Page 58 of The Scarlet Veil

A finger of unease trails down my spine, and I glance left and right through the rain, prepared to flee if it means escaping this rather abrupt turn in our conversation. He’ll chase me, of course, but my flight might distract him. It’ll most definitely lead me away from this—thisrip in the fabric between realms. Michal already walks with one foot in the land of the dead—as far as I’m concerned, he can follow it straight to Hell. I will not have any part in this. I will notsummon a ghost.

As if reading my mind, he shakes his head slowly, his voice low. “Never run from a vampire.”

Too late.

Lifting my hem, I dart behind a passing couple and sprint for the nearest shop—a quaint fleuriste of painted brick with bouquets of goldenrods on display. Surely Michal cannot exist in such a cheerful place. Surely we cannot summon ghosts in front of the pretty florist, who already rises on tiptoe to watch us—

Cold hands seize me from behind, and before I can scream, Michal wraps impossibly hard arms around my waist, lifting me from my feet and hauling me over his shoulder. Knocking the breath from my lungs. “Let me g—” Gasping, I kick at his hips, pound my fists on his back, but it feels like grappling with a mountain. His body is harder than stone. “Let mego! Howdareyou—? Unhand me, you—you appallingleech!”

“We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot, darling.” His elbow locks behind my knees—adamantine, unbreakable—as he carries me back to the theater. When I twist upright, aiming a blow at his ear, he catches my fist easily, engulfing it in his hand. “Allow us to start over. I will ask you a question, and you will answer. No more games and no more lies.” He tugs on my captured hand, and I tumble into his arms. His face, histeeth, loom entirely too close. Though I thrash away from him, he leans closer still, so close I can see the rain in his eyelashes, the shadows beneath his eyes. “Never run from me again,” he breathes, no longer smiling but deadly serious.

Kicking open the theater doors, he deposits me on my feet.

I immediately flee behind one of the pedestals in the foyer.The marble bust of a beautiful woman peers back at me before Michal closes the doors with an ominousboomand complete darkness descends. There are no candles here. There is nolight.

Panic claws up my throat.

Not again.

“M-Michal.” My fingers search blindly for the bust, for something to ground myself in the room. “Can we—can we p-please light a—”

Light flares instantly to my left, illuminating Michal beside a life-sized statue; this one lifts a candelabra over her voluptuous form, half-clothed in flowing robes of obsidian. Tilting his head curiously, Michal blows out the match in his hand. “Are you afraid of the dark, Célie Tremblay?”

“No.” I exhale heavily, taking in the high ceilings, the gilt edges of the room. A dozen other busts line the walls in an imposing semicircle.The royal family.Two at the end with large, feline eyes look acutely familiar, as does the one directly beside me. The sculptor must’ve been part witch; no ordinary artist could capture the menace in Michal’s eyes so perfectly. I turn back to its likeness. “I told you—I am not a vampire, therefore I cannotseein the dark.”

“Is that all?”

My fingers slip from the bust, leaving tracks down her dusty face. “Yes.”

“Then why is your heart racing?”

“It isn’t—”

He appears before me instantly and snatches my wrist, his fingers curling around it. They press against the wild beat of my pulse. “I can hear it across the room, pet. The sound is deafening.”When I stiffen at his touch, he tilts his head, and genuine interest sparks in his eyes.Dangerousinterest. “I can scent your adrenaline too, can see your pupils have dilated. If it isn’t the dark that scares you—”

“It isn’t,” I interject.

“—it must be something else,” he finishes, arching a suggestive brow. His thumb strokes the translucent skin of my inner wrist, and a bolt of—somethingstreaks through my core. “Unless it isn’t fear at all?” he asks silkily.

Mortified, I tug my wrist away, and it slides through his fingers without resistance. “Don’t be silly. I simply—I do not want to meddle with ghosts. I don’t even knowhow. Regardless of what you felt when I arrived here, I was not the one whothinned the veilbetween realms. I amhuman—a God-fearing Christian woman who believes in Heaven and Hell and hasn’t the slightest knowledge of life after death. There’s been a”—I skitter around him, unable to stand the fascination in his gaze—“a horrible misunderstanding.”

“Is it your emotions that attract them, I wonder? Could it beanyemotion strongly felt?”

I stand on my tiptoes and wrench the golden candelabra from the statue’s hand. “It has nothing to do with my emotions.”

“Perhaps you need to hold a personal item of the deceased to make contact.”

Pushing into the auditorium, I light every candle within reach. There must be another exitsomewhere. Perhaps backstage. “I couldn’t possibly have held a personal item of every gho—thingin that promenade. There were dozens of them.”

“Did they speak to you?”

“No.”

“Liar.” He blocks my path once more, and I cannot help but to stop short and stare at him. Here—gilded in the golden candlelight of the theater, framed by the carved demons around the stage—he looks truly otherworldly, like an avenging spirit or fallen angel. Like the Angel of Death. Exhaling slowly, he stares right back, his black eyes narrowing as if I’m a puzzle he cannot quite solve. “You’re doing it again,” he says at last.

I look away quickly. “Doing what?”

“Romanticizing nightmares.”

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