Page 26 of She is the Darke

There was a row of very nicely-made masks on the left-hand side of the table, and one in particular captured Demi’s attention. It was adorned with black feathers and sparkling black jewels. Looked like a crow mask. “How much is this one?” she asked.

“Ten bucks,” the registrar told her.

Demi pulled a ten-dollar bill out of her wallet, paid, and then moved to the sheets of paper to look at the events they had going on here tonight.

“Don’t bother,” Rachel told her, tugging at her hand. “I already signed us up for the perfect one!”

“What is it?” she asked, waving her thank-you to the registrar.

“Speed-dating.”

“What?” she blurted out, halting in her tracks.

“Put your mask on,” Rachel ordered as she tied her own bejeweled white-and-silver one to her face.

“I wanted a burger, not a boyfriend!”

“Stop whining. Let yourself have fun. Here, let me help tie it.” Rachel strapped the crow mask onto Demi’s face, then spun her around, unzipped her jacket, and tugged at the hem of her V-neck sweater so her cleavage nearly popped out.

“Rachel,” she growled, putting her boobs back under cover. “I just want to eat.”

“Great, then the challenge tonight is we are going to get our food and drinks paid for.” Rachel turned and made her way through the murmuring crowd toward the back room, where a sign that read “Speed-dating sessions start every ten minutes” had been taped over the open doorway.

“Oh my gosh,” she ground out under her breath as she peeled her jacket off. She was already overheating in here, and now she was going to have to talk to strangers.

The speed-dating room was set up with pairs of chairs facing each other. Shockingly, there were a lot of people interested in speed-dating. A tall man stood in the middle of the room calling, “Time! Switch partners please. Gentlemen, you’re still moving directly to your right. Ladies, stay put.” He looked over at them and grinned, then waved them inside with a few others who had gathered in the doorway. He pointed to a few empty chairs and told them to drag them into the circle, and then handed them each a small stack of sticky notes and a pen.

“What’s this for?” Demi asked.

“To take notes on the guys you like. It’s easiest if you put their mask description. Like you would be the black bird mask, and your friend would be the white-and-silver mask. Something like that. It’s up to you girls to find the men you are interested in out at the bar area after the speed-dating session.”

“Oh dear goodness,” she murmured to herself. She dragged a pair of chairs into the circle and faced one toward herself as Rachel did the same.

A couple of guys they’d walked in with took the seats directly across from them, and Green-Shimmer Mask Guy said a polite hello and shook her hand.

It was nerve-racking. They had two minutes to talk to each potential date. At first, Demi had no idea how to do it. She wasso awkward, and there were long pauses at the end as she waited for the guy in the middle to call “Time.” By the fourth guy, she had eased in to what she was supposed to do. Most helpful was memorizing some generic questions that everyone seemed to want to know the answers to.

“Where do you live?”

“Where is your family from?”

“What brought you out tonight?”

“What do you do for work?”

Stuff like that.

Rachel was a natural and a chatterbox, and was super charming, and Demi bet nearly every man she talked to wrote downwhite-and-silver maskon one of his sticky notes to remind himself to find her later out in the bar.

For Demi? Fortunately for her, she would be on a lot less of the sticky notes. First impressions had always been huge to shifters, as they could feel when people were genuine, or had good intentions. Her answers to their questions were pretty clipped, as she didn’t find any of them particularly interesting.

Not until Guy with the Green Mask walked in and sat three chairs down from her.

Oh, she recognized the blue eyes, and the shade and cut of Tyler’s dark hair. If that wasn’t a dead giveaway, he was wearing the thin, gray T-shirt he was wearing earlier, and it hugged every curve of muscle that fine man possessed.

Easily the hottest guy in the room—and probably the whole damn state, for that matter—Tyler kept glancing over at her as he talked smoothly to the girl in the seat a few down.

“Did you hear what I said?” the guy across from her asked.

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