“Whoa—You okay?”
Suyin didn’t even hear her.
She was frozen in place, staring at an unmistakable tall figure standing all the way across the club. He was in the darkest corner, but she knew that silhouette well. Tall, slender, broad shouldered.
Staring right at her.
The fucking park creep was here. He’d followed her to the club.
Unlike the park, however, the club wasn’t completely dark, even in the corner where he lurked, and for the first time, she could make out his features. Most startling of which was an incredible head of long, straightwhitehair. White, not blond. His skin was pale, and his bone structure was flawless, his face a picture of symmetry.
He was stupidly gorgeous. He looked like an angel. He was almosttoopretty, and she squinted, trying to find at least one flaw.
It was his cheekbones, she decided. They were too sharp, and the hollow shadow cast beneath them gave his face a gaunt look.
She stared, frozen in place, and he stared back.
Why did it matter that he was attractive? He was still the creep who was stalking her. Was she really so shallow that knowing he was hot changed how she felt about that?
It didn’t, she decided.
She was pissed off. She was tired of being afraid and angry at this douchebag for making her feel that way. Yeah, it was mostly the dreams, but this lurker wasn’t helping. Who did he think he was, standing in a park at night, watching her? He didn’t have anything better to do with his life? He didn’t have a fucking job?
“Hold my beer,” she said, and she shoved it into a confused Iris’s hands.
“What—?”
She spun back around and … he was gone.
Fuck.Where had he gone? She searched the room—
There.He was pushing through the crowd, moving rapidly toward the front exit.
He’d pulled a hood over his bright white hair, but it couldn’t hide the lengths falling down his torso over his black clothing, nor could it disguise the height that had him looming over everyone, despite the way he hunched forward as if trying to diminish his size.
The fact that he was suddenly in a hurry to escape made her instincts prickle. Images of her dreams flitted across her mind, putting all her senses on red alert.
But she’d never been one to back down from a challenge. Whatever kept her from aging also gave her more strength than a woman her size should have, even with training, and she healed from wounds faster than was normal.
There were witches, like Lily and Iris, with rare special abilities. But they wereabilities, something they had to train and practice to use. For Suyin, it just happened naturally, and she didn’t understand why.
But knowing she could lay out a grown man with one punch made her fearless, and she was sick of waiting. Day by day, the tension built as she waited for some unnamed darkness to overtake her or some catastrophic event to occur. She was sick of checking over her shoulder, putting up ward after ward and never feeling like it was enough. She wanted a confrontation. Sheneededit.
Without another word to Iris, Suyin went after him.
He was moving rapidly toward the exit, and though he hadn’t looked over his shoulder to see her in pursuit, she was sure he was trying to escape before she caught up to him.
She pushed forward, weaving through the crowd. Her determination turned to foreboding as she watched his fluid movements ahead of her.
He moved with no care for who stood in his way. While she did the same to an extent, this was … too much. He walked straight forward without turning his shoulders to avoid hitting people or adjusting his steps to dodge others, even if their backs were turned and they didn’t see him coming. He just cut right through them.
People stumbled into one another, and he paid them no mind. He didn’t look back. He didn’t break stride. It waslike he was bushwhacking through a dense forest, swatting branches out of his face. Or mosquitoes.
He reached the exit, where someone was blocking the way, and he relocated that person by wrapping a palm all the way around their face and setting them aside. By the head. It wasn’t aggressive or malicious. It was methodical. Cold. It was one of the most bizarrely disturbing things Suyin had ever seen.
He passed through the door and disappeared from view. Cursing, she increased her pace but was unable to summon the complete lack of fucks given to shove people aside as he had. And being as short as she was, that meant she had to do a lot of dodging and side-stepping.
She stepped outside only a moment later, but she already knew it was too late. She scanned the sidewalk in both directions for any sign of an unusually tall, hooded stranger with long white hair streaming behind him.
