“Too bad,” she told me. And I realized, belatedly, that she’d gone through the effort to do her makeup. And she was dressed more nicely than usual—a pair of black denim jeans and a deep-red halter top. “It’s your birthday, and you have the night off on a weekend for once, so we’re celebrating the occasion.”
“Shouldn’t we be doing whatever I want, since it’s my birthday?”
But I couldn’t help staring at her as the caffeine worked its way through my tired brain, helping me connect the dots. Sam looked almost… sober. And way more wide-awake than I had seen her in a very long time. Her normally wavy long brown hair was down and now perfectly straight. While I slept, she hadn’t been drinking. Instead, she had been… getting ready.
Sam rarely left the house. And when she did, it was usually just to walk to the corner store for more cheap wine and cigarettes.
Still staring at her, I added, “We could stay home and order some Chinese food. Maybe watch a dumb movie together?”
It was what we did almost every time we hung out, on the rare nights when I was off work and she was still coherent enough to follow a movie properly.
“Nice try, bucko.” She even rolled her eyes a little. “You’ll thank me later. Now go put on some pants and a decent shirt. And take a shower. Not in that order.”
That confirmed it. She definitely wasn’t drunk. Yet.
I swallowed the rest of my resistance and decided that, yes, this was an occasion worth celebrating. It had been years since I’d seen her actually sober for any length of time. Granted, I’d been gone for a long while, doing a residency in San Francisco that had seemed to take approximately one and a half million years, but still.
I set my coffee cup down on the circular wooden table we’d grown up eating on—pockmarked with water rings but still standing, even after a lifetime of use.
“Yeah, okay.”
I couldn’t help but smile as I left the room to get ready. Even though I knew it couldn’t last, for the first time in a long time, it felt like having my sister back. It felt like I wasn’t alone. And, even if the dull ache in my chest still lingered, the dream I’d had of the strange man with even stranger clothes was completely banished from my mind.
CHAPTER THREE || COLE
Ididn’t know what I was doing here. But something had drawn me to this place against my will, and I had come. And now I was… waiting. Watching.
The nightclub was nothing spectacular—just another quasi-posh club in Los Angeles, already crowded when I arrived. It was filled to the brim with scrumptiously well-dressed human beings pressed up against each other, their hips gyrating to the techno-pop music blaring from the speakers. The scents of so much prey swirled around me, promising the hot, rich blood flowing through their veins, all of it mine for the taking.
It was alluring, certainly—but nothing that truly sparked my interest for even an instant. I had eight hundred years of life experience on everyone in this place; there was nothing new under the sun for me. And after my encounter with Jerry Winslow the night before, I was no longer hungry.
The building was a two-story affair. The first floor held two gleaming bars and a large, crowded dance floor. A few scattered tables and chairs ringed the edges—clearly an afterthought. The upper floor was quieter, U-shaped, with a view of the dance floor below. Plush red-velvet couches and armchairs filled the corners, and a far heartier collection of tables and chairs lined the perimeter, as though the interior designer had finally puttheir foot down and insisted that seating was, in fact, an important consideration for a club of this size.
I sat at one of the tables overlooking the dance floor, idly stirring my vodka cran with a thin black straw, ice clinking softly in the glass. You might think that after eight centuries my tastes would be far more rarefied, but if anything, they’ve gotten more eclectic. Besides, a vodka cran is sweet, potent, and surprisingly sharp—an assault on the senses. Rather like me.
But the question still stood: why on earth was I here?
The pull had been unmistakable. That same subtle, wordless part of me that always insisted on learning the guilt of my victims had drawn me here. Because it was rare that I felt anything at all, apart from the vast, yawning emptiness within me, I’d listened when that strange impulse flickered to life and insisted on dragging me here.
And now?
I scanned the crowd below and scowled. Nothing remarkable. They were all well-dressed, an upscale clientele of trust-funders and young professionals looking to blow off steam—but depressingly human. Infinitely replaceable. Interchangeable.
Perhaps, after all this time, my instincts had dulled. Or maybe I was beginning my long, slow march toward insanity. I’d heard of that sort of thing happening to vampires before—though usually only to those who still possessed their humanity, as if that somehow made them better than the rest of us, despite the fact that they still drank fresh blood.
My twin brother, Thierry—born five minutes before me—was a vampire like that. An overemotional fool who clung to everything that made him feel human. I still kept tabs on him now and then, albeit from a very safe distance. He thought I was dead, and I quite preferred to keep it that way. The last time we’d been in the same room, nearly two centuries ago, he’d stabbedme through the heart with a silver knife and set fire to the place. But he still hadn’t been able to watch me die. If not for the human I’d compelled into helping me—that century’s Harris—I would have ended in flames and ash. For reasons known only to him, my brother didn’t condone murdering humans for sport. I still maintained he needed to lighten up and live a little.
By the time I’d long since finished my drink and was now watching the patrons on the dance floor less like a predator and more like a big, weird creeper with a white van and a stash of candy, I finally had to admit defeat. There was nothing here for me.
It had been ridiculous to think otherwise, hadn’t it?
After all, what could possibly be here besides overpriced drinks, several hundred sweaty humans, an overdesigned but still highly questionable atmosphere, and a colossal waste of my precious but endless time?
I stood, collecting my empty glass. I’d deposit it at the end of one of the bars on my way out. I’m a very neat monster, always. Unlike many of my kind—brazen, foolishly overconfident in their invulnerability—I rarely leave evidence of my crimes. It’s how I’ve survived for eight centuries. There are many righteous sorts out there—monster hunters, witches, even other vampires—who would object to the kinds of hijinks I routinely indulge in.
Plus, I’m a cold-blooded killer, but I’m not an asshole. I have manners, thank you very much.
I made my way down the stairs and to the nearest bar. I set my empty glass on the counter, then turned to thread through the throng toward the front door. And that’s when I ran directly into the young man standing behind me.
