In the Face of Darkness (Lily Culpepper Book 1) by Sarah Dell Read Free Book Online Page B

him. 
    I caught myself watching Matthias as he drove.  I was confused about how I felt about him.  I barely knew who he was now.  He could be completely different from the Matthias I knew ten years ago.  I also didn’t know what his motivations were and that made him dangerous.  He said he worked for an organization that could keep me safe on their Island.
    I didn’t want him to catch me watching him, so I turned away to look out the window.  He claimed that he could save me.  It was tempting to believe everything that he told me, but I knew that it would only make it harder for me when it turned out to be false.  When Endora found us and killed him I would be heartbroken, but I had to try.  I knew he wasn’t just going to stop trying.  He had said he would die trying, but I hoped that wouldn’t happen.  I just hoped that when Endora found us Matthias would be spared.
    I knew that nothing good could come from what I was feeling.  There were only two possible outcomes.  I could fall in love with Matthias, he would not feel the same way about me, and I would have my heart broken. Or, he could feel the same way and I would have to go back to Endora and spend the rest of my unnaturally long life missing him.
    Matthias wasn’t kidding about the long drive.  The clock on the dash of the old Ford truck that Matthias drove didn’t work, but I guessed that we had been driving for over an hour before Matthias brought the truck to a stop in front of a street lined with small shops.
    “Fortunes Told Here” I read with just a touch of sarcasm as we approached the shop.
    “She only pretends to be a fake fortune teller, but she is really has the sight” Matthias told me.
    “So you feel the need to see the future?” I asked.
    “She doesn’t only see the future.  She sees everything that a person is, was, and will be” he said as we walked into the fortune teller’s shop.  The first thing I noticed as was the sweet heavy fragrance of incense.  Heavy dark blue curtains covered the walls giving the room an otherworldly quality.  Across the room there was a doorframe laced with beads that fell in a curtain to the floor.  There was a sign on the second beaded curtain that stated the fortune teller was with a client.  Matthias sat down on the blue velvet couch in the waiting room as if he had been in the shop often, and I sat down next to him.
    I looked up when I heard the sound of the beaded curtain being opened.  A young woman left the fortune teller’s shop with a worried look on her face.  I thought that whatever the fortune teller had told her couldn’t have been good.  I wondered how she ever made any money if she always told her clients the truth.  People didn’t go to fortune tellers for the truth; they went for the pretty lies about how their lives will turn out ok.
    “I only take one customer at a time, and its twenty dollars for a reading” a tall, thin middle aged woman dressed in blue silk scarfs said as she walked across the waiting room.
    “She is the one here for a reading” Matthias said.  “She needs to know what she is”.
    “She is a vampire, and I don’t read vampires” she said.
    “You know she is more than a vampire” Matthias said.
    “I know that she could be more, but right now she is only a vampire” she said.  “I can show her what she could be, but it is going to cost you”.
    “I assumed as much; you can take your usual fee” he said.
    “For this I want more” she said.
    “No, you’re not getting more” Matthias said.
    “I want twice my usual amount.  That’s my price.  If you are not willing to pay then leave and stop wasting my time” she said.
    “What does she want?” I asked.
    “The same thing you take from humans; his life force” she said.
    “You want his blood?” I asked and she made a disgusted face.
    “Drinking blood is such a crude way of transferring life force” she said.
    “Won’t you die if she takes your life force?” I