I carefully clipped a single flower, tucked it into my bag with special care, then went to the yard.

Mina was sitting in the sun. It was warm, but she kept a blanket over her lap anyway. She turned to me and squinted into the waning light, looking at my bag. “Where are you going?”

“Errands,” I said.

She frowned. She saw through the lie.

I paused beside her for a moment—observing the darkness under her delicate fingernails, the heaviness of her breathing. Observing most of all the fine coating of flesh-colored dust that settled over the chair and her blanket. Her very skin abandoning her, as death crept closer.

I put my hand on my sister’s shoulder, and for a moment I considered telling her that I loved her.

I didn’t say it, of course.

If I did that, she would know where I was going and try to stop me. Besides, a word was useless compared to what I was about to do. I could show my love in medicine and math and science. I couldn’t show it to her in an embrace—and what good would a thing like that do, anyway?

Besides, if I hugged her, maybe I wouldn’t be able to let her go.

“Lilith—” she started.

“I’ll be back soon,” I said.

By the time I reached the doors, I was panting and sweating. I paused at the doorstep, taking a moment to collect myself. I didn’t want whatever was about to greet me to see me looking like a mangy dog. I glanced over my shoulder, down the dozens of marble steps I had just scaled, and into the forest beyond. My town was not visible from here. It had been a long, long walk.

Next time, I’d take a horse.

I craned my neck up to the house before me. It was a strange collection of architectural elements—flying buttresses and arched windows and marble columns, all mashed together in a mansion that really should have looked ridiculous, but instead stood in stubborn and intimidating indifference.

I drew in a deep breath and let it out.

Then I knocked, and waited.

And waited.

Nothing.

After a few minutes, I knocked again, louder.

Waited.

Nothing.

I knocked a third time, a fourth. And then, finally, I thought to myself, Well, this is the stupidest thing I’ll ever do, and tried opening the door.

The door, to my luck—or misfortune—was unlocked. The hinges squealed like this door had not been opened for a very, very long time. I had to throw myself against the mahogany to get it to budge.

It was silent within. Dusty. The interior of the house was just as strangely inconsistent in style as the exterior, though it took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust enough to see that. It was dark inside, the only light the moonlight spilling from behind me. The silver outlined the silhouettes of countless objects—sculptures and paintings and artifacts and so much more I couldn’t even begin to take in. Gods, it was mesmerizing.

“Hello?” I called out.

But there was no sound. No movement, save for the faint rustling of moth-bitten gauze curtains.

Maybe he was dead. No one had seen him for a few decades. I’d be disappointed if I came all this way just to discover a rotting corpse. Did his kind rot? Or did they just—

“It appears,” a deep voice said, “a little mouse has made its way into my home.”

CHAPTER THREE

There’s nothing to be afraid of, I told myself, but that did nothing to stop the hairs from rising on the back of my neck.

I turned.

And though I was expecting it, the sight of him standing on the stairwell, enveloped in shadow, still made me jump—the way one jumps when a snake moves in the underbrush beneath your feet.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the deeper darkness of the stairwell. He stood at the top of the stairs, peering down at me with the vague curiosity of a hawk. He had long, dark brown hair, slightly wavy, and a neat beard. He wore a plain white shirt and black trousers, unremarkable if a little outdated. He was large, but not monstrously so. I saw no horns nor wings, no matter how hard I squinted into the dark.

I was almost a little disappointed by how… normal he looked.

Yet, the way he moved betrayed his inhumanity—or rather, the way he didn’t. He was still the way stone was still, no minuscule shift to his muscles or rise or fall of his shoulders, no blink or waver of his gaze as it drank me in. You don’t realize how much you notice those things in a person until they aren’t there, and suddenly every instinct inside of you is screaming, This is wrong!

He approached down the stairs, the moonlight illuminating bright amber eyes and a slow smile—a smile that revealed two sharp fangs.

My chills were short-lived, drowning beneath a wave of curiosity.

Fangs. Actual fangs, just like the stories said. I wondered how that worked? Did his saliva contain an anticoagulant or—

“Would you like to tell me what you’re doing in my house?”

He had an accent, a sharp lilt stabbing into the t’s and d’s, rising the long a’s and o’s with a melodic twang.

Interesting. I’d never heard an Obitraen accent before. Then again, most people in the human lands never met anyone from Obitraes, because vampires didn’t often leave their homeland and were usually better off avoided if they did.

“I was looking for you,” I said.

“So you come into my home uninvited?”

“It would have been easier if you had come to the door.”

He paused at the bottom of the stairs. Again, that vampire stillness, the only movement a single slow blink.

“Do you understand where you are?” he asked.

That was a stupid question.

Maybe he was used to being cowered at. I did not cower. Why should I? I’d already met death three times now. So far, the fourth was a bit of a disappointment.

“I brought a gift for you,” I said.

His brows lowered slightly. “A gift,” he repeated.

“A gift.”

He cocked his head, a slow curl brushing his lips. “Is the gift you?”

Another chill up my spine, and this time, I shifted a little to ease it—which I hoped he didn’t see.

“No,” I said.

“Not this time,” he corrected, which I had no idea how to respond to.

“The gift is very special. Unique. You’re obviously a man who appreciates unique things.” I gestured to the walls and the many artifacts that lined them. “In exchange, I ask you for a favor.”

“That isn’t a gift,” he pointed out. “That’s payment, and I offer no services for sale.”

“Semantics,” I said. “Hear my offer. That’s all I’m asking.”

He frowned at me, silent. I wondered if someone better at reading faces would be able to tell what he was thinking, but as it was, I certainly couldn’t.

After too long, I cleared my throat uncomfortably.

“Is there somewhere we can sit?” I asked.

“Sit?”

“Yes, sit. You must have lots of chairs in here. You must do nothing but sit, being in this mansion all by yourself all day and night.”

“Do I look like I do nothing but sit?”

He took another step closer, and I looked him up and down without really intending to.

No, he looked like he did a lot of moving. Probably sometimes lifting heavy things.

I sighed, aggravated. “Fine. We can talk here in the doorway if you want.”

He seemed like he was considering it, then acquiesced. “Come.”

He brought me to a sitting room, which was even more cluttered than the entryway. This one, thankfully, was lit, albeit dimly, with lantern sconces that held peculiar blue flames. Paintings and shields and swords and scrolls plastered the walls. Overflowing bookcases were shoved into every corner—even in front of the windows—and the center of the room was full of mismatched fine furniture. Statues loomed over us—a jade cat staring us down from one side of the room, and a fierce, very naked woman rendered in black marble eyeing us warily from the other. The curtains were cerulean silk, and matching sweeps of fabric hung across the opposite wall, pulled back to reveal another expanse of paintings.