A Blood Seduction (Vamp City #1)(9)

When that familiar chill rippled over her skin, it startled her. Oh, hell. Not here. Not now.

They were nearly to the block their apartment sat on, the street where, just last night, she'd seen an old-fashioned horse and buggy. In the dark. Surely she wouldn't see it in bright daylight.

Her pulse began to race in both anticipation and dread. What if she saw that strange scene again? What if, as always happened when she peered out the window, she suddenly couldn't see the real world? Would she start running into people? Maybe walk in front of a car?

She grabbed Zack, curling her fingers around his upper arm.

His gaze swung to her, hope wreathing his face. "Do you see her?"

"No. I just . . . I don't feel well."

His brows drew down, and he pulled her hand off his arm and engulfed it in his larger one, closing his fingers tightly around hers.

Hand in hand, they crossed the street, pushing through a throng of backpacked college kids, and walked around the construction barricade that was blocking her view of her building. As they cleared the barricade, Quinn swallowed a gasp at the sight that met her gaze. Superimposed upon a small section of her apartment building, to the left of the entrance, was what appeared to be a house of some sort. Or row house. It was set back and partially illuminated as if by a spotlight, surrounded by shadows. A crumbling, haunted-looking house that wasn't really there.

Holy shit. She pulled up short.

"You see something."

Zack's words barely registered, and she answered without thinking. "Yes."

"What?"

His excitement penetrated her focus. "I'm not sure." But she started forward, her gaze remaining glued on that impossible sight. The shadows fully blocked the sidewalk, extending almost to the street, as if the vision were three-dimensional, as if a slice had been cut from another world, a square column, and dropped into the middle of hers. But the house didn't appear to actually stand within that column. In fact, the column didn't appear to quite reach the front of her apartment building at all. It was as if the shadows acted as a window into the world where the house sat, alone and abandoned.

She frowned, trying to make sense of it. Why, when the scene appeared at night, was she able to see what appeared to be the entire landscape of . . . what? Was it another world? Another time? No, it couldn't be another time. Not with a Jeep Wrangler racing across the landscape.

Why could she see it when no one else could? And, clearly, no one else could. People were walking right through those shadows as if they weren't there.

She had no intention of doing the same. With her luck, her face and hair would turn purple.

Zack squeezed her hand. "What do you see, Quinn? Something to do with Lily?"

"I'm not sure. Probably not," she replied out of habit, not about to admit to her weirdness. If Zack knew about it, he'd never said a word. And if he didn't, if he'd remained happily clueless all these years, well, there was no need for him to find out now. "Just give me a moment, Zack." She let go of his hand. "Wait here."

Quinn eased forward, dodging a couple of college kids as she neared that strange column of spotlight and shadows. It wasn't a spotlight, she realized, but sunlight illuminating the front stoop of a house that stood only about twelve feet away. Mold and mud splattered the ancient brick; glass, long since broken, left gaping holes for windows; and the front door hung askew, dangling on one hinge. On that door, a tarnished lion's-head doorknocker sat cockeyed and snarling at unwary visitors. Visitors long gone.

It looked so real.

The column itself was only about six feet wide, yet the house sat farther back than those six feet. To either side of the spotlighted front stoop, shadows and darkness lingered, like a nightscape cut by a beacon of sunlight. Yet people continued to flow through that shadowy column, oblivious. Unaffected.

"Lily's pen."

Quinn hadn't even realized Zack had followed her until she saw him reach for the bright green ballpoint pen lying on the sidewalk just inside the shadows.

"Zack, no."

Instinctively, she grabbed his bare forearm just as his arm . . . and her clutching hand . . . dipped into the shadows. Energy leaped at her through the hand that held him, attacking her with an electrical shock that raced over her body like crawling ants, shooting every hair on her arms and head straight up.

Her breath caught, her eyes widened. Her brain screamed, Let go of him! But her fingers couldn't react in time, and, suddenly, they were both flying forward.

Into nothingness.

Chapter Two

Quinn landed on her hands and knees, scraping her hands on . . . on . . . The pavers beneath her hands were not the sidewalk in front of her apartment. Looking up, the blood rushed from her face.

"Quinn?" The note of fear and confusion that rang in Zack's voice clanged in her head.

She didn't answer him. Couldn't answer him through her heart pounding in her throat. She was on her hands and knees beneath a wide, bright spotlight. And all around that single shaft was darkness.

Just like the column.

Head thudding, she pushed to her feet to find Zack standing close by, his stunned expression mirroring her own.

"What the f**k, Quinn?"

"I don't know."

The darkness swallowed everything outside the spotlight, but she sensed that far more was there. Turning, her jaw dropped as she stared at the door she'd seen through the shadows. As before, it hung from one hinge, its lion's-head doorknocker hanging cockeyed and abandoned. Stepping forward, she climbed the two brick steps and lifted her hand to touch the cool, pitted metal.