Chapter 5 — Blood, Brunch, and a Very Suspicious Best Friend

Lila's best friend, Maya, had two rules for life: never trust a man who owns a cat he didn't rescue, and never let a friend introduce you to a boyfriend without a full background check.

"So," Maya said, at Sunday brunch, spearing a waffle with the focus of an interrogator, "you've been dating this guy for a month. I've never met him. He's rich. He's mysterious. And he's been paying your rent—which, by the way, I support, but I need to meet him before I sign off on a possible murder."

"He's not a murderer," Lila said, with total confidence, because technically she knew he was a killer but not her killer.

"Prove it. Bring him to brunch."

Lila brought him to brunch.

Kael Voss sat in a corner booth at a brunch place in Williamsburg, wearing a black turtleneck and sunglasses indoors, radiating the energy of a man who had never been to brunch and was already planning his escape. The waiter asked for his order. Kael said, with terrifying seriousness: "I'll have the blood of the day."

The waiter blinked. "…We have a Bloody Mary?"

"Acceptable," Kael said, and Lila wanted the floor to swallow her.

Maya watched this with the expression of a woman who had seen a lot and was about to see more. "So. Kael. What do you do?"

"I manage nightlife," Kael said. "And real estate."

"Nightlife and real estate," Maya repeated. "So you're a landlord who owns bars."

"Essentially."

Maya's eyes narrowed. "What's your sign?"

"Mine is the crest of a fallen house," Kael said, "and yours is—" He stopped, looked at her, and said, with the accuracy of a man who could literally smell lies: "—the sign of a woman who doesn't trust me and is right not to."

Maya's jaw dropped. Lila choked on her mimosa.

And then—because the universe loves her—Lila's phone buzzed with a text from a blocked number:

You're cute. Enjoy the waffles. — The Moon has eyes on your brunch. Three cars outside. Red one is ours. Green one isn't.

Lila's blood went cold. She looked up, smile intact, and slid her phone under the table to show Kael.

Kael didn't even blink. He reached across the table, took her hand, and said, with a warmth that would have won an Oscar: "Sweetheart, I forgot my wallet in the car. Walk me out?"

Maya: "…Your girlfriend's been paying for everything this whole meal. I knew it. He's a mooch."

Kael's mouth twitched. "I'll transfer the rent to your account, Maya. I've been meaning to thank you for keeping her alive before I met her."

Maya, who had been mid-sip, nearly inhaled her orange juice. By the time she'd recovered, Lila and Kael were gone.

In the alley, Lila's heart was a war drum. "Green car. Who's in the green car?"

"Moon faction." Kael's voice was ice, and his hand on her wrist was iron. "They've confirmed you're mine. That makes you valuable to them—and a target." He pulled her into the shadow of a dumpster, close enough that she could feel the cold of him through his coat, and tilted her head back to study the street. "We're going to walk out the other side, get in the red car, and disappear. When I say run, you run."

"Run where—"

The green car's door opened.

Lila didn't think. She grabbed Kael's hand—the branded one, the one that remembered hers—and pulled him the other way, toward the fire escape, up two flights, through a laundromat, out the back, into a bodega, out the front, and into a cab she flagged with the reflexes of a New Yorker born and raised.

The cab pulled away. Lila's heart was still doing gymnastics. She looked at Kael—disheveled, slightly stunned, master of the night reduced to a man who'd just been dragged through Brooklyn by a girl in a brunch dress.

"You're not bad at this," Kael said, after a moment. It sounded like a eulogy for a worthy opponent.

"I've lived in Brooklyn my whole life," Lila said. "Getting away from things is my love language."

Kael looked at her for a long moment. Then, very quietly, he said: "Good. Because you're going to need it."

Lila didn't ask what he meant. She was starting to learn that asking questions about Kael Voss was like opening a door you couldn't close again.

But she remembered the burned paper in her pocket. Continuous supply.

And she remembered that he hadn't denied anything.