His eyeballs itched to shift back toward the bed, but he kept them focused downward as his fingers set into slow, deliberate motion, pressing the keys.
E-M-B-E-R
He tappedENTERlike she’d demonstrated. The screen changed, but to his disappointment, there was nothing about Ember. Only the definition of the word, a list of locations that bore it in their names, and a few images of red and orange glowing coals.
Where was his witch? How could he findout more about her?
With painstaking concentration, he tried to move the little arrow to the box he’d written inside. After several tries, he finally determined the angle at which he had to hold his finger so his claw wouldn’t interfere with the strange pad.
He added another word to his search.
EMBER WITCH
This time, different images appeared—women in pointed hats wielding fire. None of them even remotely resembled his Ember.
Frowning, he let his eyes roam over the laptop. It was a strange thing, undoubtedly, but it possessed a wondrousness that could not be denied. Her granting him its use had been an opportunity, and he was determined to make the most of it.
If he could not learn about the woman who’d summoned him, he would learn about her world instead. He knew his time here would be far more bearable if he was more familiar with his surroundings.
He began with a simple but important question, though the question mark took no small amount of fiddling to produce, as the key it was printed on seemed predisposed to creating a slash symbol on the screen.
WHERE AM I?
His education on the modern world began with reading about the town of Salem, Massachusetts and its four hundred years of history. It seemed somehow fitting that the place Ember called home had existed for nearly the same length of time Nyte had been gone.
He read about the infamous witch trials, in which nineteen people had been hanged, one man had been pressed to death under stones, and five others had perished due to poor conditions in the jails holding them. Death was part of the mortal world. Nyte had never given it much thought; countless humans had died during his existence, more than he could evercount, and some of those lives had been claimed by his own hands. But these deaths stood out to him, as none of the accused seemed to have been actual witches—nor had they been guilty of the alleged crimes.
Was the abundance of witch-related shops and décor in the town now a reaction to that injustice?
The information on Salem shifted to its role as an important port city in the centuries following that dark chapter, having dealt in significant international trade. But as shipping interests had shifted to larger cities, the town had changed its focus to manufacturing.
It seemed this place was a prime example of the way human technology and interests had been in flux for all the years Nyte had been gone, how their civilization changed as swiftly and frequently as the wind.
Nyte expanded his searches from there, sometimes following trails of information as they veered into different subjects, sometimes exploring things he’d seen or heard during the day with Ember. He devoured the information with surprising ravenousness. He’d spent so long observing the human world, and he must’ve forgotten just how fascinating he’d always found it during his self-imposed exile.
Only when a soft moan broke the silence in the room did he realize that he’d been at it for hours and the night had advanced considerably toward morning. His eyes darted to the bed, where Ember stirred, rolling from her side onto her back.
Carefully, Nyte set the laptop on the floor beside him and stood up. His tail swayed behind him as he padded toward her, but his attention was on the sleeping female rather than his own body. He stared down at her from beside the bed.
Her arms were up, hands resting on the pillow to either side of her head with fingers slightly curled. A few strands of silver hair had escaped her bun, one of them resting over hercheek. Her face was serene, and as beautiful as ever. The blanket had shifted with her movement, its top now below her chest. He watched, transfixed, as the slow rise and fall of her breathing made the material of her nightgown draw taut over her breasts.
She looked so soft, so warm and inviting. So tantalizing. He needed but to slip beneath the covers and he’d be next to her with that voluptuous body against his.
He balled his fists at his sides, ignoring the bite of his claws into his palms.
I don’t need that, however much I want it.
He was a nocturnus, an immortal demon of the night. He didn’tneeda mortal for anything. He could find happiness and fulfillment on his own.
Perhaps that was true. Perhaps he could. But those things had eluded him for centuries. Impossible as it seemed, he’d been entirely lost…even though he’d been right where he had trapped himself the entire time.
Yet as he gazed upon this witch, whose life would run its course in a blink of his eyes, he saw something ephemeral, made indescribably lovely and moving in its lack of permanence. There was a spark in his Ember like he’d not witnessed in any immortal creature, a passion more powerful and pure than any he’d encountered, paired with such kindness…
And it existed despite the loneliness she carried in her heart.
Delicately, he reached forward. The backs of his fingers brushed her forehead as he moved the loose strand of hair aside, guiding it behind her ear. Ember’s mouth curled into the smallest of smiles, and something inside Nyte’s chest thawed.
She wished for you, Nyte.
