All I Want for Christmas is a Faerie Assassin?!

The stranger in my living room had not moved. His hair had an odd, shining quality to it; I thought it might have been white, or blue, or perhaps some other colour previously unseen by mortal eyes. The ends of his elongated, pointed ears were obvious even in the darkness, so starkly inhuman as they were.

With cautious footsteps I reached the main light switch and flicked it on, never once tearing my eyes away from my bizarre new visitor. The faerie that was revealed in the new-found brightness of the room had just about the most murderous expression on his sharp, beautiful face that I had ever seen. His eyes – an impossible, glacial blue to match his icy hair – were intent as flames as he glared at me, though there was something decidedly bleary about them, too.

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” he growled impatiently, revealing sharp, gleaming canines as he did so. “Who the hell are you, and who the hell do you need me to kill?”

I could only stare at him in shock. I'd misheard him, right? I must have misheard him. All I’d wanted was a faerie to pretend to be my boyfriend for the week.

“Did you just say kill?”

“Well, why the f*** else would you summon an assassin to do your dirty work?”

Oh. F*** indeed.

***

Charlotte Connors’ run of bad luck with men has become the running joke of her friends and co-workers. With a looming family function at Christmas and a glitzy New Year's Eve party that she’s expected to attend, she is determined not to be single over the holiday period for the eighth year running.

Desperate and just a little drunk, Charlotte foolishly decides to summon a faerie to act as her plus one using a ritual described in one of her grandmother’s old books. Never expecting it to work, Charlotte is beyond surprised when a hungover, irritable faerie named Bain shows up…and asks her who it is he needs to kill.

Bain is an assassin from the faerie realm. Having looked forward to a long, restful sleep after a week of partying at the winter solstice revel, he is less than pleased to discover he’s been sent to answer Charlotte’s pathetic plea. But, by law, Charlotte has to give Bain something in return if he agrees to help her, and he just so happens to have some unfinished business in the human realm he’s waited years to deal with…

Hijinks ensue and a reluctant romance blossoms between the unlikely pair as they learn more about each other, culminating in a wild New Year's Eve party in which lives - and love - may be lost forever.

***

Funny, sexy and just a little bit magical, All I Want for Christmas is a Faerie Assassin is H. L. Macfarlane's first foray into festive rom-com territory. It should come as no surprise that it's also a fairy tale...think Bridget Jones meets a foul-mouthed, sarcastic supernatural being and you're on the right track.

PLEASE NOTE: All I Want for Christmas is a Faerie Assassin?! is written in British English, not American English.