Silver Blood (Series of Blood Book 1) by Emma Hamm (android e book reader .txt) 📗

Pitch was another Juice seller, but one not many people trusted. He dealt in dark emotions and dangerous Juices that rarely had happy endings. However, he had so many followers addicted to his emotions that he made more of a living than she did. He also managed to mass produce emotions in a way Wren could never hope for.

“Then it’s double the price.”

“Feckin’ Cur.”

The slang term for Curiosity was one that she was well familiar with. A Curiosity was a human possessed by something people didn’t have a category for. Wren, in particular, was a well known one.

Whatever possessed her had yet to make itself known. After 26 years of existence, Wren had rather hoped that her body buddy would have told her what it was. It talked to her whenever it saw fit and was just as quirky as she. But it never told her what category she should fit into. Or even so much as a name.

As such, she was a Curiosity. And that made people nervous.

Still, Rupert handed her more coins and swiped the emotion out of her hand before she could count them.

He stood so quickly that his horns hit one of her lightbulbs and shattered it. He flinched and then glanced at her horrified expression.

“Well, it’ll cover that at least?”

“Do you know how expensive light bulbs are?” she shrieked at his retreating form.

All forms of science had become incredibly expensive. Electricity was something that was always malfunctioning whenever magic was around it. That made having any light bulbs in her shop difficult as there was always a multitude of magical creatures in the Juice Bar.

She growled and ducked beneath the counter with the coins. She swore under her breath as she saw how little money she had hoarded underneath her counter. The shop was falling apart over her head, and she could do nothing about it.

A light thump on her shoulder made her groan. Case in point, a small bit of the ceiling had fallen once again. There had been a massive rainstorm that had caused a leak. The water had run through her apartment above the Juice Bar and straight into the shop itself.

One of these days, she was going to have enough money to buy a respectable place. One of these days, she was going to move out of the backend of town where only the lowest of the low lived.

One of these days.

The story was something she always told herself, but Wren knew the likelihood was slim to none. She had been born into poverty and wasn’t about to dig herself out of that hole any time soon.

Sighing, she popped back up to start washing tonight’s dishes. At least she had food and a roof over her head. She couldn’t complain about that.

“You can complain about whatever you want.”

The voice in her head was a welcome one. She did not know if the creature inhabiting her body had a name or even a species. E was a very secretive sort and had never felt as though personal details were necessary for her to know. Wren called it “E”, short for Entity, because what else was she to call it? She couldn’t simply say “the thing”; that was insulting. And E had been with her through the lowest parts of her life. She would always be grateful to it.

“I can’t.”

“Well, why ever not?”

“Because I have work to do, E.”

“Work work. That’s all you ever do.”

She could hear the huff of air in her head even though her body remained under her own control. It was a strange thing to have another creature in her head that sounded like another person standing right next to her.

E was likely just as odd as Wren. It never really decided whether it was a male or female or what accent it wanted. Wren found that it wanted to be someone new every day and encouraged its eccentricities.

She liked it. It was a little easier to justify her own odd behaviors with the fact that she had grown up with something just as odd inside her.

“I have to work to keep us both alive.”

“You mean to keep you alive. I’d still be alive if you died.”

“Yes, yes, you’d find another host.”

Wren paused to glance into the reflective surface of the goblet she was holding in her hand. Staring into her own eyes was really the only way to have a decent look at E.

As she stared at her own reflection, her eyes seemed to flip backwards. This was the other part of her that made people severely uncomfortable. Milky white eyes with no discernible pupils stared back at her. They weren’t her eyes, Wren’s eyes were gray. These were the eyes of the creature that was inside her.

Nearly everyone had moments when there was something else peering out of the shell of their shared body. But all the creatures tended to have a very predictable color to their eyes. It was part of the reason these magical creatures were so easy to section off into Angel or Demons.

Demons had pitch black eyes that expanded to swallow any white. Angels had electric blue eyes that almost seemed to glow even in darkness. Humans that were lucky enough to not have magical creatures inside of them tended to have a yellow tint to their natural eye color that marked them as “clean”.

Wren had never met anyone whose body buddy had white eyes like this. She tended to not allow E out in public for that reason. It made people nervous.

Whenever she tried to look at E, it was as though she had stepped backwards from her body. She could still see out of the same eyes, but it was more like looking through a window at the world outside. She had gotten used to it the older she was and the more she trusted E with moments of control.

Wren stared back at E and watched as a smile spread across her own face.

“You have something to say, girl?” Today,