Poison Tongue Read Online Free PDF Page A

to speak, her gaze flickered to a place beyond my shoulder. Like a thick, corded rope had tied itself around me, I turned, slowly, to see what had caught her attention.
    Snakes coiled themselves around his body—a blue one twining around his leg, a red-and-gold-flecked snake wrapped twice around his waist. The yellow end of a tail slipped out from just around his bicep, while a pair of ruby-red eyes glowed from beneath the darkness of his hair. A huge black snake slithered and hissed as it slinked around his neck. It ran its smooth body against his Adam’s apple, tightening, and then turned its yellow gaze on me.
    I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I could only stare at the serpent as it wrapped itself around him, growing larger and longer until it became the darkness that surrounded him. It became a shadow, a part of him.
    “Levi!”
    I blinked again. Saddie stood in front of me, a frantic look in her eyes.
    “Sorry.” I slipped from her grasp, unwilling and unable to meet her eyes. My heart slammed wildly. “It’s nothing.”
    She stared at me for a few soundless moments. “It’s not nothing. Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine.” I pulled myself up straighter and squared my shoulders, not wanting her to see how sick I felt, how terrified I was.
    “Well, I’m already waiting on two tables, and I was going to ask if you’d mind closing up tonight so I can get outta here early,” Saddie said with a quick glance toward the clock. When she looked at me again, her cheeks were red. “I have a date.”
    I swallowed hard. My gaze shifted toward the far booth in the back corner.
    “Will you, Levi?” Saddie asked. “Please? I’ll owe you one.”
    When I didn’t answer, she followed my line of sight.
    “Do you know him?”
    “No,” I replied without tearing my gaze from him.
    “He’s awfully handsome.”
    He was.
    He was cataclysmically handsome. But the wicked things always were.
    I knew better. I knew to listen to my mind and my soul, not my eyes. Sight was a sense that liked to play tricks, the favored weapon of all things evil.
    His hair was charcoal-black, longer in the front, shaved short on the sides. His nose was slightly crooked, his straight jawline peppered with stubble. A thick neck led down to wide, defined shoulders covered by a denim jacket.
    He sat in the far back booth staring down at his hands. The dim lighting from the light above our heads and the falling sun on the horizon cast dark shadows against his face, emphasizing the darkness against his light skin.
    I stared at him, blatantly—rudely. Each time I blinked, I saw a flicker of the dark serpent curling around his neck.
    When his gaze caught on me, I saw how cold and empty his pale eyes were. They were so light they could’ve been translucent. They were clear, empty skies full of nothing but clouds and atmosphere.
    It didn’t hit me like the memory of my dream. It shoved against me slowly, like a mammoth pounding against a door I was desperately trying to close. His gaze sent my heart into a frenzy, my stomach into recoil, my mind into a kaleidoscope.
    “I can’t serve him.” Forcing myself to stop gaping at the strange man had been painful, like peeling back skin.
    She put her hands on her hips, looking less annoyed and more confused. “Why? He’s just a man.”
    “No. I don’t think so.” There was more to that man than met the eye. Something simmered beneath the surface—something dark that no words could explain.
    Saddie looked at him again over my shoulder, and then back at me. “What are you afraid of?”
    “I’m afraid I might go over there and tell him to go back to whatever place in hell he came from.”
    “Wow.”
    “There’s something not right about him.”
    It was Saddie’s turn to gape at me. “I know you have a good sense of folks and all, Levi, but he can’t be that bad. Honestly, he looks a little sad.”
    “I can’t go near him, Saddie. I can’t. I won’t.”
    “Fine.” She scooped up the