Chapter 2 — The Unequal Contract (1)

At exactly two p.m., Lila Reed stood outside a penthouse in Manhattan carrying her art bag, which contained: one craft knife, one can of pepper spray, one silver cross from a dollar store (emotional support), and one printed copy of the New York State Contract Law.

The door opened to a man in a silver waistcoat who looked like a Victorian gentleman who'd been taxidermied mid-smile. He stared at her, then yelled back into the apartment: "Master! The girl's here! She's brought—" He squinted. "…a law book?"

A cold voice: "Let her in."

Lila followed the silver-waistcoat man through a foyer the size of her apartment into a penthouse that didn't feel lived in. Floor-to-ceiling windows, a skyline like a king's ransom, black-and-gold furniture arranged like a museum, and in the corner, an actual medieval pipe organ. Kael Voss sat on a black leather sofa, holding a glass of something dark red. He raised his chin.

"Sit."

Lila didn't sit. She slapped the Contract Law on the coffee table and pulled a sheaf of papers from her bag—pages she'd typed herself, at 4 a.m., fueled by spite and cold coffee. "Let me be clear. I, Lila Reed, ordinary human who pays rent by drawing other people's dreams, am about to sign a 'blood contract' I don't understand. So I've drafted forty-seven clauses. Read them."

Kael's hand stopped mid-glass.

The man in the silver waistcoat—Aldous, Lila would learn, a servant of the Nocturne house for a thousand years, the kind of old that made Kael look young—made a noise like a kettle witnessing a miracle.

Kael set down his glass and picked up the pages. He read page one with the expression of a man watching a human circus act. Page three: the expression of a man realizing the human had rewritten the circus. Page ten: he looked up at Lila with something approaching genuine regard.

"You're requiring that I not drink from you without consent. Violations fined, up to ten thousand dollars per incident."

"Vampires need labor laws too," Lila said. "Bite me without asking and I'm filing for workers' comp."

"You're requiring that I not enter your room after ten p.m."

"I sleep. You have eternity. My beauty sleep is worth more than your turf wars."

"And you require breach clauses to be symmetric: if I default, you may terminate and collect full damages—" He paused. "You know the penalty for breaking a blood contract is blood backlash? Your power destroyed, an eternity of pain?"

"Yes." Lila smiled sweetly. "That's why I'm not leaving myself an escape hatch. I don't bet on eternity. I bet on what's real right now. If you ever change your mind, I want to be sure I don't die quietly."

Aldous was now visibly crushing his waistcoat in his fists. "Master. A thousand years I've served this house. I have never—never—seen anyone rewrite vampire law like it's a lease agreement. This woman is a genius. I don't know if we should marry her or run her for Parliament."

Kael was silent for a long time. Long enough that the Manhattan clouds changed shape twice. Then he picked up a pen and signed the last page.

"The bond requires a blood-brand," he said. "Give me your hand."

Lila narrowed her eyes. "What for?"

"Palm to palm. The contract is written in blood. My blood will remember yours; yours will remember mine. From this moment, we cannot harm each other. We'll share fragments of sensation, pieces of pain. If you break the contract, I die too." He held out his hand, palm up. "That's the whole of my sincerity."

Lila stared at that hand for three seconds. It was a beautiful hand—long, pale, jointed like carved ivory. She took a breath. She put her hand in his.

The moment their palms met, her whole body lit up.

Not pain. A current that ran from her palm to her heart, waking something in her blood, something that had been sleeping her entire life. She heard her own heartbeat—and then a second heartbeat, joining it, in rhythm.

She looked up. Kael's pupils had gone from ice-blue to dark red, so dark they nearly dripped. His hand tightened around hers, and the mask of indifference cracked just enough to show something like loss of control.

"Your blood," he said, and his voice was rough. "…It's special. More special than I thought."

Lila snatched her hand back and buried it in her pocket. "Save the compliments. Contract's done. When do I move in?"

"Tonight." Kael's voice was already back to ice. "The Moon faction's people are circling Brooklyn. It's not safe there. Aldous—help Miss Reed pack. And hide the blood-drink collection in the fridge. Humans call the police when they see that."

Aldous bowed, turned, then turned back. "Master, forgive the old servant's tongue, but on night one, you want the girl to see your 'human observation' fridge? A hundred years of stuffing the fridge with blood-drink bottles just to see which guests scream? That's not courtship, that's a haunted house."

Lila: "……"

Kael: "Aldous."

Aldous: "The old servant is quiet."

Cohabitation began that night. Lila had assumed that living with a century-old vampire lord would be all danger, blood, and intrigue. She was wrong. It was danger, blood, intrigue—and a man who couldn't operate a microwave.

"What is this box?"

At 3 a.m., mid-deadline, Lila heard a question of utmost gravity from the kitchen. She went in. Kael Voss stood before the counter, holding a takeout container, looking at it like it was an enemy document.

"It's a microwave meal. You heat it."

"Heat it," Kael repeated, with the confusion of a man whose century of knowledge had just failed him. "Humans… cook food?"