He left just like he came—quiet.
Didn't buy a thing.
Didn't touch a thing.
Just tipped his head like a man leaving a sermon half-satisfied, and stepped back into the sun.
Tabby stood still long after the bell gave its lazy chime. Lace still clutched in her hand. Air still thick in her lungs. The silence that followed wasn't normal silence—it had teeth. A press behind the ears. The kind of quiet that follows something watching too long.
She shook it off.
Tried to.
But her mind was already walking circles around the shape of him.
That voice. That way of standing still. Like he'd been listening to something deeper than her words.
And Lord help her, her palms were still cold.
She cursed and turned back to her work table, half-disgusted with herself. Letting some random white man with good shoulders and a stare like a midnight storm get under her skin.
"Ain't nothin' but strange breath and boots," she muttered, reaching for a scrap of chalk. "Ain't even fine."
The lie didn't sit right in her mouth.
She leaned over her latest hem, pinning out the bottom for some grieving widow who'd insisted on a bustle and French lace like she was mourning in Paris, not Louisiana.
Her hand slipped.
"Shit—"
A prick. Deep. Sharp enough to pulse.
Tabby stuck her finger in her mouth out of habit. Warm metal taste bled across her tongue. Her eyes narrowed as the taste settled. She spit it out onto the rag beside her, like it offended her.
Then paused.
Looked at the door.
It was still closed. Nobody there.
And yet—
That same feeling.
Like breath at the back of her neck.
Like someone had leaned in, just close enough to smell the blood.
Tabby stood up straight, heart thumping a little too loud. She told herself it was nothing. Told herself she needed fresh air. Maybe a sweet tea and a smoke to settle the weird.
But when she walked home that evening—basket slung loose on her elbow, the streets dipped in amber dusk—she found herself glancing over her shoulder.
Not because she was scared.
Because something inside her was... curious.
Like a match too close to striking.
YOU ARE READING
𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐤
Vampire𝘈 𝙍𝙀𝙈𝙈𝙄𝘾𝙆 x 𝙊𝘾 𝙎𝙏𝙊𝙍𝙔: Tabby is a Southern seamstress with a stubborn spine, a honey-sweet voice, and no room for foolishness. But when Remmick crosses her path - all sharp eyes and strange hunger - the rules she's lived by start to te...
