Shadow Burns: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Preternatural Affairs Book 4) by S.M. Reine Read Free Book Online

front. The inside said, “You are invited to a memorial in honor of the residents of Paradise Mile Retirement Village. Please join us to pay your respects on Sunday the 26th of October. There will be a viewing prior to group burial at the Paradise Mile Cemetery.”
    “Refreshments will be served” was at the bottom in tiny text.
    Twelve dead bodies and a veggie tray? Oh boy. Sign me up.
    Flipping the envelope around to look at the front again, I saw that they had the right name and address. Whoever sent it to me had definitely intended to reach Cèsar Hawke in apartment 17B.
    Someone had given my personal address to the owner of the retirement village where there had just been a mass murder. A mass murder that was possibly my fault—or if not a direct consequence of my actions, then definitely something I’d failed to prevent.
    If the leak had come from one of my coworkers, I’d have been willing to bet it was Aniruddha. That guy was a dick.
    “Did you get one of these?” I asked as I headed through my apartment’s front door.
    “One of what?”
    “These.” I flapped the card at Suzy.
    Then I actually looked up at her.
    She was bent over my coffee table, head hanging over one edge, her butt sticking up facing the door.
    And what a butt it was.
    It was always a little bit of a shock to see Suzy without the monkey suit. Doubly so when she wore pajama shorts that cupped the cheeks of her ass like two juicy apples. The hems of the leg holes had lifted so that I could see the curve of skin where rump roast met thigh meat.
    Someone had been doing her squats.
    Any chance I might have had at formulating a coherent sentence was gone instantly.
    Suzy flipped upright with a triumphant noise, hair sticking up in a wild mane, cheeks flushed pink. “Gotcha, motherfucker.” She pinched a metal disc between her forefinger and thumb.
    With her butt safely underneath her, I could actually figure out what she was holding. It was about the size of a watch battery with wires sticking out of it. I’d messed with so many of those in the last couple of months that I could have disassembled and reassembled it in my sleep.
    “Another bug?” I asked. “Isn’t that the third one you’ve found since you got here?”
    “Fourth.” Suzy set it on the coffee table. “You need to get better at searching for these things if you want any privacy, ever. I don’t even want to imagine what the OPA has seen you doing.”
    They hadn’t seen anything worth writing home about. I’d been working long hours. The spy cameras would have seen me coming home, flopping on my couch, snoring for a few hours, and then leaving. Rinse and repeat every day for weeks.
    I laughed and agreed with Suzy, though. Better than confessing the pathetic truth. “Yeah. Wow. Don’t want to know what the surveillance might think about all the, you know, wild parties.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, all those wild, crazy parties.”
    “I’ve had guests,” I protested weakly. “Guests” had mostly involved neighbors coming over to complain about the volume of my music—even though I don’t listen to music at home—and Suzy’s visits to pick up more sleeping potions.
    The current batch was simmering in a stockpot on my stove. Sticky smoke had painted the backsplash in rainbow colors commemorating the many potions I’d brewed in that dinky kitchen: coppery gold for healing, red for juicing up on strength, green for mental acuity. This smoke was tinted the same shade of blue as the veins cording my arms. Liquid sleep.
    I’d offered Suzy samples of my other mixes, but all she wanted was the sleep. She thought the rest was cheating. Pretty rich coming from a woman who had enchanted her townhouse so that it was bigger on the inside than on the outside.
    Bang . Suzy hammered the spine of a book down on my coffee table, pulverizing the OPA’s bug.
    “Think that’s it?” I tossed the metal fragments into a Banker’s Box with the rest of the dead bugs. I