Summary:
Magic Emporium
A hitman and a fae walk into a café…
Callum always gets the job done—whether he likes it or not—but this job isn’t like any other. The target’s too young, too pretty, and too appealing for comfort, and the clients are offering more threats than cash. And either the target poisoned his hot chocolate or he’s going crazy, because now magic stores and wizard-looking dudes are appearing out of nowhere. It’s really not Callum’s day.
Linden’s on the run, and the human realm’s a good place to hide from evil sorcerers who think Linden’s the answer to a prophecy. But his enemy has found a way to send a very human and very dangerous assassin after him—a man who could kill Linden with one hand. Linden should be terrified, but his knees go weak for all the wrong reasons.
When Linden’s family is taken hostage, spending the night with Callum ought to be the last thing on his mind, but Linden can’t resist the chance to fulfill his deepest fantasies before sacrificing his own life. Callum knows he should walk away—it’s not his fight. But the beautiful fae is under his skin and now protecting Linden and his family feels more important than his own survival. A human learning to feel. A fae learning to trust. Can two worlds merge into one true love?
Brought to Light is part of the Magic Emporium Series. Each book stands alone, but each one features an appearance by Marden’s Magic Emporium, a shop that can appear anywhere, but only once and only when someone’s in dire need. This book contains explicit scenes, a magic flashlight, a prophecy that doesn’t quite work out the way anyone expects, and a guaranteed HEA.
I shot my arm out and caught him around the waist, neatly clotheslining him and sending him sprawling on the ground.
John let out a cry of surprise and pain and rolled onto his back, just in time for the other set of pounding feet to close in.
The guy I’d seen the night before, the sketchy one, came around the corner and launched himself at John, snarling something in a guttural language I couldn’t understand.
Sometimes, when I was in a situation like this, time slowed down. Became elastic. Every detail struck me at once, but I processed them individually: John’s wide, panicked blue eyes, sheened with tears, maybe; the flash of something in the other guy’s hand, a knife with a wickedly curved blade; the damp of mist or possibly the start of rain cooling my cheeks and settling in my hair; the weight of my gun in my hand.
John was my mark, a dead man the second Jesse told me we had to take the job. That was how it worked. There simply couldn’t be room for anything else.
I flipped the gun in my hand, grasping it neatly by the barrel, and time sped up again. John cried out, raising his bruised and gritty palms to fend off his attacker, and the grip of my pistol thwacked into the asshole’s temple with a meaty crunch. He collapsed like I’d cut his strings, his face smacking into the pavement and his limp arm falling across John’s legs. The knife gleamed against the dull concrete, reflecting the pearl-gray of the sky like a mirror.
John stared up at me, his pink lips parted, giving me a glimpse of his teeth. His tongue flicked out to wet his lower lip. “Is he dead?”
I shrugged. “Probably. Or will be, if no one gets him to a hospital.” I hadn’t flipped the gun around out of any desire to spare his life. I just hadn’t wanted the noise of a gunshot to attract attention.
John suddenly scrambled out from under the dead weight of the guy I’d maybe just killed, rolling to his knees and panting heavily, his head hanging between his shoulders like he was trying not to throw up.
Fucking civilians. I caught him around the upper arm and hauled him to his feet. He was as light as he looked. Dandelion fluff. His hair brushed my chin as he lurched upward, and a shiver went down my neck.
My fingers went all the way around his arm. I gave him a squeeze, and not a gentle one. He shuddered.
“Who the fuck is this, and what did he want?”
Of course, he was almost certainly my opposite number, hired to make sure the job got done. And that meant Jesse might be dead already, if our employers had decided we weren’t going to take the bait and sent in someone else.
A cold lump of dread settled in my stomach, but I ignored it. I couldn’t do anything for Jesse right then. Any problem that couldn’t be solved had to be shoved aside, and that was how it was.
I’m an editor by day and a romance writer by night, at least on a good day. I’m more of a procrastinator by day and despairing eater of chocolate by night when inspiration doesn’t flow and my day-job clients are driving me to insanity. Go ahead and guess which of these is more common.
My steady childhood diet of pulp science fiction, classic tales of adventure, and romance novels surreptitiously borrowed from my grandmother eventually led me to writing; I picked up my first M/M romance a few years ago and I’ve been enjoying the genre as a reader and an author ever since.
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