Love, Gods and Sinners

Chapter 1

Valentine’s Date (Heist)

RAVEN

I spend Valentine’s like any single person would: ignoring my ex-girlfriend, and stealing from the rich.

The heist begins at the wink of nightfall. I track the way colour empties from the sky with the patience of a hunter who knows high jinks and devilry happen best when prey is asleep.

Or, more specifically, when corporate offices are dark and deserted.

Breaking in, at this point, comes almost as practised as my magic.

I test my muscles with a couple of jumps, fight through the soreness of yesterday’s training session.

Tug my black mask across my cheeks, over my chin – enchanted to hide my identity.

Check the thin leather gloves that hide my fingerprints.

Load a playlist of M?neskin from a pirated music account.

‘Can you hear me?’ Maria says in my intercoms, for the fifth time tonight.

As clear as the first time. I know she’s only really doing it to get on my nerves – dating someone through your childhood and breaking up the second you’ve matured does that to you.

As I have the last three times she asked, I say nothing.

Three steps running from a neighbouring rooftop, buoyed by the enhanced strength from my Fox descendancy, and I’m crashing through the building’s forty-fourth-storey window, landing silently on the carpeted floor with a roll.

I can’t hear past heavy guitar riffs, but my feet adopt practised stealth over broken glass as I survey the empty offi—

Hold on, the office is not empty. A dour-faced CEO stares from his seat, frozen.

Damn forty-four. I pause my music. Should have come in on a different level. Forty-four is 四十四 in Mandarin, where 四 sounds exactly like 死 , death, then written twice for extra bad luck. 死 and 死. Death and death.

And now there’s a man standing – or sitting, melted into a luxurious chair – between me and indiscriminate theft.

Deep breaths, Raven. You were briefed on the heist yesterday. You knew it might not go smoothly. If you’re careful about this, the Fox Elders will never have to know that their Fox leader-in-training encountered a hiccup.

My mother raised an opportunist. I save the fifteen minutes I would’ve wasted rifling through the cupboards, my knifepoint supervising the CEO as he retrieves the roll of blueprints from a locked drawer by his desk.

Under the CEO’s scathing glare, I stuff the roll into my leggings and dig for my phone. Out of his view, I click on the recording app.

‘The police are coming,’ he says. ‘You won’t get away with this.’

‘I’ll get away like you did, bullying that employee.’ I cuff his wrist to the leg of his desk. ‘You really thought I wouldn’t hear about it?’

‘I’m not scared of you liars and thieves,’ he seethes. ‘I fired the Fox freak in my company last year because she deserved it. Your entire clan is descended from the vixen spirits of deception, isn’t it? Scum.’

I strike him over the head. My chest burns with the vitriol in his voice, but there’s no point defending Foxes to asshole non-descendants.

No point explaining our deity ancestors were masters of illusion, not deception.

Fear drives the magic-less more strongly than logic, and in the face of our powers, nothing scares the powerless population more than power they can’t control.

Discreetly, I end the recording on my phone, making a mental note to send it anonymously to the Department of Descendants for discriminatory employment practices.

The governmental department that deals with magical descendants might be basic and barely developed, but there’ll be someone who listens.

Even if they don’t, I’m already here to make reparations.

‘Careful, Kevin Tan.’ I flatten the name under my tongue like an insult, relishing the fact that I’ve remembered it. Thank God for gratuitously detailed heist documents and my squishy, wrinkled brain. ‘I lead and protect all Fox descendants, and you’re on my kill list.’

The list is real. The bravado is, annoyingly, not.

I’m only the probationary leader of the 狐狸精, the Chinese Nine-Tailed Fox deities.

There’s one more assignment to complete, one more assignment before I pass probation and become the leader of the Foxes in Singapore – but Kevin Tan doesn’t need the details, you know?

Not when there are people to threaten and blueprints to steal.

Kevin’s face darkens. ‘You can’t touch me. I have the Sentinels’ protection.’

‘I don’t see our country’s darlings here to save you.’ I plant my foot square on the seat of his chair, my boot barely missing his crotch, and press my dagger to his throat. Blood beads at its tip.

Kevin’s lips curl, his gaze stuck on the proximity between my foot and his baby-making jewels.

‘I don’t discriminate against all descendants, okay?

Foxes are basically raised criminals and can wield so much magic.

Do you know how dangerous the workplace becomes when an employee can make illusions, or throw things around with their mind?

The department approved her dismissal themselves, and she deserved it. ’

‘Oh, shut up. Our powers have been diluted through our bloodline over centuries. Most Foxes can barely levitate a cup. You knew that woman was harmless.’ I tilt his face up with my blade. ‘Hatred suits you even less than your ugly two-piece suit.’

The communication device in my ear crackles with warning from Maria. Having the CEO surrender the blueprints saved me time, but this heart-to-heart has ruined the schedule.

‘Where are my blueprints, babe?’

‘I’ve got them.’ Casting Kevin Tan a final glance, I dart out of the office, cramming the prints down my trousers. ‘But they’re not yours.’

‘So no Valentine’s gift for me?’

‘Maybe a medal for World’s Worst Girlfriend,’ I say dryly, slipping into the empty corridor. We’re approaching the two-year anniversary of our relationship’s expiration, and Maria still likes nursing the scar by stabbing it open and salting it dry. ‘Quit being an asshole and give me a route.’

I can hear the eye-roll in Maria’s voice. ‘Go left, take the lift down. There are five guards coming behind you right now, eight guards on the ground floor.’

Shit, Kevin must have activated the emergency button. I didn’t manage to check, but he would’ve had time.

Footsteps echo round the corner as I dive into the lift, the doors whirring shut behind me.

In the stillness, I scrutinize my reflection in the mirrored doors.

Hair jutting from my half-bun, wrestled by wind and momentum into brushing my shoulders.

Eyeliner sharpens my gaze, made even harsher in the lift’s fluorescent light.

Mirror-me frowns in the warped lift doors and brushes lint off her shoulder.

Kind of hot. Good.

The lift misses my stop, and grinds to a halt at B2.

Uh-oh.

I barely have time to draw my daggers before the doors slide open and eight cops stare back, their batons and shields raised.

Behind my mask, I grin.

Boot against one shield, followed rapidly by a blast of telekinesis, my magic honed by practice into instinct. The force sweeps the officer into the wall. Another guy pops up like a whack-a-mole.

I switch to daggers – stab to a gut, hilt against a temple. Every navy uniform blends into the next like a sea of target-practice dummies. The world sings with blood and adrenalin, and I thank my Fox ancestry for my increased stamina.

The last guard collapses to the floor. The world slips back into silence as my senses dial back down, and I settle for a quick palms-against-knees breather, stained with the copper tang of blood.

Back to wor—

‘Tired already?’

I’d know that cold, annoying voice anywhere.

How is she already here?

I raise my daggers as I turn, irritation flaring in my chest.

The new arrival cocks her head. I glare down – or, fine, up – at the sight I’ve grown used to over the last two years.

Lune: descendant of Chang’e, Goddess of the Moon, top-class scholar in her civilian life, and the crowd-favourite of Singapore’s Sentinel trio.

Pearlescent moonstone blasters circle her wrists and calves, clasped tight against her skin.

Her Sentinel uniform presses tight around her tall figure – white metal vest around her torso, sleek guards rounding her shoulders and knees, the handle of a sword swinging from her hip.

Above all, a silver helmet and a strip of glass curving round her eyes and cheeks.

The Sentinels were formed several years ago between two descendants with powerful magic and a pledge to serve the government (in today’s context: stop the Foxes from fighting and heisting).

Lune is the newest third member, the most popular, and somehow also the most eager to ruin my plans, like she’s trying to collect all the badges at once.

Even worse is that Lune possesses both an ability to manipulate lunar energy, and also the aura of attraction that surrounds all lunar descendants. She’s serene, beautiful, mysterious, or as otherwise pronounced with my enriched vocabulary and masterful articulation skill – a stone-cold bitch.

The arrogant stick up my ass raises a carefully shaped eyebrow behind her blue-tinted visor and twirls her blazing lunar sword for seemingly no reason at all.

She points its gleaming tip at the blueprints jutting awkwardly out of my belt. ‘Cute. Hand them over and I might let you walk out of here.’

‘Sorry, no tradesies. I’m selling them for a thousand bucks on eBay.

’ I shrug and swap my standard daggers for ones made of moonstone.

Cool through my gloves, their weight foreign as I acclimatize to them.

The Elders gave them to me a couple of weeks ago to combat the way Lune’s sword cuts through my regular metal blades.

It’s taken practice to get used to the way the daggers sail through the air, but now I flip the knives blade-over-handle, catch them with practised ease.

‘Don’t you have somewhere else to be, Tia?

’ I say, stressing Lune’s civilian name under my tongue.

‘Like – I don’t know – kissing ass at that huge gala your mega-rich company is hosting? ’

Her brows dip. ‘It’s Lune to you.’

Ew, professionalism. Tia’s always been needlessly bent on keeping her two lives separate.

Meanwhile, no one outside the Fox clan knows both sides to my coin. That monumental divide is impenetrable for the sake of necessity, not choice. The day that wall cracks is the day my life falls apart.

I adjust my grip on my daggers. ‘Shame. I thought we were friends.’

Lune’s sword burns searingly bright as her lunar powers surge. Her blasters glow on her skin, charged. ‘Make this quick, Fox. You’re the last person I want to spend my Valentine’s with.’

As if I want to spend mine with you. I swallow the remark and bring myself back to stolen blueprints and the nuisance blocking my escape. ‘Could’ve fooled me. Don’t feel the need to run over so quickly next time; you can just give me a call.’

Winking, I lob a dagger at Lune and run.

Round the corner, there’s a vent by the floor, shoulder-kissingly narrow, covered by nothing but flimsy screws and thin metal. Escape.

I punch out the vent and dive in. The blueprints dig into my thigh as I crawl through the vents, dust collecting against my gloves and knees.

I smirk through the urge to sneeze. Lune’s armour has no chance of fitting in the vents, so—

The wall beside me rumbles.

That doesn’t bode well.

I speed up, throwing myself right into a fork as I tap my earpiece. ‘Maria, ETA?’

‘Five minutes. What are you doing in the vents? The stairs are clear.’ Hard not to imagine Maria’s judgemental gaze as she says that: wrinkled nose, brows drawn dark and unimpressed across her forehead.

‘Lune can’t follow me here.’ My Fox night vision saves me from crashing into another fork. I pitch towards a path that ends in an upward ladder and clamber up, hitting a vent a couple of corridors away from the exit.

I bust it open – thank you, super-strength – and duck when white light slices the air before me.

‘Come and fight me, Fox!’ Lune calls.

Rolling out of the crawlspace and into the corridor, I ready my fist and raise my gaze to meet Lune’s. Tension broils in the stale office air between us, time paused like a breath held.

Lune moves first. Her blade misses my bicep by a hair’s breadth.

As momentum carries the sword away, I telekinetically send the vent cover flying into Lune’s visor.

The cover is hefty, but my magic swallows its weight with ease. It grazes, doesn’t catch.

Lune lunges forward blade first, but I pull out my moonstone daggers and intercept the sword between us.

When it doesn’t immediately cut through the crossed weapons like all the times before, she frowns. ‘What are these made of?’

‘Girlfriend material.’ I raise a foot and boot her backwards. ‘You’re getting better at fighting.’

‘You’re getting better at losing.’ As irritation seeps into Lune’s voice, her words slant lightly with her Indonesian accent. In the space of a breath, she rushes forward, slamming me into the wall behind.

Our faces are inches apart. I struggle, but can’t budge with all of Lune’s strength crushing me to the wall.

‘Shit, okay, I’ll do it,’ I gasp, gritting through the weight.

Hook.

‘You’ll—’ Her brows rise imperceptibly, a flutter of surprise. Her gaze flits down, to where the blueprints are squashed between my back and the wall, already greedy with her win.

Line.

‘I’ll go on a date with you, God, just at least take me out on a date before you pin me down.’ I glance down at her arm against my chest. ‘Also, those privileges only come on the second date. What are you, eager?’

Sinker.

I relish the moment Lune realizes she has me pressed to a wall, knee against my gut. Her lips twitch, flattened into a thin line of disgust. Her strength falters.

I grab the Sentinel – ego and all – with my telekinesis, and slam her into the wall behind.

Lune’s helmet crunches the cement. Grunting through her visor, she whips her sword up. But I deflect it with a moonstone dagger, forcing it back on her.

When the blow hits Lune’s thigh, she cries out.

Okay, time to go.

One hand raised to pin Lune against the wall with telekinesis, I dart out of the corridor and slip into the building’s lobby.

In the distance, Lune crashes to the floor, but I’ve already thrown myself against the glass exit doors, smashing them and bursting out into the humid air.

‘Maria?’ I snap into my intercom, but my ex-girlfriend is silent, and police sirens pierce the darkening sky.