Caleb Lockwood has spent a year learning how to be happy. Quarter-demon, retired from the tables, and about to be a father, he’s traded Hell and high-stakes poker for a house in Summerlin, a ten-foot Christmas tree in the tall windows, and the woman who loves him, monster and all.
He should have known his father wouldn’t let a clean ending stand.
Delia Dunne can feel a haunting the way other people feel a draft…and lately, something cold has been leaking through the wall of the vacant flip next door. She wants to blame the pregnancy, two unfamiliar kinds of power humming under her skin at once. But the wrongness isn’t coming from the baby. It’s coming from whatever Daniel Lockwood left behind, patient and waiting for the family’s power to gather close enough to touch.
Then Caleb's mother sweeps in for the holidays — glacial, immaculate, and carrying a sealed letter from a dead man. Brooke Lockwood has spent almost thirty years perfecting the art of not looking too closely at her own family, and this Christmas, the thing next door is counting on it. As the days tick down to Christmas Eve, Caleb and Delia race to guard a woman who doesn’t know she’s a target and would sneer at the truth — while the trap in the empty house sharpens toward the one night the whole family will be gathered under one roof.
Daniel dealt this hand before he died, and the house always wins. Breaking it will take Lockwood fire, a ghost hunter’s nerve, and the one thing a Lockwood has never managed to do: look the devil in the eye and refuse him.
The sizzling finale of the Vegas Slayers series, The Devil Next Door brings the haunted glamour of Las Vegas home for the holidays — with a demon’s redemption, a slow-burning second romance, and a family reckoning years in the making. Perfect for fans of Ilona Andrews and Patricia Briggs. Mistletoe and holy water recommended.
Keywords: urban fantasy Las Vegas setting, holiday paranormal romance Christmas, empath heroine paranormal, ghost hunter urban fantasy, demon redemption romance, supernatural suspense urban fantasy, urban fantasy romance series
USA Today bestselling author Christine Pope has been writing stories ever since she commandeered her family’s Smith-Corona typewriter back in grade school. Her work includes paranormal romance, fantasy romance, and science fiction/space opera romance. She makes her home in Arizona’s beautiful Verde Valley.