All Hallows Night (Night Series) by Marie Hall

ideal of beauty, but I hated that he’d never wanted me for what I actually was but rather for something I wasn’t. Out of respect for me, he’d adopted a style of looking from the corner of his eye that would give us eye contact without forcing a change. But he wouldn’t even do that now.
    His eyes dropped to the ground, and he was studying my carpet as if it would reveal the mysteries of the universe.
    Why hadn’t I noticed how nice he looked tonight? His hair was washed, slicked back. And it was just long enough to be pulled back into a ponytail of sorts. With his slashing cheekbones and his square-cut jaw, Luc was the epitome of masculinity. Normally he dressed like he was going off to a board meeting, but tonight he was in jeans and a button-down shirt, and I won’t deny that it made my heart throb. Sometimes I missed what we should have been.
    “The mother,” he finally muttered. “She’s at the lost-and-found tent. There is no one else that I trust to go and speak with her.” He turned to go.
    I grabbed his wrist. “Luc?” I don’t know what I meant to say after that. I knew I was messing up, and it hurt me, more than he probably would ever imagine. Letting go of us, of this, it was killing me. But I couldn’t just pretend that I wasn’t disappointed in him. I couldn’t help what I was feeling, like he was partly to blame him for everything, and it was so irrational. And I was such a jerk. “Please?”
    Powerful fingers clamped onto the side of my neck. “Screw you.”
    Then he was gone, and all I could do was laugh, because if I didn’t laugh I would cry. And crying hurt way too much.

R ather than leave with Luc, I took a ten-minute break to shower and regroup. My life was quickly going to hell in a handbasket, but I didn’t have the luxury of time to lament that fact.
    The more Luc hurt, the more nasty he got. Luc didn’t hate me; in fact, my pulling away was probably killing him and the only way to defend himself against it was to act like a prick.
    I got it.
    I didn’t like it.
    But I got it.
    There was no time to eat or read that book that Billy told me to. All I had time for was to freshen up, brush my teeth, and toss on some clean clothes. A low-slung pair of faded and ripped-at-the-knees jeans and a skull-and-crossbones black tee. I’d burn the other stuff when I got back to my trailer. I’d been vomited on—odds were good that if a mortal touched it, the plague would spread. With a sigh, I closed Kemen’s trailer door and headed to the lost-and-found tent.
    I’d been living mostly in his space since the morning I’d woken up from the coma. The stars winked from between breaks in the cloudy black sky. The breeze was much more balmy than it’d been in South Dakota just a few nights ago, but the air was still rich with the scent of carnival fried foods and sagebrush.
    Flipping aside the flap of the lost-and-found tent, I stepped inside.
    Like a sheep surrounded by wolves, the beautiful brown-skinned woman sat with a handkerchief to her eyes. Vyxen and Kane stood to either side of her. Vyxen—dressed in her customary acid-trip attire—stared at the woman with undisguised lust in her emerald-green eyes. Not for her body, no, Vyxen did not suffer from that demon. Vyxen’s demon wanted. Everything. Anything you possessed. She housed Envy, and right now the woman was in danger just being that close to her.
    Of all of us, Vyxen had the hardest time controlling her urges. I’ve asked Luc to get rid of her many times, but my cries always seem to fall on deaf ears. Kane, on the other hand—another one of us Lust demons—was looking at her with seduction clear in his lavender eyes.
    It always amazed me how mortals could see and not instantly feel the prick of wrong . We didn’t look human. Not really.
    Because no humans looked as flawless, as physically perfect, as we did. Nor did their eyes glow. Several hundred years ago, the glowing eyes meant we’d needed to stay deep in hiding.