Under Attack by Hannah Jayne
To my fifth grade teacher Suzanne Nunes who let me retest when I failed the language arts portion of my CBETs test; to my eighth grade teacher Cynthia Gore who awarded me language arts Student of the Year; and to my eleventh grade teacher JoEllen Victoreen who told me that my book report sounded like I copied it from the book’s back cover (I totally didn’t).
You made a difference.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost thank you to my amazing agent Amberly Finarelli for believing, listening, inspiring—and showing me pictures of Ruby when things get too dark in the Underworld. And to John Scognamiglio—you’ve ruined me for other editors—you are the best! Many thanks to my copyeditor Erin who humbles me with her red pencil and eagle eye. For you, I will rein in my cocky half-smiles and beelines. A big thank you to Lee Lofland and the entire staff of WPA, the Greensboro Police and Fire Departments for locking me in the slammer for “research.” Thank you to Dr. Jonathan Hayes for answering my questions on strangling, drowning and the menu at Gotham. Every woman should be lucky enough to have a gastronome/medical examiner on speed dial. To authors Juliet Blackwell, Sophie Littlefield, Penny Warner and Diana Orgain, thanks for showing me the ropes. A big thank-you to my Beta readers/cheering section at Club One: Shirley, Nadine and Penne.
Thank you to everyone in the city who knowingly (or not) supported me—especially Mike from Recycle Books, the staffs of the Pruneyard Barnes & Noble, M is for Mystery, Bay Books, Towne Books and especially, unequivocally, the gang from Crema Coffee in San Jose. There is no better place to get inspired.
Thank you is not big enough to express my gratitude to John and Joan Wendt for letting me hoard laundry quarters and stuff my purse with Google snacks. Thanks for being expert Beta readers and even better friends. We’ll be in Hawaii soon! To Oscar Varela—thank you for everything you do on a daily basis, but most of all for telling me to quit my job four years ago. I wouldn’t have done it without you.
To my best stalker fan (now friend and often roommate) Marina Chappie: thank you for reading, listening, plastering, and plotting with and for me. I can’t wait to share shelf space with Elle!
A very special thanks to my entire family, especially my parents for their unyielding and enthusiastic support, Dana and Officer Cousin for offering book tour security and to oil me up, and to my brother Trevor for understanding that not every novel can center around a quick-witted stockbroker with a heart of gold. And finally, to CTS—now I really mean it when I say “the check’s in the mail.”
Chapter One
It’s nearly impossible to get hobgoblin slobber out of raw silk.
I know this because I had been standing in the bathroom, furiously scrubbing at the stubborn stain for at least forty-five minutes. If I could do magic, I would have zapped the stain out. Heck, if I could do magic I would zap away the whole hobgoblin afternoon and be sinking my toes in the sand somewhere while a tanned god named Carlos rubbed suntan lotion on my back. But no, I was stuck in the Underworld Detection Agency women’s restroom—a horrible, echoey room tiled in Pepto pink with four regular stalls and a single tiny one for pixies—when my coworker Nina popped her head in, wrinkled her cute ski-jump nose, and said, “I smell hobgoblin slobber.”
Did I mention vampires have a ridiculously good sense of smell?
Nina came in, letting the door snap shut behind her. She used one angled fang to pierce the blood bag she was holding and settled herself onto the sink next to me.
“You’re never going to get that out, you know,” she said between slurps.
I huffed and wrung the water from my dress, glaring at Nina as I stood there in my baby-pink slip and heels. “Did you come in here just to tell me that?”
Nina extended one long, marble-white leg and examined her complicated Jimmy Choo stilettos. “No, I also came in to tell you that Lorraine is on the warpath, Nelson used his trident to tack a pixie to the corkboard, and Vlad is holding a VERM meeting in the lunch room.”
I frowned. “This job bites.”
Nina smiled, bared her fangs, and snapped her jaws.