Death at First Sight (Spero Heights Book 2) by Angela Roquet Read Free Book Online Page A

the notion of love.
    Aside from Daisy’s unwelcome advances, there hadn’t been an interested woman in his life for at least fifteen years. Not a living or well-adjusted woman anyway. Love was not on many of his patients’ minds, and his clinical bedside manner prevented him from seeing them in a romantic light. They were there for his help, not his affection.
    Other things he’d stumbled upon suggested that his foresight might be stunted because he’d strayed too far from the Fate’s chosen path for him. He had been ordered to procreate. The line of Phemonoe had to carry on, and he wasn’t getting any younger.
    Could it be possible that the Fates were sending him a companion? Was that why he’d stopped gleaning the future? If so, he thought, their timing was shit. His reflection in the office window looked tired, his gray hair sticking out from the knot he’d tied it in before his sauna meditations. How on earth was he expected to attract a mate in these conditions? Death certainly seemed the more likely option.
    It was past four in the morning, but he was still nowhere near sleep. His head spun with so many possibilities, a terrible whirlwind of self-projected outcomes, each one more disquieting than the last.
    He took a sharp breath and blinked stiffly, breaking eye contact with his reflection as he closed an open book. He would go for a run, he decided. A run brought everything into perspective. Plus, if he had to start courting women, he needed to stay in shape. Maybe the Fates would speak to him then. He would check later in his morning tea leaves.
    He stepped back through the bookcase entrance into his room and changed into a pair of gym shorts and sneakers. Then he untied his hair and brushed it out before tying it back again. The reflection in the mirror above his dresser didn’t look much better, but he knew that wouldn’t be happening until he managed a full night of sleep.
    It was still dark outside when he slipped out the side exit of Orpheus House. He stretched his arms across his chest as he made his way around to the front parking lot where there was more lighting. Once there, he paused to touch his toes and do a few lunges. Then he took off at a jog toward Caveat Road.
    Spero Heights wasn’t a large town by any stretch of the imagination. But it was more than enough for their little trio of a council to run. He’d been full of hopeful naivety when the project was first born. Pictures of crystalline utopias had danced through his head like sugarplums, and he imagined it had been the same for Graham and Selena. It took very little time for reality to sink in and ground them.
    Spero Heights was a success. He could say that much. It just didn’t come as clean or as easy as the fairytale they’d dreamed up. They were helping people. Though not everyone who came to them for help. And they were holding the place together financially and legally. As long as no one looked too closely, Spero Heights was just another tiny town not worthy of a dot on the map. And they intended to keep it that way.
    On the outside, the town wasn’t so incredibly unique, though for anyone who stayed more than a few days, the oddities began to raise questions. Most of all, it was the Midnight District they had to worry about.
    The town was amicably split for convenience sake. The four blocks that sat just north of town square catered to the vampires and nocturnal crowd, and was appropriately named the Midnight District. The vampires got along well enough with everyone else—there was a strict non-violence policy that granted all residents protection from each other, and warned them against inflicting violence on the human visitors that arrived in droves one weekend a year.
    The peace had to be vigilantly maintained if they wanted to protect the community, and that was why Dr. Delph had been commissioned to weed out troublemakers and outsiders before they became a problem. So far, he’d done a pretty good job. But if the