by Black, Tasha
She pressed through the crowd as the music swelled. But none of the faces were familiar.
Just as she was about to lose her patience, the bodies in front of her parted.
He stood directly under the largest chandelier, wide shoulders set, silvery blond hair shimmering. She knew him at once, even though his face was too obscured by shadows for her to recognize.
She went to him, her feet moving of their own accord.
When he stepped forward she could see those blue eyes, that elegant jawline and the fierce expression, the tousled hair that always made it look like he’d just rolled out of bed.
It was MacGregor. Of course it was.
It always was.
I’m asleep.
But it felt so real, the scratch of the gown, the faint scent of rose petals.
MacGregor took her hands.
“You came back,” he said, one eyebrow arched.
“I always come back to you,” she told him.
In her dreams, Parker always said what she meant. She didn’t hide behind coyness or sarcasm.
When he took her in his arms, the happiness she felt seemed to light up the room.
No.
The room was actually growing brighter, the chandelier above glowing like a camp fire.
“You’re mine,” he told her, his voice like smoldering coals.
Parker felt her body flood with need, every cell of her aware of him, unfurling.
The crowd slid away, they watching quietly from the edges of the ballroom as he spun and twirled her, his big hands maddeningly gentle.
Parker met his gaze and nearly lost herself in an ocean of desire. If she thought she needed him, it was nothing compared to the longing she saw in those eyes. He needed so desperately to possess her, it was causing him physical pain. She could feel it.
But the song was far from over.
Parker looked for a clock. Surely there was some ending to this party, some moment of release.
But there wasn’t a timepiece of any kind. There was nothing on the walls at all.
Nothing but their shadows, dancing along with them.
Parker watched her shadowy twin spin and float in the arms of her lover. She and her silhouette moved in perfect tandem.
Until they didn’t.
“No,” she murmured.
But it was happening anyway.
Shadow-Parker stretched and elongated, her hair going off in witchy spikes.
And the shadow of her lover slid out of shape until his ears were pointed and his aquiline nose was snout-like.
Before Parker’s horrified eyes the shadow line around the whole room licked up the walls like flames, pulsing and throbbing with hideous life.
She wrenched herself out of MacGregor’s arms.
Stop, stop, she begged the dark magic.
But the shadows were already flickering along the ceiling, moving to their own rhythm.
Somewhere an unseen clock began to toll.
At the edges of the room, the dancers clung to each other, staring up at the ceiling in terror.
Parker pushed past them, following an instinct that led her toward the doorway, not caring what she might find once she went through it.
Before she reached it, a dark figure appeared, blocking her way.
Where MacGregor’s hair was golden, this man’s was as black as night. His pale skin glowed in the remains of the lamplight.
“Parker,” the stranger said, his voice deep and harsh. “Come with me.”
She gazed into his eyes. They were impossibly dark.
“Parker,” she heard MacGregor’s call from the other side of the ballroom, stirring something in her very blood.
She turned back to him.
But the stranger’s hand closed around her wrist.
A faint humming sound echoed form somewhere far away, and she felt herself being pulled, not out of the room, but out of herself.
She tried to scream, but no sound came out. She was falling, falling…
2
Parker
Parker awoke in a cold sweat.
She reached for her bedside table to find the source of the strange hum.
She felt the familiar cool, smoothness of her amulet under her hand.
It was the only thing on the bedside table, and it wasn’t humming.
She clutched it and sat up in bed, trying to run her other hand through her tangled curls without much luck.
Outside her window, the moonlight illuminated her view of the college woods. The shadows of the trees were perfectly still and in their right places.
She looked around the room, getting her bearings in the still unfamiliar space.
The shadows there seemed to be behaving properly too.
She let out a long breath.
Parker had only been renting this house on the edge of campus for about a week.
The previous tenants had been three grad students who were in town to study the highway project. But they were forced to temporarily relocate when the place needed an emergency termite treatment. And by the time it was ready to be reoccupied, the three had miraculously all met the men of their dreams and didn’t want to rent the place anymore.
As a result, the house had become available in the winter, a terrible time to find a tenant. Parker had been looking for a change, and she’d been able to get a great deal on the place, even though it was three times as much house as she needed.
It was an amazing house, but the mid-century modern style meant walls of glass, most of which didn’t have any coverings.
Parker wasn’t overly modest. But between the frightening dreams and the moonlit forest, she was beginning to miss her old, cozy apartment back in Springton.
She glanced at the clock.
It was two in the morning. And she had to be up to teach at five.
Parker fastened the amulet around her neck for comfort and lay down again.
She wore the moonstone necklace every day. Her birth mother had left it for her when she’d surrendered Parker to the adoption agency.
Once, when she was about five, it occurred to Parker to ask her mom if it hurt her feelings that she always wore the necklace from her birth mother.
“Of course not,” Mom had said. “She brought you into our lives in an act of pure love. I like to think there’s a bit of your birth mom’s goodness in that amulet, a little bit of her kindness and protection, to help you feel brave and lucky.”
Little Parker had smiled and wrapped her chubby fist around the amulet, loving her mom so hard it hurt. Her feelings about her birth mother were vague and mysterious at best. But her own sweet mom was her hero, and she wanted to be just like her one day.
Grown-up Parker relaxed a little, and felt herself getting sleepy again.
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Tasha Black lives in a big old Victorian in a tiny college town. She loves reading anything she can get her hands on, writing paranormal romance, and sipping pumpkin spice lattes.
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