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Holly dragged a couple of very heavy bags out of the back of the Land Rover and hauled them into the kitchen. She went back for a second load, and as she was passing the staircase Alan’s voice floated down.
“Did you get it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Bring it here and let me see it before you wrap it up.”
“As soon as I’ve finished hauling groceries.”
There was the sound of movement overhead and for one delirious moment Holly actually thought he was coming down to help. But then she heard a door slam. Her slender shoulders drooped, and she soldiered on alone.
Some half an hour later, she trudged up the stairs holding a small box in her left hand. Walking into Alan’s office she placed it carefully on the desk in front of him. He looked up from his computer screen.
“At last. Knowing how much I want to see this, I’d have thought you could have brought it to me before now.”
“I could. But then the groceries wouldn’t have been put away before the twins get home from school.”
He opened his mouth to make a scathing retort, but his wife was already on her way out of the room. Instead, he opened the box and looked gloatingly at the heavy gold bangle in its layers of tissue paper. It had cost a great deal of money and meant he wouldn’t be buying his wife or his twin sons Christmas presents this year, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. All he could see in his mind’s eye was the image of his daughter with the bangle clasped around one slender wrist. She was going to love it.
Downstairs Holly got on with preparing the evening meal, presenting the world with her usual face of calm good sense. Inside, however, she was far from being serene and happy. Not for the first time in the ten years of her marriage, she wondered what maggot had entered Alan’s brain. How could a man who was constantly bewailing his own poverty possibly justify spending four thousand pounds on a bracelet? She allowed herself one small kitten-like snarl, before popping a huge shepherd’s pie in the oven. She was just putting the kettle on when the back door slammed.
“Paddy, Sean, shoes,” she shouted. “And before anyone considers arguing, I have fresh doughnuts.”
There was the sound of masculine laughter, and a couple of minutes later the kitchen door opened and two huge young men all but fell in. They surrounded her and subjected her to a certain amount or good natured rumpling, before sitting down at the scarred wooden table.
“You are,” Sean said, “very possibly the nicest stepmother in the world.”
“She is,” his twin concurred. “Which begs the question of how the miserable miser upstairs ever persuaded her to marry him.”
“Behave, you pair,” Holly couldn’t help laughing, as she put a huge mug of very strong tea in front of each and a plate of doughnuts between them.
While they were eating, Holly looked at their broad, good natured features and did her own wondering. She wondered exactly how two such self-centred people as Alan and Corinne, came to have produced a matched pair of nice sons. Paddy grinned at her.
“Stop frowning Stepmama, you’ll put wrinkles in your pretty forehead.”
She smiled at him, and he shoved a whole doughnut in his mouth.
“He’s been practicing,” Sean explained with simple pride. “That’s school over until January. So what now?”
“Tomorrow. Nothing. Unless you’d like to go shooting.”
“We would,” the boys chorused. “How did you swing that?”
“I have my methods.”
“And after tomorrow? What are you softening us up for?” Sean was the quicker on the uptake of the duo, although Paddy was the leader.
“Sunday your mother arrives.”The boys groaned. “And what else?”
“Christmas Eve, Anna and Christabel will be here. Staying until the day after Boxing Day.”
“Oh won’t that be fun. The two ex-wives at each other’s throats except for when they join forces to have a go at you. Plus the most spoilt young woman on the planet, Daddy’s darling Christabel, expecting to be waited on hand and foot.” Paddy looked at Holly. “I dunno how you stick it. And don’t say it’s for love of our despicable father, because you aren’t that stupid.”
“I stick it because I promised myself I’d be here for you two until you were old enough to leave home. When that happens…”
The boys looked at her with round eyes before getting up from the table and enveloping her in a group hug.
“I’d give a great deal,” Sean said, “to know what the old bastard has done that’s gotten you rattled enough to admit that.”
Holly waved her hands distractedly. “I shouldn’t have said it. And I don’t want you two to be thinking about it…”
“Okay. We won’t.”

Team Holly by Jane Jago is free to download today 23 December 2022.

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A collaborative effort between two authors – E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago – and a brilliant illustrator, Ian Bristow. This is a story in rhyme that is perfect for reading out loud to children of all ages over the festive season.

 A Christmas Tail is free to download today 22 December 2022.

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“Mensi, we’ve captured strange trespassers.”
A low, gritty voice reached Madelyn’s ears. She was sat, bound at the hands and feet and her head was throbbing. Thankful that her captors hadn’t removed her helmet, which housed the built-in translator, she opened her eyes and tried to locate the speaker without making any unnecessary movements. But a full sweep of her visual range without turning her head revealed nothing but the blank expanses of a canvas wall across the dirt floor she was sitting on, leading her to assume she was in some sort of tent-like enclosure. The voice spoke again.
“They seem to have some kind of magic, just like Calitari predicted.”
“How many were there?” The replying voice, which Madelyn guessed belonged to Mensi, carried an unmistakable note of arrogance.
“We didn’t get an exact count, but we killed the aggressive ones—at a somewhat significant loss of our own—and captured four… Three escaped.”
Madelyn’s heart skipped a beat. Three of the others had gotten away.
“Escaped? Neza, I task you with keeping threats out of our great lands and you allow three unknown magic wielders to escape? This is not your first or even second blunder in recent times. Your persistent failure is intolerable.”
“I will personally see to it they are—”
The sound of something swiping through air cut Neza’s words short, and hopeless gurgling noises replaced them, followed by the sound of dead weight crumpling to the ground.
Horrified, Madelyn realized she had just heard Neza die for allowing three of her companions to escape. Such brutality toward one of his own did not bode well for how this Mensi figure might treat her and the others.
“Lintu,” Mensi yelled.
“Yes, lord.”
“Come here. Your services are required.”
Chancing a small movement, Madelyn peered to her left and saw a Xantarian running toward the enclosure through a break in its flap-covered doorway. One of the flaps swooshed open and light poured in, stabbing at her pupils. Her head pounded in revolt and she closed her eyes.
“Three others like these four are out on our lands somewhere,” Mensi said.
These four? For the first time, Madelyn had reason to believe she was not alone in the tent. Whoever else had been captured were here as well.
“They are magic wielders, so you will need to be cautious in your hunt. Use the Manori if you need to. I want them returned here alive if at all possible. I believe they might have answers about the moving stars.”
“Your will is mine,” Lintu said.
The sound of multiple footsteps faded away, and she risked a more revealing look through the open flap. No one was standing there. Now feeling it was safe to do so, she wriggled around and found Lexi, Cameron, and Mitzu all huddled nearby, which meant Chiara, Charlene and Peter had escaped.
“Have they gone?” Lexi whispered.
“I think so,” Madelyn said, looking around again.
Her vision fell to Neza’s body a few yards away. Lifeless eyes and a deep wound across the throat spoke of the cruel fate this creature had suffered. She couldn’t be sure if it was a male or female, but its body looked similar to that of the one Hodgson had called a male during the briefing in Liverpool. That day could have been a lifetime ago now. She could still remember her growing excitement and Jonathan’s encouraging expressions as the mission started to sound more and more accessible.
Jonathan.
His smiling face materialized in her mind and tears surfaced. Her fate was now less certain than ever before in the field. If she died, all her worries and fears would come to an abrupt end, but Jonathan would be left to mourn, surely questioning if her death was his fault. Feeling like he had encouraged her to do something that ultimately resulted in her passing would destroy him.
The tears were flowing freely now.
“Maddie…”

From Contact (Instinct Theory #1) by Ian Bristow that is free to download today 21 December 2022. 

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Minna was sitting on her grandfather’s lap. They had eaten supper and now they were watching the sky spit shards of ice onto the frozen fields.
“Gramps,” she asked softly, “what’s a white Christmas?”
“A white Christmas is one where there is snow on the ground.”
“Have you ever seen such a thing?”
“No, I have never. I’m eighty-four years old and I’ve only seen snow twice in my life.”
Minna thought for a long time, then asked. “What’s snow?”
Gramps grunted as he marshalled his thoughts. “It’s frozen rain.”
“Like hail and ice storms?”
“No. Not a bit like that. It’s white and it’s soft and it makes everything look beautiful.”
“I wish I could see that.”
Gramps rested his chin on her head. “I wish you could see it too.”
They were quiet for a long moment then he lifted his head and spoke again. “There’s another thing we have to talk about.”
Minna looked into his worried eyes.
“It’s about Father isn’t it? Father has to choose a new wife.”
“Where did you hear that missy?”
“Father came and sat on my bed the last time he was home and we talked.”
Gramps looked amazed and Minna giggled.
“It’s our secret, Gramps.  Big strong Hunters aren’t supposed to talk to little girls. But Father said I could tell you because you would understand.”
Gramps gave Minna a big hug then he smiled down at her.
“Oh yes. I understand. I used to have secret talks with your Mama when she was a little girl. Now tell me what you think about Father marrying again.”
Minna wrinkled her forehead. “Does it matter what I think? If it doesn’t matter whether or not Father wants a wife, why would anybody care what I think?”
For a long time Gramps didn’t answer. When he did speak his voice was slow and sad. “It matters to me what you think. And I’m sure it matters to your Father.”
“It’s all right Gramps. Just as long as Father chooses well it will be all right.”

From ‘White Christmas’ one of the Twelve Tales of Christmas, by Jane Jago that is free to download today 20 December 2022.

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December MDCCLXXVII

It was the longest night and the fires in the sacred grove turned the oiled muscles of the naked young men to liquid fire. The old men watched from under their wrinkled eyelids as the goddess made flesh walked among them. She was beautiful and in the firelight something more than mere beauty with her red-gold hair cloaking her nakedness and the stag horns that seemed to grow from her forehead. She touched each young man with a delicate forefinger and whenever one pleased her they lay down in the loam together as the goddess and the god. The young men not deemed fit to serve watched in envy, save for the one who filmed covertly smiling to himself as he did so…

I

In another place, not far away geographically, but a million miles from the rites of the Druids in terms of intent, Julia Llewellyn was also naked in the the firelight. She was lying in her husband’s arms, noticing how her own mediterranean olive complexion looked golden in the warming glow and tracing the pink patterns the flames made on her man’s white Celtic skin.
“How does anybody even get to be so pale? You look like one of the marble statues in the forum. Just stick a helmet on your head and you’d be a dead ringer for any of the minor gods or messengers.”
Dai moved swiftly, pinning his giggling wife under him and tickling her ribs.
“Minor god, is it?”
“Is,” she said firmly, “the likes of Jupiter and Vulcan are always depicted as old men with big beards.”
He laughed down at her and she wriggled out from under him pushing against his broad chest with one small hand. He rolled on his back and she straddled him, grinning cheekily. 
“You look a bit happier now. So? Are you going to tell me what chapped your arse today?”
“How come you always know?”
“I have eyes, lovely boy. Now spill.”
Dai sat up, so that his wife straddled his lap and rested his chin on the top of her head.  Julia, being Julia, couldn’t resist a naughty wriggle. He pulled her closer and sighed.
“Smooshing my nose Llewelyn. And I really do need to know what upset you.” 
“It’s that moecha Cariad. It’s been playing on my mind all day. I think she’s up to something.”
“And that’s surprising because?”
He snuffled out a reluctant half-laugh.
“It’s not. What is surprising though is that I find I mind on behalf of Caudinus. He’s actually a decent man. Not just decent for a Roman Magistratus, just plain decent. And he obviously loves her, blindly and absolutely. But she is equally obviously bored and discontented.” He gave Julia a brief, twisted smile. “When we were there for dinner and gift giving the other day, she was walking a thin line. First there were those pointed comments over dinner, then we had the Game of Truth. Everyone else was being light and flippant, but it was as if she was trying to dig out the most excruciatingly inappropriate incidents she could think of. Asking you where – and when – you lost your virginity. Making me confess the embarrassing donation I made in the name of science during my academy days, though she knows how much I hate being reminded of that. Dragging out the personal humiliation of poor Caudinus when he was falsely accused of sleeping with his boss’s wife. And then lying in her teeth about her own dalliances. Manufacturing a blush.” His voice shifted to mimic Cariad’s sultry tone. “‘One before my dear husband…’”
Julia quirked an eyebrow.
“I know of at least a dozen” Dai said wryly.” She was and possibly still is, as randy as a mare on heat. But that isn’t my worry. I’m afraid she’s getting fed up with him. She was so mean to him about his Saturnalia gift to her and he tries so hard. I keep seeing the hurt in his eyes.”
Julia took his face between her palms.
“Dai bach, from where I was standing it was obvious that she was fed up with him on the day of their nuptials.”
He gaped at her and she couldn’t help loving him for his naïveté along with his more potent charms.
“So why did she marry him?”
“I’m guessing the lure of being queen of Viriconium was too strong to be resisted.”
Julia felt the sigh her husband heaved and put her arms around him, kissing his chest as that was the nearest bit of him.
“Promise you won’t ever get fed up with me, Julia fach.”
“I think you are pretty safe there, lovely boy. Aren’t you the other half of my soul?”
She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him rather seriously.

Later, as they lay in bed under the goose down comforter, Dai pulled Julia so she lay across his chest.
“What do I have to wear at this gods-forsaken function tomorrow? I’m dreading it, the annual temple turn out for the birthday of the Divine Diocletian I mean. Outside? December? Toga?”
Julia smiled down at him. 
“No. Tunic and trews and a good warm cloak. You have new trews and tunic in fine cashmere wool. You’ll be fine. You should rather have pity on me, as women are not allowed to wear trousers in the temple precinct. But I do have some thick woollen stockings that make my legs look really fat.”
He laughed and they drifted off to sleep in happy intimacy.

The next morning they had to be up well before dawn. Julia had just got in the bath and Dai was shaving when there came an urgent trill from Dai’s wristphone which he had left beside the bed. Dai wrapped a towel around his waist and went to see what was afoot, carefully closing the bathroom door behind him. Julia had a bad feeling about someone calling before it was properly light so she jumped out of the warm water and towelled herself briskly. Before she had finished dressing Dai was back. With his work face on.
“Sorry love, looks like I get to miss the ceremonials. Message from the landlord of the Dragon and Leek on the Ynys Mon road. A bit garbled, because the place is deep in a valley in the woods and the comms are merda, but something about a fine lady gone missing and two dead Roman outriders. I’ve roused Bryn and the posse.”

You can keep reading Dying as a Druid by E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago for free if you download it today 19 December.

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Moose Crossing was the kind of a place that aspires to be a one-horse town without much hope of success. It had a packed-dirt street lined with chinked log buildings, a livery stable with smallish corral for visiting livestock, and a tented settlement of prospectors whose population was as fluid as the freezing stream off the mountains that provided the town with drinking water.
It was September, and there was enough bite in the wind to keep the mosquitoes at home, although the sky was still a faded denim blue and the trails were hard and relatively easy to travel.
A big Conestoga wagon breasted the rise just at the edge of town and drew to a halt to give the team a breather. The eight horses steamed in the bright cool air, and the female driver jumped down with a leather water bucket – giving each animal a drink and a word of thanks.
This being the obvious place to shake-down newcomers, there were already covetous glances being cast on the wagon and its team of big, strongly-built horses.
The the owner of one pair of greedy eyes decided that now would be a good time to stake his claim to the wagon, its contents, the woman and the horses.
He swaggered over, with a hand hovering above the fancy pearl-handled Colt that hung low on his right leg.
“Well, little lady,” he sneered, “there’s a toll to be paid if’n you wants to get this hyar wagon into town unmolested.”
The woman hawked and spat, and gobbet of something landed on the ground between the would-be hard man’s feet. He was fool enough to lose his temper. Grabbing for the gun on his hip he snarled a vile insult. Even as his hand closed on the Colt he realised he wasn’t fast enough – as he found himself looking down the wide barrels of a shotgun which were pointing somewhere around his midriff.
“Put ‘em up, mister less’n you wants a square of turf on Boot Hill.”
He raised his hands, managing to keep a poker face as two of his confederates crept towards the wagon. The first would-be robber slipped into the back of the wagon, while the second made for the horses.
Both men started screaming at about the same time. The one by the horses was down on the ground with a set of long yellow teeth snapping at his throat, while the other was forcibly ejected from the wagon by the boot of a man who looked like he wrestled grizzlies for a hobby.

From ‘What Happened at Moose Crossing‘ a story in Winter Warmers: Festivals and Festivities Reimagined by Jane Jago that is free to download today 18 December 2022.

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It was like walking around with a bomb in your head.
That wasn’t such an unfamiliar feeling for someone like Jazatar Baldrik who had served time in the Special Legion. There they plumbed a direct link into your brain and set it so that you had to keep connected to the data network lattice or it would fry out and kill you. Even if you made it through the five years of hell so you could qualify for release from the convict unit, as very few ever did, the device had a bad effect on the brain tissue it was implanted in and would kill you eventually anyway. Jaz had personal experience of that too. He had recently lost a friend that way. A man he had once considered as close as a brother.
But this was different.
Different because this bomb wasn’t going to go off and kill himself. When it went off, it was going to kill one of the very few people he actually cared about. Getting that news had been the most unexpected event of the day. But still only one in series of unexpected events. and that in a place where the unexpected was so rare it never happened. 
For the past two cycles Jaz had been effectively imprisoned. Initially against his will and now with a kind of grudging acceptance, he was held in a secure clinic run by the terrorist organisation known as The Legacy. It was the kind of place where today was the same as yesterday and tomorrow wouldn’t be too much changed from that. Running to its own quiet, pre-planned patterns, nothing was allowed to penetrate which might risk breaking the steady rhythm of daily life. It was the sort of protected and predictable environment Jaz had never known any time in his forty-two years of life. He had even begun to feel safe.
Which was a mistake.
When they told him he had a visitor, he’d been a bit puzzled, but mostly just curious. It wasn’t like anyone he knew had any idea he was even here. So he didn’t expect it to be the kind of visitor most of the other inmates of this place got now and then. 
It wasn’t going to be some family member who would look all concerned. Or even an awkward work colleague, checking up on how he was doing because someone had to and they had drawn the short straw at the office. Jaz had seen those kinds of people in the reception area sometimes, waiting to be taken through to see one of the inmates – or guests as the staff smilingly called them. There was even an elderly couple standing there now, the look of worried parents clear on their faces. Obviously distracted, they didn’t even notice him. He walked right in front of them and into one of the therapy rooms.
It took him a moment to realise who his visitor was and when he did, his first reaction was to turn himself around and walk right out again. He had to use some real willpower to make himself stand still and not do that.
Car Torbalen.
The man ultimately responsible for Jaz being put in this place and being taken very much out of circulation. Even thinking that was enough to make Jaz tense up all over. But, in a place where yesterday and tomorrow were both so much the same, he was curious enough about this sudden shift to see what it might be about. 
Torbalen greeted him with a slight smile, holding out his hand like some formal event.
“Jaz. I was delighted to get your message that you wanted to see me today. Let’s go for that walk you suggested, eh?”
Something was wrong. 
Jaz was more than sure he’d sent no such message. Even if he had the faintest idea on how he might have set about trying to get in touch with Torbalen, he would never have been inviting him over for a cosy one-to-one, walking in the grounds.
This man had effectively betrayed him. But the fact was Torbalen was standing there and knew that. He must also know he wasn’t going to make it on to Jaz’s link list in any conceivable future. Which made Jaz wonder enough that he didn’t deny or challenge what Torbalen had said. 
There was nothing to read in the pleasant smile, because Torbalen was an operator with a lot of skill, but there had to be something important behind this. For him to step away from his so-busy life drawing in ever more fanatics for The Legacy, there had to be something pretty big on his mind. So Jaz took the offered hand briefly in a firm grip and said nothing. Then he went through the door which Torbalen had opened and walked out into the secure grounds around the clinic.

Not To Be by E.M. Swift-Hook is free to download today 17 December 2022.

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The fog came down suddenly: sleek and white and thick and cold. It felt like being draped in a clammy cobweb, and it became impossible to hear one’s own footsteps on the grassy pathway. If it wasn’t for the feel of the warm fur of the great dog who paced majestically at her side Amal would perhaps have been afraid. But she had walked worse than this with Chin-Cha as companion and protector. She wove her fingers into his great ruff of grey and silver hair, leaning on his strong presence as she had been able to do for so many years. Chin-Cha, she thought, the love of my life and my biggest single regret. She knew that the great dog now pacing at her side was a shape changer trapped in his present form by a powerful bear witch, who had then ensorcelled him to the service of a six-year-old girl. That child had grown up to be Amal the healer and witch-woman. A woman who loved her protector with every fibre of her being but would rather die than burden him with the knowledge of that love.
As the fog grew even denser, a voice spoke in her ear, it was woody and breathy, and sounded like a poorly tuned wind instrument.
“People ahead. Hiding. Ill intentioned. Those who have been hunting you since harvest moon Yuri thinks.”
Yuri was a frost imp and trusted friend. Amal put up a hand as if to touch him, and he blew on her fingers. Surprising warmth.
“How many?”
“I will see” and the sense of his presence was gone.

Chin-Cha pressed himself against her leg, silently urging her off the path. She allowed herself to be guided to the rough trunk of a big tree. He pushed her thigh with his nose, indicating that she should climb. Doing as she was bid Amal soon found herself on a wide branch beside a sheltering hole in the trunk. Wrapping herself in the blanket from her pack she crept into the very heart of the tree. She could no longer see her companion, but had the reassurance of his spirit as he hunkered down in the brownish bracken. Then he was coming towards her. Fast. She felt him bunch his muscles and erupted out onto her branch. He made a prodigious leap and she grasped his harness to steady him. They both crawled into the tree cave and huddled together for warmth and comfort.

It was not long before Amal got the sense of Yuri’s presence. She was about to speak when a small icy hand was placed on her lips.
“They are here” the woody windy little voice whispered, seeming to come from right inside her head. “Be still and silent and listen.”

At first Amal heard nothing, then she made out the sound of laboured breathing. There was a noise as if a heavy boot hit flesh.
“Where is the woman, tracker?” a harsh voice demanded.
“She came this way. She can’t be far. But I can no longer feel her presence. It must be the fog.”
“You had better not be lying to me. Gopal get the hounds. They will track her dog, and the old woman said that once we kill it the witch woman will lose her magic.”

Bolded Hearts by Jane Jago is free to download today 16 December 2022. 

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Ante Diem Nonum Kalendas Aprilis MDCCLXXIX Anno Diocletiani

I

The working office of the Magistratus had changed considerably since Sextus Catus Bestia had taken over the role in Demetae and Cornovii six months previously. Dai Llewellyn, Submagistratus for the same area, still fondly recalled the simple and yet tasteful decor the previous incumbent had preferred. Bestia, by contrast, favoured opulence over simplicity and substituted extravagance for good taste. But then, unlike his predecessor who had risen through the administrative ranks, Bestia had transferred into the state sector after enjoying a successful career as a commercial lawyer. Dai assumed that impressing business clients required such an ostentatious display of wealth, but the same sat ill with the kind of civic dignity expected of Bestia’s present role.
Not that the man couldn’t easily afford the expensive artwork lining the walls, the rarewood furniture, the bejewelled and gilded bust of the Divine Diocletian and the elaborate full-length golden-framed painting of himself and his wife of a few weeks. That marriage had surely made him one of the wealthiest men in all of Viriconium.
Which was why this present meeting was beginning to make Dai move from frustration into anger. Bestia was sitting in his throne-like desk chair, hands resting on the carved lions that adorned the arms. The late afternoon sun had painted the window behind him with glowing light, adding to the regal impression. He also looked regally bored, as if he found the whole business of overseeing the administration tedious in the extreme.
“I see no reason to bend the rules just because your Senior Investigator has a gut-instinct about something. Cartivel must be close to retirement age and is probably just dyspeptic.” He smiled as if inviting Dai to share the joke.
“I’m not asking you to bend any rules. I’m asking you to sign-off further resources to investigate properly. I would if I could, but have already authorised this case to the limit of my authority.”
Bestia glanced down at the file on his desk. “Indeed. I see you granted SI Cartivel and his team an entire day in man hours. Time they have used to ascertain little more than that this woman was known to be a lupa and known to be willing to take money from clients who wanted more extreme practices than the usual. But there are no grounds that I can see here for me to extend the investigation any further. It would be a waste of public money.”
“If Malina Tesni was a Roman Citizen…”
For the first time, Bestia sounded annoyed.
“If the woman was a Roman Citizen, she would not have been a common British puta who was paid well by an over-vigorous client.”
“Over-vigorous?” For a moment Dai saw the start of a red haze clouding on the edges of his vision and with a supreme effort of will he fought it down, drawing a deep breath and counting silently.
“Distasteful as it is, there was nothing to suggest she had been abused against her will. She was also found with what I am assured would be a substantial payment for a street woman. No doubt an incentive to allow her client more leeway in his behaviour.”
“She was beaten half to death. The autopsy said she died of those injuries having caused severe internal bruising and swelling.”
“It was not murder. There was clearly no intent to kill or why pay the woman and let her go home? At very best it was an accidental death. No one has denied that she was a prostitute and that is a profession that we all know carries certain occupational hazards.” His expression softened suddenly and his voice shifted to something more like friendly cajoling. “You are a good man, a good Citizen and a good administrator, Llewellyn. I do understand why you feel so strongly about this, but you must let it go. It’s for the best.”
Dai had been sitting but now he shot to his feet.
“Let it go? Dominus, the man who did this is somewhere in Viriconium and he could do the same to another woman.”
Bestia lifted one hand from its lion’s head resting place.
“Stop right there. Firstly, I already said that I completely understand where you are coming from with this. Who could not be appalled at by it? But where is the crime? There is no law against prostitution.” He leaned back and shook his head, looking saddened. “If anything the dead woman is the criminal here. The only prosecutable offense I can see is failure on her part to have purchased a license to practice her trade. And, of course, the subsequent charges of tax evasion that would lead to, especially seeing how well she was being paid.”
Dai struggled to find some way to frame things in terms that could penetrate Bestia’s lawyer logic.
“If she was a Citizen there would be unlimited resources made available to uncover the man who did this whether it was deemed consensual or not. What if the man is local and his next victim is a Citizen?”
Bestia was frowning now.
“You should know better than that, Submagistratus. We can’t run the Vigiles on ‘what ifs’. There is no reason to think the man was local, indeed it is more likely someone passing through, staying the night and wanting some entertainment. And even if he was local, you have already spent public money on investigating something that is not a crime. Instead of asking me for more perhaps you should apologise and be grateful that I’m not going to mention that you did so on any official report.”
The red haze rose and this time Dai could do nothing to stop it. His last conscious act was to turn and start walking towards the door. Better to be rude to his superior than get arrested for attacking him.

 Dying on the Streets by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is free to download today 15 December 2022.  

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The name’s Nero, Sam Nero. Me and my associate, Miss Sugar Kane, operate from an office on the fifty-fifth level of The City…

​It was a funny old day. For starters, the climate computers were on a go-slow, so we’d been enduring a sickly sort of pre-dawn for around three hours. Down at street level the lamps were jittery, and the half light was offering all sorts of interesting opportunities for those inclined towards criminality. Being a law-abiding sort, I was studying the inside of my eyelids as I warmed the cracked leather of my desk chair and halfway wondered whether there was any work in the situation for yours truly. My reverie was interrupted when Sugar oozed in from the outer office. Today she wore lipstick red that might have been painted on her curves and ankle-breaking heels that made her walk even more dangerous than ever. ​
“Sam,” she said in that breathy little girl voice that conceals a mind like a steel trap. “Sam. There’s something going down on the street corner…”
She was cut off by the sound of high-pitched screaming coming from below. I took the stairs three at a time and reached the bottom just as the street door burst open and three figures barrelled in. Two were by way of being friends of mine, Myk and Zig, the gigantic mute twins who work for Katie Scarlet O’Halleran and her Daddy. I didn’t know their companion, a skinny guy with a big head and a wispy white beard who looked right in the edge of collapse. ​
I slammed the door behind them and Myk helped me to slip the two plasteel retaining bars into their slots in the wall. As the second bar clunked home something very heavy hit the door. It made a kinda wet splatter.
Zig shrugged, and slung the skinny guy over his shoulder. We made our way back up to my office where Sugar hovered in the doorway, looking worried.
​“What gives?” She spoke to the twins, and her voice was no longer meltingly sexy.
​Myk signed his reply, with a speed that had my eyeballs rolling in my head. Fortunately, Sugar gets it no matter how fast the fingers. ​
While Myk did the talking, Zig put his burden down on my visitor chair. The little guy sat up, with unease in every line of his scrawny body, breathing shallowly and darting glances around him from a pair of shifty little eyes. ​
“Sam,” Sugar sighed, “our new buddy here is Doctor Arlo Petersen.”
​“You sure, honey?”
​She nodded her platinum blonde head. ​
“I’m sure Sam.”
This was a puzzle, as Petersen was the original poor boy made good and the last I heard of him he was relocating, upwards, to level ninety-seven to head up a fancy clinic where the wives and girlfriends of the wealthy would go for their facial tune-ups. I frowned.
​“So what’s he doing this low down the pyramid?” ​
“Nobody knows. He got a message to Mister O’Halleran asking for help. The big guy sent Myk and Zig to fetch Petersen, and they got there just in time to prevent his untimely demise.”
​“Right.” I turned my attention to the unimpressive figure cowering in my visitor chair. “Okay Mister Petersen, who’s face did you mess up?”
​He glared at me with a ratlike contempt that brought up my hackles. “I don’t talk to lowlifes.”
​Myk clipped him sharply around the head, and Sugar clicked her tongue against her insubstantial teeth.
“Naughty, naughty,” she chided, lifting a shoulder in a way that was guaranteed to have her principal assists doing all sorts of interesting things under the scarlet skin of her dress. ​
Petersen licked his lips, and I cuffed his head.
​“Less lechery more explanation.”
​He tried to make a run for it, but I put out a hand and grasped him by one skinny arm. ​“What is it with you? You really wanna go outside and get smeared across the sidewalk?” ​
“The big apes can protect me. I’m paying enough for their services.” His voice was high-pitched and nasal, and it made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle. ​
Myk gave him the stink eye and Zig signed something very rude.
​Sugar pouted. “It isn’t safe outside even with protection.”

The opening of ‘Sam Nero and the Ladykiller’ the first story in Pulling the Rug IV by Jane Jago and is free to download today 14 December 2022.

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Always the cuckoo in the Billings family nest, it was time for Helena to fly.
She studied the woman within the fussy parlour for any acknowledgement but her mother stared resolutely out a window from her position in an ornate, uncomfortable armchair. Her hair cinched into a tight ordered bun and her expression forbidding.
Helena’s travelling cloak draped from her shoulders, curtaining the growing mound of her abdomen, and she deliberately resisted straightening her bonnet that sat slightly askew upon her head—red hair escaping in unruly ringlets tickling her face and back of her neck. The disarray would annoy her mother.
A baby on the way and no husband to support her, Helena expected no help from those she had called family for nearly one-and-twenty years, but her mother blaming Helena and refusing to acknowledge her stung less than her father not standing up to his wife. Helena’s only recourse had been to write to her beloved grandfather in Lincolnshire. She would be eternally grateful to George Stockton of Redway Acres stable, for welcoming her with open arms.
Helena spoke sadly, “Goodbye, Mother.”
Two figures shuffled in the hallway to Helena’s left, pulling at her attention. Her father’s appearance was rather haggard—the hair at his temples greyer than ever, his dark hair now more salt and pepper. No doubt his wife’s complaints about their daughter exacting their toll. Helena’s younger brother’s hair was as dark as their father’s had once been, and he filled the space with a midriff almost as large as her own. They nodded goodbye, then followed their father outside to the coach their grandfather had sent for her.
“Am I to write, Papa?” Helena asked, searing every line of his face to memory lest she never see him again.
“No, it will only cause her, and therefore me, more angst. Ask George to advise me of your safe arrival. That is all.”
The tension in her father’s voice caused hope to flicker that perhaps he, more than anyone else, felt the pain of her leaving. If that was the case, he chose not to show it. She kept her tears and fears in check.
“Goodbye, Papa.”

Two days later, the countryside became more familiar as Helena rubbed her rounded stomach with relief. The prolonged days of travel caused an ache in her back, and she longed to stretch her legs.
Helena and her companions enjoyed three days of good weather during their sixty-mile journey. Accompanying her was Ruth Robertson, the Billings’ cook, and Ruth’s two young children. Following behind, driving a cart heavy with their belongings, Helena occasionally spied Ruth’s husband, John, her greater concern the large, grey stallion hitched to the cart tail. Thankfully, Perseus maintained the leisurely pace with ease and equanimity. Helena, who shared her grandfather’s love of horses and had spent much of her time in her family’s stable helping John, held a fondness in her heart for the couple.
“Baby should be ‘ere in October, ma’am,” Ruth spoke kindly to her new mistress.
“It sounds strange when you call me ma’am. I hope it’s a girl.”
“Am I to call you Mrs. Andrews, then?” Ruth smiled.
Helena’s left thumb toyed with the ring on that hand.

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