Sex, Lies & Magic

Fourteen

Things never recovered completely between Craven and I. We didn't break up, but we spent less time together. More or less things slipped back to the way they were before, with me spending every waking moment surrounded by my friends.

The week before Halloween nothing else happened and I found myself with my headphones in again. Dancing around the bookstore, I shelved a new arrival in a fancy display. It took all afternoon to put the poster and specialized shelf decorations up.

Dana stood at the counter getting ready to close up as I gyrated around making sure everything looked like the picture that came with the promotional material. I tuned out the shop around me completely wallowing in my own little world. So when I spun around and found myself crashing into the chest of a fairly attractive tall man with dirty blonde hair, I was six different kinds of mortified.

I yanked my headphones out and quickly bent down to pick up the books I knocked out of his hand.

"Are you okay? I'm so sorry." I gathered the books up and held them out.

"Don't worry about it." He smirked down at me and the only adjective his smile brought to mind was wolfish. Something about the way his eyes lingered on me coaxed me into a state of uneasiness. "We mutants need to stick together." His accent was heavenly, all the best parts of British with a certain darkness, which almost made me forget what he said puzzled me.

"What?"

He pointed to his eyes. "We both have heterochromia."

I peered up at his blue irises. They were a warm shade of blue if such a thing were possible, but with a halo of gold around the pupil. Both eyes were the same color exquisitely normal.

"No, we don't."

"The halo I have is centralized heterochromia. Yours is complete."

"Oh, I didn't know that." I blushed a little.

"Knowledge. My gift to you." He glanced at the display. "I was wondering when Midnight to Remember would finally come out." He snatched a book from the shelf.

"Oh?"

"Yes, I devour Urban Fantasy. Any author. I'm all about everything that goes bump in the night."

"Really? You don't look the type."

"And what's the type?"

"Not attractive guys in their twenties?"

"C'mon can't you see the appeal of pretty things, which could either give you the night of your life or the last night of your life?"

"That right there is serial killer talk." We shared a laugh and I pushed some of my hair behind my ear. My smile fell and I shook my head. "I could see how literally flirting with danger has the possibility of appealing to some people. But we live in a world where most of this stuff is real. If you want to have one of those experiences all it takes is a visit to Abaddon any night of the week and there's a fifty-fifty shot of going home with one of those night bumping individuals." Abaddon was a night club owned by a vampire, everyone knew that was where you went if you wanted to hook up with the preternatural. I never saw the appeal, but I was one of the preternatural—technically twice over.

"Speaking from personal experience?"

My cheeks burned as I cleared my throat. "I should probably get back to making sure this is set up."

Because I have a boyfriend... who won't sleep with me.

"So what does a bookstore clerk like you usually do after work?"