Page 115 of A Bond with the Dark

As Adaline disappears down a hallway, I place the black dishes in the sleek dishwasher one by one until they’re all nicely stacked within it. Upon shutting the door, the woosh of air signifies someone is standing next to me, and the hairs on the back of my neck prick up.

Slowly, I turn to see Hattie glaring at me.

Terror coils around my stomach, and I hold my breath.

“Follow me,” Hattie demands, and by my frozen limbs, I can tell I’d been ordered to.

Robotically, I follow Hattie down the stone hallway toward the stairs that lead to the basement. Even if I tried to resist, it wouldn’t sway the veilweaving of my feet to keep carrying me forward.

Damn, I should have kept the Nightshade on me.

Entering a cozy and brilliant room, the vellichor of the room floors me. It’s lined with ceiling-to-floor bookshelves—the kind where you need a ladder on rolling casters to get to the books at the top. Books of all ages, colors, and sizes are tucked into them, not a single space wasted, and my bookish heart swells at the sight, immediately wanting to climb that ladder and investigate them. Amongst the other shelves are jars and vials filled with herbs and other substances, canisters, and tins, bundles of dried sage, and other flowers hanging from the walls and the ceiling. It immediately feels like home.

On the west side of this room is an outdoor patio with a little greenhouse in which Adaline grows her herbs. The lovely little space is complete with those rounded tapered glass windows so she can go in there and use it during the day and not burn up. The room has a massive stone fireplace with comfy chairs surrounding it. The room is cozy and quaint, and I am jealous of not having a room for my spells like this one, instead of a little cabinet.

The beautiful and lithe Adaline is already there, peering into her bookcase and pulling down a few of her oldest and most tattered-looking ones. Hattie takes a seat by the fireplace and pulls out her phone.

“So, tell me about you, Sayah,” Adaline says, blowing the dust off the green book she chose and taking a seat on one of the chairs by the fireplace.

Mimicking Adaline and sitting down too, nervousness spills up my insides at being alone with her and Hattie. There’s a strong urge to get Adaline to like me, to win her over, but it’s hard to tell if she already does.

“What would you like to know?”

Her eyes do not look up from scanning the grimoires. “Anything you feel pertinent to tell me, I guess.”

“Well. I’m divorced. I have a ten-year-old who’s my world. He’s in a wheelchair and has diabetes. I’m in college, I work full time, I write, I beat cancer, and my parents just died.”

Figuring I’d throw it all out there and let Adaline choose what she wanted to know next, I laid my heart bare before this vampire.

Adaline’s eyes draw up to mine, and her face softens, if not entirely but slightly.

“Wow,” she says. “You’ve been through a lot.”

“I have.”

“But you didn’t mention the witch part at all.”

Of all the things I mentioned, I’d forgotten the only thing Adaline wanted to know about.

“I guess I didn’t.” I play with the fringe on the blanket on the chair’s edge.

“I’m sorry about your parents.”

“Thank you.”

“Was your mom a witch, too?”

“She was. My aunts and grandma were too.”

“Did they teach you much?”

“No. They didn’t. My mom let me pick my own path, and she was happy when I picked hers by utter luck. But I had to learn a lot of it on my own. She would buy me things, like candles and crystals and everything. But for the most part, I forged my own path.”

“What can you do? Besides spell necklaces to help vampires walk in daylight?”

“Um.” The fringe is all I can concentrate on. I feel Adaline take the measure of me with every breath and every word I speak. “I can do protection charms. I can spell storms. Make things float. I’m honestly just learning as I go.”

“Well, I can teach you a few things if you’d like.”

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