Chasing Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) by Christina Moore Page A

scholarship.
    It was well past full dark by the time we finished our meal. Mark offered to stay and help me wash the dishes, but I let him off the hook, saying he needed to get plenty of sleep for his first full day of work. I could tell that while he wouldn’t have minded helping out with the cleanup, he was also glad to get out of doing it like men usually were. I shook my head and smiled as he bid me good night and left for his new apartment, making sure to give his ‘dog’ a pointed stare behind his back. Her I was definitely not letting off the hook—and I hoped the shapeshifter understood that I wanted her to come back for a little chat as soon as she was able to get away.
    Having the dishes to do and the kitchen to clean up after the late dinner was a good distraction, but I was still finished in about half an hour. I began to pace, wondering if Angel was going to come back tonight, wondering if she’d even understood my silent message. I then sat back down and chided myself for being ridiculous—I was a dhampyr , for goodness sake! I should not be nervous!
    Except I was nervous—anxious, to be more specific. I was worried as well, wondering what in the world Angel knew about Mark and what she was up to. She was a supernatural and so was he—obviously not a coincidence. So what was the story there? Could I trust her to tell me the truth when Mark didn’t even know?
    Or so it appeared. It occurred to me as I sat in my kitchen spinning my mental wheels that it was entirely possible Mark knew all about the supernatural world, that he knew what Angel really was, and that they were both putting on a show for my benefit. But to what purpose? What could they hope to gain by lying to me and going through the charade of his needing the job on my farm? Was it possible someone from my father’s world already knew I was Vivian Drake, or suspected I knew who she was? Was he simply sent to keep an eye on me to make sure I actually looked for her?
    So many questions spun through my mind. I hated not knowing, I hated the “what ifs?” I was not one to give myself over to paranoia, but the introduction of my other half into my life had obviously thrown me off my axis. I also hated the fact that I was doubting Mark. If he really was my soulmate, and I knew there could be no denying that, then I shouldn’t doubt him at all—trust in him should be implicit. There were just too many unknown variables right now for me to be completely comfortable. I had to get answers, and soon.
    A light knock at the back door made me jump. I felt ridiculous, and chastised myself accordingly. The knock came again as I was crossing the worn rug over the wood flooring, somehow sounding more insistent even though it had not changed in volume. I opened the door to find a nude young woman, probably mid-twenties, standing on the small stoop. She looked oddly familiar, yet I knew that I had never met her before—at least, not in this form.
    “Are you going to let me in, or do you really want Mark to look out the French doors to see his sister standing naked on his new boss’s back porch?”
    “ Sister? ” I hissed, though I still stepped back to give her room to come inside.
    Juliette Singleton nodded as she turned around to face me. “May I please borrow a robe? I’m no prude, but I certainly don’t like talking to strangers in naught but my skin.”
    I nodded as I pushed the door shut again. Moe and Cissy came trotting into the kitchen then, and of course they barked until Juliette knelt and let them sniff her. They stopped yapping almost instantly; I knew that while their little minds wouldn’t be able to place where they knew her from, she would still smell somewhat familiar to them.
    Because to all three of us, Juliette still smelled like a dog.
    I ran to my bedroom and grabbed one of my long terry-cloth robes, and returned to the kitchen seconds later, just in time to find Juliette reaching into the refrigerator.
    “Oh, go right