Page 43 of The Heart of Moonlight Falls

“No.” Sebastian shook his head. “I don’t want to join the stupid veins in the earth. It just felt like all the puzzle pieces fit together. I don’t want them to. I want my life more than anything.” He sounded adamant, like a man willing to fight.

“Good.” James kissed Sebastian, then pulled him along to catch up with Eli.

“We need to do something though.” Sebastian’s grim demeanor returned. “We can’t wait around and let things escalate further.”

“I know.” James glanced from Sebastian to Eli and back again, thinking. “Let’s take one of the fuel cells from Gray’s and transfer the curse to it. We can do it now.”

Sebastian stopped. “Not if anyone might drive by the property.”

Even though it was a reminder of his parents’ accident, James’s heart warmed. Sebastian always looked out for other people. He was kind to his core, even when others didn’t return that kindness.

James gave Sebastian a reassuring smile. “We’ll get Eleanor to close the road. There’s plenty of advantages to having her in the know, and I’m not coming back here at night, so we’re making use of everything we’ve got.”

Sebastian nodded, looking relieved as some of the tension left his body.

“What happened to leading the shades to believe we’ve abandoned messing with the veins?” Eli asked.

“Dealing with shades isn’t our primary issue,” Sebastian said. “It’d be great if they left us alone but we have to put fixing the veins first.”

Eli fell into step beside them. “Don’t get me wrong, I agree. It just makes it harder having shades messing with us. I wish there was a way to get them to leave us alone.”

They continued on, passing the small cemetery, when movement caught James’s eye. A figure stood at the back of the fenced-in plot under the shadowy canopy of the trees.

James stopped short. Everything was unnaturally dark around the looming shadow, making it hard to see clearly even though the cemetery was on the edge of the forest and shouldn’t have been darker than the trees they’d just left.

“Sebastian,” James hissed.

Both Sebastian and Eli turned, and the figure came into focus. They all stared at the large humanoid shade Sebastian had banished barely a week ago. At least James assumed it was the same being. There was no way to tell if it was another individual of the same shade species since it had no decerning features, but instinct told him it was the same one that had abducted him.

Sebastian sucked in a breath beside James.

They couldn’t fight this damn shade, not now. Sebastian had nearly killed himself with the effort last time.

James herded the other two along, hurrying up the path. They seemed to shake themselves from their shock and moved quickly. James glanced over his shoulder to see how fast the shade was gaining on them, but it hadn’t moved. The giant figure remained behind the graves. The next time James looked, he saw it fading away, deeper into the forest in the opposite direction.

“It’s leaving,” he told the others.

They ran to his truck anyway.

James pulled into Gray Electrical. He was much more apprehensive about dragging one of his fuel cells out to Storm House now.

“Why did it let us walk away?” Sebastian asked, not moving to get out of the truck after Eli, who stood in the driveway on his phone, likely talking to Parker.

“I don’t know.” James’s hand shook. He shoved it through his hair to fend off the tremors. He might not remember being captured by the formidable shade, but knowing it had happened was terrifying enough.

“I assumed it’d bring the darkness back when it returned, but it seems like it’s waiting for something.”

“Or tying out new tactics,” James countered. “Come on, we can’t just sit here.”

They got out of the truck and went inside the shop. Hazel and Eleanor were by the coffee maker, heads together as they spoke in low voices.

“Great, you’re here. We need to talk to you,” James called across the room.

Both women looked up, and James told them about the humanoid shade they’d just seen.

“Just what we fucking need,” Eleanor muttered. She looked more harried than James had ever seen her, her tidy professional appearance lacking its usual air of perfection. “William is MIA.”

“What?” Sebastian crossed his arms and glared. “He has to be in Moonlight Falls somewhere.”

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