Page 2

Pity.

I dropped my head back again despite the building pain. I wasn’t going to give her the pleasure of my suffering. I just wasn’t in the mood to help her get her rocks off.

“Forty-two thousand.” Her accent licked the long syllables in “thousands”. If you had a death wish, you’d say she sounded like some Euro trash nouveau riche starlet. I thought about it for a second. No, it was too much effort to pick a fight with her, hoping I’d be pushing up daisies.

“Cutting off my allowance?” I forced myself to relax and appear “casual,” as casual as you can be with a dagger sticking out of your chest.Casualwas one of Veronica’s seven deadlies. She tutted at me. That was her not-so-subtle clue to pay attention. My brow wrinkled as her words melted through my brain fog.

“Forty-two thousand what?” I asked.

“Dollars, Pet, dollars,” she indicated the dagger in my chest with her long, elegant fingers.

I lacked the will to even roll my eyes at her as I plucked the paper from the hilt. It was a generic-looking bar tab. I gave a little “hmm” as I realized we had racked up that much in just two hours. There was a notation for “refurbishment.” I didn’t think we were rowdy enough to have broken any furniture. I squinted at the three names with hefty sums attached.

“A tasting fee?” I was incredulous. “Nadine was charging me a tasting fee?” I tried to tense my abs to sit up, but the shooting pain in my chest made me reconsider. Carla? Yvonne? Not in a million years, not if they marinated themselves in 40-year-old single malt and ripe cherries. Monroe? That was entirely possible. I was drunk last night, but I’m pretty sure I would have remembered Monroe.

“I would never…” Veronica cut me off with a snort that translated to “obviously”.

“Not you, Lachlan. Your retinue.”

Retinue? What was I, some 15th century provincial prince rubbing elbows with my boy Niccolo? I stopped to think about that. Wasn’t far off, was it? Seemed the sole purpose of my existence these days was to look pretty and represent. When Veronica discovered the word “eye candy,” she spent months slipping it into every conversation - “what eye candy you are tonight,” “come sit by Lachlan and be eye candy for me.” She was always pushing people into my circle for her visual enjoyment, her entertainment. I was her entertainment.

“Standards. When you set a standard, you must be willing to follow it yourself. We can’t have the children running around all,” she paused and gave a flourish of the wrist, “come si dice?Ah yes, all willy-nilly.”

I didn’t want to, but I half-smiled at that. Veronica was a stickler for modern vernacular. Disconnection from current events was bad for the mental health. But time blindness madewilly-nillyandyo, they be trippin’contemporaries.

I looked at the paper again and flicked it away with two fingers. Whatever. The faux pas would be forgotten in days, as always. People were more interested in sitting in my lap, hoping I’d make candy out of them.

“You know the protocol.” Her voice edged into the mommy tone. “We do not eat our friends without permission. At least you have stopped tasting the waitresses.” She shivered in disgust.

I finally found the strength to roll my eyes and stood, sucking back a groan at the flash of pain. I pressed my lips to each of her cheeks, knowing she’d be pacified by the hint of manners. Surprised, she didn’t pat me on the head with a “good boy” like the pretty pet I was.

I soundlessly pulled the dagger from my chest, making a show of licking both sides before handing it back to her, hilt first, like a proper fucking gentleman. But she saw the gesture exactly as I intended. She was the last vampire I wanted to ever taste my blood.

I stalked out, pulling the heavy teak door shut behind me, and crumpled against the wall. I rubbed my chest. My head throbbed like a freight train was running through it. It was a perverted trick of preternatural biology that hangovers hurt, but this dagger wound would heal in minutes.

Fuck, it hurts. I sighed. The dumb wound would heal, but my shriveled, broken heart never would.

THREE

TIFFANY

“This is insane, Tiff,” Monique mumbled, her face pressed against the back of the couch.

“I did say I should be on the bottom,” I replied, trying to catch my breath.

“Harder. We’re almost there,” she grunted.

With a mighty heave, we navigated the couch around the narrow bend in the stairs of my three-story walk-up. The last flight was a breeze and, in no time, we were sitting on the couch by the curb, waiting for the buyer.

“I don’t know how the hell you got this upstairs all by yourself.” Monique wiped the sweat off her brow with the collar of her muscle shirt as I swiped through my Marketplace listings.

“Spite and adrenaline. That’s how I roll.” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

Two more furniture flips and I’d have next month’s rent solid. I had a yarn wholesale order lined up, which should cover my loans. I’d figure out some way to buy groceries.

“You know,” Monique started, with that tone, the one that smacked of common sense and adult decision-making, “you don’t have to struggle this hard.”

Trying to ignore her, I leaned forward, tracking a pickup truck that zoomed by. It wasn’t my buyer. We already had this argument. Dozens of times, actually. I met Monique on the first day of undergrad and she’s been questioning my decision-making ever since. I didn’t want to go there again with her. Not now. I’d been jobless for two months, but I wasn’t out on the street... yet.