Page 16 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

“No, babe,” he finally said, his laughter fading. “If I were ever feeling experimental, I’d probably pick a woman who wasn’t my best friend of two decades.”

When his face fell into something that mirrored pity, flashes of memory rose from the abyss.

Being followed. Watched. Touched.

I froze.

My brain slipped somewhere hollow, where I could no longer feel my skin or see anything but dull gray and wilted, burnt red.

Nothing happened. You’re fine. Remember the ocean, I told myself with a nudge. I held the image in my mind—the brushstrokes of brilliant blue in my mother’s favorite painting—the way the waves lapped and licked the golden shore.

The dimly lit room and Jaxon’s clean, woodsy scent and the racing sensations of my body reappeared.

“We’re leaving tomorrow?” I asked, and Jaxon’s face shifted back to something easy and far more palatable.

He grinned, lifting a finger to his lips and nodding toward the door. Across the hall in our parents’ old room, Isabella slept, entirely unaware that I’d be leaving her here in Crescent Haven all alone.

No, not alone. She would have Phillip, and they’d start a family soon after marrying. It was everything she’d ever wanted, and she’d made it abundantly clear that I was not.

And I—I was choosing me. I was finally choosing myself, after all these years of wasting away. My life had been draining like the flowers in Mom’s garden when Dad didn’t leave his room for two months and Isabella and I refused to go anywhere haunted. They’d wilted under our neglect, drying out and blowing away in the summer air the same as the ashes we’d been left to scatter all on our own. Isabella and I had held each dead parent in our palms less than a year apart and returned them to the gods, and then we’d fought to keep our house.

Back then, we’d been rebel pirates defending our turf from greedy enemies. In reality, we were parentless, family-less children who couldn’t pay off the debt our parents had left behind.

But we found a way. Or maybe she had found a way through me. Because people wanted to give me things.

They just equally wanted to take.

The streets were busy again today, as this was the last day that this many foreign merchants would be visiting for a month or two. Everyone was stocking up on what they couldn’t get from local sellers. The sun was uncovered and warm, but the air chilled. I was wearing an oversized blue sweater and black pants, all bundled up and fully covered. The color made my eyes pop, which was a simple pleasure I stole. In another life, I’d make clothing. I’d choose the finest, most exquisite fabrics, transforming a sketch into a living, breathing piece of art—then I’d style them to people’s bodies to bring out their best features.

There were a lot of things I was saving for my next lives. I didn’t envy vampirism, but I sometimes envied immortality. All the books I’d have time to read, the people I’d meet, the skills I’d learn, the places I’d go, and the different versions of myself I’d get to be.

“You’ve got this, baby girl,” Jaxon said as we approached an older village witch who’d been reselling precious items since before our parents were born. “I did some listening in on the jewelry cart where lover boy bought it. It’s worth three hundred, easy.”

“Oh, gods,” I said, my stomach souring. “Why in the hell did he spend that much money on me?”

“Because he wants to have your babies,” Jaxon said in an annoying, childish voice. He jutted out his bottom lip, bending his hands under his chin and staring at me with lovey-dovey eyes.

I swatted at him as my laugh escaped. “First, you’re horrible.”

“The worst!”

“Second, don’t you mean he wants me to have his babies?”

“No,” he said, slow and drawn out, making a face of condescension. “I said what I said. You’d be the one wearing the pants in that household. He’d be your little baby-making bitch.”

“Jaxon!” I squealed, giggling again as I tried and failed to fill my gaze with disapproval. Several people stopped what they were doing to stare at us. “Wearing the pants?” I asked, quieter now. “That’s not very progressive of you.”

He deadpanned, lifting a brow. “And yet, you don’t disagree…”

I rolled my eyes and straightened as we climbed the doorstep of the goods broker. I rapped my knuckle against the plum purple wood.

Beatrice opened the door slowly, her eyes narrowing on Jaxon briefly before landing heavily on me. Her black braids were piled on top of her head, reading glasses low on her button nose. Her age was baked into fine lines around her eyes and her mouth. She wore a flowy purple dress and several scarves and shawls draped or wrapped around her.

She merely grunted at us in greeting. “How’s the other Hale sister?” she asked me as we followed her inside her warmly lit living area.

Candles and books were scattered everywhere, and rows and rows of jewelry and other wares lined glass cases around the burnt yellow walls. The space was cozy and inviting, but there was an unmistakable undercurrent of magick weaving through the air. This was not a witch to be trifled with.

“Oh, you know Isabella…” I said vaguely.

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