Free Addicted by S. A. Archer, S. Ravynheart Page A

it together to even fake normal grew increasingly impossible until all you wanted to do was scream and claw your own flesh.
    Every day it grew worse. Rico was gone. If he was still alive she’d do anything… anything for relief. He could send her to face a thousand Changelings with nothing but a pocketknife and she’d do it, just as long as he Touched her again.
    Shivering as the memories she tried to bury rose once more, summoned by the addiction, London brushed her lips with her fingertips. Rico kissed her once. Just once. Filled her mouth with magic. Made her inhale it. Swallow it. Seep into her body. Awakened her to a pleasure too intense to endure. She’d felt it change her. Curse her. And now bereft of it, she longed for nothing else but to experience the Touch again. Only the power of the Touch could ease her agony.
    She had to have it. She had to have it soon!
    Struggling to find composure, London raked her fingers through her hair. No time to play games, she tried the blunt approach. “The Sidhe can Touch you with their magic right through the skin. You don’t even need to drink their blood to get high.”
    Immediately, the girls squirmed against their guys. The guys had the “going to get laid” stupid grins. Oh, yeah. The fey they’d been telling her about was definitely a Sidhe. “Where is he? This Sidhe?”
    “Well, that’s kinda the trick,” Colin, the shorter and darker of the guys, laughed. He was nearly hidden in the shadow of the booth, his arm around his girlfriend, Brandy. Tattoos sleeved his bare arms. A tiny hoop pierced his eyebrow. “You don’t find him. You get magicked to him.”
    “Magicked?”
    “Yep. Zip zap. There ye be.” Colin snorted a laugh, one a little too gregarious thanks to the shots he’d been downing.
    Brandy, his girlfriend-slash-translator, rolled her eyes, which was more teen-dramatic with the glittery eye makeup. “There’s this bloke. Rand’s his name. He does the magic. He brings you there and he brings you back. He makes all the deals. Takes the payment. That kinda stuff.”
    “Where do I find this bloke?”
    Charnel obliged her by using her eye pencil on a paper napkin. She slid it across the table.
    London picked it up and then frowned. “What’s this mean? Twelve thousand?”
    “That’s what it’ll cost you.” She smiled, fangs flashing.
    “Twelve thousand for the location? I don’t think so.” London dropped the napkin, ready to pretend she would walk out rather than pay the ridiculous price.
    “No. The cash isn’t for us, it’s for Rand.” She chomped with her sharp, white teeth. “The twelve thousand buys a party.”
    London tapped her finger on the tabletop as she thought. “When?”
    “When can you get it?” Charnel laughed.

 
     
    Chapter Two
     
     
    Getting twelve thousand Euros in cash within the hour was not hard, London simply asked Selena for the money. Friends and loans never mixed, but this was a business arrangement. If the twelve thousand was indeed to pay for a party with a Sidhe, then it was going to be a party paid for and enjoyed by Selena. Since Rico’s run in with a Changeling, Selena had been without access to Sidhe blood herself. Seemed as though vampires craved the blood, but other than that annoyance, they didn’t suffer from their craving. Only humans got the raw end of that deal. And what sucked even more? A cursed human couldn’t be embraced and become a vampire. Selena had tried and failed on that score. So London was well and truly screwed, and not in a good way.
    Selena wore an elegant white satin blouse and stylish dress pants. She could go from a boardroom to an upscale party to a nightclub and still not look out of place. Selena was talented like that. It was a trick that London imagined she was born with, rather than had learned in her long vampire life. Her sleek blonde hair hung with perfect shine and smoothness. The total package that she presented was very different from London, whose