Page 25 of Nightshade

Ignoring his threat, she angled her chin higher. “I shall expect to remain here at the monastery the next time you journey to Lord Praecepsia’s.”

“You expect wrong. Although I’d be inclined to have you suffer equal punishment by Tothyll, as Drystan did, it seems Lady Praecepsia was comforted by your presence. She has requested that you accompany me again. Weekly. I expect, the next time, you to be on your best behavior, lest your punishments become increasingly worse.”

Lady Praecepsia had requested her? Had she made any sort of impression on the woman to earn such an honor? Casting her gaze from his, she lowered her head. “Yes, Your Excellency.”

“Tell me, child. Do you remember the smell of burning flesh?” The air of amusement in his voice grated on her, and she was grateful that she didn’t happen to be staring back at him in that moment.

“Every day,” she gritted, her mouth tingling with the bitter, copper flavor of blood she drew from biting her own tongue.

“Good. I would hate for you to forget.”

10

Farryn

Wonderful.

What I’d thought to be an apothecary store turned out to be an abandoned building tucked within a shady, East Garfield Park alley, adjacent to a meat packing factory.

Of course it did.

The apothecary had closed down, according the sign plastered out front.

Turn around.

Walk away.

After all, no one in their right mind would go through with a plan like that. The guy could’ve been a serial killer, for all I knew. And I could’ve easily ditched the idea without anyone even knowing I’d even considered something so stupid.

If not for the nagging feeling that I’d regret walking away.

An inexplicable and unrelenting pull that told me nothing in my life would ever make sense again, and that walking away would change everything.

And not for the better.

Still, I turned around and stepped into the opposite direction, toward my car, committing to the logical half of my brain. Like nails on a chalkboard, that sensation raked down my spine, and I shivered.

Didn’t help that the early morning rain had left a mist of fog on the ground, making it almost impossible to see down the alley, from where I stood at the mouth of it. Could’ve been a rabid dog hidden away somewhere in there, and I’d never know it. Even in broad daylight, the scowling gloom of winter-ready skies made everything darker. For the dozenth time, I swiped my hand over the lump in my khakis, where a pocket knife had been tucked, and exhaled a resigned breath. Not that it would inflict a whole lot of damage, but I was at least armed with something.

A few years back, I’d hired an investigator to track down my father. The guy had produced nothing, and I’d walked away a few hundred bucks poorer. I couldn’t let it go, though. Something about the whole thing had just sat on the fringes of my mind, always troubling me. Gnawing at me. Even my mother’s death, as strange and senseless as it had been, didn’t incite quite the same obsession to understand the truth. I’d tracked down a couple of his colleagues, professors he’d worked with at Yale, none of whom had heard from him in years.

This Xhiphias, whoever or whatever he was, happened to be the only concrete connection I had.

I stepped into the fog, making my way toward the entrance, mid-alley.

Something brushed my ankle, and a scream pounded inside my chest as I looked down to find a black figure sweeping past me. The chasing sound of a meow had me exhaling a shaky, but relieved, breath. More figures slipped through the fog, sauntering with the kind of aloof grace that could only belong to a cat. Dozens of them, all shapes and colors, meandered through the mist as if it were perfectly normal. Like a cat gang coming to inspect the outsider. None of them seemed aggressive, though, as they swiped past my ankles, purring.

I’d never seen so many congregated down one alley before.

A clanking sound, like the slam of a door reached my ears, and startled, I ducked beside a row of trash cans, flattening myself against the building’s damp bricks. I tugged out the knife I’d tucked into my side pocket, eyes scanning over the thick haze so dense I could hardly see my own shoes when I looked down. The way it moved, curling around me, felt like snakes swarming me, and the faint scent of sulphur had me wondering if I should’ve been breathing it in.

Voices drew my attention upward over the brick building beside me, to the roof, where two figures stood at the precipice. An older, dark-skinned man with long dreadlocks, and beside him, a man so pale, he almost glowed. From my distance, I couldn’t hear what either were saying, but the way they teetered around the treacherous edge turned my stomach.

In the next breath, the dark-skinned male pushed the white guy.

A scream escaped me as I watched the man flail his arms, before tumbling what had to be six stories toward the ground. The sound of spine-tingling fear that tore out of him twisted the knot in my gut.

“No!” I reached out in futility, as if my hands had the power to break his fall.