“And your dress! Oh my god, you’re just so pretty.” The drunk girl cups her hands around her face, looking me up and down. I changed before we went out into a tight black dress and dark purple heels.
“Thanks,” I tell her again and look at myself in the mirror. “It’s not very comfortable, though. Well, maybe it’s just the bra.” The pushup bra makes my boobs look ridiculously big, achieving the look I wanted perfectly.
I pull my phone from my purse to take a mirror selfie to send to Lucas, because right now that seems like the best idea in the world. He’s either still at the bar or back at home, I’m not sure. But now that I’m thinking about him, I suddenly miss him. Specifically, his cock.
Holding my phone in my hand in anticipation for Lucas’s reply to my text, I leave the bathroom and go out to find my friends. Naomi and Eliza have a group of men around them. Nicole and Kristy seemed to have given up talking to the hottie by the bar and are dancing together on the middle of the dance floor. I step to the side, letting a group of bachelorettes pass by me to get to the bathroom, and smile, looking at my friends again.
I love them so fucking much.
My heel catches on the floor and I drop my phone in an attempt to catch my balance.
“Shit,” I mumble and drop to the ground to look for it. Someone walks by and kicks it under a table. Positive no one will notice, I hold out my hand and telekinetically bring it to me. Smiling triumphantly, I straighten back up. My phone dings with a text from Lucas.
“Please be a dick pic,” I say out loud and then laugh. Right as I’m holding the phone up to my face to use the facial recognition to unlock it, something vibrates through the air. I lower the phone and whirl around.
The last time I was drunk in a bar and felt the energy shift like this, a vampire was feeding off an unwilling human in the basement. This, though…this doesn’t feel like a vampire.
It feels bigger, which doesn’t make sense. I’m drunk and confused. Yeah…that has to be it. I hold up my phone again and this time I get so far as unlocking it. Before I can read Lucas’s words, the same vibration echoes through the bar. I’m not paying attention to what I’m doing as I look around again, and somehow, I’ve accidentally called Lucas.
“Oh, hey,” I say after hearing him call my name. “I didn’t mean to call you.”
“I was hoping you were calling for phone sex.”
I close my eyes and feel the world spin around me. “Hah, that kind of sounds nice. Though real sex would be better.”
“Oh, it will be. Are you having fun?”
“I think so.” I take a breath and open my eyes again, stepping back into the hall that leads to the bathroom. The hall keeps going, leading to a door with an emergency exit. The same vibrating energy pulses through the air, and I slowly start to walk toward the exit door.
“You think?” Lucas laughs. “Maybe you need more to drink.”
“There’s a vibration.”
“Are you trying to be kinky?”
“No, it’s like…it’s like that scene in Jurassic Park when they’re hiding in the car and the T-Rex is stomping. It makes the water in the cup ripple. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Yeah, I do, but I’m not following.”
“I’m not really following either.” I stop walking and lean against the wall. “Are you still at work?”
“Yes.”
“Loser.”
Lucas laughs again. “Go have fun with your friends, and don’t worry about vibrating until you get back into bed with me.”
“Sounds good to me.” I end the call, put the phone in my purse and head back to the dance floor. I’m in the middle of a sea of people when I get that same weird feeling, but this time it’s paired with another feeling, one I’m all too familiar with.
It sinks heavy in my stomach and makes my nerves tingle.
Shit. I know this feeling well and know it’s usually not wrong. Because when I feel like something bad is going to happen, it always does.
Chapter 11
Get it together.
Tonight is all about having fun with my friends. No stress. No worry. No following creepy feelings that are probably the result of too many vodka tonics. I hold my arms out to my sides and shake my hands, ridding myself of the access energy that’s making me feel all jittery.
I go back out to the main area of the bar, and Kristy pulls me onto the dance floor. Twenty minutes later, I’m hot and sweaty and still haven’t shaken the feeling that something is lurking around the corner, waiting to attack.
There’s a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant across the street from the bar that’s open late, no doubt making a killing from all the drunk people who walk over night after night. I get a hotdog—Chicago style, of course—and a Coke simply for the caffeine. I sit on a bench along the street while I eat, watching people mill in and out of the bar.
I take my time eating, enjoying the little reprieve away from all the people at the bar. When I’m finished, I ball up the hot dog wrapper, impressed I didn’t get any mustard on my dress. I throw away the wrapper and walk down to the corner to cross the street and go back inside. I’m sobering up little by little and will no doubt need to down a drink or two to catch up with my friends.
It’s a little after midnight, and the line to get into the bar is longer now than it was when we got here about an hour ago. I already bespelled the bouncer and can easily walk right past everyone in line.
“Hey,” some girl shouts, angry that I’m bypassing the line. I turn around to tell her to just come along with me and stop throwing a fit like a baby, but something else catches my attention.
Light from the streetlamps above us illuminate the face of a man standing at the back of the line, and I swear his eyes glowed blue for the half-second our gazes met. It wasn’t quite as bright and brilliant as the blue-eyed man, but there was definitely something not human about that guy. A bit of shock crosses his face, like he’s surprised I looked his way.
My breath leaves me, and I spin so fast I almost lose my balance in these stupid heels. I take off, running as fast as I can down the sidewalk.
“Hey!” I call after the man, who’s briskly walking away from me. The streetlight above me starts to flicker, and I don’t think I’m the one doing it. I push through people waiting in line, trying to find the man with the maybe-glowing blue eyes. It sounds crazy even to me, but I’m not willing to chalk this up to having too much to drink or a trick of the light.
I know what I felt, and now I know what I saw.
The man, who’s tall with dark eyes and dark hair, moves into an alley alongside the bar. I take off, heels clicking and clacking. Loose gravel crunches under my feet, and the light dims as I move away from the building. The alley comes to a dead end between the surrounding buildings, with just enough room for a garbage truck to back up and empty the dumpster.
The door leading to the bar is locked from the inside, and the doors and windows of the building butting up to it have been boarded up. Colorful graffiti covers the plywood and I stop, looking up and down the alley.
“Hello?” I call out. There’s nowhere for that man to have gone. The hair on the back of my neck starts to prickle, and the bad feeling presses down on me even stronger than before. It’s hot outside, yet a chill goes through me. “Where the hell did you go?”
I can hear the bass thumping from inside the bar. Bringing my arms close to my body, I inch forward, looking at the buildings. There has to be a way inside one of these. He can’t just disappear, and I know he came down here.
The dumpster, which is so full it’s almost overflowing, stinks to high heaven, thanks to the heat no doubt. I cover my nose with my hair and walk around it, holding my right hand out in front of me just in case the guy is a crazy person in hiding, waiting to attack me.
But he’s not behind the dumpster.
Gagging from the smell of thrown-away food left to fester in the summer heat, I hurry away from the dumpster, feeling even more confus
ed. It’s dark back here, and I know I’m missing something. I look out at the street, making sure no one is watching, and conjure a string of blue magic to light the area.
And that’s when I see it, a gray feather floating on the top of a puddle. I ball my fists, turning the string of magic into an energy ball, and toss it up into the air. It hovers above me like a lightbulb, shining down on the feather.
I crouch down and pick it up. The moment my fingers make contact, something passes through me, something I can’t even begin to explain to myself because it makes no sense.
The feather is familiar. Holding it in my hand is giving me a sense of peace, making me feel like everything is going to be all right.
Dirty water drips from the tip, but I don’t care. I run my finger up the spine of the feather. If this were from a bird, the thing has to have wings that span at least six feet. I hold the feather up a little closer to the energy ball, needing to get a better look.
It’s deep gray in color with flecks of iridescent silvers. Birds aren’t that color. Hell, nothing in nature is that color. It’s so beautiful, and I can’t stop staring.
Loose gravel crunches under someone’s feet behind me. I put out the ball of energy, shove the feather in my purse, and turn around, holding out my hand to stop whoever is coming toward me. It’s a young guy, probably a few days shy of his twenty-first birthday, and is here with a fake ID, no doubt. He’s staggering, with shoulder-length brown hair hanging around his face.
“Bar’s that way,” I tell him and point at the other end of the alley. “And if you came back here to take a piss, find another dark alley. This one is occupied.”
The guy keeps staggering forward. How drunk is he?
A cold finger reaches out and moves down my spine. My hand flies to the back of my neck, reaching for whoever touched me. I whip around, heels catching on the uneven ground. My ankle twists, and I throw out a hand to stop my fall. I hit the dumpster hard, sending a shock of pain up through my wrist.
“Dammit.”
The man advances and grabs my shoulders.
“Hey,” I yell and bring my leg up, kneeing him hard in the balls. He doesn’t even react to the pain. I telekinetically shove him away and he staggers back a few feet. He raises his head, and the dim light from above shines down on his face. The veins on his neck and cheeks are raised and swollen, appearing like black lines against his pale skin.