Page 73 of Blood Bonds

“We are closed!” I heard her say, making me grit my teeth.

“Not for me, you’re not,” I demanded, making her emerge quickly, and the smirk on her face was the type you couldn’t trust. Her navy business suit was a surprise, though. She looked like someone you would have found working on Wallstreet, not as the Fortune teller she had first portrayed herself to be. What would I find back there this time? An office, laptop, andsecretary speaking on the phone, making appointments? Even her hair had been styled in a fashionable twist, her make up expertly applied. Who was this woman?

“Ah, so you have learned how to fight against it,” she commented, making me frown as I asked,

“Fight against what?”

“The pull of the curse.”

I shook my head a little, as if this would help rid me of her lingering words. No, not words…just one.

Curse.

“What the fuck are you talking about?!” I snapped, making her grin before jerking her head toward the room at the back.

“You want your answers or not?” she asked when I didn’t move, looking back at the cracked door and questioning whether or not being here was a good idea.

“Or you can leave now and go running off to your Vampires, it’s your choice.”

My heart started to hammer in my chest.

“You know about Vampires?” I asked, making her laugh, a manic sound of someone unhinged. Every instinct within me screamed that I should run. Every instinct but one.

Curiosity.

Because I needed to know. And she knew it. It was why she walked back toward her room, knowing that I would follow. Which I foolishly did. I was almost shocked to find it looking the same because having her standing in it now looked almost comical, she was so out of place.

“I would offer you some tea, but I think we are both past the formalities at this point.”

“You did something to me,” I stated, cutting right to it because I didn’t want to be here a single second longer than I needed to be.

“Yes,” she said, not even trying to deny it.

“That night, you… you saw something, you…”

“I cursed you,” she stated, making me stagger back a step as if she had the power to do it again.

“But why… why would you do that? I have done nothing to you!”

She simply shrugged her shoulders and told me,

“It was nothing personal, you just happened to fit. that is all.”

Again, another shake of my head before asking,

“Fit what exactly?”

“My needs to conquer a Vampire’s heart… well, two of them in this case,” she replied, making me gasp. My face twisted in disbelief because this was the very last thing I ever expected to hear. Unfortunately, she didn’t stop there.

“You see, I need something from them, an unobtainable item of great power.”

“If it’s so fucking unobtainable then why bother with me?! Why think that I…”

She was quick to interrupt me at this part, doing so with a wave of her manicured hand like she was swatting an annoying fly.

“Because you are the key to getting it for me. The curse I cast I cannot do on myself, or I would have made them fall in love with me just like I did with you.”

My heart stopped. I swear my legs nearly buckled with the weight of her cruel words.

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