Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 116618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Something about who I am.
Tomorrow, I tell myself. Tomorrow I’ll approach this professionally. Ask the right questions. Maintain appropriate distance.
But even as I form this resolution, I know it’s a lie. There’s nothing professional about what’s happening between us. Nothing appropriate about the raw hunger that rises when I think of her.
And nothing rational about the certainty that she feels it too.
9
LENA
The cold wakes me first.
One moment I’m deep in dreamless sleep, the next my eyes snap open, body tense with the instinctual awareness that something is wrong. The bedroom is pitch dark save for the red glow of the clock on my nightstand. 1:17 a.m.
My apartment is never cold—the ancient radiator beneath the window hisses and clanks through the night, keeping the space almost uncomfortably warm. Yet now my breath fogs in front of my face, visible even in the darkness. Impossible. I don’t feel cold the way humans do.
That’s when I suddenly know.
Someone is in my apartment.
I lie perfectly still, extending my senses beyond the bedroom door. The familiar creaks and settling sounds of the building continue their nighttime chorus, but beneath them is a different quality of silence.
The careful quiet of someone trying not to be heard.
A shadow passes beneath my bedroom door—a momentary darkening of the thin strip of space between door and floor.
Then gone.
Fuck me.
I slide silently from the bed, bare feet meeting the icy wooden floor. The temperature has dropped unnaturally, far beyond what the January night should cause in a heated apartment. This isn’t just an intruder. This is something else.
Listening intently, I move toward the door. Nothing. Not even the sound of breathing from the hallway beyond. I press my ear against the wood, straining my vampire hearing.
Silence.
Then I sniff quietly, smelling nothing out of the ordinary.
I ease the door open, peering into the darkened hallway. Empty. But the bathroom door at the end of the short corridor is closed, a thin line of shadow beneath it. I never close that door when I’m alone in the apartment.
Every instinct screams at me to flee, to use my speed and strength to escape whatever waits on the other side of that bathroom door.
And yet curiosity killed the cat.
I creep down the hallway, the floorboards mercifully silent beneath my careful steps. Outside the bathroom door, I pause, listening again. Nothing.
My hand closes around the doorknob. I turn it slowly.
Locked.
It’s locked.
How can that be? It has to be locked from the inside…
Oh, god, oh god.
I’m about to try the knob again when I glance down and gasp—a dark liquid is seeping beneath the door, spreading across the hallway floor in a widening pool. The metallic scent hits me immediately.
Blood.
Fresh blood.
My fangs descend involuntarily, the vampire hunger rising in response to the scent. I stumble back, fighting the dual response of terror and thirst.
What the hell is in my bathroom?
The blood continues to flow, impossibly copious, reaching toward my bare feet. I press myself against the opposite wall, heart hammering in my chest.
Then, without warning, the bathroom door swings open.
A scream dies in my throat, my heart threatening to break free of my ribs.
Empty.
It’s completely empty.
No blood. No intruder. Just my small, ordinary bathroom, exactly as I left it before going to bed.
I stare at the clean floor where, seconds ago, a pool of blood had been spreading. Nothing. Not even a trace of moisture.
What the hell is going on?
A soft sound from my bedroom spins me around. The whisper of fabric against furniture, the subtle shift of weight on floorboards.
I edge along the wall back toward it, keeping my back to the solid surface. I wished I had a gun. I never thought I needed one until now.
My bedroom is a maze of shadows from this angle, the faint glow of streetlights filtering through the window. The open window that I know I had closed before I went to sleep.
Movement by the window draws my eye.
I gasp.
A figure crosses from one shadow to another, too quickly to make out features, but unmistakably human in shape until it becomes the darkness again.
Then…
There’s no one.
The curtains by the window billow inward, dancing in a breeze that shouldn’t exist.
I approach it cautiously, coming to a stop when I nearly trip over the rug.
I stare down at the floor in horror.
The rug has been pulled away, the floorboards pried up.
I cry out softly and drop to my knees, thrusting my hand into the cavity and feeling for Elizabeth’s diary, but it’s gone. Everything else is there, all my jewels and cash, but not that.
Somehow, someone managed to not only get into my room but also find her hidden diary, all while I was distracted by blood in the bathroom.
I get to my feet, my hands at my chest, the terror hammering my heart, and slowly cross to the window. Looking out, I see the street three floors below, empty save for parked cars and pools of lamplight on wet pavement.