Free Dances With Demons - A Phoenix Chronicle Novella by Lori Handeland Page A

head turned toward the cottage. “I was worried.”
    “Your most desperate question was for her welfare?”
    She shrugged. “Go figure. But really, Quinn, if I’m not saving the world for her, who am I saving it for?”
    “Everyone?”
    “Everyone isn’t real.” She clenched her hands. “I don’t know everyone. Hell, I don’t like anyone.”
    Humanity was a large, teaming mass of faces without names, strangers who were mostly assholes. There was a reason the demons had been able to blend in for so long. A lot of humans behaved just as badly, even with a soul. So sometimes it was best to focus on the saving of the ones who mattered the most personally. He had.
    “Does she know?” Liz murmured. “What you are?”
    He shook his head.
    “She knows what I am. All of it. She still loves me.”
    “I—” he began, then words failed. There’d been a time when he’d done terrible things. The time was long past, yet it haunted him. “Being friends with the leader of the light is far different than sleeping with... me.”
    “I’d hope so,” Liz muttered. “Otherwise you aren’t doing it right.”
    He wanted to smile at her jest, one she’d made before, but he couldn’t.
    “She’s going to find out. Better that she knows before she sees.” Her gaze went to the cottage. “Believe me.”
    Her eyes, her voice, her face were so sad. She’d been lied to. Who hadn’t? But Quinn thought the lies that had been told to Liz Phoenix were earth shattering. Literally.
    “I could be human before she need ever find out.”
    “Could be,” she agreed.
    She sounded no more convinced than he was. Probably because she still planned to kill him.
    “I have to go. There’s bad things happening. They might spill onto you, onto her, onto all of us.”
    “Don’t they always?”
    “Yeah. Keep her safe. Keep her here. I’ll let you know when you can come back.”
    “The children are only with their grandparents for two weeks.”
    “It’ll be over before then.”
    “What will?”
    She smiled sadly. “Everything.”
    He wanted to ask more but suddenly the wind returned and lifted her off her feet, then dragged her backward and away, though the same wind only ruffled the ends of his hair.
     

Chapter 9
    I awoke from a dream of Max. Considering I was naked in another man’s bed, that should have bothered me more than it did. Except in this dream, my dead husband had been saying goodbye.
    He’d seemed okay with it too. He’d been smiling and behind him had been this golden, sparkling, blinding ray of light.
    You had to move on so I could , he said.
    I’d called his name, tried to run after him, but I couldn’t.
    “I can’t stop loving you, Max.” Not when Anna had his eyes and Aaron his nose and Benji his hair.
    You don’t have to. The more you love, the more you love.
    “I have no idea what that means.”
    You will.
    He turned, walked into that light, and I woke up. I waited for the usual despair to wash over me at the realization that I’d only dreamed of Max, would only ever dream of him because he was gone. Instead, I felt...
    Better than I had in a long, long time.
    I sat up. I was not only naked but alone.
    “Quinn?”
    No answer. Unless you counted the rustles and thumps from the living room. What was he doing?
    I climbed out of bed, considered dressing, decided I needed a shower and wrapped the sheet around me instead. It was already torn off the bed anyway. Considering last night’s activities I wasn’t surprised.
    I walked into the next room. “What are you—?”
    Ben Skrewd turned from his perusal of the back door. Since he held a hammer, I assumed he meant to fix it. From the looks of the thing, he wasn’t having much luck.
    His gaze swept over me; he colored and spun about again. I glanced down. I was covered, but considering the sun glaring in from the front window behind me and his reaction, I was revealing more than I wanted to. I stepped into the bedroom and snatched up my