The Taste of Night by Vicki Pettersson Read Free Book Online

air wavered around me, letting curls of evanescent energy roll over my body in little shock waves, chills popping up over my limbs and core before enveloping my face, cool and light and tickling, like a thousand bees swarming gently to their hive. My mind began to hum with it, and I swayed, dizzy, suddenly aware of myself as if from the outside; a bright torch of a woman with her eyes closed as she rocked on an unseen wind, one hand clasped tight around a stick dripping with blood as the light slowly drained from her cautionary glyph.
    This was the aureole. The dictionary defines it as a circle of light that surrounds the representation of a holy person, like the halos emanating from an angel or the Madonna or a saint. There also happens to be a great restaurant in Vegas by that name. But none of those definitions applied here. Here it meant being infused with the ability to walk throughthe world for twelve hours, imperceptible by Shadows or Light, unscented and untouchable. Now I could stand inches away from the Tulpa, and he wouldn’t know I was there. And even if he did, there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.
    When it was over—or at least when the droning had lessened to a point where I could once again hear my own thoughts—I inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly. There was nothing of Liam in the air. I glanced down at the weapon in my hand. His conduit possessed no scent marking it as belonging to him either. It was just a stick now. I’d erased his olfactory impression wholly.
    I threw the stick aside, almost at the woman’s feet, and glanced down. The arm Liam had cut with the tip of my conduit had mended, a mere scar now, and my injured knee was solid beneath my weight. My spine was straight and healed. I could be pierced by a thousand weapons now, even my own, and deflect them all like unwanted kisses.
    I glanced over to find the remaining Shadow eyeing me nervously. Released from the fetters of fear and certain death, I saw what I hadn’t before. She’d orchestrated this whole thing. No wonder my glyph hadn’t kicked into gear. I’d been in no danger from her. And, I saw, she was young. Her long ponytail swished to one side as she asked, “You going to kill me?”
    Without thinking, I shook my head.
    A smile began its upward climb on her face. “I knew it,” she said, thumping her fist against her thigh. “I knew you could be turned. The others said you never would, but I knew.”
    “I’m not turned,” I said, holding out my hand. She returned my conduit, and I tucked it back behind me. “I killed him, didn’t I?”
    “You gave him Last Rites,” she pointed out. “You allowed him remembrance in your mythos.”
    I shrugged. “It’s what I’d have wanted.”
    “And if he’d refused to tell you his name?” she asked, tilting her head the other way.
    “He was a Shadow agent,” I said, meaning I’d have killed him anyway.
    “I’m a Shadow agent,” she said. I raised a brow, and she dropped her eyes. “Well, I will be soon. And you didn’t kill me.”
    I really should kill her, I thought, nodding slowly. I would kill her. But there were things I needed to know first. “How’d you find me?”
    She shrugged nonchalantly, but there was pride in the movement. “I saw you leave the bachelorette auction. I saw you enter the portal after that.”
    That wasn’t what I meant, and she knew it. I’d faked my death, disengaged from family and friends, and I had been careful to steer clear of my old habits and haunts. So even if Regan had been studying the life I’d left behind, she shouldn’t have been able to find me. “You see a lot,” I murmured, but didn’t press. I’d find out what I needed to know…one way or another.
    “Including your fingers. Like mine.” She offered me a small smile, and wiggled her fingers. The marblelike smoothness of the tips reflected unnaturally in the aquarium’s soft light. She saw this too, and her smile widened as she tapped on the wall of