I’d become a part of the supernatural world on Thanksgiving six years earlier, the very second Amias, injured and hungry, had touched me. Had hurt me.

After I’d healed, I’d immersed myself in Bay Town’s supernatural community—a community I’d barely been aware of until Miriam Crow had invited me in.

She’d taken me to Angus, and he’d given me a job.

I’d had no one else. My sister had pretty much raised me during our mother’s struggle with the cancer that had eventually taken her, and my father had left when I was two. I didn’t remember him and had no idea where he was, or if he were still alive. And I couldn’t have cared less.

For a long time, I’d closed myself off from everyone. Everyone except the Bay Town supernaturals.

They’d accepted me without reservation—mostly—and it hadn’t occurred to me to question their acceptance. I was truly one of them, even if they hadn’t known what I was when they’d welcomed me into their world.

But I was human, and I was part of the human world as well. I worked in the supernatural world, but lived in the human world. And that hadn’t really complicated my life.

Until now.

I arrived at my apartment in the center of the city of Red Valley, wondering, as I rode the elevator up to the fourth floor, whether I really wanted to continue living in the city.

I wanted to hunt and kill vampires. Could I live amongst the humans while hunting? Come home covered in blood, likely most of it mine, wounded, and reeking of death? Would I pull the humans into the supernatural community? Bay Town wouldn’t like that.

It was bad enough with me just working there. People didn’t forget the lone survivor of a horrific slaughter. Every year, they dragged it out of the shadows and made it into something a little more fantastical, if that were possible.

At any rate, the Red Valley Thanksgiving Day Massacre was becoming somewhat legendary, and though I was not exactly hounded by the media, each year when November rolled around, I was recognized, questioned, and occasionally asked for my autograph.

Infuriating but true.

And I drew more unwanted attention to the supernaturals with whom I associated.

Bay Town, full of supernaturals, was comforting in its quaint sweetness. The city, full of humans, was forbidding with its shadows and secrets and pain. One would think it would have been the opposite.

It wasn’t.

I’d found my belongings in the nightstand drawer and had shoved the stakes, belt, and blades into a bag, then slipped down the stairs and out the front door without anyone but a two-year-old named Annabelle seeing me. Soon enough, someone would discover I’d fled the house and call to tattle to Angus, but I didn’t care. He could roar and rage all he wanted, and I could ignore him like I always did.

I hurried down the hallway to my apartment, trying to look more like I belonged there and less like a battered thug, but from the couple of narrow-eyed glances I received, I wasn’t sure I succeeded.

My neighbor across the hall opened her door the exact second I shoved my key into my lock.

“Trinity,” she called. “I’m glad to see you. I was beginning to worry.”

“No need, Mrs. Watson. I’m fine.” I turned to face her when I felt her at my back, and sighed when her eyes widened.

“My goodness, honey. What on earth?” Her faded blue eyes darted, and her head tilted like a little bird as she studied me. The mass of wrinkles on her face deepened. “Your face is bruised!”

“I was jumped last night while delivering a pizza,” I lied. “But I’m not hurt.”

“Not hurt!” She pursed her lips and reached up to touch my face, withdrawing immediately when I recoiled. “You’re bruised and…” She shook her head but her tightly coifed hair never moved. “Haggard. At your age. Can I do anything for you? Would you like some soup? Can I call someone to come sit with you?” Before I could so much as open my mouth she continued. “Shall I sit with you? I’ll get my—”

“No,” I interrupted, gently. “I’m going to run a bath and then go to bed. I’m fine, I promise.”

“You saw a doctor, of course,” she said.

“Of course,” I agreed. “All I need is some rest.”

She tsk tsk’d. “Well, if you’re sure.”

“Absolutely. Goodnight, Mrs. Watson.”

I slipped inside and closed my door. The woman was sweet as she could be, but dear lord was she nosy.

She could tell me who visited the residents in any room on our floor—even if she couldn’t see their doors—and she knew the very instant a stranger stepped off the elevator. She called the manager’s office with sightings of ruffians and imagined murderers at least once a week, and was always ready with an old broom with which she might sweep out the garbage she felt didn’t belong there.

She was funny at times, but her paranoia, intrusiveness, and suspicion had gotten old fast.

She saw everything.

But she hadn’t seen the vampire who waited silently in the shadows of my living room.

“I have something for you,” Amias murmured. “Listen to me, Trinity.”

“I can’t,” I told him. And I couldn’t. I was helpless against the bloodlust and rage that sprang to life inside me every time I saw him.

I dropped the bag and knelt to retrieve one of the stakes that rolled free, then snarling with something close to madness, I sprang at him.

Pain dug into my brain and roared through my body.

I didn’t care.

He was there, and I had to kill him, no matter what that did to me.

And for the first time, I realized that not even my home was off limits to him. Vampires couldn’t go into a human’s house without an invitation. Something stopped them—gave them, from what we humans understood, unbearable pain if they tried—but nothing stopped Amias. He was in my home.

I attacked him with everything I had, just as I always did. My mind was on only one thing—getting that stake into his heart. Killing him. Destroying him. Hurting him.

Avenging my family.

But Amias was ready for me, and he wanted to talk. It didn’t matter if I needed to kill him—his strength was enormous, and I was, no matter what grew inside me, human. A puny human.

He grabbed me, held me against him with one arm, then ripped the stake out of my grip. He flung it at the wall with such force the sharpened point lodged in the plaster.

“No more.” His voice was quiet, but the power inside it blasted my eardrums and exploded into my brain. “You will never make me kill you, Trinity Sinclair.”

As though that was what I was after. My death.

And he was done playing.

He couldn’t mesmerize me—he’d tried before—but he could subdue me with his vampire strength. It wrapped around my body, my mind, my soul, and held me fast.

I stiffened against him, my mind screaming at me to attack, to relax, to fight, surrender, to hate, to love. I warred with myself with such violence that in the end, all I could do was sink to the floor, caught in his arms, and wail.

“You are mine,” he whispered, the vampire I hated above all things, and that whisper seemed to reverberate throughout the room. “You belong to me now.”

And I knew it was the truth. He could have proven it years earlier, but he hadn’t. He’d stalked me, watched me, waiting for the time to be right to force me to understand one indisputable fact of my life.

I was a master vampire’s servant.

His servant.

Amias Sato was my master.