A Darker Past (Entangled Teen) (The Darker Agency) Read Online Free PDF

nefarious conduct with unsavory characters. She lived alone on the outskirts of town, until one day in May of 1906, her cabin was discovered empty. Lorna was never seen or heard from again.”
    Lukas put down the picture. His lips pressed in a grim line, he sighed. “So they drove her away?”
    “It’s possible.” Mom put a hand on his shoulder. They’d grown close in the last couple months. She’d taken on the role of a surrogate, and Lukas seemed more than happy to accept. They’d sit for hours huddled together over books, soaking up knowledge like it was going out of style. “But we’ll never know for sure.”
    We tried not to ask questions about Lukas’s past, but I couldn’t help it. “Did you know her?”
    He looked at me, surprised, then nodded. “We met once. At Simon’s. She was a good woman. Not a typical Belfair.”
    My best friend was a Belfair, and I should have been insulted on her behalf, but I wasn’t, because she wasn’t a typical Belfair, either. The rest of the family had a history of being self-serving and dark. They weren’t exactly pillars of the community. Lorna Belfair, though, was different. To help save lives, she’d aided Simon Darker in imprisoning Lukas’s ex, the powerful witch responsible for trapping him with the Seven Deadly Sins.
    Mom continued down the row. “Let’s keep going. I want to find the Darker display and see what we’re dealing with here.”
    I made a move to follow, but a wave of nausea rolled through me. My stomach felt like it’d been turned inside out, and there was a throbbing in my temples that rivaled the worst sinus headache known to man.
    “We can—” Mom froze. “Jessie?”
    Forget not feeling well. In that instant my entire world was spinning. My arms shot out, grabbing for the nearest stationary object. Mom’s lips were still moving, but I couldn’t make out the words anymore. Her hands came to my shoulders. I didn’t feel the weight of them—in fact, I didn’t feel anything except an echoing ring inside my head that kept getting louder.
    “Need to get out of—”
    Lukas understood right away what I was trying to say. He slipped his arm under mine and half dragged me to the far corner of the room, behind the thick black drapes.
    “Hell in a hailstorm,” I mumbled just before the ground beneath my feet disappeared.
    My stomach turned over, and a rush of icy wind cut through me as though I was wearing a bikini in a blizzard. The room swam for a moment, Lukas’s face blurred and became watery, and when my vision cleared, I was sitting in a chaise lounge across from a familiar set of aqua-colored eyes.
    “Nice of you to drop by, Peaches.” Valefar leaned against his desk. He wore the same thing he always did. Black from head to toe, worn shit-kickers, and the kind of grin that made you wonder what he’d just been up to. In his case, he’d probably been drowning puppies or dropping water balloons full of ink on little old ladies. “Long time, no see.”
    I stumbled to my feet, anxious to get away from the chaise. Everything in this office, from the furniture, right down to the clothes on Valefar’s back, were an illusion. Once in a while I’d get a glimpse of what really lay beneath the glamour—and it wasn’t pretty. The chaise was a foul, bloody thing with veins and what could only be described as twitching muscle. I had nightmares about it. I’d sit down and the damn thing would try to swallow me whole. Sometimes it would even laugh. A low, rumbling sound that jarred me from a deep sleep drenched in a cold sweat.
    Rubbing my head, I said, “I really wish you’d give me some kind of warning before doing that.”
    “I have a solution to that,” he said with a deceptively boyish grin. If he’d been human, that smile would have done a lot of girls in. But, that made sense, I suppose. If you could make yourself look like anyone, why be ugly? “My offer still stands.”
    The offer in question was my own personal room in hell.