Troublemakers' Ball

Jill Rebryna

Description

Jake Dee is your average private detective. Finding lost items, doing background checks, not getting himself murdered, the usual. Except he's an independent wizard in a world of Covens that will not tolerate his existence if they ever find him out. One spring day at sunset, he sees an angel fall right in front of him. She's everything he ever wanted in a leading lady: beautiful, cold and probably dangerous. He immediately elects himself to protect her, whether from demons who want a fight or his best friend, Lucifer Morningstar, the First of the Fallen and a terrible flirt. Finding her shoeless and homeless, he takes her to his apartment. She's new to Earth and has a lot to learn, and Jake's the one who's more than willing to teach her. So what sparks will fly between a boy with a private license and a girl with black wings?

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
• Date de parution: 06 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781638291503
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

T roublemakers’ B all: P art O ne
Jill Rebryna
Austin Macauley Publishers
2023-01-06
Troublemakers’ Ball: Part One About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgment T The Angel and the Detective Jake’s Notes The Detective and the Angel R Really Bad Deaths Jake’s Notes Recalcitrant Hearts O Outcast Angels Jake`s Notes Only One Road U Under the Big Top Jake’s Notes Unusual Suspects B Big Trouble in River City Jake’s Notes Betrayal L Laymen’s Terms E Exorcising Doubt Jake’s Notes Exorcism of Sin M Making Monsters (Damaged Hearts) A Angry Angels
About the Author
Jill Rebryna is currently working and living in her hometown of Edmonton, Alberta, with her fiancé and their adorable cat, Serana. When she isn’t writing the continuing saga of the Troublemakers , she reads entirely too much detective fiction, plays videogames and more ideas to write down than she can ever handle. As a university graduate with an arts degree in anthropology, she finds her interest in the subject has only made her writing and reading more fulfilling as time goes on and has definitely made the troublemakers the people they are today and shall continue to be.
Dedication
To ACD, RC, DH, and JB – Thank you for the stars I’m fighting to fall in.
Copyright Information ©
Jill Rebryna 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Ordering Information
Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Rebryna, Jill
Troublemakers Ball: Part One
ISBN 9781638291497 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781638291503 (ePub e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number:2022919662
www.austinmacauley.com/us
First Published 2023
Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302
New York, NY 10005
USA
[e-mail]
[phone]
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank my fiancé, Randy Bachmeier, and my family for putting up with me as I obsessed over the Troublemakers and the development of their world and the believability of its magic system. For all the times I worked out scenes and troublesome passages out loud because I needed someone to explain it all to.
A special thanks to, my mother, for putting me up for five months as I went through medical treatment and wasn’t working, and so could devote all the time I needed to the rewriting of this book before I sent it out.
To Margaret Sutherland, for always listening to my plot lines and the ridiculous scenarios we worked our way through finding the way I wanted Jake to go. Also to her devoted help to me as an author in the creation of green-winged Angie, a part of the team everyone will be pleased to meet. Her ideas about the cover design were also a great help in letting me decide what I’d really like to see on it.
Thank you to my favorite authors for writing the stories they did and inspiring me to believe I could write something just as true and individual for my own sake.
To, Austin Macauley Publishers, of course, for taking a chance on someone like me, thanks is well deserved.
Finally, thank you, Jacob John Dee, for living in my head and my heart and giving me the courage to do any of this. You’ve always been the braver part of me.
T The Angel and the Detective
“Damn it!” I growled as I saw my quarry moving ahead of me. It was a late spring afternoon on Jasper Avenue, and there were enough people that I had to shove shoulders and ask pardons as I went around people. Even worse, the form of the demon caused comment, and onlookers who weren’t moving were more difficult to go around. It was really hard not to notice a three-foot-high blob of mucous that could move of its own accord. My pay for this one was good though, and I wasn’t giving up.
Ahead of me, the demon slithered off Jasper, down a tree lined street near 109 th . I followed gratefully, not worrying about bystanders any more. I trailed it, not wanting to attack until I was sure we were alone. I followed it past a school, and I really worried, because children were interested in snot demons for some reason. Other than the reason that, to an adult, only a child would call such a demon. Where a child would get their hands on the spells required was not the question I had been hired to answer though, so I left it.
The demon turned from the school and went toward the tram tracks. This was the best place I could imagine tackling it, as the tram had not started running for the season yet, and no one should be down there. It moved toward the bridge over the tracks, but I shot a Magic Shot or two its way to herd it. I followed it down and onto the tracks, and that’s where I pounced.
I took my wand from my pocket in readiness. It was about a foot long, black with a couple inches at the top in white. There was a magic goods supplier I bought them all from when they inevitably ended up broken in another disaster. There was no cover, so the snot demon was struggling to get off the tracks and away up the far hill. I threw a Magic Shot at it to herd it down toward me again. I ran straight for it to finish things, but it had a surprise for me.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” I looked down at my shirt. A glob of yellowish green demon snot was dribbling down my chest. When I looked up, the demon was hightailing it up the hill again. I ran toward it, throwing another Magic Shot just ahead of it. It stopped, turned around, and I took the next projectile in the face.
Before I was conscious of what I was doing I raised my wand and shouted at the top of my lungs. The fire blazed from my wand and the snot demon began to melt. I kept going until it had completely burnt away. All that was left was a wet stain on the concrete, burnt around the edges, and all manner of small items that the fiend had swallowed. I pawed through car keys, cell phones, pop cans, cigarette butts, paperback books and what looked like a Saturday Night Special before I found what was wanted.
I put on my gloves and got the plastic baggies out of my messenger bag. I carefully pulled several coins from the wreckage, sifting them from the loose change of the streets. These were worth far more. In not recognizing them, I was sure they were the coins wanted. Also, there was a queen on them that was not Elizabeth the Second. It was good the protoplasm of the snot demon itself had protected them from my flames. When they were all bagged and in my own bag, I wiped sweat off my brow and remembered it wasn’t sweat.
I cast Mum-Proof, and my cheeks hurt with the sting of a facecloth applied until my face was glowing and clean. I could stand my mother’s scrutiny now, I knew. Which meant no one else would even notice me. The spell had taken care of any solids left on my shirt as well. Protoplasm did come out, as long as one washed the shirt quite soon after contact. I had completely destroyed the demon’s body, so it would not be coming back to this realm unless it was summoned again. I wondered, briefly, by whom it had been summoned. It hadn’t seemed to be under any sort of control, but why release something like that into the world then? Wouldn’t you want to use it to steal for you?
What had my client said about the coins? It hadn’t been a break – in, not exactly. The snot demon had come in the door she’d said, when she opened it to get the paper. It had completely defeated her attempts to shoo it with a broom, and proceeded to eat the coins her father had dropped from a table in shock and then leave. So the next thing she did was went for a phone book and called the only private detective in it who dealt with demons. She came to my office, and I took the case. I patted my bag. These coins should be going home, now the demon was dealt with.

When I reached the home of the man who hired me the sun had finally begun to go down. The sky in the west was golden as I knocked on the door. A woman answered, maybe my age or a year older. She smiled and welcomed me into the house. Her father came into the entry from the hall, looking haggard and older than his years. I remembered him from some jobs I’d done for the museum a while back. They consulted him on anything to do with coins. He looked up to see who was come to his house. Seeing me, his face lit up as though the brightest light you could imagine was turned on.
“Mister Dee. The coins? Did you find them?” He came forward quickly, his daughter barely sidestepping out of the doorway. There was a strange light in his eyes.
“Absolutely.” I took the coins out from the messenger bag at my side. I handed them carefully over.
“And each in their individual bags! A pity the sciences have lost your gifts!” he toddled away in the direction he’d come, hugging his bounty to his chest.
“I’m sorry!” his daughter looked after him and blushed. “Daddy’s been so anxious since it happened! I can get the cheque for you now.” She walked quickly out of the room and came back in a couple minutes with the cheque. “You really are wonderful, Mister Dee. I love to see Daddy so happy. There’s so little left for him really, since Mum… thank you so much. You’re my hero.”