Innocently Evil (A Kitty Bloom Novel) Read Online Free PDF Page B

h—y—yes,” I stuttered, trying not to stare.
    “Very good choice,” she told me and turned back around to start playing with the teapot.
    I didn’t want to know what would have happened if I had made a bad choice. Just another look at her teeth would have been enough to scare me into submission. I looked back over at Sam and screwed up my face in shock. What they hell had I just gotten myself into?
    He raised his hands above the table in self defense and then motioned towards the chair beside him. “You might want to take a seat,” he said.
    I looked at the seat next to him and thought better of it, then took the seat closest to me and furthest away from the two of them. I crossed my arms and lent my elbows on the table, waiting for an explanation.
    “So, how are you doing,” Sam asked me almost cautiously.
    “Want the truth,” I said, raising an eyebrow and then glancing at the old woman again.
    Sam seemed to understand my concern about whether or not to be discussing this subject in front of the strange little old lady and he smiled weakly at me. “There is nothing you can say in front of Cantrelle that she doesn’t already know,” he said. He looked over at her again as she turned around with our cups of tea in hand. She placed them on the table, one in front of Sam, one next to him for her and then she walked towards me with mine.
    “You have nothing to fear from me, my dear,” said Cantrelle. “In my day I was quite the terror of the countryside, but now I am nothing but a lowly seer with a few too many powers of persuasion.” She handed me my cup and I noticed that her short, chubby fingers held not fingernails, but long, white claws.
    I looked back up at her face, trying hard to hide my fea r at the thought of what she might have once been. “How do I know that I can trust you,” I asked her and she smiled down at me bearing those sharp teeth once again.
    “Oh, dear one,” she laughed suddenly. “You don’t. Samuel thought that it might be necessary for me to explain things to you should you reject them coming from him and I agreed.” Sam cleared his throat suggestively and the old woman looked over her plump and narrow shoulder at him. “Yes, Samuel,” she almost hissed and then turned back to me once more with a friendly smile. “I am to explain your existence and all that comes with it, but without my personal prejudice.” Cantrelle laughed again at a joke I couldn’t seem to get and then moved away to take her seat between Sam and me. “As you can see, Kitty dear,” she continued, “Samuel and I do not come from the same side.”
    I glanced from Sam to Cantrelle and noticed that Sam was trying hard to not look at Cantrelle when she looked directly at him. Cantrelle laughed when she couldn’t meet Sam’s eyes and I couldn’t help but wonder some more about what she truly was and why someone like Sam was uneasy around her. And for that matter, why he wanted her to explain things to me.
    I took a deep breath, finally sucking up my fear, and I decided to ask that question. “If you two aren’t exactl y the best of friends,” I began, “then why did Sam choose you to help him explain things better to me?”
    Sam looked at the table and shook his head. “I knew this would come up,” he said. “If you had been more like your mother we could have avoided this difficult truth.”
    Cantr elle laughed again, a hearty, cackle of a laugh and it was beginning to give me the creeps.
    “You could never have avoided telling this one anything but the trut h, Samuel dear,” said Cantrelle. “And you are a fool to hope she is anything like her mother. She has Ninetta’s genes and will evidently follow the same path.”
    “Ninetta? My grandmother?” I asked, forgetting for a moment that I was the last in a long line of women who had to deal with the same demon blood problem.
    “Of course,” sai d Cantrelle, without hesitation. “Before I was drained back to mortality by Tiennan, I