured the cocktail in both glasses, then poured the rest in the bowl for Frizz. He let go of her and grabbed for it.

It was amazing how the two had bonded. And to think I had kept him a secret from her for the first two weeks, afraid of what her reaction would be. I'd thought she believed me unhinged, making up a story about fairies, vampires, scientists and werewolves to account for all the years I'd been gone. Then, one evening, while I'd been giving Frizz a shower, she walked in unannounced. She admitted later she had expected to find a guy inside, and I admitted a part of me wanted to share Frizz with her but was afraid. She took to him at once, treating him like a small child, or an intelligent animal.

“How old do you think she is?” she'd asked as she'd patted him dry.

“Frizz is a he.”

“How do you know? She doesn't have the equipment to be a he.”

Both of us looked down at Frizz.

“Well, he doesn't have the equipment to be a she either,” I'd argued in a reasonable tone. Frizz sat on her lap, docile as a puppy, as if he had been doing that his entire life. Vicky patted his round head and scratched his ears and rubbed his neck, cooing and lisping as if Frizz were an infant.

They have bonded ever since.