The Heartbeat Thief by AJ Krafton, Ash Krafton Read Free Book Online Page A

word her mother could not bear to say. The word fell like a stone from her lips, the familiar dread rising up through her like a wretched fog. She knew that dread. It was the same phantom that had enshrouded her when grandmother passed, and it had never quite left.
    “Oh, my dearest,” Mrs. Fyne said. “I don’t know what I would do if I ever lost you. Please, please.” She wrapped her arms around Senza’s shoulder and clutched her. “Don’t ever die. I couldn’t bear it.”
    “No, mother.” Senza’s voice was muffled by the heaps of taffeta upon Mrs. Fyne’s shoulders. “I couldn’t bear it, either.”
     
    At the wake, Senza was disconsolate.
    Felicity Keating looked like a sleeping angel. Not a hair out of place. A snapped neck left little outward damage to distract mourners. Senza had taken her obligatory turn casket-side before retreating to the far corner of the opposite parlor.
    Most of the family remained in the formal room where poor Felicity had been displayed, while her friends found solace in small, hushed circles. The engagement had been widely reported upon, and had become a matter of public ownership. With Felicity lost, all felt as though they had been widowed.
    Senza stood apart from them. She saw their faces, heard their muted voices, but had withdrawn deep into her memories of her Grandmother’s passing. Slowly, like seeping flood waters filling the lowlands, a coldness pooled within her, rising inch by dreadful inch, closer and closer to her ever-sinking heart. That coldness was fear.
    She pressed her kerchief against her lips, trying to hide a grimace that twisted her insides. She should be comforting her friends, murmuring kind, gentle words, urging them toward peace and, yet—all she felt was a growing selfishness.
    She could be lying in that beribboned box. She could be stretched out, cold and still, passed the end of her time, with nothing to show for it.
    Tomorrow may never come, and what you do today will have to be enough to last.
    Echoes of her grandmother’s voice dragged her deeper into the clutches of despair. The thumping of her pulse throbbed in her ears, her heart lobbing against her ribs.
    Suddenly, the lace about her neck felt as tight as a noose. She gasped for breath, swaying.
    A vaguely familiar young man, who’d been standing with a small group, noticed her distress. Breaking away from his conversation, he rushed to her side and steadied her. “You must sit, Miss Fyne. You look quite pale. I’ll get you a drink.”
    He steered her to a settee and set her down with the utmost care, as if she were porcelain. Senza nodded and waved him on with a feigned look of gratitude, watching as he rounded the corner.
    Once he was out of sight, she hopped up from her seat and hurried to the door before he could return. She escaped to the open air of the courtyard and paced out her growing anxiety.
    Felicity’s casket was visible through the windows. No escape.
    She had to get away.
    Pushing open the garden gate, she hurried down the steps into the rose garden. Their fragrances hung thickly in the evening air, as cloying as the blooms that had been cut and brought inside to flank the casket.
    Suddenly, the air changed, almost imperceptibly, like a shadow slipping in front of the sun. A dip in temperature, a stilling of the breeze. Those subtleties were all that alerted her that she was no longer alone in the garden.
    The sun was near to setting, sky still ablaze with the fires of the dying day. Long shadows stretched across the grounds, climbing like spiders up the sides of the house. She saw no one. Senza turned a circle, eyes searching the paths and the veranda. No one at all.
    Until she glanced down. Upon the ground stretched out her shadow. A second shadow slid up alongside hers, taller, broader. She froze, her breath snagged in her throat.
    His voice was like the tolling of a bell, carried on a sultry wind. “That frightens you, doesn’t it?”
    Low and close to her ear the