Page 10 of Flirting with Darkness

I swallowed. I didn’t want to say the word, not aloud. It would only put Farrow at risk—more than I already had by coming here. There was a reason I had brought it here, rather than asking him to come visit our cursed town.

Selfish of me. I knew that.

“If I could distill this somehow,” I said, “how would one do that? This property?”

“You would need magic, probably.”

“What if I couldn’t do that?”

Farrow frowned. “Why would you not be able to do that?”

I eyed my lens. The projection had been up for longer than I’d ever allowed myself to look at the samples at home. I feared that at any moment, the magic would recognize the nature of what it analyzed. Magic was fickle and temperamental, just like the gods.

“Could there be a way to do it without?” I asked. “By scientific rather than magical means?”

Farrow seemed confused, which was reasonable. Science and magic were often two parts of the same whole—each complemented the other, their methods often inextricable.

“It would be… it would be hard. Maybe impossible. Bring it to one of Srana’s temples. See what the priestesses have to say about it.”

“I can’t.”

A wrinkle formed between his brows. His amazement had faded. “Why, Lilith?”

My teeth ground. I swept the runes from the table in one abrupt movement just as the lens began to smell faintly of smoke. The room went dark as the projection flickered away. Even in the dark, I could feel Farrow’s stare, hard and piercing. Gone was his childlike amazement. Now he seemed only concerned.

Of course he was. I had come here because he was one of the smartest men I knew. Could I really expect that he wouldn’t figure out what was sitting right in front of him?

“Thank you, Farrow,” I said. “I appreciate your—”

I turned to the door, but he caught my arm, gripping it tight.

I looked down at his long fingers around my forearm. Then up, at his face. His concern now overtook his expression with the same enthusiastic verve that his joy had minutes ago.

That was Farrow, of course. Feeling everything. Showing everything.

“Tell me what this is,” he said.

I shook my head, and that was answer enough for him.

“It’s one of them, isn’t it? Alive and dead at once. I thought it at first but then I thought— you couldn’t have—” He swallowed, his fingers tightening. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

I couldn’t. I had always been such a bad liar.

His expression sank with realization. He went pale. “What are you doing, Lilith?”

I pulled away, his judgment burying deep in my gut. “I’m doing what I have to.”

But with Farrow, once questions started, they never stopped. “How did you get this? How—” Another wave of realization. “Him?You went to visithim?By yourself?”

“I did what I had to do,” I hissed, again. I struggled to hide my annoyance.

Did he think I didn’t know that it was stupid? That it was dangerous?

He whispered, “You want toinject people with vampire blood?”

I spun around. “Sh.”

His mouth snapped closed. Our eyes both flicked to the ceiling—to the sky beyond. The gods, after all, were always listening.

---