Blood Threads: The Star Seamstress Book One

by Noella Royce

  "No, you really shouldn't," her son agreed.

  "It's all right; I get it. I hope to find a better job soon. These positions were fast and easy to get, but I hope to look for something more challenging once everything settles down." I'd been poor growing up and then I'd worked for famous people, and experiences didn't get any more humbling than that. I'd learned long ago to roll with the thoughtless insults.

  "Good for you," Chun-Hei said with another polite smile and turned to her son. "I'll give you an hour."

  "Deal."

  Sun Ji walked me to the door and opened it, and I gave him a genuine smile as I stepped outside. "Thank you so much for having me. Your group is truly cool, and I'll gladly come back anytime."

  "We'll take you up on that. You're brilliant."

  He was so sincere I blushed. I leaned forward and gave him a hug. "Thank you. I'm serious; it's been a while since someone was so sweet to me."

  I pulled away, and he blushed adorably. "Well, yeah, of course. Any time." He shuffled his feet and coughed. "You don't date younger men, do you?"

  I burst out laughing. He was so cute. "No, not that much younger, I'm sorry. I'm a complicated lady, and it's probably best if I stick with dudes who have as much baggage as me."

  "Yeah, I thought that might be the case." He sighed. "A man can hope." He gave me that smile again, and I saw my rejection hadn't done him any damage whatsoever. "See you soon, Veda."

  My mood was pretty good as I walked home. Talking passionately about clothing, makeup, and the art of becoming someone else had reminded me of the passion I'd once had for costuming.

  Now that didn't necessarily mean I was ready to return to that world, since the thought of crafting a costume and getting back on social media made me sweaty.

  That vigor remained as I walked across the river, and when the murmuring song surrounded me, I was able to process it as nothing more than background noise. This made me smug, and I wondered if perhaps that was the secret: if you didn't engage with the Agrimony River, the Agrimony River wouldn't engage with you.

  Nothing so simple, a burbling, amused voice responded, and I bit down several curse words.

  Damn, it really was always listening to the thoughts in my addled, overloaded head. Next time I walked around, I was going to bring headphones to drown it out, and then it'd just get lost in the music.

  Won't work. But please, feel free to try. Such experiments amuse us.

  Goddammit.

  Breanna wasn't home when I arrived so I texted to make sure she was okay. She was and said she'd be staying at a friend's place for a couple of nights. I hoped she was feeling better.

  As I lay in bed, I thought about my day. Maybe I could learn to harness this new star seamstress stuff and use the trust to both learn magical skills as well as nurture my creativity. That would help me stay sane until I had more money, and be a bonding experience with my new friends.

  On the edge of sleep, I recalled Adin's kiss, and my fingers drifted up to my lips. Damn, he was good at that. For a brief moment, he'd possessed me, and I had the uncomfortable feeling I'd have let him do anything he wanted after a kiss like that.

  He was right; I needed to stay away from him.

  I fell asleep to another variation on my usual dreams, full of versions of myself and nasty Ash Order necromancers.

  There was also scantily-clad Adin again, this time silent but smiling. He took my wrists and kissed each one gently, before pulling me towards him.

  He led my touch down the hard ridges of his muscles, and I almost purred at the sensation. Soon, my fingers had reached the trail of hair that led down into his pants, and I let myself be distracted by their dark softness, as well as the sharp hip bones that broke up the defined muscles of his torso. He made a noise of pleasure as I touched him, as well as the gentlest smile that I'd ever seen him wear before it turned wicked as my hands moved lower. There was an answering hardness underneath the strained leather that had me whimpering, and I knew this was an invitation, one I sure as hell wasn't going to say no to.

  Unfortunately, it was just as he was placing his large hands on my hips that I woke up.

  "Fuck." Man, I had wanted to see my dream to its naked, sweaty fruition. I was unlikely to be able to touch Adin that way in real life, and did I really want to? He was a vampire and a mind-screwing pain in the ass. Dreams were my only outlet for my thwarted lust.

  Shaking off the fugue of sex that'd taken over my mind, I focused on what I wanted to accomplish that day. "Today I sew!" I pumped my fist in the air in front of the bathroom mirror. Invigorated by my conversation with the cosplay group, I was ready to lean into whatever this weird star seamstress job entailed.

  Half an hour later, at Barnes', my mood balloon was losing air, and my hopes were pretty thoroughly dashed.

  "What do you mean, you can't let me sew until you and Thalia come to an agreement?" I asked Frank, crossing my arms.

  "I'm sorry, Veda." Frank was wincing, as if telling me this caused him physical pain.. "I still don't have Thalia's agreement to release me from my oath, but unless she does, you'll never gain the skills fast enough to actually become a Star Seamstress. I'm the only one who can help you right now, but she's tied my hands."

  I sighed. "Let me guess: she had you swear on the river."

  He nodded vigorously, relieved I understood. "Yes, she did. She even had me cut my hand over the water so it tasted my blood." His voice was a fearful whisper

  "So what happens to people who break oaths they've made to the Agrimony? You all act like it's some sort of big deal."

  His brow furrowed. "It's different for everyone, but their deaths are always an ironic reflection of the oath they broke. For example, Old Mrs. Sloan promised to stop stealing spell ingredients from her coven, broke the oath, and ended up having a heart attack and falling face-first into a pile of pilfered pigeon eyes." He shuddered. "The scene was gruesome."

  I clasped a hand over my mouth. "The river murders them?" Damn. I thought of how sweetly it promised me power and felt cold with fear.

  He nodded. "Sometimes, yes, although other times it just causes the oathbreakers grievous bodily harm." Lovely. "Oh, Veda, I am sorry; I truly am." He did look miserable. "She doubled down and declared that letting you use the machine itself breaks the oath. Since I own it, as well as the supplies and equipment, that's still aiding and abetting your journey."

  "So that means I can't sew on any of your machines?"

  "No, you cannot. You can't do anything until I change her mind. I'm trying to get her to listen, I truly am, but it's taking time. The stories of the destruction Star Seamstresses have wrought on her kind when they've joined the necromancers are legion, and she doesn't think you're strong enough to resist their pull."

  "What do you think?" I was deeply disappointed.

  "I think you're capable of anything." He said this with such shining conviction that I felt my heart swell. It meant a lot to my confidence that he believed in me; maybe I could get to the point where I believed in myself. "That's why it's so vital that she lets me out of this. I'll make it happen, Veda, I promise. If I'm not in the store for the next few days it's because I'm over there, working on her allies. But they're all a stubborn lot, and her authority is pretty absolute." He said this with a note of pride, and I was impressed he was still so supportive of his girlfriend, even when he was trying to circumvent her authority. I felt horrible that my presence and skills put his relationship at risk. I held in a sigh. Thwarted once again. "I get it. I won't push you anymore. But keep me in the loop, okay? I'm finally ready to try this."

  Frank put a hand on my shoulder. "That's so great; I'm really proud of you. We'll make this happen."

  My mind began to go over my options even as I nodded. Maybe Sun Ji would let me use his sewing machine, or I could rent one. My credit was crap at the moment, but I just needed something to tide me over until I could buy one and have my trust reimburse me.

  I worked the rest of my shift in a low, sim
mering bad mood, angry that I'd finally gotten some of my groove back but had no outlet for my newfound energy.

  Well, that just meant I'd need to find one, didn't it?

  11

  "So! Erica." I was leaning into her, smiling widely, and her green eyes darted about desperately for an escape. "Tell me about Adin."

  I had pinned her in the corner of the VIP lounge of the Tangerine, having approached her with a comforting and friendly demeanor before going in for the kill. "I just have a few questions, and he's not answering them himself. I promise this won't take long."

  Those green eyes widened. "You know what he is, don't you?"

  "I do, yes." I stepped back so I wasn't trapping her any longer. "Seriously, I don't mean to spring this on you, but I'm desperate for information and help. I've learned a lot of seriously weird things about this town, and no one's giving me the full picture."

  She shook her head and her burnished ringlets bounced. "It's probably best that you're mostly in the dark, Veda. To be honest, nothing good can come of you knowing Maywen's secrets, and specifically Adin's."

  I sat on the edge of a nearby booth with a sigh. "I hear you, trust me. I'd rather have nothing to do with any of this. The problem is, supposedly I've got some gift that's going to catch the attention of the Ash Order, and I need help."

  She looked afraid again. "Don't say their name out loud; supposedly it draws their attention," she whispered.

  Wonderful, just wonderful. "The Ashers, then?"

  "That's not much better."

  I sighed. "See? This is the problem. I have no idea what's going on around here, including what language to use to keep myself from being attacked by a bunch of slimy death mages. I'm lost."

  She tilted her head with narrowed eyes. "What's that have to do with Adin? He's not in the Order, none of the vampires are. They hate each other, but the vampires hate him, too. He might not be the best ally."

  "I know, but he's been running around saving my ass, and I just want to know if he can be trusted. I need any help I can get, even if from a grumpy, isolated vampire."

  Erica began to chew on a nail. "Maybe. But sometimes I think he gets involved in things just because he's bored, not because he really cares much what happens to anyone."

  "Hmm." He definitely cared about some things, judging by his anger, but I had to agree I probably wasn't one of them. "I totally agree, and that's what's so frustrating. Please, Erica. I won't share what you tell me with anyone." I gave her my best pleading eyes, which I'd heard were quite effective, and waited.

  Her shoulders fell a fraction of an inch, and I knew I'd won. "Okay. What do you want to know?"

  "First, how do I get him to talk to me like a human being?" Her eyebrows lifted. "Okay, maybe that's not the right phrasing when discussing a vampire. How do I get him to stop freezing me out?"

  "I don't know exactly what you're looking for there, because it's not like he lets me in." She poked at a candle on a table, and her smile was wistful. "He and I had a bit of a flirtation, that's all, and I'd figured out from rumors he was a vampire. He was looking very pale one night—I think he'd been in some sort of fight—and I was feeling dangerous and offered him my blood. I've got a bad boy problem, to be honest." I nodded sympathetically. I hadn't, but Maywen seemed to be fucking with my preferences. "Anyways, he took me up on my offer, and since then we've hooked up now and then; Nothing serious. Some light necking, and then he might take a little bit of blood." She shrugged. "I wanted more, both physically and relationship-wise, but that's not how Adin works. I think he could tell I was getting attached and pulled away." She gave a wry smile. "Not the dating kind, that one."

  "What happened the night I saw you guys, when he was wearing that amazing velvet outfit?"

  "That getup was something else, wasn't it? I'd been out that night and was pretty drunk, and I'd basically booty called him." Erica's cheeks reddened. "He'd just been drained by some crazy magic after fighting demons and took me up on my offer."

  "You called him to drink your blood?" That was a new one.

  She winced. "Yeah, having your blood sucked is a high, and since I stopped doing hard drugs it's my only major vice."

  "So he feeds off you regularly?" I felt more than a bit queasy. How could everyone see regularly exchanging unusual fluids with vampires anything other than gross and unnatural?

  Another voice in my head pointed out that maybe, just maybe, I was jealous of her experiences with Adin. I shook that thought off, since it made me uncomfortable.

  "Not regularly; since he's so old, he doesn't have to feed more than a couple times a month except when he's drained. He also has a regular supplier for donated blood. But it seems that lifeblood, from a pumping heart, does offer more benefits." She grinned. "He's always very grateful afterward."

  Despite her smile, I could tell she was disappointed there wasn't more to her relationship with Adin. Not that I blamed her. I'd barely known him before having lurid sexual fantasies about him, and I suspected those dreams were just going to get worse. "Is there anything else you know about Adin? Like, why he might help me, other than shits and giggles?" I dug my nails into my palm. "Man, I hope he isn't just fucking with me because it's fun." I was starting to see why no one trusted him, if this was the sort of bullshit his friends thought he was capable of.

  "Not really; I'm sorry." She continued to push the candle around the table nervously, and I knew I'd made her both sad and uncomfortable. I won't become you, I swore to myself. No way was Professor Adin going to confuse me to the point where a conversation about him made me want to cry. "Well, thank you anyways. I'm sorry to ambush you, but kinda desperate right now."

  "If you really are involved with the Order and the vampires, I don't blame you." She looked around again, as if worried the walls had ears. "Seriously, Veda, if you can stay out of this or leave town, you should. I've seen a few people disappear over the last few years, and they'd always been too curious or accidentally got involved with things they couldn't handle."

  I nodded, and tried to hide how much her warning unsettled me. I thought of Chief Metzger's snarl, and the mocking, shadowy figures in my dreams, and held down a shudder. "I'll be careful, I promise. Nothing bad has happened yet, right?"

  Erica looked skeptical, but nodded.

  We went back to our respective jobs, and I wondered if perhaps we could be friends someday.

  As I went back behind the bar, Jordan looked up at me from the glass he was drying, wearing an uncharacteristically subdued smile. He'd been so happy to see me when I arrived. Had something happened?

  I began to cut lemons and limes and glanced at him. "What kind of night do you think it'll be?" I asked brightly.

  He paused before answering. "It's raining outside, so I expect that to scare off a few patrons. Still, Tuesday nights are a pretty steady group." He still wasn't looking at me, but he gave a small smile. "I hope it's a normal crowd, or Frisky Rascal will be cranky; he can be a real grump when no one's dancing."

  "Oh yeah, that'd be too bad. Nobody likes a cranky DJ."

  Jordan chuckled, but fell quiet.

  I felt how little we knew each other just then and wondered if I should try to kickstart the conversation. Maybe he didn't like me as much as I thought he did.

  He then cleared his throat, and I looked up. "So I went up to the lounge to see what you and Erica were up to, and I heard you guys talking about Adin." He still wasn't looking at me.

  I swore to myself. No wonder Erica was so nervous about being heard in this place. I hadn't even known he was near the lounge.

  "What did you hear?"

  "Not much; I really wasn't trying to eavesdrop. All I heard was you ask about Adin. Are you seeing him?" He was trying to sound casual and failing. "A lot of women in this town are really into him."

  It took me a moment to figure out what was going on. Jordan was jealous of Adin.

  I shook my head violently. "Oh, god, no; it's not like that. Trust me, I want as little to do w
ith him as possible. He's involved in some group of weirdos my other coworkers were telling me about, and I was curious. It's just more of the extreme weirdness of Maywen."

  "Maybe, but be careful with that one, Veda." Jordan's blue eyes were steady, and he sounded seriously concerned. "If the timing works out, then Erica got pretty down during the time she was seeing him, and I don't want to see that happen to you. He's probably a scary, manipulative guy, and he was staring at you pretty closely that night he was here."

  I put a hand on Jordan's shoulder and squeezed. "Thanks, but you've got nothing to worry about. Yeah, he's attractive, but also a serious creep." I didn't add I had no desire to get involved with a vampire, no matter what my hormones said. He was a virgin when it came to Maywen's paranormal side, and I didn't want to be the one to tell him the bad news. "But that's why I was asking Erica about him. He freaks me out and I wanted to know what his deal is, but nothing she told me made me feel remotely better."

  Finally I got the real Jordan smile. "Good! You're too cool a woman to fall into the clutches of an asshole like that." His gaze became savvy. "So does that mean we're still on for our date tomorrow?"

  I laughed. "Yes, you dork, I'm looking forward to it. I obviously find you attractive if I'm defending my honor to you, and I'd love to talk to you outside of work."

  "You're not supposed to defend your honor to me, I'm supposed to do that for you."

  "I'll accept that." I grinned. The man was a master flirter, and I was so down for it.

  "So I have an idea for where we should go to dinner." Jordan leaned forward, eyes bright. "Do you like Italian?"

  We hashed out the details, and I enjoyed the normalcy of our interaction and how absolutely human he was.

  I was both excited and a little nervous. Since I'd been in a relationship for a while in LA, I'd not had a first date in a long time.

  The customers were low-key throughout the night, and Jordan and I kept the flirting train chugging along.

  I was downright glowing from our interactions when he went in the back to help Trish clean and sort glasses. For a moment, I even forgot all the weird supernatural drama swirling around Maywen.