The Dead of Sanguine Night by Travis Simmons Read Free Book Online Page B

close to the wall with just enough room for two people to sit behind it.
    Around the table were various adults in the late stages of life. A grandfather, Amaranth suspected by his balding white hair and withered face, sat at the head of the table. A portly woman and a thin man sat close to the wall. They looked of the age to be Lauren’s parents.
    “The rest of the family will be down shortly,” Lauren said.
    As if in response to her words, thumping sounded from upstairs.
    “Would you like some tea?” she asked Amaranth.
    “Yes, please,” Amaranth said, sitting down across from Lauren’s mother. “Thank you for sending your daughter after me.”
    The woman’s eyes were milky and didn’t seem to register that Amaranth was there. Maybe she was in the grips of another vision or something. Amaranth couldn’t be sure. She’d never been around seers before.
    “It’s very kind of you to accept me into your home,” Amaranth said to the grandfather at the head of the table. His eyes were dull, not quite as milky as the mother’s, but she bet his eyesight was failing. He stared straight ahead as well, taking no notice of what was happening around the table.
    In fact, the entire family seemed to be vacant from their own bodies, poised around the table as if Lauren was a little girl who’d set out her favorite dolls for tea.
    A moment of panic seized Amaranth. “Is there something wrong with your family?”
    Lauren smiled and sat a cup of steaming water before her. The smell of jasmine filled Amaranth’s nostrils, and she took a tiny sip of the hot liquid. It soothed her throat and washed away the growing panic. She imagined there wasn’t anything so strange about the family after all. The grandfather might have lost his sight in old age, and the mother was likely still in a trance, trying to sort out if Amaranth was evil or not. Who knew what seers looked like when they were in a trance?
    “Did your mother study her art at the Apothecarium?” Amaranth asked Lauren, who was busy at work behind her. Amaranth wasn’t sure that seers trained there, but with all the kinds of mancy they taught at the Apothecarium, she figured psychic forces would be among them.
    “No,” Lauren said. “We don’t…agree with the Apothecarium.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “Just personal issues with the headmaster,” Lauren said in a tone that said she didn’t want to talk more on the subject.
    “This is a very nice home you have here,” Amaranth said to the father, hoping that she might engage him in some kind of conversation. But, like the mother and the grandfather, stared straight ahead. Amaranth had the chilling thought that there might not be anything there behind his eyes, no soul, no thoughts…nothing.
    Amaranth shivered and looked away. “How long until sunrise?” she asked, suddenly wondering if she would rather be out on the street than inside this house with these vacant people.
    “Long enough for a good meal and a nice, long sleep,” Lauren said. Again, there was something behind her voice that said more than her words did. Whatever it was she was trying to say eluded Amaranth.
    A shadow passed over the mother’s eyes, but then was gone. Amaranth leaned forward, intent on her aged face, but the shadow didn’t return. Had she really seen anything?”
    “Here you go,” Lauren said, setting a plate piled high with beef and potatoes before Amaranth.
    Amaranth dug into the meat. Pink juices sluiced out of the beef, adding to the pool of gravy that dominated the plate. The smell was intoxicating: onions and garlic mingling with the aroma of butter potatoes and rich gravy. Her stomach growled. She bit into the meat and wondered if she’d ever tasted anything so amazing in all of her life.
    The light flickered. Amaranth looked up, and for a moment there wasn’t a silver chandelier above her illuminated with numerous candles but a tarnished chandelier that hung lopsided from the ceiling. One of the two chains that had