I peered out the window as the driver turned onto a darkened street, far away from the city center and toward a much seedier section of town. My breath fogged the pane, but I swiped it clean with my hand.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked, turning to Logan. “Transylvania?”

He snorted. “You really do know nothing about vampires, do you?”

“Are we really going to start this again?”

“I’m curious,” he said. “What made you decide to write about vampires in the first place? No offense, but you don’t exactly seem the type.”

“What, you think you have to be goth or something?” I demanded. This wasn’t the first time I had gotten this question. And, honestly, I didn’t blame people for asking. I had never had much interest in horror or vampires or anything of the paranormal sort. Until the dream, that was.

“I didn’t say that,” Logan replied easily, stretching his arms above his head. I tried not to notice the way his shirt lifted with the movement—exposing a small ribbon of muscled flesh. He dropped his hands again and it disappeared. Which was definitely for the best. “I was just curious,” he said.

“Curiosity killed the cat,” I reminded him.

“Lucky for me, I’m a vampire, not a shifter.”

“So there are shifters, too? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

‘The Otherworld is vast,” he assured me. “There are all sort of things lurking under the skin of the world that you know. Vampires are just the beginning.”

“Awesome,” I muttered. This guy was deranged, I reminded myself again. Super-hot, but super insane. How had he talked me into this whole thing again?

I realized he was waiting for an answer. “It was kind of random,” I said with a shrug. “And not all that interesting to be honest. One night I went to sleep. And I had a dream. About Jonathan.” I paused, then added, “That’s the series’ hero.”

He nodded. “I read the book, remember?”

“Right.” I felt my face heat. Oh I remembered all right. All too well.

I cleared my throat. “Anyway in this dream he snuck into my dorm room. Clear as if I was awake. He told me his story. And he begged me to write it down.” I smiled, remembering. “When I woke up, I ran to my computer. Skipped all my classes—just typed all day long. It was as if the words weren’t mine. That someone—Jonathan, I guess—was whispering in my ear.” I turned back to Logan. “Sorry. It sounds dumb when I try to explain out loud.”

But Logan wasn’t laughing. Instead, he was staring at me thoughtfully, a ponderous look in his eyes. “Had you ever written anything before?” he asked.

“A little. Short stories, mostly. Some poems. Nothing big. I mean, I never wanted to be a writer if that’s what you mean,” I added. “I wanted to be a librarian.”

Now he laughed, his penetrating gaze raking over me. “You would have made for a very hot librarian,” he teased.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” I said, waving him off. Though in truth I couldn’t help a small trill of pleasure spiral through me. He thought I was hot? Not that I should care, but still!

“What about you?” I asked, wanting to turn the tables. “How did you become a vampire?”

To my surprise, his face darkened. As if a storm had suddenly rolled in out of nowhere. I sank back in my chair, the laughter fading from my lips. “What?”

“Are you mocking me?” he asked in a low voice.

“Uh, I was just trying to make conversation.”

“You don’t believe vampires exist.”

“But you do,” I countered. “Isn’t that the whole reason I’m here? So you can convince me? Maybe if I hear your personal story…”

“No!”

His voice was sharp, angry. I clamped my mouth shut and inched away from him on my seat. Clearly I had pissed him off somehow, though I had no idea how.

“Sorry,” I stammered. “I’ll just shut up now.”

“No,” he said again, but his voice was softer this time. “We can talk. About anything you like. I want you to ask questions. That’s the whole point of this exercise. So you can learn what vampires are truly like.”

“But you won’t tell me your story.”

“My story is not interesting.”

Hm. I watched him, curiously as he turned back to the window, staring intently into the black night, as if it held the secrets to the universe. The way he said that made me think it probably was pretty interesting. So interesting he didn’t want to relate it to a stranger. Maybe it had been really traumatic for him. Like, he was turned against his will… Like in Anne Rice’s Lestat books—where his vampire sire had killed himself before explaining to Lestat how to be a vampire…

Wait. What was I thinking? I didn’t believe any of this bullshit! Logan wasn’t a vampire. He was simply a deluded freak. A good looking deluded freak, I admit, but completely deluded all the same.

Because, as everyone knows, vampires simply don’t exist.

Which made me wonder once again, why was I here? How did he convince me to go along with this charade? I thought back to the party. The way he’d asked. The way I’d been completely ready to say no. And then he had looked at me. With those crazy eyes of his. And suddenly I was totally on board, all in, along for the ride. Leaving my own party to go off with a strange guy without telling anyone where I was going. Sure, that was par for the course for many girls my age. But not me. I would never do something like that. I’d be too scared I’d end up being dumped in a ditch. That no one would find my body for years.

So why had I said yes? Was it simply the lure of a large charitable donation? Or was something else going on here?

A shiver ran down my spine. One word echoing through my mind. One impossible, ridiculous word—and yet I was unable to dismiss it from my brain.

Compulsion.

Logan may have thought I knew nothing about vampires. But I knew all too well this power that vampires in TV and movies and books always seemed to have. A way to talk mortals into doing things against their will. Things they would have never agreed to do otherwise.

Could Logan have used this on me somehow? Was that how I found myself here?

I shook my head. That was ridiculous. He didn’t compel me. He just offered me a challenge. And I made a very bad, impulsive choice to accept that challenge. Period. End of story.

But for some reason, this rationalization didn’t make me feel any better. And soon my arm started itching again, begging for the relief of a fingernail or blade. I was also sweating, I realized, and it was causing the thick fabric of my dress to stick to my skin. I wanted to pull my sleeve up, but, of course, I couldn’t. I didn’t need this guy to see the weakness written on my arms. And so instead I rubbed them with my hands, trying to feel the grooves on my skin beneath the heavy fabric. The marks of times before. Sometimes that would be enough. But right now it didn’t seem to be doing much good.

“Are you all right?”

I looked up. Lost in my thoughts I hadn’t realized Logan had turned away from the window. Turned back to me. He was looking at me now with what appeared to be genuine concern in his eyes. Which only made me angrier. This was all his fault, after all. Me even being here. And now he was worried about me?

“I’m fine,” I spit out. “How far is this stupid place anyway?”

As if on cue, the limo stopped. Logan smiled.

“Actually, we’ve just arrived.”