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“Oh, lovely,” I muttered to myself.

I quickly closed the drawers and deemed that a problem for another day.

I pressed onward. The ad had listed an upstairs loft, which was where I planned to live.

But if it was anything like the downstairs, perhaps I would find a park bench to sleep on.

Surely, that would be better than sleeping next to skeletons.

I guess there was only one way to find out.

I climbed the creaky stairs and was dismayed to find the loft was, in fact, worse than downstairs. The whole place was smaller than my old suite in the French Quarter. Then there was the ceiling. It slanted downward at the back and forced me to duck to peer out the drab, dingy window.

On the floor, right in front of the window, sat a sunken, narrow mattress—sans bedframe. I’d never personally slept on anything twin-sized before, but it looked like that was about to change.

Next to all that sat an old vanity with a mirror so thickly covered in grease and grime, it couldn’t reflect an image. Thankfully, that didn’t matter since I was a vampire and had no reflection to speak of.

All in all, the room had potential. Maybe. Hopefully. If you squinted. Or had a head injury.

At the end of the day, all that really mattered was this place was mine, and no one could ever take it away from me.

First thing tomorrow, I’d replace the mattress?—

I stopped, then sighed. I couldn’t replace the mattress. Because I had no money. I’d sunk every last cent I had into this purchase. Because while I was technically a vampire heiress, I now had to add the word former onto that title.

Hell, I didn’t even have enough funds to replace the wardrobe I’d lost or buy myself blood.

Things were looking…bleak. I’d used the last of my credit to secure this building—through a disreputable bank with chokingly high interest rates, no less.

The indignity. I hadn’t so much as glanced at an interest rate in my entire life until this month, and now I’d shackled myself to one like a debtor in a cautionary tale.

Thanks to Trystan.

The vampire I’d trusted with my heart, my future, and, apparently, the key to my family’s financial ruin.

He wasn’t just unfaithful. He was a liar with a gift for numbers and an appetite for fraud.

He’d used my family’s name— our legacy—to court high-profile investors and pad his books. Opened half a dozen shell companies, rerouted funds through shady holding accounts, and spun it all into a gleaming blood-distribution empire that never actually existed beyond the glossy pitch deck.

My parents hadn’t invested everything , but they’d put in enough—along with public endorsements, connections, and reputational capital—to go down with the ship when the truth came out.

Then, to make matters worse, Trystan vanished two days after the investigation began.

The rest was a blur of lawsuits, frozen assets, auctioned estates, and social invitations that stopped arriving overnight.

I was radioactive.

And broke.

So, I’d taken a leap. I’d walked into a bank and signed my life away on a loan to buy a bar sight unseen in a town far, far away from my society, Trystan, and even from my family.

I’d desperately needed a fresh start.

I couldn’t buy a new mattress, not until the bar started making profit. So, it was time to triage and come up with a plan that eventually earned me a new bed, new furniture, and a new life.

First, I needed to sanitize the bar. Possibly with bleach.

Maybe with a little fire. Then I needed to convince the town council that I was a serious business owner and not a walking scandal in stilettos.

Hopefully, that led to me making money, preferably before the loan interest started strangling me. And lastly, do not cry.

Thirst hit me, so I made my way back downstairs, in search of something to drink before retiring for the night. I didn’t expect much, but maybe I’d get lucky.

As I crossed the floor, the chandelier above suddenly jerked and swayed, even though there wasn’t any breeze. I paused, then glared up at the dusty light fixture. My first ghost, perhaps? It’d sure taken them long enough to make an appearance if so.

“If you drop on me, I will melt you down and turn you into earrings.”

The chandelier instantly froze, confirming my suspicion.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I muttered.

Eyeing the chandelier, I tucked behind the bar and searched the shelves. Miraculously, I found a single bottle of dark red liquid, and when I popped the cork, I was relieved to find it smelled more like bloodwine than poison. Thank goodness.

We vampires were an interesting breed that way. We didn’t require food, but we could enjoy a drink now and then, so long as it was paired with blood. Without that key ingredient, any form of liquid sustenance we put in our mouth was little more than ash on our tongues.

I poured a generous glass, lifted it in a silent toast to the empty room, and took a sip.

It wasn’t bad. A little sharp, a little aged. Like me.

“To fresh starts,” I muttered. “And questionable decisions.”

Somewhere upstairs, the plumbing creaked and groaned like a disgruntled monster.

I smiled into my glass.

The ghosts could complain all they wanted.

I’d survived far worse.