Silver Blood (Series of Blood Book 1) by Emma Hamm (bill gates book recommendations .TXT) 📕

silken fabrics and velvet touches where she dreamt a man would visit her. She would beguile him with her stories, and he would eventually fall in love with her.

Right, as if. Wren didn’t need a man anyways. Who did? She was perfectly happy alone and mildly successful.

She blew out a breath to send her black hair flying away from her forehead. Tomorrow she’d change her hair again. Pink was simply not working for her, and she was feeling like red was a more appropriate color.

Not because Burke had suggested she should have red hair. That would have been a foolish reason for her to change her hair color.

A soft scratching sound on her window made her squeeze her eyes shut. Whatever it was could wait until the morning. The window was right next to her bed and went out onto the fire escape. She wouldn’t step foot on the rickety metal rungs if her life depended on it.

Again the scratching sound, though this time it had a few raps at the end of it.

Sounds like that couldn’t be attested to the wind or the stray vines that had crawled away from her. Grumpy and overtired, she blinked open her eyes to look out her window.

The dark shadow of a man sat there. He was reclined on the steps that went further up the building with his long legs stretched out before him. Wren didn’t think comfort like that could be faked. The man should really be worried about the metal breaking and sending him plummeting to a painful fall.

She didn’t flinch back from the form that she could have reached out and touched if the window had been opened. Sadly, Wren was used to early morning visits like this.

She grumbled as she rolled onto her knees to open the window. Some people could wake up happy as a lamb, and some could have only a few hours of sleep and feel well rested. Wren was not either of these people.

The window jittered open with a loud squeaking sound.

Smoke drifted towards her as the wind blew into her apartment. The scent of sweet cigar smoke was what she always thought of when it came to this man. Pitch: the most dangerous person on her block and perhaps the most dangerous person in the city.

He turned to look at her with dark, obsidian eyes and blew a red smoke ring in her direction.

She flinched back and waved her hand in front of her face. “Stop it. You know I don’t like that in my apartment.”

Pitch was an odd person when it came to these parts, but then again most of them were. He was tall and lanky with long limbs and ropey muscles that corded over his shoulders and legs. He was wearing a simple tank top and leather pants that seemed to disappear into the murky darkness beneath him.

She supposed he was a handsome man. If one didn’t know him. His black hair was shoulder length and roughly hewn. A hawk like nose and full lips made his porcelain skin just pretty enough to be dangerous. He was a waking dream that she knew held a nightmare within its shell.

Wren had seen him fight before. The man had no mercy for anyone or anything that stood in his way. Thankfully, she had never been in his way.

Folding her legs so that she was settled onto her knees, she braced her arms against the window frame and looked up at him. “What is it that you want, Pitch?”

The cigar between his hands always held an odd color of smoke. Red, tonight, made her nervous, because it always meant that he was angry. Blue was a safe smoke, green even better. She would never tell him that his cigars were a clear indication of his mood. If he knew, then he used them as a warning. If he didn’t know, then she wasn’t going to ruin it for everyone else.

“Heard you had some trouble tonight.” Another smoke ring was blown, but at least this time he aimed it away from her building.

“Just Rupert. I made a mistake that I shouldn’t have. It won’t happen again.”

“You don’t make mistakes.”

“I did this time.”

He made a sound that sounded like an affirmation and stared off into the distance.

Wren had noticed early on in their odd relationship that he didn’t make eye contact with people. Whenever she watched his eyes, it was too hard to pay attention. He flickered between his own dark eyes and that of a Demon too quickly for most people to feel comfortable with.

She had a feeling that Pitch was a little too close to whatever creature possessed him.

“I’ll take care of him,” he said.

“I don’t need you to take care of him, Pitch. Rupert’s harmless enough; he was just upset.”

“People get what they pay for. But I can’t have customers roughing up distributors.”

“I’m not one of your distributors,” Wren said. He had no right to step in with her patrons when she didn’t ask him to.

“Close enough.”

“I am not!”

He looked at her then. His eyes were completely black as he stared her down. Red smoke hovered around him like a halo before he finally nodded.

Pitch wasn’t usually so serious. Though his expression rarely changed, he was always so sarcastic that she thought he was making jokes. Tonight the intensity in his gaze made her nervous. It seemed to be a constant state for her lately.

“Why are you worried about me anyways?” she asked as one of her brows raised.

“I don’t mind you.”

“That’s--” Wren was about to make a stinging reply but stopped herself with a shrug. “Actually from you, that’s probably about the best I’ll get. Is that the only reason you came to visit me at this ungodly hour?”

He didn’t move in the slightest, but she noticed the change in his demeanor as he appeared to relax more. “I’ve got news.”

Wren waited for him to say something after that, but he only dragged a breath of his cigar and let the