Apprentice to the Villain (Assistant to the Villain, #2)

by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

“You wicked bitch!” She took a bow. “At your service.”

She was afraid, but she knew now: fear usually meant you were standing on the edge of something new, something self-altering, something potentially good. Fear was not something she would shy away from ever again.

“It is fiction for a reason, you menace. By the gods, what if you carried out every impossible act you read about?” It was a rhetorical question, but she couldn’t resist the urge to slip into the normal ease of their cadence, like no time had passed. “Oh, I suppose that I would need to become very, um—flexible.”

He would follow her off a cliff without question. And Evie knew she was in love with him. Right then, right there.

She breathed, “It’s so beautiful.” Her boss had been silent beside her, but now he replied hoarsely, still gripping her hand, “Yes, it is.” And when she turned, he was looking at her.

There was no emotion in his voice when he said, “Does your mind live in the gutter?” She shook her head, tapping a finger against her lips. “No, but it rents there on occasion.”

“Sometimes family isn’t a thing we are born into but a choice we make. Sometimes”—Evie smiled—“the people who love you most in your life are the ones who choose you.”

“By the gods, alert the town crier! I’ve found a man who doesn’t believe in love.”

There was nothing like a man in a puffy white shirt, and wet to boot.