Page 7 of Safe in Shadow
“Well, don’t slam any other doors! You’ll chip the paint, and I can’t afford any repairs right now.”
Casey and Daffodil trotted down the stairs.
Grace’s brows drew together.Wait. They were upstairs. I could have sworn the door slammed just down the hall from me.
“You’re loaded. Aren’t you?” Daffodil cocked her head, puzzled.
“No. I’m just a good grant writer, this place was cheap and about to be demolished, and I have the furniture from Nana and G-Pop’s old house from storage. There’s nothing ‘loaded’ around except that moving truck—that we need to unload,” Grace said pointedly.
“I bet I could have this place packed by tomorrow if I post about it on my channel—especially if I mention it’s haunted.”
“It’s not haunted! Good God, that’s all I need.” Grace clapped a hand to her forehead.
“Well, we know that, but other people won’t!” Casey smirked. “There are big bucks in scary shit.”
“One, I don’t want a bunch of paranormal patrollers with their spook-o-meters running through my B&B. Two, there’s no furniture here except for what’s in that moving truck, a few pieces in the library and sunroom, and a few solid pieces upstairs that would survive Armageddon. That means I can’t open up. You can’t have a bed-and-breakfast without the bed part. No guests. Just work. Hours and hours of work to get ready and hope I didn’t just waste all of Nana’s money—most of which she earned because of me, by the way, when I pulled it out of G-Pop’s defunct pension account, where it was earning like ten bucks a year in interest, and got it in some really good tech stocks!” Grace clenched her teeth and her fists to stop from screaming. Or crying. Possibly screamingwhilecrying.
“Yeah. I thought you were crazy to do this, too.” Casey shrugged.
I’m going to crack a filling.Grace slowly unlocked her clenched jaw.
“This could all go belly up. You have no experience. Mom was saying you should at least try working in a hotel before you open one. Dad says you’re going to end up back home working as the overnight manager at the Sleep Tite Motel in six months.”
Oh, hell no. Not after I became the unofficial super of Nana’s building while going to college and learning the stock market.
Grace started counting to ten, made it to four, and then unleashed a yowl of pure familial frustration. “Arghh! Go! Now. Carry stuff. Just put everything on the first floor for now. I don’t want you trying to carry something upstairs and crashing through the antique banister.”
NYX PAUSED AS HE HOVEREDin the darkness of the downstairs hall. The sun shone brightly outside. He was wondering when the human visitors (interlopers) would realize that they couldn’t force their lights into his domain. Wherever he was, it was always dark.
He was preparing to slam another door—but he stopped.
They were good entertainment, these three. The young couple that raced around with screens over their faces were mere gnats, an annoyance he wouldn’t bother to swat. But the blonde with her wild, tangled bun and her resolute chin... He liked watching her.
His cold frame started to run hot as she unbound her hair, shook it out, and combed her fingers through it as she arched her back in a tension-releasing stretch.
He liked watching her ever so much.
So, he wasn’t evil.
No one said he wasgood. If he were good, he wouldn’t be stuck here, in this strange, shadowy limbo, torn between human, spirit, and demon, what he now believed was referred to as a Shade.
Like a soul three naughty children had fought over and ripped three ways before clumsily pasting him back together.
“Are you sleeping down here?” Daffodil asked as she came back into the house, carrying a boxy black television.
“No, there’s one room upstairs that's in pristine condition. It has a gorgeous old brass bed and a mahogany wardrobe. I’ll haul the mattress up later—myself.”
Nyx’s darkness took on a fiery glint at its heart.
It has been a long, long time since he watched a woman. The nurses who attended the men broken in their minds were often pretty little things with nice legs in their short calf-length skirts. He never interfered with them.
Then again—those women had never slept in his room. One had never decided to sleep right over his portal between worlds, placing herself like a tempting morsel for one very dangerous monster under the bed.
