The Reluctant Goddess (The Montgomery Chronicles Book 2) by Karen Ranney Page A

about my mother. But something flipped over in my chest the night she confessed to trying to kill me and hitting Opie, instead. Maybe it was that last shoe dropping in a relationship. You know it sucks. You know it's bad. Yet you continue on with this notion that if you pretend everything is all right, you'll eventually fake it until you make it.
    My mother's words killed that fairytale completely.  
    Ever since that night, I had no illusions that there was any kind of relationship between us. Yet, at the same time, I had this cognitive dissonance going on. (My minor was psychology.) My brain told me I should feel something: regret, pain, rejection, grief, you name it. The fact that I didn’t worried me a little.  
    Maybe one day, when things were quiet and I had the answers to all my questions, I’d break down and cry for hours. I didn’t have that luxury right now. I was too busy trying to figure out what I was and how to stay out of harm’s way.  
    I wasn’t doing too good on either front.  
    We were quiet on the way to the restaurant. I wanted to ask if the late nights were playing havoc with their schedules, but didn't. Dan had worked for Maddock for a while, an undercover assignment he’d given himself, so he had to be available at all hours of the day and night.  
    Me? I had to get into a routine and stick to it. Maybe I could be up and about in the afternoon and then go to sleep again at three or four in the morning. That way, I could function as a human and still watch for Maddock.  
    I didn’t like the idea of sleeping while he was trying to get to me. That was just too creepy.  
    Dan pulled into the parking lot of Dukes.  
    I glanced at him, said, “It's okay, I'll get it," and opened my own door. Otherwise, he would've made a point of coming around the hood of the car to do it for me. I appreciated the chivalry, I really did, but it seemed a little foolish to sit there and wait for somebody to open a car door that I could open on my own.
    “What’s going on with your disappearing humans problem?” I asked when he got to my side of the car.  
    I could barely see his face in the darkness. Dukes didn’t believe in parking lot lights like The Smiling Señorita. This would have been a much better place to kill me, a thought that had me doing a once over of the cars around me. I didn’t see anything, but more importantly, I didn’t feel anything. No witch buzz and I didn’t have to worry about my mother for a few decades.  
    “It’s going,” he said and smiled. It was one of those I don’t want to talk about it smiles. The kind that instantly made me want to know more.  
    I wasn’t obnoxious by nature. Becoming a Dirugu was making me a little cranky, however.  
      “Like how?” I asked as he put his hand in the small of my back to guide me around the car.  
    I really didn’t like him touching me. I really didn’t like it because I really liked it, if you know what I mean. I didn’t want to feel anything for Dan, especially the hormonal surge whenever he looked at me. After what Maddock had done to me, I shouldn’t have been feeling anything, but I was evidently still affected by a good looking human guy and when that good looking human guy put his hand on me, I naturally reacted.
    “Well?”  
    “Now’s not the time, Marcie,” he said, dropping his hand.  
    I didn’t know what annoyed me more, his comment or the fact that he moved aside so I could enter the restaurant in front of him and Mike.  
    Chivalry was all well and good, but not if it was a way of shutting me up. I was going to get answers from Dan. Just as soon as the meeting with the scariest vampire I’d ever met was over.  
    Not Maddock, but Kenisha.

C HAPTER E IGHT

    Kenisha and Mikey, sitting in a tree

    San Antonio isn’t really a foodie town. Not like Portland or San Francisco or even Austin. We do, however, have hole in the wall joints that produce excellent Mexican food. The restaurant Kenisha had