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PART ONE

CALAMITY AT STORM CASTLE

Calamity at Storm Castleis set between Phoenix’s Refrain (Book 10) and Demon’s Mark (Book 11) in the Legion of Angels series.

CHAPTER 1

SIERRA & ANGEL

One of the perks of being the Angel of Chaos is that no one asks any questions when the big stack of paperwork you were supposed to have read and signed by the end of the day spontaneously catches on fire. But I swear it wasn’t my fault.

At least not this time.

Ok, maybe I should rewind this story a bit.

Today started out well. Sure, the cat woke me up early by scratching at the door to come in, but she often did that. She spent most of her nights hunting on the former Plains of Monsters that lay on our doorstep.

“Hey, look what the cat dragged in,” I declared, grinning at my daughter Sierra.

She blinked, totally not appreciating the genius of my statement. Well, she was only two years old.

I looked at the ‘present’ Angel the cat had dropped at my feet. Most cats brought their humans dead mice, but Angel wasn’t most cats, and I wasn’t human. The bird she’d caught was the size of a large turkey, but it still looked small next to my lion-sized cat.

Angel stared up at me, waiting.

“Good girl,” I told her, knowing that’s what she wanted to hear. But I couldn’t help but tack on, “Any chance you could hunt down a tub of cookies-and-cream ice cream next time?”

The cat lifted her nose in the air and strutted past me, unimpressed with my request, as though she considered ice cream runs to be beneath an apex predator like her.

But she must not have been too upset with me because she did later follow me and Sierra down to the canteen for breakfast. Though she was probably just following Sierra. The cat adored Sierra, even though my crazy baby angel was always trying to grab her and carry her around like she was an oversized teddy bear. Did I mention my daughter’s really strong?

Anyways, breakfast was waffles with strawberries and lots of whipped cream. After the three of us devoured a few waffles (yes, the cat helped), we headed to my office. I got to work on the ominous mountain of paperwork, and Sierra got to work on redecorating my walls with crayon drawings. As for Angel, the cat plopped herself down in the middle of the doorway to take a nap. Being a cat was a really exhausting profession.

“Hey, what are you doing?” I asked Sierra about ten minutes later.

I’d looked up from the boring building proposal I was reading because I’d heard giggling. Lots and lots of giggling.

“Pretty.” Sierra showed me the piece of paper in her hands. It was one of the mission reports I was supposed to read today. And my cheeky daughter had doodled dragons and unicorns all over the page. “Better now,” she told me proudly.

And she was probably right. The report was written by Sergeant Burrows. All his mission reports read like the ingredients list on a cereal box.

“Daddy doesn’t like it when you doodle on mission reports,” I told Sierra.

Ok, so technically Nero had toldmeoff for doodling on mission reports. He wasn’t swayed by my argument that every good mission report required visual aids. Like mother, like daughter, I guess.

“Daddy loves Sierra’s pictures!” she squealed, grinning.

Yeah, Nero was one proud papa. Our daughter could set the world on fire, and he would pat her on the back for a job well done.

Speaking of fire…

Sierra sneezed, and my big stack of paperwork burst into flames. I waved my hand, casting a little ice spell to freeze the fire. In retrospect, maybe that hadn’t been the best idea. Now the papers were singedandsoggy.

“Hey, Leda, I…”

Alec, my head of security, froze just in front of the doorway, his eyes locked on the steaming, sizzling pile of paperwork on my desk. He snorted.

“I helped!” Sierra declared, her eyes sparkling with pride.