The Scent of Shadows Free with Bonus Material Read Free

been called a number of things in my adult life, but innocent had never been one of them. Neither, for that matter, had passive . Folding my arms across my chest, I let my fingers curl into fists. “And how, exactly, do you intend on doing that?”
    “With my right hand,” he said, pleased I’d asked. “And the serrated poker beneath my jacket.”
    He lifted one side of his coat, and my breath lodged somewhere between my throat and chest cavity. Sure enough, a multihooked blade as long and thin as a fencer’s sword glinted in the candlelight, winking at me. He lowered the lapel. All around us hushed chatter continued, an incongruous contrast to the stillness that had slowed every cell of my body. I lifted my eyes, and this time I didn’t have to blink.The monster was there. Even if I was the only one who could see him.
    “Now get up,” he said, “and slowly walk to the door.”
    “Fuck you.”
    No way was I going to let this crackerjack near my back…even if every instinct in my body was crying out for me to bolt, and quick. I might be able to outrun him; he certainly didn’t look fast, but then he hadn’t looked psychotic either.
    “Get up,” he repeated, louder, “or I will kill every person in this dining room, starting with the woman behind me.”
    My eyes flicked to the woman in question, a petite blonde with hair piled fashionably atop her head to reveal a creamy white nape. Her back was to us, her head momentarily tilted back in a soundless laugh. With that thin barbed blade, Ajax could rend the tendons from her neck before she’d even caught her next breath.
    Her companion, a handsome man with sparkling eyes, caught me looking and smiled. I looked away. It was the smile of a person untouched by violence, a look I’d never worn in my adult life. I doubted my dinner partner ever had either.
    “I don’t care,” I lied, returning Ajax’s stare.
    He laughed as if we were also enjoying a pleasant evening in each other’s company. “Of course you do. See, that’s why you’re the good guy and I’m the bad guy.” The humor dropped from his face, along with his voice. “Now get your ass out of that chair.”
    I remained seated.
    The smooth white bones beneath his cheeks flashed. Then there was the slight rustle of fabric, the unmistakable chink of a weapon being unsheathed beneath the table, and Ajax’s shoulder rotated in a motion that would end in a killing blow. My stomach clenched but still I didn’t move. He growled, and it was an expectant, warning sound.
    “Wait!” I said as his muscles tensed. He stared back at me with those soulless eyes, and I knew he’d have done it.He’d have killed that woman without blinking, and the man across from her would never smile again.
    “See?” Ajax said quietly. “I told you you’re one of the good guys.”
    I didn’t answer, just pushed away from the table and rose, my eyes never leaving his. But then I did something even I couldn’t have anticipated. I picked up my wineglass, swirled, and put it to my lips.
    Perhaps it was the intensity of the moment, or maybe Ajax’s lesson in odorous acuity really had hit home, but the flavors I inhaled from that glass were the most complex, the most vibrant, and the richest I’d ever tasted. I could scent the clay of the plateau vineyard in France where the fruit had been harvested, and somehow I knew the grapes had been picked on a windless, rainy day. The juice had been aged in French oak, and the winemaker had regularly tested the barrel with a steel ladle, his artist’s palate telling him when, exactly, to go to bottle. Inhaling all these things—things I had no right to sense or see—they became a part of me, their knowledge burrowing into my bones.
    I drank deeply, almost ecstatically, like the saints you see on the ceilings of cathedrals, martyrs looking expectantly toward heaven in their final, lingering moments on earth. All the while Ajax watched me with those glassy death-eyes, like he could