Page 104 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

At the thought of Scarlett, I felt the weight of the small notebook and pen in my back pocket.

“Tell me about her,” Sadie said, probing, unable to hide the curiosity from her sharp green irises.

Defensiveness barricaded me, an instinctive urge to hide Scarlett and my unthinkable obsession from this mentor I respected above all others. This woman who enjoyed breaking people more than I did.

I nodded. “Fine. After we talk strategy. War is coming. We need numbers.”

“How can you be sure she isn’t a plant?” Sadie asked later, an echo of my every conversation with Mason lately. We sat out on the back porch, watching the sun disappear behind the magickal glamour perimeter and the rolling hills beyond.

No one underneath me could know how I first found Scarlett. But Sadie wasn’t in my clan. She was my equal. Though she might disagree with that assessment.

Still, I hesitated.

Sadie took a drag of her cigarillo. “What in Selena’s good name are you hiding?” After reading my gaze, she lifted a hand and snapped three times. The man in a gimp suit she’d been using as a footrest scrambled away on all fours back toward the house.

“She’s from Crescent Haven,” I said once we were alone. “I first saw her years ago, during one of my visits. And I found myself searching for her again, each visit since. Just watching, promising never to interfere. But fate had other plans for us.”

Sadie made a soft tsk noise against the roof of her mouth, looking from the sunset to my eyes. “I see.”

I clenched the arms of the chair tighter, my knuckles going white. “What do you see, oh divine one?”

She smiled. “I told you to be careful with your words, my protégé. You know how much I love taking what I can’t have. The more powerful the man, the more satisfying the fall to their knees.”

Though we flirted like this, there was nothing sexual between us. Never had been. It was all play and ego dances between old friends.

Her smile fell away. “She’s your deepest weaknesses embodied. She’s your humanity.”

It had always been unnerving to hear Sadie echo back my inner world, understanding me in a way no one else had before her. When I was a young man, a human in search of meaning and thirsty for vengeance, there had been nothing more seductive. Nothing more intriguing than a powerful witch who saw and illuminated everything I’d buried deep.

I knew that was also why Scarlett had fallen under my spell this easily. I knew her. I saw her in a way she’d always craved to be seen, in a way she didn’t think was possible. And how I’d come to understand her so deeply so quickly was entirely fucked-up. Yes, I recognized myself inside of her. But I’d also watched her for years against her knowledge, ruminated on her life and her mind, of which I’d only ever caught glimpses.

“She’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, in all of my years. There’s this fire inside of her that refuses to die. She doesn’t just exist, like most humans. She can’t help but live, sucking out mortality’s raw marrow. She can’t help but burn. I wanted to see if she’d ever fizzle out, lose that spark she’d claimed from Goddess-knows-where. But no. Not even after cruelty at the hands of mortals and the born alike. She’s only gotten brighter. Damn radiant.”

Sadie’s smile faltered. “Wait, back up. How has a young human woman from a small village incurred so much violence in such a short span?”

Anger boiled inside my blood, forced to focus on Scarlett’s pain, the horrors she didn’t deserve to endure.

“She’s magnetic,” I said. “She pulls everything and everyone toward her, like she’s a planet with its own orbit. All the beauty and all the pain, the duality of darkness and light that cannot exist without the other. And gods above, does this little seductress love to flirt with danger, coax it toward her like I’ve never seen before.” I shook my head slightly. “The scent of her blood, Sadie… Thank the gods you eradicated me of bloodlust.”

At this, Sadie frowned with displeasure. “You said she was human?”

I nodded slowly, and emotions flickered through her eyes, too quickly to discern. Her mind was working, connecting dots and intuitions in a way that had me leaning forward on impulse.

I watched her, and I waited for what seemed like hours.

Impatience got the better of me, a sick feeling twisting up my guts. “Why do you ask that?”

Sadie met my eyes. “Because if you didn’t know she was human, and I’d heard that description without having met her, I’d have bet everything I own that she was a succubus.”

Despite knowing she was mortal, my heart still pumped furiously, my muscles going rigid and revulsion scrunching my face.

“Everything I own,” Sadie repeated. “And you know how much I love my boys.”

It took me a moment to ground myself, to stop imagining a reality in which Sadie’s words were true. If I hadn’t seen Scarlett as a child, raised in a human family in a sleepy village that was so dull it wasn’t even scrawled on some maps, then I might’ve considered it.

I shook my head. “She’s very human. Annoyingly fragile and all.”

Succubi and incubi were born exceptionally rarely to born-human couplings, which far more often produced stillbirths, weak vampires, or sickly humans. The staggeringly greater likelihood of this unnatural mating pair to produce diseased offspring was a testament to the vile nature of Lillian’s soul-eating demons.

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