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

enjoyed change, but it is an essential part of life. We’ll get through this together.”

Wren smiled as she hit the switch for the shop. Darkness fell across her store, but she was not frightened. She was never frightened when she was inside these walls. Nor was she frightened outside of them whenever E was with her.

“Are you feeling better?” she asked as she started walking up the rickety staircase.

“In a manner of speaking. I am still weak.”

She didn’t ask why E was weak. Wren knew that the creature wouldn’t tell her no matter how much she badgered it.

“Do you need to rest more?”

“I grew worried for you. I thought Malachi would have followed us home.”

“Honestly, I thought the same.” It had plagued her for a few days now. There was nothing unusual that she could see, but Wren was jumping at shadows lately. She had not slept well as every wind that whistled past her window made her think someone was going to attack her again.

Her hands skipped over the peeling wallpaper in the stairwell. She had put it up herself when the store had first opened. Wren could still remember the scent of plaster and how many times the sticky wallpaper had fallen over her head. The flowers that decorated the wall had already faded.

“I have been dreaming through your day. I have not noticed anything worrisome.”

E dreamed what Wren saw during the daytime when it rested. Every blink of her eyes fed more information to the slumbering creature inside her head. At first, the knowledge had made Wren uncomfortable. There was no part of her day that was entirely private. She had long since gotten over that worry.

Rounding the steps and walking into her apartment, Wren shrugged. “Maybe he’s not all that interested in me after all.”

A sharp prick on her thigh made her frown. She had already told the stinging nettles that they had to stay in their pot more than once. The dastardly plants were constantly attempting to escape and cause mischief wherever they could. Wren had never met a plant that was such a nuisance.

But when she looked down at her leg, it was not a vine she had brushed against. A metal dart stuck to the muscle in her leg through the worn fabric of her purple skirt. Grey feathers fletched the end and fluttered with her every twitching movement.

“E?” she whispered as horrified fear made her voice tremble.

No voice responded to her plea for help.

“Sorry about that. We heard that your creature was a little stronger than we had anticipated.”

The voice came from her kitchen. Wren’s head swiveled around to see the woman perched on top of her table.

Her legs swung wildly high above the floor. Wren was shocked at how tiny the woman must be. Her black hair was so dark it disappeared into the dim light behind her and reached nearly to her waist. Intelligent blue eyes blinked at her while pale lips smoothed into a soft smile.

“Who are you?” Wren had apparently spoken too soon. Perhaps Malachi had sent someone to get her after all.

“Burke did tell you they’d send us, didn’t he?”

“Us?”

Wren’s eyes darted in the other direction as movement from her window made her heart skip a beat. A man had been leaning against her window sill. He had blended into the darkness so well that she hadn’t noticed him until that moment.

He was taller than she had ever seen anyone, so broad that both her arms stretched couldn’t have wrapped around him. A trimmed beard made his jaw appear sharper than the blade of a dagger. His hair was so long that it tangled around him like a lion’s mane. He was both fiercely handsome and masculine. Yet dangerously so. He made Wren instantly nervous.

“He’s always been a loner,” the woman said as she tsked. “I told him standing in the shadows was too creepy, but he didn’t listen.”

“Are there more people hidden in my closet?” Wren snapped at them. She was buying time until E could wake back up. In her head, she was screaming for help.

“Don’t try to contact the creature,” the woman said as she hopped off of the table. She was a tiny little thing as Wren expected. The top of her head would barely reach Wren’s shoulder. “The dart blocks your two minds from each other.”

“What did you do to me?” Wren started backing away from them. Her eyes frantically searched the room for some kind of weapon to hold against the two strangers. Unfortunately, the only thing she might be able to grab was a broom next to her door.

The tiny woman held her hands out, palm up. “Oh come on, don’t be frightened. We’re just here to bring you back to the Five.”

“I made it clear to Burke that I wasn’t doing that.”

“Sorry.” Wren almost believed she was apologetic when her face twisted into the disappointed expression. “But you don’t have that choice anymore.”

The man moved so quickly that Wren only saw a blur. One moment, her eyes were open, and the next, a blinding pain forced her to close them.

Another needle was sticking out of the side of her neck. She felt it as she dropped to her knees on the floor. Wren had a moment to cry out for E one more time before she fell deep into sleep.

He floated in the black abyss that was the dreaming world. Large bubbles of dreams floated past him but nothing caught his attention. They were all the normal dreams that he would have expected.

Once he thought he had found another candidate. They had been fighting a dragon in their dream and winning. Powerful magic was wielded on their side with insanity riding upon the dreamer’s shoulders. But when he got closer, it wasn’t the creature within the person that was insane. It was the human mind that was insane. He pulled memories from the person’s mind and found they were in a hospital.

Dying.

Jiminy had pulled out of the dream in