Graveyard Shift by Jenn Burke
Series: Not Dead Yet #3
Release Date: November 4, 2019
Subgenre: LGBTQ+ Paranormal
Romance
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Synopsis:
Ghost/god Wes Cooper and his not-life partner, vampire Hudson Rojas, have
settled into cohabitation in an upscale part of Toronto. So what if their
hoity-toity new neighbors haven’t exactly rolled out the welcome mat for the
paranormal pair? Their PI business is booming, and when a suspect they’ve been
tailing winds up in the morgue, it’s alongside a rash of other shifters in
apparent drug-related fatalities.
Now Wes and Hudson must connect the dots between
the shifter deaths and an uptick in brutal vampire attacks across the city.
Throw in a surprise visit from Hudson’s niece—who may or may not be on the run
from European paranormal police (who may or may not exist)—and guardianship of
a teen shifter who might be the key to solving the whole mystery (if only she
could recover her memory), and Wes and Hudson have never been
busier…or happier.
But when a nightmare from Hudson’s past comes
back to haunt him, their weird, little found family is pushed to the brink.
Mucking this up would mean Hudson and Wes missing their second chance at
happily-forever-afterlife…
Excerpt :
No sooner had I hung up with Ren than
my phone buzzed again—this time with the ringtone I’d assigned to Hudson, “Axel
F.” To say he wasn’t amused by it was an understatement—“I’m not Eddie Murphy,
for fuck’s sake”—but that was about 80 percent of the reason I kept it. The
other 20 percent was that I really liked Beverly Hills Cop.
“Hey,” I answered. “How’d the client
meeting go?”
Now that Hudson and Evan, his baby
vampire and junior investigative assistant, weren’t affected by sunlight
anymore, thanks to regular sips of my blood—godhood had its benefits—we’d
adjusted the hours of the firm to reflect their new availability. We worked
late when needed, but usually most nights we wrapped things up around ten
instead of after midnight. Hudson had taken to being the lead on client
meetings during the day now, since Iskander’s voice was iffy thanks to a throat
injury he’d suffered the year before.
“Lots of crying. Jesus.” Hudson huffed
out a breath. “I mean, she knew. She told me at our first meeting she was
certain he was fooling around. So I’m not sure why all the waterworks.”
“Because she knew, but she didn’t
know. You know?”
“No.” I could hear the smile in his
voice at the wordplay.
“You hugged her, didn’t you?”
He grunted. “Yes. Ruined another
goddamned shirt.”
God, I loved this man. He could
grumble and complain all he wanted, but he loved being a private investigator.
It showed in the bounce of his step and the lightness in his eyes, even if he
tried to maintain the gruffness that had been way more natural when he’d been a
homicide detective.
“Look, I’m going to miss lunch. I got
a call from Kat—she wants to meet me at the morgue.”
“Uh…” That was not where I thought
this conversation would go. “Why?”
“Weird stuff.”
Of course. Hudson’s old boss,
Detective Sergeant Katrina Li, brought him in on anything that seemed hinky
these days. “Anything to do with our buddy from yesterday?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Okay, come get me.”
Silence came over the line. “It’s the
morgue, Wes.”
“I’m dead, Hudson.”
“Yeah, but not—not dead-dead. Not
morgue dead. It might be gross.”
“I can handle it.”
“Wes—”
“I can handle it. Come get me. You
might be able to use my godly insights.”
Hudson made his trademark can’t react
don’t react breathy-grunt noise, but I wasn’t sure if he was holding back a
chuckle or a groan. Maybe both. I had that effect at times.
“Fine,” he finally said. “I’ll be
there soon.”
I hung up, triumph flashing through
me. Lately he’d made a real effort to show, on a regular basis, that he trusted
me and my judgment. This was progress, and I was excited.
“The morgue?” Lexi bit off the last of
her lollipop and crunched it. “Ready to witness an autopsy?” She smirked.
My elation faded. “He didn’t say
anything about that.”
“Oh, cool. Maybe it’s not that, then.”
She chucked the stick at the garbage can next to the end table and got it in.
“Could be an identification request. Sometimes bodies come in so decomposed or
damaged—”
“Lexi—”
“Watch out for the brains in jars.”
Yeah, that definitely wasn’t happiness
in my stomach now.
Author Bio:
Jenn Burke has loved out-of-this-world romance
since she first read about heroes and heroines kicking butt and falling in love
as a preteen. Now that she’s an author, she couldn’t be happier to bring
adventure, romance, and sexy times to her readers.
Jenn is the author of a number of paranormal and
science fiction romance titles, including the critically acclaimed Chaos
Station science fiction romance series (authored with Kelly Jensen) from Carina
Press.
She’s been called a pocket-sized and puntastic
Canadian on social media, and she’ll happily own that label. Jenn lives just
outside of Ottawa, Ontario, with her husband and two kids, plus two dogs named
after video game characters…because her geekiness knows no bounds.
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