Pamela Palmer ~ Riveting Tales of Dark, Paranormal Romance

“Lily’s missing.”

At the sound of Zack’s frantic voice through the cell phone the next morning, Quinn leaped from her lab bench, her free hand pressing against her head. “Are you sure?” God. The disappearances!

“We were going to meet out front and walk to class together like we always do. But she never showed up. And I can’t find her.”

“She’s not picking up her phone?”

“No. She texted me to say she’d be here in five minutes, but that was fifteen minutes ago and she’s not here. She’s not anywhere, Quinn. I’ve been walking around looking for her.”

“Zack.” She’d never heard him sound this frantic—she’d never heard him sound frantic at all. She scrambled to think of a logical, safe explanation for Lily’s disappearance and couldn’t come up with a single one that fit Lily’s serious, responsible nature. “Have you called her mom?” Lily lived with her parents about six blocks away.

“I don’t know her mom’s number.”

Crap. “Do you know either of her parents’ names?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Wang.”

“Zack. There have to be hundreds of Wangs in D.C.”

“I know.”

“Where are you?”

“In front of the coffee shop on K.”

A block from their apartment. “Stay there. Inside. I’m on my way.”

Thirty minutes later, after handing off her work to a fellow technician, racing to her car, and flying through more nearly-red lights than she cared to admit, she found Zack right where he’d said he’d be, his body rigid with tension as he paced. He looked up and saw her, the devastation in his expression lifting with relief. As if she could fix it. Oh, Zack. His t-shirt was plastered to his body, his face flushed and soaked with sweat. He loved that girl, she could see it in his eyes, even if he didn’t know it, yet. If Lily was really gone, her loss was going to slay him.

And his grief was going to slay Quinn.

She took his hand, squeezing his damp fist. “Where have you looked?”

“Around.” His eyes misted, his mouth tightening painfully. “She’s not here, Quinn.”

“We’ll find her.”

But he wasn’t buying her optimism any more than she was. The cops hadn’t found a single one of the missing people, yet. Not one.

“Do you know where she was when you last heard from her?”

“She was close. Within a block or two of our apartment.”

Quinn cocked her head at him. “Doesn’t she usually buy coffee on her way to class?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

He blinked. “Here.”

“Have you asked if they saw her?”

His face scrunched in embarrassment. “No.” He pulled out his cell phone as he walked up to the counter, stepping in front of the line and holding out his phone and, she assumed, Lily’s picture, to the barista. “I’m looking for my friend. Did she get coffee here a little while ago?”

The man peered at the picture. “Yeah. Lily, right? She ordered her usual mocha latte no-whip.”

Zack turned away and Quinn fell into step beside him as they pushed through the morning coffee crowd and left the shop. She squinted against the glare of the summer sun. “She went missing between here and the street in front of our apartment. It’s just two blocks, Zack.” And the chances they’d find her, after Zack had already looked, were slim to none.

Together they walked down the busy sidewalk, dodging college kids, locals, business people, and tourists as they searched for any sign of Lily or what might have happened to her. Quinn’s chest ached, as much for Lily as it did for Zack. His anguish, thick and palpable, hung in the steamy air.

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

They were nearly to the corner that intersected with 20th, the street their apartment sat on. The street brimming with cars, diesel-spewing trucks, and a pair of rumbling buses. The street where, just last night, she’d seen an old-fashioned horse and buggy. But in the dark. Surely she wouldn’t see it in bright daylight.

As they approached the corner, 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 turned the corner, pushing through a throng of back-packed college kids. Quinn swallowed a gasp at the sight that met her across the street. Superimposed upon a small section of her apartment building was a house illuminated as if by a spotlight, surrounded by shadows. A crumbling, haunted-looking house that wasn’t really there.

Holy shit.

“You see something.”

Zack’s words barely registered and she answered without thinking. “Yes.”

“What?”

His excitement penetrated her focus. “I’m not sure. I need to cross the street.” A moment later, the light changed and they crossed with the crowd, but her gaze remained glued on that impossible sight. Oddly, as they reached the sidewalk on the other side, the house became less and less visible, though the shadows remained, fully blocking the sidewalk, extending slightly into the street. It was 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. Only peering through it at the correct angle could she see the house. The column, it seemed, didn’t quite reach the front of her apartment building.

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 she had to believe no one else had seen it. 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?”

His question yanked her back to the more pressing situation. She needed to be hunting for Lily. But the chance to explore this strange phenomenon was too much to resist. It wouldn’t take long.

“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.”

As they neared that strange column of spotlight and shadows, she released his hand and eased into the street between two parked cars where she could view the house from a better angle. It wasn’t a spotlight, she realized, but sunlight illuminating the front stoop of a house that now 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 further back than those six feet. It was as if the column acted as a window into another world. 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.

Zack followed her as she slid along the cars parked on the curb before climbing back onto the sidewalk on the other side of the shadows. She’d love to spend more time studying the phenomenon. What if the buggy driver from last night walked through it? But she’d wasted enough time. Lily came first.

As she turned away from the shadows, Zack gasped. “Lily’s pen.”

Quinn followed his gaze to the bright green ballpoint pen lying on the sidewalk just inside the shadows. Zack reached for it.

Instinctively, she grabbed his arm. “Zack, no.”

But it was too late. His 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.

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“A Blood Seduction is a wonderfully intriguing and chilling launch!”

~RT BookReviews awarding A Blood Seduction 4 stars. (posted May 2012)

“An amazing, action-packed series! I'm as hungry as a Vamp for the next book!"

~Kerrelyn Sparks, NYTimes bestselling author of the Love at Stake series. (posted May 2012)

“Pamela Palmer’s stories catch you, captivate you, and never let you go.”

~Christina Dodd, New York Times bestselling author. (posted May 2012)