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Chapter One

The cherries were dancing

They bounced around happily in front of ht red and fra in the old-fashioned bedroom, from the lamp on a nearby table, to the curtains at a tall, narro, to the washbasin and jug on another table across from the bed The whole room ash in a sea of red

Up close, individual pieces were sort of cute All together, and with my current blurry vision, it looked like a massacre had taken place I stared at the hideously cheerful things for aed a pillow over my head

My name is Cassie Palmer and, frankly, this wasn’t the worst place I’d woken up Since beco Pythia, the supernatural world’s chief seer and favorite punching bag, I’d opened as, a torture-filled castle in France, a dank dungeon in Faerie, and a couch in hell And, most recently, on a spine-conto

rting tree root in sixth-century Wales that I still hadn’t recovered from

So, it could be worse, I told rimly

“Are you planning to just lie there all night?” a pissy voice demanded

Oh, look It orse

I poked an eye out froreasy blond hair, narrowed green eyes, a nosedown on people with, and an expression that matched the voice

And an outfit that didn’t

As lord of the incubi, the demon race best known for suave seduction, Rosier should have been sporting a Hugh Hefner s a mud-streaked homespun tunic and had dirty knees But then, he shouldn’t have been here at all, wherever here was, although I had a pretty good idea