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Chapter 1
Matt
I… did not think this through.
And damn it, I knew better. You don’t spend fifteen years representing fae, sorcerers, and the odd alchemist in the courtroom without learning to beverycareful about every word you say. Otherwise you ended up like that district attorney—his name escapes me right now—whose political aspirations went up in smoke because he got careless and gave his name to a trickster who was now a U.S. senator running for reelection.
So. Yeah. I knew better.
In my admittedly weak defense, I was desperate. Everyone thinks they’reso smartand wouldneverfall for trickster magic, but let’s see how rational and responsibleyouare when your love life is so pathetic that Spirit Halloween wants to rent out one side of your bed.
Staring into my bathroom mirror now, I rewound the events of the last few days, trying to figure out how exactly I’d ended up here.
Or rather, howthey’dended up here—“they” being the two tiny beings perched on my shoulders.
On the left, a demon. On the right, an angel. I supposed I should be thankful the angel wasn’t one of the Old Testament angels with the dozens of eyes and however many wings. I’d had a little too much to drink last night to process that. Not that I was doing such a hot job of getting allthisinto my head.
I wiped a hand over my unshaven face, then glared at my two passengers. “Okay, now that I’m… Maybe ‘awake’ is being generous, but…” I gestured dismissively. “Just… run it all by me again?”
In an instant, they were talking over each other, both sounding entirely too conscious and—at least in the angel’s case—perky for 7:43 on a Saturday morning.
“One at a time,” I growled.
They quieted and leaned forward to look past me at each other. I watched in the mirror as they gestured and shrugged in a pantomime of“You want to? No, you do it.”
I rolled my eyes. Then I pointed sharply at the angel. “You.”
He jumped and stammered, “Oh. Uh. I…” After a second, he recovered, pushed his shoulders back, and spoke, his accent British and his voice alittletoo loud, given the night I’d spent with Jack Daniels. “We’ve been sent here to assist you in finding a companion.”
I blinked. They’d both said as much when I’d first discovered them, but I’d been so freaked the hell out because hello—a tiny angel and demon? What the fuck? Now that I’d calmed down… no, it didn’t make any more sense than it had during my initial panic.
“Assist me. In finding a companion.” I shook my head. “What the fuck does that even—”
The demon huffed, and he sounded Scottish and bored: “What my feather-brained colleague means is that we’re here to get you laid.”
I eyed him as much as my throbbing head would allow. “So you’re my divine wingmen?”
The angel made an indignant sound. “I amnota winged man. I am anangel.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” The demon rubbed his hand over his face much like I had a moment ago. “He didn’t mean—mortals call someone a wingman if they help them get laid. Do you evenreadthe briefings?”
“I do read them!”
“Do you, though?” The demon’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Because on our last assignment, you thought Grindr was a power tool.”
Annnd just like that, they were bickering again, flailing arms, wings, and—I thought—a tail at the edges of my peripheral vision as they shouted past me.
I rubbed my eyes. This was a dream, right? I’d had a little too much to drink last night, and I was still sound asleep in my bed, hallucinating vividly about two mosquitoes buzzing around my head.
This was absolutely not reality. It definitely wasn’t a consequence of visiting a former client from the Fae District and asking if her whole matchmaking thing actually worked. Or of her smiling sweetly and asking, face and voice full of innocence, if I needed help finding a companion.
I stared at the angel. At the demon.
At my loud, obnoxious, bickering wingmen.
Oh, fuck my life.
That loud, obnoxious bickering wasn’t helping my throbbing head, so I barked, “Hey!”
