Page 198 of Shadowblood Souls
Pearl pops out of the shadows next to me so abruptly my nerves flinch. It’s only by sheer force of will that I don’t jump ten feet in the air.
She waggles her finger at my chest. “You got shadow imprints from having sex? That’s so cool!”
Cool is not the word I would have used. But maybe to a succubus, airing your bedroom activities in public is a lot less embarrassing.
“I… guess.” I glance at Rollick. “Shadow imprints? Is that a normal thing?”
The demon ambles closer, his head tipped at a contemplative angle. “I’ve heard of some shadowkind who plant physical marks on beings over whom they’re staking a claim, but generally those are mortals, and it’s done purposefully. It sounds like you didn’t mean to create them?”
I shake my head. “No, it just happened.”
“Very interesting. There’s so much we don’t know about how hybrids might function.”
He motions for me to pick up the silver platter again. “Hold it so it’s totally covering the mark.” Then he snaps his fingers at Andreas. “Go somewhere else on the yacht, wait five minutes, and then come back.”
Cinder, who’s still watching from near the railing, lets out a discontented sound.
Rollick ignores her. As Andreas lopes off, his attention stays focused on me.
“Can you follow his path without seeing him, even with the silver over the mark?”
I pause, letting my own attention center on the splotch that binds me to Andreas. A faint tickling sensation spreads through my flesh.
I try to map my sense of him onto what I remember of the ship’s interior layout. “I can definitely tell what direction he’s in and how far away he is. If I needed to get to him, I could find him no problem. He’s stopped… I think that would be the library?”
A few more shadowkind pop into being around the edges of the deck. The gangly muscular guy who complained yesterday—Kudzu—crosses his arms over his triangular chest.
“None of this is working. They’re notlikeus.”
Rollick turns to him. “We’ve only tried a few strategies so far.”
The other man grunts. “We’re risking everything over?—”
He cuts himself off with a jerk of his head, but the frustration in his voice digs into my bones. What’s his problem with us?
Rollick looks as if he may have restrained an eye roll. As I set the platter aside, he strides toward his shadowkind companions, gesturing for them to gather with him near the front cabin.
“If you’re so concerned about using our time effectively, you can use that thick head of yours to generate some other possibilities.”
Kudzu lets out a huff, but he follows, along with Cinder and a couple of the others. The tentacled man—Torrent—appears out of the shadows to join their cluster.
Pearl leans closer to me, giving off a whiff of a smoky rose scent. She raises her finger as if to touch one of the marks onmy chest, but I step back instinctively, releasing my shirt so the neckline springs back up to cover them with a jostle of my pendant.
The shadowkind girl claps her hand to her mouth with an abashed expression. “Sorry! I just—I’ve never seen something like that before.”
“Me neither,” I say dryly, eyeing the woman.
She’s awfully nosy. Is that a succubus thing or just a Pearl thing?
Her smile springs back into place, and she waves to the slim guy who helped bring the silver platters over. “Billy, come meet them!”
The guy walks over to us tentatively, his pale eyes gone wide beneath his chaotic brown waves. As he gets close, I realize that two of those waves aren’t hair at all.
He has spiraling horns protruding on either side of his head, closer to beige than brown and poking too high to be disguised by his locks.
“Billy’s like me,” Pearl announces, slinging her arm around his narrow shoulders. “Well, he’s a faun, not any kind of cubi. But he hasn’t been in the mortal world much. So many fun things to learn.”
The horned guy’s gaze roves over all of us, including Andreas and Jacob as they cross the deck to rejoin our group. His voice comes out breathless. “Have you ever gone in a plane before? This is my first time even on a boat. They say you can swim in the water, but I don’t know…”
