Excerpt of Dances With Demons by Lori Handeland

I cried when they took away my children. Who wouldn't?

"Mom." Anna, my oldest, might be only nine, but she can roll her eyes like any sixteen-year-old. "We go to Mam and Pop's every summer for two weeks, and every summer you act like it's forever."

"It always feels like forever." I rubbed the sting of tears from my eyes. I couldn't help it. Anna and her brothers were all I had left of Max. But, to be fair, they were all Max's parents had left of him either. So, for the final two weeks of each summer, I allowed my in-laws to drive away from Milwaukee with my babies.

Anna rolled her eyes again, but she allowed me to hug her, even kiss her forehead before squirming away and out the door in the wake of her grandfather.

The boys, Aaron and Benjamin—who’d recently decided he liked to be called Benji—were six and five, and they still allowed me to smooch on them for longer than Anna did. They always had. I ruffled their dark heads, so like Max's, and sent them on their way, then turned to face my mother-in-law, a woman who did not look in any way like she answered to the sweet granny name of Mam. If I hadn't wanted to keep on her good side, I would have been tempted to address her as Cruella. Not that she'd skinned any puppies lately, though I wouldn't put it past her.

Susan Murphy was tall, slim, and always perfectly put together, in control of herself and of anyone else she could manage. I doubted the woman ever left her house in anything less than full makeup and hair that she'd sprayed into an immovable coif. In comparison, I always appeared shorter, dumpier, and less put together than I actually was. I think she liked it that way. She'd certainly never liked me.

I'd hoped that once Max and I had children, Susan and I would bond. Hadn't happened. With my own parents living in Phoenix now, Max's were the closest relatives I had. You'd think we'd spend more time together.

But now that Max was dead, and I had opened a tavern/ restaurant then had the bad taste to call it Murphy's— thus tarnishing their name—I doubted we'd ever be BFFs. I didn't mind so much. I had a BFF; I didn't need another. However, it would be nice if Susan would at least pretend not to loathe me.

"Megan." She lowered her head, a dismissal, a goodbye.

"If you have any problems,” I said, following her to the door, then onto the porch and down the walk toward the waiting Lincoln Navigator, "just give me a call and I'll drive down."

"I doubt anything will come up that I can't manage."

The only thing Susan Murphy had ever been unable to manage was her only son. She hadn't wanted him to become a cop. If he just had to help people, why not become a lawyer? Because they were so helpful.

She'd gotten past Max's choice of profession, only to have him turn around and marry me.

In her defense, she'd been right about the occupation. Max had died in the line of duty. But the only thing he'd ever wanted more than that badge was me.

My eyes pricked again. God, I missed him. Some days were harder than others, and today was one of them.

"Who is that?" My mother-in-law's already chilly voice went ice age.

Quinn Fitzpatrick leaned against the side of my house. Tall, lean and dark, with eerily light green eyes that seemed to shine yellow in a certain light, he resembled a panther on the prowl. Until he moved. Then he usually tripped over his puppy feet, dropped a glass, knocked over a tray or worse. I'd never seen a more beautiful man with less grace in my life.

"New bartender."

I lifted my hand in hello. Quinn lifted his in return and smacked the gutter so hard it came apart. He caught the loose piece, cracked it against the house, then frowned at the dent. I sighed. He'd fix the thing so it would be better than before. Sometimes I thought he broke things on purpose just so he could improve them.

"He's very . . ." Susan's lips pursed. She glanced at me in suspicion. "Tell me you aren't sleeping with him."

I blinked. "Sleep . . . I . . . No!"

She rolled her eyes, and I saw where Anna had gotten it from. "The man is sex on parade."

"If he were in a parade he'd trip, fall into the tuba section, cause them to knock over the drums, and the entire band would end up in the lake."

"You expect me to believe that a man who looks like that does nothing more than pour drinks?"

"He makes sandwiches too."

"Hi, Quinn!" Benji shouted.

Quinn waved and dropped the gutter on his foot.

"Bye, Quinn!" Aaron hung out the window.

"We'll see you in two weeks." Anna's smile was genuine. Even she had a soft spot for Quinn.

"It's right here I'll be when you come back." The slight Irish lilt that sometimes crept into his voice always made me want to close my eyes and beg him to keep talking. And not touch anything.

"He's Irish!" Susan accused.

"Quinn. Fitzpatrick." I spread my hands.

"You're Megan Murphy and you don't have an accent."

"But I do like potatoes."

"The children obviously know him well."

"He works everyday. He helps fix things around here."

Usually after he broke them, but I kept that to myself. "They know him. They like him. He's . . . likeable."

"Do you like him?"

I glanced at Quinn as he laid the gutter on the ground and strode toward the garage where he kept his tools. He caught the toe of his large athletic shoes on a blade of grass and nearly kissed dirt. "I guess."

I'd never really thought of Quinn as anything other than a slightly klutzy first-shift bartender. Certainly, he was lovely to look at, even lovelier to listen to. But since Max had died I'd first been focused on getting through each day without dissolving into a puddle of agony. Once that was accomplished, my next job had been raising the children, then paying the bills.

I'd met Max while I was a waitress in a cop bar on the south side. We'd married, had children, lived, loved, laughed. Then he'd died. All I knew was being a wife, a mother, and running a bar. So I'd opened Murphy's.

It hadn't been easy. The hours were long and, to begin with, most of them were mine. I received a lot of law enforcement business since Max's former co-workers made Murphy's their new hangout, and his former partner, Liz Phoenix, had left the force—Max's death had been as hard on her as it had been on me—and taken a job as my dayshift bartender.

Liz blamed herself for Max's death though I never had. We'd become best friends; we always would be, even though she was now the leader of a group of demon killers pledged to save mankind from the Apocalypse. As I'd attended Catholic school, the approach of doomsday was less of a surprise to me than it had been to her.

My mother-in-law's sigh brought me back to my front yard. "I suppose it's time."

"Yes." I started walking toward the SUV. "I know you want to get on the road." I paused when I realized she hadn't moved and glanced back.

"I meant that it's time you moved on." Though the words were gentle, her face was . . . devastated.

"I don't—"

"Max is gone. He isn't coming back. You're alive, so are the children."

"Okay." I had no idea what she was trying to tell me beyond the obvious. Life went on.

Even when you didn't want it to.