Page 19 of Coveted

Falling silent, I blink hard in the dense gray light, because the image before me doesn’t make sense. It can’t be real.

Nausea seesawing in my gut, like my nervous system understands before I do, I lean forward for a better look.

The guy’s a student I recognize, but his head is all wrong.

His ear crushes against his right shoulder, and his purple tongue protrudes from his mouth like a slug. Though his eyes are open, he stares into the middle distance instead of clocking me. A red-and-white mess sticks up from his neck, gleaming and smelling of metal.

My nausea doubling, I realize the branch snap I heard wasn’t actually a branch.

It was his neck breaking.

His head was nearly ripped off, left to hang like he’s a destroyed puppet.

An eerie groan escapes my mouth, and my body feels like ants are crawling all over me.

What the fuck? What have I stumbled into?

After drawing a deep, horrified breath, I scream and scream and scream.

CHAPTER 5

Lucan

Sadie compulsively plays with the end of her long, glossy braid.

She does that when she’s nervous, which has been a lot lately.

“You saw nobody else at the scene?” asks the detective for the millionth fucking time. “Only the deceased?”

“I saw a shadow,” she says. “Someone leaving.”

“Did this shadow have any distinguishing features that you recall?” he asks.

I lean forward, my eyes trained on her face through the screen.

Her voice is barely above a whisper. “I don’t think so.”

I lean back.

“And you were familiar with the deceased?” presses the cop. “What was his name?”

A slight crease forms on her forehead, like she’s reliving the moment she found the mutilated body. “Parker Hale.”

The interrogation room has only a table and two chairs. Oh, and a camera attached to the ceiling. I’m watching a live feed on the monitors in my study.

I couldn’t miss out on staring at her uninterrupted while hearing her statement to the police. Her lips trembling while she speaks about my freshly dead cousin shouldn’t arouse me, yet here we are.

My father negotiated access to the local station’s camera feeds years ago, back when he suspected I might need the intervention.

And I did. Good old Dad.

Now and then, her gaze drifts up to the camera. When she does this, excitement kicks through my veins. It’s almost like we’re face to face.

Can she feel me watching her? Is that why she keeps looking up?

Probably wishful thinking on my behalf. More like she’s exhausted, traumatized, and unused to being on camera that she knows about.

When the Darkbloom bells tolled over the green to mark the end of the Founder’s Run, it was her screams tearing through their melody.