Chapter 1

T rixie

"Stop here."

I glanced in the rearview mirror at my last passenger of the night. At nearly three o'clock in the morning, a man who identified as "Little Hank" sat in a drunken slump in the backseat of my car, just conscious enough to give me directions. Little Hank smelled like pretzels and crayons.

"You want me to stop here ?" I squinted, slowing the car. "Are you sure? There's no address that I can see."

An address wasn't the only thing missing from our location. Technically, we were in the middle of nowhere. My cell service was barely hanging on. I pulled over on a two-lane highway that was the definition of abandoned.

"There's nothing around here." I faced Little Hank, my canister of pink pepper spray tucked discreetly next to my thigh. My hand played over it carefully. "I don't feel right leaving you in the middle of nowhere."

"I'm not paying you cash to offer your opinion." Little Hank handed over a wad of bills. "Don't tell anybody about me, and we'll be golden."

I tucked the cash into my pocket as Hank loped out, surprisingly lithe and coordinated, seeing as he'd tripped over a sidewalk crack on the way into my car. I felt a little bad about leaving him here, but he'd insisted multiple times this was the right spot. I wasn't here to judge. I was just here to drive.

Unless there was one slightly more reasonable explanation this man wanted to be dropped in the middle of the woods under a full moon. Like the fact that maybe Little Hank was a werewolf.

I spun the car around and made the drive back into New York, heading into a little alcove near the Upper East Side that was densely populated by paranormal types. Our little nook in New York was called The Hollow, and thanks to intense enchantments from the magical folks in charge, it didn't appear on most maps. It just sort of squeezed itself into the city unbeknownst to regular humans, a couple block radius of glittering skyscrapers and magical emporiums and spellcasting services.

We were close to the paranormal Sixth Borough—an entire magical borough set inside city limits, but unlike the Sixth Borough, we lived amongst the mortals in our day-to-day life. We were just sort of folded into the bustling streets like a book on a bookshelf.

I included myself as a paranormal, even though I didn't currently use magic. I was technically a witch by blood. I just preferred to ignore that smidge of a fact. I didn't want to be a witch; I just couldn't exactly deny that it was where my bloodline had landed me.

My phone rang, and while I'd like to say that I hit answer on my Bluetooth, I'd be lying. My car didn't have working Bluetooth functionality. I answered on my cell's speaker.

"I thought you were going to be home hours ago?"

"Hey, Emmy," I said to my roommate. "I picked up a strange fare. I'm just on the way back to the city. I've got a bottle of wine and a date on the couch with you."

"It's three in the morning."

"You're still awake, aren't you?"

I could almost see the studious Emmy poking glasses up her cute little nose. Everything about Emmy was sweet, which meant she was basically the polar opposite of me. It somehow made us the perfect pairing to live together.

Emmy sighed. "I'm waiting for my cultures to be ready so I can get them under the microscope tomorrow. If these stupid little toadstools aren't ready for me to pop into my potion soon, I'm going to lose an entire week's worth of research."

"Sounds like you need cheap wine," I repeated. "I'll be home in ten minutes."

When I made it back, I turned into a sketchy little restaurant that was only open for three hours a day on Friday afternoons and was definitely a front for something. Every month, I paid a big guy named Chopstix—a dude I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley—a hundred bucks in cash for a parking spot. I wasn't sure if Chopstix was even affiliated with the restaurant, but my car had never been towed, so the arrangement suited me.

Speaking of dark alleys, I climbed out of my car and made my way down one said alley behind the restaurant toward my apartment building. The block between the restaurant and my apartment complex wasn't all that far in distance, but it was the block that crossed from the human section of town into The Hollow.

One never knew what sort of thing—human or otherwise—would be stumbling around at three in the morning in these parts. Usually things worked out fine for me. I had to settle for usually because parking at my building was one ridiculous expense I couldn't afford.

I made my way three steps into the alley on the paranormal side of town when I realized something wasn't right. At that exact moment, I also realized I'd left my pepper spray on the front seat of my car where I'd been fondling it in anticipation of an altercation with a transforming werewolf.

"Who's there?" I asked, glancing around, seeing nothing but rusty old garbage bins and puddles leftover from the evening's thunderstorm on the ground. "I'm armed."

A skitter sounded to my right, but it was just a huge rat ferreting around for some dinner. I sighed, let my shoulders drop. Another skitter and a bang from further down the alley, and I saw a raccoon pop out of a trash can.

I crept uneasily forward, too far down the alley to turn back and head for the sidewalk. I really should have taken the sidewalk, but the alley was a serious shortcut, and I was lazy, and that was the entirety of my excuse.

I shifted my shoulder bag higher, feeling the bottle of wine clink against my hip, reminding me I had something I could use as a weapon. A cheap red cabernet in a glass bottle could do a number against someone's head if needed.

Then the feeling returned. The eerie sensation of being watched. It felt like the temperature dropped twenty degrees in mere seconds. I shivered, reached a hand comfortingly around the neck of my cabernet bottle.

"Who's there?" I called out again, knowing that this time, it wasn't just a critter.

The full moon reflected in a puddle on the ground, and I cringed as I stepped over it, thinking it was possible a werewolf hadn't gotten out of the city tonight. That a beast was here, eyeing me, lurking—waiting for the opportunity to take me down as a midnight snack. The only way to describe the discomfort in the air was with one word: predatory.

I continued forward, breathing a sigh of relief when the door to my apartment complex came into view between a couple of dirty garbage bins. That was when I saw him.

He was tall, taller than most men—even men who called themselves Little Hank and Chopstix. The man was broad shouldered, dark-eyed, midnight-haired. The word I'd been thinking still fit when I saw the look in his eyes: predatory.

"Don't you know a pretty thing like you shouldn't be walking along dark alleys at night?" The man's eyes glittered as he stepped out from the shadows. "You never know who might be lurking in the shadows."

The man's eyes were almost black, and it was only as he got within spitting distance that I realized there was a hint of slate-gray in them. The moonlight turned those flecks of gray into bits of reflected starlight. It was startling, but not so startling that I couldn't recognize how much it fit the rest of him. This person was otherworldly handsome in that dangerous, alluring sort of way.

My stomach sank. There was no way this man was a human.

He was a vampire.

I pulled the bottle of wine out of my bag and held it before me. "Don't take a step closer, or I'll—"

"Hit me with your wine bottle?" The vampire gave a delicious, frightening smirk.

I tensed, feeling the reluctant pull of magic building inside of me. I tamped it down just as hard as I could. It was my general rule to ignore the call to be a witch, to ignore the tugs of magic that had been growing stronger and stronger as my thirtieth birthday approached.

As much as it was tempting to want to use magic now to protect myself, I knew better. A girl couldn't go from ignoring magic for a couple of decades to brandishing it about like Hermione Granger. It just didn't work like that. There would be consequences, mistakes, and people could end up seriously injured, or worse.

"Don't take a step closer," I warned again, even though the vamp had already guessed my method of defense. "My roommate is looking for me. She'll call the police."

The vampire gave a little smile, the corners of his mouth tugging up in a wry grin that twisted his face into something even more beautiful. He was beyond gorgeous with those dark eyes, thick, muscled arms, that curling black hair.

He wore suit pants and a white shirt that was unbuttoned one button lower than necessary, as if it'd been a long day at the office, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. One arm was marked with several tattoos. A girl could tell just from looking at this man that he knew what to do with those fingers that could make a girl blush. I glanced at his hands, suddenly distracted.

That's when I figured out it was magic. The vampire was using his allure magic, a sort of innate magic that made vampires appealing to their prey just moments before they sucked them dry. He was distracting me with tempting thoughts. Typical vampire. It was stupid of him to think that garbage would work on me.

My hand clutched around the cabernet as the pull of magic grew stronger and stronger inside my belly. It swirled, sensing that I was in danger, the very strings of magic chomping at the bit to be unleashed in a way that could save my life. It was everything I could do to deny the natural pull of it. It took all my restraint to keep it from leaking out as a defense mechanism.

I was like a teapot ready to boil over at any second, but instead of a nice pot of chamomile, I was a dangerous elixir of angry and frightened, and I had a helluva lot of pent-up magic that could do a lot of damage.

The vampire stepped toward me. "You're fighting it."

"Fighting what?" I raised my wine bottle. "Don't come closer, or I'll—"

At that moment, the magic had coiled so tightly inside of me that there was no containing it. Even as I battled it down, there was a loud pop, and the cork shot out of my wine bottle with the force of a full-blown rifle. The knotted hunk of cork launched itself at the vampire, hurtled through the air with a velocity that could only be explained by magic.

In response, the vampire raised a hand, plucked the cork out of the air like he might a speeding bullet. It was alarming. He glanced at it, smiled in a way that showed pearly whites, those deadly teeth that could cut me to ribbons in mere seconds, and then he flicked the cork into the nearest trash can with alarming precision.

"Or you'll what?" He gave a dark little chuckle. "Pop a cork at me?"

"Oh, shut up," I said, exasperated. "Are you going to eat me, or can I get by you and go home to my apartment? I really did promise my roommate wine." I took a swig of my cabernet for good measure, hoping he wouldn't notice the shake in my hands despite my display of bravado.

At this the vampire threw his head back and gave a laugh that caused my belly to flip over. I'd never seen a vampire laugh before. Actually, I'd begun to wonder if it was even possible. Like, if that was just something their dark and brooding species had never evolved the capacity to do because it was something that resembled fun and sunshine and joy— the opposite of everything men like him stood for.

"So you do live here." The vampire nodded at the door behind him. "You must be the witch on the seventh floor. I recognize your scent."

"I'm one of them," I said uncomfortably. Then it dawned on me. "You're the vampire who owns this place. The one living in the penthouse."

The man crooked his eyebrow, and I was loathe to admit he even had handsome eyebrows. For Pete's sake, it wasn't enough that vampires had fantastic senses of smell, super speed, and incredible strength? This one had gotten all of the good genes too? Even the scar that cut across his chin, just a faint outline of danger past, made him look a little bit more terrifying and a little bit more handsome.

I wondered who'd managed to scar a vampire. I bet they hadn't lived to tell about it.

Unfortunately for him, my insides felt like they were tearing apart. It had taken every last fiber of my being to keep the magic from slipping out of every pore of my body. My stomach churned with the discomfort of abandoned magic circling through me with nowhere to go except to funnel itself into one measly little cork. I was anxious to get somewhere alone—and fast.

I rolled my eyes and took another swig of wine. Much like how alcohol slowed a werewolf's transformative process, it also dulled the effects of the magical war inside of me.

"Please move," I said. "You're too big for me to move, and I'd like to go home."

I took a step toward him, reaching for the door, but he moved half an inch at such a speed it was like he'd snapped there, blocking me. I bounced off his shoulder like it was a steel I-beam.

"You really shouldn't be out here at night alone." The vampire dipped his head toward me, whispering close to my ear. "I can smell the magic on you from a mile away, and it's... tempting."

I shivered, but I wasn't sure if it was in fear or exhilaration, or maybe a little bit of both. His lips were so close to my skin that all it would take was a split second for him to have his teeth in my neck, and I'd be dead. He had my life in the palm of his hand, and it both surprised and annoyed me that I wasn't more scared. Almost like I enjoyed the thrill of being so close to him, like it was desirable to be teetering on the brink of death.

"I can handle myself, thanks."

"Oh?"

The vampire still didn't touch me, but his breath tickled the skin of my neck, sending goosebumps down my arms and legs. I felt myself wanting to curl toward him, to run my hands down that solid chest of his, but I knew that was his vampire magic, the allure, talking. I cleared my throat, pushing the glamour away.

"You and your wine?" he murmured. "You did say you were armed."

His eyes roved over my face. We were just inches away from one another. He glanced down at my chest, and I could see him watching me breathe—inhale, exhale—as if he was listening to every beat of my heart with rapt attention. And hell if it didn't intrigue me to see the way he was studying me like I was something precious.

In response, I raised my bottle of wine and took one more little swig, mostly just to give myself something to do. The vampire didn't move away. I gave my lips a little smack as I let the wine bottle drop to my side.

I was sure I smelled like red wine, and maybe a little bit like crayons and pretzels courtesy of Little Hank. I narrowed my gaze at him.

"Yes," I confirmed. "Me and my cabernet sidekick."

He didn't move, a gargoyle carved out of solid mercury—the moonlight splashing him with a wash of a majestic glow. Those eyes glinted, little flecks of stars pulling me deeper into his gaze. He smelled fresh, crisp, rich. Expensive cologne and fancy shampoo, but something woodsy and natural beneath it all. I inhaled, both to steady myself and to drink in his scent.

The vampire seemed to like that because he smiled.

"Have a good night, then." He stepped to the side, let me reach for the handle.

Expelling a shaky breath, I moved around him and yanked open the door to our high-rise. It was hard to believe we hadn't touched, not more than the whisper of his breath on my skin, an imaginary sensation I'd be dreaming about for weeks on end.

My heart raced as I stepped through the door, feeling like he'd gotten me all hot and bothered and then left me hanging out to dry. I glanced behind, looking to see if he was still watching me, to see if he was as affected by this moment as me.

But I was alone. As if I'd imagined the entire thing.