Kiss Me Deadly Read Free

to her out-on-loan soul.
    Which is why she’d bargained for the Sight in the first place. Sacrifices had been made, but ultimately, it would be for the greater good.
    Referring with a glance to the instructions from the dusty old grimoire she’d dug out of grandmama’s trunk, the potion now had to sit high and loosely covered overnight. A courier would arrive at daybreak for pickup.
    What happened after the potion left her hands should concern her. Ravin suspected Himself wished a certain mark to fall in love with another certain mark of opposing forces for reasons that would summon a demented thrill in Himself. The playing of enemies against one another? Right up the devil’s sinister alley.
    Ravin looked the other way. It did not serve to poke one’s nose into this type of business.
    Standing on tiptoes—though some would label her short, Ravin liked to think of herself as average for a seventeenth-century woman—she carefully placed the vial on top of the refrigerator. The plastic wrap fluttered over the circular opening, but she didn’t press it to seal over the glass lip.
    “See you in the morning—”
    Arms still raised high, Ravin averted her attention from the vial and focused her senses in all directions of her periphery.
    A nonmortal being was close. She always felt such a presence as an intuitive clamp tightening her scalp. Who or what…?
    A discernible wave shuddered through her apartment, as if it were a frisson moving the air. She could actually see the air molecules and walls and furniture be displaced in a wavery movielike shiver.
    Her heart dropped two inches. Her mouth grew dry.
    Couldn’t be.
    “My wards are breeched?”
    Impossible. The entire block was warded to warn her of impending danger. The apartment building was cloaked and set to alarm should an enemy cross the threshold to the first-floor foyer. And if anyone, creature or being, got past all that, the repulse ward she’d set up to span twenty feet about her property should have alerted her like a punch to the gut.
    “Something must have glitched.”
    Again, impossible. But Ravin felt the intrusion like a blade to her side.
    Wood creaked. Heavy metal bolts tore from hinges.
    Weapons . She needed to protect herself.
    A loud slam echoed from around the corner of the kitchen. The crash of the front door to the floor made Ravin jump.
    Chaotic commotion vibrated throughout the apartment.
    Ravin spun around, but her elbow hit hard against the refrigerator door handle. Splattered with an officious rain of potion, she scrambled to right the vial, but swallowed and gasped at the dripping mess.
    “Screw it!” She didn’t have time to deal with the nonessentials.
    Someone—or something—had invaded her home. And her closest weapon was in the artillery closet across the living room.
    Ravin took two steps and slammed into a force so substantial it set her back and thumped her shoulders against the fridge.
    A man stood in her kitchen. Big and imposing. Dark, so dark. Coal-black hair flowed about his head and broad shoulders like a wicked flag warning against cutthroats. Black leather creaked as he fisted his fingers. And he snorted like a bull for the red cape.
    Droplets of the spell dribbled down her forehead. Ravin spat at the liquid.
    She saw the intruder for his truth—a vampire. Their kind wore an aura like glittering rubies shadowed with ash. Indeed, the Sight was valuable. She’d never regret making a deal with the devil.
    But that this creature had permeated her wards and stood in her home staring her down as if she were his next meal, infuriated her. How had he entered without verbal permission? A vampire could not cross a private threshold uninvited.
    Whatever the glitch that had allowed him entrance, Ravin wasn’t about to bemoan her privacy, or her safety. She didn’t need weapons. This one she could battle with her hands tied behind her back.
    Ravin bit the inside of her cheek, tasting the blood and sucking it into her saliva.