AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 1
Six weeks ago.
One dark, stormy night…
Annie Vervain Wonderfully, a woman about to
shed her inhibitions, her clothing, and
every last bit of her common sense.
Lies, lies, and more lies…
All the way down the narrow dirt path leading to the marsh on the outskirts of Nightfall, New Hampshire, I tell myself pretty lies.
I tell myself I volunteered for this mission because I love my sister and want to ease her suffering. (Evidently, the only cure for a nasty “refused by your fated mate” rash is a poultice made of evergreen needles, a lock of your own hair, whole grain flour, pistachio-flavored goat butter, and the blood of the species who spurned you. So, in Blaire’s case—a vampire.)
I tell myself I chose to come to Baron for a blood donation because all the other vampires I know are busy tracking down criminals or doing serious, out-of-town vampire things.
I tell myself I’ll only stay a few minutes at his cabin in the swamp, just long enough to get the blood needed to ease Blaire’s rash and then be on my merry way.
I tell myself loads of things, but the truth is…a bit more complicated.
Yes, I want to help Blaire, but I could have paid one of the kids in town to run this errand. They’re always eager to help out for a few bucks or a maple cookie. Or I could have waited a few days until Colin, my former fake fiancé and closest friend in Nightfall, returned from his trip to Massachusetts to meet with the other supernatural sheriffs. He’s promised to help my family with whatever we need, even though it doesn’t look like my sister will be marrying his brother, after all.
Even easier still, I could have placed a call to the Blackmore vampire clan’s mansion and asked one of the servants to run down a vial of blood along with the clothes I left behind when Blaire and I stayed there last week. I’m friendly with several of the humans in the Blackmore’s employ, and I know they wouldn’t have hesitated to do me a favor.
Honestly, they probably would have jumped at the chance.
Ever since word got out that Blaire’s taken Kitty, the kraken who’s made herself at home in our pipes, as her familiar, half the town has been angling for a dinner invitation. Blaire says they probably just want to see if our house kraken is as good a cook as her mother and grandmother before her, but I’m pretty sure they’re expecting one of us to get eaten and would like to be there to get the gossip firsthand.
The residents of Nightfall are, on the whole, kind and generous people, but they have a morbid streak and a hunger for novelty that extends to the macabre.
But most small towns with human residents are the same. When you live in the boonies and have known everyone in your community your entire life, you take your entertainment where you can get it—even at your neighbor’s expense.
The Blackmore servants would have relished a gossip-collecting trip to our crumbling Victorian mansion to deliver the red stuff, and Blaire would have relished the chance to show off the witchy spell room she’s building in the basement. Right now, I could be cozy by the fire with a cup of tea, secure in the knowledge that I’ve done my best by my family and my sister’s suffering will soon be a thing of the past.
Instead, I’m scurrying down a lonely, pock-marked road, jumping at every rustle in the reeds and shivering in the ice-cold wind.
Sophie, my long-lost-and-recently-found twin sister, said there would be thunder snow tonight, and that I should be home before six or risk being caught in the storm. Sophie and I are half Wyvern on our father’s side. Wyverns can occasionally foresee the future and Sophie has a gift for weather-related prophecies. She even writes a column for the Nightfall Village Post, keeping the paranormal populace in-the-know on heat waves, storms, and the occasional rain of frogs. (Even the storms in Nightfall are supernatural, and the local chefs like to set out buckets to collect frogs for slow-cooked leg sandwiches and hearty frog-and-root-vegetable soups.)
But Sophie didn’t say a word when she saw me slipping out of the back door at five forty-five.
She simply raised an eyebrow and grinned like she had my number…which she probably does.
I’m not as close to Sophie as I am to Blaire, but if she had a hopeless crush on someone in town, I’m pretty sure I’d know about it. It’s hard to keep things like that from someone with whom you once shared a womb.
I’m betting Sophie knows I’ve been having steamy fantasies about Baron since the day he growled that he was “a monster I couldn’t save.” Turns out a man warning me that I’m “the kind of perfect people like him love to spoil,” in a tortured voice that made it clear he would cut off his own hand before he actually “spoiled” me, really does it for me.
It really, really does…
Who knew?
Not I said the fly.
As a thirty-four-year-old virgin who’s never had any trouble walking away from a first kiss—the only kind of kiss I’ve ever had—I used to be pretty sure I didn’t have a libido. Or that if I did, it was a pale, wimpy thing, much like the rest of me. In other words, it was a minor annoyance I could ignore while I took care of my family, quilted, or disappeared into a good book.
I haven’t dated much myself, but I’ve seen enough of my sisters’ relationships go hideously awry to realize books are much safer than boys.
