Page 293 of Sigils & Spells

SANGUINE SHADOWS

MONTELIER SUPERNATURAL ACADEMY

CHAPTER1

“You have to marry,Mari Di Bartolo. It is our way. Our Houses must be strengthened by those of noble blood. You are my child and as such will marry accordingly.” Roark, her Sire gave her a stern look and left her standing in the middle of her room, a stinging retort on her lips.

She wanted to laugh at his resemblance to the Gary Oldman Dracula, complete with the long hair, old fashioned clothes and glasses perched on his nose but she didn’t dare. Especially when she took in the dress she was about to have to wiggle into.

“You’re not getting out of it so don’t try.” Gibbs, her resident ghost lounged against the four-poster bed, his gaze locked on the dress draped over the edge of the bed.

“Ugh. Can’t you even leave me alone so I can change?” She reached for the top of her robe and scowled.

“Get over it. You’re not my brand of fruit basket. Come on. You don’t have all night. Wait too long and that battle axe housekeeper is going to come up here and lace you in tighter than…”

“Okay. I don’t need a visual.” Mari shuddered, sliding out of her robe and dropping it on the bed.

“Just trying to help.”

“Well don’t.”

Mari twisted her lips and winced as a sharp stab of her fangs cut into her lip. The annual vampire version of a meat market was about to happen downstairs in their ballroom. How many times would Roark try to pawn her off on a desiccated old windbag or one of his weird pervy social rejects just so he could further his political ambitions?

She just wasn’t interested.

She had only one goal. To find the bastards who put her here and shove a silver plated blade right between their furry eyeballs. Her gaze traveled down the smooth expanse of her chest and arm, still marveling at the way her new body healed itself. It was a miracle really, and one she should be grateful for. And she would be, after she’d taken care of business.

So why did her thoughts keep swaying toward one particular Fae Captain of the Guard? Fenris was one of the Protectorate and the only one other than her Sire who had seen the girl before she’d been changed into a lycanthrope assassin in a skirt. He’d looked in her eyes and despite what had been done to her…just when she had been determined not to feel, she looked into his eyes and saw their light shining back at her.

He gave her the strength to take what Roark gave her without spinning into madness. A human girl with no knowledge of the supernatural world one moment and the next laying in a pool of her own blood, the corpse of a werewolf lying next to her on the sidewalk and a vampire offering her a second shot bending down and offering a kiss that could render her immortal.

Mari took it. But all the while wishing it was Fenris’s teeth sinking into her neck and his blood passing through her lips.

She absently slipped into the dress and sucked in her stomach as Gibbs helped her fasten all of her bindings.

“Thank you.”

“No problem, Pigeon. Now just help me find Bertrand and we’re good. And watch what you do with that arsenal under your dress. You don’t want to put someone’s eye out with that thing.”

“I just want to find Fenris or get out of here so I can do something other than schmooze with the other walking dead.”

“Don’t diss your fellow vamps, girlie. Roark saved your sorry butt.”

“I realize that. But right now being saved feels a lot like being a moth in a jar. I just want some flame to fly up next to.”

And a chance to become the witch she was here in Salem to become.

“What? So you can die again?” Gibbs raised an eyebrow and twisted his lips into a frown, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“No.” But it sounded defensive, even to her own ears. “I just want to find him.”

“He looks for you. Every time he comes here.”

Mari looked at him, incredulous. “And you’re telling me this why?”

“I shouldn’t. You don’t understand the Fae like I do.”

“I know him.”

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