Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (Wicked Lovely 5.50)

“Excellent,” Sampson says. “I’ll never be the classic poor, starving artist if I start creating stuff everyone wants in their bedroom.”

“He wants to sit out here with you. He hasn’t stopped thinking about you since you came in,” Juliet says suddenly. I see her eyes on Sampson, intent, focused, like she’s reading very faraway text. I start to shake my head at her, but her words seem to have thawed me. I lean back a little, exhale.

“I don’t know. That’s the type of stuff certain rock stars might want in their home. I bet if you added a naked girl in the shower of one of those houses, they’d pay you millions.”

“Sculptor of the stars . . .” Sampson nods, thinking it over, then grins again.

“He doesn’t know what to say to you. He wishes you’d tell him more about yourself. Or ask him more about himself. Or anything, really . . .” Juliet’s voice drifts off and she meets my eyes hopefully, almost desperately.

I mouth “thank you” at her, which makes her beam. She glances from me to Sampson a few times, and then vanishes. Emptiness sweeps over me. I turn back to Sampson, who is trying to figure out what’s in the blank space I’m staring at.

“I get distracted easily,” I say, turning my body toward his. “So, are you studying creepy-ass sculpture, or is that concentration not officially offered here?”

JULIET

Here are the things I learned about love:

It involves kissing.

It changes you.

It’s never where you expect it.

Niederwald

by Rachel Vincent

mma, wake up!” I shook her shoulder and she jerked upright, blinking, her normally golden complexion tinted green by the clock numbers blinking in the dashboard.

“Where are we?” she asked, pushing long blond hair from her face as we passed the road sign that answered her question.

NIEDERWALD, TEXAS, POPULATION 542. What the sign didn’t say was that only a dozen or so of those were human.

“We’re still about three hours from home.” After the world’s lamest extra-credit road trip to some bullshit cultural fair. I would not be writing the corresponding essay.

“Why are we stopping? Where’s the highway, Sabine?” Emma twisted to stare out the rear windshield, like I-35 might magically reappear.

“Took a detour. I have to do something.” A couple of things, actually. I’d only come with her in the first place because my car wasn’t running and Em’s trip would take her within shouting distance of where I needed to be. But the downside of my free trip to Neiderwald was an entire day spent with my ex’s new girlfriend’s best friend. Em and I had nothing in common other than Nash and Kaylee, and calling the two of us friends would have meant redefining the term entirely.

I turned right into the Sac-N-Pac parking lot, the only break in acres of empty farmland, other than the occasional mobile home and a few houses in clusters too small to be called neighborhoods. I parked in front of the building, a couple of spaces down from several other cars. Two sets of eyes watched me from the first vehicle, colorless reflections of light, and I could feel more from the other cars.

I hadn’t been to Neiderwald in nearly a year, but nothing had changed.

Emma frowned. “Fine, we’ll take a bathroom break. But then I’m driving. No more detours.”

I pulled the keys from the ignition and pointedly shoved them into my pocket, letting a small beat of alarm and intimidation pulse through my carefully constructed mental shields—feeding her fear, like fattening up a cow before the slaughter. A reminder that just because I hadn’t turned her into a quaking mass of terror and tears didn’t mean I couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.

There were several upsides to being a Nightmare—a mara, to the well-informed—but getting my own way was easily the best of them. “This isn’t a pit stop. You’ll have to hold it.”

“Why?” she demanded, and I let that pulse beat a little stronger, but she just stared back at me like she hadn’t even felt it.

“Your ignorance is truly astounding, even for a human.” I leaned toward her until she scooted back against her door, finally properly intimidated. “This is Niederwald. Do you know of another place name that sounds like Neiderwald?”

She blinked. Then she blinked again, and I could practically see her connecting the dots, though her confusion never quite cleared. “The Netherworld? Is that really what Niederwald means?”

I shrugged. “In German, it means ‘woodlands,’ or something like that. But I think that’s just a coincidence, because they aren’t German.” I nodded toward the line of vehicles as their doors started opening. “They aren’t human, either.”

Em glanced at the people getting out of their cars, openly watching us. “Start the car, Sabine.” Her voice was dark and even, but her tense grip on the door handle ruined the calm facade. She knew just enough about my world to know she should be scared.