Page 2 of Midnight Wishes

Chapter 1

SARAH

All My Friends Are Falling In Love | The Vaccines

‘If she requestsone more change to this portrait, I’m going to murder her and let the damn dog shack up with a mutt. That’ll make her roll in her grave.’

This was how Sarah greeted her best friend as Abby walked through the door of their flat.

‘What more could she possibly want?’ Abby’s pretty face twisted into a scowl as she unloaded tote bags filled with groceries and—crucially—wine. Sarah nodded enthusiastically when Abby held up a bottle of red, one eyebrow cocked in a silent offer.

‘Apparently I haven’t quite captured the opalescent quality of his coat.’ Sarah rolled her eyes, dumping her paintbrush in a jar of thinners on her way to the tiny island separating their kitchen and living room. She took a grateful sip from the large glass Abby pushed towards her. ‘She wants me to add more colour.’

‘To the painting of herwhitedog,’ Abby said flatly, shoving vegetables into the crisper.

‘That’s the one.’

And Sarah understood the theory involved. White reflected all colours, and sometimes those colours would appear, as if they were part of the white surface. Yawn, yawn, she’d learnt all the science in her four years at art college. But since Mrs Bedford had also opted to have her precious Samoyed, Winston, posing on her sad beige couch in her sad beige sitting room, there wasn’t much colour around for his fur to reflect. She’d toyed with adding a sunset streaming through the large bay window, but upon sending Mrs Bedford a digital mock-up, the feedback had been that she ‘didn’t much care for those warm tones.’ But this commission would cover her rent for the next two months and place a sizable dent in her student loans. As much as she complained about the pampered upper classes she catered to, their willingness to pay obscene amounts of money to have their pets immortalised in oil paint had freed up her time significantly, allowing her to escape her nine to five grind and spend at least an hour or two a day on the art she actually cared about.

That had been the plan, anyway. Although her well of inspiration for personal projects had been dry for a while.

‘Are you done working for today? Erik’s having dinner with his brother, so if you don’t have plans, I’m proposing girls’ night. I bought triple chocolate chip ice cream and a bottle of Kahlua, and despite the mound of healthy food I just brought home, I want to eat my body weight in pizza and watch something trashy with hot supernatural creatures.’

‘Say less, friend,’ Sarah said, reaching for her phone.

She looked up after requesting their usual—thankful to live in an age where she could order her vices and pay online without ever having to talk to an actual human being—to find Abby staring absently at her left hand and the sparkling emerald that graced her ring finger.

‘Let me guess—you miss him.’

Abby’s mouth quirked up, the way it did whenever her fiancé was mentioned. They’d been engaged for a week after dating for only three months (though their lifetime of history made the timeline seem wholly unimportant), and her friend still looked awestruck each time she saw the physical reminder that after years of pining, she’d finally got her guy.

‘I know it’s silly.’ Abby sighed. ‘We were apart for so long while he was working abroad. I got used to it. I should be able to go a day without him.’

‘But you don’t want to. And that’s as sweet as it is pathetic.’

Since Erik had moved back to London permanently after a month of long-distance, he and Abby hadn’t spent a single night apart. While on paper Abby lived with her and Erik lived at his brother’s townhouse in Holland Park, neither cared where they spent the night, as long as the other was there. Despite Erik currently eating dinner less than twenty feet from what was officially his bedroom, Sarah had no doubt that he’d be walking through their door in a few hours so he could sleep next to Abby.

She was incandescently happy for her friends. Really. But being single around such a high concentration of deeply consuming love was getting to her. The pain of her breakup from a year ago had completely faded—Gregg was an ass who didn’t deserve to ruin any more of her life than he already had—but theinsecurities and anxieties left behind still throbbed like a day-old bruise, holding her back from pursuing anything deeper than a Tinder date or a hook-up after a night out. And even those had been minimal in comparison to her regular activities pre-Gregg.

‘This’—Abby waved her hand—‘is kind of why I wanted to hang out. I was going to do this over Kahlua and ice cream, but screw it. I can’t wait.’

She turned to rummage in yet another tote bag as Sarah’s heart quickened. If this was what she thought it was, she’d frankly been waiting for this moment since the day Abby had introduced her to Erik and she’d seen the attraction pulsing between them. Abby turned back with a red velvet box and snapped it open to reveal a beautiful, delicate daisy charm on a thin chain. ‘Sarah Owens, will you be my maid of honour?’

‘Yes!Obviously yes. Does this mean you’ve set a date?’

‘We’re waiting on responses from a couple of venues. They’re all beautiful, but everything is booked, like, years in advance. Honestly, we’ll probably go with whichever has the earliest date available. I’d marry him in a parking lot if I didn’t think my parents would disown me on the spot. I’m just…really ready to be his wife.’ That soft, sappy smile reappeared, and Sarah couldn’t help but reflect it a second before their buzzer sounded. ‘Okay! Enough wedding talk. I’ll get the pizza. You find us some hot vampires doing bad things.’

Chapter 2

SARAH

Right Side of My Neck | Faye Webster

Sarah breathed asigh of relief at the confirmation text from her bank, informing her that Mrs Bedford had transferred the final payment for her dog’s portrait. The old woman had seemed overjoyed when Sarah sent pictures of the finished work a few days before, but until the money had cleared in her account, she hadn’t dared dream that she might finally be finished with one of the more painful commissions she’d done thus far.

Winston looked almost identical to his previous iteration, but in a stroke of genius, Sarah had opted to finish the furred areas of the painting with an iridescent sealant, allowing for magical results as light caught it from different angles, without sacrificing her artistic integrity by forcing in colours that simply didn’t exist.

‘Do you need anything from the bathroom to finish getting ready?’ Abby called from her spot in front of the hall mirror,where she was applying layer after layer of red lipstick. ‘The Uber’s arriving in ten minutes, and Erik’s heading to shower.’