Shadow Burns: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Preternatural Affairs Book 4) by S.M. Reine Read Free Book Online Page B

tell you why, but it feels like serious trouble.”
    “Could that feeling have anything to do with the mass murder that happened there last night?”
    “Whatever. Don’t listen. I don’t care.” She took a sip of the potion. “The company Halloween party’s coming up on Friday. Are you going?”
    “Not a chance.” Normally, I had no problems socializing with my coworkers. We practically lived at the bar after work. But once you add in costumes, I’m out.
    I only needed to see Janet dressed as Trinity from The Matrix once to have nightmares for the rest of my life, sleeping potions or not.
    “I don’t want to go either. Let’s do something else that night.”
    “Like what?” I asked.
    Suzy shrugged. “Get drunk. Watch movies with the lights off so that trick-or-treaters don’t try to bother us. Whatever you like to do when you’re having ‘wild parties.’”
    Watch movies? She was speaking my language. “I did just get a few new shows on DVD.”
    “Great,” Suzy said. “Let’s binge watch a TV show on the night of the Halloween party. We can steal the candy jar from work before we leave and eat all the peanut butter cups and miniature bags of M&Ms ourselves.”
    That sounded like a perfect way to spend the night.
    I glanced at the calendar on my wall. The Halloween party was a few days after the Paradise Mile memorial.
    Suddenly, I wanted to tell Suzy that I wasn’t going to be available that night. That I wasn’t going to be around for some reason. But that made no sense. I didn’t have any plans.
    Why did it feel like I was going to be gone?
    I shook off the strange feeling.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s plan on doing that.”

    I didn’t sleep well that night.
    I’d gotten to bed earlier than usual, so when I looked at my bedside clock to find the glowing numbers reading 11:59, I was confused. It felt like I’d been asleep for hours, maybe days, but the clock said I’d been out for less than an hour.
    My ceiling was shadowed with the pattern of my miniblinds. Black and then blue and then black again, in bars that cut across the white paint from wall to wall. The light reflected off of a windshield as a car passed. It tossed a glassy glow on my wall for three seconds before vanishing.
    It was so hot. The blankets were tight around me, tangled up like I’d been thrashing in fever dreams.
    Everything felt strange.
    It was because I hadn’t taken the sleeping potion that evening. I had to be able to wake up to check on Suzy. On any other night, I would have been deep underneath the warm tide of dreamless unconsciousness.
    The fact I’d woken up hot with my pulse racing just meant that I was struggling with the lingering after-effects of nightmare thrall again—no big deal. Normal job hazard.
    Get up, get the blood moving, and I’d be fine.
    Standing was hard. Felt like gravity had tripled. But I stood, jogging shorts and shirt dripping with sweat, and staggered toward the door.
    The doorknob turned under my hand. I pushed it open.
    On the other side, I found a hallway. Not my hallway. This one had a low roof, a door at the end, a trap door on the floor in between.
    Everything was made of old wood. The wallpaper on the upper half of the walls was peeling at the corners. The faded peacock feather pattern was strangely yellow.
    It was the servant’s hallway from Paradise Mile.
    There was light coming from the crack between the trap door and surrounding floorboards. Bright light. Like someone had picked up the whole house and set it on the surface of the sun so that the blaze of fire was leaking through the cracks.
    I turned to go back into my bedroom, but the door had shut behind me. It wouldn’t open.
    I was trapped in the hallway. No way to go but forward.
    “This isn’t right,” I said. “I’m dreaming.”
    The fact that I felt so confident about the nature of the dream was worse, somehow, than believing it was reality. That wasn’t how dreams worked. You’re not supposed to know