The Acceptance

Prologue

Boredom was her newest enemy, and since running off from Luther—make that Detective Luther Cross—she’d been bored more than not.

Until now, she hadn’t realized how much . . . excitement he’d brought to her life. You’d think a paladin would have her hands full enough that a nosy cop bent on seduction would have been mostly an annoyance, perhaps even a threat.

Instead, he’d been fucking wonderful. The most wonderful thing to ever happen in her miserable, cursed life.

Shit. Gaby walked along the broken concrete walkway in front of the aged, blackened building until that bored her too, then she leaned back against the rough brick, trying to ease her mind, her body.

Her soul.

Hanging out with hookers was a distraction, but it just didn’t fill the space the way he had.

She needed something to happen, anything, to keep her from . . . Whoa. Just then, her instinct kicked and she felt the presence of evil, in her bones, in her guts. Her throat burned, she looked up—and she saw him.

A kid.

Clean-cut and unafraid.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The defenses screaming silently throughout her body said that he was the wrong person, in the wrong place—and there could be nothing right about his presence here tonight. Pickled with immorality, riddled with holes of depravity, his black aura clung to him like a wet cloak.

He sickened Gaby.

He challenged her.

And it didn’t matter to her if he was ten or fifty.

Evil was evil.

Tonight, her boredom would end.