Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
“You’re fine, Maggie. Nobody’s in the store right now, so I have a minute,” Ember said, keeping her cellphone pressed between her ear and her shoulder as she neatly refolded and restacked the garments on the display table in front of her.
Nyte strolled along the clothing racks, absently brushing his fingers over the hanging clothes. His attention, as had become habit, was fixed upon Ember. His enchanting witch.
A smile spread across Ember’s alluring lips. “Of course I’m free. You know I’m always down for Halloween shenanigans with you. Just text me the info, and I can grab the tickets if you want.”
How could her smiles be so moving, so powerful, so tempting? They were genuine expressions of happiness, not attempts at being sultry and seductive. Yet those smiles pierced Nyte to his core. They warmed him from inside, and sparked tiny, fluttering sensations in his belly.
Ember’s smiles were infectious. They made his lips twitch with the urge to curl upward, and very few of the customers who came into the boutique were able to keep straight faces when greeted by her smile.
“You don’t have to do that!” Ember plucked up a handbag that someone had set in the wrong place and carried it to the proper shelf. “It’s supposed to be my turn, Maggie. I don’t mind if Levi joins us.”
Nyte’s eyebrows angled sharply down, and a scowl tugged at his mouth. “Levi?”
Ember chuckled as she wandered toward the jewelry. “He always makes the best costumes.”
Clenching his teeth, Nyte followed her, but he couldn’t quite make out what Maggie was saying through the cellphone even from immediately behind Ember.
She didn’t seem to notice his nearness. All her focus was on her conversation with her friend.
With a growl, he dematerialized and reformed himself directly in front of her.
Ember gasped, stopping abruptly as her eyes widened. “Nyte!”
“Who is Levi?”
She lowered the cellphone to her stomach and pressed it there. “He’s Maggie’s husband.” Smiling, she brushed aside the locks of hair that had fallen over Nyte’s forehead, her fingertips grazing the base of his horn. “He’s taken. Don’t worry.”
A calm settled over him at her touch, which soothed him even more than her words.
He recalled one of the pictures in the box Ember had unpacked in her living room a couple days ago, when he’d helped her hang some of the images.
Maggie’s wedding picture. The man beside the bride must’ve been this Levi.
Ember returned the phone to her ear. “Sorry. A friend was asking about Levi.” There was a pause as Maggie spoke before Ember chuckled. “Yes, it’s a guy. Can you meet him? Uh…”
Her eyes flicked to Nyte’s before she combed her fingers through her hair. “Maybe? He’s pretty busy… Oh! He also usually works nights. What does he do? He, um… He’s a bodyguard.”
Ember squeezed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose as she grimaced.
My little witch is lying for me.
And it’s adorable.
He grinned as he stepped away to lean his shoulder against the wall, watching Ember resume tidying the shop.
Perhaps she wasn’t quite lying; Nyte had been there to defend her from the dangerous pizza delivery man, after all.
And he’d caught her when she’d fallen off a stepstool yesterday.
Knowing how fragile mortals could be, he’d likely spared her serious injury.
His grin died as those thoughts reminded him of something she’d said during their slumber party four days ago.
There’s only so much we mortals can do to keep our skin looking youthful before the inevitable.
Nyte was neither so foolish nor so disconnected from her kind to believe the inevitable referred to anything but death. His mind had returned to those words repeatedly in the time since she’d spoken them. For her, it had been an offhand remark, a mild jest.
But what she’d said had forced him to face a difficult truth.
There would come a time—very soon by his perception—when Ember was simply…
no more. The moon cycle for which he was bound to her was but a single drop of rain during a torrential storm.
It would pass, and he would endure while she grew old and died.
And then he would exist in a world that no longer had Ember in it.
That shouldn’t have bothered him. Mortals died every moment of every day. That was their lot, that was the natural terminus of their lives. But the thought of it happening to his witch left Nyte unsettled, left his chest tight and his heart frigid.
Despite everything, he was enjoying his time with her.
He’d enjoyed the self-pampering night, enjoyed cooking and eating with her, enjoyed walking with her, talking with her, watching movies together, watching her sleep.
He’d even taken pleasure in the quiet moments they’d spent together, when she’d read a book beside him while he continued learning about her world on the laptop.
He was enjoying…everything with her.
It seemed a heinous injustice that one day, she’d simply run out of time. That she’d be gone and beyond his reach.
The door opened, and raucous laughter filled the store as a group of five men entered. They appeared to be around the same age as Ember, and all of them were dressed in casual wear.
Nyte had seen many people of varied appearances visit this establishment.
Ember had called them tourists—people who’d traveled to visit Salem, see the sights, and browse the shops.
Most had been friendly, a few had been a bit careless in their handling of the goods but ultimately harmless, and only a couple had been rude.
But there was something about these men and their demeanors that set Nyte on edge.
From what he’d seen over his long years of watching, human males, especially the younger ones, were more likely to be emboldened and antagonistic when they gathered in groups.
A blond man with a red hoodie picked up a handbag that was shaped like a coffin. “Yo, look at this!” He held it up and bared his flat teeth with a hiss, causing the others to laugh.
“This shit is so tacky,” one of the other men said.
Rather than return the bag to its place, the blond man tossed it onto one of the lower tables where bottles of perfume were on display, knocking them out of alignment.
“I have visitors, so I’ll talk to you later, Maggie,” Ember said, her eyes on the men. “Love you too. Bye bye.”
She slipped her phone into her dress pocket and approached the group. For the first time, her smile seemed forced, belied by the wariness in her gaze. “Welcome to Darkly Romantic. Are you looking for anything in particular?”
The men turned their attention to her, and there was no mistaking the nature of the smiles that sprouted on their lips or of the gleams that entered their eyes.
Fire ignited in Nyte’s chest, its low, roiling, restless flames blazing a scorching path through his body.
He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists.
“I think I am now,” said the dark-haired man wearing a vest with a checkered shirt beneath.
“You got any underwear with bats or broomsticks or that kinda shit on it?” the red hoodie man asked.
“You asking if she has any in the store or if she’s wearing it right now?”
They all burst into laughter.
Ember’s smile disappeared. “We have some lingerie, but nothing like what you mentioned.” She gestured toward the back of the store. “You can find them on the racks back there. We also have a men’s section to the right.”
“Mind showing us the lingerie, and which you’d recommend?” asked the blond man.
“My recommendation would depend on who you’re buying for.”
“Just…in general.”
Her gaze flicked to Nyte’s before she nodded. “This way.”
She led them toward the back, and the men followed. With his eyes narrowed, Nyte stalked after them.
When she reached the lingerie section, she selected a black lace negligee and held it up for them. It had a bra-like top with flowing sheer fabric spilling from it like a robe. “This is a customer favorite. It’s elegant and sensual.”
A man with curly brown hair stroked his chin as he grinned at her. “Mind putting it on and modeling it for us?”
Nyte’s claws bit into his palms, and the pain only intensified the blaze inside him.
Ember returned the lingerie to the rack calmly. “I’m not going to do that.”
“Oh, come on.” The man in the vest moved closer to Ember, fingering the lacey negligee as he stared at her. “How are we gonna know if we like it until we see it in action?”
“We have a fitting room. You’re more than welcome to try it on so you can show your friends.”
All the men laughed.
Curly Hair slapped his friend wearing the vest on the back. “How about it? You gonna model your junk for us?”
“Fuck no!”
The blond man chuckled and stepped up behind Ember, lightly running the backs of his fingers down her arm. “You got a curvy body and some big tits. I wanna see what it looks like on you.”
Nyte bared his fangs.
The man had touched her. He’d touched Ember, Nyte’s little witch.
Rage nearly compelled him to snuff out all the light within the shop and descend upon these disgusting mortal men, to reveal himself as a nocturnus in all his glory, fearsomeness, and ferocity. To gut and disembowel them.
But what would that mean for Ember? What would that mean for her shop? She’d said herself that beings like Nyte weren’t supposed to exist in her world, and he didn’t want to bring outside scrutiny upon her and her business.
Ember jerked away from the man with a scowl. Her eyes were hard, but Nyte detected a tremor in her voice when she said, “I need you all to leave right now, before I call the cops.”
Nyte tasted something deeply troubling from her—fear.
The dark-haired man laughed. “You don’t need to be such a bitch. Nothing wrong with some flirting.”
The blond man lowered his head, petting her hair as he whispered in her ear. “I’ve always had a thing for goth chicks.”
They closed in on her, and when she tried to push through them, they laughed and dragged her back.