Chapter One
There was an infinite number of things Cat would rather be doing tonight, and the options scrolled through her mind as she trailed behind Jake down Lexington: Sitting on the couch in her apartment with a glass of wine and a movie. A dinner out with her best friend back home in Denver. A hot shower, a cold beer. A massage, a concert, the ballet.
She’d even take something as typically unappealing as a few hours in a dentist chair right now. Short of terrible illness or injury, Cat couldn’t think of anything much worse than attending a Halloween party hosted by the best friend of a guy she planned to break up with later.
Cat and Jake had been together for only three months, so there was no real devastation involved, just exasperation. He was cute and funny and always happy enough to spend time with her, but he was oblivious in the way that so many guys were: He was willing to put in the effort, but only if she told him precisely what that effort entailed. A quiet night at Jake’s apartment often found Cat squashed between a handful of guys on a shabby couch as they shouted at whatever basketball game was on the TV. If she suggested they do something, just the two of them, he’d take her out forsports trivia at a rowdy bar or a quick bite somewhere before heading back to his place for sex.
Basketball and trivia and bars and sex were fine for now, but Cat had realized earlier—when Jake appeared at her doorstepnotin the agreed-upon shepherd’s robe to match her stupid lamb costume but dressed as his favorite Knicks player—that he mostly forgot about her the moment she left the room. The fact that they were still relative strangers wasn’t really a surprise, but given that Jake was either unknowable or not very deep, he and Cat were likely going to remain strangers even if they stayed together for the next fifty years.
So, no, she wasn’t upset about ending things. The sadness came whenever she considered that Jake—even barely knowing him—was still her closest friend here in New York. It was hard to make friends when most of your time was spent studying or in class, especially when the only free time youdidhave was monopolized by a beer-drinking, sports-watching,fine-for-nowkind of guy like Jake. She only wished this realization would have occurred to her three months ago.
Already a little buzzed from pregaming with his friends, Jake pushed open the front door to Harry’s brownstone and walked in ahead of her. Tossing their coats on the couch, he clapped friends on the back and greeted a half dozen people before it occurred to him that Cat knew nobody here except for Harry—messy, loud Harry, always with a nauseating string of spit connecting his upper and lower lip—and turned around to take her hand, dragging her through the room.
“Ellie ... Nova ... Ashley! Nice costume, girl!” He dropped these names without offering hers in return. Everyone smiled, friendly but vague, and Cat did her best to connect faces to names, to give her bright, wide-open smile, but they were moving through the crowded room too fast for anything to stick. “That guy over there is the other Jake, wecall him Ohio Jake ...” Still walking, still a blur. “Ting, Ava ... that’s Asher ... Sophie! It’s been fucking forever!”
In the kitchen, he tugged on Cat’s hand again, leading her to a keg where he poured beer into a red plastic cup. Foam rose up and spilled over the lip as he distractedly handed it to her. Jake pressed a hard kiss to her cheek. “You good?” he asked.
She frowned at him, understanding immediately: He was going to pawn her off on someone. “I’m fine, but where are you—”
Jake looked around quickly before settling his gaze on a woman dressed as a witch and bent at the waist while reaching for a can of wine in the refrigerator.
“Regina,” he said, bright with relief. The woman straightened, smiling in surprise and hugging Jake. “Regina, this is my girlfriend, Cat.”
Cracking the top on her wine, Regina turned her warm, dark eyes to Cat and smiled again.
“Could you hang with her for a sec?” Jake asked. “I have to go find the boys.”
Before Regina could answer, he jogged out of the kitchen.
Unsurprised, Cat watched him go and then turned her wry grin up to the other woman. “You don’t have to babysit me; I promise I’m fine.”
Regina laughed and tilted her head for Cat to follow. “Jake is hopeless. Come on. There’s a group of us over by the couch.”
From the side of the room, he watched the little lamb. He’d been unable to take his eyes off her, in fact, tracking her from the moment she was dragged in behind the basketball player—a truly aspirational costume, given that the man couldn’t bemore than five foot six—who deposited her unceremoniously in the kitchen with a woman she clearly had never met before. He stared at the lamb’s face—enormous hazel eyes, sharp cheekbones, a mouth like a soft, edible heart—and then took in the rest of her. Brown curls fell past her shoulders; she was petite but stood with a posture that spoke of a stubbornness and passion that made his skin hum. Feeding was endlessly more fun when they had a little fire in them.
He watched as the costumed witch led the lamb to a sofa where several humans sat and gossiped. The lamb turned from him, and he stared at the firm swell of her backside in her white leggings. A flurry of debauched images raced through his mind before he pulled his gaze away.
Stifling a yawn, he surveyed the party around him. Same shit, different setting. Forever twenty-five, he easily blended in with the crowd here, but even if he hadn’t, it wouldn’t matter. Sometimes he wondered if people even saw his face or only reacted to the pull of his power. After all, he’d been there barely ten minutes, but several women had approached him already, their eyes glazed in that familiar way, their offer simple and straightforward. He’d politely declined, compelling them to return to their friends, although he wasn’t sure why.
He needed to feed.
It was the singular reason he’d left his penthouse, wandered uptown, and followed the group of unexceptional humans down the sidewalk, up the front steps, and into this dull party. He should get what he came here for and be done with it.
And yet a familiar restlessness ate at him, made a tight, agitated sensation take seed in his gut and spread into his limbs. He was too impatient to spend hours slowly siphoning energy from the room, but he didn’t want to take one of thesedazed women into a dark bedroom for pleasure and feeding either. He wanted the same thing he’d wanted for centuries: to not have to live like this anymore.
He knew that when he felt this way, the best thing was to run or swim or fly, but tonight he wanted something else more than he wanted relief from the tension of perpetual boredom or the urge to siphon from humans: Tonight, he simply didn’t want to feel alone for a little while.
He didn’t lie to himself; of course he was lonely. In this way, he supposed, sex served two purposes—companionship and sustenance—though of course for himcompanionshipwas a term to be used loosely. Centuries ago, when he’d been cursed and transformed, he quickly learned that a beat of eye contact was all it took. In a way, humans became drunk—not on fairy dust or pheromones or alcohol, but on the very essence ofhim, which turned their attraction or fascination into a raw, carnal hunger. From there it was as simple as finding a private space—an apartment, a dark hallway, an alley—where he could pleasure them for as long as he wished and breathe in their vitality until he was sated and they were drowsy enough for him to vanish without notice.
The unfortunate paradox, of course, was that no human in this state was very good company. Beguiled as they were by him, as soon as he was alone with a human, they were reduced to vacant, hypersexual beggars. The ensuing encounters sustained him, and certainly the sex itself was enjoyable, but it made the loneliness expand inside him into a dark, yawning pit.
His eyes returned to the little lamb, shifting anxiously on her feet with the group of strangers chatting amiably around her. She lifted her gaze, searching the room, her eyes passing, unseeing, over where he stood; despite his size, his tailored but nondescript black trousers and sweater as wellas centuries of experience allowed him to blend into the shadows.
And then her attention traveled the same path, but in reverse, and despite the absurd Halloween mask that covered half of his face, shesawhim, her gaze clashing with his for a single, excruciating heartbeat, long enough for most humans to lose whatever trivial thought occupied their minds and move directly toward him. But strangely, the lamb’s pulse didn’t lurch, her lips didn’t part in a gasp, her eyes didn’t ignite and then glaze over. She simply blinked away, uninterested.
Shock flooded him, and he was immediately—desperately—curious.
In a world where every second was predictable, the sensation of surprise was blissfully foreign to him.Turn around,he murmured to her, using the low, vibrating voice that seemed to run down a human’s spine, compelling them to unquestioningly do his bidding. For much of his existence, he’d used this power greedily, to amass property and riches, to wordlessly coerce humans to dance and sing and make general fools of themselves to his great amusement, but in recent decades, he’d mostly used it to direct them away.
