Claimed by the Creature

I’m used to getting all sorts of fan mail — but a spellbook?

After an in incident on tour leaves me cooped up in my penthouse apartment, on vocal rest for the unforeseen future, with only my grumpy pet cat for company, I’m desperate for a distraction.

At my manager’s suggestion, I do something I haven’t done in ages: I go through my fan mail. There was enough of it to keep me occupied… but I only get through one bag before I find a package addressed to me.

To me. Not my stage name. Not the name I’ve gone by since I was sixteen, but my real name.

Color me intrigued

There’s a book inside, an old leather-bound book that has me curious. Inside? There’s something called a ’true love’ spell that, in a whisper since I’m not supposed to be speaking, I read out loud.

Forget vocal rest. When a seven-foot-tall horned creature with glowing red eyes appears in my apartment, I scream so loudly that I think I scare him even more.

I get over it, though. After the life I’ve lived, I thought I’ve seen everything — but then I find out that Dagon is an immortal shadow demon, I’m supposedly his fated mate, and he thinks I should give up all the glitz and the glamour and the fame to live with him in his shadow world all because he’s “claimed” me.

Well… I wanted a distraction, didn’t I?