Seduced by Shadows by Jessa Slade

carried himself as if he could stop a speeding SUV with a single scathing comment was no reason to buy into his delusional fantasies.
    As if reluctant to do the job alone, her fingers were slow on the buttons of her shirt and the fly of her jeans. Finally, shirt hanging open between her breasts, she peeled down the jeans. She stepped out of the pool of denim and raised her gaze to the mirror.
    Gone. Her breath caught. Almost gone anyway. Once red and puckered, all that remained of the tangle of scars over her thighs and hips were traceries almost as unremarkable as her unbleached cotton underwear.
    She turned, craning her neck to look over her shoulder. The contortion was effortless, and for the last six months, impossible. Under her wondering fingertips, only faint raised ridges remained of the scars on her lower back.
    “I do not believe this.” She couldn’t stop her smile. She twisted the other way, just because.
    What had Archer said? “Don’t bother trying to decide whether to believe or not. It’s true.”
    At the thought of him, her smile faded.
    And what if everything else he said was true?
    “It will be one of the dark.”
    The man twisted his fingers as he made his pronouncement.
Ten white twisting worms. Unfortunately, too large a lunch for the crow.
    Corvus leaned back in his chair. “Are you certain?”
    “With the solvo spreading well, the dissonance should definitely have triggered the crossing of a specimen from the more powerful strain. The crossing was so unusually violent, the Veil is still in flux, which will make our task that much easier. All signs point toward a djinn crossing, and we do have an agreement—”
    “Are you certain?”
    The crow stabbed its beak out between the bars to grab a paperclip off the desk. It sidled away, working the shiny metal in its beak and cackling.
    “Not entirely, no.”
    Corvus nodded once. “Then we wait. And continue our preparations. The wound in the Veil will serve us, whether the demon will or not.”
    The Worm twitched, as if impatience consumed every cell of his body just as, Corvus supposed, it did all mortal creatures. “Only my work has gotten you this far. I deserve . . .” Again, that twitch, accompanied by a conspicuous pallor.
    Corvus let the outburst pass, as he let the thieving crow keep its little toy. “All our efforts shall be rewarded, eventually.” The Worm couldn’t begin to understand how long Corvus himself had waited for his chance.
    The Worm nodded until Corvus thought his head would wobble off. “The demon must be djinn. I simply can’t believe the teshuva could muster such force across the Veil. I’ve noticed the impulse toward repentance diminishes in ratio to the threat of punishment. Which explains the remorseful teshuva’s mediocrity in this realm.”
    “You simply can’t believe?” The Worm could do nothing simply, not even speak. “With the Veil isolating us from what lies beyond, our beliefs are all we have to sustain us.”

    Rather than endure the Worm’s squirmings at the reprimand, Corvus swiveled in his chair to look out over the city. The sun burned a pale gray hole in the darker gray sky. The light raised forlorn glimmers in the delicate sculptures arrayed on the windowsill. The churches born of Rome weren’t the only ones to capture peace and beauty in glass. He caressed the stone in his ring, calmed by the vista and the promise of what was—at long last—coming.
    “If Sera Littlejohn is possessed by one of ours, then she will fight for the Darkness. If not, she must die.”
    “She’s on the move.”
    Ecco’s voice crackled in Archer’s earbud, and he scowled up at the darkening sky where low clouds threatened snow. He remembered the restlessness that had driven him at his demon’s ascension, but couldn’t she have just done a little knitting instead?
    “Wrong century,” he muttered.
    “What’s that?” Even through the electronic connection, Ecco sounded as annoyed as Archer felt.
    “I