Free Darklands by Nancy Holzner

promised he’d send someone out to deliver it right away. When I crawled back into bed, I fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.
    All too soon I opened my eyes, and the problems of the past days elbowed their way back into my consciousness. My business was still crumbling. Maria and Gwen were still fighting. Simone Landry was still after Kane. And Pryce was still out there somewhere, probably getting ready to attack me again.
    Welcome to another day in the life.
    I checked my bedside clock and found it was only four thirty in the afternoon. I turned over, thinking I could catch another hour’s worth of z’s. But it was no good. All the things that were on my mind might as well be lined up by my bed, poking me with sticks. Sleep wasn’t an option. I threw back the sheets and got up. I started some coffee, and took a shower while it brewed.
    As I toweled off, I inspected my wounds from last night’s Harpy attack. Everything was healing nicely. The edges of the wound where the Harpy had gouged my leg had knit together and scabbed over. There’d be a scar, but I couldn’t do anything about that.
    Dressed in jeans and a blue cotton sweater, I sipped a mug of strong black coffee. I turned on the phone’s ringer and checked for messages. Just one—the exact number of clients I had left. I crossed my fingers.
Please don’t let it be a job cancellation.
    It wasn’t. The number was Kane’s. “Hi, it’s me,” he said. His warm, deep voice sent tingles shivering through me. “I’ve been thinking all day how great it would’ve been to have breakfast in bed with you. Couldn’t get the idea out of my mind.” He chuckled, and the tingles reached my toes. “Especially because I have to work tonight. Simone is giving a talk at a meeting of the Human-Paranormal Women’s Business Association, with some potentially big donors in attendance, and I need to be there.”
Oh.
Funny how fast tingles can evaporate. “It wasn’t on my calendar—I guess her assistant forgot to notify my assistant or something. Simone told me about it this morning, right after you left.”
    I’d bet she did. She was probably batting her eyelashes and telling him how much she needed him there before the door had closed behind me.
    “I know you’re working tonight, too,” Kane went on, “somaybe I’ll see you tomorrow? Oh, not for breakfast, though. I’ve got another meeting with Simone in the morning. Always the way, isn’t it? And this month’s retreat is almost here. I hope we can get together before then. If not, I guess it’ll have to be some time next week. Call me when you can.”
    Always the way
—well, yes and no. In some ways, it was a typical message from Kane. Our work schedules didn’t have a lot of overlap, and one or the other of us was always canceling plans. But what wasn’t typical was hearing another woman’s name woven through his message.
Simone, Simone, Simone.
I knew what she was trying to do—push herself between us until the werewolf retreat, when she’d have him all to herself.
    Why was he managing her campaign, anyway? Kane had never been interested in Deadtown politics before. He was all about getting the norms to recognize paranormal rights, preferably in Washington. How had she talked him into this?
    Those triumphant green eyes. That smug assurance that she’d win.
    I needed to talk to Kane. And not on the phone. It wasn’t yet five in the evening, and he never left the office until six. If I went there now, maybe—just maybe—he could pencil me in for an appointment between Simone and Simone and goddamn Simone.
    THE NORMS’ RUSH HOUR WAS RUSHING FULL FORCE AS I walked along Tremont Street toward Kane’s office near Government Center. Sidewalks and streets were choked with people, all in a hurry and yet not getting anywhere very fast. As I approached Kane’s building, workers poured out the front door. Among them was a woman in an emerald green blazer. A woman with long, wavy chestnut hair.
    She turned