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  “Man, I can’t afford a two-bedroom with windowpanes that stick without having a roommate. Vampires have all the luck. I mean, apart from that thing where you’re all part of the legions of the living dead and stuff, I guess. That’s not all that lucky.”

  The heady scent of the young man’s fear undercuts his quick-fire banter, and makes Xavier’s mouth water. It is hard not to smile at the wisecracking, too — the young man’s mannerisms are surprisingly normal and natural, despite his situation.

  Abruptly, the man shoves the pizza box back into Xavier’s hands.

  “Listen. You better… you better just be planning on killing me, okay? Don’t… don’t fucking enthrall me like that asshole outside the restaurant was about to do, okay? I know vampires are all piece of shit assholes, but you don’t have to be the absolute worst kind of piece of shit asshole, you know?”

  The sudden anger mixed with the fear in the young man’s scent arouses Xavier even more. Contrarily, that spike of desire makes him hesitate. He prefers to do his feeding from humans whom he feels little or nothing towards. The safety of neutrality appeals to him.

  After all, every time he looks at Emelie’s face now, he’s met with a reminder of just how dangerous it is to care too much.

  Xavier knows that the wisest course of action at this point would be to drain this young man dry and dispose of him, but he finds himself unwilling to end this interaction so unceremoniously. The thought of keeping him nearby instead, to drink from him at his leisure at a more suitable time, is an appealing thought.

  “I won’t enthrall you,” he promises the man. “Nor kill you.” Xavier can’t stop himself from offering a sharp smile. “Not yet, anyway.”

  4

  ADRIAN

  The vampire puts the pizza box down on the glass coffee table, walking further into the enormous apartment. Adrian can’t remember the last time he’s been in a home this big, not even a freestanding house. The rooms feel like they go on forever, all of them beautifully furnished and all of them devoid of any mark of personality of the person who lives there.

  Well, that makes an awful kind of sense, doesn’t it? After all, nobody lives here. The person who stays here isn’t alive. Isn’t even a person, by strict definition of the word.

  “In here,” the vampire says, leading him into a bedroom with a private bathroom attached to it. Like the rest of the apartment it has the luxurious anonymity of a hotel suite.

  Before Adrian can say anything the vampire is gone, closing the door behind him and locking it with the audible click of a key. No electronic fobs this time, which surprises Adrian a little. You’d think the vampire would have a more high-tech system in place for keeping captives than just regular old door keys.

  Adrian wonders how many other people have been locked in this room. Have died in this room.

  He makes it into the attached bathroom and to the toilet before his stomach heaves up the pizza and soda he’d had earlier, cramping painfully when there’s nothing left to puke.

  Adrian stumbles back to his feet and activates the flush, then goes to the sink to wash his face. His reflection in the mirror looks like shit, his eyes fever-bright and his face clammy. He could hardly look worse even if he had been fed from.

  To stave off the panic attack he can feel threatening to overtake him, he tries to consider the positive elements of his situation. Being locked in is better than being held by thrall, because at least this way he retains a desire to escape. Remembering that he wants to get away at all is a good first step in any escape plan, right?

  But if this vampire is letting him keep his wits about him, that must mean that he’s confident that escape is almost impossible, that it isn’t going to matter if Adrian tries to think up a plan.

  He sinks down to sit on the edge of the almost absurdly large bed, shoulders slumped. Despair floods through him. He can’t believe that after everything he went through to build a life of his own, a life where he didn’t have to rely on Lee for anything, after everything he went through as a kid… after all that, he still wound up here, miserable and sweaty and sick and hating himself, sitting on the edge of a vampire’s bed.

  Perhaps it was inevitable. He always knew, deep down, that this was all he was good for, didn’t he?

  Okay, no, he can’t spiral down into thinking like that. If he gets caught up in old memories it’s gonna be even harder to plan than if he gave in to the panic attack.

  More than anything, Adrian is furious at himself for everything that happened at the pizza place. If he’d just kept to his regular boring routine, he’d be at home eating trail mix and trying to find something to watch on Netflix right now.

  That routine had been hard-won, and look what taking it for granted for even one night has cost him: Everything.

  Focus. He’s got to focus. He can be mad at himself later. For now he has to think about what to do next.

  That key fob is, well, the key to getting out. To get that, Adrian’s going to have to find a way to get the vampire’s guard down.

  If this guy wants a pet, then Adrian will have to make sure to give him one worth keeping alive. One that’s trustworthy.

  Then he’ll be able to get away.

  5

  XAVIER

  After making sure the door to the bedroom is locked, Xavier retrieves the pizza and returns to the elevator, activating it with the fob and riding up one level to Emelie’s penthouse at the top of the building.

  The thought of the human shut up in one of the suites of his own apartment fills Xavier with a surprising amount of excitement and anticipation, but there are other things for him to turn his attention to for the time being.

  Lennon is exactly where Xavier expected to find him at this hour, which is in the extensive gym room. Specifically, he’s swimming in the heated lap pool, the absolute picture of healthy living strength.

  Xavier has always had an appreciative eye for both of Emelie’s pet humans, understanding on an aesthetic level just how pleasing both of them were as examples of humanity. He likes their company as individuals, too. But he’s never desired either of them. He has too much respect for his Queen to even consider the notion.

  When he thinks of the young man in his own apartment one level below, however, his mouth waters.

  “Emelie said you expressed a desire for a pizza,” Xavier says when Lennon surfaces at the end of the pool. The human grins.

  “Aw, nice. Thanks!” Lennon climbs out of the pool and takes the box from him, opening it and grabbing a slice. “Still warm. Perfect. Breakfast of champions right here.”

  Xavier smiles as the two of them walk towards the palatial kitchen area — unlike Xavier with his unexpected guest, Emelie knew in advance when she designed her floor that humans would be making use of any kitchen she built, so it was worth getting it as perfect as possible.

  Xavier likes doing things like picking up pizza for Emelie’s humans. The simple normality of performing mundane little tasks makes him feel a contentment that has rarely been present in his long life.

  Xavier far prefers the stable routines of times like this to the periods of open conflict that sweep through the underworld every few months. Even thinking of those makes him frown, especially as he knows they’re more than overdue for the next wave of trouble.

  Xavier has no fear of violence, but no especial taste for it either.

  Before they make it to the kitchen, the elevator makes a sound signaling that it’s about to arrive.

  “Looks like your duty calls,” Lennon says to Xavier. “I guess I’ll catch up with you later.” He continues on his way, still making quick work of the pizza as he goes. Xavier goes to wait near the elevator for Emelie’s arrival.

  As always, she looks utterly, devastatingly lovely, her hair a sleek fall of wintery gold past her shoulder blades, her ears and throat adorned with the highest grade of pearls, the simple black leather of the patch covering her left eye making her beauty seem dangerous and strange, like that of a femme fat
ale in a James Bond film.

  Tonight she’s wearing an Armani Collezioni black cocktail dress and black Wolford tights. A pair of perilously high black Christian Louboutin pumps is already kicked free off her feet, clutched in one dainty manicured hand instead.

  “Ugh,” she says by way of greeting, stomping towards her private parlor. “That sucked.”

  He follows her, not bothering to respond. He knows she’ll explain in her own way at her own pace. She steps behind the byobu, the beautifully decorated Japanese folding screen, in her parlor.

  “We got a tip-off that the police were going to shut down the auction as soon as it got underway,” she tells him, shedding the dress and tights as well, tossing them up to drape over the top of the screen. Xavier collects them automatically and shakes them free of creases from wear. “We had to delay going live with the stream and the chat, and the in-person bidders had to be shifted to the backup location. It was a nightmare.”

  The pearl necklace and earrings fly over the screen, a series of tiny priceless projectiles. Xavier catches them deftly.

  He’s not a valet, not even for Emelie, but his natural preference for things being kept in an orderly state means that they’ve fallen into this kind of pattern instinctually over the years. Being the Executive Assistant to this Queen of the city’s underworld will always mean a degree of cleaning up after her, and Xavier is fine with that.

  “The whole thing had Katerina’s fingerprints all over it,” Emelie goes on, as if he hasn’t guessed that much already. “There’s no way for me to prove that, of course — she’s too smart to leave a trail — but I can tell that it was her.”

  “Did everything go all right in the end?” Xavier asks. “The auction took place?”

  “Oh, yeah, the failsafes all went fine, it wasn’t a problem,” Emelie assures him. “I’m just pissed off that she always makes everything as difficult as possible.”

  “You should have called me when things went awry. I would have helped get everything running smoothly again.”

  “No, it was fine, we took care of it. Anyway, your job was of the utmost importance too,” she says with a smile in her voice. “You had to get Lennon his pizza. Did that go okay?”

  Xavier thinks about telling her about the young man locked in a bedroom one level below but decides not to mention it. Instead, he says “I ran into Davis, briefly. He was being a troublemaker, but I didn’t get a sense of anything more organized in the works.”

  Emelie emerges from behind her privacy screen, now wearing a pair of worn brown corduroy jeans and a black t-shirt, barefoot save for black cherry nail polish on her toes. “She might not have even told him about the auction plans. She doesn’t keep him around for his brains.”

  She pulls her hair back into a loose ponytail and the two of them leave the parlor, heading towards the library. As they pass Lennon’s room he steps out to join them, his swimming trunks now replaced with a casual outfit similar to Emelie’s own.

  “Hey babe,” Lennon greets her, leaning in for a kiss which she deftly dodges.

  “Not while you’re all pizza-fied, thanks,” she laughs.

  He snorts. “Whatever, I know for a fact that garlic doesn’t hurt you.”

  “Being smooched by a guy with garlic breath hurts anyone, Lennon.” Emelie wrinkles her nose.

  She would look like any happy young woman bantering with a lover, if not for the aura of leadership and power that always surrounds her wherever she goes, however relaxed and happy she might appear in a given moment.

  She’s far younger than Xavier, having only become a vampire in the 1990s. He’d had her pegged as a tough cookie from the first moment he’d met her, despite her small build and delicate features.

  She’d been nineteen when she died, with wide worried eyes and red-gold hair that she started dyeing a glossy platinum shortly thereafter. The change in coloring was meant to make herself look sparer, colder.

  It works moderately well to mitigate the innocence of her natural appearance, though in Xavier’s private opinion the cosmetic difference will never matter as much as the way Emelie holds herself, the manner with which she engages with the world.

  She’s driven and smart, willing to get her hands dirty when she needs to but always seeking a way to solve a problem before it reaches the point where violence becomes necessary.

  In short, she is his Queen, and Xavier would do anything for her.

  Emelie’s other human is in the library, which is where he can be usually found. Winter is quieter and younger than Lennon, more interested in books than athletics, with a surprisingly bitchy sense of humor when the mood strikes him.

  Emelie is protective of both her humans, but especially of Winter, whose life before he met her had more than its fair share of violence and sadness. Her protectiveness towards him is matched only by her voracious appetite for him, the two sides of their dynamic making a surprisingly natural mix in the bond between them.

  “Hey, Win, there’s pizza if you want it,” Lennon says. Winter puts his book aside as the three of them join him in his library, shaking his head.

  “No thanks.”

  His bruises have faded, but Xavier thinks he’s still a little more withdrawn ever since the attack. Winter and Emelie were out together, coming home from a gallery opening when they were surrounded by several newly-turned vampires, led by Davis and aiming to kill Winter.

  Emelie killed the newly-made attackers before Winter was seriously harmed, and took Davis’s arm off near the elbow, but in the process of bringing them down she suffered a serious injury to her eye. Now she’s stuck wearing a patch over the wound until the long process of healing such a deep scar is over and done with.

  It might be months or even years before she regains sight in the eye, even longer before the marks are completely faded from her skin.

  When it comes to things she cares about, Emelie is ruthless and hot-blooded to a fault, her otherwise-rational judgement clouded by love. It worries Xavier. She loves Winter and Lennon with all her heart, and that’s a chink in her armor, a weakness where otherwise she’s so strong.

  It wasn’t her formidable, steely strength that saw Emelie rise to position of Queen of the city in just a few short decades, however. She made powerful connections quickly, thanks for an innate knack for working out what a person wants most; wants enough to compromise on everything else in order to get. By leaning heavily on this skill, Emelie was able to make a lot of people loyal to her very quickly.

  Xavier watches his Queen as she chats about her evening with Winter and Lennon, feeling a twinge of frustration on her behalf as she recounts again the scramble to relocate the auction.

  Katerina’s continued meddling in everything frustrates Xavier to no end. She’s both older and meaner than Emelie, and resents that a vampire she sees as a young upstart has gained control so easily.

  But her plots and plans never do anything to boost her own profile as a viable alternative as Queen, they merely seek to sabotage Emelie’s work. That’s why none of Katerina’s coups will ever succeed — there’s nothing about her that makes her seem like a better option. The city’s vampire underworld is happy with Emelie. She has far more allies than she does enemies.

  Thinking about all these machinations and schemes is giving Xavier a truly impressive headache. Maybe he misses outright conflict more than he wants to admit.

  6

  ADRIAN

  The vampire returns hours later, looking irritated — as much as any mood shows on his reserved, handsome face. He unlocks the door to the room where Adrian’s been trapped and then stands in the frame, taking in Adrian’s position where he’s been pacing back and forth across the expansive distance of the large room.

  “You can come out. Stretch your legs,” he tells Adrian.

  Adrian snorts. “I’m pretty sure that room’s bigger than my entire apartment. It might even be bigger than the book shop.”

  The vampire ignores the comment. “Have you been drinking wat
er?”

  There had been a clean glass beside the sink in the bathroom. “Yeah, I’m hydrated. Bored and scared, but hydrated. Vampires like that, right? I know whenever I’ve gotta get a blood test, they always want me to drink a bunch of water a while before I go in, so it’s easier for them to find a vein.

  “I guess it’s pretty offensive to compare pathology technicians to vampires, though, isn’t it? They have to have training and everything, while you guys just kind of do whatever you feel like.”

  Adrian desperately, desperately wishes his mouth would stop making sounds, that he could shut the babble off, but that’s a skill he’s well and truly never managed to master.

  “I should probably stop insulting you, shouldn’t I? I just feel like you probably don’t put as much thought and care into drawing blood as a trained technician, and maybe that’s reflected in… but, wait, maybe you care if I’m hydrated because it tastes better? Does it? I always hate it when ice melts in my soda and makes it watery, but maybe blood’s different. Does—”

  “There isn’t any food here,” the vampire says, as if Adrian’s been quiet this whole time. “There may be a few protein bars in one of the kitchen cupboards, but for obvious reasons I can’t vouch for their flavor or effectiveness. I apologize; this was not a planned situation.”

  “Nah, it’s okay, it’s only a few hours since I had pizza,” Adrian answers. He doesn’t want to wonder about who the protein bars belonged to, if they’re still alive or not.

  The vampire sits down at the table in the large kitchen, getting out his phone and typing a quick message to someone.

  “Do vampires have trouble with phone screens or are your fingers still conductive even though you’re dead? I guess they must be, since you’re using one, but I wondered. Is there any technology that’s not accessible to you guys because you aren’t human? Are you worried that there might be in future? Is CCTV and stuff something you get stressed about, or do you have a secret illuminati that controls the government?”