Payback's A Witch: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Red Witch Chronicles 8) by Sami Valentine

Author:Sami Valentine [Valentine, Sami]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocketmaus Publishing
Published: 2022-07-25T16:00:00+00:00

13

November 5, Near Midnight

Far outside Dublin, North Dakota

* * *

In the smoky backroom of a honky-tonk, Red rested an elbow on the back of her lover’s chair. Her hand didn’t stray far from the gun hidden under her denim jacket.

“You can do it, baby,” she said to Kristoff with a silly giggle.

He played poker with three roughnecks in a game where a hundred dollars was the initial ante. A cowboy hat hung low on his brow. He’d introduced himself as Travis many rounds ago.

Red was Gina. She wore a pink jacket and had curled her dyed blonde hair. Her blue contact lenses were emphasized by her overdone eyeshadow. It was the costume for an alias that had been minted yesterday.

They were between nowhere and Lone Tree Lake in North Dakota.

Wood paneling and old Sports Illustrated posters shielded them from the rolling stretches of arid hills. Country music blasted from a boombox on a sagging shelf. The walls were soundproof. It would have been hard for the patrons in the rowdy barroom down the hall to hear over their own jukebox to complain.

The two men at the left and right of the table were young bucks. Paxon and Dave raked in fat paychecks from the Bakken oil fields and had too little to spend it on. An illegal high-stakes poker game was the most excitement this rural county could offer.

Neither man knew the third player opposite Kristoff. Older, he wasn’t here for the thrill. Only the money. He fit in visually with his buff hide jacket and flannel shirt, but the hard cast to his eyes was different. His family owned land nearby, where he stayed between distant jobs. He hadn’t introduced himself.

His name was Hank Seagrave. Red had come for him.

“Four of a kind. Aces,” Hank said. He laid down a winning hand without a change in his remote expression.

The other players groaned and tossed down their cards.

Tawny-haired with a bushy beard, Seagrave had aged more than his thirty years. The wrinkles were earned from a hard life. It began at birth to a disgraced Brotherhood line, muddled with military service and jail time for assault, then continued with tours as a mercenary for whatever outfit, magical or mundane, would take him. Many were financed by organizations connected to the warlock.

He’d also been spotted trailing Ezra Fox in Charm last September. Maxwell Baldacci must’ve had him on speed dial.

Hank Seagrave was also known in the area as a Hero who kept the vamp population down when he drifted through between less heroic contracts. He had killed as many humans as demons. There were more hunters like him than Red wanted to admit. He wasn’t as interesting as the heirloom he possessed.

Like his cards, he kept it close to his chest.

In his last mug shot, she’d spotted a battered patron saint medal of St. Anthony around his neck. It held more than a holy blessing. The Seagrave clan had handed down a lost piece of her magic. That lead had been helpfully passed along by Fat Crispin from his research in the Brotherhood libraries.

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