Never Look Back

And then Allie realized why. The raven was shifting, transforming into a man.

No, not a man.

Her angel.

It was him, right down to the smallest detail. As enormous black wings empowered him like a magic cloak, she watched him as closely as her fading vision would allow. He seemed disoriented, confused by his celestial state. He simply stood in the middle of the shambled studio, staring at the painting that depicted his image. Even in all the chaos, the watercolor remained unscathed.

Allie fought to stay conscious, to touch him, to talk to him, but she couldn’t hold on. She drifted into oblivion, her head throbbing, her arm still bleeding from his bite.

When Allie regained her senses, she didn’t know how much time had passed. All she knew was that the sun continued to shine, sending daylight streaming into the room. She fought a wave of nausea and squinted through her delirium. As her eyes focused, she looked around.

The angel was missing.

No, not missing.

She glanced up and saw that the raven was back. There he was, in the rafters once again.

Good God.

Taking a chance, she stood up, holding on to the cabinet she’d slammed into, using the wooden structure for support. The raven watched her from above, and the cat was still hiding under the chair.

Allie didn’t know what to think. Had she imagined the bird’s transformation?

No, she thought. His shape-shifting had been too real. Too powerful. For a few stolen moments in time, he’d become her angel.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice echoing in the spacious room.

Silence met her call. Then a sudden dash of wings. The raven rushed past her, making her hair flurry around her face.

She let go of the cabinet, spinning around to question him again. But it did no good. He soared straight out the window, taking the route from whence he’d come. And then she lost sight of him. He wasn’t even a speck on the horizon. He’d flown completely away.

She took a minute to catch her breath, to ward off the lingering dizziness, to walk to the bathroom and splash some water on her face. Last year, she’d lived through some craziness with her sister, fighting bewitched creatures Zinna had conjured.

But this seemed strangely erotic. As confusing as it was, she couldn’t stop the heat that spiraled through her body, the attraction that left her wanting him.

Her angel.

She bandaged her wound, and once she got her sea legs back, she returned to the studio and set about cleaning up the mess, wiping the spilled liquid and putting the shelves in order.

Samantha crept out from under the chair with the bird’s feather in her mouth, moving like a jungle cat, slow and steady, her shoulders arching, her rangy muscles bunching. Drama queen, Allie thought. The shape-shifter was gone.

Gone.

The word reverberated in her brain. She took the feather away from Sam, putting it in the oak cabinet for safekeeping. She needed to find out who or what the angel was. At this point, she didn’t know if he was a manifestation of her magic or if he’d existed before today—if his image, the details she’d painted, went beyond the strokes of her brush.

She reached for the window screen, intending to replace it. But she changed her mind. She left the window as it was, just in case he decided to return.

To come back to her.

Samantha meowed, grabbing her attention. She blinked and scooped up the cat. She didn’t need to worry about leaving the window open. Aside from it being too high for Samantha to reach, Allie and her sister lived on the fourth floor in a commercial building, a downtown loft in the Los Angeles Fashion District that was located above a trendy shoe store and a gourmet coffee bar. Home invasion robberies weren’t part of their realm.

Then again, Kyle Prescott had broken in one night. Of course, Kyle hadn’t been robbing them. He was Allie’s trainer, an Apache militant who’d staged an attack. At times, she thought he was the toughest, most capable man on earth. And other times, she thought he was as dense as a rusted doornail. But the feeling was mutual. The nickname Addle-brain had come from him.

She closed the studio door and carried Samantha down the hall, placing her on a velvet sofa. The living room had been decorated with rich fabrics and mystic accents. The walls were covered with a mural she’d painted, with unicorns and fairies and an armor-clad knight slaying a dragon. Luckily none of those beings had jumped to life.

Allie wished she could call Olivia, but her sister wasn’t available. So she dialed Kyle’s cell phone number instead.

He answered on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

“It’s Allie.”

“I know. I saw your name on the caller ID. What’s up?”

She decided not to waste any time. “Do you know anything about ravens?”

He made a perplexed sound. “What?”

“Ravens. Those big, black birds. One flew in my window today.”

“Damn it, Allie. Did you do something weird?”

“No.” She wasn’t about to tell him about the raven’s transformation. Not because he wouldn’t believe her. He’d been involved in combating last year’s witchery, and he knew she’d been experimenting with her magic. But she wanted to keep the angel a secret, to let her romantic notions linger. Everyone had a partner but her.

Kyle was married with a baby on the way. He’d wed a homicide detective, a lady Allie respected and admired. She’d helped them get together, in the same way she’d helped Olivia commit to her FBI lover. Allie liked playing matchmaker. She’d always believed in love.

Kyle’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Are you sure you didn’t do anything weird?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t lying. Not completely. She was simply omitting a few details. “I’m just curious about ravens now.”

“Then you should talk to Daniel Deer Runner. He’s a member of my Warrior Society.”

How was one of Kyle’s hard-edged militants going to help? She wasn’t looking for someone to hunt the bird down and kill it. “Why should I talk to him?”

“Because he’s half Lakota, like you, but he has a tribal affiliation with the Haida Nation, too. Raven is a demigod to them, a major part of their mythology.”

Her pulse jumped. Any little bit would help. She reached for a pen and paper. “What’s his number?”

“Hold on. I’ve got it programmed in my phone.” A second later, he rattled it off.

Allie jotted it down. Then she drew a black bird on the paper, coloring its wings with bold marks. “What does Daniel do?”

“He’s a veterinary technician at the zoo.”

She looked at Samantha. The cat was curled into a ball, napping on a gold-tasseled pillow. “So he would know about real ravens, too? And not just the mythological kind?”

“That’s why I recommended him.”

“Thanks, Kyle.”