Page 6 of The Midnight Order (The Thorngray Vampires Duet #1)

Silver

A knock at the door signals the exterminator’s prompt arrival. Everyone in the city is always late, and I was ready for him to be, if I’m honest.

I’m still in my pajamas and fuzzy slippers when I open the door.

The man looks me up and down before grinning. “My wife wouldn’t be caught dead looking like that, but I find it refreshing.”

A hint of a Southern accent makes the comment funny, even if it’s highly inappropriate.

“Well, I thought you’d be later than this, if I’m honest.”

“No one in Blackmoore is ever late, ma’am.”

His words strike me as odd, but I shove them into the box with all my other mounting worries and step outside.

“So, Bill said you have some critters eating your porch?” He curls his thumbs through his belt loops, and I’m taken aback by how normal he seems in a town of… Well, nothing normal.

“Yeah, he said they’re probably in the house, too.”

“Mm, I’d figure as much. I mean, the porch is connected.” He laughs, rocking on his heels. “Well, I’ll inspect and draw up the paperwork for Bill and be out of your hair.”

“Do you need anything from me? Any coffee or anything? It’s chilly out today.”

He eyes me as if I’ve just said the most peculiar thing he’s ever heard. “I’d love some coffee, actually.”

“Sure. Cream and sugar?”

“Is there any other way?”

I laugh as I walk inside and leave the door open, heading for the coffeepot, which is still on the warm setting.

“You know, I don’t think I’ll ever understand black coffee drinkers,” I call out as I pour him a mug full.

“My wife is one of them, and I swear she’s another breed entirely.”

I turn as he sounds farther off.

Sure enough, he’s standing outside the house, poking only his head to speak to me.

“You can come in if you’d like. Unless you’re worried that the place isn’t structurally sound and might fall in on you.”

He smiles, looking down at his feet before placing one inside.

It’s as if he’s testing some unforeseen boundary line, which strikes me as odd.

I add that to the box of worries and sigh inwardly.

That box is going to need to be taken to the dump soon, or it’ll overflow.

I finish making his coffee, just as I make my own, and hand it over.

“Thank you, kindly.” He tips his hat as he takes a long drag. “Oh, that’s good. See, Karen doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

I laugh. “Stop. Karen is your wife?”

“The one and the same.”

“The woman who’s ruined me with her pumpkin cheesecake coffee is a black coffee drinker? I would’ve never pegged her as such.”

His laugh trails off as he takes another swallow.

“You know, I should have you two by for dinner sometime.”

I don’t know where that came from. Maybe the small-town vibes are getting to my head.

“Oh, we’d love that. I know Karen would. Social butterfly, that one. And you wouldn’t mind inviting her in?”

“Uhh, no?! If I invite you over, I’m not going to force you to eat with the termites.” I laugh at my own joke, and he follows suit.

“Well, I’d best be getting this paperwork done. Bill’s a stickler for being on schedule and expecting me to be finished soon.” He hands his mug back to me, and I place it in the sink.

“I never got your name,” I tell him.

“Oh, I do that all the time. So sorry.” He places his hand out for me to shake. “I’m Ulysses. It’s a pleasure to meet you…”

“Silver.”

“What a pretty name.” He holds onto my hand for a second too long, and it’s when I realize the chill settling into my bones at his touch, like my subconscious is warning me of something.

However, I can’t decide what it’s trying to tell me, and Ulysses is the most normal resident of Blackmoore I’ve met yet, so I choose to brush it off.

“Thank you for the coffee,” he tells me, closing the door behind him as he steps back onto the porch.

I sigh, a bit shaken by my interaction with Ulysses, and then mentally stuff it into the box, where now the lid won’t close because it’s stuffed full, its contents bulging.

Ulysses finished in under an hour, giving me a copy of the paper confirming Bill’s initial suspicion.

I have to tent, and it’s going to cost thirty grand.

To forget about the cost and the hassle of staying in a hotel for a week, I’m at the local dive bar I found on Ulysses’ recommendation when I asked where I could get a stiff drink.

The Blue Bucket is small and packed to the brim. I found a stool early on, thank goodness, and I’m not letting it go to waste.

I ordered the special: a round of beers in a blue bucket, and I only have one left.

My bladder is done with me by the time I crack the lid on the final one, and I know that when I stand up, the room’s going to spin, and the alcohol is going to lace my veins like a freight train.

“This seat taken?” someone asks, and I turn to find Nova smiling back at me.

I look down at an empty stool to my right. “Nope. Go right ahead. I honestly hadn’t realized it was empty.”

There was someone beside me when I registered last.

“Drowning your sorrows in a blue bucket already, newbie? I bet you’d last at least a month before I found you here, warming a stool.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint.”

She laughs and taps me on the shoulder. “Ahh, don’t worry, it was only five dollars to enter my bet.”

“Wait, what?” I slur, the room blurring around me the more the alcohol rages through me.

“Bourbon on the rocks, please?” she asks the bartender.

He nods and pours her order as she hands over cash.

“So, rough day?”

“Thirty grand worth of rough. You know, I thought it would be easy to spend my hard-earned money on that house, but then my foot went through the porch, and Ulysses brought me the amazing news about fixing it. Well, shit, not even fixing it. I have to tent before I can fix it. Bill’s still working on the renovation estimate.

He’s probably somewhere right now with his red pen and clipboard, crushing my dreams one calculator button at a time.

” My words are rushed and slurred, and Nova is highly entertained.

I can tell by the amused look on her face.

“Damn. Yeah, neither of them ever has good news if they’ve got their clipboard out,” she agrees.

“At least this town has excellent coffee,” I mutter.

“That’s the spirit; look on the bright side.”

“I should just knock the fucking house down and be done with it. I don’t know why I’m so determined to fix it. It’s not like I’m going to stay here.”

“You’re not?”

I shake my head. “Nope. I wanna flip it and sell it.”

Her laugh has a note that almost sounds like she thinks my idea is absurd.

“What?” I ask.

“Well, it’s a little pointless to fix it up when it won’t sell. Outsiders don’t come here, and no one in town needs a residence right now.”

Her evaluation pisses me off, but it also strikes me as odd. “I’m an outsider. I’m here.”

“Mm, but you are different, Silver. The town wouldn’t let you in if you didn’t belong.” She finishes her drink and stands, heading for the door.

I hop off my stool, holding the counter as the room swims. Grabbing my purse and tossing cash down, I hurry after her.

“Hey,” I shout when I finally get outside. “What do you mean the town wouldn’t have let me in?”

She turns, a knowing smirk making her porcelain skin crinkle around her mouth and eyes. “You’ll find out soon enough.” She looks at her watch. “Any minute now, honestly.”

As she walks away, I try to riddle out her words.

This town is so fucking weird.

Even with all its oddities, it’s even more perplexing that I’ve never felt more comfortable somewhere.

A hand covers my mouth from behind, and I scream into the palm of a man who leans over my shoulder and whispers in my ear. “Don’t worry, pretty girl, this will all be over soon.”

Confusion mutes my screams before he runs two fingers over my forehead, and my body grows lax. Darkness swallows me whole.

Suddenly, every strange thing I’ve been shoving into my box of worries glares at me, judging my stupidity as I’m kidnapped while I can’t fight back.

They really don’t like outsiders here.

“How much power did you use, Asher?” a man grumbles, and it makes the throbbing in my head pulse against my temples harder.

“Not that much, but she smelled faintly of alcohol. Maybe the two don’t mix.”

“You know the two don’t mix. I swear you see a pretty one, and the cogs in your brain stop fucking turning.”

My eyelid opens forcibly, and a light is shined across it.

“Pupils are reactive. You haven’t killed her.”

“Thanks for the assessment, Doc.”

“My head,” I groan, rolling onto my side as my stomach screams at me that it was the wrong move. “Fuck.”

My stomach retches, its contents splattering whatever is in front of me as men groan and scurry backward.

“I’m sor—” vomit cuts off my words as my body continues to reject all the beer I downed before falling into a stupor of some kind.

I tell myself all the voices I’m hearing and my kidnapping, which I vaguely remember, are all in my head, but someone wipes my mouth with a warm cloth, and my eyes fly open to see a man crouching in my vomit to clean me up.

“You’re alright now,” he tells me, and warmth spreads through my body, along with alarm and fear.

His eyes are red behind the partial mask on his face.

“It was you,” I whisper, not taking my gaze from his. “You were watching me.”

A throat clears. “Actually, that was me.”

My eyes flick to where another masked man has his hand up.

Red eyes are in his sockets, and the mask makes him indiscernible from the others, besides the two tattoo sleeves running the length of his arms and his muscular build.

The man in front of me is equally tall, but his body is more lithe than the man who admitted to stalking me.

“Who are you? Wait,” I sit up, “tell me I’m not in the creepy manor.”

There are two more men behind me.

One is in a suit and matching mask, and the other has no shirt on, and his muscles should be studied for their rigid perfection.

They, too, wear white partial masks and have red eyes.

“Hey, I’ll have you know we take pride in this manor, and it’s not creepy.”

I rub my temples and close my eyes.

I can’t do this right now.

“Lowell,” the one in the suit warns.

The one who was stalking me put his hands up. “Just saying.”

“What are you? Who are you? Where am I?”

Fear is becoming an odd bedfellow, and I’m sure that once my hangover fades, latent anxiety will be my best friend again.

“We are what’s left of the original vampiric lines, better known as the Midnight Order, and you are here to be tested,” the one who cleaned me tells me plainly, and I’m thankful for it.

My mind is whirring like a glitching computer. “Tested for what?”

“Tested to see if you’re the key,” he answers.

I leave him space to tell me what I might be the key to, raising my brows as if to coax him on.

“The key to our curse,” he finally sighs.

Vampires?