IN THEold days the Abascal Hotel and Spa would have been the creepy, run-down manor where the degenerate local gentry took the good-living youths they stole, tempted, or tricked out of their God-fearing ways. Every few generations, the cowed local priest would die and a firebrand young preacher would rock up to the pulpit. Or a bereaved parent would scrape together enough coin to hire a Hunter—mothers mostly, they had always made better plans.
Next thing you know the house was on fire, the local woodcutter had disemboweled the servants, and the surviving members of the family had legged it to the woods through escape tunnels, their pockets full of cursed gold to start again in another county, or country if they’d been particularly florid.
The Prodigium had put a stop to that. Monsters had to blend in—even the rich and even their houses.
It turned out that if a creepy old house was turned into a brutally exclusive luxury spa, beautiful youths would beat their own paths to the door. Not only that, they’d pay for the privilege of being on the menu.
The modern world had its problems, but it did make life simpler.
Arkady hooked his arm over Cash’s shoulders as they walked through the hotel, through the crowd of human guests in leisure wear and glitzy cocktail outfits. He slid his fingers inside Cash’s shirt, hot against his skin, and leaned down slightly so their temples touched.
“What do they want?” he asked as they passed a mirrored booth. It was full of beautiful women in toweling robes that looked soft as fur. They were all glossy pink smiles and rattly pink drinks as they giggled and clapped, but their auras drooped with the weight of foul gray infection that scabbed the edges.
“What the one in the middle has.” He paused as his eyes fell on the one in the middle. Bride-to-be and her hen party, he’d guess, but instead of being flared in excitement, her aura was pickled in close to her body. Like a rind. His skin itched as his monster reached out to taste her, and the voice he’d need to lure her to her death scratched at his throat. Cash swallowed it, like hooks, and looked away. “And she wants him dead.”
Arkady glanced over with interest. “Fiancé?”
“No,” Cash said. He wasn’t sure how he knew that, but… he did. “Someone else.”
“Huh.” Arkady made eye contact with the woman and smiled. She stared back at him for a second, a flush pink as it spread up her throat, until one of her friends pushed a drink into her hand. She stumbled through the toast, obviously flustered, and Arkady moved on. “Maybe later.”
Under Cash’s skin his monster sulked at having its prey stolen. It would get over it. Cash hadn’t planned to lurk around dimly lit corridors for a chance to lure her into a bad fall down the metal staircase in the Grand Ballroom anyhow.
Not seriously.
There were other monsters there, scattered among the crowd as they browsed the produce section for something that would hit the spot. Some of them were restrictive feeders, like Cash.
Despair was his meat and potatoes, densely filling and calorific, although he could also take a shot of lust like whiskey. The other emotions he could taste, but they were like cotton candy, gone on his tongue before they could hit his stomach.
Others were just picky, well-fed enough they could afford to play with their food. Like the kelpie at the bar, with dark, stupid-handsome features and all-black eyes as he charmed the middle-aged woman in an expensive gown onto his arm. One day she’d die in a car crash, but not tonight. The betrayal hurt more if the lie ran long.
“He’s from New York, near Rockaway,” Arkady said quietly. “A guest, but one to watch. I heard he made some incautious decisions, and now he works for the Hand.”
“Which one?” Cash asked.
“Always a good question,” Arkady said, but he didn’t answer it. “Come on. We don’t want to hold up dinner.”
He unhooked his arm from Cash’s neck and headed across the floor with the confidence of someone who knew people would get out of his way. Cash straightened his collar and took another look around the bar as he trailed after Arkady. Peopledidget in his way. A few monsters stepped pointedly in front of him, their backs turned, as if they couldn’t have known he was there. Humans who’d edged out of Arkady’s way drifted back into position in his wake.
Cash didn’t mind. It gave him an excuse to slow down and have a good look around as he ducked through bodies.
If someone wanted to expose the survival of monsters to the world, after all, where better to send his patsies than a wedding of the great and grotesque? It was the East Coast capital of the Prodigium, no matter whose ass or ass-adjacent body part held the seat, and this would be the biggest event of the year.
Blood would flow.
A sharp heel came down hard on his foot. The tall woman it belonged to gave him a sidelong smirk from behind a thick mane of silver-streaked black hair, just a hint of fang visible.
“Sorry, darling,” she drawled in her thickly accented contralto. “I didn’t see you there. I was looking for Madeline.”
The accent was fake. The Prodigium hadn’t allowed any foreign vampires in for nearly a century now. An ongoing familial dispute. Besides, they’d come to camp together. Natalie had granddaughtered in, so to speak, even though she’d been just a human on a promise then.
“Sorry too, you’re not her type,” Cash said. “I hear she likes her bedwarmers to be, well, warm. How’s your mother? Still in New Jersey?”
Her eyes narrowed. The flecks of gray glittered red for a second, like bits of glass. The man with her gave a nervous laugh in confusion. “Jersey, Natalia?”
She blinked twice, and the fangs were gone as she turned back to her companion. Her hand brushed his face, a thin smear of oil left where her fingers stroked over his cheekbone.
“My parents settled there,” she said, her voice thick and throaty as she overwrote his memories. “After they came here from the old country? Remember?”
