The Affectionate Monster (The Unconventional Agent Beaufont Book 7) Read online

  THE AFFECTIONATE MONSTER

  THE UNCONVENTIONAL AGENT BEAUFONT™ BOOK 7

  SARAH NOFFKE

  MICHAEL ANDERLE

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2022 LMBPN Publishing

  Cover by Fantasy Book Design

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  Version 1.00, August 2022

  eBook ISBN: 979-8-88541-738-9

  Print ISBN: 979-8-88541-739-6

  THE AFFECTIONATE MONSTER TEAM

  Thanks to the JIT Readers

  Veronica Stephan-Miller

  Deb Mader

  Dave Hicks

  Diane L. Smith

  Jackey Hankard-Brodie

  Christopher Gilliard

  Angel LaVey

  Dorothy Lloyd

  If we’ve missed anyone, please let us know!

  Editor

  The Skyfyre Editing Team

  For Cathryn, my first niece. For recently reminding me of the bond between family members.

  — Sarah

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  to Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  to Live the Life We Are

  Called.

  — Michael

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  The Story Continues

  Sarah’s Author Notes

  Michael’s Author Notes

  Books By Sarah Noffke

  About Sarah

  Books By Michael Anderle

  Connect with The Authors

  CHAPTER ONE

  Kang’s Market, Queens, New York City, New York, United States

  The smell of strange herbs and the putrid odor of dead creatures hanging from the ceiling of the old shop was enough to make Jackson Zelle turn around when he entered the exotic Chinese market. He swallowed down his disgust and reservations and thundered into the crowded shop full of strange medicinal concoctions and foods that no one should eat—yet they did.

  Dead skewered serpents lay on trays like perfectly good kabobs and sat on a table with other strange culinary ingredients. Alive animals rattled and barked and squawked in locked cages that lined the back wall of the shop which was full of magical ingredients and only appeared to those who knew about it on the crowded streets in Queens, New York.

  The worst part of the place was the smells. They weren’t natural, but that’s why Jackson Zelle was there—he needed to create something that was unusual. Something artificial. Something that destroyed nature.

  “I’m looking for Kang,” Jackson Zelle said to the woman with short black hair who was grinding a bright green paste with a pestle in a mortar.

  She didn’t look up from her work, but the bird sitting on her shoulder, which was the same color as the paste she was smashing, did. It squawked at him and then nodded to a door behind them. “In the back,” the bird yelled. “You go!”

  Jackson Zelle sighed deeply, shaking his head at the absurdity of the place.

  He might have sunk to his lowest place ever, but that only meant he was close to rising to his greatest heights. And he felt it in his bones. In his blood. In every part of his fairy being. Jackson Zelle now owned his own corporation, and they were making great strides.

  Recruitment for the technology company had been easy. All he had to do was steal the best candidates who applied for the IT and Operations Director position at FGA. They were now all working with him, with strict orders to never speak to anyone about how they were recruited or where they worked. No one knew what happened at Zelle Corp, and the longer that was the case, the better.

  Jackson Zelle needed time to get things into place. He needed time to take over the market slowly. And then by the time anyone at FGA or around the world or any magical governing organization noticed—it would be way too late. Zelle Corp would be too strong. They’d be unstoppable. They’d be running the world. And Jackson Zelle would be the most powerful and wealthiest man alive. But first, he needed to take care of an old debt. He needed to pay back the hometown where he came from. And make them all wish he’d never been born…there.

  The back of Kang’s Market was just as gross as the front—possibly worse. In the back of the crowded and musty shop, the worst the Chinese medicine and market had to offer could be found. Jackson Zelle got that some ingredients could turn regular mortals into magical beings, or at least give them magic. This was a place for dark magic that made mortals magical and made those with magic even more powerful.

  Although, Jackson Zelle got that there were a lot of medicinal benefits to eating the brains of an animal, why someone would stoop to that level, he didn’t understand.

  For the new CEO, it was simple: Get smarter than your competition. One did not have to resort to gross means to corner the market. Instea
d, they strategically took them down from the ankles, then the shins, then the knees, then the rest… There was more to it than that, of course. Like planning and research, and Jackson Zelle had done that.

  He threw down a pouch of powder and hardly looked at the man with all white hair that went down to his lower waist and receded at the hairline and had a long thin mustache. “I hear you can make that into something that will turn a water and food supply into something that invokes nihilism. Is that true?”

  The Chinese man didn’t look up from his work, creating some sort of chemical concoction, but the monkey stationed beside him did. The creature was apparently known as Pippen, according to what Jackson Zelle had learned about the shop and the potion expert was Kang. The monkey was a capuchin with white fur at the front and black covering most of its body. Its long tail flickered around its body as it gave Jackson a skeptical look.

  The monkey opened the pouch and sniffed the contents before barking once at his master.

  The man, unhurried and staying focused, nodded. “I can.”

  “Will you?” Jackson Zelle asked simply.

  “What else will you require?” the man asked. “There is always more than just creating potions of this magnitude. I’ve dealt with your type before.”

  Jackson Zelle resented the phrase “your type,” but he’d excuse it in this instance. He needed this man’s help. He’d recovered this ingredient from Tomár. The demon of all demons, now dead, had gotten it when time traveling into the past. It had been irradicated in the past since it was so powerful that when mixed with simple ingredients, it made a person nihilistic. Jackson Zelle needed it to make an entire town that way, which would require more creative planning.

  “I need you to spread it in the lakes and crops of a small town,” Jackson answered. “Infect the population and ensure they stay that way…”

  “Until?” Kang asked after seeming to consult with his monkey, who flickered her tail and made strange cooing noises. She was a small thing but very agile and smart.

  “Until the population is so destitute, there’s no way they can survive.”

  The old man glanced up at Jackson Zelle, arching a curious eyebrow. He then seemed even curiouser about the scars on his face from the plane crash he’d survived, but he shook this off. “You must really hate this place if you want to destroy it so badly. On top of my price, which you’ll know by now, I’ll also require to know why you want this place destroyed.”

  Jackson Zelle nodded, unafraid to tell the man before him his reasons. He deserved so much and he wouldn’t be the type to talk. “It’s where I grew up. It’s the place that raised me up and then shut me and my mother down when we needed help the most. It’s a place known as Piney Woods Hills, and I want you to destroy it through the fish and crops. Make it so the town’s residents never know love again.”

  The old man smiled now, showing a mouthful of blackened and crooked teeth, the gesture not reaching his eyes. “That’s a motivation I can get behind. And for Pippen and me, that is a mission we can complete rather easily.”

  “Then do it,” Jackson Zelle ordered, turning and heading out of the back room, disgusted by it. “And don’t stop until every sad soul in that god-forbidden town is so low that they’ll never recover. I never want them to know happiness ever again.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Little Pleasures Farmhouse, Outskirts of Boulder, Colorado, United States

  “I just want to see you happy,” Paris implored. She was picking up dirty dishes and bustling behind her Uncle Clark as he made to clear the Little Pleasures Restaurant dining room.

  He paused, holding his own pile of dirty dishes, and sighed. “Then stop helping. Stop with doing dishes. Stop with trying to manage the restaurant. Stop with trying to make me happy. You’ve already got a full-time job. Actually, as of recently, you’ve got a high-level position at FGA and shouldn’t be worrying about anything to do with me.”

  Paris sighed too and didn’t put down the dishes in her hands but instead added more to the mix. “But you’ve got a full-time job as a Councilor for the House of Fourteen. And then you’re the chef here at Little Pleasures Restaurant. And why are you busing tables? Don’t we have someone for that?”

  “Because people don’t want to work,” he answered, shaking his head. “And I like to work. I’d rather stay busy.”

  “That’s fine,” Paris said, bustling to the back with her uncle whose light-colored hair was pushed back impeccably as it always was and he wore a suit below his apron as if he had an important business meeting after prepping the kitchen for that night’s dinner service. Ironically, he did have both. "But you could be busy with someone who made you happy. All you do is work.”

  “All you do is work,” he countered.

  “I work hard and play hard,” she argued. “I have Hemmingway. And you have…well, I hear you and Sherlock, Faraday, and Subfar play a mean game of bridge at night.”

  “I like bridge,” her uncle stated, sounding slightly offended.

  “I’m sure you do, but don’t you want something more? Like a companion or a friend or someone who you can share intimate moments with?”

  He set down a load of dishes and shook his head. “I hate to say this, but it’s none of your business.”

  “I hate to say this, but as a high-level agent for FGA and as the Director of the Advanced Love Branch, it’s totally my business. I have access to your entire romantic file.”

  He lowered his chin and gave her a stern look. “Don’t look at that.”

  “It’s tiny, and I haven’t,” she said.

  He gave a sigh of relief. “Pare, I don’t care about romance. It’s always more work than it’s worth. I have tried, and it never goes anywhere. I love my job as a Councilor. I love my family. I love magic. I love what you’ve done here. I love culinary expressions. I don’t really love romance.”

  “You said ‘really,’” Paris pointed out with a sly grin.

  He leaned against the counter in the kitchen seeming to acquiesce. “Fine, there’s been this woman at the House of Fourteen who I’ve had my eye on.”

  “Oh, for how long?” Paris asked, leaning forward and feeling like a girl at a slumber party trying to get her friend to relinquish all her secrets. “Do tell.”

  Clark sighed and cut his blue eyes at her—that trademark Beaufont blue that Paris shared. “Well, for roughly four or five years….”

  “Four or five years?” Paris exclaimed, getting the attention of the staff around them.

  Clark nodded shamefully. “I’ve tried talking to her, and she never cares to respond much. Always seems unresponsive to my small talk. Anyway, she’s pretty and smart and refined, and I like her, but I don’t know…”

  “Maybe small talk isn’t your thing,” Paris offered. “I mean, you’re not good at talking about the weather. Have you tried deep conversations? That seems more your style, Uncle Clark.”

  He chuckled. “I’m actually awful at small talk and always despise it, but I just don’t know what to say to her, so I always end up asking about the weather or something.” He seemed to have had a sudden realization. “You know, you’re actually really good at this match-making thing.”

  She laughed too. “Yeah, who would have thought?”

  “Maybe I could try finding out what she’s interested in and asking her about it,” he said, seeming to think. “She just seems so reluctant to accept the world of magic since being brought into it. She was raised by her aunt, who is a Mortal Seven for the House of Fourteen who she still lives with there. I’m sure entering our world has been strange.”

  Paris nodded. “I can relate.”

  He grinned. “I’m sure you can. Any advice?”

  She nodded again. “You were raised inside the House of Fourteen, but for one of us outsiders, it’s like entering Disney World and told it’s how things really are. It challenges everything. Try seeing things from her perspective. Try talking to her about normal things like Netflix or cooking or motor
cross.”

  “Motor cross?” he questioned.

  Paris laughed. “Just don’t make it all big magical cases and strange spells. I’m sure as a mortal that only makes her feel even more like an outsider.”

  He seemed to consider this and then said, “You don’t think it’s weird that I fancy a mortal?”

  Paris shook her head at once. “Who your heart draws you to is not governed by the magical races. Love who you want without abandonment, and then you’ll find true freedom.”

  Clark pulled in a breath, seeming to really take in her words. Then he nodded. “Good advice. And on the topic of freedom, you might should go and talk to Subfar. He’s getting antsy and wants to leave the farmhouse but as you’ve dictated, he shouldn’t.”