Jillian Cade by Jen Klein

Author:Jen Klein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult Mystery / Thriller
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2015-06-18T21:47:56+00:00

Seventeen

Her skin wasn’t pale in the way people usually say someone’s skin is pale. Not like a Caucasian baby’s or a redhead’s. It wasn’t even pale the way milk is pale. It was luminescent, a glowing white, like the moon on a clear night, when it is full and low and seems too close to be real. Unreal and otherworldly. And way, way too close.

Sky and I stood at the foot of the platform, staring up at her. She was seated on the wooden throne—the bartender hadn’t lied; it was definitely a freaking throne—staring down at us. I couldn’t get a read on her expression. Maybe I didn’t want to. My eyes roved over her outfit: very black and very shiny and very tight, especially her shirt. She looked like her naked body had been painted with ink. Her hands were splayed on the armrests, and her fingernails were long and red. Carvings of wings rose up by the sides of her head. Beside her, on a high side table, was a vase of flowers.

Black calla lilies.

I took a step closer, Sky lagging behind me on his neck belt. Misty, the fake succubus, whoever or whatever she was, leaned forward. Her eyes were very dark. I couldn’t discern the pupils. I felt as if I were looking into wells with no bottom. Her lips were as red as her fingernails. When she spoke, her voice was the purr of a giant panther. “This is new,” she said.

Poser or not, I had to hand it to her: she had the succubus act down.

Sky nudged me from behind. I held one of the glasses up toward Misty. As she accepted it, I caught a glint of a thick gold ring she wore on her left hand. “Am I to consider this an application?” she asked in that throaty animal voice.

Was there a correct answer?

“It’s more like a conversation,” I finally managed.

I felt those dark eyes scan me. “You’re not as deferential as most,” Misty said. She held her glass in my direction. “Trade with me.”

She wasn’t stupid either. She knew we could have put something in her drink. But Sky was sharp too and had foreseen this: the same thing was in all the drinks. He poked me in the back, and I raised my glass. A smile flashed over Misty’s face, and instead of taking the drink, she clinked her own against it. “To conversation,” she said, raising her vodka-cranberry-blood cocktail to her lips.

A test then.

I paused with my glass held out before me. If I actually drank this, it would be the single most disgusting thing I had ever done . . .

In that moment of indecision, Misty’s face changed. Her eyes narrowed to slits and became even darker than before. Her spine straightened. She seemed to grow larger on her throne.

For the first time, a coil of true fear tightened around my abdomen. It occurred to me that it actually didn’t matter what I believed; Misty herself may have very well believed that she was a real, live succubus.

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