A Cast of Shadows: An Araneae Nation Story (14 page)

“Oh. Um. I was joking.”

“You shouldn’t throw out jokes unless you’re ready to back them up with action,” she teased. “Come on, now.”

“Nah. I don’t dream, not really.”

“Now who’s lying?”

“Lots of people forget their dreams,” he protested.

“Not you. You’re too detail oriented and aware of everything to shut yourself down at night.” No, there was something he didn’t particularly want to tell her. He was rattled, and like always, it tickled her. “Tell me. Is it unicorns? You dream about unicorns, right?”

“Yes. Unicorns. I love ’em. They prance through my sleep on cotton-candy clouds.”

“Or maybe you dream that you’re naked in front of a crowd and you have to recite the Gettysburg Address.”

His voice deepened. “Occasionally, I am naked, no lie.”

Jules licked her lips. How he could send her from despair and sadness to laughter to arousal with simple changes in pitch and tone was beyond her. “Is that right? Well now, that image is sure to haunt me.”

“I’d worry over whether you meant that in a good way or a bad way, but since you’ve never seen me, I don’t think you can mean either.”

“That would be cool.”

“What?”

“If I knew what you looked like,” she blurted out, and then felt immediately foolish.

Christ. Could she be any more of a girl?

He was silent. No doubt thinking of how to extricate himself from this. She opened her mouth at the same moment he spoke. “Is that…important to you?”

“Knowing what you look like?”

“Yes.”

“No.” She squirmed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you’ve been in my head for so long, I felt like… I didn’t mean to cross any lines, so please forget…”

“No. Of course it makes sense that you would wish to see me, especially when I know what you look like.”

“How do you know what I look like?”

“Sometimes if I’m tuned in to you and you pass a mirror or your reflection, I catch a glimpse.”

Oh. That certainly made her feel vulnerable, though she knew that wasn’t his intent. “I guess when I said you’re detail oriented, I wasn’t wrong, huh?”

“Like I said, I know it’s not fair. If you want, we can try…” He hesitated. “Are you in a secure location? Can you put on your specs?”

As secure as she would ever get, and even with the VR specs on, she could still hear fine. Mystified, she leaned over the side of the bed and pulled them out of her knapsack. They looked like plastic goggles a mad scientist might wear, with a strong rubber band that went around the back of the head to keep them from slipping off. They were black, and a cord dangling off the side plugged them into a side slot on her collar.

“I have them. Am I training now?” She knew how to fight, but since Sanctuary had supplied her with this newfangled technology along with her collar, she’d started combat training with the virtual-reality goggles on. When she plugged it into her collar, James was able to upload virtual assailants for her to fight against.

It felt real to her. She supposed she looked like a fool, but no one was ever around to see her, and it served to keep her reflexes sharp.

“Not exactly. We’ve been working on something, and I want to see if it works. Put them on.”

She slipped them over her head and plugged them into the collar, staring into the blank nothingness of the glasses. “Done.”

“Give me a second.”

A second was all it took. For her combat training, James usually uploaded a program that gave her a weight room backdrop. That wasn’t what she saw now. This was a pastoral scene. Green grass lay in a rolling carpet, up to a house in the distance. Weeping willows kissed the ground.

Pretty.

Possibly the prettiest thing she’d seen in a while. The last time she’d come across a park, the overgrown lawn and weed-choked playground had depressed the hell out of her.

There was a moment of disorientation, and the scene became three dimensional. She wasn’t a watcher any longer, she was in it. The bed beneath her morphed into the soft grass. The chirp of birds sang in her ears, the trickle of a nearby river running merrily along.

Not pretty. Beautiful. Christ, how long had it been since she had experienced a quiet that was peaceful instead of fraught with the silence of those who had lived and died or run away?

She raised her hand to shade her eyes from the too-bright sun, watching as a colorful bird jumped from one branch of the tree to the next. The brush of her arm against something soft had her glancing down to find herself garbed, not in her usual rough clothes, but in a white satin halter dress with blue flowers strewn over it. Bemused, she touched the skirt. She didn’t own any dresses, and she certainly never wore white. It showed bloodstains too well.

“Jules?”

She didn’t jump, though the temptation was there. No one ever, ever crept up on her back. But she knew that voice, and she knew who would be standing there.

A Cast of Shadows

Hailey Edwards

The strongest net is no match for destiny.

An
Araneae Nation
Story

Daraja has grown up watching her brothers journey down the river on the traditional Deinopidae rite of passage. Each returned with riches from their travels, and lovers with whom to share their lives.

Now she has reached the age where she would strike out on her own to seek her fortune—if she were male. Instead, she is expected to sit patiently, weave her nets and wait for the river to bring a husband to her.

Patience, however, has never been her strong suit.

Brynmor haunts the forest surrounding the city of Cathis, his disembodied spirit inextricably bound to the wild canis roaming his lands. Until the day he stumbles across a brazen trespasser in his woods.

Compelled to step in when the canis suspect her of poaching one of their own, Brynmor fears he has lost a piece of his ragged soul to the feisty, adventure-seeking female. And when the canis confront the real poachers, he is forced to choose which life to sacrifice. Hers…or his own.

Warning: This book contains one heroine with a knack for weaving nets and one hero who relishes getting caught. Expect singing, some howling, ghostly shenanigans, and the start of a love that transcends death.

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

Cincinnati OH 45249

A Cast of Shadows

Copyright © 2013 by Hailey Edwards

ISBN: 978-1-61921-486-6

Edited by Sasha Knight

Cover by Kanaxa

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: February 2013

www.samhainpublishing.com