“Really?”
She nodded.“I’m not supposed to share that because they don’t want people taking advantage. Owen let me do that a few times when I was prepping for finals.”
Somehow that didn’t surprise me. The manager, Owen, had a huge crush on Josie and let her get away with things the rest of us couldn’t.
“Alright,I’ll stay until then,” I agreed.
She slapped the counter and straightened, her face brightening.“Great, now I don’t have to suffer through the next hour by myself.”
The remaining time passed quickly. Josie, it turned out, was pretty funny and made a good work buddy. She kept a running commentary on the customers who stopped to pump gas or come inside.
Before I knew it, I was clocking out and wheeling my bike from the storage room. I took a moment to look it over, not trusting the goblins had left it alone. Surprisingly, they hadn’t touched it; something I was grateful for.
As my only means of transportation, I was serious about the bike’s care and upkeep. Had they messed with it, I might actually have made good on my threat.
Or maybe not.
There was still an hour before I needed to be home. Plenty of time to bike there. The stars were beginning to fade as the sun prepared for its ascent. First light, which typically began half an hour before true sunrise, was still thirty minutes away.
The normal lethargy that plagued me during first light was still absent, but it wouldn’t be long now. It was a reminder of my limits. I could feel the sun in my chest as it lingered just under the horizon. The sensation would steadily grow stronger as sunrise approached.
Home was a second story walk-up on the outskirts of the university district. It was a plain, two story brick building composed of townhome style apartments. Mine was on the second story.I’m not sure if my place had originally been intended to be a one room apartment since the rest of the units were 2 story units, or if someone had gotten greedy for extra rent and turned the second floor into a stand-alone apartment.
WhenI’d first settled here, the entire complex had been little more than a slum. Since the new owner had taken over, they’d begun renovating the place, bringing everything up to code.
You’d thinkI’d be happy about that. Unfortunately, the new owner happened to be my sire, Thomas—a vampire I would gladly avoid for the rest of my undead life. Such was not to be, given his propensity for interference.
The cracked, unusable parking lot had been replaced and was now smooth, with sharp white lines delineating parking spots. One of them held the black Escalade my sire had given me as a gift. I still hadn’t touched it or figured out what I was going to do with it. Not that it mattered anymore, since I couldn’t even afford the gas it would take to fill it.
Gifts from vampires,I’d learned, always came with a set of strings attached to them. My sire seemed determined to get his hooks into me by any means possible, and I was just as determined to steer clear of them.
Everything to do with my sire involved hidden agendas and things not always being what they appeared. I couldn’t trust anything he did or said. I didn’t like being used, and I preferred to control my own destiny. It left me in a precarious predicament.
It didn’t help that he wasn’t afraid to use his power as my landlord to fuck with me either, as evidenced by the partially completed set of stairs to my unit.
It was not lost on me that construction on them halted right around the time I refused to use the mansion as my temporary lodging. I liked having my own place. Say what you will about the building’s condition, butI’d turned it into a home. I wasn’t willing to give that up. Not even for the opulent lodgings of the mansion.
Thomas thought by taking away my stairs he could force my hand. Not the case. As with everything in life, I adapted, and I overcame. Granted, it wasn’t easy and was growing increasingly annoying, but until my sire bored of this game, I was stuck finding new and inventive ways to access my own apartment.
I pulled a harness out of my backpack and slid into it. Once done, I shifted my backpack to my front before attaching the hooks in the back of the harness to the bike. I would have loved to leave my bike down here, but a couple of the college kids liked to play pranks. I couldn’t trust it would be here when I got back. That left me in the unenviable position of having to lug it upstairs every night.
I set one hand on the wall and began my climb, taking advantage of the easy handholds formed by the half-built stairs.
“You’re just making things worse. He’ll find another way to get to you until you stop being so stubborn,” a voice said from below.
CHAPTERTWO
I stilled. I knew that voice. Liam.
I shifted my weight, putting most of it on one foot and in my arms as I peered down. Liam’s impossibly blue eyes stared up at me.
I caught my breath, suddenly feeling likeI’d been punched in the chest. He always did that to me. He had the sort of charismatic presence that eclipsed any notion of beauty, the sum of his parts totaling to much more than what each feature would be if taken separately. Not to say he wasn’t handsome. He was. His face possessed the strong lines and rugged features you’d imagine on one of those billionaire CEOs featured in romance books.
But a pretty face wasn’t the only reason he drew women like a moth to the flame. No, it was the power he wore like others wore clothes. It was the confidence in his movements, as if the world only existed to please him. Nothing and no one would ever successfully thwart him, at least not for long.
The sight of him, hearing his voice after several month’s long absence caused an avalanche of conflicting feelings I didn’t want to deal with. Not now or at any point in the future.
He wasn’t quite smiling as we stared at each other. My expression had gone blank.
