KIRA

“I’m pulling over,” I said, spotting the cemetery cutting through the treeline.

Hannah glanced up from her phone, following my gaze to the weathered stone church. “Seriously? A cemetery? Now? What is with you and these places?” She stared out of the window as I grabbed my professional camera from the back seat.

“For my substack and I want to explore Duskhaven before tonight. Get a feel for the place.” I was already unbuckling my seatbelt. “You don’t have to come.”

“Good, because I’m not.” She waved her phone. “Liam’s calling anyway. Cemeteries freak me out.”

I left Hannah in the car and walked toward the church, pulling out my phone to capture the gothic spires against the gray sky. The building looked abandoned, chains wrapped around the heavy wooden doors, rust bleeding down the stone like old tears. I snapped a few shots of the dramatic entrance before heading around back.

The cemetery called to me, overgrown and wild, headstones tilting like broken teeth. Dark academia meets small-town gothic. I moved through the graves methodically, photographing the most elaborate monuments, the kind only old money could buy.

I crouched beside one headstone, adjusting the angle to catch the carved roses and I moved along taking several shots, the professional in me recognizing good content when I saw it. This was the kind of atmospheric, slightly morbid aesthetic that performed well on social media. My followers ate up this dark romanticism.

But as I framed another shot of a particularly ornate angel statue, its wings spread wide and face turned skyward in apparent anguish, I heard something that made me freeze.

A voice. Low, conversational, like someone talking to an old friend.

That’s when I heard the voice and I followed the sound through the overgrown paths until I saw him—a man kneeling beside a grave, his back to me.

He was placing something on the headstone. Fresh white roses, incongruous against the weathered marble. And in his other hand, he was flipping a silver coin that caught the afternoon light, glinting like liquid mercury.

The man rose slowly, movements fluid and predatory but didn’t turn around. “You can come closer,” he said, voice carrying easily across the stillness. “I’m assuming you’re here for the Halloween event.”

“Yes,” I answered, my voice smaller than I intended. My heart hammered against my ribs as I realized I should have left. Should have backed away quietly and pretended I’d never seen this.

But my feet wouldn’t move. Something about the way he stood there, perfectly still among the graves, made my mouth go dry and my mother’s voice echoed in my head—Don’t go poking around in places that aren’t meant for you, Kira. 

She would have had a fit if she knew I was not only in a cemetery but photographing it, turning sacred ground into social media content.

Disrespectful, she’d call it. Inviting darkness into your life.

But that familiar maternal disapproval only made me want to step closer. The same rebellious pull that had made me pierce my ears three times, get that small tattoo on my ankle, lower back and skip church whenever I could get away with it. 

Instead of retreating, I moved toward the stranger, drawn by curiosity to him and the striking contrast of fresh white roses against the weathered tombstones.

My phone was in my backpocket and my camera still in my hands but I didn’t dare take a picture now. I wanted to but something about this moment felt too private, too charged with meaning I didn’t understand.

When he finally turned, I was pinned in place by his amber gaze—like whiskey backlit by firelight, like honey caught in a predator’s teeth. 

Roman McKay.

I recognized him from the photos online, but they hadn’t captured the raw magnetism of him in person. Dark hair swept back, jawline shadowed with stubble, and those penetrating amber eyes that seemed to strip me bare.

The photos hadn’t captured the way he commanded space either, he was masculine beauty wrapped in expensive clothes, yes but it was the kind of beauty that made my thighs press together; like he belonged above me in bed, the kind of man who would pin my wrists and watch my face while I came apart beneath him.

Kira, what is wrong with you? My thoughts burned through me, shame blazing hot as it always had.

My mother’s voice echoed sin even as my body throbbed with want.

But those eyes — God, those eyes — held mine until my knees threatened to give, like he was cataloguing every thought I’d ever had, every secret I’d ever tried to bury.

“Most people avoid cemeteries,” Roman said, tucking his coin in his coat pocket. “Especially ones like this.”

“What makes this one special?” The words came out steadier than I felt.

I already knew the answer, of course. Everyone who researched Duskhaven knew the story. In the 1920s, a McKay—Roman’s ancestor—had killed his fiancée and then himself, in the Duskhaven manor.

The scandal had destroyed everything. The family’s Gatsby-esque empire of hotels and estates had crumbled overnight. Duskhaven, once a thriving destination for the wealthy, had withered into the forgotten backwater it was now.

But I wanted to hear him say it. Wanted to see if he’d acknowledge the blood on his family name, the reason this town felt like it was slowly dying, the reason people still whispered about the McKays with a mixture of fear and fascination.

Roman’ smile was slow, dangerous, almost  like he knew exactly what I was thinking. “For the next three nights,” His gaze traveled deliberately down my body, diverting the conversation before returning to my face and he stepped closer. “The veil thins, little sinner, and old debts come due.” Close enough now that I could smell his cologne, something dark and expensive that made my mouth water. “Are you ready for that kind of reckoning?”

“I-I don’t know what you mean.” But my voice came out breathless, betraying me.

“You have a taste for dangerous places, don’t you?” Roman’ voice dropped lower, more intimate, eyes flicking to the camera still clutched in my hands. “Taking pictures of the dead, turning sacred ground into… what? Social media content? Sell the images, make a quick buck.” His smile turned predatory. 

“No,” I lied, hating that he had read me so easily or maybe everyone does this and I am not unique.

Nevertheless, heat flooded my cheeks because Roman wasn’t entirely wrong. Duskhaven was known for the murder, and everyone who came to this town was chasing ghosts or dark history for their own reasons. Mine just happened to involve building a photography portfolio with gothic aesthetic that would actually pay the bills.

“I can see it in your eyes,” Roman furthered. “The hunger for something… forbidden.”

“You can tell all that from looking at me?”

Roman reached out, fingers barely grazing my wrist where I held the camera, his gaze dropping to my hand. “For she has forsaken the path of life, her steps lead down to death,” he quoted the bible verse softly which caught me off guard. Roman knew it too; the way his thumb lingered told me he could feel it in my pulse. His thumb traced over the small script tattooed along my knuckles. “M.A.T. T Seven One, otherwise Mathhew 7:1. ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’ How… interesting.”

The scripture rolled off his tongue like a caress, coiling low in my belly. Heat bloomed between my thighs and still the words cut deeper than he knew. It wasn’t just scripture; it was a reminder of how verses like that had been wielded like chains.

My mother’s voice. My church’s silence. Every time I had wanted to speak, to name what happened, faith had been the muzzle.

I bit back a sound, thighs clenching involuntarily as his thumb traced my tattoo. He had connected the dots, my ink meant I knew the Bible, which made his choice of verse deliberate.

So, what did that make Roman’s verse?  A mockery of my rebellion? Or a reminder that no matter how I twisted scripture to my own ends, he could twist it sharper, darker, and cut me with it?

“Are you religious?” I asked him.

Roman’s laugh was low, “Religious? No.” His fingers still traced the edge of my tattoo. “But I understand the power of faith. How useful it is for… shaping behavior. Making people feel guilty for wanting what they want.”

“Especially useful for hiding behind,” I said quietly, surprising myself with the bitterness in my voice. “Amazing how many sins can be washed away with the right prayers. Confessions to a priest or how many predators find sanctuary in sanctuaries.”

Roman’s eyes sharpened, studying my face with new interest. “Speaking from experience?”

The words lanced through me, sharper than they should have. My throat locked, the truth pressing hard against the back of my teeth. For a heartbeat I wanted to say it; spill everything I had buried under years of silence and my mother’s judgment. But the muzzle was too familiar, too tight and he was a stranger.

I pulled my hand back, suddenly aware of how much I’d given away. “Just… observation.”

“Hmm.” Roman’s smile sharpened, appreciative in a way that made my skin prickle. “And do those lips of yours come with a name, Miss…?”

“Kira.”

Roman turned to go, then paused. “Kira, try not to wander off alone in Duskhaven. This town has a way of keeping things that don’t belong to them.”

The words sounded less like a warning and more like a promise, that wandering was exactly what he wanted me to do. My body shivered with the certainty that if he caught me, he’d do more than keep me.

I thought of calling after Roman but he was already walking away, disappearing between the headstones like he was never here at all. Only the fresh roses on a grave proved I hadn’t imagined it.

When I finally made it back to the car, Hannah was still on the phone, oblivious. I slid into the passenger seat, pulse racing and that inexplicable heat still thrumming under my skin, my underwear damp and clinging, my body aching for a touch that felt like damnation.

My mother’s voice might have been hissing about sin, but my body was screaming for more of whatever Roman McKay was offering.

“Ready?” Hannah asked, glancing up from her phone.

I nodded, though uncertainty gnawed at me. 

Roman McKay wasn’t just some handsome local, he owned this entire town and probably had his pick of anyone chasing Duskhaven’s ghost stories. Maybe I was just another tourist to him, easy prey. I was nobody special. Just a girl with a camera and a long list of red flags.

But as much as I tried to rationalize it away, the truth crawled colder and closer. This didn’t feel random. It felt like I had stepped into something waiting for me long before I’d ever heard of Duskhaven.

The way Roman looked at me wasn’t casual flirtation. It wasn’t even hunger.

It was recognition.

And that terrified me most of all.

–

Read The Warlock’s Little Thief — a forbidden dark romance of obsession and magik — free on Inkitt and ReamStories.