A Wizard for Christmas Read Online Free

demanded. “Kidnap her? She needs to trust us.”
    Stone pursed his lips and, frustratingly, didn’t offer a lick of help.
    “The poor dear.” Kara sank into Hadrian’s chair before he could sit back down in it. “She’s so young. I almost wish we could let her spend this one last Christmas with her family without knowing about this.”
    “Her family?” Hadrian felt as if he’d been slapped. He’d been watching her for three years. He should have known everything about her by now. How could he have missed something as important as a family?
    “That’s what she said.”
    “She’s like us,” Stone said. “How could you forget that?”
    “I assumed a family adopted her. Couldn’t it happen?”
    “It never has before,” Jake said from the front counter. “We’re the castoffs. The unwanted. The unloved.”
    “Thanks a lot, Jake,” Kara grumbled. “You make us sound like a miserable lot.”
    “We were...before Stone found us,” Jake pointed out.
    “Well, I heard her talking about her Christmas plans,” Kara said. “The New One didn’t sound the least bit miserable.”
    Hadrian raised a brow at that. He and Stone had thoroughly researched her background. They’d watched her for years. She was one of them.
    “There’s no family,” Stone said as he shifted uneasily in his chair.
    “Then what is she up to?” Hadrian wondered aloud.
     
    * * * *
     
    The third body in three days. The sight of the young woman in the city flower garden churned in Newton’s stomach. He’d attended some of the most gruesome crime scenes without flinching. No matter how torn up the body, he could handle it.
    But this...this was worse.
    “She looked asleep,” the beat cop who found her said.
    “Yep,” Newton agreed. Not even a hair out of place. It looked like she had laid down in the snow-powdered bed and died. Only, she didn’t look dead. Even her skin looked flush and healthy. It made his skin crawl.
    He looked around for Hadrian Graham. But there was no sign of the cursed man this morning. For once, Newton wanted the bastard to show up. He had some questions for him. And he wasn’t going to let Hadrian leave before he got some answers.
    “Does this look like a murder to you?” Newton asked the cop standing beside him.
    “No sir. Not at all, sir.”
    “It doesn’t to me, either.” But Hadrian had said it was murder—at least that’s what he said of the first two bodies they’d found. And so that’s how the department was treating the deaths, despite the coroner’s reports to the contrary. The heart stopped beating. The organs stopped functioning. Everything stopped. For no apparent reason, everything had simply stopped.
    Still, this morning there was no sign of Hadrian.
    “Perhaps this one is different,” Newton grumbled to himself. But he knew he was wrong.
     
    * * * *
     
    What a holly-jolly Christmas this was turning into. Holly slumped down, using her luggage as a stool and propped her head up with her hands as the people rushing by sent curious glances in her direction.
    Every single hotel was booked.
    No room in the inn. Anywhere.
    And no one was offering her a manger, which she would have gladly accepted since she’d rather sleep in the cold than return to her apartment and admit to her friends that she didn’t have anyone. That she’d never, ever had a “real” family Christmas.
    Sure, the orphanage would put up a tree and presents would arrive from unnamed donors. But it wasn’t the same as waking up on Christmas morning in a fluffy bed in a safe, loving home with the knowledge that she was wanted. And loved.
    Mary had Joseph.
    Charlie Brown had Linus. And Snoopy.
    God, why couldn’t she grow up and accept the truth? She didn’t have a family. But she did have friends. She could be at Priscilla’s enjoying the day with her three small kids. Or with Karen listening to her mother moan and complain about her ungrateful, unmarried daughter.
    It wasn’t exactly pride that kept her out