Page 15 of The Temptation of Roan Island

The sour scent of their illness makes me disinclined to feed from any of them. The disease wouldn’t hurt me as a Mavarri—no disease can—but if it tastes half as bad as it smells…

Jafeth scrunches his nose, clearly as repulsed by the idea as I am. If he weren’t, I’m sure he’d already have taken to feeding from one of these women beyond the new moon parties.

I adjust myself in my seat, inadvertently putting myself closer to Pippa on the bench.

Her fragrance is lovely, and one of the reasons I don’t mind her presence. Under the notes of illness, Anna smells like too many wildflowers bunched together in a stifling space. Kay’s scent reminds me of sweets, which as a boy I might have enjoyed. But it doesn’t appeal to me at all now. Once in my youth, I visited New Essik with my mother. It was one of the last days we spent together before her death. We went to a candy shop where they made spun sugar. I ate too much, giving me a stomachache. Kay evokes that memory.

But Pippa feels like standing in the afternoon sunshine while a gentle breeze laced with the essence of lemon-citrus wafts from an orchard. My fangs descend, surprising me. I press my lips together to hide the evidence of my desire. It’s only because of the new moon.

But perhaps feeding from Pippa would be… enjoyable. What expression would she make when my venom hits her bloodstream? Would she arch her back? Curl her toes? Sob out a curse? My hearts pump faster, blood flowing to my groin, thickening my cock as my mind fills with a picture of Pippa, tears streaming down her pink cheeks, mouth open on a gasp, body tense with pleasure. Fuck.

As subtly as possible, I shift my plate on my lap.

“What do we say if the inspector wants to know why we’re at the Roan Estate?” Pippa asks, drawing me back to the conversation at hand.

“Charity and community service,” Ruby answers. “The Roans invited terminally-ill guests from The Sanatorium to join them for the Winter Solstice and to convalesce here at the estate.”

“What about Mrs. Darning?” I ask. “Will she stay quiet about what happened?”

“That’s your job. She likes you the best.” Noah gives me a rare smirk. “Figure it out however you deem necessary.”

I narrow my eyes, uncertain if he’s giving me the carte blanche he’s implying.

“Don’t kill her,” Ruby says sternly.

Well, that answers that.

8

SHEMAIAH

Idon’t really want to kill Mrs. Darning, but I wouldn’t mind being rid of her. The woman is a fixture at the Roan Estate. But in all the years I’ve known her, I’ve never been able to get a clear read on her, which unnerves me. I like being able to understand people and their motivations.

She presents a precarious situation. She knows too much for me to dismiss her, but she was too close to my father for me to trust her to keep her mouth shut around the detective. Fuck Noah for giving me this job. This is probably payback for the time I locked him and Ruby in the Gate House on a new moon. He shouldn’t hold it against me since it all worked out fine in the end, but I know he’s still angry about it.

I find Mrs. Darning in the wine cellar. She looks to be taking an inventory of the bottled and preserved blood my father kept in the icebox. Most of these bottles contain the blood of Mavarri and other creatures from our home world. My father’s family brought them through the portal with them. Before it collapsed. He used to open one or two bottles a year, rationing them for special occasions.

Her task is surprising, considering none of the rest of us drink aged blood. It’s a delicacy only my father had a taste for—not that he allowed us to try it. I’m not sure why she’d need to take an inventory of the bottles since they’re so rarely touched.

I stay back, watching her through the gaps in a shelf of chardonnay. In her late forties, she’s not an old woman, but she’s not young by human standards either. Mavarri age like normal humans until we reach the age of maturity, when our aging slows dramatically. The same can’t be said for Mrs. Darning. I’ve seen her go from the twenty-something-year-old widow who fed us when we were young, to the stern-faced woman before me now. You would think witnessing so much of her life would make me more sympathetic to her, but instead it makes me wary.

She picks up a bottle and holds it to the light, spinning it one direction, then the next. With my keen eyesight, I can see the label identifying it as blood from a lumax, a rare animal back on our home world with particularly thick blood, said to smell horrible but taste divine. Particularly nourishing, if the old accounts are accurate.

She carefully wraps the bottle in linen and places it in a small box packed with ice.

“What are you doing?” I step around the shelf and into the light.

“Nothing that concerns you.” She barely reacts to my sudden presence. “Just the tasks of a housekeeper, ensuring everything is stored properly.”

There’s a slight uptick in her pulse that I note from the throbbing vein at her neck, but other than that, she appears as calm as I am, both of us wearing masks of indifference.

I haven’t spent much time with Mrs. Darning since I was a boy. She was like a nursemaid to us then, only it wasn’t milk we got from her, but blood. Once my siblings and I were grown enough to join the new moon parties, her tasks changed, taking on more responsibilities until she managed the entire household while continuing to feed and fuck my father until his death. She begged him to turn her, and he never did—rightfully, since it likely would have killed her—perhaps the one kindness he ever showed. But her bitterness and grief at his death hasn’t been well hidden. I think, in her strange way, she loved him. She was certainly loyal to him and even helped keep my sister captive for decades.

She takes another bottle from the shelf and wraps this one as well.

“It looks as if you’re getting ready to send these somewhere.” I tap the box with the toe of my shoe.

Darning turns to look at me, a thin, sharp eyebrow raised. “Where would I send it? Are there other Mavarri out there I don’t know about?”