Elixir Read Online Free Page B

a small shift of his palm against my skin, he directed our dance, and to my amazement, my movements fell in line with his—we were dancing as one. Without once thinking about the steps, we glided across the floor. I’d never had a great partner before. He made it easy. In his arms, suddenly, I could dance.
    I noticed I was smiling, the tension slipping from my body as we moved together, though my heart still fluttered.
    Remember what you’re here to do, I had to tell myself. You’re not here to dance. You’re here to find out information.
    “I have to ask you.” I leaned in close to whisper in his ear. There was a gap between us and the other couples; it gave us a breath of privacy to talk. “I came here tonight because of one of my friends. Maybe you know her—Charlotte Mercado?” I said, trying to let the missing girl’s name roll off my tongue like I’d practiced with Eva. “I haven’t seen Charlotte in a while. The last time I talked to her, she mentioned she’d been coming here a lot. I just . . . I wondered if maybe you’d seen her around?”
    His body froze for a second, and I saw him nod, but it was like a shadow passed over his face at the mention of the missing girl’s name. He let out a sigh.
    “I wish I could help you, I really do. But I haven’t seen her lately either,” he said slowly. “I don’t think anyone has. I heard her parents filed a report with the police.”
    “Yeah, I heard that too.”
    A beat of quiet passed between us.
    “I truly am afraid for her,” Obadiah said, breaking the silence.
    There was genuine pain in his voice as he said it.
    “What do you think happened?” I asked, beginning to feel scared myself.
    “Well, if you were really friends with Charlotte, you would know she had a lot of problems.”
    I didn’t like the way he’d said “if you were really friends”—as if some part of him doubted my story.
    “Charlotte was pretty lost,” he said, his eyes far away, though his body still moved with perfect masculine grace to the music. “She was deeply in debt. She’d been unemployed for more than a year. Her love life was in shambles. She was estranged from her adopted family. The last time I talked to her, she told me she wanted to track down her birth mother in the Philippines. I guess she thought that would somehow bring her peace, but she didn’t know the location exactly, and she didn’t have the money to travel.”
    There was a deep melancholy in his eyes. “So when she asked for my help—what was I supposed to say?”
    “But why would she come to you for help?”
    The song had ended. Everyone stopped dancing and began to clap as the musicians held hands and bowed.
    “Because I help people,” Obadiah said mysteriously. “That’s what I do. When people feel they’re out of options, and they want someone to wave a magic wand and fix all their problems . . . they come to me.”
    I didn’t know what he was talking about, and somehow I was afraid to ask. There was something ominous sounding about this altruism.
    Before I could say a word, Obadiah spoke first, his eyes narrowing.
    “You asked me a question; now I have a question for you.”
    “Go on,” I answered, my heartbeat quickening. But the expression on his face had changed. His eyes were taking on that cold intensity again, like he had when I first saw him, and suddenly I was nervous.
    “Do you know why you attracted my attention, when you walked through the door of my club?”
    I shook my head, unsure what to say. Eva would have replied something like “Because I’m cute?” but she was the kind of girl who could get away with lines like that. I was not.
    “For a moment I doubted it. I tried to convince myself that my eyes were playing tricks on me, that you were not what I thought you were. But now I am certain. So you can stop pretending.”
    He looked me straight in the eye.
    “I know what you are.”
    I froze like a bug when the light is turned on. He knows, I thought,