Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,49

winters. She also seemed to have forgotten that Austin, while normally hot and humid, was in the Northern Hemisphere. In December.

Anna sighed and considered stopping into one of the shops along the street to buy clothing like a true tourist. She paused in front of a storefront display window. It was all done up in holiday lights and glowed softly against the early twilight of winter. A dark gray hoodie on display read, “I did six sixths on Sixth Street.” The quote was ridiculous, but the hoodie looked soft and warm.

She thought about it a second more.

And then she laughed. “Just – no.”

As she walked, she realized there was moisture in the air; it smelled like snow. The shifting wind brought not only heavy clouds, but memories.

Of a Midwest Christmas. Fifty years ago.

“Snow…” she whispered to herself, tilting her head up to peer at the dark sky overhead. Was it going to snow? Was that what she smelled? Snow in Austin was rare. When she’d visited a few years back, the city had seen a little more than an inch. That small amount had amazed and delighted most of Austin’s population. But she could feel it building heavy around her this time, accumulating quietly in the darkness. “Maybe it’ll be a white Christmas,” she wondered aloud before closing her eyes. Mist immediately formed on her eyelashes, chilled nearly to the point of freezing.

“I can’t deny a bit of sun complements your complexion, but I do believe it’s the cold that has always suited you best.”

Anna froze where she was, head tilted back and eyes closed like a child.

“You’re practically glowing, Annaleia.”

She recognized the voice despite the number of years separating the present from the last time she’d heard it. When she opened her eyes, it was with the vague sense that she was in a dream. Or that she’d been in a dream for fifty years and hadn’t in fact ever left Philadelphia or put miles and minutes between them.

The crowd moved around the two of them, parting on either side of the pair as if they were stones in a stream, caught immobile in a moment in time.

The man was tall and dark, his eyes like dark matter. But as it had been for the majority of their strange relationship, his smile was warm and friendly, quite different from the expression he’d first graced her with in a diner half a century ago. That smile took him right up the ladder from handsome to one of the most beautiful men in the world.

But she knew that outer beauty was just his nature, part and parcel to being an incubus.

When he tilted his head to regard her, it felt as though she’d known him her entire life. In a way she had. She’d known him for the sum of her second life, any way.

“I don’t believe this,” she whispered. “You have got to be kidding me.” She shook her head as she took him in. He was wearing a darkly hued three-piece suit. It was perfectly tailored to his admittedly equally perfect proportions. Of course. “And you dressed up for me.”

“Always,” he returned with a chuckle. “It’s good to see you, Annaleia.”

His sudden appearance scrambled her brain, negating the possibility of most coherent thought. What was left was quite simple: She knew why he was there and why he’d tracked her down. There could be only one reason. It was a reason both very good and very bad. “Who’s dying this time?” she asked point-blank.

Jarrod Sterling’s smile became a grin, and Anna stifled a groan. He was a sexual creature, so even his laugh was like foreplay. His dark eyes sparkled. “You know damn well I would come to you, impending death or not. Any time. Night or day.”

That was probably true. Male sex demon and what not.

“However…” he continued, taking a single step toward her that rang out in her head like a battle drum, “I do know you’d have nothing to do with me if a life wasn’t on the line,” he finished, and his smile turned slightly sad.

That was also probably true.

Anna felt her fingers twitch. She desperately tried to weigh her options but he was so close and she was so tired, and this all seemed surreal. She couldn’t think straight. Then again, that could have been his doing; a spell of some sort. She wouldn’t put it past him. “So?” she repeated, her voice lowered but demanding. “Who is it? Who’s fated to die this