Harley Merlin and the First Ritual (Harley Merlin, #4)

by Bella Forrest

“Your mom would be so proud.” “Ah, man, I’d totally take a selfie of this if I didn’t think she’d cut me out of the family for dishonoring our ancestors. It might not be the Quetzalcoatl, but it’d be close enough to get a smack on the ass at the very least.”

Life wasn’t a fairytale. Life was tough and turbulent, and if you could come out of it all with a smile on your face and your heart beating as fierce as ever, then maybe that was the ultimate triumph over adversity.

yawning when other people did—but research had shown that it was an echo phenomenon, otherwise known as an automatic imitation of another person. Dogs and chimpanzees apparently suffered from the same impulse, though they’d yet to settle on a conclusion as to why. Another curious human attribute, like falling in love or crying at sad movies.

“If you have time to think about boys, then you have too much time on your hands.”

‘I am chaos. I am the substance from which your artists and scientists build rhythms. I am the spirit with which your children and clowns laugh in happy anarchy. I am chaos. I am alive, and I tell you that you are free.’

I’m not saying it’s an excuse, but one of my coaches used to have a saying, that ‘hurt people hurt people.’ I guess that kind of stuck with me.”

Wade Crowley liked me. He’d picked me over a potential date with Imogene—he freaking liked me!

“Omnem dimittite spem, o vos intrantes.” It had been my father’s inside joke, to use the same words that were written above the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno—“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”—though