Free Seduced in Shadow by Stephanie Julian

started in her stomach and Ellie had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t going to like what was coming next. “How so?”
    “Through Dad.”
    She shook her head. “Dad’s dead, Justin. I don’t have a clue why his stories would affect us now.” Ellie waited for Justin to continue. When he didn’t, she prompted,
    “Come on, just spit it out.”
    Her brother grimaced. “Scarlata’s a folletta and Antonin’s a linchetto .”
    “So Antonin told me. Are you going to explain what the hell that means to me?”
    Glancing over his shoulder, Justin said, “Red, honey, would you…”
    Ellie shifted her gaze to Scarlata and felt her entire body become one huge mass of gooseflesh when she saw what appeared to be pink wings behind the woman’s back.
    “Are they… I mean…”
    Scarlata turned so she could see that, yes indeed, the wings were attached to her body. They were sticking out above Scarlata’s halter top. Ellie blinked a couple of times and in between one blink and the next, the wings were gone. Only an outline of them, like a tattoo, remained on the woman’s skin.
    The goose bumps faded and that pit was back in her stomach. With an effort, Ellie forced herself to nod and look at Justin. She could handle this. She was going to be fine.
    Her brother shifted his gaze back to Antonin and his expression visibly hardened again. Oh please. Ellie rolled her eyes. Justin had to get over his habit of treating her like a child. He had to get used to the fact that she was an adult and she could do whatever and whomever she pleased.
    Crossing her arms over her chest, Ellie gave her brother the look she saved for when he was being bossy. “I’ve already seen Antonin’s ears, Justin. And he’s told me a little.” Very little. But really, if that woman had wings that disappeared at will, well, 61
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    then Antonin’s ears weren’t that big a deal. At least that was what she kept telling herself. In truth, Ellie was quite proud of how calmly she was handling this. The old Ellie would have been stuck in a panic attack already. But here she was, discussing elves and fairies as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
    “Ellie.” Antonin’s voice sounded in her ear and, for a second, she wanted to melt back into him, wanted to return to his bedroom, shut the door and pretend none of this had happened. But that would be pulling an ostrich and if she really were an adult then she would have to deal with this crazy mess.
    Justin practically bared his teeth. “Back off, An—”
    “Justin, stop acting like an idiot.” Ellie moved back just a hairsbreadth toward Antonin. It was enough to feel the heat of his body and catch the faint scent of his skin.
    “You back off. I’m not ten anymore.”
    “I like your sister, Justin,” the redhead with the wings said with a smile. “She doesn’t take your shit either.”
    “Fucking hell,” came a deep masculine voice from the kitchen, “could you please hurry the fuck up? We don’t have all day, people.”
    Ellie had to lean to the right to see around Justin. What she saw in the arch between the kitchen and the dining room made her brain shudder to a halt like a frozen computer that needed to be rebooted.
    And when it did, memories started to re-form in her brain like the words to a favorite childhood book she’d long forgotten. Memories that seemed almost as if they were hazy pictures from someone else’s life.
    “Sal, Goddammit,” Justin said. “I told you to stay out of this.”
    Ellie barely registered anything because she was so busy trying to sort through long-forgotten pieces of her past.
    “We don’t have time for the easy way now, kid,” Sal said. “The Mal have got men on the move and they’re heading this way.”
    62
    Seduced in Shadow

    Antonin felt panic hit him like a blow to the gut. “How do they know where we are? No one knows about this place.”
    The four-foot salbinelli named Salvatorus shook his head, his curly black hair