Waking the Serpent Read online

  The millionaire’s redemption...

  When Sedona’s most eligible bachelor is accused of murdering a local psychic, medium Phoebe Carlisle finds herself drawn into the danger that surrounds him—by the meddling of the shades she channels and by his irresistible charms. A public defender and a gifted medium, Phoebe is devoted to justice—and not just for the living. Proving Rafe Diamante’s innocence means conjuring up two shades who were former lovers and now ignite the chemistry between their hosts.

  Rafe can’t afford to lose control and act on his feelings for Phoebe. His unfulfilled sexual tension begins to stir something inside him—the legacy of Quetzalcoatl. But as these newfound abilities awaken a dormant power in Rafe, can he stop the real murderer in time to claim his true destiny?

  The black ink spiraled over his left pectoral like a segment of conch shell sliced down the center.

  Phoebe was having trouble focusing on the tattoo itself. The flesh beneath it was kind of spectacular. She tried not to drool. “What’s it mean?”

  “It’s an ehecacozcatl. A wind jewel that belongs to the god. It’s sort of a family coat of arms.”

  “Your family’s ancestry is Aztec?”

  “Maybe. Probably not, but who knows? The Diamantes like to say so.” Rafe flashed another of those smiles that were beginning to do funny things to Phoebe’s stomach. Because stomach was the organ involved. Sure.

  Rafe started to settle onto the floor in front of the coffee table.

  “You’re keeping the pants on?” Phoebe had to resist rolling her eyes at herself. The words had just jumped out. “I mean—you said the fabric gets in the way.”

  He answered as if she weren’t a complete loon. “I figured going fully skyclad would be a little presumptuous.”

  About the Author

  Jane Kindred is the author of the Demons of Elysium series of M/M erotic fantasy romance, the Looking Glass Gods dark fantasy tetralogy and the gothic paranormal romance The Lost Coast. Jane spent her formative years ruining her eyes reading romance novels in the Tucson sun and watching Star Trek marathons in the dark. She now writes to the sound of San Francisco foghorns while two cats slowly but surely edge her off the side of the bed.

  Books by Jane Kindred

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  Waking the Serpent

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  WAKING

  THE SERPENT

  Jane Kindred

  Dear Reader,

  Although I grew up in Tucson, Arizona, I never visited the northern part of the state until I’d graduated from college and moved away, and then only briefly. It wasn’t until I decided to set my little series about magic-touched sisters in the town of Sedona that I took the time to discover it for myself.

  If there’s anywhere in the West where magic exists, Sedona is that place. It’s easy to imagine that the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is thin among its otherworldly rock formations in hues that run the gamut from the brash tones of a shiny copper penny to the rich, earthy decadence of a dense red velvet cake.

  Waking the Serpent pays homage to that sense of magic, as well as to Sedona’s quirky individuality. I like to think my heroine, Phoebe, nicely represents the latter, while my hero, Rafe, contributes plenty to the former. I hope you’ll think so, too.

  Wishing you unexpected magic,

  Jane Kindred

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Excerpt from Warrior Untamed by Shannon Curtis

  Chapter 1

  Hello vertigo and free-floating anxiety, my old friends. Phoebe let the familiar nausea-inducing miasma wash over her as the lights in her Sedona ranch house flickered and went out. The latter might be reasonably explained by the summer storm rolling over the desert, downed power lines, the fact that the old house had bad wiring, maybe—if it were anyone but Phoebe. But she’d driven around the bend of reasonable and onto the unimproved county road of completely certifiable a long time ago.

  The dead and Phoebe had an uneasy truce. She’d given up trying to ignore them, because looking like the crazy lady who occasionally talked to herself was infinitely preferable to public outbursts worthy of an exorcist. She agreed to help them find justice, or closure, or peace—as long as they backed off when she told them to.

  The electrical activity of a rainstorm actually brought them out. Or gave them energy to manifest, anyway. They’d been mumbling about her all day, the spectral aura of a migraine telling her somebody wanted in.

  The shade trying to step in right now was new at it, making the room swim around Phoebe in gut-churning waves.

  Phoebe stood over the couch with a death grip on the back of it, teeth clenched to keep from losing her lunch on the faux leather upholstery, trying to focus on the room through the dark bob of her ponytail swinging in front of her eyes. “For the love of Mike. Just step in already. The damn door’s open.”

  As if in contradiction to her statement, the kitchen door slammed behind her, yanked by the air being sucked through the house in the wind tunnel created between the front entrance and the screen door opening onto the back porch. There was nothing better than the smell of petrichor stirred up by an oncoming storm. Phoebe had left the doors open to let it clean out the house and freshen things up. Given her housekeeping habits—and Puddleglum’s litter box habits—any little bit helped.

  The storm-dark sky visible through the windows in front of her lit up for an instant with a horizontal bolt of lightning, and the answering crack of thunder came swiftly.

  “I think he set me up.” The uncertain murmur had come from her own lips. The shade was in.

  “It’s okay.” Phoebe spoke aloud, though it wasn’t necessary. Someone else talking through her was bad enough without answering in her head. She had some mental dignity left. “You can talk to me. You’re safe here.”

  “Here?” The answering voice seemed youngish but Phoebe couldn’t get a handle on the gender. “Where’s here? I don’t know where I am.”

  From experience, Phoebe knew it was better to prevaricate a bit. Especially with the newly dead. “You’re at the hospital. Do you remember what happened to you?”

  Her heart began to hammer—the shade’s fear—as the answer came. “I was supposed to meet someone. But I... Something went wrong. Oh, God. Why is he here?”

  Phoebe had to center the shade in the present before panic took over and it got stuck on a loop at the moment of its death. “Why don’t we start at the
beginning, hon? Can you tell me your name?”

  “I...I can’t... I think... I’m not sure.”

  “That’s okay. Don’t worry about that right now. Do you remember who you were meeting? Where were you supposed to meet?”

  “I got a message, and I... He isn’t supposed to be here. Oh, my God. He set me up.”

  Before Phoebe could bring the shade back to center, her throat began to tighten as though a pair of strong, gloved hands had closed around it. Fantastic. A violent murder and the shade was going to relive it inside her. There was no use fighting. She had to let the shade go through it—let it make Phoebe go through it—before it would release her.

  Her lungs, however, were harder to convince. They fought like hell. Adrenaline shot through her bloodstream, a last-ditch, futile attempt at fight-or-flight, as Phoebe stumbled backward, hands convulsing at her throat. Before she could lose consciousness from the air being squeezed out of her, however, the back of her head hit the hardwood floor, beating it to the punch.

  * * *

  Rain spattered the entryway through the screen door as the storm broke at last. Phoebe lay and listened to it for a moment without moving. She hadn’t felt the shade go. But, like being blackout drunk, it had left her with a serious hangover. The ungrateful little wretch.

  Howling at her like a Klaxon from the coffee table, her cell phone announced there wouldn’t be time to indulge her headache.

  Phoebe crawled around the couch and jabbed the speaker button to let it know who was boss. “This had better be good.” Her voice sounded like she’d been gargling kitty litter.

  “Ms. Carlisle? Phoebe Carlisle?”

  Phoebe cringed at the booming, deep baritone. “Yeah, you got her. Who’s this?”

  “I was given your name for representation.”

  Her stomach gave a little lurch of protest at his volume and Phoebe pressed her fingers to her temples. “I’m a public defender. If you need an attorney and you can’t afford legal assistance—”

  “Jesus. I don’t need a fucking Miranda recitation.” Wow. Charming. “I need a lawyer. Now. I’ll pay your standard hourly rate.”

  Despite his rudeness, Phoebe’s ears perked up at the sound of money. Being an assistant public defender wasn’t exactly a high-paying gig. But she wasn’t about to let this jerk get the upper hand. She needed to be the one in control of any potential client relationship. She’d refused clients before when she knew their anger issues—or their woman issues—were going to prevent that. Which didn’t help the pay situation any, but it was where she drew the line.

  “How about you stop swearing at me and tell me what kind of lawyer you—”

  “I don’t have time for sweet talk. I’m at the Yavapai County Jail. Rafael Diamante.”

  The line went dead while Phoebe’s mouth worked, poised on a pointless rebuke of her potential client. Rafael Diamante. Why was that name familiar? She’d seen it somewhere in her newsfeed this morning.

  Phoebe pulled up the browser on her tablet and thumbed through her feed until she found the post from the Sedona Red Rock News.

  Local Businessman Brought in for

  Questioning in Mystic Murder.

  Barbara Fisher, a self-described psychic medium who offered palm and tarot readings from her residence on Cedar Road, was found strangled in her home early this morning. An anonymous Sedona PD source confirmed entrepreneur Rafael “Rafe” Diamante was discovered at the scene—apparently intoxicated.

  Unless two people had been strangled in Sedona this morning, the victim had to be Phoebe’s step-in. And Rafe Diamante—Phoebe had seen his name on signs all over town: Diamante Construction and Excavation. He owned half of Yavapai County. Why he would want Phoebe to represent him, she couldn’t fathom. Was this some kind of joke? Common sense and her conscience told her to stay far away from this one. Representing the accused killer of someone whose shade she had just hosted had to be a pretty big conflict of interest. But neither common sense nor her conscience was in the driver’s seat of her Jeep as she headed to the county lockup in Camp Verde.

  Chapter 2

  Rafe Diamante wasn’t at all what she’d expected. Waiting for him in an interrogation room, Phoebe had been picturing a man in his sixties with a beer belly and a receding hairline. Apparently she was thinking of his father. This Rafe Diamante was perhaps thirty, tall, hard and lean—a fact accentuated by the white T-shirt hugging his abs—his skin a deep coppery brown, as though he worked the construction sites himself. Far from a receding hairline, he had a rich, dark head of hair with a wavy curl to it, tied back in a short ponytail, while penetrating brown eyes glowered at Phoebe from under some serious eyebrows. Damn. He could excavate at her place any time.

  When he spoke, the illusion of hotness was shattered. “You’re Phoebe Carlisle? Un-fucking-believable.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’re a goddamn Girl Scout.”

  Dropping the hand she’d extended when he was escorted in, Phoebe sat across from him, taking her tablet out of her bag and flipping the cover open before making a point of tugging her bouncy ponytail tighter behind her head. “I made Cadette, actually. But the uniform doesn’t really fit anymore and I got stuck on the goddamn deportment badge.”

  Diamante wasn’t amused. “Do you even have a law degree?”

  “Mr. Diamante, I’m an assistant public defender. You don’t get that position without having a law degree and having passed the bar. But I’m quite certain you’re aware of that. You’re the one who called me, if you remember.”

  He folded his arms—such an impressive display of his biceps she almost expected him to beat his chest—and deepened his glower. “You were recommended to me.”

  “So you said. I have to confess, Mr. Diamante, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t already have a lawyer who represents your family and your business—someone who I’m sure has the requisite gray hair to satisfy your age requirement. And a penis.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched and his glower warmed as if he would have smiled if he wasn’t concentrating so hard on being on the offensive—a tiny sign he might not be a complete douche. “I can’t use my family’s lawyer. It’s complicated. But I can certainly afford exceptional legal counsel. Your recommendation, however, involved a specific unique skill.”

  It was Phoebe’s turn to stifle a mouth twitch. “What skill would that be?”

  “I was told you’re...” Diamante paused and the tips of his ears turned an adorable pink. “A step-in.”

  Her amusement at his boyish blush dissipated instantly. Phoebe flipped the cover back onto her tablet as she rose. She remembered now why his name seemed familiar. It wasn’t just the construction signs. The outline of his pendant was visible under the shirt—she’d been thinking it was some kind of saint medallion. It was a pentacle. He belonged to her sister’s coven.

  “A step-in, Mr. Diamante, as you well know, is an unanchored shade. Not the vehicle. That’s an offensive term for someone who does what I do, and I won’t sit here and put up with your bigoted insults just because you’ve gotten yourself into some kind of metaphysical bind and can’t use Daddy’s money to get you out of it.”

  Phoebe turned on her heel and headed for the door, anger at Ione making the blood pound in her ears. Ione had never had any respect for her younger sister, imagining herself morally superior because she had the backing of a group of twelve equally uptight jerks behind her. And now she had the gall to tell this rich-boy witch Phoebe could defend him because he’d murdered a psychic?

  “Wait. Ms. Carlisle.” Diamante rose and came around the table, grasping for her arm before she could open the door.

  Phoebe moved out of his reach with a smooth sidestep and turned the handle, facing him as she did a quick twist to go through the door. “I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding
another lawyer with your charming personality.” The multilayered insult was probably lost on him.

  “Not one who can talk to the people I’m trying to help.”

  Phoebe paused. “What people?”

  “The shades.”

  He was full of crap. “Exactly how would someone of your affiliation be helping shades? I think you’re confusing ‘help’ with ‘persecute.’”

  “I don’t share the majority opinion of the Covent.”

  The name always annoyed her. They couldn’t just use “coven” like normal people. They had to be snooty about it.

  Diamante was unconsciously rubbing the pentacle through his shirt—an unfortunately sexy quirk. “If you’d come back in and close the door, I’ll be more candid. And I apologize. I didn’t realize that was an offensive term.” He looked annoyed, as though he’d never needed to apologize before. Which strained credulity.

  Phoebe stepped back inside and shut the door, leaning against it with her briefcase in front of her as if to ward off any underhanded spell-casting. “All right. I’m listening.”

  “To the rest of the Covent, I’m a warlock. An ‘oath-breaker.’ I was working with Barbara Fisher to communicate with shades. It goes against the Covent’s creed.”

  “No kidding.” Despite her skepticism, Phoebe couldn’t help but be intrigued. She hadn’t pegged Diamante for a spiritual maverick. “If you don’t mind my saying, you don’t really look like the type to buck the system.” If anything, he looked like the type who owned the system.

  Diamante slipped his hands into his pockets. “My little brother died a few years ago. Broke into one of my father’s construction sites to party after his senior prom and fell to his death trying to impress some girl. His shade visited me.” He’d been glancing down as he spoke, but he looked up and met Phoebe’s eyes. “I insisted on crossing him over. He didn’t want to go. He seemed confused, not understanding he’d died, but I stuck to the strict doctrine and cast the crossing spell. I exorcised my own brother from the mortal plane. And he was sobbing and begging for mercy when he went.”