Honkytonk Hell: A Dark and Twisted Urban Fantasy (The Broken Bard Chronicles Book 1) eden Hudson (best book club books txt) 📖

Kathan cracked a smile and stood up.

“I’d like to see this,” he said. He looked at Tempie. “Why don’t you keep your sister company? I’ll be back before long.”

“Promise?” Tempie asked in this disgusting, saccharine voice.

I wanted to scream at her. Over the years, Tempie had been a lot of things that weren’t very good, but she’d never acted like one of those stupid twee-girls. Seeing that was worse than knowing what she’d done for that tattoo artist and his friends back in Santa Barbara.

Kathan followed Fatigues out into the hall, his bare feet making almost no sound on the thick carpet. The door eased shut behind them.

I picked up another cookie. Eight months following her across the country. I’d traded clothes and shoes with some girl trying to confuse a tracker so I could have a pair of boots that wouldn’t wear out as fast as my flats had. I’d sold my hair for the cash to make it from Tucson to Fort Worth, sold my phone for the cash to make it from Fort Worth to New Orleans, hitched halfway up the Mississippi, then finally broke down and used the bank card I stole from Mom to get myself to Halo. Eight months of getting hassled by demons, sirens, undead, mambos, primals, and just plain creeps. Now Tempie was sitting right there, happy and healthy and apparently in love, waiting for me to say something.

“Cookie?” I asked, pushing the cart toward her with the toe of my boot.

She thought about it for a second, which was another new, ugly thing to see.

“Yes.” She took one and ate it in four bites. The next one was gone in three. “Man, these are so good. I wish Kathan would keep our room stocked with them. He forgets about food sometimes since they only eat for the taste, anyway, and then I have to remind him that humans eat every day.”

“How long’s it been since you ate, Tempie?”

“I ate earlier today. I think. Don’t you give me that look! Kathan treats me well and he doesn’t have to. You should see some of the junk Mikal does to her familiar. The whole basement—”

“Colt,” I said.

“Huh?”

“His name is Colt.”

“Who cares? He’s just an enforcer’s familiar. Kathan’s an alpha—and he’s able to be a commander. Everyone around here treats me like a queen because I’m his.” She got this wicked smile on her face, almost exactly like the one she’d had after she got home three hours late from her date with Leif Barnhart back in ninth grade. “When we make it out of the bedroom, anyway. We’re usually too busy.”

“City budget work and stuff?” I said.

Tempie laughed. Why did she sound and look so much like my sister?

“He’s incredible, right?” She looked at the door as if she could see Kathan behind it. “That face and those abs—and I’m pretty sure if you shot him in the butt, the bullet would bounce off. I don’t know if he spent his whole existence working out and screwing, but let me tell you, a forked tongue—”

“Yeah, he’s a sex-god. I got it,” I said. I leaned forward and looked into the matched set of my eyes. “Tempie, he said if you wanted to come home, he’d let you.”

“If I wanted to live with a pathetic loser whining and crying about the asshole that dumped her for someone younger, I wouldn’t have left in the first place.”

“Mom needs us, Tempie.”

“She doesn’t give a crap about us,” Tempie said. “You know she doesn’t. Kathan does. He’ll take care of us. And with him, we’ll be as powerful as any foot soldier—maybe even as powerful as Mikal.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The two of us as Kathan’s familiars,” Tempie said. “Commanders raise their familiars to a level of power humans could never experience, not even witches. And we’ll rule with him.”

“Rule what?” I asked.

Tempie laughed. “I never thought I’d see the day the Great Nerd of Hannibal didn’t do her homework.”

I jumped up.

“I did my homework,” I snapped. “Do you want to know what happens around Day 179 of Tempie’s Angel Rebellion? Kathan throws you out because your brain—that squishy thing in your skull that most people use to think—falls apart. Falls. Apart. Do you even get that?”

Tempie shrugged one shoulder and looked down at her fingernails the way she always did when she knew something I didn’t.

“If he’s a commander and we’re his co-familiars,” she said, “The essence doesn’t corrode anything. That’s part of why he wants us both. He loves me and he wants to protect me. The day we met, he sent the foot soldiers to find you because he was worried about me. How’s that for treating me well?”

I sat back down, hard. “If I’m enthralled, too, the essence doesn’t…”

She shook her head. “No, it doesn’t. And remember the power? He said we’re strong enough to be world destroyers, maybe even god-killers. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

Sometimes it’s a shock to realize that the universe or God or someone is providing you with loopholes to jump through so you can do something that just a second ago was impossible. I could still save Tempie. I would have to give myself up, but I’d be with her, wouldn’t I?

I rubbed my face with both hands and sighed. I needed to think about this. I needed time to really do my homework, like Tempie said. And Kathan had enough charming devil in him to offer me the space to think and research.

Tempie stood up and grabbed my hand.

“He wants us to come to the parlor,” she said.

Tough

I wished I could’ve said something smart when Mikal blew into the parlor, but even if I’d had my voice, I probably wouldn’t