Chapter One
Growing Up Among Gods
Ginger
I almost hit the girl with my bright red Mini Cooper as I buzzed around a corner mere yards from my intimate apparel shop, Vixen’s Den.
“Shit!” I slammed on my brakes. Tires squealed against the pavement as I yanked the steering wheel sharply to the left, then nearly plowed head-on into a laundry truck trundling along in the opposite lane. The rude blare of the truck’s horn told me what I already knew—that I was in his lane—before I managed to crank my car back to where it belonged.
Holy crap.
After growing up surrounded by the dangers of the Chicago Gravedigger world, I’d nearly bought the farm thanks to a dumpy laundry truck and a brown-haired girl playing chicken in the middle of the road.
Oh.
Wait.
The girl.
Bringing my car to an ignominious stop in front of my shop, I waited for the telltale sensation of my throat closing up, a reflex action that happened when I was terrified. Nope. Just good old-fashioned adrenaline-fueled outrage. With that, I jumped out of my car and ran-walked to where the girl looked at me with huge owl eyes.
“What the absolute hell were you doing in the middle of the damn road?” Adrenaline thumped through me, balling my hands into fists. I had weird reactions to certain stimuli, because I’d had a seriously screwed-up childhood. Terror made me go mute, and being startled or freaked out made me furious. I didn’t shake or burst into tears like a normal human being. No. I snarled and beat the crap out of whatever it was that had freaked me out. Gods didn’t get freaked out. They just flattened whatever it was that had dared to bother them. I was no god, of course, but I’d grown up surrounded by them. Growing up among gods, a weak mortal like me learned fast that the only way to survive them was to pretend I was one of them. “Answer before I toss you under the wheels of the next oncoming bus.”
“I’m sorry!” The girl—really, she looked way too young to even have a driver’s license—held up both hands as if she expected me to carry through with my threat. Her straight brown hair, parted in the middle and hanging without any life to her shoulders, made her oval face appear that much paler as she stared at me with light brown eyes as big as an anime character’s. “Please don’t hurt me, I swear I didn’t see you. I just wanted to go around my car to look at the tires, because something was thumping while I was driving along and something didn’t feel right. I’m sorry, really.”
I crashed to a halt no more than a foot from her, instinctively putting all I could into my six-foot-tall frame. I wasn’t the tallest woman in the world, but more often than not I was the tallest one in the room. I definitely towered over this little kid as I tried to get my redhead’s temper under control.
Little kid, I repeated silently, trying to talk myself down off the attack-mode ledge. Little tiny kid who made a mistake. Quit intimidating. Don’t threaten. Don’t kill. Just… don’t kill.
Okay.
“So. Um. Your tires.” I repeated her words to buy some time as I tried to let out the steam boiling away in my brain. Whew. When it came to fight or flight response, there was never any doubt what mine would be. I could lay that nasty little character flaw directly on Hades’s doorstep, but that was weak. To conquer that madness I first had to take responsibility for it. “Okay, I get it. You stepped out into the street to check your tires, yes?”
“Y-yes.”
“I understand. Sorry I snapped. Really, I mean it. That was just adrenaline getting the better of me.” I waited a couple beats, then stifled a sigh when she didn’t budge. “I’m not sure what you’re waiting for, but your car’s tires aren’t going to magically come over to you. You’re going to have to go over to them. Go ahead and check them, okay? I’ll wait.”
She blinked. “For what?”
This time I didn’t bother stifling a sigh. She was a sweet kid, but she obviously was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. “What’s your name?”
“Olive.”
“Olive.” She looked like an Olive, so I found myself relaxing enough to smile at her. “If it’s all right with you, I’m going to stay here and wait for you to tell me if you’ve got a car problem that we can deal with ourselves, or if we need to call for help. Okay?” When she continued to just stare at me like I was speaking in ancient Sanskrit, I clapped my hands to snap her out of it. “Go on, hon.”
She jumped into action as if poked with a pin. This time she took an almost absurd care in looking for traffic before heading around her car, then gave a despairing moan when she rounded to the trunk.
That didn’t sound good. “What’s the verdict, Olive?”
“Flat tire.” She trudged back toward me as if her feet had turned to lead, her expression woebegone. “What am I going to do? I don’t have the money to buy new tires. I don’t even know if the spare has air in it. God, my life is such a shambles. Maybe it would’ve been best if you’d just hit me and then everything would be over.”
“Hey, stop that,” I said, alarmed enough to reach out to touch her forearm. “It’s not the end of the world, okay? It’s just a flat tire.”
“Sometimes a flat tire can be the end of someone’s world.”
That was a mortal’s way of thinking, and while I knew I was one, I automatically jumped into pretend-goddess mode. “Maybe for some people, but not for us. Nothing can defeat us.”
Olive’s shoulders slumped as if carrying a massive invisible weight. “Trust me, everything can defeat us.”
“You’re just having a bad morning, but don’t worry, okay? Things are about to turn around, I promise. Come on.” I tried out my most charming smile, shifting gears from towering menace to fairy godmother, and gently pulled her toward my shop. “I’m going to get you settled inside my place with something hot to drink, and then I’m going to change that tire for you. I’ll bet you anything you’re going to feel loads better an hour from now.”
“Uh, your place?”
“Vixen’s Den. The shop you’ve always wanted to go into, but were too afraid to look.” With a laugh, I led the way toward my shop.
“That was quite a wake-up call for the morning.” The moment we walked through the door, my best friend and shop manager, Roxie LaRue, stared at us from behind the counter with wide eyes. “I saw the whole thing from the display window. Nothing like a near-death experience to get the ol’ blood pumping.”
“Remember, Rox, that which does not kill you makes you stronger and pissed off.” I tossed my hair to underscore the point, then glanced back at the girl I’d almost made into roadkill. “Please, come in, Olive. Make yourself at home while I get some coffee going, okay? Then I can head out and take care of that tire for you.”
“I…” The girl took one step into the shop, looked at the stripper pole and the mini stage it was on smack in the middle of the front room, before taking in a mannequin display next to her dressed in a neck-to-toe fishnet bodysuit with patches in all the delicate places. Then she looked around at the never-ending displays of pasties, platform heels displayed on rows of underlit wall shelving, and bedazzled bra-and-brief sets on circular racks, some of which were my own design. “Wait. What kind of store is this again?”
“We are Chicago’s fastest-growing shop for all your exotic-wear needs,” I said brightly. “Which is a polite way of saying we sell lots of sexy, smutty stuff to strippers and stripper-wannabes. Welcome to Vixen’s Den.”
“Thanks,” she said faintly, her gaze making another sweep of the fab front room before landing on me. “Who are you?”
“Ginger Sisko, owner of Vixen’s Den.” I pulled off a little curtsy. “Over there at the counter is Roxie, my bestie and all-around good egg. Get this, she was one of the best exotic dancers in all of Chicago—even won a lot of dancing awards—but then her back got crunched while she was competing at the World Pole Dance Competition about seven years back.”
“Wow.” Olive looked at Roxie like she wasn’t sure if she should applaud or back out of the door and run for it. “I didn’t even know you could compete in… uh, in something like that.”
“Oh yeah, it’s a big industry.” Roxie tossed back her glorious mane of brown hair and gave Olive a wink. “Any time you want a lesson, kiddo, I’m your girl.”
“Um…”
“She’s for real on that offer,” I said brightly, hoping to loosen the poor girl up. Everything about her reminded me of a nervously clenched fist, and the mother hen in me wanted to find a way to make her take a breath and relax. “She teaches classes here whenever she feels the itch, in addition to being the Den’s store manager. Be nice to her, she may or may not bite.”
“Only if you give me permission,” Roxie shot back without missing a beat before glancing at me. “And no need for you to put on the coffee, babe, I’ve already got it going.”
“Oh, you’re the best, Rox, thanks. I promised Olive here a cup of coffee before I headed out to change her tire for her.”
Roxie, an impossibly gorgeous brunette with an itty-bitty waist balanced by a butt and boobs that gave new definition to dangerous curves, slow-blinked deep blue eyes immaculately done up, complete with out-to-there eyelashes. “ You’re going to change it?”
I gave her my best goddess-tier look. “Of course I’m going to change it. Got a problem with that?”
“Why not just call across the street and ask for help from—”
“Never ask a god for help, Roxie.” Zipping my bright red jacket up to my chin, I shot her a quelling glance. “They always make you pay for it.”
To be fair, Tyr Colgrave—the man Roxie had been on the verge of mentioning—was the most tolerable of the modern-day gods that weaved in and out of my life, I thought minutes later as I hefted the spare tire out of the back of Olive’s beat up Honda Civic. Ever since I could remember I’ve had terrifying, powerful men—all named after some ancient god or another—casting their shadow over me and my mother. For years we were pawns in a twisted game of checking the balance of power, and that balance had always seemed to be held between two opposing poles—Hades, the leader of the Chicago Gravediggers MC, and Tyr, his nephew, the leader of the breakaway chapter known only as the Gravediggers.
It hadn’t started out that way. My first memory of Hades was when I was only about four or five years old. He and my mother, drunk on what she used to call “mommy juice,” had stumbled home one night, crashed through the bedroom door and tumbled onto the unmade bed. They then proceeded to screw each other right in front of me because my mother had clearly forgotten our apartment had only one bedroom and my little cot was crammed into the corner by the overflowing closet. At the time I hadn’t understood what Hades was doing to my mom. All I knew was that she’d been laughing and begging him to give it to her hard, but since it looked like he was hurting her, I’d pulled the covers over my head and plugged my ears so I wouldn’t hear them.
I was too young to understand what was happening then. I was also too young to recognize that this was the beginning of the end for my mother.
A growl rumbled out of me as I retrieved the tire-changing tools from the car’s trunk. Careful not to make the same mistake Olive had made by stepping out into the street, I shoved the scissor-style jack under the car’s frame, slipped the cheap-ass hand crank into the jack, and cranked it like it was my mission in life. Physical exertion—dancing, working out, playing on the pole inside my shop—was my go-to method of repressing memories when they wouldn’t stay repressed. Thoughts of my mother and Hades triggered me something fierce, but that was to be expected.
Sadly, any mention of Tyr had almost the same effect.
Which probably wasn’t fair, I thought, readjusting my grip on the manual crank that had a jagged point on the end of it that poked my palm with every turn. But when it came to Tyr, I never felt fair . From the moment Hades had ascended to power as the leader of the Chicago Gravediggers, I’d become the whipping boy—or whipping girl —Hades used to keep his powerful nephew Tyr in line.
The problem with that, of course, was that Tyr never stayed in line . He never gave me a thought if he came in late, or had a bad run, or sassed his uncle. He didn’t get punished for that. I did. So what if Hades had knocked out yet another one of my teeth because Tyr pulled some stupid shit that hadn’t been authorized? It wasn’t his teeth. My smile now had four permanent fake teeth screwed in place thanks to that bastard’s carelessness with my life. And the scars on my arms and chest, from the night there had been so much blood… That had been Tyr’s fault too.
God, how I’d hated him then.
I hated Tyr now, almost as much as I’d adored him when I was a small child and shared my very first kiss with him when I’d only been seven or so…
“What the actual fuck are you doing?”
The sharp, familiar voice barking at me made me jump. The jack’s hand crank slipped, and the jagged point sliced across my palm. I cried out, then immediately clamped my lips between my teeth, but it was too late.
Shit.
I’d made a sound.
Oh God, I’d made a sound of pain.
Right in front of a god.
Panic ballooned in my chest, irrational and all-consuming. Making a sound of pain was the absolute worst. It excited those who thought they were gods and only brought more pain raining down on me. I could never allow my pain to be seen or heard by a god who would delight in it. That way lay dragons.
“ Fuck .” Tyr materialized beside me, crouched beside the car’s tire while I clutched my fisted hand to my chest. I found myself staring at the man I hated—dark blonde hair that was so naturally straight it looked silken; light brown eyes the color of whiskey; a beard so short and well-manicured it could almost be scruff. When he’d been a little boy, his cheeks had been cute and chipmunk-like, but that boy had long ago disappeared. Tyr had become a granite-faced man a long, long time ago. The Night of Blood, as I always thought of it. That was the night he’d killed for the first time. He’d done it to save me.
Neither one of us had ever fully recovered from it.
My stomach rolled over hard. I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on not throwing up. Think of kittens. Puppies. Rainbows, Silly, impossibly high heels that looked so cute, and if they had bows or sparkles, so much the better…
“Ginger.”
“Fuck off.” Honestly, didn’t he know how much I hated him?
“Let me see your hand.”
Goddamn it, Tyr, let me go to my mental happy place . “It’s fine.”
“Ginger, let me see.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.”
“It is.”
“It’s bleeding. You’re bleeding. Blood’s dripping from your hand like a leaky faucet. Let me see so I can take care of it.”
I almost whimpered, and I had to once again bite both my lips together from making another intolerable sound of weakness. My shoulder hit the car that I was crouched next to, telling me that I’d semi-swooned, but I still didn’t open my eyes. If I did, I might see the blood, and I couldn’t do that. No way. Not in front of Tyr. I’d throw up for sure, maybe even faint, and I couldn’t do any of that in front of him.
So at this point my plan was simple—I just had to keep my hand balled up and eyes shut for all eternity, and everything would be okay.
I could do that.
I could do anything if I set my mind to it.
“Snap, I need you to listen to my voice.”
Snap. Like Gingersnap. How long had it been since Tyr called me that? Before I hated him, I used to love it when he’d call me Snap.
“Listen to my voice, and do exactly as I tell you, yeah?” Some kind of woolly fabric wrapped around my hands, but I didn’t open my eyes to see what it was. “Take nice, deep breaths, slow and even. I’m here, so you know you’re safe from everything this world could ever throw at you.”
Um, I completely did not know that, actually. Yet at his words, for some reason my body let go of a bone-breaking tension I hadn’t even known was there.
“Good girl. Now, I’ve wrapped your hands up in my scarf so you won’t see the blood. Don’t look down at your clothes, just open your eyes and look at me.”
Right. Sure. Look at Tyr. The guy who used to be my best friend. My first innocent little kiss. The boy who’d turned into my enemy when we were teens. The leader of the breakaway chapter of the Gravediggers, and the man who blamed me for making him kill for the first time.
The man who had killed to protect me, and sullied himself forever.
Tilting my face up in his direction, I opened my eyes.
Darkly fringed eyes the color of whiskey stared back at me, his face so close I could see just a hint of gray in his dark blonde brows. Gray? I thought, in part to distract myself from the blatant fact that he was close enough to kiss. I knew he was only thirty because he was two years older than me. When had Tyr started going gray, and why hadn’t I noticed until now? Whether I liked it or not, I always noticed everything about Tyr. It was like my personal curse.
“There you go. You’re okay.” He kept his hands on mine—or more accurately on the black scarf wrapped around my hands, while keeping his gaze locked with mine. “Next step is standing up. Ready?”
“I told you, I’m fine.” I hated how weak I sounded, like I was inches away from a Victorian swoon. Damn it, that wasn’t like me. I could never allow weakness to be a part of my vocabulary, so I jutted my chin upward. “Or at least I would have been fine if you hadn’t jump-scared me like that. What the hell is wrong with you, Tyr?”
“Lots of things, one of them being a six-foot-tall redhead who right now is paler than Casper the ghost.”
“I’m always pale.”
“Not like this. You look like you’re about to pass out. Are you?”
“No.” I snarled the word. Passing out was for normal people who hadn’t been raised inside the Gravedigger world. I had to be made of sterner stuff. “I feel fan-fucking-tastic, thanks for asking.”
“You’re not going to feel fan-fucking-tastic when you see your hand. Or the front of your jacket. Or your jeans.”
Damn it . “That bad?”
“I’ve seen horror flicks with less blood.”
I swallowed hard and tried for a casual shrug. “No problem. I’ve got a change of clothes in my shop.”
“Uh-huh. And how are you going to get into your nice, clean change of clothes without getting them all bloody?”
Duh . “Obviously I’m going to take care of my hand first.”
“You’ll have to look at it to do that.”
My stomach rolled queasily again. Of course. He knew my problem with blood because he was there when it began. “I’ll wash it off and bandage it myself.”
“Without looking?”
“Roxie can help. Or that little Olive kid.”
“That’d be great if one of them is a doctor.”
I stared at him, baffled. “I don’t need a doctor to bandage up a hand.”
“You do if you need stitches.”
The street wobbled under my feet. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“I haven’t seen it yet, so I don’t know. We’re going to stand up now,” he went on in a matter-of-fact tone that told me he had things to do, and one of them wasn’t coddling me through a dramatic emotional meltdown. “You’re going to keep your eyes on me, and I’m going to take you over to Ride Or Die to get you all bandaged up. Don’t faint on the way over, or I might just leave you where you fall.”
“Thanks for the warning, Prince Charming,” I growled before forcing my legs to hold me as I stood with him to my full height. The anger at his careless—no, uncaring —words solidified my muscles like nothing else. The world snapped into crystal clarity, and I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Roxie stood hesitantly at the door of Vixen’s Den, with the girl, Olive, just behind her.
“Are you all right?” Roxie called the moment she saw me pop up from behind the car.
“No, she’s not, but I’m taking care of it,” Tyr answered before I could open my mouth.
Olive, staring at Tyr as if he were the Devil incarnate, looked like she wanted to cower behind Roxie forever. “I called my brother, Ginger, and um, he said he’s going to swing by to talk to you. He’ll be here any minute.”
“Good. Let him change your damn tire. Roxie, call Misty to let her know I’m bringing Ginger over to patch up her cut hand. Have her get the first-aid kit out and ready for us in my office bathroom.”
“Don’t order her around, she’s not your servant.” Then I glanced over at a wide-eyed Roxie. “But if you wouldn’t mind, would you please call Misty and let her know we’re coming in hot?”
“On it.” With that, Roxie vanished back into the shop.
Olive, looking distressed, hung on to the shop’s open door like she feared she might drift away. “Ginger, I’m sorry you got hurt. Maybe we can take care of your hand here? Like I said, my brother—”
“Your brother is your problem, kid. Ginger is mine.” Tyr barely spared Olive a glance before tugging on my hands. To a casual observer, it probably looked as if he had me all tied up like I was his personal prisoner, and he was carting me off to his secret urban dungeon. Great . “Let’s move.”
“Tyr, I’m not your problem.” Really, I had to say it.
“If only that were the case. Now do me a favor and pipe down, yeah? I’ve got to get you across the street before you faint from blood loss.”
“I am not fainting.” I hoped.
“Across the street” wasn’t as simple as it sounded. Tyr’s Gravediggers Motorcycle Club, or MC, wasn’t just one building, like a quaint little community center. It was a massive, fenced-in and heavily guarded compound that took up approximately one commercial-sized city block. It contained several buildings, including an old 1960s-style motor court motel that used to house a stable of strung-out, haggard, used-up prostitutes, including my mother. The motel was now called the Barracks, and it could house up to two-hundred Gravedigger brothers if they ever went on lockdown. That had happened at the beginning of the year, and while no one wanted a repeat performance, Tyr remained ready to pull his army in at a moment’s notice. The kitchens were always stocked, the place was kept immaculately clean, and if anyone wanted to throw down in a big way, Tyr was clearly ready to take care of his men during a long-term siege.
That, as much as anything, made him a great leader. He always put the members of the Gravediggers first.
But of course, I wasn’t a Gravedigger. I was just a woman, so I was something the leader of the Gravediggers had no problem sacrificing.
The bastard.
The Barracks hung on the edge of a huge parking lot that connected all the other buildings. To the right was a gray-washed, solid-looking structure that used to be a bank, but was now the Gravediggers Clubhouse. I loved that place. On the surface it looked harmless and vaguely contemporary, but on the inside it was a wondrous fortress that had sublevels to it that even I hadn’t been allowed to see. As far as security went, it was a masterpiece.
In the middle of the huge parking lot, there used to be an island of trees and bushes that had been ignored until was an overgrown tangle. Now it had been cleared, and in its place stood a small, elevated structure that resembled the wooden lifeguard towers you’d find on a beach. Last winter we’d had a couple of Hades’s men hide in that tangle, and once the hubbub from that incident had blown over, Tyr ordered that thicket to be mowed down so that a watchtower-slash-central security hut could be built.
On the left side of the large parking lot, a gigantic metal warehouse-like structure dominated the landscape. That was our destination, Ride Or Die Choppers, Tyr’s pet project and secret love of his life. A legit business pulling in almost as much money as the club’s less-than-legal enterprises had never been a part of Tyr’s long-term plans, at least as far as I knew. He’d just needed a legit business front to launder whatever money came in from the club’s “extra-legal” activities.
But over the past several years that the Gravediggers had become a separate chapter from the Chicago Gravediggers, Tyr had come to love Ride Or Die Choppers like it was his own child. Now he gave it almost as much attention as he did to the other not-so-kosher business dealings that made his Gravediggers chapter thrive, and that told me where his secret heart lived.
Not that I believed Tyr had any aspirations of going straight and living a meek little civilian’s life. The very thought made me laugh to myself as he pulled me through Ride Or Die Choppers’ showroom decorated in grays and whites, with fantastical custom-built bikes gleaming under the showroom lights. I doubted he even knew what living a straight life was. He’d been born into the Chicago Gravediggers, a club his grandfather had founded, and from the start it had been exactly what a 1%er club was supposed to be—brutal muscle-for-hire for organized crime, running drugs, guns and prostitutes with impunity.
Tyr’s grandpa, Titan, eventually wound up in the gray-bar hotel—prison—for beating a man to death with his bare hands. The club had passed on to his son, Odin, Tyr’s old man, who hadn’t been any better than his pops. To prove it, Odin wound up beating a man to death when I was in middle school and got caught by the law, but this time the club didn’t get handed down to Tyr. Oh, no. Hades had taken control even before his brother had been officially convicted.
From that point on, Hades had ruled the Chicago Gravediggers with a tyrannical iron fist.
Hades taking control of the Chicago Gravediggers had signaled a terrible change in my life and in the lives of the Colgrave children. Gone was the protection we’d all enjoyed when Odin was around to be a natural brake on his brother’s cruelty. I had never been used as a whipping boy for Tyr, the heir apparent, when Odin had been in power. But that insanity started almost immediately after Hades came to power. We’d all been shocked by it, most of all Tyr and me, but clearly Tyr had never been so shocked that he actually stopped misbehaving. If anything, my torture sessions got worse the older we got, and always it was because of Tyr.
Tyr’s younger brother Loki flat-out left the MC life once he graduated high school and never looked back. He was now some kind of famous tattooist with a regular job and a passel of wild-eyed kids who were growing so fast they were threatening to be even bigger than he was.
Tyr and Loki’s little sister Hel now lived somewhere on the rugged Oregon coast. She did cute illustrations for children’s books as Helen Colgate, and unutterably nightmarish gothic paintings as “Hell Grave,” a play on her true name, Hel Colgrave. The last time I spoke with her, she was getting ready for her first solo exhibition and was a nervous wreck—which, for a Colgrave, meant she was bitchier and more acerbic than ever.
As unexpected as all that was, Tyr did the craziest thing of all. After trying to hold the Chicago Gravediggers together while under his uncle’s insane rule, it became apparent that the chaos-loving Hades wanted nothing more than to be king of the graveyard, with the members of his MC planted in the graves. Tyr and his closest friends bailed on the club his grandfather founded, and so did I. Not that I really had to at that point; I hadn’t been linked to the Chicago Gravediggers since my mother, Hades ol’ lady, OD’d when I was eighteen. But Tyr had convinced me that to be safe, I had to be clear in my affiliation with Tyr’s new MC chapter, the Gravediggers. I’d agreed to do this because I feared Hades would try to hold on to me even after my mother’s death, and Tyr was the only one strong enough to oppose him.
At the time of my mother’s death, I’d been designing lingerie and cute girlie clothing and selling my creations online. I’d been saving every penny I had to get the hell out of the nightmare of a life my mother had put me in, but when my mother died and Tyr broke free with the announcement that I was under his protection, I decided to try to use the money I had to buy more inventory and make a real go of my online store I’d named Vixen’s Den. Within a year, Tyr had found the dated, single-story strip mall across from his new base of operations and loaned me the money to bring Vixen’s Den to brick-and-mortar life.
So far it had been a fabulous business decision. I’d already paid back Tyr’s loan, something that had been my first priority. The shop was wrapping up its best year yet, to the point where I could now invest in building up my online shop as well as advertise for a greater reach throughout Chicagoland. My own designs sold as well as any of the other pieces of intimate apparel I had in stock, and I was playing with the idea of starting up my own line of super-sexy platform high-heeled shoes.
You could say I was bringing sexy back, one woman at a time.
“Oh, no.” As we closed in on Tyr’s office at the back of the showroom, a statuesque blonde bombshell came out, looking distressed. Misty, my other best friend whose miserable upbringing was so similar to mine it wasn’t even funny, pushed the office door open wide so we could enter. “Girlfriend, what happened? I got the first-aid kit ready to go on the bathroom counter, but if you want I can drive you to the ER…”
“No one touches Ginger but me.” Tyr blew by Misty like she wasn’t even there, while his words smacked every coherent thought out of my brain. “Get up front, Misty, and if anyone needs me, tell them I’ll get to them in about an hour. Right now I’m in official Do Not Disturb mode.”
“Understood.” With one last worried glance my way, Misty beat a hasty retreat, leaving me to Tyr’s tender mercies.
I’d be lucky to survive to the end of the day.